Part 1

THE BLACK PANTHER

THE BLACK PANTHER

A BOOK OF POEMS

BY JOHN HALL WHEELOCK

AUTHOR OF

“THE HUMAN FANTASY” “THE BELOVÈD ADVENTURE” “LOVE AND LIBERATION” “DUST AND LIGHT,” ETC.

NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

The author thanks the editors of the following, for kind permission to reprint here various poems first published in their pages: _All’s Well_, _The American Magazine_, _The Art World_, _The Bellman_, _The Bookman_, _The Century Magazine_, _Contemporary Verse_, _The Dial_, _The Forum_, _The Freeman_, _Harper’s Monthly_, _The International_, _The Literary Review of The New York Evening Post_, _The Lyric_, _McClure’s Magazine_, _The Outlook_, _Poetry_, _The Poetry Journal_, _The Poetry Review_, _Reedy’s Mirror_, _Scribner’s Magazine_, _The Smart Set_, _The Yale Review_, _Youth_. Thanks are also due to Messrs. Harcourt, Brace and Company for permission to reprint “Sea-Horizons,” first published in the anthology, _Enchanted Years_.

CONTENTS

PAGE _The Black Panther_ 3

_I. Dim Wisdoms_

NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 7

THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE 12

OCTOBER MOONLIGHT 13

THE FLESH AND THE DREAM 15

VAUDEVILLE 16

1914 18

THE BELOVÈD 19

PROUD DOOM 21

THE SECRET ONE 22

THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY 25

BLIND PLAYERS 26

TRAVAIL 28

THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE 29

THE BURIED DREAM 31

HAUNTED EARTH 32

LONG AGO 34

TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY 35

MIRROR 36

PLAINT 38

ANDANTE 39

THE DEAR MYSTERY 42

IN THE DARK CITY 43

_II. Space and Solitude_

IMMENSITY 47

SEA-HORIZONS 48

OF DAY CAME NIGHT 51

PILGRIM 53

BY THE GRAY SEA 54

THE FISH-HAWK 55

DISDAINFUL BEAUTY 57

MY LONELY ONE 58

_III. The Lost Traveller’s Dream_

WILD THOUGHT 63

JOURNEY’S END 64

BELATED LOVE 65

A LEAVE-TAKING 66

BUT LOVE-- 72

ANNE 73

THE SILENCE 74

EXULTATION 75

SONG OF SONGS 77

SORROWFUL FREEDOM 78

STARLESS MORNING 79

PHANTOM 80

LEGEND 81

_IV. The Divine Fantasy_ 85

_The Lion-House_ 97

THE BLACK PANTHER

There is a panther caged within my breast; But what his name, there is no breast shall know Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so, Backward and forward, in relentless quest-- That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed, The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go Over my body’s prison to and fro, Trying the walls forever without rest.

All day I feed him with my living heart; But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars, The inexorable Frenzy reawakes: His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars, The eternal passion stretches me apart, And I lie silent--but my body shakes.

I

DIM WISDOMS

NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR

Night has its fear: As the slow dusk advances, and the day Fades out in fire along the starry way, The ancient doubt draws near.

Vague shapes of dread-- Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering things-- Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings The bat flits overhead.

And in the house The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard The gnawing of the mouse.

Through the old room What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro Tremble, and lips that laughed here long ago-- Gone back into the gloom!

A whip-poor-will Bleakly across the baleful country cries From a blurred mouth; and from the west replies Echo--and all is still.

Now from her shell, Her body’s prison, with the ancient doubt And terror stricken, the scared soul looks out, Asking if all be well.

Great kings have been, Poets, and mighty prophets--shapes have cried About the world, or moved in mournful pride; And are no longer seen.

From many lands Their plaint was lifted; from how many a shore Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more! They sleep with folded hands.

They have their day: Their cry is loud about the earth, who come To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb Always in the one way.

Though they implore, Brief is the plea, inflexible the fate! Silence has the last word; and then--the great Silence, forevermore.

Pondering these, The fretful spirit in bewilderment Quickens with a vague doubt, and, not content, Broods--and is ill at ease.

Her being is Throned on so frail a pulse; such fleeting breath Bears up her dream across the gulf of death And the obscure abyss.

Always she hears The hurtling chariots of the hurrying blood, Her shuttling breath that in the solitude Weaves the one self she wears.

Now first the vast Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole Shining Reality; whereat the soul Sickens, and is aghast!

Darkness reveals The tragic truth; her will sinks hopeless wings Before the inexorable Fact of things, Humbling the dread she feels.

With the old Awes Confronted and the flaming Mystery, She may not speak; but pondering, suddenly Grows silent, and withdraws.

She may not bear That sight: the spangled heavens, from east to west, Stretch out too wide the confines of the breast, Straining in wonder there.

Upon what Brow Of awful eminence--O thought that stuns!-- Is laid that chaplet of a million suns, Upon what Forehead now?

Who was it wrought This universal glory all around, Of glittering worlds forever without bound?-- Great Poet, what a Thought!

It is a Word Unutterable that is written there; The spirit, gazing, is one voiceless prayer, Careless if it be heard.

Her thoughts ascend, Star beyond star, height beyond aching height Upward, in adoration infinite, Forever, without end.

So _shall_ it be! Till heaven yield her sceptre; till the throne Of night be shaken, and the Face be known Beyond eternity:

Till God divide And rend asunder the embroidered hem Of darkness; till the starry diadem And crown be set aside!

THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE

Even as to a music, stately and sad, The young girl’s feet begin to move in a dance, And curiously, for joy, shift and advance; So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet, All laughing things move with delighted feet-- So all things that draw light and laughing breath Move to the mournful waltz of life and death: Comedy is a girl dancing in time To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime; And ever she laughs back, and as she skips Mimics the mournful music with her lips; Then, for sheer anger at her own pretense, Sobs violently at her own vehemence; And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep, She needs must cover up her face and weep.

OCTOBER MOONLIGHT

Heaven is like an empty room to-night; From rim to chilly rim Wells the clear radiance of the cold moonlight, And the earth-ways are dim.

Who has departed from this perfect place! What fiery one here set His throne in splendor, whom, vanished now, the face Of heaven remembers yet!

Emptiness--emptiness--the skies are bare, And the stark earth no less Grows vacant as a memory: everywhere Sleeps the cold loveliness.

Old is the earth, too old; her voice is shrill Against the end of things-- To the inevitable her bitter will Grows humbler as she sings.

Now from my breast the very soul takes flight, Leaving her chambers bare Of all save lonely memory and moonlight-- And Song is silent there.

THE FLESH AND THE DREAM

The baffled dreamer, the defeated Christ That for your love upon the cross-tree hung-- O take Him to your bosom, give Him rest Close at the wanton wonder of your breast, O carnal World, forever well and young!

VAUDEVILLE

When to a cheap and tawdry tune the orchestra cried out, Frantic, in violent syncopation, and began Your holy, adorable body in mournful grace to move about Through the old, devious motions, the device of man--

How suddenly then, silent magnificence, you put to shame The crowded and garish theatre, the strangled cries Of flute and trumpet! O mortal body, bearer of our flame Through the drear lands of death, flower of the eternities!

Revered, reviled, wept and adored, beseeched, cried out upon By ravening lips of the ages--the sacred source of things, That glimmered in Thrace, that shone in Rome, that swayed in Babylon, Here moves to the vile throb of castanets and strings.

O through what generations have you lured, what secret ways, Man’s fainting heart to be reborn! What splendors move Deep in his breast when, dolorous, your reluctant beauty sways In the old weary rhythms of eternal love!

1914

I lift my gaze beyond the night, and see, Above the banners of Man’s hate unfurled, The holy figure that on Calvary Stretched arms out wide enough for all the world.

THE BELOVÈD

Life, Belovèd, I lay my heart against Your heart, Long, long I peer into the dark pool of Your eyes; Never will I forsake You, O adorable One!

I cannot comprehend You, but I love You. In the shadow of Your locks I hide my eyes from the terrors; But You are not greatly concerned-- Closer and closer I draw toward the dear Face.

See--I set my lips against Your lips, But You do not answer: Steadfast and grave beyond me Your eyes are burning, As of one that dreams.

I am clinging here at Your heart! I am singing my love of You for sheer joy! Mother, what is it that trembles on Your lashes so soft-- And Your lips are salt as the taste of the sea?

Can it be for me Your eyes are brimming, Mother, Even as they smile? Can they be for me, these drops on Your lips so warm? Dear One, do I understand at last!

O holy draught, wine of the world, bewildering and bitter-sweet! Sacred tears, from the depths of what wild love welling! Deeper and deeper let me drink and draw-- Nirvana, divine oblivion....

Bitter is the taste of Your lips, Belovèd!

* * * * *

Though I lie in the darkness, yet often do I remember You--and wonder-- And the touch of Your lips, how strange, and how sad.

PROUD DOOM

The crucifixion of Beauty on the cross Of mortal destiny--the eternal law-- The thorny crown of death about her brows Fills me with anger--then with sudden awe:

So dear, so lovely her adorable sorrow Shows in the darkness, ’mid the tragic doom, The very heart in me leaps up with laughter, And hastens, proud and secret, toward the tomb.

THE SECRET ONE

Here, by this frame and network of the flesh And wires of her control Surrounded, central in her subtle mesh And secret, sits the soul,

Urgent through all the body, while each part Obeys, and all are one-- While in her dungeons labors the lone heart To make her will be done.

She reins the forces in their wild career That bear her, as they go, Over the dark abyss; and knows how sheer Reaches the gulf below.

How dubious her life and slenderly Hangs, by a scarlet thread, Between eternity and eternity-- She guesses, wise in dread;

And ever watchful, ever wary, set In the centre all alone, Feels ’round her cautiously if any threat Be made against the throne.

Sometimes along her nerves the voice of pain Bears tidings to her hate And frantic wrath, that the old foe again Is clamorous at the gate--

She rages up and down, and to and fro In timid anger runs: If the frontiers be menaced, it is known All over, and at once.

She hears her breast of sorrows night and day At labor; ’round her brood The old oblivions, where she sits at bay; She hears the battling blood.

Echoes assail her from far worlds that lie Beyond the bourne of these-- Contact and color and the angry cry Of the realities

Beat on the brain forever; the high dream, By stratagem of speech, Enters her portals, where she sits supreme And silent, pondering each:

Weighing and challenging, for weal or woe, All rumors, sending out The emissaries of her will, that go To the frontiers about.

But most she loves the hour that beauty brings, Of rapture and release From the crude hunger and the cry of things, The hour of her peace--

When, by the inner light that floods her cell, The spirit, even as here, Travails, in secrecy and joy, to tell Her passion and her fear.

Now to the listening soul in you who read These lines, she tells it all-- How dear her day, how dark shall be, indeed, The hour when night must fall.

THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY

Less than it is we would the Truth should seem: Holy and marvellous the Actual is-- But stern her lips, and bitter is her kiss Upon the brows of dream.

BLIND PLAYERS

Day breaks, and the old drama Repeats itself anew: The hind wakes to be hunted, The huntsman to pursue--

The lover and the belovèd, Each one doomed to his part; The victor and the vanquished, The hushed and the hurrying heart--

In terror and in triumph They play it through again, The old, unchanging drama Of passion and of pain,

As the great Will has willed it, That, in all forms being cast, Wars on Itself forever. O may they at the last--

The falcon, and the fledgling He stoops to from the sky; The lips that are so eager, The lips that would deny--

When the old war is ended, When the stern Will is done, Meet in eternal pity And know themselves as one!

TRAVAIL

Before the sacred beauty of the morn How fade the wrangling wisdoms of the earth! Wisdom is beauty in the womb, unborn; Wisdom is beauty laboring for birth.

Wisdom, the ghost of Beauty, in the wide Womb of the world lies clamoring for life, While the white Beauty, the immortal Bride, Sits throned upon the summits void of strife.

So the bright flower, bending from the soil, Sums up and scorns the wisdom of the sage; And Helen’s beauty, soaring beyond toil, The laboring beauty of the poet’s page.

So, when the veils of mystery are furled, Earth’s wisdom blooms in heaven’s beauty above ... Beauty is all the wisdom of the world Uttered by the seraphic lips of love!

THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE

How shall I sing of Her that is My life’s long rapture and despair-- Sorrow eternal--Loveliness, To whom each heart-beat is a prayer!

Utterly, endlessly, alone Possessing me, yet unpossessed-- The dark, the drear belovèd One That takes the tribute of this breast:

Dæmon disconsolate, in vain, In vain petitioned and implored-- How many a midnight of disdain Darkly and dreadfully adored!

Beauty, the virgin, evermore Out of these arms with laughter fled-- Vanished--a voice by slope and shore Haunting the world--Illusion dread--

Most secret Siren, on whose coast, ’Mid spray of perishing song, are hurled All desolate lovers, all the lost Souls, and half-poets of the world:

Through sleepless nights and lonely days In tears and terror served and sought-- Light beyond light--the supreme Face That blinds the adoring eyes of thought!

How shall I sing of Her? Nay all, All song, all sorrow, all silence of This desperate heart that is Her thrall, Trembles and tries to tell my love!

THE BURIED DREAM

I hid a dream amid the sands of Time, And said, “Now will I go upon my way-- I shall be free henceforward from this time, And full of laughter all the livelong day.”

But it came following like the midnight voice Of my true love behind her lattice-bars-- And it came following like the silver voice Of my lost childhood strayed beyond the stars:

Like my dead self, so laughable, so sad, So foolish and so lovable it rang-- That, for sheer laughter, I was very sad, And took it back into my heart, and sang.

HAUNTED EARTH

Heaven at last Is bared, and the whole world one radiant room-- Black are the shadows, in great pools of gloom By copse and thicket cast.

The cattle browse With sound of gentle breathing, and their breath Is mild in glimmering meadows, or beneath Drooped branches, where they drowse;

While ’mongst the chill Shadows, and cold, clear moonlight all about, A single bat goes dipping in and out Softly; and all is still.

Silence around-- Save for a cricket! Lapped in slumb’rous peace Lie hill and meadowland, the shining seas Lap on them without sound.

It is earth’s cry Lifted in adoration: the old dream, Beauty, is with her, and her hour supreme That goes so swiftly by.

Too well she knows The sweet Illusion, from no earthly shore Visitant, the bright word that evermore Troubles her dark repose.

Her heart lies bare-- Drunken, drunken, she lifts a dreamy breast; Hour by hour, in rapture and unrest Flows the unending prayer.

The path of night Reaches, from rim to rim, a radiant road Whereon the exalted Beauty walks abroad In wonder and wild light.

Upon what eyes, Lifted in homesickness, now falls again The loveliness that haunts the world with pain-- Light out of Paradise!

LONG AGO

Ah, once your quiet eyes were calm and deep And wistful with much dreaming; long ago Your solemn lips, so innocent of woe And delicately parted, seemed to keep A secret still unsaid, and murmured low: But that was long ago.

And I, who saw and loved you from afar, Prayed a hushed prayer, the first I ever prayed, That God might keep you safe; and unafraid I looked up through the night at my one star, Moving mysteriously and bright-arrayed. And silently I prayed.

While you passed singing tenderly and low, Wandering through life’s meadows with slow tread, Death laid his kiss on your belovèd head: But that was long ago.

TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY

My heart cried out in wonder: Can it be, The form, from which this thrilling passion flows On tides of beauty and eternal tone Audibly now before the very sense Of thronging thousands, somewhere in the clay Of Russia lies, with folded hands--relapsed Into the Formless? And my mind replied: The longing that so labors for release Not wholly in that transient form was trapped Wherein we perish miserably here-- But has escaped into the form supreme, A deathless body; and now walks abroad Among the generations of mankind, Trailing the robes of the immortal woe.

And still that music poured. O sacred heart And secret, well-head of those streams of song-- Are you content! How is it with you now, O breast whose sorrows overflowed the world!

MIRROR

On the wide sea of sleep I launch my gliding boat: Over the rhythmic Deep On flowing tides I float.

The curving shore around Fades in the pale starlight-- A slumbering, sleepy sound Goes drifting through the night.

It is the music of dreams Along the horizon blown, It stirs the glimmering streams Where the pale stars lie strown.

The stars shine in the Deep, Reflected from afar; My eyes tremble with sleep, Reflecting sea and star.

My eyes look up at me Out of the mirrored eyes, And in their depths I see Mirrored the stars and skies.

Around--around--around My boat whirls with the stream; I feel a dizzy sound Around me, like a dream.

Where may I moor my bark? How may I lift my head? What is that silence? Hark-- The sound of dreams is fled!

The breath of slumber lies, Like perfume, on the Deep: Night with a thousand eyes Stares at herself in sleep.

PLAINT

Brief is Man’s travail here, and transitory His wrath that soon is spent-- Brief his lament, Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees Of the high Destinies That move not for the murmur of his woe: Even as snow On sunny meadows, as a lover’s story Told in an April twilight long ago, Brief is he even as these-- His little hour of tumult or of glory-- And to what end devised we may not guess, Considering, as we go Toward the same shadows, bearing the same spark, His vanity and utter nothingness. Yet in the mighty Dark Dear is the spirit; grievously we know Earth has one burden more, one soul the less.

ANDANTE

The evening steals like an ocean around your playing, Whose perfect tones move on the sombre Deep With a grave gesture, and sigh into a sleep, George, where your hands, along the piano straying, An intricate rhythm keep.

And all the room is starry with your dreaming, And limitless and vague. O the white square Of the window-pane shimmers behind you there, Framing the street, where the first lights are gleaming, Transfigured now and fair!

Now, while the heaven of night grows vast above her, The soul from her lone dream has sure release; The tumult and the ancient struggles cease-- The wars that Beauty wages on her lover Dwindle into a peace,

When Schumann speaks so firmly and so sadly, And all the twilight rustles, wave on wave. O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave, What new smile in all things shines back so gladly, Grown dignified and grave!

The curtains by the window rise and flutter, The ornaments on the mantel, row on row, Seem touched with a melancholy of long ago-- What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter? Schumann--we know, we know.

Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel it-- All the half-hope and passion unexpressed When twilight heaves more gently in the breast! Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it, Smile--and divine the rest.

O wrap me in Beethoven’s storm and thunder! My baffled spirit, with abated breath, Flutters upon the verge of life and death-- And all my being, whirled along in wonder, Dies between breath and breath.

Let me endure, within a single pulsing Of the quick heart, in a storm of showering rain Of sound, all joy, all grief--each breath again Live through a life complete, in one convulsing Moment of rapturous pain!

Silence--the lamplight, through the window streaming, Falls on the listless keyboard, smooth and white-- Remembered music dreams in the dull light; And you, too, George, sit silently and dreaming, Alone, into the night.

THE DEAR MYSTERY