University of Virginia Library

Another evening falls, another leaf
Drops from the withered bough. Here let us rest
Till dawn, if still another dawn be ours,
And these be not the limits of our hopes.
This desert starlight seems to shale away
The crust and rind of our disfigurement,
And I can see us on the palm-fringed shore,
Young, in a land of virgin miracle.
With laughter and light words we burnt the ships,
And waited while the morning jewel-pure
Between the flaming zenith and the sea
Drank up the smoke, and left all crystalline.
Then, after prayer and planting of the cross,
Our captain rose, and o'er us where we kneeled
Let stream the ensign of our strange attempt.
With shout and song we took the wilderness,
Light song which in the arrogance of joy
Mocked all the shadowy issues of our search.
—Wondrously near those first days rise to-night
Bright-pictured to the visionary sense,
And like a stepping music, full of gust
And savorous to the marrow of the tune.
But dim and without sound, a realm inert,
Lie the long stretches of our after-toil.
You know how hunger, accident, disease,
Ambush and open battle wore us down,
How schism split us, envious leadership
Ditched into rivulets of little head
The stream and onset of our expedition;
How some for love of women, some for sloth,
Some for a taint of wildness in the blood,
Some brain-sick, or with dreams of savage rule,
Fell off from us and mingled with the tribes.
You know how, when the knighthood we were of
Was broken, when despair was in the ranks,
And the main voice was loud for turning back,
This handful, heroes of a dwindling hope,
Bade deep farewell, and set our faces on.
Long, long ago the others found their kin,
Wept in the shrunken bosoms of their wives,
And leaned their weight of weakness on their sons,
Or else, not fortunate, sank by the way,
With eyes turned homeward, and delirious hands
Held up through the death-mist to signal Spain.
But we, who now out-tarry our own selves,
Who are as our own spectres haunting us,
Many a dim immemorable year
We grope about, at hazard of our clue;
Again and yet again the thin thread snaps,
The half-heard rumor dies upon the air;
Then sit we drowsed, forgetting what we seek,
Again remembering only to forget,
Till, in some wakeful moment such as this,
Or such as come under the struggling dawn,
When earth is taken with anxiety,
And till the crisis all the gates of life
Swing wide, and there is access everywhere
And mighty recognitions, then once more—
I know not how ye others keep the quest,
I know not on what root of hope ye feed,
But as for me, the voices that I hear,
The beckoning hands I follow, are of them
Whom you reject as false and lying guides.
Again I see that dark-eyed leaf-crowned boy,
That tawny budding girl, earnest and vague,
Who took our meaning with soft-brightening gaze,
And beckoning slipped before us through the wild;
And like a fountain on the hills of dream
Wells the clear music of their mated throats,
Now rising from the maiden's single heart,
Now from the youth's, rejoicing far away,
But ever wedded in the secret depths
And raining up inextricable song.

“Hasten, hasten, turn and twine
Body mine, spirit mine,
Spells behind me,
Lest he follow me and find me!
Never stay, but as we may
Fleeing, fleeing, bar the way;
To my love's delicious moan
Make the air no thoroughfare,
Lock the light to stone!
By the heavenly pool to-day,
Body mine, spirit mine,
We must bathe, we must play
Alone, alone!”

“I knew not when I rose from thee,
I only knew
That on from tree to dreaming tree
All the wet, dark forest through
I touched and traced the fairy clew.
Upland silences unstirred
By wind of dawn
Or wakeful bird,
With signals wan and unaverred
Led me, lured me, lulled me on,
To where a brook or little river
Bubbled from a Source divine—
O, by many a mighty sign
Sealed and set apart forever
Mine, mine!”

Again I listened to that married pair,
Who laid their hands upon the giant trees,
Saying, “When these were seedlings, we were far
Gone in the wonder and the peace of love,”
Yet seemed young as the bloom they led us through.
And I can hear again the husband's song
At which the woman clung to him and wept,
And after seemed more blessèd than before.

“Dost thou fear, my bride, to dwell
Longer near the wondrous well,
Where we, careless leaning,
Drank and were glorified?
Stirs and flutters in thy side,
Love, the sweet meaning
Why we abide,
Here where the waters flow
Till the heart-prophecied hour!
When with tears of weakness, songs of power,
We have knelt the stream beside,
And poured the chrysm wild
Over our deathless child,
Then we will go—
O whither, whither, love, seeking our child that died!”

Yea, yea, I know to what unlikely springs,
To what mere household wells and neighbor brooks
Some led us, saying, “Here by chance we drank
And suffered the bright change; stoop ye and drink!”
Also I know how others stood at loss,
Saying, “'T was here, 't was such a place as this;
But nowhere wells the water. Blame us not!
Perhaps it has its seasons!” Seasons four
We waited once, and when the fourth was run
We put our guide to death—unrighteously!
For look you, but a little after that,
Upon the monstrous borders of this place,
We met the ancient comrades of our quest.
A lifetime since, they fell away from us
And mingled with the tribes. Nine souls we met,
Seven thereof as old and worn as we,
And with them women-kind more broken still;
But two were more divine uplifted men
Than when we knelt beside the burning ships.
You know how, at our question, one spake naught,
But wept, and gave us mutely of his store,
Filling our hands with precious necessaries;
The other, from our vasty mountain shelf,
Pointed far westward over silver peaks.
Then she who went beside him as his bride
Smiled and said Nay to the uplifted arm;
Yet followed where he led us. Twelve days march
By west and north we journeyed, through a world
Gigantic and phantasmal, as if flung
In terror of their fancy from the hands
Of rude and early gods. And as we went,
Ever before us that bright woman sang
Many a bright, disturbing song, whereof
One was the strangest among many strange.

So, for twelve days, her singing led us on:
The twelfth day, in the fading light, we came
Into a region where the laboring earth
Spouted whale-like her fountains, icy some
And clear as ice, some boiling sulphurous.
Then, by the master-water in the midst,
He who far off had pointed out the land
Halted us, saying, “Here I drank; drink ye!”
And when we drank and found no virtue in it,
He muttered, “Even as the other seven!”
And beckoning his bright woman, slipped away.
But he, our other comrade, who had wept
To see us, and had followed without speech,
Broke silence then, and as the mountain dusk
Shut over them, we heard his lessening song
Mix with the pouring waters and the wind.

“Not with searching, not with strife,
Not by traveler's true reporting,
Nor by signs of old importing,
Win ye to the Fount of Life.
But as the husband to the wife
At evening thoughtless goes,
And lo, about her careless head
Twines terror like a flashing knife,
Breathes wonder like a climbing rose,
And dreams wherewith his youth was rife,
The sorrowed-for, the long-since dead,
He finds up-gathered in her eyes
Beyond belief, beyond surprise—
So shall ye find, not otherwise!
For ere with striving you are come
The fountain's singing heart is dumb,
Faded its spell;
And down the world at random hurled
By conduits and thwart understreams,
The secret waters of the well—
Where the thirsty millions dwell
Or 'neath unvisited moonbeams—
Renew their miracle!”

To-morrow morn, yet fewer than to-night,
We will go on, leaving the fallen head.
These peaceful desert men will give it honor.
From moon to moon they hold us more in awe,
And as they deal with their outlying gods,—
Them of the farther fields and water-holes,
Too shy to climb into their rock-perched towns
So do they unto us, in lonely places
Setting us sacred food, honey and maize,
Sun-baken fruits and sacrificial bread.
I think there have been battles waged for us,
And vigil set in all their eagle-towers;
I think their priests come with us afar off,
Staying when we stay, moving when we move:
Either 't is so, or 't is a thing I dream.

Though order and the comeliness of truth
No more reign constant in the spirit's house,
Though far and near shift places, and our sleep
Tangles itself with what we are awake,
Yet, O worn brothers, much-enduring men,
Without search, without striving, go we on,
For I am told at heart that we shall find! ...
Perhaps within the pictured water-jars
They fill and place for us along our path;
Perhaps in stooping where the wild and tame
Fight for the thread of moisture in the rocks;
Perhaps as ghosts beside the ghostly lakes
Which noonday paints upon the distant sand;
Perhaps far sunken by a canyon pool,
Under the soft rein of a cataract
Which leaps and scatters down the walls of Death.