HIEROGLYPHS
I
All dreams are older than the seas,
Being but newer forms of change;
Some savage dreamed mine; and 'twas these
De Leon sought where seas were strange.
All thoughts are older than the Earth
Being of beauty ages wrought;
Old when creation gave them birth,
When Homer sang them, Shakespeare thought.
II
If souls could travel as can thought,
Beyond the farthest arcs that span
Imagination, what would man
Not know and see at last?
One would explore the stars; and one
Would search the moon and one the sun
And tell us of their past.
And one would seek out Hell; and, wise
In tortures of the damned, return
To tell us if they freeze or burn,
And where God's red Hell lies:
And one would look on Heaven; and, mute
With memories of harp and lute,
Sit silent as the skies.
But I—on condor wings would sweep
To some new world, and, soaring, sit
'Mid firmaments volcano-lit,
And see creation heap
Its awful Andes, vague and vast,
About its Inca-peopled past,
While deep roared out to deep.
III
Out of it all but this remains:—
I dreamed that I had crossed wide chains
Of Cordilleras, whose huge peaks
Lock in the wilds of Yucatan,
Chiapas and Honduras. Weeks—
And then a city that no man
Had even seen; so dim and old
No chronicle has ever told
The history of men who piled
Its temples and huge teocallis
Among mimosa-blooming valleys;
Or how its altars were defiled
With human blood; whose idols there
With eyes of stone still stand and stare.
So old, the moon can only know
How old, since ancient forests grow
On mighty wall and pyramid.
Huge ceïbas, whose trunks were scarred
With ages, and dense yuccas, hid
Fanes 'mid great cacti, scarlet-starred.
I looked upon its paven ways
And saw it in its kingliest days;
When, from its lordliest palace, one
A victim, walked with prince and priest,
Who turned brown faces toward the east
In worship of the rising sun:
At night a thousand temple spires,
Of gold, burnt everlasting fires.
Uxmal? Palenque? or Copan?
I know not. Only how no man
Had ever seen; and still my soul
Believes it vaster than the three.
Volcanic rock walled in the whole,
Lost in the woods as in some sea.
I only read its hieroglyphs,
Perused its monster monoliths
Of death, gigantic heads; and read
The pictured codex of its fate,
The perished Toltec; while in hate
Mad monkeys cursed me, as if dead
Priests of its past had taken form
To guard their ruined fanes from harm.
IV
And then it was as if I talked
Of gods and beauty, like a god;
'Mid Montezuma's priests who walked
Obedient to my nod.
From Mexic levels breezes blew
O'er green magueys; cacaö fields;
I stood among caciques, a crew
With plumes and golden shields.
In raiment made of humming-birds
Brown slave-girls danced. All Anahuac
Stood, grim with strange obsidian swords,
Around the idol's rock.
And up the temple's winding stair
Of pyramid we wound and went:
The bloomed vanilla drenched the air
With all its tropic scent.
Volcanoes walled us in: and I
Walked, crowned with flaming cactus-flowers,
Beneath the golden, Aztec sky,
Lord of the living hours.
When, lo! five priests, who led me to
A jasper stone of sacrifice!—
Then deep within my soul I knew
That prideful moment's price.
A sixth priest, robed in cochineal,
Received me at the altar's stone:
I saw the flint-blade, sharp as steel,
That in his high hand shone.
O God! to dream that they would bind—
With pomp and pageant of their love—
Me to the rock, and never blind
Mine eyes to that above!
I felt the flint hack through my breast,
And in my agony did raise
Wild eyes, a little while to rest
Upon their idol's face.
Just God! the priest tore out my heart,
And held it, beating, to the sun—
Chanting—and from one burning part
Great drops dripped, one by one.
Torn out, I felt my heart still beat,
I felt it beat with pain divine;
For, bleeding at the idol's feet,
My heart was pressed to thine.
V
You were a maiden like a dream
Who led me where volcanic dust
Rained in a scoriac mountain stream,
Where, from Andean snows, was thrust
One crater belching stones and steam.
You were an Inca princess when
I was a cavalier of Spain,
Who frowned among Pizarro's men,
And saw the New World rent with pain.—
No grace of God could save me then.
And it was you who led me far
To gaze on caves of Inca gold:
But when we came, lo! warrior
On warrior, an army rolled
Around us panoplied for war.
Fierce faces chiseled out of stone
Are not more stern.—Down, underneath,
I heard the sullen earthquake groan;
Above me, red eruptions seeth.
And clenched my teeth and stood alone.
And then you pled and was denied.—
They laid me where the lava crawled,
Red-rivered, down the mountain side.
I felt the slow, slow hell-heat scald:
And as it closed, you leapt and died.
VI
In farther planets there are men who talk,
Not with their lips, but with their eyes alone,
With beaming eyes and brows that burn with thought:
Pure souls whose sentiments need but be born
To be expressed. Where speech of mouth and tongue
Were barbarous discord. Where no voice imparts
Thought, but divulging eye and sensitive brow.
Superior planets, far beyond our sphere,
And nearer God than ages shall combine
To lift our world up with its wrangling woes.
Worlds that are strange to sickness and disease
Of mind and body; perfect mentally,—
Past what we name perfection here on Earth,—
And physically. Morally divine
As creeds have taught us God's high Heaven is.
Worlds where Love makes no playmate of vile Lust;
Where Hope makes no companion of Despair;
Where Power can not trample with fierce feet;
And, impotent, the iron hand of Might
Surrenders its red weapon unto Mind;
Where Truth and Thought are wedded, in one rule
Of far progression, whose white child is Love.
So have I dreamed, and longed to leave sad Earth,
And live anew on some diviner sphere;
A world so higher, lovelier than this,
So spiritually perfected and refined,
That, should an Earth-born mortal,—suddenly
Translated thither,—unprepared behold,
Dazed with divinity, before the feet
Of its inhabitants he would fall prone
In worship and astonishment; and, all
The exaltation of celestial peace
Singing within, cry out: “Yea, this is Heaven!
How long, O sinner, hast thou dwelt in Hell!”
VII
An iron despotism the day's:
A brutal anarchy the night's:
What hope for hope when day betrays,
And night in death delights?
For, once I prayed for gulfs of gold,
And morn pooled heav'n with sombre blood:
For skies of stars, and skies behold—
Malignant with the scud.
And so I marvel not that he,
Gray-haired and toothless, hugs his stove,
While I my youth, which once was she,
Have buried with my love.
VIII
All thoughts of nature are but forms
Of life and death, with which began
Love: love, that swept the heavens with storms,
Evolving worlds to perfect man.
Thoughts are the forms of mind; and come
And go, assuming every shape:
Science and art: through which we clomb,
And climb, to angel from the ape.
