Chapter 2
Few notes out of the coffer of sound, An image from the gallery of Nature, An hour from the infinity of Time,-- Out of these, blessed creature, Createst thou the world of endless rhyme!
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CHOPIN'S FUNERAL MARCH
The keyboard black and white; Shadow-Light the Evening's scale; Half silent the voice of thy singing. Quiver the notes in pain; Exquisite, sad, the melody at thy touch; Like the silver arrow of Desire Piercing the Soul's golden heart.
The room is lost in dark. The ivory keys, white fringe Of a music long since mute; Yet, in the black night Tremble and toss notes Unheard, undreamt,--like sleep Sleepless, and waking full of smart.
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In the golden afterglow you lay, When the emerald moon Made thin silver fog-veils For the bride of night, Whose saffron-sandled feet Walked the foam-strewn floor of the sea. In my arms you listened To words of love Poured by the infinite heaven of my heart, Echoed by the endless symphony of the sky. Your silent gaze, Deeper than the song of the sea, Farther than the moon, Nearer than your own heart-beat, Asked mine for speech. "What can my love say At this sad sacred hour?" Hour of parting this! Love's ever-feared moment, Longing's much-dreaded end, Yet no voice sorrows in our being, No woe dims the moon-face tonight. Between the sheltering dunes and fading light On an aërial couch lying, Adorned in kiss-woven garments of nudity Our spirits garlanded with myriad embraces, Borne on passion's flaming wings Cross this ocean of parting Unto that far island of Cythera Where only love reigns In eternal majesty.
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HENRIK IBSEN
Lone as the lone north star, Stern as the rocks that guard the sanctity of his home, Pure as the white snow of his land, And beauteous his visions like the fjords At each turn of the mariner's helm.
The lofty glaciers engage his eyes, As life's height the sight of his mind; And his Imagination, expansive as the sea, Tries to push the boundary-line of the sky, his Soul, Further and further, where a new North Star Awaits his exploring eye.
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AFTER HEARING "MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME"
I know not whose the words, Nor the maker of their music; In my sorrow-laden heart The aroma of its pathetic art Like the soothing breath of dream.
Joy borrows its charm from sorrow; Sorrow feverish with the color of joy; An opaque crystal, a stone on life's string Made of music that doth ring As the stars on the lyre of night.
A pain it is, made perfect; A call made clear by the voice of peace; A silver stream of song Darkened, yet floweth on and on Between black banks of memory, into the Soul's white home.
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THE COMING OF THE TIDE OF NIGHT
Pale this twilight-face, Shade-ridden the horizon-light; The forest, a green-gold vision of grace In its frame of lavender mist.
No rose-leaf washed in moonlight; No vine on vermilion walls; Pale sunlight fading into night, Dark tunes, the music of the hour.
No death, nor life is ours, here; But the vast vague sea of black Sounded by star-mariners Seeking the Infinite's track.
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DEAD LOVE
Pour no blood on ashes, brother, That is not the way; Better say nothing, Blood is no life-giver; It makes death look so gay.
Dead life, or dead love Need no blood at all. No trumpet's call can Bring back what you lived, and strove: The ashes know no thrall!
Why cry for a colored glass That for jewel you took; The magic--the dream-- All returning to dust and grass, Not a day love your soul forsook.
At last, you have known it, That is more than they do. Be not afraid, O friend, Alone, alas, alone! you have loved and lived it, Pour no blood on the ashes, for blood can not turn into dew.
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It is the same twilight, dear, The hour of love and tear When in raiments of shadows Fancies, fears, hopes, and sorrows Tread the path of sunset, While like barks of jet Float the clouds from east to west.
I think of thee, my darling, As in my heart strange chords ring Out melodies of many memories, And half-forgotten reveries Telling of this or that scene, That is and has been Trod by thee, Queen of queens.
My dreams of thee are ceaseless, As my love of thee is endless; Whether it be sunset or sunrise, Hour of star-song, or bird-cries It is of thee that I dream, In the heart of my soul's stream That flows to thy feet, my darling.
Dark grows both east and west; Flower-heads droop into rest, As I seek to lay my heart and loving On thy star-white breast, my darling, And sink into that pool of sleep That rises from thy singing's deep, While all are silent, as my desires near thee, my Queen.
What peace thy presence breathes! What serenity weaves its wreathes! What myriad wonders touch hands Across many seas, from many lands, When a thought of thee Heralds thy coming to me Between palpitating desires, and fragrant dreams.
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WEARINESS
Weariness the tune of this evening melody, Pain the lute to which I sing; Ah! goddess, why this gray measure In thy starry harmony?
The white conch[4] of the half-moon Silent as though all worship's ceased, No incense-perfume from the forest censer The breeze brings; all still, like torrid noon.
I row in a black bark on a copper-colored sea, The sun fades like a golden bubble in its deep; Weariness the chart that I hold in my hand, Weariness the tune of this evening melody.
[Footnote 4: In a Hindu temple conch shells are blown during or at the close of a worship.]
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A call, not a song; A command, not a prayer; No mellowing moonlight, but dawn, Frail, fanciful, and fair In the east of my dream and desire. At the portal of unending desire, Draped in diaphanous dreams, With a whispered word of fire That quivers and gleams Through the clouds of my longing. Longings poignant with pains and tears Enfold, and fill my soul That aches with hopes and fears As thy chariot wheels' roll Sets fire with torches of gold To my words, my silences, my singing, And to this black pyre of my life To take my being on the wings of thy embracing To sail away, far away from man's hate and strife Where only love reigns on its throne of unending light.
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REMORSE
Gently descending dark-- Curtain of silence From heaven to earth;
The drama of day over, Empty the seats of life, Dead the twilight fire.
Curtains of black Woven from threads of purple By the hands of a star,
That lone soul weeping Over the dead hours Laid by mute time in the eternal's grave.
In the night of my soul Not even a ray, Nor a mourner present;
But a deep dark hollow Where no fate weeps Even fear is afraid to tread:
Fear-forsaken, hollow within hollow, Even silence flees from me-- O, the pity of it!
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POET
To distil a few golden drops of song Through the gloom of this hour; To filter true emotions Through passion's burning fire When the sun bubble-like fades in the west; As our being craves for night's rest That pool of silver in life's forest of distress.
To light some pale candles In the cavern of a lonely isle And draw the wine of day From the must of midnight, Or plant a star-seed in the gray-ploughed eve-- So out of the abyss of the blackness of night Dawn's million-colored fountain might spring.
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WANDERER
The silvery beach, a riband around the flowing hair of the sea, Where gleam the foam-flowers garlanded in multitudinous nebulous rings: Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep, No sound, no music, no silence that a wounded soul can heal.
A longing more tempestuous than the craven breeze-possesséd deep, And tears that outweigh the salt of the woeful brine, Yet no sleep dream-robbed, or dream-laden, nor even death's pallid peace; But a ceaseless crying over my heart's forsaken valleys Where love like a wraith haunts the empty tombs of memory.
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AT DAWN
With the breath of dawn Cooling thy feverish brow, And the fading of the last footfall of the stars No kiss can I bring to thy bedside, Nor caresses of cooling fire, my sweet. Yet through this dreamful silence That writes on the rim of the golden light The story of our love With most eloquent poignancy, More love we pour into each other Than the tryst of an eternal night.
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From her many-colored bow Nature Has hurled her silver arrows of rain And slain the hosts of Dark.
Jeweled with a single star, the Moon Walks the garden of Night; Higher and higher Through the star-enflowered pathways of sapphire She draws her train of silver.
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If words fail, song will come; If thought fades, souls will not be dumb; If sound ceases, Silence our song; If Life fails,--Death join our hands.
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RAINY NIGHT
Like tears shed over a dream, Like sighs that stream In an unseen nameless way Into the heart of our lay.
It seemed hour on hours, Years like fading flowers Scattered their petals and bloom In a half-lit forest of gloom.
The softness of its sounds, Like the coursing of a million hounds Of dream over the glade of sleep Where tortured silences creep.
Exquisite, pain-laden, peaceful, This night most beautiful, What love forsaken by loving Sets his heart a'singing?
No torment in it, but tenderness; A liquid star-music of sadness Pours into my soul half asleep; While the willows at my window weep.
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GHOSTS
Flames flickered in the fireplace, As memories on the hearth of life; Two shadows we, watching, brooding, To catch our reflection In a non-existent stream.
The ghost-witness of it all, The clock brings its proofs; Moments melt into moments, Like notes of sad music, Like a white cerement.
Cold memories shroud our life; Speech flees before this; Faces turn away from each other; The fire throws light on them; There, too, flames burn and flicker.
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RAIN
What world-agony distils its poignancy this day? What pain-laden heart pours out its exhaustless lay Of tormenting woe and tortured silences?
From the far reaches of the marshland Along and beyond the crescent-bed of the sea-sand What tempest on the wave's-strings makes its cadences?
The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams Raise their shadowy heads where pour in streams The tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies;
While into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet Turbidly fall and dance sheet upon sheet To the measureless measure of the wind's empty sighs.
No light but a dismal gray, that neither throbs nor quivers On the torn banks of the heavens' cloud-rivers, But stonily stands still, like death that dies never.
Not-dead, but a weeping world bathing its corpses-- Its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's hearses To be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer.
It writhes in agony, rolls out in undulating rills, This rain-melody from the sea-waves to the farthest hills, Thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight.
It is all dark and dank, a mourning of earth and heaven, Sorrow-laden, life-weary, long-lost, death-craven, A day lost to time, a light more baleful than night.
No dead these, but a living death seeking peace From the furies--their own thoughts--sorrow--surcease, Kissing the lashing wind thinking it to be the breeze.
Pour, pour, pour, O relentless, exhaustless pain! To the measure of thine own agony, thy woe's refrain, These desolate streams of thy music, thy pangs of a million seas.
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EVENING WORSHIP
The amber west melts into saffron, The east, a misty vision of rose: Like the sun, our souls seek repose. The mountains, empurpled priests, The river, the chant from their lips, Sunlit the pine-candles' crimson tips.
At this hour of worship Shadows spread their wings; Silently the breeze-bell rings. The stars put a silver riband round night's tresses, The light fades like a receding song As fall soundless sounds from Nature's moon-gong.
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The rosy mist stilly polishes the round mirror, The moon; Golden her face
Reflecting the cool sweet glory of a Baby sun When dangling
His short golden arms in the cradle of the sky After night Gave him birth,
And herself died as day dies to see the moon, This golden Rose-washed stone
That the unseen hand puts on the crown of night Beside it puts Bits of white--
The star-jewels like million fancies, worshipping The goddess Of dream.
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The sun's golden spear, The violet cloud writhing in pain; Golden the tint of the sky, The tall trees wave their green-gold hair.
Music of this hour! The zephyr's perfume-laden argosy Drifts with the song of lutes Down the sunset-stream that falls from heaven's bower.
Another flow of light, Tinkling like the intangible bells of paradise, Flows out of my heart Into the mysterious love-perfumed ocean of night.
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TRUCE
A field of battle--this sky, The sun, the hero bleeding to death; The shadows and lights hurl their Hosts of clouds ceaselessly: No peace? Warfare all? Nay, lo! she cometh-- The Spirit of Truce, The Evening Star!
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A PARALLEL
Time has passed, since Shadows trembled to watch Twilight sweep the earth For the phantoms to trip and mince.
A dark breeze the forest-heart stirs; Yet merry the face of the sky-- Twinkling in joy Its innumerable eyes, the stars.
Hushed the music within; Pleasure's silver laugh, dead; Thought lost in reverie-- Reverie receding into nothing.
The taper of dreams flickers Out, leaving the soul in dusk By the altar of love, Flower-laden as the night with stars.
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"Nothing endures," you said; "None can die," quoth love; "In the firmament of loving No stars set, no meteors fall."
Yet, nothing endures, nothing, Naught but dust; Naught but regret and vain desire The twin monuments of life,
Reared by time, by wrecking All that we seek and find. Its relentless waves of years Break even the impregnable wall of memory That thought builds On the embankment of hope.
Pass all away, even we who loved, Dreamt as none dreamt before-- Borne by the tide of life-- But, lo! from our defeated destiny Rise our seeds reared by time Consecrated to love and living!
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DISAPPOINTMENT
They think thee bitter: Thou art not made o' laughter Nor love's smile Can thy vision beguile: Like a black-fiery comet Suddenly, sinisterly, thou comest; Making thy fateful journey, Littering the floor of destiny With wreckages of life, Of love, of heart-- Of all visitors thou art the surest; Halting nowhere long, endlessly passest, Dragging behind thee thy train of fire That burneth all, heedless of curse or prayer.
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BUDDHA
On thy Lotus-seat of Night,-- Meditation closing thy eyes,-- The Star Hosts thy awe-struck devotees: The Moon, thy halo unchanging. White-robed time telling his beads Of aeons on the thread of Eternity By the ocean of space Slumbering in peace at thy feet; While Destiny stringing the lyre of death Sings Nirvana's hymn.
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Ask me not to stand at thy friendship's gate-- I, who loved thee, now must like a cold spectre from a far forgotten land of snow Watch thee fall asleep on the couch of freezing friendship? In these arms thou sought and joyed on many delights Excavated the ruins of passion to build them anew, Or sailed on thy wings--these arms--over love's enchanted sea. Friendship! Barrier not this, but a coward's refuge-- A shadow, not the rainbow-light of loving and life. O come, my pilot, conduct the bark of our twin souls From cold friendship's haven Over love's boistrous desire-foam-fringéd ocean Till in the sheer joy and fatigue of flying We fail, fall and fade Into the heart of Passion's another fire-born day.
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Golden vines they, These thin lines of light, Climbing the sky-wall After the sun sank into sleep.
Like rills, thread-like, Seen from a jutting rock Where air is dizzy And fancy infinite, free.
What fiery wine Tingles in these vines Weaving golden arabesques On the pale evening sky?
Ah, the heavens this hour Have drunk of sunset's ruby Wine For those golden cobwebs to weave Their magic of twilight dreams.
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AT SUNDOWN
Two shadows fell, tremulous and frail, From the upland over the lake-surface pale, While the shivering reeds shook at sunset, As the swans sailed into a sea of jet.
The rippling waters, and the breeze, And the shadows that fall from the trees, Mingled and melted with the twain, A song of whitewashed away by its black refrain.
Only words remained, palpitating and few, Falling through the gloom and night's dew Like jewelled fancies rising out of a dream That live for a moment and die ere they gleam.
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Tears well out from my heart, As clouds overcast my soul, And blur my vision of thee.
Melancholy this dawn, When thy smile and words, And thy sky-shaming eyes Are not beside me to rouse me from sleep.
Though cry I without end, Yet a thought of thee heals many wounds, Why? thou ask me; how can I tell?
All thou wish to take is thine; Not even the dust of thy feet I seek, Only leave me the star of thy memory To bathe in the rain of my weeping.
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At last thou comest; Thy footsteps I hear across the ages, Over wandering fancies, Through shadows of dreams Is thy coming, Queen of queens.
This shimmering summer of life That thou bringest with thee As a gift to my silent waiting Is but what I prayed to bring To the altar of thy coming.
I spread the seat of my soul, For thee to rest thy tired limbs; And wave the fan of my heart To cool thy lotus-shaming face, Lady of light, queen of grace.
Come to my bower of worship, Where burns the incense of devotion, Lay thy rose-robed body In the shrine of my longing, Where love's rainbow-songs are ringing.
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The lingering light of the sun Takes from the chalice of the valley Its mist-perfume to wash the Moon-face with rose. In the pool at my feet the goldfishes drag their trains of brown Which cleave it into parts that ceaselessly mingle anew. The moon, silver bright Through thousand streams sends her light Into the valley aswoon, listening to the harmony of night.
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I have drunk your tears with insatiate lips; I have broken like a toy the heart of your life; What have I given? your last query! The cup of my heart filled I with love; The chalice of soul with the substance of my God, For thee to drink my life's first love. Thou drankest as one that comes from a desert, Thou spiltest the nectar heedless, like mad; Yet I cursed not, nor shed tears; But loved thee, longed to live for thy love. Alas! thy tears grew salt, thy love thy self's greedy grasp,-- O, it is the end; let us part! The morning of indifference wings the gray sky; The bird-song of the other dawns the raven's shriek now,-- Shed no more tears, I tire of my drink; Break not thy heart; thy soul? Let it be still! Beyond the gray-cloud is the land of sunrise: Let us part, dear, let us be wise.
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SOUND BUTTERFLIES
(IN A FOUNTAIN)
Like interpenetrating bells of silver, The water-drops ring and melt Into new drops, like new notes From an untiring lyre, That in colored succession Paint our heart-beats From the gold of sunrise into sunset fire; Yet, not like that, this brush of water-drops Limns on the silver rim of Joy The dark Butterflies of Desire.
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Even in sadness thou art beside me, In gladness, none so happy as thee; I love thee; May my love kiss the feet of thy love of me.
My dreams are thine, day or night, My sleep sings in silence to the night Of thy delight; May thy heart's gifts like stars my heart's heaven bedight!
Though a sigh rises in my soul this hour; Closes its petals in the west the golden day-flower; In my bower Let thy love pour its rainbow shower.
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By the sea of sleep walks white-robed Night; The breeze but the faint rustle of her drapery That calls the mist-made bark of dream From the cavern of the Unknown to sail to us, Laden with endless star-like fancies. And She! the magician, walks on and on Over the sapphire embankment of the sky Like a moving magnet drawing behind her a million dream-argosies.
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FAREWELL
(AFTER A HINDUSTANI SONG)
Farewell, fairest of loves! Life's most fanciful of gifts, Joy and treasure, love and wonder, Waking's elusive reality, Dream's ever-yielding divinity. Even thou must pass Beyond time's starless bar: Thy eyes, their lambent flames Shall no more illumine my night; Nor thy brow, home of many moods, Tranquil yet tormented as a sea, Shall ever wear the coronal of my kiss. Ah, kisses! blisses of fire, Passion's long lingering melody Played by thy lips on mine. Even they must die-- Intangible realities of rapture, Ever present wonders of desire-- Now like autumn leaves Fly with the west-wind of fear. No, not fear that takes thee from me, Nor love's slayer, satiety; Yet art gone; thou art going. Oh, not to crush thy heart on mine: Thy breasts made but for my hands, No more to quiver in rapture therein! Who wills this cruel decree? The warmth of thy body, The staggering storm of thy yielding, The intoxicating perfume of thy mouth: These, and many other endless Viols and lutes of passion, love, life, Delights of a thousand heavens, Who robs them of me? Fate! that fool in the court of love, Who hath no wit for laughter, Steals it all from me In the mid-hour of life; And as it befits his mind, Scatters it all over the turbid Stream of fear and lies.
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SATIETY
All thy gifts must die, All thy thoughts must fail; Such were the decree writ by time With shadows on the scroll of fate. Even thy memory recedes into forgetting, Thy lustrous words star-like set, Ah, sweet! autumn's breath withers all, Even the west-wind fears to tread. All yield to the power of relentless time That no love nor passion can stay, Blown like dried leaves we now On the granite pavement of fate. No more thy lip-touch on my brow, Nor thy hands pleading caresses, Thy gifts fall and fade into nothing, Thy vision grows dim in life's sunset-west.
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Drowsy the noonday air, Under the trees the still shadow Like a fugitive fragment of night Seeks shelter from the sun.
The bird has ceased singing, The beggar unable to bear The wealth of the sun Spreads his torn garment,