Part 2

O woven fabric and bright web of sound, Whose threads are magical, And with swift weaving thrall And hold the spirit bound! We may not know whence thy strange sorceries fall-- Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong, Her high and perfect song. Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound. For, lo, thou art as dreams. And to thy realm all hidden things belong-- All fugitive and evanescent gleams The soul hath vainly sought; All mystic immanence; All visions of ungrasped magnificence, And great ideals pinnacled in thought; All paths with marvel fraught That lead to lands obscure: For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass, Seeking thy magic lure, To vales mist-implicated and unsure, Where all seems strange as visions in a glass; And wonder-haunted hills, Where Beauty is an echo and a dream In sighing pines, and rills Clouded and deep with imaged tree and sky; And where bright rivers gleam Past cities towering high, Each wonderful as some cloud-fantasy.

Thou loosenest the bondage of the years, Making the spirit free Of all sublunar joys and fears. Who mounts on thine imperious wings shall see The ways of life as threads of day and night; Serene above their change, His eyes shall know but far transcendent things, His ears shall hark but voices free and strange; Vast seas of outer light Shall beat upon his sight, Eternal winds shall touch him with their wings; His heart shall thrill To larger, purer joy, and grief more deep Than earth may know; And e'en as dews of morning fill The opened flower, into his soul shall flow High melodies, like tears that angels weep. Then shall he penetrate The veils and outer barriers of sound, And near the soul of melody, Where, rapt in aural splendors ultimate, His soul shall see The marvel and the glory that surround Eternal Beauty's shrine; And catch afar the glint divine Of her moon-colored robe, or haply hear, With world-oblivious ear, Some echo of her voice's mystery.

Thou hast Love's power to find The soul's most secret chords, that else were still, And stir'st them till they thrill Disclosed to least, faint movements of thy wind. Thine aural sorcery O'erwhelms the heart as sunset storms the sight, For thou art Beauty bodied forth in sound-- Her colors bright And diverse forms expressed in harmony: Within thy bound, The flare of morning is become a song, And tree and flower a music sweet and long. And in thy speech The power and majesty that swing Planet and sun, and each Dim atom of the system manifest, Become articulate, expressed Like ocean in the brooklet's whispering. Beyond the woof of finite things, Thy threads of wonder deep-entangled lie-- Time's intertexturings Within Eternity-- With Song, mayhap, to be his memories; For Beauty borders nigh The ultimate, eternal Verities.

THE LAST NIGHT

I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height, A mountain's utmost eminence of snow, Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below To a far sea-horizon, dim and white. Beneath the sun's expiring, ghastly light, The dead world lay, phantasmally aglow; Its last fear-weighted voice, a wind, came low; The distant sea lay hushed, as with affright.

I watched, and lo! the pale and flickering sun, In agony and fierce despair, flamed high, And shadow-slain, went out upon the gloom. Then Night, that grim, gigantic struggle won, Impended for a breath on wings of doom, And through the air fell like a falling sky.

ODE ON IMAGINATION

Imagination's eyes Outreach and distance far The vision of the greatest star That measures instantaneously-- Enisled therein as in a sea-- Its cincture of the system-laden skies. Abysses closed about with night A tribute yield To her retardless sight; And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores. She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield, And through the obstruction of his vestment dire, Pierces the centermost sublimity Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire Heaves upward like a monstrous sea, And inly riven by Titanic throes, Fills all his frame with outward cataract Of separate and immingling torrent streams. Her eyes exact From the Moon-Sphinx that wanes and grows In wastes celestial, alien dreams Brought down on wings of fleetest beams. Adown the clefts of under-space She rides, her steed a falling star, To seek, where void and vagueness are, Some mark or certainty of place. Upon their heavenly precipice The gathered suns shrink back aghast From that interminate abyss, And threat of sightless anarchs vast.

She stands endued With supermundane crown, and vestitures Of emperies that include All under-worlds and over-worlds of dream-- Kingdoms o'ercast, and eminent heights extreme Where moon-transcending light endures. She wanders in fantastic lands, where grow In scarce-discernèd fields and closes blind, Vague blossoms stirred by wings of eidolons; Or roves in forests where all sound is low: Each voice that shuns The noiseful day, and enters there to find Twilight that naught exalts nor grieves, Is quickly tuned to the susurrous leaves.

Upon some supersensual eminence She hears the fragments of a thunder loud, Where lightnings of ulterior Truth intense Flame through the walls of hollow cloud. But these she may not wholly grasp With incomplete terrestrial clasp. Her eyes inevitably see, 'Neath rounds and changes of exterior things, The movements of Essentiality-- Of ageless principles--that alter not To temporal alterings-- Unswerved by shattered worlds upbuilt once more. And stars no longer hot; Or broken constellations strewn Like coals about the heavenly floor, And rush of night upon the noon Of their lost worlds, unsphered restorelessly In icy deserts of the sky. From the beginning of the spheres, When systems nebulous out-thrown Drove back the brinks Of nullity with limitary marks, Till end of suns, and sunless death of years, To her are known The unevident inseparable links That bind all deeps, all suns, all days and darks.

THE WIND AND THE MOON

Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark, How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest! Forever its voice is a voice of the dark, Forever its voice is a voice of unrest. Oh, list to the pines as they shiver and sway 'Neath the ceaseless beat of its myriad wings-- How they moan and they sob like living things That cry in the darkness for light and day! Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher, And its eerie voice comes piercingly, Like the plaint of humanity's misery, And its burden of vain desire. Now to a sad, tense whisper it fails, Then wildly and madly it raves and it wails.

Oh, the night is filled with its sob and its shriek, Its weird and its restless, yearning cry, As it races adown the darkened sky, With scurry of broken clouds that seek, Borne on the wings of the hastening wind, A place of rest that they never can find. And around the face of the moon they cling, Its fugitive face to veil they aspire; But ever and ever it peereth out, Rending the cloud-ranks that hem it about; And it seemeth a lost and phantom thing, Like a phantom of dead desire.

LAMENT OF THE STARS

One tone is mute within the starry singing, The unison fulfilled, complete before; One chord within the music sounds no more, And from the stir of flames forever winging The pinions of our sister, motionless In pits of indefinable duress, Are fallen beyond all recovery By exultation of the flying dance, Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance The maze of stars that only death may free-- Flung through the void's expanse.

In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found; In space that litten orbits gird around, Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted Of unenvironed, all-outlying night. Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight Shall find, and with its venturous ray return From gloom of undiscoverable scope, One ray of her to gladden into hope The doubtful eyes denied that truthward yearn, The faltering feet that grope.

Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing All luminous horizons limited, The substance and the light of her have fed Ruin and silence of the night's amassing: Abandoned worlds forever morningless; Suns without worlds, in frory beamlessness Girt for the longer gyre funereal; Inviolate silence, earless, unawaking That once was sound, and level calm unbreaking Where motion's many ways in oneness fall Of sleep beyond forsaking.

Circled with limitation unexceeded Our eyes behold exterior mysteries And gods unascertainable as these-- Shadows and shapes irresolubly heeded; Phantoms that tower, and substance scarcely known. Our sister knows all mysteries one alone, One shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies; Whose eyeless head and lipless face debar All others nameless or familiar, Filling with night all former lips and eyes Of god, and ghost, and star:

For her all shapes have fed the shape of night; All darker forms, and dubious forms, or pallid, Are met and reconciled where none is valid. But unto us solution nor respite Of mystery's multiform incessancy From unexplored or system-trodden sky Shall come; but as a load importunate, Enigma past and mystery foreseen Weigh mightily upon us, and between Our sorrow deepens, and our songs abate In cadences of threne.

A gloom that gathers silence looms more closely, And quiet centering darkness at its heart; But from the certitude of night depart Uncertain god nor eidolon less ghostly; But stronger grown with strength obtained from light That failed, and power lent by the stronger night, Perplex us with new mystery, and doubt If these our flames, that deathward toss and fall Be festal lights or lights funereal For mightier gods within the gulfs without, Phantoms more cryptical.

New shadows from the wings of Time unfolding Across the depth and eminence of years, Fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears. Prophetic-eyed, with planet-hosts beholding The night take form upon the face of suns, We see (thus grief's vaticination runs-- Presageful sorrow for our sister slain) A night wherein all sorrow shall be past, One with night's single mystery at last; Nor vocal sun nor singing world remain As Time's elegiast.

THE MAZE OF SLEEP

Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, Through which the colored clue of dreams, A gossamer thread, obscurely runs.

THE WINDS

To me the winds that die and start, And strive in wars that never cease, Are dearer than the level peace That lies unstirred at summer's heart;

More dear to me the shadowed wold, Where, with report of tempest rife, The air intensifies with life, Than quiet fields of summer's gold.

I am the winds' admitted friend: They seal our linked fellowships With speech of warm or icy lips, With touch of west and east that blend.

And when my spirit listless stands, With folded wings that do not live, Their own assuageless wings they give To lift her from the stirless lands.

* * * * *

Within the place unmanifest Where central Truth is immanent, Lies there a vast, entire content Of sound and movement one in rest?

I know not this. Yet in my heart, I feel that where all truths concur, The shrine is peaceless with the stir Of winds that enter and depart.

THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS

SCENE: _A moonlit glade on a summer midnight_

THE POET

What consummation of the toiling moon O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet, Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green, Edgèd and strong by day, is dull and faint Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood, That in this absence of the impassioned sun, Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color The live and vivid aspect of the world-- Subdued as with the great expectancy Which blurs beginning features of a dream, Things and events lost 'neath an omening Of central and oppressive bulk to come. Here were the theatre of a miracle, If such, within a world long alienate From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years, Might now befall.

THE PHILOSOPHER

The Huntress rides no more Across the upturned faces of the stars: 'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world, Glittering with desolation. Earth's old gods-- The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's youth-- Are fled from years incredulous, and tired With penetrating of successive masks, That give but emptiness they served to hide. Remains not faith enough to bring them back-- Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon, And all the visions that made populous An eager world where Time grows weary now. Yet Youth, that lives, might for a little claim The pantheon of dream, on such a night, When 'neath the growing marvel of the moon The films of time wear perilously thin, And thought looks backward to the simpler years, Till all the vision seems but just beyond. If one have faith, it may be that he shall Behold the gods--once only, and no more, Because of Time's inhospitality, For which they may not stay.

THE POET

Within the marvel of the light, what flower Of active wonder from quiescence springs! Is it a throng of luminous white clouds, Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans, That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices Like the last echoes of a thunder spent? 'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold About the magic circle which the moon Draws like some old enchantress round the glade.

THE PHILOSOPHER

I see them not: the vision is addressed Only to thine acute and eager youth.

JOVE

All heaven and earth were once my throne; Now I have but the wind alone For shifting judgment-seat. The pillared world supported me: Yet man's old incredulity Left nothing for my feet.

PAN

Man hath forgotten me: Yet seems it that my memory Saddens the wistful voices of the wood; Within each erst-frequented spot Echo forgets my music not, Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood.

ARTEMIS

Time hath grown cold Toward beauty loved of old. The gods must quake When dreams and hopes forsake The heart of man, And disillusion's ban More chill than stone, Rears till the former throne Of loveliness Is dark and tenantless. Now must I weep-- Homeless within the deep Where once of old Mine orbèd chariot rolled,-- And mourn in vain Man's immemorial pain Uncomforted Of light and beauty fled.

APOLLO

Time wearied of my song-- A satiate and capricious king Who for his pleasure bade me sing, First of his minstrel throng. Till, cloyed with melody, His ear grew faint to voice and lyre; Forgotten then of Time's desire, His thought was void of me.

APHRODITE

I, born of sound and foam, Child of the sea and wind, Was fire upon mankind-- Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome. Time fanned me with his breath; Love found new warmth in me, And Life its ecstasy, Till I grew deadly with the wind of death.

A NYMPH

How can the world be still so beautiful When beauty's self is fled? Tis like the mute And marble loveliness of some dead girl; And we that hover here, are as the spirit Of former voice and motion, and live color In that which shall not stir nor speak again.

ANOTHER NYMPH

Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting The world which was. Nor have the gods retained Such power as once informed and rendered vital The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone,-- That statue which Pygmalion made and loved.

ATÈ

I, who was discord among men, Alone of all Time's hierarchy Find that Time hath no need of me, No lack that I might fill again.

THE POET

Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed To fall and flutter among spacial winds, Finding release nor foothold anywhere-- Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spirits Whose names are blotted from the lists of Time, Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed?

THE GODS TOGETHER

Throneless, discrowned, and impotent, In man's sad disillusionment, We passed with Earth's returnless youth, Who were the semblances of truth, The veils that hid the vacantness Infinite, naked, meaningless, The blank and universal Sphinx Each world beholds at last--and sinks. New gods protect awhile the gaze Of man--each one a veil that stays-- Till the new gods, discredited, Like mist that melts with noon, are fled-- That power oppressive, limitless, The tyranny of nothingness. Our power is dead upon the earth With the first dews and dawns of Time; But in the far and younger clime Of other worlds, it hath re-birth. Yea, though we find not entrance here-- Astray like feathers on the wind, To neither earth nor heaven consigned-- Fresh altars in a distant sphere Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire, New hearths to warm us from the night, Till, banished thence, we pass in flight While all the flames of dream expire.

A SUNSET

As blood from some enormous hurt The sanguine sunset leapt; Across it, like a dabbled skirt, The hurrying tempest swept.

THE CLOUD-ISLANDS

What islands marvellous are these, That gem the sunset's tides of light-- Opals aglow in saffron seas? How beautiful they lie, and bright, Like some new-found Hesperides!

What varied, changing magic hues Tint gorgeously each shore and hill! What blazing, vivid golds and blues Their seaward winding valleys fill! What amethysts their peaks suffuse!

Close held by curving arms of land That out within the ocean reach, I mark a faery city stand, Set high upon a sloping beach That burns with fire of shimmering sand.

Of sunset-light is formed each wall; Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems; And every spire that towers tall A ray of golden moonlight gleams; Of opal-flame is every hall.

Alas! how quickly dims their glow! What veils their dreamy splendours mar! Like broken dreams the islands go, As down from strands of cloud and star, The sinking tides of daylight flow.

THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS

But yestereve the winter trees Reared leafless, blackly bare, Their twigs and branches poignant-marked Upon the sunset-flare.

White-petaled, opens now the dawn, And in its pallid glow, Revealed, each leaf-lorn, barren tree Stands white with flowers of snow.

THE SUMMER MOON

How is it, O moon, that melting, Unstintedly, prodigally, On the peaks' hard majesty, Till they seem diaphanous And fluctuant as a veil, And pouring thy rapturous light Through pine, and oak, and laurel, Till the summer-sharpened green, Softening and tremulous, Is a lustrous miracle-- How is it that I find, When I turn again to thee, That thy lost and wasted light Is regained in one magic breath?

THE RETURN OF HYPERION

The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle, Whose mass is bound around the bulk Of the dark, unstirred, unmoving East. Alike on the mountains and the plain, The night is as some terrific dream, That closes the soul in a crypt of dread Apart from touch or sense of earth, As in the space of Eternity.

What light unseen perturbs the darkness? Behold! it stirs and fluctuates Between the mountains and the stars That are set as guards above the prison Of the captive Titan-god. I know That in the deeps beneath, Hyperion Divides the pillared vault of dark, And stands a space upon its ruin. Then light is laid upon the peaks, As the hand of one who climbs beyond; And, lo! the Sun! The sentinel stars Are dead with overpotent flame, And in their place Hyperion stands. The night is loosened from the land, As a dream from the mind of the dreamer. A great wind blows across the dawn, Like the wind of the motion of the world.

LETHE

I flow beneath the columns that upbear The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell; Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers tell My motion nadir-ward; no moment's flare Gives each to each the shapes that, unaware, Commingle at my verge, to test the spell Of waves intense with night, whose deeps compel One face from pain, and rapture, and despair.

The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sons Meet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease. And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones, Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low, Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow Drink at one draught a universe of peace?

ATLANTIS

Above its domes the gulfs accumulate To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their screed; But here the buried waters take no heed-- Deaf, and with closèd lips from press of weight Imposed by ocean. Dim, inanimate, On temples of an unremembered creed Involved in long, slow tentacles of weed, The dead tide lies immovable as Fate.

From out the ponderous-vaulted ocean-dome, A clouded light is questionably shed On altars of a goddess garlanded With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine; And wingèd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam, Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine.

THE UNREVEALED

How dense the glooms of Death, impervious To aught of old memorial light! How strait The sunless road, suspended, separate, That leads to later birth! Untremulous With any secret morn of stars, to us The Past is closed as with division great Of planet-girdling seas--unknown its gate, Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous.

Oh! may it be that Death in kindness strips The soul of memory's raiment, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain peaks a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall?

THE ELDRITCH DARK

Now as the twilight's doubtful interval Closes with night's accomplished certainty, A wizard wind goes crying eerily; And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl, Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall As with some dreadful witches' ecstasy, Flung upward to the dark, whence glitters free The crooked moon, impendent over all.

Twin veils of covering cloud and silence thrown Across the movement and the sound of things, Make blank the night, till in the broken west The moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown.... The night grows whole again.... The shadows rest, Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings.