Part 2
O odour of incense, pride of purple and gold, Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute and pipe! O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing antiphonal chant! O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echoing roof, With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant tubes, and thunder of sound! And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of jubilant bell, And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, insistent pipe-- If song and emotion and music were all-- Were it only all!
II
For see, dark heart of mine, How the singers have ceased and gone! See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are low, And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent towers Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to His stars! How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of Silence with sound! How in vain with our music and song and emotion assailed the Unknown, How beat with the wings of our worship on Earth's imprisoning bars! For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud loud tubes have tired, Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable stars, And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn Where glimmer those sentinel fires, Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two Some night must steal us forth, Quite naked, and alone!
THE PILOT
I lounge on the deck of the river-steamer, Homeward bound with its load, Churning from headland to headland, Through moonlight and silence and dusk. And the decks are alive with laughter and music and singing, And I see the forms of the sleepers And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the rail, And the romping children behind, And the dancers amidships. But high above us there in the gloom, Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his feet, Unseen of lover and dancer and me, Is the Pilot, impassive and stern, With his grim eyes watching the course.
DOORS
Listen! Footsteps Are they, That falter through the gloom, That echo through the lonely chambers Of our house of life?
Listen! Did a door close? Did a whisper waken? Did a ghostly something Sigh across the dusk?
From the mournful silence Something, something went! Far down some shadowy passage Faintly closed a door-- And O how empty lies Our house of life!
SPRING FLOODS
You stood alone In the dusky window, Watching the racing river. Touched with a vague unrest, And if tired of loving too much More troubled at heart to find That the flame of love could wither And the wonder of love could pass, You kneeled at the window-ledge And stared through the black-topped maples Where an April robin fluted,-- Stared idly out At the flood-time sweep of the river, Silver and paling gold In the ghostly April twilight.
Shadowy there in the dusk You watched with shadowy eyes The racing, sad, unreasoning Hurrying torrent of silver Seeking its far-off sea. Faintly I heard you sigh, And faintly I heard the robin's flute, And faintly from rooms remote Came a broken murmur of voices. And life, for a breath, stood bathed In a wonder crowned with pain, And immortal the moment hung; And I know that the thought of you There at the shadowy window, And the matted black of the maples, And the sunset call of a bird, And the sad wide reaches of silver, Will house in my haunted heart Till the end of Time!
THE TURN OF THE YEAR
The pines shake and the winds wake, And the dark waves crowd the sky-line! The birds wheel out on a troubled sky; The widening road runs white and long, And the page is turned, And the world is tired!
So I want no more of twilight sloth, And I want no more of resting, And of all the earth I ask no more Than the green sea, the great sea, The long road, the white road, And a change of life to-day!
IF I LOVE YOU
If I love you, woman of rose And warmth and wondering eyes, If it so fall out That you are the woman I choose, Oh, what is there left to say, And what should it matter to me, Or what can it mean to you? For under the two white breasts And the womb that makes you woman The call of the ages whispers And the countless ghosts awaken, And stronger than sighs and weeping The urge that makes us one, And older than hate or loving or shame This want that builds the world!
WHAT SHALL I CARE?
What shall I care for the ways Of these idle and thin-flanked women in silk And the lisping men-shadows that trail at their heels? What are they worth in my world Or the world that I want, These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate women And these half-women daring to call themselves men Yet afraid to get down to the earth And afraid of the wind, Afraid of the truth, And so sadly afraid of themselves? How can they help me in trouble and death? How can they keep me from hating my kind? Oh, I want to get out of their coffining rooms, I want to walk free with a man, A man who has lived and dared And swung through the cycle of life! God give me a man for a friend To the End, Give me a man with his heel on the neck of Hate, With his fist in the face of Death, A man not fretted with womanish things, Unafraid of the light, Of the worm in the lip of a corpse, Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart,-- God give me a man for friend!
HUNTER AND HUNTED
I
When the sun is high, And the hills are happy with light, Then virile and strong I am! Then ruddy with life I fare, The fighter who feels no dread, The roamer who knows no bounds, The hunter who makes the world his prey, And shouting and swept with pride, Still mounts to the lonelier height!
II
In the cool of the day, When the huddling shadows swarm, And the ominous eyes look out And night slinks over the swales And the silence is chill with death, Then I am the croucher beside the coals, The lurker within the shadowy cave, Who listens and mutters a charm And trembles and waits, A hunted thing grown Afraid of the hunt, A silence enisled in silence, A wonder enwrapped in awe!
APPLE BLOSSOMS
I saw a woman stand Under the seas of bloom, Under the waves of colour and light, The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees That made a glory of earth. She stood where the petals fell, And her hands were on her breast, And her lips were touched with wonder, And her eyes were full of pain-- For pure she was, and young, And it was Spring!
THE HOUSE OF LIFE
Quietly I closed the door. Then I said to my soul: "I shall never come back, Back to this haunted room Where Sorrow and I have slept." I turned from that hated door And passed through the House of Life, Through its ghostly rooms and glad And its corridors dim with age. Then lightly I crossed a threshold Where the casements showed the sun And I entered an unknown room,-- And my heart went cold, For about me stood that Chamber of Pain I had thought to see no more!
ULTIMATA
I am desolate, Desolate because of a woman. When at midnight walking alone I look up at the slow-wheeling stars, I see only the eyes of this woman. In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded, Where once I sought peace, I find now only unrest And this one unaltering want. When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-tops I hear only her voice's whisper. When by day I gaze into the azure above me I see only the face of this woman. In the sunlight I cannot find comfort, Nor can I find peace in the shadows. Neither can I take joy in the hill-wind, Nor find solace on kindlier breasts; For deep in the eyes of all women I watch I see only her eyes stare back. Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my heart And the ache for her out of my hours. Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreams And wounds me in sleep; And my body cries out for her, Early and late and forever cries out for her, And her alone,-- _And I want this woman!_
I am sick at heart because of this woman; I am lost to shame because of my want; And mine own people have come to mean naught to me; And with many about me still am I utterly alone, And quite solitary now I take my way Where men are intent on puny things And phantasmal legions pace! And a wearisome thing is life, And forever the shadow of this one woman Is falling across my path. The turn in the road is a promise of her. The twilight is thronged with her ghosts; The grasses speak only of her, The leaves whisper her name forever; The odorous fields are full of her. Her lips, I keep telling myself, Are a cup from which I must drink; Her breast is the one last pillow Whereon I may ever find peace! Yet she has not come to me, And being denied her, everything stands denied, And all men who have waited in vain for love Cry out through my desolate heart; And the want of the hungering world Runs like fire through my veins And bursts from my throat in the cry _That I want this woman!_
I am possessed of a great sickness And likewise possessed of a great strength, And the ultimate hour has come. I will arise and go unto this woman, And with bent head and my arms about her knees I shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words, Others have sought your side, And many have craved your kiss, But none, O body of flesh and bone, Has known a hunger like mine! And though evil befall, or good, This hunger is given to me, And is now made known to you,-- For I must die, Or you must die, Or Desire must die This night!"
THE LIFE ON THE TABLE
In the white-walled room Where the white bed waits Stand banks of meaningless flowers; In the rain-swept street Are a ghost-like row of cabs; And along the corridor-dusk Phantasmal feet repass. Through the warm, still air The odour of ether hangs; And on this slenderest thread Of one thin pulse Hangs and swings The hope of life-- The life of her I love!
YOU BID ME TO SLEEP
You bid me to sleep,-- But why, O Daughter of Beauty, Was beauty thus born in the world? Since out of these shadowy eyes The wonder shall pass! And out of this surging and passionate breast The dream shall depart! And out of these delicate rivers of warmth The fire shall wither and fail! And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed! And this perilous bosom that pulses with love Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,-- Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, Close to its sumptuous warmth You hold my sorrowing head, And smile with shadowy eyes, And bid me to sleep again!
THE LAST OF SUMMER
The opal afternoon Is cool, and very still. A wash of tawny air, Sea-green that melts to gold, Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill. Out of the black-topped pinelands A black crow calls, And the year seems old! A woman from a doorway sings, And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks, And through the umber woods the echo falls. Then silence on the still world lies, And faint and far the birds fly south, And behind the dark pines drops the sun, And a small wind wakes and sighs, And Summer, see, is done!
AT CHARING-CROSS
Alone amid the Rockies I have stood; Alone across the prairie's midnight calm Full often I have fared And faced the hushed infinity of night; Alone I have hung poised Between a quietly heaving sea And quieter sky, Aching with isolation absolute; And in Death's Valley I have walked alone And sought in vain for some appeasing sign Of life or movement, While over-desolate my heart called out For some befriending face Or some assuaging voice! But never on my soul has weighed Such loneliness as this, As here amid the seething London tides I look upon these ghosts that come and go, These swarming restless souls innumerable, Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcern Must know and nurse the thought of kindred ghosts As lonely as themselves, Or else go mad with it!
PRESCIENCE
I
"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses, "The worst of it is, when I think of Death, That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful, And Summer by Summer be lovely again, --And I shall be gone!"
II
"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses, "If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind! But the thought that Earth and April Year by casual year Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful, Year by year when I am away, --This, this breaks my heart!"
THE STEEL WORKERS
I watched the workers in steel, The Pit-like glow of the furnace, The rivers of molten metal, The tremulous rumble of cranes, The throb of the Thor-like hammers On sullen and resonant anvils! I saw the half-clad workers Twisting earth's iron to their use, Shaping the steel to their thoughts; And, in some way, out of the fury And the fires of mortal passion, It seemed to me, In some way, out of the torture And tumult of inchoate Time, The hammer of sin is shaping The soul of man!
THE CHILDREN
The city is old in sin, And children are not for cities, And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not, You say with a broken laugh. Yet out of each wayward softness of voice, And each fulness of breast, And each flute-throated echo of song, Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things, Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown, Each whisper and touch in the silence of night, Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth, Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought, Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain, Arises the old and the inappeasable cry! Every girl who leans from a tenement sill And flutters a hand to a youth, Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk, Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel That would trample truth down in the dust, Reaches unknowingly out for its own, And blind to its heritage waits For its child!
THE NOCTURNE
Remote, in some dim room, On this dark April morning soft with rain, I hear her pensive touch Fall aimless on the keys, And stop, and play again.
And as the music wakens And the shadowy house is still, How all my troubled soul cries out For things I know not of! Ah, keen the quick chords fall, And weighted with regret, Fade through the quiet rooms; And warm as April rain The strange tears fall, And life in some way seems Too deep to bear!
THE WILD GEESE
Over my home-sick head, High in the paling light And touched with the sunset's glow, Soaring and strong and free, The unswerving phalanx sweeps, The honking wild geese go,-- Go with a flurry of wings Home to their norland lakes And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace And the pinelands soft with Spring!
I cannot go as the geese go, But into the steadfast North, The North that is dark and tender, My home-sick spirit wings,-- Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts And nests in the tarns of youth.
THE DAY
I
Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes, Is this the day she comes? O wild-flower face of Morning, Must you never wake? Silvery, silvery sea-line, Does she come to-day? O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, Beneath your whispering shadow She will surely pass; And thrush beneath the black-thorn And white-throat in the pine-top, Sing as you have never sung, For she will surely come!
II
The lone green of the lawn-slope, The grey light on the sky-line, The mournful stir of birch-leaves, The thin note of the brown thrush, And the call of troubled white-throats Across the afternoon!-- Ah, Summer now is over, And for us the season closed, For she who came an hour ago Has gone again-- Has gone!
THE REVOLT
God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed, That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game, That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song, That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content! But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all, I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time, I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out, I want to make peace with myself, And say what I have to say, While still there is time!
Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said, To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind, Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated! Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul The shackles and chains of song!
But, lo, on my wrists are the scars, And here on my ankles the chain-galls, And the cell-pallor, see, on my face! And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust, And for guidance I grope to the walls, And after my moment of light
I want to go back to the Dark, Since the Open still makes me afraid, And silence seems best in the sun, And song in the dusk!
ATAVISM
I feel all primal and savage to-day. I could eat and drink deep and love strong I could fight and exult and boast and be glad! I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it! I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door! I could glory in folly and fire and ruin, And race naked-limbed with the wind, And slink on the heels of my foes And dabble their blood on my brows-- For to-day I am sick of it all, This silent and orderly empty life, And I feel all savage again!
MARCH TWILIGHT
Black with a batter of mud Stippled with silvery pools Stands the pavement at the street-end; And the gutter snow is gone From cobble and runnelling curb; And no longer the ramping wind Is rattling the rusty signs; And moted and soft and misty Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets, And the home-bound crowds of the city Walk in a flood of gold.
And suddenly out of the dusk There comes the ancient question: Can it be that I have lived In earlier worlds unknown? Or is it that somewhere deep In this husk that men call Me Are kennelled a motley kin I never shall know or name,-- Are housed still querulous ghosts That sigh and awaken and move, And sleep once more?
THE ECHO
I
I am only a note in the chorus, A leaf in the fluttering June, A wave on the deep. These things that I struggle to utter Have all been uttered before. In many another heart The selfsame song was born, The ancient ache endured, The timeless wonder faced, The unanswered question nursed, The resurgent hunger felt, And the eternal failure known!
II
But glad is the lip of its whisper; The wave, of its life; The leaf, of its lisp; And glad for its hour is my soul For its echo of godlier music, Its fragment of song!
AUTUMN
The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill; In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all, And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad. There are no birds, And the goldenrod is gone. And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight; And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper, And all the world seems old!
FACES
I tire of these empty masks, These faces of city women That seem so vapid and well-controlled. I get tired of their guarded ways And their eyes that are always empty Of either passion or hate Or promise or love, And that seem to be old And are never young! I think of the homelier faces That I have seen, The vital and open faces In the by-ways of the world: A Polish girl who met Her lover one wintry morning Outside the gaol at Ossining; A lean young Slav violinist And the steerage women about him, Held by the sound of his music; A young and deep-bosomed Teuton Suckling her shawl-wrapped child On a grey stone bridge in Detmold; A group of girls from Ireland, Crowding the steps of a colonist-car And singing half-sadly together As their train rocked on and on Over the sun-bathed prairie; A mournful Calabrian mother Standing and staring out Past the mists of Ischia After a fading steamer; A Nautch girl held by a sailor Who'd taken a knife from her fingers But not the fire from her eyes; And a silent Sicilian mother Standing alone in the Marina Awaiting her boy who had been Long years away!-- These I remember! And of these I never tire!
THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL
There is strength in the soil; In the earth there is laughter and youth. There is solace and hope in the upturned loam. And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed! And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song; For I know it is good to get back to the earth That is orderly, placid, all-patient! It is good to know how quiet And noncommittal it breathes, This ample and opulent bosom That must some day nurse us all!
LIFE-DRUNK
On opal Aprilian mornings like this I seem dizzy and drunk with life. I waken and wander and laugh in the sun; With some mystical knowledge enormous I lift up my face to the light. Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem; With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel; And my arm could fling Time from His throne; I could pelt the awed taciturn arch Of Morning with music and mirth; And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought, That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of Night Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song!
MY HEART STOOD EMPTY
My heart stood empty and bare, So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. The remembered ways of this woman Hung sweet in my heart. So I followed where thought should lead, And it led to her feet. But the mouth of this woman was pain, And the love of this woman, regret; And now only the thought Of all those remembered thoughts Of remembered ways, Is shut in my heart!
ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST
When they flagged our train because of a broken rail, I stepped down out of the crowded car, With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk. I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night, And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face, And somewhere I heard the running of water, I felt the breathing of grass, And I knew, as I saw the great white stars, That the world was made for good!
DREAMERS
There's a poet tombed in you, Man of blood and iron! There's a dreamer dead and buried Deep beneath your cynic frown, Deep beneath your toil!
And deep beneath my music, There's a strong man stirs in me; There's a ghost of blood and granite Coffined in this madness Carpentered of Song!
You live your day and drain it; I weave my dream and lose it; But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times, At all your city's sky-line, At all your roaring market-place, At all its hum of power-- And the poet dead within you stirs Still at the plaintive note or two Of a dreamer's plaintive song!
THE QUESTION
I
Glad with the wine of life, Reeling I go my way, Drunk with the ache of living And mouthing my drunken song! Then comes the lucid moment And the shadow across the lintel; And I hear the ghostly whisper, And I glimpse with startled eyes The Door beyond the doorway, And I see the small dark house Where I must sleep.
II
Then song turns sour on my lips, And the warmth goes out of my blood, And I turn me back to the beaker, And re-draining my cup of dream, I drown the whispering voices, I banish the ghostly question As to which in the end is true: The wine and the open road? Or the waiting Door?
THE GIFT OF HATE