Chapter 3

_The dust of forty centuries has buried Babylon, And out of all her lovers dead rises only one; Rises with a song to sing and laughter in his eyes, The old song--the only song--for all the rest are lies!_

_For, oh, the world has just one dream, and it is very old-- 'Tis youth's dream--a silly dream--but it is flushed with gold!_

A RHYME OF THE ROADS

PEARL-SLASHED and purple and crimson and fringed with gray mist of the hills, The pennons of morning advance to the music of rock-fretted rills, The dumb forest quickens to song, and the little gusts shout as they fling A floor-cloth of orchard bloom down for the flashing, quick feet of the Spring.

To the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; let us follow his feet!

Like raveled red girdles flung down by some hoidenish goddess in mirth The tangled roads reach from rim unto utter-most rim of the earth-- We will weave of these strands a strong net, we will snare the bright wings of delight,-- We will make of these strings a sweet lute that will shame the low wind-harps of night.

The clamor of tongues and the clangor of trades in the peevish packed street, The arrogant, jangling Nothings, with iterant, dissonant beat, The clattering, senseless endeavor with dross of mere gold for its goal, These have sickened the senses and wearied the brain and straitened the soul.

"Come forth and be cleansed of the folly of strife for things worthless of strife, Come forth and gain life and grasp God by foregoing gains worthless of life"--

It was thus spake the wizard wildwood, low-voiced to the hearkening heart, It was thus sang the jovial hills, and the harper sun bore part.

O woman, whose blood as my blood with the fire of the Spring is aflame, We did well, when the red roads called, that we heeded the call and came-- Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul may speak sooth unto soul, Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal of Nowhere for our goal!

What planet-crowned Dusk that wanders the steeps of our firmament there Hath gems that may match with the dew-opals meshed in thine opulent hair? What wind-witch that skims the curled billows with feet they are fain to caress Hath sandals so wing'd as thine art with a god-like carelessness?

And dare we not dream this is heaven?--to wander thus on, ever on. Through the hush-heavy valleys of space, up the flushing red slopes of the dawn?-- For none that seeks rest shall find rest till he ceaseth his striving for rest, And the gain of the quest is the joy of the road that allures to the quest.

THE LAND OF YESTERDAY

AND I would seek the country town Amid green meadows nestled down If I could only find the way Back to the Land of Yesterday!

How I would thrust the miles aside, Rush up the quiet lane, and then, Just where her roses laughed in pride, Find her among the flowers again. I'd slip in silently and wait Until she saw me by the gate, And then ... read through a blur of tears Quick pardon for the selfish years.

This time, this time, I would not wait For that brief wire that said, _Too late!_-- If I could only find the way Into the Land of Yesterday.

I wonder if her roses yet Lift up their heads and laugh with pride, And if her phlox and mignonette Have heart to blossom by their side; I wonder if the dear old lane Still chirps with robins after rain, And if the birds and banded bees Still rob her early cherry-trees....

I wonder, if I went there now, How everything would seem, and how-- But no! not now; there is no way Back to the Land of Yesterday.

OCTOBER

CEASE to call him sad and sober, Merriest of months, October! Patron of the bursting bins, Reveler in wayside inns, I can nowhere find a trace Of the pensive in his face; There is mingled wit and folly, But the madcap lacks the grace Of a thoughtful melancholy. Spendthrift of the seasons' gold, How he flings and scatters out Treasure filched from summer-time!-- Never ruffling squire of old Better loved a tavern bout When Prince Hal was in his prime. Doublet slashed with gold and green; Cloak of crimson; changeful sheen, Of the dews that gem his breast; Frosty lace about his throat;

Scarlet plumes that flaunt and float Backward in a gay unrest-- Where's another gallant drest With such tricksy gaiety, Such unlessoned vanity? With his amber afternoons And his pendant poets' moons-- With his twilights dashed with rose From the red-lipped afterglows-- With his vocal airs at dawn Breathing hints of Helicon-- Bacchanalian bees that sip Where his cider-presses drip-- With the winding of the horn Where his huntsmen meet the morn-- With his every piping breeze Shaking from familiar trees Apples of Hesperides-- With the chuckle, chirp, and trill Of his jolly brooks that spill Mirth in tangled madrigals Down pebble-dappled waterfalls-- (Brooks that laugh and make escape Through wild arbors where the grape

Purples with a promise of Racy vintage rare as love)-- With his merry, wanton air, Mirth and vanity and folly Why should he be made to bear Burden of some melancholy Song that swoons and sinks with care? Cease to call him sad or sober,-- He's a jolly dog, October!

CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS

THE Hours passed by, a fleet, confused crowd; With wafture of blown garments bright as fire, Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed, And where they trod the jonquil and the briar Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;-- They danced! they danced! to piping such as flings The garnered music of a million Springs Into one single, keener ecstasy;-- One paused and shouted to my questionings: "Lo, I am Youth; I bid thee follow me!"

The Hours passed by; they paced, great lords and proud, Crowned on with sunlight, robed in rich attire; Before their conquering word the brute deed bowed, And Ariel fancies served their large desire;

They spake, and roused the mused soul that dwells In dust, or, smiling, shaped new heavens and hells, Dethroned old gods and made blind beggars kings: "And what art thou," I cried to one, "that brings His mistress, for a brooch, the Galaxy?"-- "I am the plumed Thought that soars and sings: Lo, I am Song; I bid thee follow me!"

The Hours passed by, with veiled eyes endowed Of dream, and parted lips that scarce suspire, To breathing dusk and arrowy moonlight vowed, South wind and shadowy grove and murmuring lyre;-- Swaying they moved, as drows'd of wizard spells Or tranc'd with sight of recent miracles, And yet they trembled, down their folded wings Quivered the hint of sweet withholden things, Ah, bitter-sweet in their intensity! One paused and said unto my wonderings: "Lo, I am Love; I bid thee follow me!"

The Hours passed by, through huddled cities loud With witless hate and stale with stinking mire:

So cowled monks might march with bier and shroud Down streets plague-spotted toward some cleansing pyre;-- Yet, lo! strange lilies bloomed in lightless cells, And passionate spirits burst their clayey shells And sang the stricken hope that bleeds and clings: Earth's bruised heart beat in the throbbing strings, And joy still struggled through the threnody! One stern Hour said unto my marvelings: "Lo, I am Life; I bid thee follow me!"

The Hours passed by, the stumbling hours and cowed, Uncertain, prone to tears and childish ire,-- The wavering hours that drift like any cloud At whim of winds or fortunate or dire,-- The feeble shapes that any chance expells; Their wisdom useless, lacking the blood that swells The tensed vein: the hot, swift tide that stings With life. Ah, wise! but naked to the slings Of fate, and plagued of youthful memory! A cracked voice broke upon my pityings: "Lo, I am Age; I bid thee follow me!"

Ah, Youth! we dallied by the babbling wells Where April all her lyric secret tells;-- Ah, Song! we sped our bold imaginings As far as yon red planet's triple rings;-- O Life! O Love! I followed, followed thee! There waits one word to end my journeyings: "Lo, I am Death; I bid thee follow me!"

DREAMS AND DUST

SELVES

_My dust in ruined Babylon Is blown along the level plain, And songs of mine at dawn have soared Above the blue Sicilian main._

We are ourselves, and not ourselves ... For ever thwarting pride and will Some forebear's passion leaps from death To claim a vital license still.

Ancestral lusts that slew and died, Resurgent, swell each living vein; Old doubts and faiths, new panoplied, Dispute the mastery of the brain.

The love of liberty that flames From written rune and stricken reed Shook the hot hearts of swordsmen sires At Marathon and Runnymede.

_What are these things we call our "selves"? ... Have I not shouted, sobbed, and died In the bright surf of spears that broke Where Greece rolled back the Persian tide?_

Are we who breathe more quick than they Whose bones are dust within the tomb? Nay, as I write, what gray old ghosts Murmur and mock me from the gloom....

They call ... across strange seas they call, Strange seas, and haunted coasts of time.... They startle me with wordless songs To which the Sphinx hath known the rhyme.

Our hearts swell big with dead men's hates, Our eyes sting hot with dead men's tears; We are ourselves, but not ourselves, Born heirs, but serfs, to all the years!

_I rode with Nimrod ... strove at Troy ... A slave I stood in Crowning Tyre, A queen looked on me and I loved And died to compass my desire._

THE WAGES

EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross, Her golden souls, to waste; The cup she fills for her god-men Is a bitter cup to taste.

Who sees the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.

Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld And beats some falsehood down Shall pass the pallid gates of death _Sans_ laurel, love or crown;

For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee-- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane.

IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR?

"In Vishnu-land, what avatar?" --BROWNING.

PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth Are destined to another birth, And worn-out creeds regain their worth In the kindly air of other stars-- What lords of life and light hold sway In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way? What avatars in Mars?

What Aphrodites from the seas That lap the plunging Pleiades Arise to spread afar The dream that was the soul of Greece? In Mars, what avatar?

Which hundred moons are wan with love For dull Endymions? Which hundred moons hang tranced above Audacious Ajalons?

What Holy Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star? What fables sway the Milky Way? In Mars, what avatar?

When morning skims with crimson wings Across the meres of Mercury, What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings Of miracles on Mercury? What Christs, what avatars, Claim Mars?

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN

NEVERMORE Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned flute;

Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore; And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

And into what night have the Orient dieties strayed? Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged you eternal!) decayed.

The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass Like a breath from the face of a glass, Or a blossom of summer blown shallop-like over The clover And tossed tides of grass.

Sink to silence the psalms and the paeans The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the aeons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worships grow senseless and strange,

And the mockers ask, _"Where be thy altars?"_ Crying, _"Nothing is changeless--but Change!"_

Yes, nothing seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, One story for ever appears; The tale of a City Supernal-- The whisper of Something eternal-- A passion, a hope, and a vision That peoples the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- Manifold are the tale's variations, Race and clime ever tinting the dreams, Yet its essence, through endless mutations, Immutable gleams.

Deathless, though godheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason-defying, Lives that passionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, _Never_

_Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- I will storm the black bastions of Night! I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a god!"_

As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs; And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, he clothes them with music and fire; Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, that he worships his own desire; And mixed with his trust there is terror, and mixed with his madness is ruth, And every man grovels in error, yet every man glimpses a truth.

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow, too;

For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion But is worthy some worship of mine;-- Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble--but open-eyed!

UNREST

A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core Of all existing things: It was the eager wish to soar That gave the gods their wings.

From what flat wastes of cosmic slime, And stung by what quick fire, Sunward the restless races climb!-- Men risen out of mire!

There throbs through all the worlds that are This heart-beat hot and strong, And shaken systems, star by star, Awake and glow in song.

But for the urge of this unrest These joyous spheres were mute; But for the rebel in his breast Had man remained a brute.

When baffled lips demanded speech, Speech trembled into birth-- (One day the lyric word shall reach From earth to laughing earth)--

When man's dim eyes demanded light The light he sought was born-- His wish, a Titan, scaled the height And flung him back the morn!

From deed to dream, from dream to deed, From daring hope to hope, The restless wish, the instant need, Still lashed him up the slope!

. . . . . .

I sing no governed firmament, Cold, ordered, regular-- I sing the stinging discontent That leaps from star to star!

THE PILTDOWN SKULL

WHAT was his life, back yonder In the dusk where time began, This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape And the eye and brain of a man?-- Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, Play, and the blind beginnings Of an Art that groped for light?--

In the wonder of redder mornings, By the beauty of brighter seas, Did he stand, the world's first thinker, Scorning his clan's decrees?-- Seeking, with baffled eyes, In the dumb, inscrutable skies, A name for the greater glory That only the dreamer sees?

One day, when the afterglows, Like quick and sentient things,

With a rush of their vast, wild wings, Rose out of the shaken ocean As great birds rise from the sod, Did the shock of their sudden splendor Stir him and startle and thrill him, Grip him and shake him and fill him With a sense as of heights untrod?-- Did he tremble with hope and vision, And grasp at a hint of God?

London stands where the mammoth Caked shag flanks with slime-- And what are our lives that inherit The treasures of all time? Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, A little play (and too much toil!) With an Art that gropes for light; And now and then a dreamer, Rapt, from his lonely sod Looks up and is thrilled and startled With a fleeting sense of God!

THE SEEKER

THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old gods fail him in the strife-- Withdrawn, the heavens he sought!

Vanished, the miracles that led, The cloud at noon, the flame at night; The vision that he wing'd and sped Falls backward, baffled, from the height;

Yet in the wreck of these he stands Upheld by something grim and strong; Some stubborn instinct lifts a song And nerves him, heart and hands:

He does not dare to call it hope;-- It is not aught that seeks reward--

Nor faith, that up some sunward slope Runs aureoled to meet its lord;

It touches something elder far Than faith or creed or thought in man, It was ere yet these lived and ran Like light from star to star;

It touches that stark, primal need That from unpeopled voids and vast Fashioned the first crude, childish creed,-- And still shall fashion, till the last!

For one word is the tale of men: They fling their icons to the sod, And having trampled down a god They seek a god again!

Stripped of his creeds inherited, Bereft of all his sires held true, Amid the wreck of visions dead He thrills at touch of visions new....

He wings another Dream for flight.... He seeks beyond the outmost dawn A god he set there ... and, anon, Drags that god from the height!

. . . . . .

But aye from ruined faiths and old That droop and die, fall bruised seeds; And when new flowers and faiths unfold They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier creeds.

THE AWAKENING

THE steam, the reek, the fume, of prayer Blown outward for a million years, Becomes a mist between the spheres, And waking Sentience struggles there.

Prayer still creates the boon we pray; And gods we've hoped for, from those hopes Will gain sufficient form one day And in full godhood storm the slopes Where ancient Chaos, stark and gray, Already trembles for his sway.

When that the restless worlds would fly Their wish created rapid wings, But not till aeons had passed by With dower of many idler things; And when dumb flesh demanded speech Speech struggled to the lips at last;-- Now the unpeopled Void, and vast,

Clean to that uttermost blank beach Whereto the boldest thought may reach That voyages from the vaguest past-- (Dim realm and ultimate of space)-- Is vexed and troubled, stirs and shakes, In prescience of a god that wakes, Born of man's wish to see God's face!

The endless, groping, dumb desires,-- The climbing incense thick and sweet, The lovely purpose that aspires, The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet That rise and run with eager feet Forth from a myriad altar fires: All these become a mist that fills The vales and chasms nebular; A shaping Soul that moves and thrills The wastes between red star and star!

A SONG OF MEN

OUT of the soil and the slime, Reeking, they climb,

Out of the muck and the mire, Rank, they aspire;

Filthy with murder and mud, Black with shed blood,

Lust and passion and clay-- Dying, they slay;

Stirred by vague hints of a goal, Seeking a soul!

Groping through terror and night Up to the light:

Life in the dust and the clod Sensing a God;

Flushed of the glamor and gleam Caught from a dream;

Stained of the struggle and toil, Stained of the soil,

Ally of God in the end-- Helper and friend--

Hero and prophet and priest Out of the beast!

THE NOBLER LESSON

CHRIST was of virgin birth, and, being slain, The creedists say, He rose from death again. Oh, futile age-long talk of death and birth!-- His life, that is the one thing wonder-worth; Not how He came, but how He lived on earth. For if gods stoop, and with quaint jugglery Mock nature's laws, how shall that profit thee?-- The nobler lesson is that mortals can Grow godlike through this baffled front of man!

AT LAST

EACH race has died and lived and fought for the "true" gods of that poor race, Unconsciously, divinest thought of each race gilding its god's face. And every race that lives and dies shall make itself some other gods, Shall build, with mingled truth and lies, new icons from the world-old clods. Through all the tangled creeds and dreams and shifting shibboleths men hold The false-and-true, inwoven, gleams: a matted mass of dross and gold. Prove, then, thy gods in thine own soul; all others' gods, for thee, are vain; Nor swerved be, struggling for the goal, by bribe of joy nor threat of pain.

As skulls grow broader, so do faiths; as old tongues die, old gods die, too,

And only ghosts of gods and wraiths may meet the backward-gazer's view. Where, where the faiths of yesterday? Ah, whither vanished, whither gone? Say, what Apollos drive to-day adown the flaming slopes of dawn? Oh, does the blank past hide from view forgotten Christs, to be reborn, The future tremble where some new Messiah-Memnon sings the morn? Of all the worlds, say any earth, like dust wind-harried to and fro, Shall give the next Prometheus birth; but say--at last--you do not know.

How should I know what dawn may gleam beyond the gates of darkness there?-- Which god of all the gods men dream? Why should I whip myself to care? Whichever over all hath place hath shaped and made me what I am; Hath made me strong to front his face, to dare to question though he damn.