Chapter 5

Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors, Shiny and sparkling,--arms and crowns and rings: Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -- To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down, Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again, And watch the glinting metal trickle off, Even as at night some fisherman, home bound With speckled cargo in his hollow keel Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines, Dips in his paddle, lifts it forth again, And laughs to see the luminous white drops Fall back in flakes of fire. . . . Gold was the dream That cheered that desperate enterprise. And now? . . . Victory waited on the arms of Spain, Fallen was the lovely city by the lake, The sunny Venice of the western world; There many corpses, rotting in the wind, Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er. Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets Came railing home at evening empty-palmed; And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone, Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away: They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down, Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below And over wealth that might have ransomed kings Passed on to safety;--cheated, guerdonless -- Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped) A city naked, of that golden dream Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky.

Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams, Helpless and manacled they led him down -- Cuauhtemotzin--and other lords beside -- All chieftains of the people, heroes all -- And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there On short stone settles sloping to the head, But where the feet projected, underneath Heaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed, The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned, Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault. Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers; some Stood at the sufferers' heads and all the while Hissed in their ears: "The gold . . . the gold . . . the gold. Where have ye hidden it--the chested gold? Speak--and the torments cease!"

They answered not. Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimed No accent fell to chide or to betray, Only it chanced that bound beside the king Lay one whom Nature, more than other men Framing for delicate and perfumed ease, Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth, Had weaned from gentle usages so far To teach that fortitude that warriors feel And glory in the proof. He answered not, But writhing with intolerable pain, Convulsed in every limb, and all his face Wrought to distortion with the agony, Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, The secret half atremble on his lips, Livid and quivering, that waited yet For leave--for leave to utter it--one sign -- One word--one little word--to ease his pain.

As one reclining in the banquet hall, Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers, Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he, Staunch in the ethic of an antique school -- Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind -- With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene, Himself impassive, silent, self-contained: So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched, Amid the tortured and the torturers. He who had seen his hopes made desolate, His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him, And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled His stricken people in their reeking doors, Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell As back and forth he paced along the streets With words of hopeless comfort--what was this That one should weaken now? He weakened not. Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealt In pity nor in scorn, but, turning round, Met that racked visage with his own unmoved, Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes, And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice, As who would speak not all in gentleness Nor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am -I- then Upon a bed of roses?"

Stung with shame -- Shame bitterer than his anguish--to betray Such cowardice before the man he loved, And merit such rebuke, the boy grew calm; And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries, And shook away his tears, and strove to smile, And turned his face against the wall--and died.

The Nympholept

There was a boy--not above childish fears -- With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, Walked up into the mountains. One by one Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride Fell back, and ever wider and more wide The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed, From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed At that far length to which his path had led, He paused--at such a height where overhead The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill, And all was hushed and calm and very still, Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound Of tumbling waters rose, and all around The pines, by those keen upper currents blown, Muttered in multitudinous monotone. Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees, Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes; I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The Life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable . . . He might not linger, but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides -- Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine, By glade and flowery lawn and upland green, And never paused nor felt assured again But where the grassy foothills opened. Then, While shadows lengthened on the plain below And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow Looked back upon the world with fervid eye Through the barred windows of the western sky, Homeward he fared, while many a look behind Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined, Highland and hollow where his path had lain, Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.

The Wanderer

To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,

And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken and new bliss Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates, Coming to market with his morning load, The peasant found him early on his road To greet the sunrise at the city-gates, --

There where the meadows waken in its rays, Golden with mist, and the great roads commence, And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense, Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze.

White dunes that breaking show a strip of sea, A plowman and his team against the blue, Swiss pastures musical with cowbells, too, And poplar-lined canals in Picardie,

And coast-towns where the vultures back and forth Sail in the clear depths of the tropic sky, And swallows in the sunset where they fly Over gray Gothic cities in the north,

And the wine-cellar and the chorus there, The dance-hall and a face among the crowd, -- Were all delights that made him sing aloud For joy to sojourn in a world so fair.

Back of his footsteps as he journeyed fell Range after range; ahead blue hills emerged. Before him tireless to applaud it surged The sweet interminable spectacle.

And like the west behind a sundown sea Shone the past joys his memory retraced, And bright as the blue east he always faced Beckoned the loves and joys that were to be.

From every branch a blossom for his brow He gathered, singing down Life's flower-lined road, And youth impelled his spirit as he strode Like winged Victory on the galley's prow.

That Loveliness whose being sun and star, Green Earth and dawn and amber evening robe, That lamp whereof the opalescent globe The season's emulative splendors are,

That veiled divinity whose beams transpire From every pore of universal space, As the fair soul illumes the lovely face -- That was his guest, his passion, his desire.

His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides.

The Need to Love

The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.

Before the beauty of the west on fire, The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed, Cloud-like arose the image of desire, And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes it held: With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled, As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled Shut out the fair horizons of the world --

A truant from the fields and rustic joy, In my changed thought that image even so Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy And all the pure delights I used to know.

Often the veil has trembled at some tide Of lovely reminiscence and revealed How much of beauty Nature holds beside Sweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield:

Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eaves When summer cumulates their golden chains, Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves, Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes,

An organ-grinder's melancholy tune In rainy streets, or from an attic sill The blue skies of a windy afternoon Where our kites climbed once from some grassy hill:

And my soul once more would be wrapped entire In the pure peace and blessing of those years Before the fierce infection of Desire Had ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears

Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did, Again ere long the prison-shades would fall That Youth condemns itself to walk amid, So narrow, but so beautiful withal.

And I have followed Fame with less devotion, And kept no real ambition but to see Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean My dream of palpable divinity;

And aught the world contends for to mine eye Seemed not so real a meaning of success As only once to clasp before I die My vision of embodied happiness.

El Extraviado

Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.

I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack. For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skies I have chosen the sod for my pillow and a threadbare coat for my back.

Evening of ample horizons, opaline, delicate, pure, Shadow of clouds on green valleys, trailed over meadows and trees, Cities of ardent adventure where the harvests of Joy mature, Forests whose murmuring voices are amorous prophecies,

World of romance and profusion, still round my journey spread The glamours, the glints, the enthralments, the nurture of one whose feet From hours unblessed by beauty nor lighted by love have fled As the shade of the tomb on his pathway and the scent of the winding-sheet.

I never could rest from roving nor put from my heart this need To be seeing how lovably Nature in flower and face hath wrought, -- In flower and meadow and mountain and heaven where the white clouds breed And the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught.

Over the azure expanses, on the offshore breezes borne, I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led, Sufficed with the sunshine and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn, The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead.

La Nue

Oft when sweet music undulated round, Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea Thine image from the waves of blissful sound Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.

And in the country, leaf and flower and air Would alter and the eternal shape emerge; Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair, And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.

The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue Were windows in a palace pearly-silled That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.

And in the city, dominant desire For which men toil within its prison-bars, I watched thy white feet moving in the mire And thy white forehead hid among the stars.

Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude, Radiant there with rosy arms outspread, Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude, Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,

Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills, Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line, Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills, Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;

The gold all color and grace are folded o'er, The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, -- Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core, The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.

Round thee revolves, illimitably wide, The world's desire, as stars around their pole. Round thee all earthly loveliness beside Is but the radiate, infinite aureole.

Thou art the poem on the cosmic page -- In rubric written on its golden ground -- That Nature paints her flowers and foliage And rich-illumined commentary round.

Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears Hover about like butterflies and bees. Thou art the theme the music of the spheres Echoes in endless, variant harmonies.

Thou art the idol in the altar-niche Faced by Love's congregated worshippers, Thou art the holy sacrament round which The vast cathedral is the universe.

Thou art the secret in the crystal where, For the last light upon the mystery Man, In his lone tower and ultimate despair, Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.

And soft and warm as in the magic sphere, Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire, So in my heart thine image would appear, Curled round with the red flames of my desire.

All That's Not Love . . .

All that's not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway Of early desire, nor see when it goes The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings, But even with their beauty life fades from them too.

No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves, That, burden and essence of all that surrounds, Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.

Paris

I

First, London, for its myriads; for its height, Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; But Paris for the smoothness of the paths That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .

Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days When there's no lovelier prize the world displays Than, having beauty and your twenty years, You have the means to conquer and the ways,

And coming where the crossroads separate And down each vista glories and wonders wait, Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair You know not which to choose, and hesitate --

Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom Of some old quarter take a little room That looks off over Paris and its towers From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --

So high that you can hear a mating dove Croon down the chimney from the roof above, See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is To wake between Our Lady and our love.

And have a little balcony to bring Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming, That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands, And swallows circle over in the Spring.

There of an evening you shall sit at ease In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees, There with your little darling in your arms, Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.

And looking out over the domes and towers That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours, While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,

You cannot fail to think, as I have done, Some of life's ends attained, so you be one Who measures life's attainment by the hours That Joy has rescued from oblivion.

II

Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.

The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: Come out under the lights and leaves to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .

Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant. Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."

Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay, The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.

And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .

But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.

Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic: Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;

Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads, and courtezans like powdered moths, And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;

And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;

And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you:

All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young.

"Comment ca va!" "Mon vieux!" "Mon cher!" Friends greet and banter as they pass. 'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere,

A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . .

The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme.

And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, And lurid posters paint the walls with scenes of Love and crime and war.

But follow past the flaming lights, borne onward with the stream of feet, Where Bullier's further up the street is marvellous on Thursday nights.

Here all Bohemia flocks apace; you could not often find elsewhere So many happy heads and fair assembled in one time and place.

Under the glare and noise and heat the galaxy of dancing whirls, Smokers, with covered heads, and girls dressed in the costume of the street.

From tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall,

That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . .

Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen.

Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath the narrow brim, Docked, in the model's present whim, 'frise' and banged above the brows.

Uncorseted, her clinging dress with every step and turn betrays, In pretty and provoking ways her adolescent loveliness,

As guiding Gaby or Lucile she dances, emulating them In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal.

Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes,

And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . .

But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins As first the fascinating strains of "El Irresistible" start.

Caught in the spell of pulsing sound, impatient elbows lift and yield The scented softnesses they shield to arms that catch and close them round,

Surrender, swift to be possessed, the silken supple forms beneath To all the bliss the measures breathe and all the madness they suggest.

Crowds congregate and make a ring. Four deep they stand and strain to see The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling.

Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise,

Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight.

And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance They waken from their magic trance and join the cries that clamor "Bis!" . . .

Midnight adjourns the festival. The couples climb the crowded stair, And out into the warm night air go singing fragments of the ball.

Close-folded in desire they pass, or stop to drink and talk awhile In the cafes along the mile from Bullier's back to Montparnasse:

The "Closerie" or "La Rotonde", where smoking, under lamplit trees, Sit Art's enamored devotees, chatting across their 'brune' and 'blonde'. . . .

Make one of them and come to know sweet Paris--not as many do, Seeing but the folly of the few, the froth, the tinsel, and the show --

But taking some white proffered hand that from Earth's barren every day Can lead you by the shortest way into Love's florid fairyland.

And that divine enchanted life that lurks under Life's common guise -- That city of romance that lies within the City's toil and strife --

Shall, knocking, open to your hands, for Love is all its golden key, And one's name murmured tenderly the only magic it demands.

And when all else is gray and void in the vast gulf of memory, Green islands of delight shall be all blessed moments so enjoyed:

When vaulted with the city skies, on its cathedral floors you stood, And, priest of a bright brotherhood, performed the mystic sacrifice,

At Love's high altar fit to stand, with fire and incense aureoled, The celebrant in cloth of gold with Spring and Youth on either hand.

III

Choral Song

Have ye gazed on its grandeur Or stood where it stands With opal and amber Adorning the lands, And orcharded domes Of the hue of all flowers? Sweet melody roams Through its blossoming bowers, Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.

A city resplendent, Fulfilled of good things, On its ramparts are pendent The bucklers of kings. Broad banners unfurled Are afloat in its air. The lords of the world Look for harborage there. None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.