University of Virginia Library

I
LIFE

[I
Pride, power and substance of created things]

Pride, power and substance of created things,
Gross, vital element of all that is,
Womb of interminable pregnancies,
Perennial source of earth's resurgent Springs—
O Life! crude matrix that forever clings
To thought's clear diamond, dark chrysalis
Big with prodigious birth, unsunned abyss
Headlong beneath the soul's Icarian wings!
When, as my peers before me, I shall fall
Shattered with light, and, lost beyond recall,
Mix and resolve in thy creative slime,—
Thence shall I rise in endless avatars,
And still once more, for Truth's eternal stars,
Leap from the cloud-capped battlements of Time!

II
PRIMAVERA

Spirit immortal of mortality,
Imperishable faith, calm miracle
Of resurrection, truth no tongue can tell,
No brain conceive,—now witnessed utterly
In this new testament of earth and sea,—
To us thy gospel! Where the acorn fell
The oak-tree springs: no seed is infidel!
Once more, O Wonder, flower and field and tree
Reveal thy secret and significance!
And we, who share unutterable things
And feel the foretaste of eternity,
Haply shall learn thy meaning and perchance
Set free the soul to lift immortal wings
And cross the frontiers of infinity.

[III
Life gives the pass-key of his treasure-house]

Life gives the pass-key of his treasure-house
Into our hand, saying, “What diadem,
What gold of glory, what illustrious gem
Man shall desire of me, shall crown his brows!”
And nothing of all man's choice Life disallows,
Whether of prized or priced or priceless things:
By the feast-tables heaped with offerings,
“Enter!” he cries to all men, “and carouse!”
And thus after our will, in greed and haste,
For certain years we choose and use and waste,
Suffer and strive:—save some few restless men
Who seek, uncrowned, unfriended, alien
And careless of the flushed festivity,
The path thro' life and death to liberty!

[IV
Unspeakable are the felicities]

Unspeakable are the felicities
Of labour and long endurance for the Truth:
Love's sea at flood in the rash heart of Youth,
Freedom and spiritual ecstasies!
Incredible are the discoveries
Of Life's adventure: on the high, outcast,
Star-severed pathways Life may stand at last
Thrilled witness of the soul's divinities!
And always Night beyond!—infinite, strange,
Teeming, inviolate, where the peaks of thought,
Flushed by an unseen Dawn, superbly range
Down the long frontiers whence the restless soul,
Forward, beyond the last and best it sought,
Still finds a path, a prospect and a goal!

[V
We trod into the starlight, into the night]

We trod into the starlight, into the night;
The ways of our deliverance were not mild:
Long had we been contented and beguiled,
And long importunate lovers of the light.
Long had we sought and scorned the false delight
Of perishable things and things defiled,—
Reckless at last we passed unreconciled
Out thro' the darkness in all men's despite.
And much we suffered, and spent our strength and youth
On the steep paths, and lived in loneliness,
Till, as our life-blood fed the lamp of Truth,
Ruin rent down the fortress-walls of Fear,
And light was kindled in the blind, austere
Ways of the soul's eternal restlessness.

[VI
Twilight of Truth's unfettered wanderings]

Twilight of Truth's unfettered wanderings!
Skies of supreme adventure, lightning-crossed!
Tho', as we soar alone, perchance, and lost,
Strange ethers yield beneath our desperate wings,
The diapason of Life's singing strings,
Large as the pensive murmur of still seas,
May reach us, and of all Truth's galaxies
Haply one star console our sufferings.
We stand, at least, too far beyond to heed
The protest vacant and grandiloquent
Of timid, rich and pious men: the event
Is ours to win or lose, and ours the faith
That he who sows the Truth's immortal seed
Shall harvest in the fields of life and death!

VII
TUCKANUCK

1

Take me away to the sea, O carry me
Down to the sea where there is space and light,
Where stars abound in the gigantic night,
Where soul and flesh are unconstrained and free!
Carry me back! for I once more would see
The midnight sky's moon-silvered azurite,
The calm lagoon at noonday wide and white,—
Carry me down! O take me to the sea!
O take me hence to the innumerable
Deep-rumouring waters! Let me feel the core
Of life reëcho like a chambered shell
The voice and motion of the immensity!
Carry me back!—O Soul, from Life's dark shore
Take me away forever to the Sea!

[VIII
Powerful, patient, vast serenity ]

2

Powerful, patient, vast serenity
Of Nature's fathomless tranquillities:
Inviolate silence of the starlit skies,
Deep respiration of the windless sea:
There may we rear the towers of thought in thee,
Pluck forth the secret from the Sphinx's eyes,
Ransom from countless chance captivities
Man's inarticulate divinity!
There may we find the faith which dares disown
Nothing that is, the faith by which alone
We, peradventure, shall be justified;
There may the Soul go forth and there return
Or here no more, but pass from bourne to bourne,
Ever from life to life unsatisfied!

[IX
Shall we return, return once more and stand ]

3

Shall we return, return once more and stand
There where at sunset we may thrill to see
The skies flash kindling like the noontide sea,
The birds pass seaward from the darkling land?
Shall we return and on the stainless sand
Hear, as of old, the waves' wild minstrelsy,
And feel once more the heart within us free,
The soul within us strong to understand?—
We shall return! and in the silence find
Ever the nameless peace, the calm delight,
The spacious meditations of the mind,
Wherein, dilate with Truth's unfailing breath,
Our souls may witness Life's immortal light
Fill the dark chambers of the House of Death.

[X
There may we learn at daybreak and nightfall, ]

4

There may we learn at daybreak and nightfall,
As day and dusk and darkness cover us,
With earth and sky and the omniverous
Infinite sea of ceaseless flood and fall,—
There may we learn how love is spiritual
And death divine and life illustrious,
There may we find at last the fabulous
Truth and compose the soul's high ritual.
There may we haply find ourselves, the goal,
Ourselves, the source of all enlightenment,
And thus discern how earth and sky and sea
And love and life and death and destiny
Are wrought of one eternal element
Quarried in dim deep strata of the Soul.

[XI
We loved too perfectly for praise ]

5

We loved too perfectly for praise
The spread of noon's sun-startled sea,
We loved the large tranquillity
Of flowing distances and days.
In calm, dark sunsets or the blaze
Of moonlit waves, the ecstasy
And spacious thought of liberty
Thrilled us in deep and silent ways.
We loved too much for song or speech
The stars' exalted loneliness,
And in the tacit tenderness
Of hearts thrown open each to each
We found the perfect peace that brings
A foretaste of eternal things.

[XII
We loved the illimitable night ]

6

We loved the illimitable night,
We loved the interminable sea,
We loved, on flower and vine and tree,
The candid foliage wet with light.
We loved the thunder and the might
Of mountains and ineffably
We loved the power that made us be
Lovers of life and life's delight.
We loved the innocent joys of earth,
The poise and peace of natural things,
We loved the miracle of birth;
We loved, beyond life's last release,
The shadow as of stirless wings,
The silence and majestic peace.

[XIII
We found a symbol and significance ]

7

We found a symbol and significance
In day by day the changed and changeless sea,
In night by night each glittering galaxy,
The cosmic pageant and extravagance.
Lost in the devious labyrinth of chance
We sought the endless thread of liberty,
And in the shadow of the Mystery
We watched for light with sleepless vigilance.
Yet still how far soever we climbed above
The nether levels, always, like a knife,
We felt the chill of fear's blind bitter breath:
For still a secret crazed the heart of Love,
An endless question blurred the eyes of Life,
A baffling silence sealed the lips of Death.

[XIV
How often in the tranquil evenings ]

8

How often in the tranquil evenings,
There by the kindled sea's immense unrest,
Has love, like music in the human breast,
Thrilled us with incommunicable things!
How often, as we watched the sea-birds' wings
Flash in the sunset on their homeward quest,
Have life's large secrets, by the soul confessed,
Taught us the pride and peace that freedom brings!
How often have we felt the calm of thought
Quell the storm-shaken waters of the soul,
Till, land-locked by the cliffs of Time, they caught
The silent gleam of Truth's unchanging stars,
And felt the universal ocean roll,
Muffled and vast, on Life's dissolving bars!

[XV
O South-wind, silvered by the crescent moon ]

9

O South-wind, silvered by the crescent moon,
Breathe on my shadowed sail and carry me
Homeward across the sunset-coloured sea,
The rose and violet of the calm lagoon.
There where the high and homeless stars shall soon
Thrill the vast darkness singly, silently,
Carry me back, O South-wind, tenderly
Thro' the gold dusk of closing afternoon.
And as thou bear'st me on my homeward way,
With what few leaves of Truth's immortal wreath,
What spiritual, secret victories,
Are mine; so, homeward from life's little day,
The golden-winged, star-silvered wind of death
Shall take the soul with all its argosies.

[XVI
In some clear, crystalline, calm-murmuring ]

10

In some clear, crystalline, calm-murmuring
Midnight, or when the cloud-sierras rise
Massive and flame-swept in the sunset skies,
Or in the noonday broad and glittering,
We shall return! The endless wind shall bring
Sea-perfumes and sea-rumours and the cries
Of scattered sea-birds, while our shrunken eyes
Grow spacious in the vast horizon's ring.
There day by day in high intelligence
Of Nature, we shall learn her parable;
We shall explore thought's wide circumference;
We shall return at last! and find the soul,
By indications untransmissible,
Always the steadfast centre and the goal!

XVII
ODYSSEUS

He strove with Gods and men in equal mood
Of great endurance: not alone his hands
Wrought in wild seas and laboured in strange lands,
And not alone his patient strength withstood
The clashing cliffs and Circe's perilous sands:
Eager of some imperishable good
He drave new pathways thro' the trackless flood
Foreguarded, fearless, free from Fate's commands.
How shall our faith discern the truth he sought?
We too must watch and wander till our eyes,
Turned sky-ward from the topmost tower of thought,
Haply shall find the star that marked his goal,
The watch-fire of transcendent liberties
Lighting the endless spaces of the soul.

XVIII
KALYPSO

Sorceress of his charmed captivity,
Of all love's gifts she was munificent;
Yet was he unpersuaded to content
Incurious of love's warm felicity,
Fain of departure on the treacherous sea:
Heedless he was whether his life were spent
In shipwreck on the cruel element,
So he were homeward bound, so he were free!
And even as he adventured life and cast
Pleasure and passion from his home-sick heart,
Still, tho' in exile, mindful of his goal;
So, after long enslavements, we, at last
Reckless and undissuaded, shall depart,
Free and bound outward, homeward to the soul!

XIX
EGYPT

Reliquary Time's vicissitude,
Proof of persistent change, and prophecy,—
Rapt in thy myths and monuments I see
Visions that throng thy soundless solitude:
The pageant of a rumouring multitude,
The celebration and the mystery
Of occult and august Divinity
Sculptured in hieratic attitude;—
Till I discern across the shadow of years
The self-same tragic life and death of men,
The passion and the pathos and the tears,
The love and labour of humanity:
And know at last, tho' Time's abysmal sea
Divide us, yet we are not alien!

[XX
In Time's cathedral Memory, like a ghost]

In Time's cathedral Memory, like a ghost
Crouched in the narrow twilight of the nave,
Fumbles with thin pathetic hands to save
Relics of all things lived and loved and lost.
Life fares and feasts and Memory counts the cost
With unrelenting lips that dare confess
Life's secret failures, sins and loneliness
And life's exalted hopes, defiled and crossed.
Shalt thou endure, O Memory, and thy breath
Quicken the dead in thy dominion
And fire the peaks of thought we dared to climb,
When, in the swift relentless chill of death,
The crawling ice-floes of oblivion
Strangle thy passage thro' the seas of Time?

[XXI
O Memory, Mistress of the heart's despair]

O Memory, Mistress of the heart's despair,
Spirit of solitude and silent tears,
Pilgrim thro' twilights of departed years
Peopled with ghosts of all that once we were—
Pale vampire of the graves of Time, forbear!
Suffer the dead to rest! each ghost appears
Desolate in thy darkened atmospheres,
And joy is bitter and pain is perfect there.
Thine are the days gone irretrievably:—
Forbear, O Memory, for the heart will break!
Unless the Soul shall, peradventure, wake
Wonderfully, and, elate with mystic powers,
Rend as with lightnings of eternity
The graves of the interminable hours!

[XXII. Days that have been and nevermore shall be]

Days that have been and nevermore shall be,
Children of Time the sword of Time has slain,
Great hours of life when heart and soul were fain
Of Love's pure fire and Truth's eternity,—
Now, on the marches of that dim domain
And desolate sunset-land of Memory,
Ye rise like tortured ghosts and silently
Walk in the sombre twilights of the brain.
And we, like pilgrims on the path of Time
Who find no rest nor any dwelling-place,
We follow blindly in Life's retinue,
While, like the furies of Orestes' crime,
The spectral hosts of Memory on our trace
Innumerably assemble and pursue.

XXIII
QUESTIONS

Curious of life and love and death they stand
Outward along the shadowy verge of thought;
Rebels and deicides, they rise unsought
And spare no creed and yield to no command.
Even tho' at last we seem to understand,
Yet, when our eyes grow sphered to the new light,
We find them, outposts in the forward night,
Their eyes still restless with the same demand.
On all the heights and at the farthest goal
Set by the seers and christs of yesterday
They watch and wait and ask the onward way;
They storm the citadels of faith and youth,
And, gazing always for the stars of Truth,
Crowd in the glimmering windows of the Soul.

XXIV
TO NIGHT

Thou canst console our sad humanity
With dreams of unimagined loveliness,
Or cast the shadow of forgetfulness
Over the haggard eyes of memory.
The deep unrest of man's infinity
Thou canst appease, for all thy stars confess
The living soul's imprisoned loneliness,
And heart finds liberty alone in thee.
Thou shalt complete us all who love and learn
The secret of thy silences, till we
Arise regenerate from the throes of strife,
And in thine all-receptive peace discern
The ineffable presence of eternity
Waiting forever at the gates of life.

[XXV
Thus were our lives resolved! “The Dawn,” we said]

Thus were our lives resolved! “The Dawn,” we said,
“Is somewhere since the light is everywhere;
Pinnacled in the universal air
The tower of thought, we must believe, shines red!”
By blind belief at all adventure led,
Thus were our lives resolved at last to dare.
Also we knew that up the endless stair
Socrates and some few were gone ahead.
But when at length we climbed into the light,
In wild alarm we saw how far it springs
Across death's void impassable atmosphere,—
Then, as our great resolve grew sick with fear,
We felt the freedom and the infinite
Ambition of the soul's expanded wings!