4. PART FOURTH
I
Nay, turn not to the past for light;
Nay, teach not Pagan tale forsooth!
Behind lie heathen gods and night,
Before lifts high, white holy truth.
Sweet Orpheus looked back, and lo,
Hell met his eyes and endless woe!
Lot's wife looked back, and for this fell
To something even worse than hell.
Let us have faith, sail, seek and find
The new world and the new world's ways:
Blind Homer led the blind!
II
Come, let us kindle Faith in light!
Yon eagle climbing to the sun
Keeps not the straightest course in sight,
But room and reach of wing and run
Of rounding circle all are his,
Till he at last bathes in the light
Of worlds that look far down on this
Arena's battle for the right.
The stoutest sail that braves the breeze,
The bravest battle ship that rides,
Rides rounding up the seas.
Come, let us kindle faith in man!
What though yon eagle, where he swings,
May moult a feather in God's plan
Of broader, stronger, better wings!
Why, let the moulted feathers lie
As thick as leaves upon the lawn:
These be but proof we cleave the sky
And still round on and on and on.
Fear not for moulting feathers; nay,
But rather fear when all seems fair,
And care is far away.
Come, let us kindle faith in God!
He made, He kept, He still can keep.
The storm obeys His burning rod,
The storm brought Christ to walk the deep.
Trust God to round His own at will;
Trust God to keep His own for aye—
Or strife or strike, or well or ill;
An eagle climbing up the sky—
A meteor down from heaven hurled—
Trust God to round, reform, or rock
His new-born baby world.
III
How full the great, full-hearted seas
That lave high, white Alaska's feet!
How densely green the dense green trees!
How sweet the smell of wood! how sweet!
What sense of high, white newness where
This new world breathes the new, blue air
That never breath of man or breath
Of mortal thing considereth!
And O, that Borealis light!
The angel with his flaming sword
And never sense of night!
IV
Are these the walls of Paradise—
Yon peaks the gates man may not pass?
Lo, everlasting silence lies
Along their gleaming ways of glass!
Just silence and that sword of flame;
Just silence and Jehovah's name,
Where all is new, unnamed, and white!
Come, let us read where angels write—
“In the beginning God”—aye, these
The waters where God's Spirit moved;
These, these, the very seas!
Just one deep, wave-washed chariot wheel
Such sunset as that far first day!
An unsheathed sword of flame and steel;
Then battle flashes; then dismay,
And mad confusion of all hues
That earth and heaven could infuse,
Till all hues softly fused and blent
In orange worlds of wonderment:
Then dying day, in kingly ire,
Struck back with one last blow, and smote
The world with him molten fire.
So fell Alaska, proudly, dead
In battle harness where he fought.
But falling, still high o'er his head
Far flashed his sword in crimson wrought,
Till came his kingly foeman, Dusk,
In garments moist with smell of musk.
The bent moon moved down heaven's steeps
Low-bowed, as when a woman weeps;
Bowed low, half-veiled in widowhood;
Then stars tiptoed the peaks in gold
And burned brown sandal-wood.
Fit death of Day; fit burial rite
Of white Alaska! Let us lay
This leaflet 'mid the musky night
Upon his tomb. Come, come away;
For Phaon talks and Sappho turns
To where the light of heaven burns
To love light, and she leans to hear
With something more than mortal ear.
The while the ship has pushed her prow
So close against the fir-set shore
You breathe the spicy bough.
V
Some red men by the low, white beach;
Camp fires, belts of dense, black fir:
She leans as if she still would reach
To him the very soul of her.
The red flames cast a silhouette
Against the snow, above the jet
Black, narrow night of fragrant fir,
Behold, what ardent worshiper!
Lim'd out against a glacier peak,
With strong arms crossed upon his breast;
The while she feels him speak:
“How glad was I to walk with Death
Far down his dim, still, trackless lands,
Where wind nor wave nor any breath
Broke ripples o'er the somber sands.
I walked with Death as eagerly
As ever I had sailed this sea.
Then on and on I searched, I sought,
Yet all my seeking came to naught.
I sailed by pleasant, peopled isles
Of song and summer time; I sailed
Ten thousand weary miles!
“I heard a song! She had been sad,
So sad and ever drooping she;
How could she, then, in song be glad
The while I searched? It could not be.
And yet that voice! so like it seemed,
I questioned if I heard or dreamed.
She smiled on me. This made me scorn
My very self; for I was born
To loyalty. I would be true
Unto my love, my soul, my self,
Whatever death might do.
“I fled her face, her proud, fair face,
Her songs that won a world to her.
Had she sat songless in her place,
Sat with no single worshiper,
Sat with bowed head, sad-voiced, alone,
I might have known! I might have known!
But how could I, the savage, know
This sun, contrasting with that snow,
Would waken her great soul to song
That still thrills all the ages through?
I blindly did such wrong!
“Again I fled. I ferried gods;
Yet, pining still, I came to pine
Where drowsy Lesbos Bacchus nods
And drowned my soul in Cyprian wine.
Drowned! drowned my poor, sad soul so deep,
I sank to where damned serpents creep!
Then slowly upward; round by round
I toiled, regained this vantage-ground.
And now, at last, I claim mine own,
As some long-banished king comes back
To battle for his throne.”
VI
I do not say that thus he spake
By word of mouth, by human speech;
The sun in one swift flash will take
A photograph of space and reach
The realm of stars. A soul like his
Is like unto the sun in this:
Her soul the plate placed to receive
The swift impressions, to believe,
To doubt no more than you might doubt
The wondrous midnight world of stars
That dawn has blotted out.
VII
And Phaon loved her; he who knew
The North Pole and the South, who named
The stars for her, strode forth and slew
Black, hairy monsters no man tamed;
And all before fair Greece was born,
Or Lesbos yet knew night or morn.
No marvel that she knew him when
He came, the chiefest of all men.
No marvel that she loved and died,
And left such marbled bits of song—
Of broken Phidian pride.
VIII
Oh, but for that one further sense
For man that man shall yet possess!
That sense that puts aside pretense
And sees the truth, that scorns to guess
Or grope, or play at blindman's buff,
But knows rough diamonds in the rough!
Oh, well for man when man shall see,
As see he must man's destiny!
Oh, well when man shall know his mate,
One-winged and desolate, lives on
And bravely dares to wait!
IX
Full morning found them, and the land
Received them, and the chapel gray;
Some Indian huts on either hand,
A smell of pine, a flash of spray,—
White, frozen rivers of the sky
Far up the glacial steeps hard by.
Far ice-peaks flashed with sudden light,
As if they would illume the rite,
As if they knew his story well,
As if they knew that form, that face,
And all that Time could tell.
X
They passed dusk chieftans two by two,
With totem gods and stroud and shell
They slowly passed, and passing through,
He bought of all—he knew them well.
And one, a bent old man and blind,
He put his hands about, and kind
And strange words whispered in his ear,
So soft, his dull soul could but hear.
And hear he surely did, for he,
With full hands, lifted up his face
And smiled right pleasantly.
How near, how far, how fierce, how tame!
The polar bear, the olive branch;
The dying exile, Christ's sweet name—
Vast silence! then the avalanche!
How much this little church to them—
Alaska and Jerusalem!
The pair passed in, the silent pair
Fell down before the altar there,
The Greek before the gray Greek cross,
And Phaon at her side at last,
For all her weary loss.
The bearded priest came, and he laid
His two hands forth and slowly spake
Strange, solemn words, and slowly prayed,
And blessed them there, for Jesus' sake.
Then slowly they arose and passed,
Still silent, voiceless to the last.
They passed: her eyes were to his eyes,
But his were lifted to the skies,
As looking, looking, that lorn night,
Before the birth of God's first-born
As praying still for Light.
XI
So Phaon knew and Sappho knew
Nor night nor sadness any more. . . .
How new the old world, ever new,
When white Love walks the shining shore!
They found their long-lost Eden, found
Her old, sweet songs; such dulcet sound
Of harmonies as soothe the ear
When Love and only Love can hear.
They found lost Eden; lilies lay
Along their path, whichever land
They journeyed from that day.
XII
They never died. Great loves live on.
You need not die and dare the skies
In forms that poor creeds hinge upon
To pass the gates of Paradise.
I know not if that sword of flame
Still lights the North, and leads the same
As when he passed the gates of old.
I know not if they braved the bold,
Defiant walls that fronted them
Where awful Saint Elias broods,
Wrapped in God's garment-hem.
I only know they found the lost,
The long-lost Eden, found all fair
Where naught had been but hail and frost;
As Love finds Eden anywhere.
And wouldst thou, too, live on and on?
Then walk with Nature till the dawn.
Aye, make thy soul worth saving—save
Thy soul from darkness and the grave.
Love God not overmuch, but love
God's world which He called very good;
Then lo, Love's white sea-dove!
XIII
I know not where lies Eden-land;
I only know 't is like unto
God's kingdom, ever right at hand—
Ever right here in reach of you.
Put forth thy hand, or great or small,
In storm or sun, by sea or wood,
And say, as God hath said of all,
Behold, it all is very good.
I know not where lies Eden-land;
I only say receive the dove:
I say put forth thy hand.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]
