Part 4

He ruminates Upon the pebbles and Demosthenes, And sets his will to be an orator That he may herald truth and save the world. After much toil, re-writing, he delivers A speech he calls, "Ich Dien," and loses out Against a youth who speaks on Liberty. And then he uses Gladstone for his theme, The Christian Statesman; for exordium Tells of the ermine which will die before It suffers soilure--that was Gladstone--yes! But still he cannot win the prize; a boy Who talks about the labors of Charles Darwin, His suffering and sacrifice, is awarded The prize this time--a boy who had the wit To speak in praise of Darwin's virtues--saying Nothing about his hellish doctrines, thus Winning the cautious judges to his theme.

But is our little Gladstone crushed, dismayed? He plucks up further strength and takes a hint: A larger subject may bring down the prize. He thinks of Thomas Jefferson--but then Jefferson was a deist, took the Bible And cut out everything but Jesus' words. "Yet I can speak on what was good in him, His work for liberty, the Declaration, And close my eyes to all his heterodoxy." Then something of this plan crept like a snake Into his brain, he petted it with hands: Be ye as wise as serpents, and as doves Harmless, he smiled--and went to work again, And won the prize.

And now he has stepped forth Into the world's arena to become A Savior, an evangel, as he thinks, In truth a pest. He runs for Congress first And when his manager takes out a check And shows him, given by the local brewery, Another check a bank gives, he maintains A smiling silence, thinking to himself, Jesus accepted gifts from publicans, And if I am elected then this money, However dirty, will be purified By what I do.

But then he was defeated. He thinks the banks and breweries did the trick. In truth they knew the Christian Statesman, knew The oleaginous smile and silver voice Concealed the despot. Did he scourge them then? Well, scarcely then--he wrote a public letter And said the people had decided it. And what the people said was law. He nerved His purpose for another trial--that body So big and flawless could not be exhausted-- That voice still carried to the farthest corner, That oily smile deceived the multitude That he was hurt, embittered, only waited To see if body, voice and oily smile Could win by any means; if not, the scourge Would be brought forth, the smile dropped, the complaints Against the breweries, what not, opened up, Unmasked. For when your hope is gone, you're free To scold and tell your bitterness.

And then He made a third and last attempt, though edging Toward the sophistry that moral questions Make those political, and by this means Trying to win the churches. Still he stuck To matters economic, as before Took what the breweries gave to help his cause, His campaign fund. By this time many more Had found him out, and knew him for a voice And tireless body nourishing a brain As mediocre as the world contained, And only making louder noise because Of body strong and voice mellifluous. They put him down for good: the Christian Statesman Had cause to think he was no statesman, or No Christian, or the electorate not Christian. And so he took the mask off, dropped the smile, And let his mouth set like a concrete crack And went about to punish men, while seeming To save the world.

Out of that indentation, That fosse of mediocrity, came up A crocodile with wagging tail upreared, And smile toothed to the gullet--it was this: Questions political are moral questions, And moral questions are political, And terms convertible are equipollent, And wholly true. Therefore, I rise to preach To moral America, draw audiences In churches, of the churches. If I win Majorities upon--no matter what-- A law will blossom; as all moral questions Are equally political, procure For their adoption the majority. Upon this fortress I can stand and shoot-- Who can attack me, since I seek for self Nothing, but for my country righteousness? And as an instrument of God I punish My enemies as well.

Who are my enemies? The intelligencia, as they call themselves, Who flaunt the Bible wholly or in part, Or try to say that Darwin's evolution Honors the Deity more than Genesis. Who are my enemies? The thinkers, yes, The strivers for a higher culture, yes, The scorners of old fashioned ways, the things Really American!--I know the crowd-- That smart minority I overwhelm, Blot out, drown out, by massing under me The great majority, the common folk, Believers in the Bible--first for them! And on the way the vile saloon I crush, The abominable brewery--then I take away From banqueters and diners, diners out, The seekers after happiness, not God, The cocktail and the wine they love so well. This is a moral question, being so Is also a political--the majority Can do what they desire. I am consistent, For from the first I've preached the people's rule, Abided by the people's voice and taken Defeat with grace because the people gave it. So now I say the people have the right To pass upon all questions. As I said When starting as a public man, the people Could have what Government they desired, in fact A King, or despotism, if they voted for it. For all this talk of rights, or realms of right, Or individual preferences, beliefs And courses in the world is swallowed up By right of the majority--the serpent Of Moses, so to speak, which swallowed up All other serpents.

If he thought so much The Christian Statesman thought this way--at least He acted out a part which seemed to say He analyzed so far. He went to work To make his country just a despotism Not governed by a King, but by the people Laying the hand of law on everything Most intimate and private, having thought For moral aspects, as all politics Are moral in their essence, to repeat.

Did not the Christian Statesman have revenge In building his theocracy, who saw All bills of right and fruit of revolution Ground into mortar, made into a throne For Demos?

And behold King Demos now! A slouch hat for a crown upon his brow, Stuffed full of bacon and of apple pie, The Christian Statesman leaning on his shoulder A tableau of familiarity. The Christian Statesman having lost his hair Betrays the Midas ears--the oily smile Beams on the republic he has overthrown!

THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA

You who have wasted this June for me, Bitter be the seed of your love.

Long midnights by the sea Have I waited for your return, Counting the stars-- Bitter be the seed of your love.

And as stars go out in the crocus light of dawn, As waters drip from a failing fountain, So passed these days of June. As a boy strips from a stalk of snap-dragons The perfect blossoms, And treads them into the earth, So you have taken the June days from me-- Bitter be the seed of your love.

On my couch by the sea, My golden curls loosened, Resting after the cool ablution of evening waters, My body white as whitecaps, under the moon, My eyes large as the fox's lurking in darkness, I have waited for your return.

May the scourge of Asia mar your beautiful body, Beloved! You have wasted my loveliest June. As the unheeding wind Drives the falling cherry blossoms Into the purple waves, So you have scattered my days of June-- Bitter be the seed of your love!

I have distilled henbane for you, Beloved, And put it in a crystal vial. The moon of October will shine, Then you will come to me, Your wanderings and treasons finished! And when you slip exhausted from my arms I will give you wine from a golden cup, And pour the henbane in it-- I shall give you henbane for the poison of defeated love; I shall kiss your dead lips, Beloved.

Then I shall drink, too. Our bodies shall feed the worms As these June days have fed my writhing sorrow, Beloved murderer of my June!

AT DECAPOLIS MARK, CHAP. V

I

THE ACCUSATION

I am a farmer and live Two miles from Decapolis. Where is the magistrate? Tell me Where the magistrate is!

Here I had made provision For children and wife, And now I have lost my all; I am ruined for life.

I, a believer, too, In the synagogues.-- What is the faith to me? I have lost my hogs.

Two thousand hogs as fine As ever you saw, Drowned and choked in the sea-- I want the law!

They were feeding upon a hill When a strolling teacher Came by and scared my hogs-- They say he's a preacher,

And cures the possessed who haunt The tombs and bogs. All right; but why send devils Into my hogs?

They squealed and grunted and ran And plunged in the sea. And the lunatic laughed who was healed, Of the devils free.

Devils or fright, no matter A fig or straw. Where is the magistrate, tell me-- I want the law!

II

JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ

Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear, If you have wit to understand my plea. Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear, Poor man possessed of such is partly free,

Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains May pluck while running, howling through the mire And take a little gladness for his pains, Some fury for unsatisfied desire.

But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,-- But then this lunatic had rights. You grant Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew His baffled spirit. How significant,

As they were legion and so named, the point Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath. Desire puts a spirit out of joint. Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path.

But man with many lusts, what is his way, Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms? He prays for night to come, and for the day Amid the miry places and the tombs.

But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end. Would I might cast the swinish demons out From man forever. Yet the word attend. The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?

What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved? What loss of lands and houses, man being free? Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved, Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.

Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth, Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw; Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe Free souls with courage to transgress the law

By casting demons out from self, or those Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues Would leave to battle singly with his woes-- What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs?

Which being lost, men play the hypocrite And make the owner chief in the affair. You banish me for witchcraft. I submit. Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.

And into swine where better they belong, Casting the swinish devils out of men The devils have their place at last, and then The man is healed who had them--where's the wrong

Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs. This rule has been the statute from the flood.

Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw. Is it not so with judges first and last-- You break the law to specialize the law?-- This is the devil that from you I cast.

WINGED VICTORY

Icarus, Daedalus, Medea's dragons, Pegasus, Leonardo, Swedenborg, Cyrano de Bergerac, with dew-filled flagons, Bacon, who schemed with chemicals and forge, Lana, of copper spheres of air exhausted, Therefore made light to rise Up where the pathless ways are frosted In the blue vitriol of the skies.

Montgolfier, Franklin, von Zeppelin, Watt, Edison, an engine must be, spiral springs, Nor steam move not these more than condor wings Of heaven's Argonaut, Gathering the sun-set clouds for golden fleece. Santos Dumont and Langley, over these The Americans, the brothers Wright. America finds wings for flight. At last out of the New World wings are born To wheel far up where cold is, and a light Dazzling and immaculate, In the heights where stands the temple of the Morn. Winged Victory more beautiful than Samothrace's For the New World opening the gate Of heaven at last, where mortals enter in Unconquerably and win The great escape from earth, the measureless spaces Of air across the inimical abyss Between ethereal precipice and precipice. Hail! spirits of the race's Courage to be free, adventurers Of infinite desire! Hail! seed of the ancient wars, Of burning glasses, catapults, Greek fire! Hail! final conquerors, Out of whose vision greater vision springs-- America with wings!

The vulture lags behind, the Gorgones, Revealed or ambushed in the thunder clouds, Would tear from heaven these audacities Of deathless spirit, shatter them and spill The blasphemy of genius from the sky. Gods are you, flyers, whom no danger shrouds, No terror shakes the will. Gods are you though you suffer and must die, Men winged as gods who fly!

Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, With feathers made him wings, but steel Soars for the petrol demon's toil, Fed by the sap of trees far under earth In the long eons past turned into oil. The petrol demon in the enchanted coil Of lightning howls and spins the invisible wheel Which had its birth In the rapt vision of Archimides. Borelli, in the centuries that are gone, With feathers made him wings. But now a swan, A steel-borne beetle cleaves the immensities, Fed with fire of amber and oil of trees, And soars against the sun, And over mountains, seas!

Flight more auspicious than the flight of cranes In Homer's Troyland, or than eagles flying Toward Imaus when the midnight wanes. Victorious flight! symbol of man defying Low dungeons of the spirit, darkness, chains. Flight beyond superstition and the reigns Of tyrannies where thought of man should be Swift as his thought is free. Flight of an era born to-day That puts the past and all its dead away.

Locusts of the new Jehovah sent to scourge All Pharaohs who enslave. Hornets with multiple eyes, Scorning surprise, And armed to purge The despot and the knave Out of the fairer land where men shall live, Winning all things which were so fugitive Of wisdom, happiness and peace, Of hope, of spiritual release From fear of life, life's mean significance, Till life be ordered, not a thing of chance.

The hopelessness of him who cried Vanity of Vanities Was justified, But now no longer must abide. Failure was his, and failure filled the hours Of our fathers in the past--let it depart. Triumph is come, and triumph must be ours. The archangels of earth through Israel, Through India and Greece Shall find us wings for life and for increase Of living, and shall battle down the hell Whose fires still smolder and profane. Life and the human heart In living must become the aeroplane, Not the yoked oxen and the cart. Let but the thought of East and West be blent, Europe, America, the Orient, To give life wings as Time's last great event: The final glory of wings to the soul of man In an order of life human, but divine, Fashioned in carefulest thought, powerful but of delicate design, As the wings of the aeroplane are. Where spirit of man is used to the full, but saved, As the petrol demon, in this dragon of war, Uses and saves his power. Where neither thought, truth, love nor gifts, nor any flower Of spirit of man, so mangled or enslaved In the eras gone, is wasted or depraved.

Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised With winning of his wings. Dust he no more shall eat, Who crawls not, but from feet Has risen to wings! Man shall no longer python be. These wings are prophecies of a world made free! Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised. He has soared to the gate of heaven and gazed Into the meadows of infinity, Winged and with lightning shod, Beyond the old day's lowering cloud and murk. The heavens declare the glory of God, Man shows His handiwork!

OH YOU SABBATARIANS!

Oh you sabbatarians, methodists and puritans; You bigots, devotees and ranters; You formalists, pietists and fanatics, Teetotalers and hydropots, You thin ascetics, androgynous souls, Chaste and epicene spirits, Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound, Fingers insensitive, Do what you will, Make what laws you choose-- Yet there are high spaces of rapture Which you can never touch, They are beyond you and hidden from you.

We leave you to the dull assemblies, Charades, cantatas and lectures; The civic meetings where you lie and act And work up business; The teas of forced conversation, And receptions of how-de-dos, And stereotyped smiles; The church sociables; And the calls your young men of clammy hands And fetid breath Pay to anæmic virgins--

These are yours; Take them-- But I tell you In places you know not of, We, the free spirits, the livers, Guests at the wedding feast of life, Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus, Worshipers of fire and of God, Who made the grape, And filled the veins of His legitimate children With ethereal flame-- We the lovers of life in unknown places Shall taste of ancient wine, And put flowers in golden vases, And open precious books of song, And look upon dreaming Buddhas, And marble masks of genius. We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments, Voicing the dreams of great spirits. We shall know the rapture of kisses And long embraces, And the sting of folly. We shall entwine our arms in voluptuous sleep, And in the misery of your denials And your cowardice and your fears You shall not even dream that we exist.

Unintelligible weeds! We, the blossoms of life's garden, Flourish on the hills of variable winds-- We perish, but you never live.

PALLAS ATHENE

Athene! Virgin! Goddess! Queen! descend, Come to us and befriend. Set up your shrine among us and defend Our realm against corruptions which impend.

* * * * *

Divinity of order and of law, Most powerful and wise, Our land reclaim. Patron of the assemblies of the free, Our cities shame! Dethrone our bastard Demos, partisans Of Moody, Campbell, all the Wesleyans. Come down with awe, Enceladus and Pallas strike, who rise Against your father and his hierarchy. Smite the giants Superstition, Force, Fanaticism, Ignorance and Faith In village gods, and bury them beneath Volcanic mountains. Yoke them to the course And labor of your wisdom. Fling your shield, Medusa faced, before the brows of clay, Who rule our clattering day; Flash it before their brows and make Stones for the pavement of the way Whereon you drive your chariot, golden-wheeled. Descend, O Goddess, for the memory's sake And for the hope's sake of your son, Franklin, your herald, Washington, Who dreamed to make perpetual Our Parthenon, column, court and hall. And save it from the donjon, minaret, The cross, the spire, the vane, the parapet!

* * * * *

We have no god but Jesus, No god but Billiken. Nature and Dionysius Come back again! Jehovah is an alien tyrant, rules us From arid Palestine, Who mouths a heaven that fools us, And curses the olive and vine, And the smiles of the lyric nine. Gods are they, hard and full of wrath Who drive us on the unintelligible path. Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work Too puerile or despotic, or with feet That drip blood on a mercy seat. They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk, Or weaken us with poison sweet. Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel In our delirium, no less, that life Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel Set up to feed this world of strife By Mary's son, Mary the wife-- Come from the Islands of the Blest, Goddess, and give us wisdom, vision, rest. Reveal a Beauty for our hearts to love. The wooden ark of Moses, overlaid With strips of gold, And all the spurious covenant thereof By which our life is obelised We would no more behold, Who have so vainly with it temporized. Fruitless our spirits have these centuries prayed Before the Janus cross, The oracle that speaks in riddles, asks Penitence, obedience, tasks Which nature interdicts. We are the body on the crucifix, Not Jesus; we, the race, are crucified, And die upon the cross, For centuries have died. Come and restore our loss Of truth, the eyes of spirits undeceived, Courage with nature, strike the opiate joss To ruin with your sword, O most adored! Give us Reality, O lover of men, Republics, cities, lands. Uplift our eyes to Beauty, once perceived We may rebuild the Areopagus, With wiser eyes and hands. Bring Thought, the Argus, consciousness That looks before and after, And grace perpetual of Mnemosyne-- Remembering we shall be free! Save us, O Goddess, from the drifting crowd, Wondering, witless, loud, The lovers of the minute who possess No reverence and no laughter!

* * * * *

Goddess! with silver helmet, guardian You may be, if we worship at your shrine, Before the gates of Boston and New York, Chicago, San Francisco, through the span Of continents and isles; your heart incline Toward our turbulent blood from many climes, Worships and times. Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths; The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths, Bring rain and dew, Plant olive trees, Set on our hills the emblem of the vine; Bring to our hearts the lofty purities Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew Temples of beauty and academies!

* * * * *

Set up your golden altar In Parthenons in every village and shire. The crucifix and psalter, The ikons and the toys of vain desire We cast into the fire. We keep the lover Jesus, for his hope, His humanism and his flaming zeal. He will approach your altar, he will kneel At last before you, for the horoscope Of life misread in youth And youthful dreams and faith. Goddess! our globe that hungers for the truth Between the roar of life, silence of death Cannot be stayed or cowed. But, oh, descend First to our soil, Atlantis, and befriend. Make us a light across the fathomless sea Of centuries to be, Even as Athens is, divinity!

AT SAGAMORE HILL