The poems of Madison Cawein

These are the flowers I bring to thee,
Heart's-ease, euphrasy and rue,
Grown in my Garden of Poetry;
Wear them, sweet, on thy breast for me:
The first for thoughts; and the other two
For spiritual vision, that's always true,
So thou with thy soul mayst ever see
The love in my heart I keep for thee.

THE GARDENS OF FALERINA

Her hills and vales are dimmer
Than sunset's shadowy shimmer;
Thin mists, that curl, of poppy and pearl,
Above her bowers glimmer;
And, silvered o'er with sails of faery galleys,
Far off the sea gleams, glimpsed through fountained valleys.

The moon floats never higher
Than one white peak of fire;
And in its beams pale Beauty dreams,
And Music tunes her lyre;
And, Siren-like, beside the moonlit waters,
Fair Fancy sits singing with Memory's daughters.

A cloud, above and under
The ocean, white with wonder,
Looms, starry steep; and, opening deep,
Grows gold with silent thunder;

Revealing far within, immeasurable,
Lost Avalons of old Romance and Fable.

Ah! could my spirit shatter
These bonds of flesh and matter,
And, at a word, mount like a bird
To her through mists that scatter;
And, raimented in love and inspiration,
Look down on Earth from that exalted station:

No mortal might inveigle
My soul, that, like an eagle,
Would soar and soar from shore to shore
Of her, the rare and regal;
And by her love made all a lyric rapture,
A wild desire, wing far beyond all capture.

ROMANCE

Thus have I pictured her:—In Arden old
A white-browed maiden with a falcon eye,
And rose-flushed face, and locks of wind-blown gold,
Teaching her hawks to fly.

Or, 'mid her boar-hounds, panting with the heat,
In huntsman green, she sounds the hunt's wild prize,
Plumed, dagger-belted, while beneath her feet
The spear-pierced monster dies.

Or in Brécèliand, on some high tower,
Clad soft in samite, last of her lost race,
I have beheld her, lovelier than a flower,
Turn from the world her face.

Or, robed in raiment of romantic lore,
Like Oriana, dark of eye and hair,
Riding through Realms of Legend evermore,
And ever young and fair.

Or now like Bradamant, as brave as just,
In complete steel, her pure face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, dens of demon lust,
Winding her bugle-horn.

Another Una; and in chastity
A second Britomart; in beauty far
O'er her who led King Charles's chivalry
And Paynim lands to war. . . .

Now she, from Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,—
'Mid which white stars and never-waning moons
Make marriage; and dim lips of musk-mouthed flowers
Sigh faint and fragrant tunes,—

Implores me follow; and, in shadowy shapes
Of sunset, shows me,—mile on misty mile
Of purple precipice,—all the haunted capes
Of her enchanted isle.

Where, bowered in bosks and overgrown with vine,
Upon a headland breasting violet seas,
Her castle towers, like a dream divine,
With stairs and galleries.

And at her casement, Circe-beautiful,
Above the surgeless reaches of the deep,
She sits, while, in her gardens, fountains lull
The perfumed wind to sleep.

Or, round her brow a diadem of spars,
She leans to hearken, from her raven height,
The nightingales that, choiring to the stars,
Haunt with wild song the night.

Or, where the moon is mirrored in the waves,
To mark, deep down, the Sea King's city rolled,
Wrought of huge shells and labyrinthine caves,
Ribbed pale with pearl and gold.

There doth she wait forever; and the kings
Of all the world have wooed her: but she cares
For none but him, the Heart, that dreams and sings,
That sings and dreams and dares.

THE VALLEY OF MUSIC

I

Oh, cool as the flutter of fountains,
And fresh as the fall of the dew,
Wet as the hues of the rain-arch,
In that vale, is the dawn, when, o'er mountains,
Pearl-peaked and hyaline blue,
Through the Memnonian blue,
Her spirit, like music, comes slowly,
A music of light and of fire,
Leaving her footsteps in roses
There on its summits, while holy,
Fair on her brow is her tire,
Gemmed with the morning-star's fire.

II

And still as the incense of altars,
And dim as the deeps of a cloud,
Mystic as winds of the woodlands,

In that vale, is the night when she falters
In the sorrowful folds of her shroud,
The far-blowing dusk of her shroud,
By the scarlet-strewn bier of her lover,
The day, lying faded and fair
In his chamber of purple and vair.—
When, above it, you see her uncover
Her star-girdled darkness of hair—
Gold-hooped with the gold of the even—
And for the day's burial prepare,
The spirit of night in the heaven,
O'er that vale, is most hauntingly fair;
So fair that you wish it were given
That you in the rays of her hair,
Might die! in her gold-girdled hair.

III

There lies in a valley, where mountains
Have walled it from all that is ours,
A garden entangled with flowers;
Where the whisper of echoing fountains
Makes song in the balm-breathing bowers:
Where torrents, plunged down from wild masses
Of granite, from cavern-pierced steeps,
With thunders sonorous cleave passes,
And madden the world with their leaps,
The clamorous foam of their leaps.

IV

And, oh! when the sunlight comes heaping
With glitter the mist of those chasms,
The foam of those musical chasms,
You may hear a lamenting and weeping,
And see in the vastness far sweeping,
In wild and æolian spasms,
Down, down in those voluble chasms,
The Spirits of Light and of Darkness.
And the wave from the gray-hearted granite
In rivers rolls rippling around;
Meanders through shade-haunted forests,
Where many rock-barriers can span it,
And dash it in froth and in sound;
Where the nights with their great moons can wan it,
Or star its dark stillness profound.

V

And here with her harp doth she wander,
That daughter of music, twice kissed
Of the Spirits of Love and of Sorrow:
Yea, here doth she wander and ponder,
That maiden of moonlight and mist,
With starlight on hair and on wrist;

Yea, here doth she ponder and wander
'Mid blossoms with loveliness whist,
'Mid moonlight with fragrances kissed.
And ever her being grows fonder
Of forests where phantoms keep tryst,
The people of moon and of mist:
And often they troop to her singing,
As she sits 'mid the undulant cedars—
All savage of wildness and scent—
Whose tops to her beauty are bent,
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In worship and testament:
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
All ragged with battle and rent.

VI

And oft when the moon, like a palace
Of witchcraft, shines white overhead,
Making pearl of the foam of the torrent,
She wakes her wild harp in the valleys
Where the blossoms have built her a bed:
She sits where a fountain of flowers
Rains fragrance from branches around,
The blossomed lianas around,
Keeping time with their petal-sweet showers
To her harp; with its strain interwound;
Unfolding, it seems, to the sound:

While her song is as redolence round her,
And their fragrance as music, it seems,
Whose touch and enchantment have bound her
With shadows and whispers of dreams,
And she seems but a part of her dreams,
A creature created of dreams.

VII

One night as she whispered and wandered
In her garden of music and flowers,
She saw, in a ray of the moonlight,
A youth fast asleep 'mid the flowers;
A youth on a mantle of satin,
A poppy-red robe 'mid the flowers.

VIII

Love housed 'neath his eyelids, that, slender
As petals of roses, were pale:
She bent and she kissed them and, tender,
She murmured and bade them unveil,
The blossoms beneath them unveil.
And he woke and beheld her and panted:—
“At last I behold thee, O Song!
O beautiful, pitiless Song!
Thou, thou, who so wildly enchanted,
And led me, eluded me long!
Evaded and lured me so long!”

IX

Then she knelt on the mantle of satin,
And plunged a long look in his eyes:
She knelt on the mantle of scarlet,
And kissed him on mouth and on eyes,
And mingled her soul with his sighs.
And then in a moment she knew it,—
He deemed her a part of his dream;
And she smiled and she said, “I am Music!
And thy soul—'twas my spirit that drew it,
Thy soul, with a mystical gleam,
A brightness, a glimmer, a gleam.”

X

And he gazed at her strangely; and, sobbing,
Cried out, “Yea; thy harp!—is it strung?
Thy harp of wild gold, is it strung?
With fingers of silver set throbbing
Its chords with that song thou hast sung,
So oft in my dreams thou hast sung.”

XI

Then he ceased:—and his eyes—how they glistened!
His eyes, that were haunted with pain,
With longing and beauty and pain:

And again he cried out, “Oh, that music!
That proud and that perilous music!
O God! for that tyrannous strain,
To which in my dreams I have listened,
Ah, God! I have listened in vain!”
And he tossed on the mantle of satin
His deep raven darkness of hair;
And the song at her lips was ungathered,
And she sat there to marvel and stare;
Like marble, to wonder and stare.

XII

Then there welled from her lips all the glory
Of music delirious with words;
Of music that told the heart's story,
And trembled with God-given words,
And rang like the crossing of swords.
And it seemed that the spirit of Beauty
Swept through it with farewells and sighs;
The spirits of Beauty and Duty,
And Love with his beautiful eyes;
And Heaven, and Hell with its cries;
Sad Hell with a tempest of cries.

XIII

The rapture was there of all passion;
The heartache of all we have lost:

The sweetness was there that we fashion
From love we have won or have lost,
Its terror, its torment, and cost.
And over it all was a fury
Of wings that seemed beating above,
Of stars and of winds and the glory
Of God and the splendor of love,
The splendor and triumph of love.

XIV

And then, from her poppy wings, Slumber
Dropped petals of sleep on his eyes;
The Spirit of Slumber with pinions
Of vaporous silver, whose flutter
Had mixed with the music's wild number,
Lured down from the shadowy skies;
Lured down from her drowsy dominions,
To nest in his tired-out eyes.

XV

And in sleep he cried out to her,—stilling
A moment the rush of her song,
The rainbowing torrent of song,—
“Cease! cease! for the rapture is killing!
The glory of light is too strong!—
Oh, cease! make an end of thy song!”—

But she, with the frenzy o'erflowing,
Cried out in an anguish of passion,
“Thy soul shall be one with my song,
With me and the soul of my song.
Take my hand! let us walk in the glowing
Sweet heaven and hell of all song;
Where the torrents of music are flowing,
The rivers of music and song.
Take my hand! Dost thou hear? We are going!
We, too, to God's splendor belong!
Let us walk in the light of His song,
The thunder and flame of His song.”

XVI

Then she flung in her song the emotion,
Triumphant, of heart and of soul;
Till the passion and pain were an ocean
That swept her with billowing roll,
As it seemed, to abysses of dole,
Abysses of infinite dole.

XVII

And paler than moonlight and marble
He lay on the red of that robe,
Lay white at her feet on the scarlet,

With silence-sealed lips and the glitter
Of tears in each violet globe
Of his eyes.—And she said: “It is bitter
To see him so still on this robe,
Like marble so still on this robe.”
Then she knelt and cried out, “Art thou living?
Or dead?—Have I slain thee with song?—
I gave thee the best in my giving,
But all that I gave thee seems wrong!—
No blessing, a curse was my song!
A curse and a sorrow my song!”

XVIII

And she shattered her harp in her madness,
And rent at her breasts and her hair;
Then kissed him on mouth and on temples,
And spoke to him smoothing the sadness,
The calm of his brow that was fair,
Was perfect and hopelessly fair.
Then she wailed to the stars in the heaven,
And railed at her song as a thief,
Calling out, “For a curse wast thou given!
Yea, thou! for a curse and a grief!
A curse and an infinite grief!”

100

XIX

And the moon, it went down like a broken
Great dagger of gold in the west;
Like a dagger of gold that was broken,
Her dagger of song, that had spoken,
And pierced with its beauty his breast,
Had ravished his soul from his breast.
And she lay with her hair, deep and golden,
Thick showered and shaken on his;
Her arms around him were enfolden;
Her lips clave to his with a kiss,
The love and the grief of a kiss.

101

BLODEUWEDD

Not to that demon's son, whom Arthur erst,
For necromancy, at Caerleon, first
Graced greatly, Merlin,—not to him alone
Did those lost learnings of white magic, known
As sorcery and witchcraft, then belong.
Taliesin, now, hath told us in a song
Of one at Arvon, Math of Gwynedd; lord
Of some vague cantrevs of the North; whose sword
Beat back and slew a southern king, through wrath
And puissance of Gwydion, whose path
Thence on, with love, he honored.

Now this Math
Was learned in wondrous witchcraft: as he willed,
He wrought the invisible visible, and filled
The sight with seeming shapes, which it believed
Realities, nor knew it was deceived.

102

For, at his word, the winds were wan with tents,
And armies rose of airy elements;
And brassy blasts of war from bugles brayed,
And armored hosts in battle clanged and swayed,
And at a word were not. And at his nod,
Steeds, rich-accoutered, whinnying softly, trod
The dædal earth; and hounds, of greater worth,
And wirier, too, than dogs of mortal birth,
Rose up, like forest fungus, from the earth
Around th' astonished stag, or flying doe,
Let Math but wish it or his trumpet blow.
But only things that had their counterpart
On earth could he make real through his art.

Now, to his castle, Math, through Gwydion,—
The son of Don,—the daughter dark of Don,
The silver-circled Arianrod, had brought;
A southern rose of beauty, whom Math thought
To wed, in love and friendship, without blame,
And at Caer Dathyl. When the maiden came
Said Math, “Art thou a virgin?”—Like a flame
Mantling, her answer angered, “Verily,
I know not other, lord, than that I be!”—
So wrought he then through magic that the form
Of her boy baby seemed upon her arm,
White as a rose.
“A Mary!—Yea!” laughed Math;

103

“Forsooth, another Mary!” then in wrath
Laid harsh hands on the babe and fiercely flung
Far in the salt sea. But the strong winds clung
Fast to the Elfin and the lithe waves swept
Him safely shoreward dry; some fishers kept
Him thus unseaed and christened Dylan, fair
Son of the wave, and fostered him with care.
Nor was this really hers. But Gwydion,
Brother to Arianrod, before the sun
Had time to glimpse it with one golden glaive,
Swiftly,—as hoping the real babe to save,—
Some dim small body on the castle pave
In raven velvet seized; and, hiding, he
Stole this from court, to subtly raise to be
A comely youth. In time, to Arianrod
Came, swearing by the rood and blood of God
He brought her back her son.

Quoth she: “More shame
Dost thou disgrace thyself with, and more blame
Dost damn thyself with, thus to mix our name
With this dishonor, brother, than myself!”
Then, waxing wroth, cried Gwydion, “The Elf
Is thine then?—Tell me, wanton! is thy son
Dylan, the fisher, or this fair-haired one,
This youth?—God's curse!”—and daggered her with looks.

104

And she in turn waxed fiery, saying, “Books
Of magic I have read as well as Math!
And now I tell thee, keep from out my path!
Thou and thy bastard, he as well as thou!
Thou dog! And on thy folly, listen, now
I lay a threefold curse: behold! the first—
Until I name him, nameless be he! Cursed
Be they who give him arms!—the second:—nor
Shall he bear arms until I arm for war.
And, lastly, know, however high his birth,
He shall not wed a woman of the Earth!—
Malignity! to shame me with thy sin!”
Then passed into her tower and locked her in.

But Gwydion, departing with the youth,
Sware he would compass her; if not through truth,
Through wiles and learnéd magic. And he wrought
So that unbending Arianrod was brought
To name the lad. Again he managed that,
Though strange enchantments as of war, he gat
Her to give arms. But then, not for his life,
Howbeit, could he get the youth a wife.
Persisting, desperate, at last the thing
Wrought in him blusterous as a backward spring.
Now Llew the youth was named. And Gwydion

105

Made his complaint to Math, the mighty son
Of Mathonwy.

Said Math: “Despair not. We
With charms, illusions, and white sorcery
Will seek to make—for mine are wondrous powers—
A woman for him out of forest flowers.”

And so they toiled together one wan night,
When the full moon hung low, and watched, a white
Wild wisp-like face behind a mist. They took
Blossoms of briars, blooming by a brook
Shed from the April hills; and phantom blooms
Of yellow broom that filtered faint perfumes;
And primrose blossoms, frail, of rainy smell,
Weak pink, dim-clustered in a glow-worm dell;
Wild-apple sprigs, that tipsied bells of blaze,
And in far, haunted hollows made a haze
Of ghostly, fugitive fragrance; and the blue
Of hollow harebells, hoary with the dew;
The gold of kingcups, golden as low stars;
And white of lilies,—rolled in limpid bars,
Like sleepy foam,—that swayed aslant and spilled
Slim nectar-cups of musk the rain had filled;

106

And paly, wildwood wind-flowers; and the gloss
And glow of celandine; and bulbs that boss
And dot the oak-roots bulging up the moss;
Last, on the elfin uplands, pulled the buds,
That burn like spurts of moonlight when it suds
The showering clouds, of blossomed meadow-sweet,
And made a woman fair; from head to feet
Complete in beauty. One far lovelier
Than Branwen, daughter of the gray King Llyr;
Or that dark daughter of Leodegrance,
The stately Gwenhwyvar. And young romance
Dreamed in the open Bibles of her eyes:
Music her motion; and her speech, like sighs
Of roses swinging in the wind and rain,
And lilies dancing on the sunlit plain:
And in her eyes and face there bloomed again
The bluebell and the poppy; and fern and bud
Gave grace and glory to her maidenhood:
And all the attributes of all the flowers
Were in her body, that was not like ours
And yet was like: but in her brow and face
Was love alone and beauty, and no trace,
No least suggestion of an earthly pain,
Or hate, or sorrow, or of worldly stain;
But hope, high heart, and happiness of life.

107

And Blodeuwedd they named her; and, for wife—
Baptizing her with light and dawn and dew—
Gave, that next morning, to the happy Llew.

108

AMADIS AT MIRAFLORES

I
MORNING

The quickening Day climbs to one star,
That, cradled, rocks itself in morn;
Whose airy opal, flaming far,
Makes fire of the mountain tarn.
The hosts of morning storm the sky
With streaming splendor, their bright lips
Blow laughter wild that shakes the rye,
And, from the bough, the dew that drips
On Oriana walking by.

The calling rooks swarm round the towers:
A heron sweeps through deeps of glare:
And Falconry among the bowers
Whistles his falcon down the air:
While in the woods the bugled Hunt,
With bearded cheeks, blows wild a-mort

109

As dies the boar; or, front to front,
Upon the baying hounds, the hart
Turns, antlering at the battle's brunt.

The heath-cock, stout amid his dames,
Upon the purple-heathered hill,
With glossy coat the morn enflames,
Sounds to his rivals challenge shrill.
Where, tossing white its plume of foam,
The fountain leaps and twinkles by,
Embodying dawn and all its bloom,
My Oriana draweth nigh,
Sweet as the heath-bell's wild perfume.

The mountain tarn is like a cloud
Of fallen and reflecting blue;
In azure deeps the larks are loud,
The larks that soar through dawn and dew.
A wild-swan, mirrored in the mere,
Moves with its image breast to breast—
As our two souls as one appear
When to my heart her heart is pressed,
The heart of Oriana here.

110

II
EVENING

O sunset, from the springs of stars,
Draw down thy cataracts of gold;
And belt their streams with burning bars
Of ruby on which flame is rolled:
Drench dingles with laburnum light;
Drown every copse in violet blaze:
Rain rose-light down; and, poppy-bright,
Die downward o'er the hills of haze,
And bring at last the stars of night!

The stars and moon! that silver world,
That, like a spirit, faces west,
Her foam-white feet with light empearled,
Bearing white flame within her breast:
Earth's sister sphere of fire and snow,
Who shows to Earth her heart's pale heat,
And bids her see its pulses glow,
And hear their crystal currents beat
With beauty, lighting all below.

O cricket, with thy elfin pipe,
That tinkles in the grass and grain;
And dove-pale buds, that, dropping, stripe
The glen's blue night, and smell of rain;

111

O nightingale, that so dost wail
On yonder branch of blossoming snow,
Thrill, fill the wild hart-haunted dale,
Where Oriana, walking slow,
Approaches thro' the moonlight pale.

She comes to meet me! Earth and air
Grow radiant with another light.
In her dark eyes and her dark hair
Are all the stars and all the night.
She comes! I clasp her! and it is
As if no grief had ever been.
The world takes fire from our kiss.—
There are no other women or men
But Oriana and Amadis!

112

URGANDA

It is Sir Elid of the Sword,
Of whom his wife, Helis, hath heard
For three long years no wished-for word.

His armor dofft, he comes in fur
And velvet, all the warrior,
And takes her hand and kisses her.

“Thrice have I seen the summer die;
And thrice the autumn, fading, lie:
And heard the weary winter sigh,

“Since last, my lord, my own true heart,
From me, thy wife, with love, didst part,
And rode to war with Lisuarte:”—

So said Helis with many tears:—
“Still welcome, Elid! though long years
Of silence, what with doubts and fears,

113

“Have made me deem that thou wast dead.—
Why dost thou stare so overhead?—
What is it that thy soul doth dread?”

He said to her: “My own, my best,
To thee alone . . . Witch! wilt thou wrest
This hour from me? . . . shall be confessed
The thing that will not let me rest.

“It was at Hallowmas I spurred
Through woods wherein no wild thing stirred,
No sound of brook, no song of bird.

“When softly down a tangled way
A dim fair woman, white as day,
Rode on a palfrey misty gray.

“Upon her brow a circlet burned
Of jewels, and the fire, inurned
Within them, changed, and turned and turned.

“I stared like one, who, wild and pale,
Spurs, hag-led, through the night and hail:

114

When, lo! adown a forest vale
An angel with the Holy Grail.

“It vanishes; but, once beheld,
The longing heart is never quelled,
Its loveliness hath so enspelled.—

“She vanished. And I rode alone,
Save for a voice that did intone,
‘Urganda is she, the Unknown.

“‘And never shalt thou clasp the form
Of her who leads thee by a charm
To follow her through sun and storm.’

“I can not stay for weal or woe.
E'en now her magic bids me go,
Soft-summoning through wind and snow.”

[OMITTED]

Helis with some old song beguiles
His hollow face until it smiles;
And with her lute shapes sweeter wiles:

Till kingly figures, woven in
The shadowy arras, seem to win
Strange, ghostly life, and slay and sin.

115

Until her deep hair's golden glow
Sweeps his dark curls as, praying low,
She kneels, a marble-sculptured woe.

And then she left him there to rest,
A weary with his haggard quest,
All in gray fur and velvet dressed. . . .

At midnight through the vaulted roof
She heard armed steps of ringing proof:
She heard a charger's iron hoof.

The leaded lattice glowed, a square
Of moonlight in the moonlit air:
She flung it wide: what saw she there?

Sir Elid in the moonlight's beam,
Stark, staring as if still a-dream
Rode downward towards the rushing stream.

His helm and corselet had he on,
And, in one gauntlet, silver-wan,
His bugle-horn was upward drawn.

Upon his horn he blew his best;
Then sang, it seemed, his merriest,
“I ride upon my love's last quest:
And on her breast at last shall rest.”

116

Straight onward by some mighty will,
Into the stream below the hill
She saw him ride. Then all was still. . . .

Not wider than her eyes are his
That stare, where icy eddies kiss
His lips. “Urganda's work is this!”

She cries, and where her warrior lies
With horror in his face and eyes,
She bends above his form and sighs.

And then she seems to hear a moan
Beside her;—but she leans alone:—
Then laughter; and a cloud seems blown
Before her eyes, that doth intone:

“Beware, Helis! beware! beware
My curse! my kiss, that is despair!
Kiss not his brow, lest unaware,
Helis, Helis, my curse be there!”

117

HAWKING

I

I see them still, when poring o'er
Old volumes of romantic lore,
Ride forth to hawk, in days of yore,
By woods and promontories:
Knights in gold-lace, plumes and gems,
Damsels crowned with anadems,—
Whose falcons perch on wrists, like milk,
In hoods and jesses of green silk,—
From bannered Miraflores.

II

The laughing earth is young with dew;
The deeps above are violet blue;
And in the East a cloud or two
Empearled with airy glories;
And with merriment and singing,
Silver bells of falcons ringing,

118

Beauty, rosy with the dawn,
Lightly rides o'er hill and lawn
From towered Miraflores.

III

The torrent glitters from the crags;
Down forest vistas browse the stags;
And from wet beds of reeds and flags
The frightened lapwing hurries:
And the brawny wild-boar peereth
At the cavalcade that neareth;
Oft his shaggy-throated grunt
Brings the king and court to hunt
At royal Miraflores.

IV

The May itself, in soft sea-green,
Is Oriana, Spring's high queen,
And Amadis beside her seen,
Some prince of Fairy stories:
Where her castle's ivied towers
Drowse above her woods and bowers,
Flaps the heron through the sky,
And the wild-swan gives a cry
By knightly Miraflores.

119

ORLANDO

SUGGESTED BY ARIOSTO'S “ORLANDO FURIOSO”

I

When southern winds sowed woods and skies,
Angelica!
With bloom-storms of the flowering May;
When hill and battle-field were gay
With peace and purity of flowers,
I sat to dream
Beside a stream amid the bowers,
Clear as the deeps of thy blue eyes:
And near the stream
I saw a grotto banked with flowers,
From which the streamlet fell in showers,
Cool-sparkling through the sunlit bowers,
Angelica!

II

My casque I dofft to scoop the fount,
Angelica!

120

With liquid pureness bubbling cool
It rose—then clashed into the pool . . .
Thy name I saw, hewn in the rock!
And under it . . .
Ah no! I dreamed! my eyes did mock
My senses! . . . Then I seemed to count,
All fire-lit,
The letters! deep, carved in the rock!
Medoro carved in every rock!—
My brain went round like some wild clock,
Angelica!

III

O treachery! O lust of blood!
Angelica!
That one so fair should be so vile!
No more for me again shall smile
The brows of Beauty! As of old,
With clarion call,
No more shall Battle make me bold!
Or Chivalry fire my soul! . . . The wood,—
Away from all,
From love and lust,—shall house and hold
My misery! . . . The dawn breaks cold!
And I lie naked on the wold,
Angelica!

121

YOLANDA OF THE TOWERS

Old forests belt and bar
Her towering battlements;
And all the west, with crest on crest,
The blue o' the hills indents.

Her garden's terrace cliffs
That soar above a sea
Dreamier and fuller of shadowy color
Than sunset's mystery.

And league on league of coast,
Sand-ribbed of wind and wave,
Rolls dim and far with reef and bar
And many an ocean cave.

The morning,—bright with beams
And sea-winds,—wakes the day;
Its breezy lutes and foamy flutes
Make music on the bay.

122

The deer are roused from rest;
The sea-birds breast the brine;
And from the steep wild torrents leap
Foaming 'neath rock and vine.

But she, in one tall tower,
High built above the tide,
In her heart a thorn, turns from the morn,
Wan-faced and weary-eyed.

Long, long she looks a-sea,
As one who seeks a sail:
But on her view the empty blue
Beats and her eyelids quail.

She turns and slowly goes
Down from her sea-gray towers,
To walk and weep, like one asleep,
Among the salt-slain flowers.

Until the sun is set,
And crocus heavens, grown cold,
Leave all their light to the new moon's white
And one star's point of gold.

Until a breeze from sea
Sets in, of balm and spice

123

And streams amid the stars, half-hid,
Thin mists as white as ice.

And then her eyes grow large
With hate or one last hope,
And again she bends her gaze where blends
The sea with heaven's slope.

But naught the night reveals,
The night that seems to weep
And shudder down two stars, that drown
Themselves within the deep.

Then to herself she says,
Softly, “Ah God! to know
No death or shame is his, or blame,
Who brought on me this woe!

“What though I know that Hell
At last will have its own;
It will not heal my soul, I feel,
Though there he wail and moan.

“Could I his carrion see,
On yonder crag's wild crest,
Hung up to rot, a traitor's lot,
My soul might find some rest!” . . .

124

And this is she God made
Of sunlight and of flowers
For love and kisses and fond caresses—
Yolanda of the Towers.

125

ERMENGARDE

Queen of the Courts of Love, she sleeps; one arm
Pillowing her raven hair, as Dawn might Night,
Or Day kiss Dusk; or Darkness, starry warm,
Be gathered of her sister, rosy Light.

Pale from the purple of the damask cloth
One hand hangs, as a lily-bloom might, lone
Above a bed of poppies; or a moth
Might softly hover by a rose full-blown.

Heraldic, rich, the costly coverings
Sweep, fall'n in folds, pushed partly from her breast;
As through storm-broken clouds the full moon springs,
From these one orb of her pure bosom pressed.

She sleeps: and where the moteless moonbeams sink

126

Through blazoned panes—an immaterial snow—
In wide, white jets, the lion-fur seems to drink
With tawny jaws their wasted, winey glow.

Light-lidded sleep and holy dreams are hers,
Untouched of feverish sorrow or of care,
Soft as the wind whose fragrant breathing stirs
The moonbeam-tangled tresses of her hair.

127

HACKELNBERG

I

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm,
He rides beneath the mountain storm
With mad “halloo!” and wild alarm
Of hound and horn and thunder:
With his hunter, black as night,
Ban-dogs, eyed with lambent light;
And a stag, a spectral white,
Rushes on before, in flight
Glimmering through the boughs and under.

II

Long-howling, crouched in bracken black,
The werewolf shuns his ruinous track,
On every side the forests crack,
And mountain torrents tumble:
And the spirits of the air
Whistling whirl with scattered hair,

128

Teeth that flash and eyes that glare,
Round him as he gallops there,
In the rain and tempest's rumble.

III

Above the storm, the thunder's growl,
The torrent's roar, the forest's howl,
Is heard his hunting-horn—an owl,
That hoots and sweeps before him:
And beneath the blinding leven,
On wild crags, the Castle riven
Of the Dumburg towers to heaven,
Beckoning on the demon-driven,
Beckoning on and looming o'er him.

129

AN ANTIQUE

Mildewed and gray a marble stair
Leads to a balustrade of urns,
Beyond which two stone satyrs glare
From vines and close-clipped yews and ferns.

A path, that winds and labyrinths,
'Twixt parallels of verdant box,
Around a lodge whose mossy plinths
Are based on emerald-colored rocks.

A lodge, or ancient pleasure-house,
Built in a grove beside a lake,
Around whose edge the dun deer browse,
And swans their snowy pastime take.

And underneath and overhead,—
The breathings of a water-nymph
It seems,—the violets' scent is shed
Mixed with the music of the lymph.

And where,—upon its pedestal,—
The old sun-dial marks the hours,

130

Laburnum blossoms lightly fall,
And duchess roses rain their flowers.

The air is languid with perfume,
As if dead beauties—who of old
Intrigued it here in patch and plume—
Again the ancient terrace strolled

With gallants, on whose rapiers gems
Once sneered in haughtiness of hues,
While Touchstone wit and apothegms
Laughed down the long cool avenues:

And there, where bowers of woodbine pave,
All heavily with sultry musk,
Two fountains of pellucid wave,
In sunlight-tessellated dusk,

I seem to see the fountains twain
Of Hate and Love in Arden, where,
In times of regal Charlemagne,
Great Roland drank and Oliver.

Where, wandered from Montalban's towers,
The paladin, Rinaldo, slept,
While, leaning o'er him through the flowers,
Angelica above him wept.

131

JAAFER THE BARMECIDE

Scene, Baghdad: time of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid. Salih ben Tarif speaks.

With Imam Hassan I had reached the khan
Outside of Ambar. Jaafer at the door
Of his pavilion watched a caravan
Inbound from Yemen.—Ah, the bales it bore
Of richest stuffs and spices!—'Mid the rout
Of porters, camel-drivers, old and poor,
A singer stood,—a blindman, singing out
With luted preludes. Imam Hassan then:
“'Tis Zekkar; he, t' whom, with the blind about
The Mosque of Moons, I with our holy men
Scattered my silver at the hour of prayer,
When hearts are open unto Allah's ken.—
Danic or dirhem, though, were wasted there:
Yea, by the Prophet! had one sown dinars
He had not budged one finger or that stare.
And so the beggars and the scavengers
Got all.”
Then I: “The very same whom I—
Guard at the Western Portal—'neath the stars

132

Some midnights past heard singing. Dim the dry
Hot night; and Baghdad only knew of us
Until, gray shadows shuffling slowly by,
Pilgrims for Mecca passed, all vaporous
In dust and darkness; them we challenged not.
—Slaves, with the tribute of Nicephorus
The Roman, from long shallops, as they shot
Along the moonlit Tigris far away,
Timing their oars, raised languid chanting.—What
This blindman sang was sweeter than—let's say—
The songs of Ibrahim, the dulcet frets
Of Zulzul's lute. I listened till the day
Made gold of all the city's minarets,
And the muezzin summoned us to pray.”

Now while we gossiped, lounging slow along
The packed bazaar, a fisher with his nets
Passed, singing Abou Newas' newest song:
A honey-merchant, then, his tinkling mule
All hanap-hung with sweetness: then a throng
Of scholars and their Sheikh from mosque or school:
A milk-white woman on a cream-white ass,
Black slaves attending. . . . And—I am no fool!—

133

I knew her of the Court, the noblest class,
By her gem-bangled bracelets. . . . Let Haroun
On the Euphrates with Zubeideh pass
A single day, at royal Rekkeh,—noon
And night his harem here, so it is said,
Is all intrigue.—Then drawling out his tune,
“Ten thousand pieces to be paid, be paid,
For Yehya's head, Er Reshid's late vizier,”
A crier passed us. Then the market's shade
Glittered with weapons; and we seemed to hear,
Sword of the Khalif, Mesrour, and commands
Naming the Khalif. One swart officer
Flamed forth the Sultan's signet. And harsh hands
Were laid on—whom?—I saw not! For my sight
Was dazzled by the scimitars,—from bands
Of jeweled belts that burned,—and, keen and bright,
Swift hedged us out. Then broad the red blood dyed
The ground around a body—and, hoar white,
Was raised a severed head.—And, stupefied,
Elbowing the rabble, “By my beard!” I cried,
Marking the face, “Jaafer the Barmecide!”

134

A PRE-EXISTENCE

An intimation of some previous life?
Or dark dream—by my waking soul divined—
Of some uncertain sleep? in which the sin
Of some past life, a life that some one lived—
Not I, yet I,—long, long ago in Spain,
I live again. . . . Wherein again I see
From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,—
Damascened corselet broken, his camail
And armet shattered,—deep within the eve's
Anger of brass, that burned around his helm,
A hurrying flame,—a galloping glitter,—one
Ride arrow-wounded. And the city catch
Wild tumult from his coming, wilder fear—
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; ravin; conquered kings:
Triumphant Taric; shackled Spain—revenge.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus—squalid and alone,
Save for his slave,—a dog he beat and starved,—

135

Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A battle beacon, westerns; all my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the fear,
Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him—I, who held
Him, heart and soul, more hated than his God,
Stood silent. Fools had laughed. I saw my way.

War-times grow weapons, and the blade I found
Was hacked but pointed.—Well I knew his ways:
The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems
And bags of doublas.—Well I knew his ways.
No figure, woven in the hangings, where
He hugged his riches in that secret room,
Was half so still as I, who gauntly stole
Behind him, humped and stooping; and his heart
Clove to the center, stabbing from behind,
Thrice thro' his tattered tunic, murrey-dyed.
Forward he fell, his old face 'mid his gold,
Grayer and thinner than the moon of morn,
While slow the blood dripped, oozing through the cloth,
Black, and thick-clotting round the oblong wounds.
Great pearls of Oman, whiter than the moon;

136

Rubies of Badakhshân, whose bezels wept
Slim tears of poppy-purpled flame; and rich,
Rose, ember-pregnant carbuncles, wherein
Fevered a captive crimson, blurred with light
The table's raven cloth. Dim bugles wan
Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds
With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains
Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts;
Fire-opals, savage and mesmeric with
Voluptuous flame, long, sweet and sensuous as
Deep eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed
With talismanic violet, from tombs,
Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans,
Scattered the velvet: and like gledes amid,—
Splintering the light from rainbow-arrowed orbs,—
Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of
Golconda. . . . (One a dervish once had borne
Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun,
Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon,
Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held
Of some wild tribe.—Bleached in the perishing waste,
A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones,
A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull
One eyeball blazed—the diamond. At Aleppo

137

Bartered . . . a bauble for his desert love.)
Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem heaped on gem,
Flashed, rutilating in the taper's light,—
Unearthly splinters of a rainbowed flame,—
A blaze of irised fire; and his face,
Long-haired, white-sunk among them. And I took
All! yea! all! all!—jewel and gold and gem!—
Although his curse burned in them! 'though, meseemed,
Each burning jewel glared a separate curse.
[OMITTED]

Can dead men work us evil from the grave?
Can crime infest us so that fear will slay? . . .
Richer than all Castile and yet—not dare
Drink but from cups of Roman murra,—spar
Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold,—spar sensitive
To poison! I, no fool! and yet—a fool
To fear a dead Jew's malice! . . . Yet, how else?
Feasting within the music of my halls,
While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes,
Diaphanous, more tenuous than those famed
Of loomed Amorgos or of silken Kos,
Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed,
Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolf'sbane-slain!

138

THE KING

Up from the glimmering east the full moon swung,
A golden bubble buoyed zenithward
Above black hills. The white-eyed stars, that thronged,—
Hot with the drought,—the cloudless slopes of heaven,
Winked thirstily; no wind aroused the leaves,
That o'er the glaring road hung motionless,
Withered and whitened of the weary dust
From many hoofs of many a fellowship
Of knights who rode to'ards quest or tournament:
Among them those who brought the King disguised,
Whose mind was, “in the lists to joust and be
An equal 'mid unequals, man to man:”
Who from the towers of Edric passed, wherein
Some days he'd sojourned, waiting Launcelot:
That morn it was; . . . for, with the morn, a horn
Sang at dim portals, musical with dew,
Wild echoes of wild woodlands and the hunt,
Clear herald of the stanchest of his knights.

139

And they, to the great tilt at Camelot,
Rode armored off, a noise of steel and steeds.

Thick in the stagnant moat the lilies lay,
Pale 'mid their pads; above them, huge with chains,
The drawbridge hung before the barbéd grate;
And far above, along lone battlements,
His armor moon-drenched, one lone sentinel
Clanked drowsily; and it was late in June.

She, at her lattice, loosely night-robed, leaned,
Thinking of one she loved: a pensive smile
Haunting her face; a face as fair as night's,
Night's when divinely beautiful with stars,
Two stars, at least, that dreamed beneath her brows.
Long, raven loops and coils of sensuous hair
Rolled turbulence round white-glimpsed neck and throat,
That shamed the moonlight with a rival sheen.

One stooped above her; and his nostrils breathed
Heavy perfumes that blossomed in her hair;
And round her waist hooped one strong arm and drew
Her mightily to him, soft crushing,—cool

140

With yielding freshness of her form,—her gown;
Then searched her eyes until his own seemed drunk
And mad with passion: then one hungry kiss
Bruised, hard as anger, on her breathless lips,
Fiercer than fire. Leaning lower, then
A whispered, “Lov'st but one? and he?”—And then,
She, with impatience, “Rough and rude thou art!
Why crush me, thou great bear, with such a hug!
Or kill me with such kisses!”—Then, as soft
As some rich rose syllabling musk and dew,
“And whom I love?—ah, Edric, need I say!” . . .
Then he, fierce-smiling, swiftly, without word,
His countenance harsh-writhen into hate's
Gnarled hideousness, haled back her marvelous head,
Back, back by all its braids of gathered hair,
Till her full bosom's clamorous loveliness
Stark on the moon burst bare. Low leaning then,
With mocking laughter, “Yea, by God's own blood!
The King, O thou adulteress!” and a blade
Glanced, thin as ice, plunged hard, hard in her heart.

141

MELANCHOLIA

“Jamque vale Soli cum diceret Ambrociotes,
In Stygios fertur desiluisse lacus,
Morte nihil dignum passus: sed forte Platonis
Divini eximum de nece legit opus.”
—Callimachus.

I

Now there was wind that night, wild wind, and rain;
And frantic thorns, that huddled on the wold,
Seemed withered witches met in storm again
To keep their Sabbath and to curse and scold,
With gnarled, fantastic gestures, lame and old.
Deep in a hollow, where some cabin lay,
A lamplit window, like an eye of gold,
Glared, winked and closed—or was't an Elfin ray,
A jack-o'-lanthorn gleam, lost on a wildwood way?

142

II

Still I held onward through the ugly night;
Breast-deep in thistles, all their ghostly heads
Kinked close with wet; through the bedraggled plight
Of brakes of bramble, tousled into shreds,
And tangled wastes of briars—tumbling beds
For winds to toss on.—Once, across a farm,
Unsteadily, a lamp towards unseen sheds,—
Like the blurred glow of some ungainly worm,—
A watery wisp of light crawled trailing through the storm.

III

Then swallowing blackness of the night; and thin
The shrewd rain beat me and the rough limbs whipped
Of dwarfed, uneasy beeches. There within
Their savage circle battered tombstones tipped
Squat lengths to weeds the fighting winds had ripped
And chopped to tatters. And I heard before,
Rounding a headland, where the gaunt trees dripped,—

143

A shout borne deathward from night's ghastly shore,—
Hoarse as a thousand throats the river's sullen roar.

IV

Shuddering I stopped, for, with my feet so caked
With clay, damp-dragging, safer were the graves,
Crowding that vista of the wood,—which raked
My face with burrs,—than, walking towards the waves,
To feel earth slip away; the architraves
Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit
Of wallow and of water.—Madder knaves
Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit
Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.

V

Wooingly silence whispered to me there
Through boughs of dripping darkness sad with rain;
Darkness, that met my eyeballs everywhere,
Blind-packed and vacant as a madman's brain.

144

And so I stood and heard the dead leaves drain,
And through the leaves the haunted wind that hissed;
Then suddenly—perhaps it was the strain
Snapped in my temples—laughter seemed to twist,
With evil, night's dead mouth that bent to mine and kissed.

VI

Insanity! two leaves that dabbled down,
Touched me with drizzle; and that laugh—ah, well,
No laugh! an owlet hooting at the frown
Night's hag-face tortures while she works her spell.
Yet I had sworn, before those kisses fell
Like winter on me, black as broken jet,
An occult blackness like the Prince of Hell,
A woman's hand had brushed my face—and yet,
A bat it might have been made mad with wind and wet.

VII

And stark I stood among the sodden stones,
Icy with fever, hearing in each gale

145

Strange footsteps,—while within my soul were moans
For strength,—as powerless as I was pale.
Then I remembered that within a tale
Once I had read—a chronicle of ills
Cowled monks had written—how one shall not fail
To find, unsought, the Fiend, if so he wills,
Cloak, cap, and cock's crook'd plume among the lonely hills.

VIII

Was that his laugh? and that his vulture hand?—
No! no! for in the legend it was said,
“Though moonless midnight curse the barren land
Sathanas' shadow follows him as red
As Hell's red cauldron is.”—My terror fled,
Remembering this.—How sad a fool was I
To dream Hell's wickedness would bow his head
By mine, and parley with me, lie for lie,
With cunning scrutiny of oblong eye by eye!

146

IX

Then, then I felt—her presence! all awake
Unto her power that could lift or sink;
And her straight eyes controlling, like an ache,
My brain that had no mastery to think,
Or to perform. And slowly, link on link,
She bound me helpless, like an inquisitor,
In vasty dungeons of the soul; no wink
Of light was there, but darkness, bar on bar,
Self-convoluted chaos strangling will's high star.

X

“I am the mother of uneaseful sleep,
The child of night and sister of dim death;
Who knoweth me, yea, he shall never weep,
Yet bless and ban me in a single breath:
Who knoweth me a coward is unneth:
And saddest hearts have sought me over glad
To find gray comfort where the preacher saith
There is no comfort. Melancholy mad,
Reach me thy hand and know me if thy heart be sad.”

XI

Thus did she speak. Her voice was like a flame

147

Of burning blackness. Then I felt the throb
Of her still hand in mine. And so I came
Gladly unto her. Yea, I, too, would rob
Time of his triumphs.—Who would groan and sob
Beneath his fardels, hearing sad men sigh
When here is cure?—for Life, that, like a lob,
Rides us to death; for Love, a godless lie;
And Toil and Hunger.—Yea, what fool would fear to die?

XII

Then seemed I wrapped in rolling mists, and, oh,
Her arm was round me and her kisses dear
On eyes and lips, and words that none may know—
What words of promise said she in mine ear!
Drunk with her beauty still I felt no fear,
When, past the forest, like some bounding brute,
I heard the river roaring. Drawing near,
Again she whispered, and my soul grew mute
Before her voice that lulled like music of a lute:

148

XIII

“Within the webs of darkness and of day
The spider Hours spin about thy world,
Who now finds time to even laugh or pray,
Cramped in a term of years that are uncurled
Like coils of some huge monster, head uphurled
To fang when the last fold falls! Slope on slope
The night environs thee with space, empearled
With hopeless stars by which men symbol Hope,
Beneath whose light they breed and curse and pray and grope.”

XIV

And so she brought me to the river's brink
To plunge me downward. All the night was mine;
And so, exulting, to Death's darker drink
I stooped and drank.—What better drink divine,
O man, hast thou? what wiser way is thine?
Who find'st me carrion on a hungry coast,
Sand in mine eyeballs, in my hair the brine,

149

And o'er my corpse with bitter lips dost boast—
“Poor fool! poor ghost! Alas! poor, melancholy ghost!”

150

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD

I

As to my soul—'tis pathos and passion.
As to my life—'t hath a flavor of sin.
What would you have when such is the fashion,
Was and will be of the world we are in?
Yes, I have loved. And have you?—Have you reckoned
The cost of all love?—I can tell you: as much
As a soul!—Is it worth it?—You'll know it that second
You know that you love; and God pity all such!

II

My lover dissembled that ardor's pure beauty.
I endured undeceived nor pretended; and gave
All that his passion demanded—my duty,
For I loved. And the world?—why, I was his slave!—

151

Should it worry I pleased him?—Propriety sorrowed,
Uprolling her eyes as occasion, and—well,
That lie, overglossed with a modesty borrowed,
Assisted my fall and the end was—I fell.

III

Through love? No; the woman! that visible woman
Men usually know.—None knows how we know
Of an innermore beauty! that part of the human
We designate character.—Look at the bow
Of the moon that is new; that bears in its crescent
A world.—So the flesh gleams the slenderest line
Of soul; that is love; the unevanescent,
Making the mortal immortal, divine.

IV

Yes; I know what I am. Have outlasted my season
Of pleasure and folly.—You think it is strange
That I let you, say—love me? But why not?—my reason

152

Requires illusions. They give me that change
Which quiets remembrance. You kiss me—I wonder.—
When you say, “You are beautiful,”—well, am I glad
If I laugh?—You declaim on my form, “How no blunder
Of nature discords,”—If I sigh, am I sad?

V

How you stare at my eyes!—Well! my lips!—must they languish
For kisses to redden?—“My eyes are as bright
As the jewel I drown in my hair, with its anguish
Of tortuous fire that quivers to-night”?
Tears may be.—This showy?—That silly white flower
Were better?—For me its simplicity? no!—
The gem I prefer to the lily.—The hour
Has struck: I am ready: my fan: let us go.

153

A GUINEVERE

Sullen gold down all the sky;
Roses and their sultry musk;
Whippoorwills deep in the dusk
Yonder sob and sigh.—

You are here; and I could weep,
Weep for joy and suffering. . . .
“Where is he”?—He'd have me sing—
There he sits, asleep.

Think not of him! he is dead
For the moment to us twain—
Hold me in your arms again,
Rest on mine your head.

“Am I happy?” ask the fire
When it bursts its bounds and thrills
Some mad hours as it wills
If those hours tire.

154

He had gold. As for the rest—
Well you know how they were set,
Saying that I must forget
And 'twas for the best.

I forget?—But let it go!—
Kiss me as you used of old.
There; your kisses are not cold!
Can you love me so?

Knowing what I am to him,
To that gouty gray one there,
On the wide verandah, where
Fitful fireflies swim.

Is it tears? or what? that wets
Eyes and cheeks;—on brow and lip
Kisses! soft as bees that sip
Sweets from violets.

See! the moon has risen; white
As this open lily here,
Rocking on the dusky mere,
Like a silent light.

Let us walk . . . So soon to part!—
All too soon! But he may miss.
Give me but another kiss—
It will heat my heart

155

And the bitter winter there.—
So; we part, my Launcelot,
My true knight! and am I not
Your true Guinevere?

Oft they parted thus, they tell,
In that mystical romance . . .
Were they placed, think you, perchance,
For such love, in Hell?

No! it can not, can not be!
Love is God, and God is love:
And they live and love above,
Guinevere and he.

I must go now.—See! there fell,
Molten into purple light,
One wild star. Kiss me good night,
And once more. Farewell.

156

PERLE DES JARDINS

What am I, and what is he,
Who can take and break a heart,
As one might a rose, for sport,
In its royalty?

What am I that he has made
All this love a bitter foam
Blown about the wreck-filled gloam
Of a soul betrayed?

He who of my heart could make
Hollow crystal, where his face,
Like a passion, had its place,
Holy, and then break!

Shatter with neglect and sneers!—
But these weary eyes are dry,
Tearless clear; and if I die
They shall know no tears.

157

But my soul weeps. Let it weep!
Let it weep, and let the pain
In my heart and in my brain
Cry itself to sleep.—

Ah! the afternoon is warm;
And the fields are green and fair;
Many happy creatures there
Through the woodland swarm.

All the summer land is still,
And the woodland stream is dark
Where the lily rocks its barque
Just below the mill. . . .

If they found me icy there
'Mid the lilies, and pale whorls
Of the cresses in my curls,
Wet, of raven hair!—

Poor Ophelia! are you such?
Would you have him thus to know
That you died of utter woe
And despair o'ermuch?

No!—such acts are obsolete:
Other things we now must learn:—

158

Though the broken heart will burn,
Let it show no heat.

So I'll write him as he wrote,
Coldly, with no word of scorn—
He shall never know a thorn
Rankles here! . . . Now note:—

“You'll forget,” he says; “and I
Feel 'tis better for us twain:
It may give you some small pain,
But, 'twill soon be by.

“You are dark and Maud is light.
I am dark. And it is said
Opposites are better wed.—
So I think I'm right.”

“You are dark and Maud is fair”!—
I could laugh at his excuse
If the bitter, mad abuse
Were not more than hair!

But I'll write him, as if glad,
Some few happy words—that might
Touch upon some past delight
That last year we had.

159

Not one line of broken vows,
Sighs or hurtful tears—unshed!
Faithless hearts—far better dead!
Nor a withered rose.

But a rose! this rose to wear,—
Perle des Jardins, all elate
With sweet life and delicate,—
When he weds her there.

So; 'tis finished. It is well—
Go, thou rose. I have no tear,
Word or kiss for thee to bear,
And no woe to tell.

Only be thus full of life,
Cold and proud, dispassionate,
Filled with neither love nor hate,
When he calls her wife.

160

FACE TO FACE

Dead! and all the haughty fate
Fair on throat and face of wax,
Calm on hands, crossed still and lax,
Cold, dispassionate.

Dead! and no word whispered low
At the dull ear now would wake
One responsive chord or make
One wan temple glow.

Dead! and no hot tear would stir
Aught of woman, sweet and fair,
Woman soul in feet and hair,
Once that smiled in her.

She is dead, oh God! and I—
I must live! though life be but
One long, hard, monotonous rut
For me till I die.

161

Creeds might help in such a case:
But no sermon could have wrought
More of faith than you have taught
With your pale dead face.

Now I see, oh, now I see
My mistake!—so very small,
Yet so great it bungled all,
All for you and me.

Oft I said, “I feel, I'm sure
She could never live that life!
She is still my own true wife,
She is good and pure!”

You were pure and I bemoiled!
That you loathed me, it was just;
Weak of soul and left of lust
Vulgar, low, and soiled. . . .

Closed—the eyes once filled with dreams!
Great, proud eyes! . . . I see them yet,
Miniature nights of lucid jet
Filled with starry gleams.

Sealed—the lips; poor, faded lips!
Once as red as life could make—

162

Sweet wild roses, half awake,
Dewy to their tips.

Hair!—imperial still, and warm
As a Grace's; where one stone,
Jeweled, lay ensnared and shone
Like a star in storm.

Eyes!—at parting big with pain . . .
God! I see them still! the tear
In them!—big as eyes of deer
Led by lights and slain. . . .

Woman true, I falsely blamed;
Whom I killed with scorn and pride;
Woman pure, of whom I lied;
With the nameless named:

All you said, Sweet, has come true!—
Ah! this life had woe enough
For the little dole of love
Giv'n to me and you.

Do you hear me? do you know
What I feel now? how it came?
You, beyond me like a flame,
You, before me like the snow. . . .

163

Dead! and all my heart's a cup
Hollowed for repentant tears,
Bitter in the bitter years,
Slowly brimming up.

Peace! 'tis well! But might have been
Better.—Yes, God's time makes right!—
Better for me in His sight
With my soul washed clean.

Do you hear me? do you know
How my heart was all your own?
How my life is left alone
Now with naught but woe?

Peace! be still!—I kiss your hair.
Sweet, good-by. Upon your breast
Let this long white lily rest—
God will find it there:

There beyond the sad world and
Clouds and stars and silent skies,
Where your eyes shall meet His eyes,
And—He'll understand.

164

THE EVE OF ALL-SAINTS

I

This is the tale they tell
Of an Hallowe'en;
This is the thing that befell
Me and the village belle,
Beautiful Amy Dean.

II

Did I love her? God and she,
They know and I!
Ah, she was the life of me—
Whatever else may be
Would God that I could die!

III

That Hallowe'en was dim;
The frost lay white
Under strange stars and a slim
Moon in the graveyard grim,
Pale with its slender light.

165

IV

They told her: “Go alone,
With never a word,
To the burial-plot's unknown
Grave with the oldest stone,
When the clock on twelve is heard.

V

“Three times around it pass,
With never a sound;
Each time a wisp of grass
And myrtle pluck; then pass
Out of the ghostly ground.

VI

“And the bridegroom that's to be,
At smiling wait,
With a face like mist to see,
With graceful gallantry
Will bow you to the gate.”

VII

She laughed at this and so
Bespoke us how
To the burial-place she'd go.—
And I was glad to know,
For I'd be there to bow.

166

VIII

An acre from the farm
The village dead
Lay walled from sun and storm;
Old cedars, of priestly form,
Waved darkly overhead.

IX

I loved; but never could say
The words to her;
And waited, day by day,
Nursing the hope that lay
Under the doubts that were.—

X

She passed 'neath the iron arch
Of the legended ground;—
And the moon, like a twisted torch,
Burned over one lonesome larch;—
She passed with never a sound.

XI

Three times the circle traced;
Three times she bent
To the grave that the myrtle graced;
Three times—then softly faced
Homeward and slowly went.

167

XII

Had the moonlight changed me so?
Or fear undone
Her stepping soft and slow?
Did she see and did not know?
Or loved she another one?

XIII

Who knows?—She turned to flee
With a face so white
It haunts and will haunt me:—
The wind blew gustily:
The graveyard gate clanged tight.

XIV

Did she think it I or—what,
Clutching her dress?
Her face so wild that not
A star in a stormy spot
Shows half so much distress.

XV

I spoke; but she answered naught.
“Amy,” I said,
“'Tis I!”—as her form I caught . . .
Then laughed like one distraught,
For the beautiful girl was dead! . . .

168

XVI

This is the tale they tell
Of that Hallowe'en;
This is the thing that befell
Me and the village belle,
Beautiful Amy Dean.

169

MATER DOLOROSA

The nuns sing, “Ora pro nobis;”
The casements glitter above;
And the beautiful Virgin, whose robe is
Woven of infinite love,
Infinite love and sorrow,
Prays for them there on high—
Who has most need of her prayers,—to-morrow
Shall tell them!—they or I?

Up in the hills together
We loved, where the world was true;
Our world of the whin and heather,
Our skies of a nearer blue;
A blue from which one borrows
A faith that helps one die—
O Mother, thou Mother of Sorrows,
None needs such more than I!

We lived, we loved unwedded—
Love's sin and its shame that slays!—

170

No ill of the years we dreaded,
No day of their coming days;
Their coming days, their many
Trials by noon and night—
And I know no land, not any
Where the sun shines half so bright.

Was he false to me, my Mother!
Or I to him, my God!—
Who gave thee right, O brother!
To take God's right and rod!
God's rod of avenging morrows—
And the life here in my side!—
O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows,
Would that I, too, had died!

By the wall of the Chantry kneeling
I pray, and the organ rings,
“Gloria! gloria!” pealing,
“Sancta Maria!” sings.
They will find us dead to-morrow
By the wall of their nunnery—
O Mother, thou Mother of Sorrow,
His unborn babe and me.

171

LOVE AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV

I

Thrice on the lips and twice on the eyes
I kiss you or ever I kiss your bosom.—
When love is young would you have it wise,
Wise as the world goes?—No! 'tis a blossom
Lovely and wise since it's lovely; content
To live or to die as its folly pleases:
Life is a rose and the rose's scent
Is love, that grows as the rose increases.

II

If I tell you the Marquis will die, will you smile?
And laugh when he's dead?—This powder, my lily,
That seems but an innocent sweet in this phial—

172

Do not touch it! breathe distant!—a poison Exili
Used a life to discover. Its formula left
To a pupil (well worthy the master!), the prudent
And pious Sainte Croix. Him, of teacher bereft,
The Devil, I deem, must have taken as student.

III

Quite a dealer in death. And ours was a case
That those difficult drugs of his laboratory
Demanded. I visited; found him; his face,
Bent over a sublimate,—safe from the hoary
Light particles,—masked with a mask of fine glass.
I told him your danger, Marie, and expounded
Our passion, despair, with many an “Alas!”
He smiled while a paste in a mortar he pounded.

IV

Three fistfuls of Louis!—“He'd do it,” he said.—
A delicate dust, gum, liquid and metal

173

Crushed, crucibled. . . . “Stay! tie this mask on your head.
You see, but a grain on your rose's pink petal
Has shriveled and blasted it—look, how it dries!—
A perilous pulver . . . could Satan make better? . . .
To mix with that present of perfumes—she dies,
And who is the wiser? Or, say in a letter

V

“To the husband of her who has smiled on you since
Another grows bald?”—And he poured in a bottle
The subtlety.—“Bah! be he beggar or prince,
If he kiss but the seal the venom will throttle.”—
“Well,” I thought, “I will test ere I risk.” Slyly drew
My dagger; approached to the bandlet, that tightly
Supported his mask, its keen point. . . . It was true!—
When it cracked he fell dead; he but breathed of it lightly.

174

VI

Your letter is sealed and is sent. You are mine!—
By now he has broken the wax. . . . If there flutters
Some dust in his nostrils, who, who will divine
That thus it was poisoned?—Our alchemist utters
No word!—You are happy? and I?—Oh, I feel
That I love and am loved.—The tidings comes heavy
To-night to the King; you are there; you will reel—
Will faint!—Now away to the royal levee.

[1]

Note.—In this poem, which originally appeared in a volume of mine entitled Lyrics and Idylls, published in 1890, some hypercritical critic in the New York Nation accused me of imitating Browning's The Laboratory. The truth of the matter is that the poem was written ten months before I had ever read Browning's Dramatic Lyrics, and was suggested to me by the reading of the following passage in one of E. T. W. Hoffman's (the German Poe's) stories. The passage occurs in Mademoiselle De Scuderi and is as follows: “The poisons which Sainte Croix prepared were of so subtle a nature that if the powder (called by the Parisians Poudre de Succession, or Succession Powder) were prepared with the face exposed, a single inhalation of

175

it might cause instantaneous death. Sainte Croix therefore, when engaged in its manufacture, always wore a mask of fine glass. One day, just as he was pouring a prepared powder into a phial, his mask fell off, and inhaling the fine particles of the poison, he fell dead on the spot.”

176

THE TROUBADOUR

He stood where all the rare voluptuous west,
Like some mad Mænad, wine-stained to the breast,
Laughed with delirious lips of ruby must,
Wherein, it seemed, the fierceness of all lust
Burnt like a feverish wine, exultant whirled
High in a golden goblet, gem-impearled.
And all the west, and all the amorous west,
Caressed his beauty, dreamed upon his breast;
And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows,
A passion-flower of men of snowy rose,
Beneath the casement of her old red tower,
Whereat the lady sat, as fair a flower
As ever bloomed in Provence; and the lace
Mist-like about her hair, half-hid her face
And the emotions that his singing raised,
So that he knew not if she blamed or praised.
And where the white rose, climbing over and over

177

Up to her wide-flung lattice, like a lover,
And stalks of lavender and fleurs-de-lis
Held honey-cups up for the violent bee,
Within her garden by the ivied wall,
Where many a fountain, falling musical,
Flamed rubies in the eve against it flung,
Like some wild nightingale the minstrel sung:—

“The passion, oh, of gently smoothing through
Long locks of brown, soft hands as lovers do!
Thy dark, deep locks, rich-jeweled as the dusk
Is scintillant with stars! Oh, frenzy rare
Of clasping slender fingers round thy hair!—
What balm, what breath of winds from summer seas!
What silken softness and what sorceries
Doth it contain!—Ah God! ah God! to lie
Wrapped strand on strand deep in thy hair and die!
Ay me, oh, ay!

“Oh, happy madness and, oh, rapturous pain,
With white hands smoothing back thy locks, to drain
Into thine eyes my soul!—Oh, perilous eyes!
As agates polished; where the thoughts that rise,

178

Within thy heart are imaged; thoughts that pass
As magic pictures in a witch's glass.—
What siren sweetness, wailed to lyres of gold,
What naked beauty that the Greeks of old,
God-bosomed, through the bursting foam did see,
Could sway my soul with half their mastery!
Ay, ay, ay me!

“Far o'er the sea, of old time, once a witch,
The fair Ææan, Circe, dwelt; so rich
In marvellous magic, she was like a god,
And made or unmade mortals with a nod:
Turned all her lovers into bird or brute.—
More cruel thou, who mak'st my heart a lute,
That lies before thee, hushed and sadly mute!
Who let'st it lie, yet from its soul might draw
More magic music than Acrasia,
Or Circe knew, that filled them with its bliss,
Didst thou but take me to thine arms and kiss!
Ay, ay, I wis!”

Knee-deep amid the dews, the flowers there,
Beneath the stars that now were everywhere
Flung through the perfumed heavens of angel hands,

179

And, linked in tangled labyrinths and bands
Of soft rose-hearted flame and glimmer, rolled
One vast immensity of mazy gold,
He sang; like some hurt creature, desolate,
Heart-aching for the loss of some wild mate
Hounded and speared to death of heartless men
In old romantic Arden waste; and then
Turned to the moon that, like a polished stone
Of precious worth, low in the heaven shone,
A pale poetic face and passed away
From the urned terrace and the fountains' spray.

And that fair lady in dim drapery,
High in the old red tower—did she sigh
To see him fading through the purple night,
His lute faint-twinkling in th' uncertain light,
Then lost amid the rose-pleached avenues,
Dark walls of ivy, hedged with low-clipped yews?
And left alone with but the whispering rush
Of fountains and the evening's hyacinth hush,
Did she complain unto the stars above,
All the lone night, of that forbidden love?
Or down the rush-strewn stairs, where arras old
Waved with her mantled passage, fold on fold,
Beyond the tower's iron-studded gate,

180

That snarled with rust, did she steal forth and wait
Deep in the dingled lavender and rose
For him, her troubadour? . . . . Who knows? who knows?

181

MY ROMANCE

If it so befalls that the midnight hovers
In mist no moonlight breaks,
The leagues of the years my spirit covers,
And my self myself forsakes.

And I live in a land of stars and flowers,
White cliffs by a silver sea;
And the pearly points of her opal towers
From the mountains beckon me.

And I think that I know that I hear her calling
From a casement bathed with light—
Thro' music of waters in waters falling
'Mid palms from a mountain height.

And I feel that I think my love's awaited
By the romance of her charms;
That her feet are early and mine belated
In a world that chains my arms.

182

But I break my chains and the rest is easy—
In the shadow of the rose,
Snow-white, that blooms in her garden breezy,
We meet and no one knows.

We dream sweet dreams and kiss sweet kisses;
The world—it may live or die!
The world that forgets; that never misses
The life that has long gone by.

We speak old vows that have long been spoken,
And weep a long-gone woe,—
For you must know our hearts were broken
Hundreds of years ago.

183

THE EPIC

“To arms!” the battle bugles blew.
The daughter of their Chief was she,—
Lord of a thousand spears and true;—
He but a squire of low degree.

The horns of war blew up to horse:
He kissed her mouth; her face was white:
“God grant they bear thee back no corse!”
“God give I win my spurs to-night!”

The watch-towers' blazing beacons scarred
With blood-red wounds the face of night:
She heard men gallop battleward;
She saw their armor gleam with light.

“My God, deliver me and mine!
My child! my love!”—all night she prayed:
She watched the battle beacons shine;
She watched the battle beacons fade. . . .

184

They brought him on a bier of spears.—
For him, the death-won spurs and name;
For her, the grief of lonely years,
And donjon walls to hide her shame.

185

THE MINSTREL AND THE PRINCESS

I

He had no hope to win her hand,
A harper in a loveless land,
And yet he sang of love;
And marked the blue vein of her throat
Swell with mute rage at every note:
And when he ceased she spake him then,—
“Such whining slaves are less than men!”
And anger in her dark eyes wrote
Contempt thereof.

II

He had no hope to win her hand,
A harper in a hostile land,
And yet he sang of peace;
And marked how mock'ry curled her lip
With scorn as, 'neath each finger-tip,
The chords breathed pastoral content:

186

Till haughtiness, that beauty lent
To beauty, sneered, “Would'st feel the whip?—
O fool, surcease!”

III

He had no hope to win her hand,
A harper in a tyrant's land,
And so he sang of war—
“Oh, fling thy harp away!” she said.
“O war, thy singers are not dead!—
Seat thee beside me; now I see
Thou art for battle, and must be
Brave as thy song.—Well hast thou pled.
My warrior!”

187

THE ALCALDE'S DAUGHTER

The times they had kissed and parted
That night were over a score;
Each time that the cavalier started,
Each time she would swear him o'er:—

“Thou art going to Barcelona!—
To make Naxera thy bride!
Seduce the Lady Iona!—
And thy lips have lied! have lied!

“I love thee! I love thee, thou knowest!
And thou shalt not give away
The love to my life thou owest;
And my heart commands thee stay!

“I say thou hast lied and liest!—
For—where is there war in the State?—
Thou goest, by Heaven the highest!
To choose thee a fairer mate.

188

“Wilt thou go to Barcelona
When thy queen in Toledo is?—
To wait on the haughty Iona,
When thou hast these lips to kiss?”

And they stood in the balcony over
The old Toledo square;
And, weeping, she took for her lover
A red rose out of her hair.

And they kissed farewell; and, higher,
The moon made amber the air;—
And she drew, for the traitor and liar,
A stiletto out of her hair. . . .

When the night-watch lounged through the quiet
With the stir of halberds and swords,
Not a bravo was there to defy it,
Not a gallant to brave with words.

One man, at the corner's turning,
Quite dead, in a moonlight band—
In his heart a dagger burning,
And a red rose crushed in his hand.

189

ISHMAEL

Ishmael, the Sultan, in the Ramadan,
Amid his guards, bristling with yataghan,
And kris,—his amins, viziers wisdom-gray,
Pachas and Marabouts, betook his way
Through Mekinez. For he had read the word
That in the Koran says, “Slay! praying the Lord!
Pray! slaying the victims!” so the Sultan went
Straight to the mosque, his mind on battle bent.
In white burnoose and sea-green caftan clad
He entered ere the last muezzin had
Summoned the faithful unto prayer and let
The “Allah Akbar” from the minaret
Invite to worship. 'Neath the lamps' lit gold
The many knelt and prayed.

Upon the old
Mosaics of the mosque—whose high vault steamed

190

With aloes' incense—lean ecstatics dreamed
Of Allah and his Prophet, and how great
Is God, and how unstable man's estate.
Conviction on him in this chanting low
Of Koran texts, the Caliph's passion so
Exalted soared—lamped by religious awe—
Himseemed he heard God's everlasting law
'Gainst unbelievers; and himself confessed
The Faith's anointed sword; and, so impressed,
Arose and spoke. The arabesques above—
The marvellous work of oriental love—
Seemed, with new splendors of Heaven's blue and gold,
Applauding all. And, ere the gates were rolled,
Ogival, back to let the many forth,
War was declared on all the Christian Earth.

Now had his army passed the closed bazaar,
Thro' narrow streets gorged with the streams of war:
Had passed the place of tombs and reached the wall
Of Mekinez, above which,—over all
Its merloned battlements,—in long array,

191

Seraglios and towers, his palace gray
Could still be seen when, girt with pomp and state,
The Sultan passed the city's scolloped gate.

Two dozing beggars, each one's face a sore,
Sprawl'd in the sun the city's gate before;
A leprous cripple and a thief, whose eyes—
Burnt out with burning iron—as supplies
The law for thieves—were wounds, fly-swarmed and raw,—
Lifted shrill voices as they heard or saw;
Praised God, and bowed into the dust each face,
With words of “victory and Allah's grace
Attend our Caliph, Mouley-Ishmael!
Even at the cost of ours his day be well!”

And grimly smiling as he grimly passed,
“While Allah's glory is and still shall last—
Now by Es Sirat!—will a leper's word
And thief's avail to help us?—By my sword!—
Yea, let us see. Whatever their intent
Even as 'tis offered let their necks be bent!
'Though words be pious, evil at the soul

192

The prayer is naught!—So let their prayer be whole.
Better than gold is death, meseems, for these:
So by the hands of you, my Soudanese,
They die,” he said; and even as he said
Rolled in the dust each writhing, withered head.

And frowning westward, as the day grew late,
Two bleeding heads stared from the city gate
'Neath this inscription for the passer-by,
“There is no virtue but in God most high.”

193

IN MYTHIC SEAS

Beneath great saffron stars and skies, dark-blue,
Among the Cyclades, a happy two,
We sailed; and from the Siren-haunted shore,
All mystic in its mist, the soft wind bore
The Siren's song; where, on the ghostly steeps,
Strange foliage grew, deeps folding upon deeps,
That hung and beamed with blossom and with bud,
Blue-petaled, pallid, or, like urns of blood,
Dripping; or blowing from wide mouths of blooms
On our hot brows cool gales of dim perfumes.
While from the yellow stars, that splashed the skies,
O'er our light shallop brooded mysteries
Of calm and sleep, until the yellower moon
Rose, full of fire, above a dark lagoon;
And, as she rose, the nightingales, on sprays

194

Of heavy, Persian roses, burst in praise
Of her wild loveliness; their boisterous pain
Heard through the pillars of a ruined fane.
And round our lazy keel, that dipped to swing,
The spirits of the foam came whispering;
And from gray Neptune's coral-columned caves
The wet Oceänids rose through the waves;
With naked limbs we saw them breast the spray,
Their pearl-white bodies tempesting the way;
Their sea-green hair, tossed streaming to the breeze,
Scattering with brightness all the tumbled seas.
'Mid columned aisles, seen vaguely through the trees,
We watched the Satyrs chase the Dryades;
Heard Pan's shrill trebles and the Triton's horn
Sound from the flying foam when ruddy Morn,
With dewy eyelids, opened azure eyes,
And, blushing, rose, and left her couch of skies.
We saw the Naiad, clothed with veiling mist,
Half hidden in a bay of amethyst,
With shell-like breasts, and at her hollow ear
A shell's pink labyrinth held up to hear

195

Circean echoes of the Siren's strains
Imprisoned in its chords of vermeil veins:
Then, stealing wily from a grove of pines,
The Oread, in cincture of green vines;
Her cautious feet, fragrant and twinkling wet,
Set in a bed of rainy serpolet;
Her flower-red lips half-parted in surprise,
And expectation in her wondering eyes,
As in the bosk a rustling noise she hears—
A Faun, sly-eyed, with furred and pointed ears,
Who leaps upon her, as upon a dove
A great hawk pinions from the skies above.
Diana sees, and on her wooded hills
Stays her fair band, the stag-hounds' clamor stills—
A senseless statue of cold, weeping stone
Fills his embrace; the Oread is gone.
The stag-hounds bay; again they urge the chase,
While the astonished Faun's bewildered face
Paints all his wonderment, and, wondering,
He bends above the sculpture of a spring.

And so we sailed; and many a morn of balm
Led on the hours of sunny song and calm:
And it was life, to her and me, and love,
With the fair myths below, our God above,

196

To sail in golden sunsets and emerge
In golden morns upon a fretless surge.
But, ah! alas! the stars, that pierce the blue,
Shine not for ever; clouds must gather, too.

I knew not how it came, but in a while
I found myself cast on a desert isle,
Alone with sorrow; wan with doubt and dread;
The seas in wrath and thunder overhead;
Deep down in coral caves the one I love—
No myths below; no God, it seemed, above.

197

LOKÉ AND SIGYN

A daughter of Winter, Skade, a giantess,
One twisting serpent hung above his head,
So that its blistering venom, roping down,
Beat on his upturned face and tortured him.

Him had the gods of Asgard, Odin and Thor,
Weary of all his wiles and evil ways,
Followed, and after many stormy moons,
Within the land of giants overcome,
In Jotunheim, and dragged beneath the world,
Into a cave the earthquake's hands had built,
A cavern vast and terrible as that,
They tell of Hel's, whose ceiling is of snakes,
That hang, a torrent torture, yawning slime,
In whose slow stream eternal anguish wades.
And for his crimes they chained him to a rock,
His lips still sneering and his eyes all scorn,
And left him with the serpent over him,
And, gathering round him from their larvæ lairs,
Monsters, huge-warted, eyed with wells of fire.

198

But Sigyn, Loké's wife, stole in to him,
And sate herself beside his writhen limbs,
And held a cup of gold against the mouth
Of ceaseless poison dripping in the gloom.
Was it her voice lamenting? or the sound
Of far abysmal waters falling, falling
Down tortured labyrinths of hollow rock?
Or was't the Strömkarl? he whose hoary harp
Is heard remote; who, syllabling strange runes,
Sits gray behind the crashing cataract,
Within a grotto dim with mist and foam;
His long thin beard, white as the flying spray,
Slow-swinging in the wind and keeping time
To his wild harp's notes, murmuring, whispering
Beneath the talons of his hands of foam.

Was it the voice of Sigyn? whose sad sound
Soft from the deathless hush detached itself,
As some pale star from darkness that reveals
The heavens in its fall; or but the deeps
Of silence speaking to the deeps of night?
Sad, sad, and slow, yea slower than sad tears
That fall from blinded eyes, her sad words fell:—
“O Love! O Loké! turn on me thine eyes!

199

Thy motionless eyes that woe has changed to stone;
That slumber will not seal nor any dream.
Yea, I will woo her down; woo Slumber down,
From her fair far-off skies, with some old song,
The croonéd syllables of some refrain,
Sung unto childhood by the mothers of men.
Or shall I soothe thine eyes shut with my hair,
The fluttered amber of deep curls, until
They shall forget their stone stolidity,
And sleep creep in between the linéd lids
And summon memory and pain away?

“Pale, pale thy face, that seems to stain the night
With pallor; hueless as the brows of death.
So pale, that knew we Death, as mortals know,
I'd say that he, mysterious, had laid hands
Of talons on thee and had left thee so.
So still! and all the night is in my heart.
So tired! and sleep is not for thee or me,
Never again for our o'erweary limbs!
Around, the shadows crouch; vague, obscene shapes,

200

In horrible attitudes; and all the night,
Above, below, seems so much choking fog,
That clogs my tongue, or with devouring maw
Swallows my words and makes them sound far off,
Remote, deep down, emboweled of the Earth.
And then again it hounds them from my tongue
To sound as wildly clamorous as the hills
Sound when Earth shakes with armies; men that meet
With Berserk fury, shouting, and the hurl
And shock of iron spears on iron shields,
And all the world is one wild wave of helms,
And all the air is one wild wind of swords,
On which the wild Valkyries ride and scream.
Dread cliffs, dread chasms of rocks howl back my words
While yet they touch the tongue to grasp the thought;
And all the vermin, huddled in their holes,
Creep forth to glare and hiss them back again.

“How long! how long ago since we beheld
The rose of morning and the lily of noon,
The great red rhododendron of the eve!
How long! how long ago since we beheld

201

Those thoughts of God, the stars, that set their flowers
Imperishably in the fields of heaven,
And the still changing yet unchanging moon!
So long, that I unto myself seem grown,
As thou, long since, to rock; in sympathy
With all the rock above us and around.
My countenance hath won, long since, with thee,
The reflex of an alabaster black
That builds vast walls around us, and whose frown
Makes stone thy brow as mine. O woe! O woe!
And now that Idun's apples are denied,
Are not for lips of thee nor lips of me,—
The apples of gold that still keep young the gods,—
The years shall cleave this beautiful brow of thine
With myriad wrinkles; and, in time, this hair,
Brown, brown, and softer than the fur of seals,
Shall lose its lustre and instead shall lie
A drift of winter in a winter cave,
A feeble gray seen in the glimmering gloom.
But I shall age, too, even as thou dost age.
Yet, yet we can not die; the immortal gods

202

Can never die! what punishment to know!
What pain to know we age yet can not die!
Death will not come except with Ragnarok.—
That thought be near! take comfort from the word,
The dark word Ragnarok, which is thyself;
Thy vast revenge; thy monster synonym;
Thy banquet of destruction. Thou, whom fate,
The Norns, reserve to war and waste the worlds
Of gods and men, with thy two henchmen huge,
The wolf and snake, the Fenris, that devours,
The Midgard, that engulfs the universe.
O joy! O joy! then shall those stars, that glue
Their blinking scales unto old Ymer's skull,—
The dome of heaven,—shudder from their spheres,
A streaming fire; and thou, O Loké, thou,
Elected annihilation, shalt arise,
To devastate the Earth and Asaheim.
And as this darkness now, this heavy night,
Clings to and chokes us till we, strangling, strive
With purple lips for light, and feel the dark

203

Drag freezing down the throat to swell the weight
That houses in our hearts and peoples our veins,
So shall thy hate insufferably spread
In fires of Hel, in fogs of Niflheim,
Storm-like from pole to pole, o'erwhelming all.—
The Twilight of the Gods, behold, it comes!
The Twilight of the Gods!—The root-red cock
I seem to hear crow in the halls of Hel!
The blood-red cock, whose cry shall bid thee rise!

“But, oh! thy face! paler it seemeth now
Than icy marble; and the serpent writhes
Its rustling coils and twists its livid length,
Hissing, above thee, pouring eternal pain.—
Oh, could I kiss the lips o'er which he swings!
The lips that once touched living flame to mine!
At which sweet thought, as some sick flower of drought
At dreams of dew, my lips with longing ache!
—Oh, could I gaze once more into thine eyes

204

Whose starry depths outstarred the midnight heavens!
Or see them laugh as golden morning laughs,
Leaving her steps in roses on the hills,
The peaks that wall the world and pierce the clouds;
The hills, where once we stood, among the pines,
The melancholy pines that plume the crags,
And rock and sing unto the still fiords
Like gaunt wild-women lullabying their babes!
Then could I die e'en as the mortals die,
And smile in dying!—But the serpent baulks
Each effort to behold, or on loved lips
To ease the torture of my soul's desire.
Thy face alone is comfort to my gaze,
Like some dim moon silvering through night and mist.
—Now from their lairs again the monsters creep;
I feel their ghastly touches, and their eyes
Draw steadily nearer, wandering will-o'-the-wisps;
The serpent strives to fang me as he swings;
And in the cup's caked gold the venom swims,
Seethes upward horribly to the horrible edge.”

205

She ceased. And then, heard through the echoing night,
The chained god spoke, tumultuous violence
And rage in every word. His utterance seemed
Large as the thunder when it, rolling, plants,—
Heavy with earthquake and impending ruin,—
Seismic feet on everlasting seas
And mountains silent with eternal ice.
His eyes in hideous labor; and his throat,
Corded and gnarled with veins of boisterous blood,
A crag of fury; and his foaming lips,
A maelstrom of rebellious agony,
Of thwarted rage and wild, arrested wrath.
Fierce vaunter of loud hate, one mighty fist,
Convulsed with clenchment, in its gyve of ore,
Headlong for battle-launching, at the gods
Clutched mad defiance, madder blasphemy;
Yet all unhurled and vain as mists of morn,
Or foam, wind-wasted on the sterile sands
Of rainy seas, when Ran, from whistling caves,
Watching the tempest-driven dragon wreck,
Already in her miser fingers feels
The viking gold that has not yet gone down.
Then all the cave again is dumb with night.

206

He sees the spotted serpent writhe above;
He sees the poison streaming towards his eyes.
And now her cup is brimmed; but one more drop
Will float the filth gray o'er the venomed edge.
Into the river slowly flowing by
Swiftly she pours the vitriol torture: scarce
A tithe of time it takes, but in that time
The reptile's vomit slimes his helpless face,
Burns to the bone. . . . All his fierce muscles twist,
Wrenching the knotted steel that locks his limbs,
And shriek on shriek divides the solitudes.
The ocean roars; and, under toppling skies,
The mountains avalanche from pine-pierced sides
Their centuries of snow. Then all the night
Once more is filled with silence and with sighs.

207

WAR-SONG OF HARALD THE RED

And this is the song of battle, they sang to the thrash of the oars,
As the prows of their shield-hung dragons were driven along the shores:—

On to the battle! Yo ho for the slaughter!
Hark to the grind of the oars that thunder!
Clash of the prows as they crash through the water,
Hurl through the foam of the seas they sunder!
Up with the axe! and drive through the bristling
Beaks of the foe that our iron has broken!
On through the sleet of the shafts that are whistling,
Arrows of ash, in a wedge that is oaken.
By the eye of Odin! whose frown is war,
Think of the vikings' daughters, who wear
Gold on their hips! to hale by the hair,

208

Gold-bound, red as the beard of Thor!
Virgins, whose bodies, white-bosomed, are
For rape and ransom!—A kingdom's ravish
Yours! for the sweat and the blood you lavish.

Hark! on the shore how his fierce fangs clamor!
Ocean's, whose rocks are hungry for carrion:—
Ho! 'tis a sound as of swords that hammer
Helms to the brazen snarl of the clarion. . . .
On to the revel of war, my bullies,
Blades, that fury like fire to battle!
On to the banquet, through spray that gullies,
Bray of the beaks and the oars' wild rattle!
When prow grinds prow and the arrows hail,
Think! were it better with hollow-eyed Hel
To rot with cowards? or boast and yell
Hoarse toasts over skulls of the boisterous ale
High in Valhalla where heroes dwell?
In vast Valhalla, where life wends well!
The warrior vault of whose shields with curses
Rings to the roar of the Berserk verses!

209

YULE

Behold! in the night there was storm; and the rushing of snow and of sleet;
And the boom of the sea and the moaning of pines in its desolate beat.

And the hall of fierce Erick of Sogn with the clamor of wassail was filled,
With the clash of great beakers of gold and the reek of the ale that was spilled.

For the Yule was upon them, the Yule; and they quaffed as from skulls of the slain,
And shouted loud oaths in hoarse wit, and long quaffing swore laughing again.

Unharnessed from each shaggy throat, that was hot with brute lust and with drink,
Each burly wild skin and barbaric tossed, rent from the gold of its link.

210

For the Yule was upon them, the Yule, and the waesheils were shouted and roared
By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls round the ponderous board.

And huge on the hearth, that writhed, hissing, and bellied, an ingot of gold,
The Yule-log, the half of an oak from the mountains, was royally rolled.

And its warmth and its glory, that glared, smote red through the width of the hall,
And burnished the boar-skins and bucklers and war-axes hung on the wall.

And the maidens, who hurried big goblets, that bubbled, excessive with barm,
Blushed rose to the gold of thick curls as the shining steel mirrored each charm.

And Erick's one hundred gray skalds, at the nod and the beck of the king,
With the stormy-rolled music of an hundred wild harps made the castle reëchoing ring.

For the Yule, for the Yule was upon them, and battle and rapine were o'er;

211

And Harald, the viking, the red, and his brother lay dead on the shore.

For the harrier, Harald the red, and his merciless brother, black Ulf,
With their men on the shore of the wintery sea were carrion cold for the wolf.

Behold! for the battle was ended; the battle that clamored all day,
With the rumble of shields that were shocked and of spears that were splintered like spray:

With the hewing of swords that fierce-lightened like flames and that smoked with hot blood,
And the crush of the mace that was hammered through helm and through brain that withstood:

And the cursing and howling of men at their gods,—at their gods whom they cursed,
Till the caves of the ocean re-bellowed and storm on their battling burst.

And they fought; in the flying and drifting and silence of covering snow,

212

Till the wounded that lay with the dead, with the dead were stiff frozen in woe.

And they fought; and the mystical flakes that were clutched by the maniac wind
Drave sharp on the eyes of the kings, made the sight of their warriors blind.

Still they fought; and with leonine wrath were they met, till the battle-god, Thor,
In his thunder-wheeled chariot rolled, making end of destruction and war.

And they fell—like twin rocks of the mountains, or pines, that rush, hurricane-hurled,
From their world-rooted crags to the ocean below with the wreck of the world.

But, lo! not in vain their loud vows! on the black iron altars of War
Not in vain as victims, the warriors, their blood as libation to Thor! . . .

Lo! a glitter and splendor of arms through the snow and the foam of the seas
And the terrible ghosts of the vikings and the gauntleted Valkyries! . . .

213

Yea, the halls of fierce Erick of Sogn with the turmoil of wassail are filled,
With the steam of the flesh of the boar, and the reek of the ale that is spilled.

For the Yule and the victory are theirs, and the waesheils are shouted and roared
By the Berserks, the eaters of fire, and the Jarls round the ponderous board.

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[IN THE GARDENS OF FALERINA]

TO GERTRUDE

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