Part 3

Brother, what news out of the night, what word From the frontiers of mind beyond our ken, Of mysteries unimagined yet of men, Compassed by travail of your spirit? O Could you but reach to us! Could we but know Across the imperturbable old Dark Some answering glimmer of the ancient Spark Lifted--some token, tangible to sense, Of the indomitable Intelligence That thrones on matter--language visible-- Crying, “Eternity--and all is well! Brother, be of good cheer; we, too, have known! Not lonely moves, not utterly alone, Your sad fraternity through the dark of God: But the confederate legions are abroad, Life’s flag advances on the starry way, And Consciousness, still battling, still at bay, Holds the bright forts against Oblivion--” What answering thrill would ’round the planet run!

For we are one; all Consciousness is one, Whatever form it wear, however dressed In gray or glamour, in whatever breast It lift its longing: glimmering it moves Through the green wave; it stamps with startled hooves The upland pastures of the world, and soars In heaven with the eagle; on bright shores It basks a sunny body, or in dread Lifts from the undergrowth a snaky head And darts a flickering tongue; it is most clear In the lark’s throat; among the grasses here, That couch the ant, it turns a tiny eye Around the darkness; scampers and is shy In the scared rabbit; through the murmuring air Wheels with the beetle, and, where heaven is bare, Southward with the wild crane at summer’s close, Hungering, an eternal pilgrim goes On quests implacable. And from the eyes Of the poised panther gleam the cruelties Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones Of its own wreck and, hungering again, Knows in its body the old spur. For when Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near, Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear, And in the lion’s roar at dusk is heard The unassuagable, insistent word Of urgent Being, clamorous to be.

Wreaking and wrought upon, eternally Mingling and mixed; inextricably blent, Victor and vanquished, in one sacrament-- Body with body--of delight and death, It moves in splendor; lifts the shuddering breath Of the spent stag; and in the mind of Man Rebels against the miserable plan-- Flings its frail web of thought across the path Of suns in heaven, and in holy wrath, On blood of murdered brothers nourished, still Thunders to all the world, _Thou shall not kill_! And the worm’s death is in the sparrow’s song.

And I have seen it in the gnats that throng Old shadowy forests, in tumultuous dance; Or in the little measuring-worm advance, Inch by slow inch, along the swaying stem Of some exalted flower; or lift the hem Of the frail butterfly’s embroidered cloak In gentle breathings that the sun did stroke Caressingly with fingers of his heat; Or from the dog yearn upward, and entreat With eyes of adoration or of fear The great god, Man--“What message, master dear, From the dim heights beyond me where you are?” In the mare’s tremulous whinny, in the far Lowing of cattle from the upland sward, Or wail of whip-poor-wills, at twilight poured On pools of silence plaintively, or cry Of the lone wolf beneath the glittering sky Of soundless winter, I have heard the same Splendor speak forth, and utter the one name Of Life, the dreadful, the magnificent.

All afternoon the passion of heaven spent On earth its fiery fury in blind, bright Lightnings of dread and laughters of delight Down shuddering deeps of shaken thunder, where The delirious longing loosed its sorrowing hair Of wind and shower and overshadowing cloud Across the belovèd face, in darkness bowed Or glimmering light revealed; and cried aloud For anger of utter ecstasy; and shed The wild love of the rushing rain that sped To the thrilled heart, consenting, of the dim And rapturous earth, that lifted up to him Drowsed lips of thirsty flowers; and the cup Of every flower for joy was lifted up, And drank, and swayed! So, wearied out at length, Flagged the bright pulses, and the ebbing strength, With muttering of remembered thunders, passed Down the large shores of evening: till at last The exhausted heaven of twilight from afar Shone washed of all her sorrows; and a star Brooded above the fading storm, and saw The winnowed reaches deepening into awe Of gradual darkness, and the fields that lay All drenched and wearied out at dusk of day And the worn end of things; while far away The receding fury moaned.

And now they lie In the same peace around me, and the sky Holds up her stars; now in the rain-drenched wood The tree-toad drinks the rain and finds it good, And trills for joy--the sliding waters grieve Quietly--now the bat begins to weave With intricate motion on the cloudy loom, Of glamourous starlight mingled and gray gloom, His dipping flight among the darkened boughs And dreamy vistas; and the little mouse Furtively hurries through the lane, his eye Turned up in terror as the owl goes by: On softest feathers of silence overhead Flits the dim shadow of the ancient dread, Hooded and vague, the cruelty of his beak Bent on old lustful mysteries.--A squeak-- A scuffle--beating of wings--and in the lane Silence--and the old wrong is done again, That was ere Adam; the triumphant heart And the defeated, each one doomed to his part, They play it through, the old tragedy where one Presence still wars and still is warred upon, Slays and is slain: while fiercely all around Shakes the eternal love-song in shrill sound, Of grasshopper and cricket--sleepless flow The immortal tides of longing to and fro On waves of music; endless is the prayer Of life to the belovèd, everywhere Lifted in adoration: on dark shores Beats the insistent passion that implores The one dear breast of pity or disdain, To be reborn, to be reborn again-- Nor perish wholly! The blind earth is thrilled As with vague rites accomplished, dreams fulfilled, Marriage and mystic union; all along Her brimming meadows rings the bridal song And chaunt ecstatic: that great heart of hers Is touched now the eternal longing stirs From hill to hollow and hollow to clear hill In many voices mingled, or the still Ecstasy of the firefly that trails Among the shadows where the starlight fails, His body’s burning love. Forever flows The dreadful drama to its stately close And endless ending--the fierce carnival Of death and passion, wherein each and all Mix, and are mingled, slaughter, blend, and pass Each into other--the high poem that has No end and no beginning, that the one Self in all living forms beneath the sun, And on all worlds around him and above, Weaves on the strands of hunger, death, and love.

I see it all, I hear it all, and lie Under my swaying poplars, and the sky Is fretted with frail leaves. The mortal dream Is in my heart: I hear the night-hawk’s scream Shatter the silver silences, I hear The owl’s clear tremolo rise over-clear-- The mouse’s blood along his veins has made His love-note lovelier and the night afraid Of beauty’s dreadful secret--and I know Soft shapes of stealth that in the darkness go, Of furry lusts and gnawing hungers, small Twittering things obscene, that flit or crawl In furtive secrecy, vague mouths and blurred Of the night creature or nocturnal bird-- Amorphous moth and bat-wing--and the earth, With all her burrows, nooks and nests of birth Crowded, and wreck of many a perished might, By the ebbed waters of Life’s fierce delight Washed up on shores of silence--spoiled and spurned Altars where once the sacred fire burned-- Forms flowing back into the Formlessness; In a supreme embrace, a long caress, Mixing their bodies with the mother mould-- And all the heaven of stars around me rolled, Whose brooding eyes have stared so many an age Upon this theatre of lust and rage, Of death and adoration. And a breeze Rustles the branches of the poplar-trees.

Dear Spark, that shinest in the solitude! One Consciousness, that in the brotherhood Of all earth’s living creatures movest on The shaken ramparts of Oblivion-- Whose starry cry, across the darkness hurled, Makes music in the silence of the world! Life, whose sole splendor in red slaughter spills The blood of its own breast; in many wills Wars on the one Will; and in wrath or dread Feeds on itself and, on itself being fed, Shines forth in song and color; gilds the dress Of the green-fly; and pours its loveliness In rapture on the earth; in theatres Of crowded congregation sits--nor stirs-- Watching itself, itself the spectacle; And builds the swallow’s breast, and shapes the shell And all these mansions of its thought that are Between the morning and the evening-star, On earth, in heaven, or in the glimmering caves And grottoes of the world below the waves-- Butchers the ox, and, gladdened by his meat, In the young mother’s downward smile is sweet; Or, sated on his body, walks abroad In symphonies, and poems, and prayers to God; Sins, and has conscience and, repenting, sins; And in the lowly patient spider spins Its fragile web; and in these words of mine Flings out its groping utterance, line by line, Across the intangible abyss of thought-- With infinite passion, infinite patience wrought-- Dread Loveliness! Be strong in me, be strong, To utter forth your meaning in my song!

THE LION-HOUSE

Always the heavy air, The dreadful cage, the low Murmur of voices, where Some Force goes to and fro In an immense despair!

As through a haunted brain-- With tireless footfalls The Obsession moves again, Trying the floor, the walls, Forever, but in vain.

In vain, proud Force! A might, Shrewder than yours, did spin Around your rage that bright Prison of steel, wherein You pace for my delight.

And O, my heart, what Doom, What warier Will has wrought The cage, within whose room Paces your burning thought, For the delight of Whom?

Transcriber’s Note: The first illustration is the cover; the last illustration is the publisher’s logo.