East and west : the discovery of America and other poems

So heard the ancient world a cry of doom,
Of agony which blossomed into prayer,
And saw the laden treasuries of years
Spilled on the flaming altar of her tomb.

Fragrant the memory of Arcadian flutes,
And shepherds' dance in groves whose Orphic lutes
Flood space with tune; of Jove's Olympian plains
Where strive earth's naked gods; and gilded fanes
Carving warm outline from Corinthian skies;
Or cool Castalian depths where mystery lies;
Or the broad terraces of Parthenon
Crowned with the sunflash from the virgin's shield,
Whose proud chivalric bloom of Attic field
In dance of throbbing marbles surges on

As Phidias dreamed, that prince of centuries
On his immortal throne, Acropolis.

And aromatic music yet distils
In languid drops through soil of Indian lore,
Echoes which cling like moss to temple floor:—
The tinkling bell of Aryan upland kine
Calling to prayer the herdsman, nature's priest;
And that great martial pageant of the East
Where Krishna preached of peace; and palaces
Of Sakyan kings upon a hundred hills
Fringing the skirts of Ganges—sacred foam
Wherein the Brahmin bathes—till Ocean's brine
Swallows her floods of prayer; the rock-hewn dome
Hung with blue veils of incense, and gray stones
Where weeping saints lay the last Buddha's bones.

Perchance these two sweet songs took soul and shape
One evening when the low sun held his breath,
And Nature, pausing as at thought of death,
Played with her folded canopy of crêpe.
Then the delirious waves which flood the halls
Of Time subsided; and, with vision clear,
Floating as in a crystal atmosphere,
Two wingéd spirits spake at intervals:—

“Mark how the shuttles of the falling stars
Weave golden fabrics on the warp of earth!
How their soft patterns swing

Like birds upon the wing;—
Of our fair faces mirrors, as a brook
Wherein two lovers look!
How plastic universes wax and wane,
Tangles of Brahma's skein,
Where rainbow thoughts come flushing to the birth,
And the pale gold of Venus melts in the blaze of Mars!”

“Spirit of Beauty, see
Thy crown transferred to me,
The heritage of Western orbs which sink
Beyond Olympus' brink;—
Through the long night which shuts upon the world
A downy seedling curled
In thy rich soil thick sown with shattered gods;
But as a pale white blossom
Nursed in the fragrant moisture of this bosom,
From which again shall start
The tender shoots of Art,
Fresh fronds of perfect curve like ends of tunes,
And groves of graceful palms to fleck our sods
With the long shadows of the Eastern moons.”

“Soul of the East, I kneel
Thine inmost mood to feel.
Heart, as of woman, wet
With the first dews of nature's morning dream,
Here on this cold hard brow in mercy set
Thy sacred touch, and break

This chain of sparkling jewels which I deem
A bond upon my soul; and in thy lake
Of childlike self-unfolding consciousness
Baptize my soul with floods of sweet distress.
Show me reflected shades of sacrifice,
And opal tints of pity, and cloud forms
Of unimagined aspiration piled
Against the enamelled blue of earthly aim,
And powers without a name
Which the calm pilot of the soul enjoys
When in salt wash of seething currents wild
He steers new worlds through elemental storms.”

“So may our spirits for a moment float
As in a new-built boat;
Clasping each other
With the warm love of sister and of brother,
Breathing fresh life together
From every blast of Jove-distracted weather.
For now the future glows
With the rich promise of Aurora's bows.
Now we can see all sin
And pain but as the flesh we struggle in;
Let perish pleasure's sloth,
And cherish pangs of growth,
And folding hands in prayer
Welcome the futile tortures of despair:—
For the great plan of universal Law
We gaze upon with awe.

Yet is the moment done.
Black is the buried sun.
One kiss before we part,
And in the hurried mingling of our breath
Transmit the seed that shall not suffer death;
In tear-wet patience of a lonely heart
Each in his separate soil
To plant and water with long ages' toil;
Until again perhaps
Thousands of years shall lapse,
And in some second focus of God's will,
When the long night of cataclysm ceases
And worn-out worlds have torn themselves in pieces,
In some sweet dawn which dissipates that ill
We shall bring forth the pure and ripened flower
Conceived in this sweet hour.

“Yet now harsh horns begin
To rasp in din.
And all the world grows black
With gathering shadows of the coming wrack.
Away! Farewell!
And now unleash the murderous hounds of hell!”

[OMITTED]

Reclining on his roof in Macedon,
The youthful Alexander
Heard a loud cry, and from the Eastern ocean
Saw cloud-shapes leap like warriors in commotion,

And lightning shafts hurled swift as bolts of battle,
And scouts of flying scud which hurried on
The rising tumult of the thunder's rattle.
And in the bosom of the young commander
A flame leaped up, as if a star had broken
And in a molten mass its contents poured
Through the dilating chambers of his heart;
While, Fate's grim message eager to impart,
Quick hissing in his ears Ambition roared:—

“Darling of destiny! prince of the ages!
Jove-dowered paragon! nursling of sages!
Sword of the universe! moulder of races!
Welder of hemispheres! forger of spaces!
Rise, O arise, for they fight in the skies,
And the chargers of demons have blood in their eyes,
And the captains of light, and the cohorts of shades
Are pricking the kings of the world with their blades
To yield thee the wealth of their crowns as a prize!”

Thus was the signal of the furies spoken.

[OMITTED]

At Issus, after fateful Granicus,
In rival lines paused Greek and Persian hosts.
But high in upper strata of the air,
Tossing in wild disorder, mutinous,
Like the torn fringes of a Typhon's hair,
Lay two o'ershadowing armaments of ghosts,
Mighty contingents from all unseen spheres.

The morning sun lit up their ranks of spears
With myriad flashes, like magnetic glances
Shot from arched forests of auroral lances.
But their tumultuous rings were held in curb
By two archangels, arrogant, superb,
Fierce spirits of the elemental fire
Who sped on eager wing at Jove's desire
Down from the parching dust of Martian fields
To plan fresh woes for this distracted ball;
Calm, cruel, dread with gorgon-headed shields
Forged in the sun, and fresh Hephaestian mail.
Waved each a falchion like a comet's tail
Threatening extinction to a million stars.
And now against the drum-head of the moon
Shivered a lightning bolt; and all hell shook,
While the supreme recorder in his book
A new page marred with blood; and like a wall
Smitten with earthquake fell the impatient bars,
Whence, snorting trumpet blasts, a mad platoon
Of rampant elephants rushed forth, and raged
Down that black plain of cloud like winds uncaged;—
As Alpine peaks had avalanches hurled
Down the besplintered pathway of their rock;—
With liquid leaps, as some great torrent runs
Bursting the futile barrier of its dam,
And oscillating like a drunken world.

But lined in solid ranks to meet the shock
Knelt calm ten thousand archers, who at once

Bent their great bows as bamboo forests bend
When off the Yellow Sea beats the simoom.
Earth heard their loosened cords like crack of doom,
Or the last crash of some mad orchestra.
And a low cloud of hissing serpents sped
Stinging like fire-fed eels from Surinam;
Till those great mammoths fell and writhed in pain,
Tearing each other's flesh, as tigers rend
The bones of sheep. And now the gilded car
Of each archangel moved; the ominous tread
Of myriad chargers sounded on their flanks;
And gathering lines of mounted furies whirled
Down either side, and tore through broken ranks
As spring-fed torrents tear through rock-choked passes,
Sweeping away, like cyclones, struggling masses;
Till in the centre of that blood-streaked plain
They met as mountains meet, when Titans cast
Pelion on Ossa, and their fragments spurt
Through startled space a jet of asteroids.

And now the red demonic masses seething
In the wild vortex of those awful voids
Felt the strained strata of the atmospheres
Cracking beneath them; and, as polar bears
Slipping on toppling icebergs when the spring
Loosens the Greenland crust in Baffin's Bay,
They reeled, and through that crumbling crater passed
As towns melt up in earthquakes, like the spray
Of salt seas hissing through earth's molten heart.

Not like the falling Satan dazed, inert,
Impotent, cursing like a baffled king;
But as a blood-red dragon active, breathing
Mephitic tongues of flame, with teeth like swords
To reap glad harvests of barbarian hordes;—
So on the pygmy heads of Persian hosts
Thundered this dread Niagara of ghosts.

But now the Greeks like a long fire-tipped dart
Burst frontward in. And Alexander shrieked
To frenzy wrought by hell's unclaimed alliance.
And the shrill whistle of his hot defiance
Pierced, with the meteor-flashing of his blade,
Straight to Darius' heart; who turned dismayed
Into the maddened flight of plunging horses
Trampling to crimson froth their slippery courses.
As some proud orb, meeting magnetic bars
Flashed from indomitable master stars,
Pauses a moment, hesitant and piqued,
Then with a shudder hurries retrograde
Down the long reaches of the zodiac;—
So did the Persian monarch on his track;
So swirled behind the spray of rout and wrack,
Like Tigris, flooding Babylonian plains
With wreckage of undreamed catastrophe.

And now the world lay at his feet. But he,
Like some discarded engine of the gods,
Smitten by rash excess of his own Mars,

Fell on the pathway of the continents.
Not all the wingéd fates for which he fought,
Not all the gorgeous gates of ancient reigns
Submerged beneath his Macedonian sea
Could grant him shelter. Yet those peaceful waves,
Filling earth's golden cup from Chersonese
To the wide crystal of Himálya's rim,
Wearing strange channels for Ægean seas
Through Indus' mouth,—whence the returning tide
Sweeps the vast spoil of oriental thought,—
Lay on the pregnant bosom of those sods
Through the long evening mists of centuries,
The sunset chamber of the world's veiled bride;
Where dull Seleucid crimson afterglows,
Or the last purple arch of Parthian bows
Blended rich blooms from continental graves:
Lay in still depths of brooding elements
Like ferns in dark organic soil of tombs,
Whose slow gestating mystery of wombs
Silent, unheralded, in twilight dim
Moulded twin orbs for hovering cherubim.

So had the spirits of the hemispheres
Fore-planned the fruitful years,
Ere nature's cyclic chills
Should wrap their tender souls in separate ills.

So the pure germ of art
Washed from its native soil,

Warm with the last caress of Grecian toil,
Nestled against the oriental heart;
Mid the first kindling faith of Scythian plains
Found tender incarnation
In shoots of fresh creation
Creeping like frost-blown flowers o'er Buddhist fanes.

So, too, Imperial Rome,
Smitten with pangs of unsuspected birth,
By her new Eastern blade of conscience keen
Stabbed in the secret chamber of her heart,
Rent her gay robes of art,
Levelled the stately marbles of her home:
Then, with breast bared,
And gray head bent to earth
In the first ecstasy of suffering,
Rushed to the desert like a guilty thing,
And cast her weight of sin, so gladly shared,
Upon the Mercy of the Nazarene.

So shall we leave them there,
Two worlds as if in prayer,
In consecration kneeling,
For one blest moment feeling
That strife
Is not true life,
That perfect rest
Is best.

University of Virginia Library

1. PART I. The First Meeting of East and West.

1. PART I.
The First Meeting of East and West.