Part 1

_THE TORCH-BEARERS—II_

THE BOOK OF EARTH

_WORKS OF ALFRED NOYES_

COLLECTED POEMS—_3 Vols._ THE LORD OF MISRULE A BELGIAN CHRISTMAS EVE THE WINE-PRESS WALKING SHADOWS—_Prose_ TALES OF THE MERMAID TAVERN SHERWOOD THE ENCHANTED ISLAND AND OTHER POEMS DRAKE: AN ENGLISH EPIC POEMS THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN THE GOLDEN HYNDE THE NEW MORNING _The Torch-Bearers_— WATCHERS OF THE SKY THE BOOK OF EARTH

_THE TORCH-BEARERS—II_

THE BOOK OF EARTH

BY ALFRED NOYES

NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY MCMXXV _Copyright, 1925, by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages_

_Printed in the United States of America_

CONTENTS

PAGE

I—THE BOOK OF EARTH

I. THE GRAND CANYON 1 II. NIGHT AND THE ABYSS 11 III. THE WINGS 22

II—THE GREEKS

I. PYTHAGORAS

I. THE GOLDEN BROTHERHOOD 29 II. DEATH IN THE TEMPLE 37

II. ARISTOTLE

I. YOUTH AND THE SEA 50 II. THE EXILE 60

III—MOVING EASTWARD

I. FARABI AND AVICENNA 77 II. AVICENNA’S DREAM 85

IV—THE TORCH IN ITALY

LEONARDO DA VINCI

I. HILLS AND THE SEA 95 II. AT FLORENCE 110

V—IN FRANCE

JEAN GUETTARD

I. THE ROCK OF THE GOOD VIRGIN 125 II. MALESHERBES AND THE BLACK MILESTONES 137 III. THE SHADOW OF PASCAL 146 IV. AT PARIS 154 V. THE RETURN 164

VI—IN SWEDEN

LINNÆUS 169

VII—LAMARCK AND THE REVOLUTION

I. LAMARCK AND BUFFON 187 II. LAMARCK, LAVOISIER, AND NINETY-THREE 195 III. AN ENGLISH INTERLUDE: ERASMUS DARWIN 202 IV. LAMARCK AND CUVIER: THE _VERA CAUSA_ 209

VIII—IN GERMANY

GOETHE

I. THE DISCOVERER 215 II. THE PROPHET 226

IX—IN ENGLAND

DARWIN

I. CHANCE AND DESIGN 231 II. THE VOYAGE 242 III. THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS 249 IV. THE PROTAGONISTS 273 V. THE _VERA CAUSA_ 311

X—EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE 325

I—THE BOOK OF EARTH

I

THE GRAND CANYON

Let the stars fade. Open the Book of Earth.

Out of the Painted Desert, in broad noon, Walking through pine-clad bluffs, in an air like wine, I came to the dreadful brink.

I saw, with a swimming brain, the solid earth Splitting apart, into two hemispheres, Cleft, as though by the axe of an angry god. On the brink of the Grand Canyon, Over that reeling gulf of amethyst shadows, From the edge of one sundered hemisphere I looked down, Down from abyss to abyss, Into the dreadful heart of the old earth dreaming Like a slaked furnace of her far beginnings, The inhuman ages, alien as the moon, Æons unborn, and the unimagined end. There, on the terrible brink, against the sky, I saw a black speck on a boulder jutting Over a hundred forests that dropped and dropped Down to a tangle of red precipitous gorges That dropped again and dropped, endlessly down.

A mile away, or ten, on its jutting rock, The black speck moved. In that dry diamond light It seemed so near me that my hand could touch it. It stirred like a midge, cleaning its wings in the sun. All measure was lost. It broke—into five black dots. I looked, through the glass, and saw that these were men. Beyond them, round them, under them, swam the abyss Endlessly on. Far down, as a cloud sailed over, A sun-shaft struck, between forests and sandstone cliffs, Down, endlessly down, to the naked and dusky granite, Crystalline granite that still seemed to glow With smouldering colours of those buried fires Which formed it, long ago, in earth’s deep womb. And there, so far below that not a sound, Even in that desert air, rose from its bed, I saw the thin green thread of the Colorado, The dragon of rivers, dwarfed to a vein of jade, The Colorado that, out of the Rocky Mountains, For fifteen hundred miles of glory and thunder, Rolls to the broad Pacific. From Flaming Gorge, Through the Grand Canyon with its monstrous chain Of subject canyons, the green river flows, Linking them all together in one vast gulch, But christening it, at each earth-cleaving turn, With names like pictures, for six hundred miles: _Black Canyon_, where it rushes in opal foam; _Red Canyon_, where it sleeks to jade again And slides through quartz, three thousand feet below; _Split-Mountain Canyon_, with its cottonwood trees; And, opening out of this, _Whirlpool Ravine_, Where the wild rapids wash the gleaming walls With rainbows, for nine miles of mist and fire; _Kingfisher Canyon_, gorgeous as the plumes Of its wingèd denizens, glistening with all hues; _Glen Canyon_, where the Cave of Music rang Long since, with the discoverers’ desert-song; _Vermilion Cliffs_, like sunset clouds congealed To solid crags; the _Valley of Surprise_ Where blind walls open, into a Titan pass; _Labyrinth Canyon_, and the _Valley of Echoes_; _Cataract Canyon_, rolling boulders down In floods of emerald thunder; _Gunnison’s Valley_ Crossed, once, by the forgotten Spanish Trail; Then, for a hundred miles, _Desolation Canyon_, Savagely pinnacled, strange as the lost road Of Death, cleaving a long deserted world; _Gray Canyon_ next; then _Marble Canyon_, stained With iron-rust above, but brightly veined As Parian, where the wave had sculptured it; Then deep _Still-water_. And all these conjunct In one huge chasm, were but the towering gates And dim approaches to the august abyss That opened here,—one sempiternal page Baring those awful hieroglyphs of stone, Seven systems, and seven ages, darkly scrolled In the deep Book of Earth. Across the gulf I looked to that vast coast opposed, whose crests Of raw rough amethyst, over the Canyon, flamed, A league away, or ten. No eye could tell. All measure was lost. The tallest pine was a feather Under my feet, in that ocean of violet gloom. Then, with a dizzying brain, I saw below me, A little way out, a tiny shape, like a gnat Flying and spinning,—now like a gilded grain Of dust in a shaft of light, now sharp and black Over a blood-red sandstone precipice. “Look!” The Indian guide thrust out a lean dark hand That hid a hundred forests, and pointed to it, Muttering low, “Big Eagle!” All that day, Riding along the brink, we found no end. Still, on the right, the pageant of the Abyss Unfolded. There gigantic walls of rock, Sheer as the world’s end, seemed to float in air Over the hollow of space, and change their forms Like soft blue wood-smoke, with each change of light. Here massed red boulders, over the Angel Trail Darkened to thunder, or like a sunset burned. Here, while the mind reeled from the imagined plunge, Tall amethystine towers, dark Matterhorns, Rose out of shadowy nothingness to crown Their mighty heads with morning. Here, wild crags Black and abrupt, over the swimming dimness Of coloured mist, and under the moving clouds, Themselves appeared to move, stately and slow As the moon moves, with an invisible pace, Or darkling planets, quietly onward steal Through their immense dominion. There, far down, A phantom sword, a search-beam of the sun, Glanced upon purple pyramids, and set One facet aflame in each, the rest in gloom; While from their own deep chasms of shadow, that seemed Small inch-wide rings of darkness round them, rose Tabular foothills, mesas, hard and bright, Bevelled and flat, like gems; or, softly bloomed Like alabaster, stained with lucid wine; Then slowly changed, under the changing clouds, Where the light sharpened, into monstrous tombs Of trap-rock, hornblende, greenstone and basalt.

There,—under isles of pine, washed round with mist, Dark isles that seemed to sail through heaven, and cliffs That towered like Teneriffe,—far, far below, Striving to link those huge dissolving steeps, Gigantic causeways drowned or swam in vain, Column on column, arch on broken arch, Groping and winding, like the foundered spans Of lost Atlantis, under the weltering deep. For, over them, the abysmal tides of air, Inconstant as the colours of the sea, From amethyst into wreathing opal flowed, Ebbed into rose through grey, then melted all In universal amethyst again. There, wild cathedrals, with light-splintering spires, Shone like a dream in the Eternal mind And changed as earth and sea and heaven must change. Over them soared a promontory, black As night, but in the deepening gulf beyond, Far down in that vast hollow of violet air, Winding between the huge Plutonian walls, The semblance of a ruined city lay. Dungeons flung wide, and palaces brought low, Altars and temples, wrecked and overthrown, Gigantic stairs that climbed into the light And found no hope, and ended in the void: It burned and darkened, a city of porphyry, Paved with obsidian, walled with serpentine, Beautiful, desolate, stricken as by strange gods Who, long ago, from cloudy summits, flung Boulder on mountainous boulder of blood-red marl Into a gulf so deep that, when they fell, The soft wine-tinted mists closed over them Like ocean, and the Indian heard no sound.

II

NIGHT AND THE ABYSS

A lonely cabin, like an eagle’s nest, Lodged us that night upon the monstrous brink, And roofed us from the burning desert stars; But, on my couch of hemlock as I lay, The Book of Earth still opened in my dreams. Below me, only guessed by the slow sound Of forests, through unfathomable gulfs Of midnight, vaster, more mysterious now, Breathed that invisible Presence of deep awe. Through the wide open window, once, a moth Beat its dark wings, and flew—out—over that, Brave little fluttering atheist, unaware Of aught beyond the reach of his antennæ, Thinking his light quick thoughts; while, under him, God opened His immeasurable Abyss. All night I heard the insistent whisper rise: _One page of Earth’s abysmal Book lies bare._ _Read—in its awful hieroglyphs of stone—_ _His own deep scripture. Is its music sealed?_ _Or is the inscrutable secret growing clearer?_ Then, like the night-wind, soughing through the pines, Another voice replied, cold with despair: _It opens, and it opens. By what Power?_ _A silent river, hastening to the sea,_ _Age after age, through crumbling desert rocks_ _Clove the dread chasm. Wild snows that had their birth_ _In Ocean-mists, and folded their white wings_ _Among far mountains, fed that sharp-edged stream._ _Ask Ocean whence it came. Ask Earth. Ask Heaven._ _I see the manifold instruments as they move,_ _Remote or near, with intricate inter-play;_ _But that which moves them, and determines all_ _Remains in darkness. Man must bow his head_ _Before the Inscrutable._ Then, far off, I heard, As from a deeper gulf, the antiphonal voice: _It opens, and it opens, and it opens,—_ _The abyss of Heaven, the rock-leaved Book of Earth,_ _And that Abyss as dreadful and profound_ _Locked in each atom._ _Under the high stars,_ _Man creeps, too infinitesimal to be scanned;_ _And, over all the worlds that dwindle away_ _Beyond the uttermost microscopic sight,_ _He towers—a god._ _Midway, between the height_ _That crushes, and the depth that flatters him,_ _He stands within the little ring of light_ _He calls his knowledge. Its horizon-line,_ _The frontier of the dark, was narrow, once;_ _And he could bear it. But the light is growing;_ _The ring is widening; and, with each increase,_ _The frontiers of the night are widening, too._ _They grow and grow. The very blaze of truth_ _That drives them back, enlarges the grim coasts_ _Of utter darkness._ _Man must bow his head_ _Before the Inscrutable._ Then, from far within, The insistent whisper rose: _Man is himself_ _The key to all he seeks._ _He is not exiled from this majesty,_ _But is himself a part of it. To know_ _Himself, and read this Book of Earth aright;_ _Flooding it as his ancient poets, once,_ _Illumed old legends with their inborn fire,_ _Were to discover music that out-soars_ _His plodding thought, and all his fables, too;_ _A song of truth that deepens, not destroys_ _The ethereal realm of wonder; and still lures_ _The spirit of man on more adventurous quests_ _Into the wildest mystery of all,_ _The miracle of reality, which he shares._

But O, what art could guide me through that maze? What kingly shade unlock the music sealed In that dread volume? Sons of an earlier age, Poet and painter stretched no guiding hand.

Even the gaunt spirit, whom the Mantuan led Through the dark chasms and fiery clefts of pain, Could set a bound to his own realms of night, Enwall then round, build his own stairs to heaven, And slept now, prisoned, in his own coiling towers....

Leonardo—found a shell among the hills, A sea-shell, turned to stone, as at the gaze Of his own cold Medusa. His dark eyes, Hawk-swift to hunt the subtle lines of law Through all the forms of beauty, on that wild height Saw how the waves of a forgotten world Had washed and sculptured every soaring crag, Ere Italy was born. He stood alone,— His rose-red cloak out-rippling on the breeze,— A wondering sun-god. Through the mountain-peaks, The rumour of a phantom ocean rolled. It tossed a flying rainbow at his feet And vanished.... Milton—walked in Paradise. He saw the golden compasses of God Turning through darkness to create the world. He saw the creatures of a thousand æons Rise, in six days, out of the mire and clay, Pawing for freedom. With the great blind power Of his own song, he riveted one more clasp, Though wrought of fabulous gold, on that dark Book, Not to be loosed for centuries. Nearer yet, Goethe, the torch of science in his own hand, Poet and seeker, pressed into the dark, Caught one mysterious gleam from flower and leaf, And one from man’s own frame, of that which binds All forms of life together. He turned aside And lost it, saying, “I wait for light, more light.”

And these all towered among celestial glories, And wore their legends like prophetic robes; But who should teach me, in this deeper night, The tale of this despised and wandering house, Our lodge among the stars; the song of Earth; Her birth in a mist of fire,—a ball of flame, Slowly contracting, crusting, cracking and folding Into deep valleys and mountains that still changed And slowly rose and sank like age-long waves On the dark ocean of ever-dissolving forms; Earth, a magical globe, an elfin sphere, Quietly turning through boundlessness, Budding with miracles, burgeoning into life; A murmuring forest of ferns, where the misty sun Saw wingèd monsters fighting to bring forth men; Earth, and her savage youth, her monstrous lusts, Mastered and curbed, till these, too, pulsed into music, And became for man the fountain of his own power; Earth, on her shining way, Coloured and warmed by the sun, and quietly spinning Her towns and seas to shadow and light in turn; Earth, by what brooding Power Endowed at birth with those dread potencies Which out of her teeming womb at last brought forth Creatures that loved and sinned, laughed, wept and prayed, Died, and returned to the unknown Power that made them; Earth, and that tale of men, the kings of thought, Who strove to read her secret in the rocks, And turned, amid wild calumny and wrong, The lucid sword-like search-beams of the mind On the dark passion that through uncounted æons Crept, fought, and climbed to the celestial gates, Three gates in one, one heavenly gate in three, Whose golden names are Beauty, Goodness, Truth.

Then, without sound, like an unspoken prayer, The voice I heard upon the mountain height, Out of a deeper gulf of midnight rose, Within me, or without, invoking One To whom this dust, not of itself, would pray:

Muse of the World, O terrible, beautiful Spirit, Throned in pure light, since all the worlds obey Thy golden law which, even here on earth, Though followed blindly, leads to thy pure realm, Couldst thou deliver me from this night at last, Teach me the burning syllables of thy tongue That I, even I, out of the mire and clay, With face uplifted, and with arms upstretched To the Eternal Sun of Truth, might raise My song of adoration, not in vain. Throned above Time, thou sawest when earth was born In darkness, though none else was there to see; For there was fury in the dark, and fire, And power, and that creative pulse of thine, The throb of music, the deep rhythmic throes Of That which made and binds all worlds in one.

...

_In the beginning, God made heaven and earth._ One sentence burned upon the formless dark— One sentence, and no more, from that high realm.

The long-sought consummation of all law, Through all this manifold universe, might shine clear In those eight words one day; not yet; not yet! They would be larger, then; Not the glib prelude to a lifeless creed, But wide as the unbounded realms of thought, The last great simplification of them all, The single formula, like an infinite sphere Enfolding Space and Time, atoms and suns, With all the wild fantastic hosts of life And all their generations, through all worlds, In one pure phrase of music, like a star Seen in a distant sky. I could not reach it. All night I waited for the word in vain.

III

THE WINGS

Night greyed, and up the immeasurable abyss, Brimmed with a blacker night than ocean knew, The dawn-wind, like a host of spirits, flowed, Chanting those airy melodies which, long since, The same wild breath, obeying the same law, Taught the first pine-woods in the primal world.

_We are the voices._ _Could man only_ _Spell our tongue,_ _He might learn_ _The inscrutable secret_ _And grow young._

_Young as we are_ _Who, on shores_ _Unknown to man,_ _Long, long since,_ _In waves and woods_ _Our song began._

_Ere his footsteps_ _Printed earth,_ _Wild ferns and grass_ _Breathed it. No man_ _Heard that whispering_ _Spirit pass._

_Not one mortal_ _Lay and listened._ _There was none_ _Even to hear_ _The sea-wave crumbling_ _In the sun._

_None to hear_ _Our choral pine-woods_ _Chanting deep,_ _Even as now_ _Our solemn cadence_ _Haunts your sleep._

_Ear was none_ _To heed or hear_ _When earth was young._ _Even now_ _Man understands not_ _Our strange tongue._

There came a clearer rustle of nearer boughs. A bird cried, once, a sharp ecstatic cry As if it saw an angel. He stood there Against the window’s dusky square of sky, Carrying the long curled crosier of a fern, My singer of the woods, my Shadow-of-a-Leaf, The invisible friend with whom I used to talk In childhood, and that none but I could see,— Shadow-of-a-Leaf, shy whisperer of the songs That none could capture, and so few could hear; A creature of the misty hills of home, Quick as the thought that hides in the deep heart When the loud world goes by; vivid to me As flesh and blood, yet with an elfin strain That set him free of earth, free to run wild Through all the ethereal kingdoms of the mind, His dark eyes fey with wonder at the world, And that profoundest mystery of all, The miracle of reality; clear, strange eyes, Deep-sighted, joyous, touched with hidden tears. Often he left me when I was not worthy; And many a time I locked my heart against him, Only to find him creeping in again Like memory, or a wild vine through a window When I most needed that still voice of his Which never yet spoke louder than the breath Of conscience in my soul. He would return Quietly as the rustling of a bough After the bird has flown; and, through a rift Of evening sky, the shining eyes of a child, The cold clear ripple of thrushes after rain, The sound of a mountain-brook, or a breaking wave Would teach my slumbering soul the ways of love. He looked at me, more gently than of late, And spoke (O, if this world had ears to hear The sound of falling dew, the power that wrote The Paradiso might recall that voice!) _It is near daybreak. I am faithful still;_ _And I am here to answer all your need._ _The hills are old, but not so old as I;_ _The blackbird’s eyes are young, but not so young_ _As mine that know the wonder of their sight._ _Eagles have wings. Mine are too swift to see;_ _For while I stand and whisper at your side,_ _Time dwindles to a shadow...._ Like a mist The world dissolved around us as he spoke. I saw him standing dark against the sky. I heard him, murmuring like a spirit in trance,— _Dawn on Crotona, dawn without a cloud_....

Then, slowly emerging from that mist of dreams, As at an incantation, a lost world Arose, and shone before me in the dawn.

II—THE GREEKS

I

PYTHAGORAS

I. THE GOLDEN BROTHERHOOD

Dawn on Crotona, dawn without a cloud.