The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder

Ah, no! that sacred land
Where fell the wearied feet of the lone Christ
Robs not the soul of faith. I shall set down
The thought was in my heart. If that hath lost
Aught of its child-belief, 't was long ago,
Not there in Palestine; and if 't were lost,
He were a coward who should fear to lose
A blind, hereditary, thoughtless faith—
Comfort of fearful minds, a straw to catch at
On the deep-gulfed and tempest-driven sea.

Full well I know how shallow spirits lack
The essence, flinging from them but the form.
I have seen souls lead barren lives and curst,—
Bereft of light, and all the grace of life,—
Because for them the inner truth was lost
In the frail symbol—hated, shattered, spurned.

But faith that lives forever is not bound
To any outward semblance, any scheme
Fine-wrought of human wonder, or self-love,
Or the base fear of never-ending pain.
True faith doth face the blackness of despair,

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Blank faithlessness itself; bravely it holds
To duty unrewarded and unshared;
It loves where all is loveless; it endures
In the long passion of the soul for God.

'T was thus I thought:—
At last the very land whose breath he breathed,
The very hills his bruisèd feet did climb!
This is his Olivet; on this Mount he stood,
As I do now, and with this same surprise
Straight down into the startling blue he gazed
Of the fair, turquoise mid-sea of the plain.
That long, straight, misty, dream-like, violet wall
Of Moab—lo, how close it looms! The same
Quick human wonder struck his holy vision.
About these feet the flowers he knew so well.
Back where the city's shadow slowly climbs
There is a wood of olives gaunt and gray,
And centuries old; it holds the name it bore
That night of agony and bloody sweat.

I tell you when I looked upon these fields
And stony valleys,—through the purple veil
Of twilight, or what time the Orient sun
Made shining jewels of the barren rocks,—
Something within me trembled; for I said:
This picture once was mirrored in his eyes;
This sky, that lake, those hills, this loveliness,
To him familiar were; this is the way
To Bethany; the red anemones
Along yon wandering path mark the steep road
To green-embowered Jordan. All is his:
These leprous outcasts pleading piteously;
This troubled country,—troubled then as now,

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And wild and bloody,—this is his own land.
On such a day, girdled by these same hills,
Prest by this dark-browed, sullen, Orient crowd,
On yonder mount, spotted with crimson blooms,
He closed his eyes, in that dark tragedy
Which mortal spirit never dared to sound.
O God! I saw those eyes in every throng.

Was he divine, and maker of all worlds,—
The Godhead veiled in suffering, for our sins,—
An unimagined splendor poured on earth
In sacrifice supreme,—this was a scene
Fit for the tears of angels and all men.
If he was man—a passionate human heart,
Like unto ours, but with intenser fire,
And whiter from the deep and central glow;
Who loved all men as never man before,
Who felt as never mortal all the weight
Of this world's sorrow, and whose sinless hands
Upstretched in prayer did seem, indeed, to clutch
The hand divine; if he was man, yet dreamed
That the Ineffable through him had power,—
Even through his touch,—to scatter human pain
(Setting the eternal seal on his high hope
And promised kingdom); was he only man,
Thus, thus to aspire, and thus at last to fall!
Such anguish! such betrayal! Who could paint
That tragedy! one human, piteous cry—
“Forsaken!”—and black death! If he was God,
'T was for an instant only, his despair;
Or was he man, and there is life beyond,
And, soon or late, the good rewarded are,
Then, too, is recompense.

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But was he man,
And death ends all; then was that tortured death
On Calvary a thing to make the pulse
Of memory quail and stop.

The blackest thought
The human brain may harbor comes that way.
Face that,—face all,—yet lose not hope nor heart!
One perfect moment in the life of love,
One deed wherein the soul unselfed gleams forth,
These can outmatch all ill, all doubt, all fear,
And through the encompassing burden of the world
Burn swift the spirit's pathway to its God.

THE ANGER OF CHRIST

On the day that Christ ascended
To Jerusalem,
Singing multitudes attended,
And the very heavens were rended
With the shout of them.

Chanted they a sacred ditty,
Every heart elate;
But he wept in brooding pity,
Then went in the holy city
By the Golden Gate.

In the temple, lo! what lightning
Makes unseemly rout!
He in anger, sudden, frightening,
Drives with scorn and scourge the whitening
Money-changers out.

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By the way that Christ descended
From Mount Olivet,
I, a lonely pilgrim, wended,
On the day his entry splendid
Is remembered yet.

And I thought: If he, returning
On this high festival,
Here should haste with love and yearning,
Where would now his fearful, burning
Anger flash and fall?

In the very house they builded
To his saving name,
'Mid their altars, gemmed and gilded,
Would his scourge and scorn be wielded,
His fierce lightning flame.

Once again, O Man of Wonder,
Let thy voice be heard!
Speak as with a sound of thunder;
Drive the false thy roof from under;
Teach thy priests thy word.

THE BIRDS OF BETHLEHEM

I heard the bells of Bethlehem ring—
Their voice was sweeter than the priests';
I heard the birds of Bethlehem sing
Unbidden in the churchly feasts.

They clung and sung on the swinging chain
High in the dim and incensed air;
The priests, with repetitions vain,
Chanted a never-ending prayer.

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So bell and bird and priest I heard,
But voice of bird was most to me;
It had no ritual, no word,
And yet it sounded true and free.

I thought Child Jesus, were he there,
Would like the singing birds the best,
And clutch his little hands in air
And smile upon his mother's breast.

NOËL

Star-dust and vaporous light,—
The mist of worlds unborn,—
A shuddering in the awful night
Of winds that bring the morn.

Now comes the dawn: the circling earth;
Creatures that fly and crawl;
And Man, that last, imperial birth;
And Christ, the flower of all.

“THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS”

Wise Rembrandt! thou couldst paint, and thou alone,
Eyes that had seen what never human eyes
Before had looked on; him that late had past
Onward and back through gates of Death and Life.

O human face where the celestial gleam
Lingers! O, still to thee the eyes of men
Turn with deep, questioning worship; seeing there,
As in a mirror, the Eternal Light
Caught from the shining of the central Soul
Whence came all worlds, and whither shall return.

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THE DOUBTER

Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!
With words the scholars wear me out;
My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, and myself, and all I doubt.

And must I back to darkness go
Because I cannot say their creed?
I know not what I think; I know
Only that thou art what I need.

THE PARTHENON BY MOONLIGHT

I

This is an island of the golden Past
Uplifted in the tranquil sea of night.
In the white splendor how the heart beats fast,
When climbs the pilgrim to this gleaming hight;
As might a soul, new-born, its wondering way
Take through the gates of pearl and up the stair
Into the precincts of celestial day,
So to this shrine my worshiping feet did fare.

II

But look! what tragic waste! Is Time so lavish
Of dear perfection thus to see it spilled?
'T was worth an empire;—now behold the ravish
That laid it low. The soaring plain is filled
With the wide-scattered letters of one word
Of loveliness that nevermore was spoken;
Nor ever shall its like again be heard:
Not dead is art—but that high charm is broken.

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III

Now moonlight builds with swift and mystic art
And makes the ruin whole—and yet not whole;
But exquisite, tho' crusht and torn apart.
Back to the temple steals its living soul
In the star-silent night; it comes all pale—
A spirit breathing beauty and delight,
And yet how stricken! Hark! I hear it wail
Self-sorrowful, while every wound bleeds white.

IV

And tho' more sad than is the nightingale
That mourns in Lykabettos' fragrant pine,
That soul to mine brings solace; nor shall fail
To heal the heart of man while still doth shine
Yon planet, doubly bright in this deep blue;
Yon moon that brims with fire these violet hills:
For beauty is of God; and God is true,
And with His strength the soul of mortal fills.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Let fall the ruin propt by Europe's hands!
Its tottering walls are but a nest of crime;
Slayers and ravishers in licensed bands
Swarm darkly forth to shame the face of Time.

False, imbecile, and cruel; kept in place
Not by its natural force, but by the fears
Of foes, scared each of each; even by the grace
Of rivals—not blood-guiltless all these years!

Ay, let the ruin fall, and from its stones
Rebuild a civic temple pure and fair;
Where freedom is not alien; where the groans
Of dying and ravished burden not the air!

1896.

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KARNAK

I

Of all earth's shrines this is the mightiest,
And none is elder. Pylon, obelisk,
Column enormous—seek or east or west,
No temple like to Karnak 'neath the disk
Of the far-searching sun. Since the first stone
Here lifted to the heavens its dumb appeal,
Empires and races to the dread unknown
Have past—gods great and small 'neath Time's slow wheel
Have fallen and been crusht;—the earth hath shaken
Ruin on ruin—desolate, dead, forsaken.

II

Since first these stones were laid, the solid world,
Ay, this whole, visible, infinite universe,
Hath shifted on its base; suns have been hurled
From heaven; the ever-circling spheres rehearse
A music new to men. Yet still doth run
This river, throbbing life through all its lands;
Those desert mountains lifted to the sun
Live as of old; and these devouring sands;
And, under the changing heavens, amazed, apart—
Still, still the same the insatiate human heart.

III

And Thou, Eternal, Thou art still the same;
Thou unto whom the first, sad, questioning face
Yearned, for a refuge from the insentient frame
Of matter that doth grind us; seeking grace
From powers imagined 'gainst the powers we know;—
Some charm to avert the whirlwind, bring the tide

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And harvest; turn the blind and awful flow
Of nature! Thou Eternal dost abide
Silent forever, like the unanswering skies
That send but empty echoes to men's cries!

IV

But not in temples now man's only hope,
Nor secret ministries of king and priest
Chanting beyond dark gates that never ope
Unto the people; now no hornèd beast
Looms 'twixt the worshiper and the adored,
Nor any creature's likeness; He remains
Unknown as erst; yet Him whom we call Lord
Is worshiped in the fields as in the fanes.
We have but faith; we know not; yet He seems
More near, more human, in our passionate dreams.

V

We know not, yet the centuries in their course
Have built an image in the mind of man;
We have but faith, yet that mysterious Force
Less darkly threatens, looms a friendlier plan.
Far off the singing of the morning stars,
Yet age by age such words of light are spoken
(Like whispered messages through prison bars),
Sometimes men deem the dreadful silence broken,
And hearts that late were famished and afeared
Leap to the Voice and onward fare well cheered.

VI

Cheered for a little season, but the morrow
Brings the old heartbreak; gone is all the gain;
Tho' the bowed soul be schooled to its own sorrow,
Ah, heaven! to feel earth's heritage of pain,—

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The unescapable anguish of mankind,
That blots out natural joy!—O human soul,
Learn Courage, tho' the lightning strike thee blind;
Let Duty be thy worship; Love, thy goal:
Love, Duty, Courage—these make thou thy own,
Till from the unknown we pass into the unknown.

“ANGELO, THOU ART THE MASTER”

I

Angelo, thou art the master; for thou in thy art
Compassed the body, the soul; the form and the heart.
Knew where the roots of the spirit are buried and twined,
The springs and the rocks that shall suckle—and torture and bind.
Large was thy soul like the soul of a god that creates—
Converse it held with the stars and the imminent Fates.
Knewest thou—Art is but Beauty perceived and exprest,
And the pang of that Beauty had entered and melted thy breast.
Here by thy Slave, again, after long years do I bow—
Angelo, thou art the master, yea, thou, and but thou.

Here is the crown of all beauty that lives in the world;
Spirit and flesh breathing forth from these lips that are curled
With sweetness and sorrow as never, O, never before,
And from eyes that are heavy with light, and shall weep nevermore;
And lo, at the base of the statue, that monster of shape—
Thorn of the blossom of life, mocking face of the ape.
So cometh morn from the shadow and murk of the night;
From pain springeth joy, and from flame the keen beauty of light.

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II

Beauty!—O, well for the hearts that bow down and adore her:
Heart of mine, hold thou in all the world nothing before her.
All the fair universe now to her feet that is clinging
Out of the womb of her leapt with the dawn, and the singing
Of stars. O thou Beautiful!—thee do I worship and praise
In the dark where thy lamps are; again in thy glory of days,
Whose end and beginning thou blessest with piercing delight
Of splendors outspread on the edge of the robe of the night.

Ah, that sweetness is sent not to him whose dull spirit would rest
In the bliss of it; no, not the goal, but the passion and quest;
Not the vale, but the desert. O, never soft airs shall awake
Thy Soul to the soul of all Beauty, all heaven, and all wonder;
The summons that comes to thee, mortal, thy spirit to shake,
Shall be the loud clarion's call and the voices of thunder.

A WINTER TWILIGHT IN PROVENCE

A stranger in a far and ancient land,
At evening-light I wander. Shade on shade
The mountain valleys darken, and the plain

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Grows dim beneath a chill and iron sky.
The trees of peace take the last gray of day—
Day that shone soft on olives, misty-green,
And aisles of wind-forbidding cypresses,
And long, white roads, whitely with plane-trees lined,
And farms content, and happy villages—
A land that lies close in the very heart
Of history, and brave, and free, and gay;
In all its song lingering one tone of pain.
But now the wintry twilight silent falls,
And ghosts of other days stalk the lone fields;
While through yon sunk and immemorial road,
Rock-furrowed, rough, and like a torrent's bed,
Far-stretching into night 'twixt twilight farms,
I see in dream the unhistoried armies pass,
With barbarous banners trailing 'gainst the gloom;
Then, in a thought's flash (centuries consumed),
In this deep path a fierce and refluent wave
Brims the confined and onward-pressing march
With standards slantwise borne; so, to the mind,
The all-conquering eagle northward takes its flight,
And one stern empire widens o'er the world.
There looms the arch of war where once, long gone,
In these still fields, against those thymy slopes,
An alien city reared imperial towers:
See sculptured conqueror, and slave in chains
Mournful a myriad years; and near the arch
The heaven-climbing, templed monument
Embossed with horse and furious warrior!
Millenniums have sped since those grim wars
Here grimly carved, the wonder of the churl,—
The very language dead those warriors cried.
Deepens the dusk, and on the neighboring hight
A rock-hewn palace cuts the edge of day

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In giant ruin stark against the sky:
Ah, misery! I know its piteous tale
Of armed injustice; monstrous, treacherous force.
Deepens the dusk, and the enormous towers,
Still lording o'er a living city near,
Are lost to sight; but not to thought are lost
A hundred stories of the old-time curse—
War and its ravagings. Deepens the dusk
On westward mountains black with olden crime
And steeped in blood spilled in the blessèd name
Of him the Roman soldiers crucified—
The Prince of Peace. Deepens the dusk, and all
The nearer landscape glimmers into dark,
And naught shows clear save yonder wayside cross
Against the lurid west whose dying gleam
Of ghastly sunlight frights the brooding soul.

Dear country mine! far in that viewless west,
And ocean-warded, strife thou too hast known;
But may thy sun hereafter bloodless shine,
And may thy way be onward without wrath,
And upward on no carcass of the slain;
And if thou smitest, let it be for peace
And justice—not in hate, or pride, or lust
Of empire. May'st thou ever be, O land!
Noble and pure as thou art free and strong:
So shalt thou lift a light for all the world
And for all time, and bring the Age of Peace.

St. Remy de Provence, January, 1896.

University of Virginia Library

1. PART I

IN PALESTINE