Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Angel of Death through the dry earth slid,
Like a mole to the Dervish Yan,
Lying beneath the turf six feet,
Till he reached the coffin and smote its lid

209

With his hammer that wakes the Mosleman;
And whispered thus through board and sheet,
‘Arise, that thy closed eye and ear
The things that Are may see and hear!’
The Dervish turned him round, and rose
On his knees at the sound of the three dread blows:
He was alive and a man again,
Yet he felt no earth, nor of it thought,
But rose without a strain.

Friends wept aloud for the Dervish Yan,
And a wife she wept for a Christian man,
A long train of mutes had but lately laid
Under the sward in the cool green shade
Of a sanctified wall whose stones divide
The earth where heretic corses hide,
From that set apart for the faithful alone,
And over him carved his name on a stone;
But the dead man laughed as he woke below,
For he rejoiced at wakening so,—
‘I am awake, awake and well;
Am I myself indeed, and where?—
Here is no light, here is no air,
Here is neither heaven nor hell.’
The Angel of Death stooping clasped his hand,
And silenced him, whispering, ‘I command
The power whose song shall answer thee,—
As it hath been, so shall it be.’

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Beneath the head
When the Jew is dead
Is a clod of quick clay kneaden:
And as the mourners backward go,
Three turfs, green turfs, to the grave they throw,
Saying, ‘Thou shalt like these green turfs grow,
May thy soul be buried in Eden.’
Thus in the Levites' vault was laid
A Rabbi, thus were the last rites paid,
At the same time that the Summoner
Made the two Gentile corses stir,
And with a writhe like theirs, his eyes
The Rabbi opening, tried to rise.
‘Have the demons power o'er me?’ he cries,
Dragging himself with painful toil
From the mould which is the earth-worm's spoil,
And trembled to hear the words ‘Follow thou too,
Within the sphere of the melody
That re-createth those who die!’

And thus have these three mortals passed,
Being dead, into the formless vast,
Which we in life, expectant, still
By creeds and myths and fancies, fill
With hopes and fears like life on earth,—
Things for the days 'tween death and birth,
For which we care not any more
Down upon the further shore.

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‘By what uncertain sense we're led,
Born thus again—the body dead
Our mother—the grave our nursing bed!

‘Haunted still with hearth and home,
Hammer in hand, sword, pen, and tome,
Sun and moon and starry dome.

‘Morn till evening toil-in-vain,
Market loss and market gain,
Restless sea and wheaten plain.

‘Down the darkness go we still,
Go we without choice of will;
From Gentile's scoff and scorner's rail,
From worm and asp, from kiss and wail;
From master's whip, Muezzim's cry,
Camel and rice, and blank white sky.

‘Carried or driven, through sea, through air,
Carried sheer down by cloud or stair,
Are we or are we not—whither away?
Phantom's of life's fever-day.
Can we not return again,
As leaves come after spring-time's rain?
The trumpet cannot call the dead,
Yet I hear it overhead;
A madman's sleep is thick and brief;
The dawn would give us all relief!—

212

Ah, 'tis gone, and thou, the dearest!
Thou with moonlike light appearest;
Thou, mine own, beside the hearth,
Assiduous with childish mirth—
Dreams, only dreams! the past doth cry,
In the throes of dissolving memory.
O brother spectres who have come
Out of yourselves,—oh, can ye tell,
Rise we or sink—to heaven or hell?
But even now with my own old eyes
I saw the ghost of myself arise;
And then forthwith I was beguiled
To think myself again a child.
But what, alas! are those below
That to and fro
Pass like men walking fast, and then
Pass the very same again?
Alike they are, even every one,
Not as men beneath the sun;—
Now they stalk our heads above,
Now beneath our feet they move,
Now they pass through us quite, as though
Shadows with like shadows blent,
Shadows from some real things sent,
We their shadows cannot know!
Gone, gone, gone! a fiery wind
Severs the vision, and mountain or flood,
City or temple, or cedar-wood,

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Or rock-walls with their multitude
Of caverns void and blind,
Fragments of this baseless world,
About us are flashed out and furled;
And phantoms without number vast,
Interlace the insane dream,
Hurtle together, and never get past:
And a leprous light, a light and breath,
Like the phosphor in the eyes of Death,
Follows each phantom; down they stream,
Wingless, from above descending,
Straight and stiff; nor is the hair
On their rigid shoulders pending
Stirred by any fitful air.
Together they rush now, from near and far,
As if around a central war,
And now in circles whirl, while we—
We cleave the whirlpool steadily.
If any god still hears our wail,
For an hour again
Let us be men,
Or now cease utterly and fail
To know ourselves, to think and be!

‘Hath our prayer been heard? Ah, no;
Spectres that have never trod
Earth with man or heaven with God
Rise stark and slow;

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Rings of gold
About their corded locks are rolled,
Dreadful symbols of dead creeds,
And dripping brands
Are in their hands;—
Naked giants! how they hold
By the nostrils monstrous steeds!
They meet, they rush together: now
The furies of battle are over all,
And some struggle upwards in pain, some fall
Sheer through the seething gulf below;—
Allah el Allah, how are we
In this collapsing death-strife free?
Oh, that we could dissolve at once
To nothingness;—advance,
Ye barbed giants! smoke and fire
Lap us round till we expire,—
Expire, cease utterly and fail
To retract ourselves, to think and be!

Thus the dead men from the grave
Wailed as they went; but who can say
How to paint the unknown way
Within the wondrous door of death?
Or what the mysteries are that pave
The path to New Life, when the breath
And senses cease to be, as now,
The guardians of our souls? The plough

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Casts up bones where warriors trod,
Belted, plumed, and iron-shod;
Those shreds the plough exhumes, I deem,
Little like the warriors seem.

Two lights, two haloed lights appear,
Round like the moon at the fall of the year,
When the sky is mantled o'er
With a fleece of mist, and of all the store
Of stars, not one can penetrate
To the traveller's eye till the night be late.
Two haloes slowly and steadily
Advancing like a double day,
Increasing in beauty more and more;—
Behold! they are the tires of light
On the heads of gods, and a golden sound,
Swooning and recreating, wound
From those two haloes, passed right round
The dead men's hearts with a painful might.
Would I could say
Whose voices or whose harps were they,
That had such vital force divine,
Holy Spirit, like to thine!
But what was the song
That bore along
These weary ghosts with a power so strong?
If we could repeat that lay
In the light of upper day,

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It might unravel warp and woof
Of this prisoned conscious Life
Tear all sensuous ties aloof;
Of good and ill unwind the strife:
Interweave it with amaranth again,
Die it with nepenthe bloom,
That we no more knew sin or pain,
Nor feared the darks beyond the tomb!

But what was the song
That bore along
Those dead hearts with a power so strong?
Would I could repeat the lay
In the dull light of this cold day;
Wean the soul from the thirst to know,
By wisdom be as gods, that so
The slave unmanacle his hand,
The ploughshare rest upon the land.

When the sound of the wires
Of those holy lyres
Had the dead men's lives remade,
Did their shadows remain in the world of shade,
Their flesh in the earth
That gave it birth?
Then in what were they arrayed?
But the child just born forgetteth quite
Its ante-natal garments; night

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And utter change doth interpose,
And when this life over the body doth close,
And the freed Soul hears without ears the hymn,
Sphere-music of God's cherubim,
And sees the haloed powers below,—
Utterly changeth it also;
And after the new birth again
Forget the ante-natal gain?
We cannot know.