University of Virginia Library

SECTION II. Songs of Gramarye.

A SONG OF GRAMARYE.

NAKED NATURE.

I had a vision of an angel face;
It came to me one magic April morning,
When every flower through every sunwashed place
Was breaking out in beauty and new grace
And put on fresh adorning,
With shy scorning;
As if, with sudden flame and secret strife
And throbbing heart of thirst,
At last they burst
Into the glory of a greater life.
And this bright Angel face
Stept out of Space,
Which as some blue and palpitating blossom
Opened itself and showed the swelling bosom
And that white wonder of the naked form,
As soft as sleep and most divinely warm,
From the small golden head down to the feet
That trod in passion proud
Upon a cloud—
A form delicious pure and virgin sweet.
Naked, but clothed in light of coloured vesture,
And with unfathomed eyes
Like azure skies,
She stood before me with compelling gesture,
Bathed in a glow that never fell on man,
Or fairest woman
Of most perfect plan
Who gathers to her all the glories human;
Clothed in her own bright beauty
Like a dress,
Which seemed her duty—
That great loveliness;
All flushed with passion
That was utter purity,
She read the fashion
Of the dim futurity,
With eyes that travelled
On and on through haunted
Space and unravelled
Riddles dark, undaunted;
Ablush with love
That played in lambent fire,
With brow above
And feet of earth's desire,
She stayed my wandering with her waving hand
Whose waving was command,
And by the glamour of her conquering look,
And lips like rosy rhymes
Telling the stories of all climes and times,
Their changes and their chimes,
And poetries of every blessed book.
But, lo, the beauty of each separate flower,
Each individual grace
Poured on her face
The writing and the rapture of its power;
And she partook of each
Within the compass of her bright embrace,
Whate'er might gladden her exceeding dower
And living lessons teach.
But then O was it sound of laughing waters,
Or waft of summer winds
From fragrant Inds
Where star beams walk with moonlight's magic daughters?
A fount of music broke
From overflowing silence and the shrine
That seemed a holy shrine;
Spirit to spirit spoke,
And I awoke
To the full stature of a strength divine.
Round me her radiant arms
In dew and fire were folded,
And I was moulded
By the deep impress of her Angel charms
To something fairer still
Than any earthly shape by sculptor skill,
And the celestial rose that was her mouth,
Laden with all the perfume of the south
And other ages gone
When larger sunlight shone,
Shed into me a tempest of vitality
And riches of reality,
And while it breathed
Upon me I was caught and carried up,
As rapt with some intoxicating cup,
And mixed with her and with her life enwreathed. I saw
The meaning and the might of law,
The miracle and mystery
In all their history
Of all high things that harass souls of men,
Laid bare before me in the light of love
With beauty so terrifical
And bliss magnifical,
That in a flash of wonder every ken
Stood out like steps of fire to God above.
And when she laid
Voluptuous warm hands
O'erfull of passion and of utter purity
Upon my burdened brow—
And when she said
In words that with their brightness were obscurity
Unspeakable great thoughts, that ranged all lands
And seas divided by the venturous prow,
And reached through all futurity—
I was afraid.
But when she set her quickening lipson mine
In the full rapture of their rhythmic flame,
That seemed to twine
And in the shadow shine
About the hidden bases of my frame,
And mould it into something new, the same
As hers and half divine,
New courage came.
And with the glow of that creative kiss
Unclosing to me all the wells of bliss,
A voice that sounded every height
Of light,
And every deep
Where nought is made amiss
That brings the vision of the heaven called sleep,
Spoke to me of the height and the abyss.
“For ever now thy life is sealed
And healed
Of sorrow with no morrow but the day
That tricks in suffering even the noontide ray,
And sickness with the saddening blot
Or spot
Of trouble which is double with the shame
Not less a burden if it bears no name,
A living part of human things
If wings
And flying with vain trying to the morn
So big with blossom though it gives but thorn,
Which is earth's dark exiguous lot—
A spot
Which nowise may by mortals be forgot,
And to their brightest grandeur clings
And stings.
Henceforth thine cannot be a sordid choice,
Since thou hast seen my face and heard my voice;
But with my being thou art bathed
And swathed,
And cleansed from all the coarse and common dust
With all the keen corroding rust
Of lust,
Uplifted to the same sublimer goal
And gathered in a kindred whole
And soul,
Which blends thee with me in a kindred trust
Beyond each flitting shape and gust,
And must.
For thou hast fully seen
In all her stature
Unveiled the awful Queen
And naked Nature,
And known the secret sight
Not known to learning
But granted to the might
Of maiden yearning,
And felt my fervent lips'
Sweet palpitation
In ecstasy's eclipse
And education,
To thine in living breath
Divinely married
In rapture that were death,
If long they tarried.
And thou hast drunken deep
The mystic torrent,
And wakest not to weep
In strife abhorrent,
Washed in the quickening waves
That purge the mortal,
To others only graves,
To thee life's portal.
And now
Behold the blessed truth that turns
The lock of every riddle, on the brow
Of wrinkled age
Or writ on funeral urns
Or scarlet lips just opening the first page
Of purest passion
In its fiery fashion,
Or dimpled baby hands that clasp another's
Who one mad moment has the hungry fill
That is a mother's
Then unclaspt are still.
Behold,
The secret of the world is sex
En, amor regit omnia, vivat rex!
And thus the gray and old
Are turned to gold,
By union and communion of the parts
Divided but then guided by their hearts
That never can be cold,
And shaped anew
Of fire and dew
In the same magic mould.
And thus from wedded grace,
Come fruits and flowers
Through shining showers,
When heaven and earth embrace;
When pleasure meets with pain,
And life and death
Unite their breath,
The man is born again.
From kissing seas and strands,
That kiss and quarrel
With waves and coral,
Uprise new forms and lands.
And rules in all the fates
The sexual thirst,
Which from the first
Creates and recreates.
This quickens every gloom,
And rolls afar
The radiant star,
And makes the crimson bloom.
Behold,
This is the universal law,
Stamped on the petty straw
And on the planet,
And in the frailest fibre of each fold
Whereby all textures hold,
And in the awe
And miracle of earth since God began it.
This is the rule
Of every gas
And mass
And in the movement of each molecule,
The sexual plea
Compelling every atom,
That thrills a cosmic system or a sea,
The lily on the lea,
A churl or Chatham;
Behind the theologian's bloody articles
And forms of iron
As in the pink siren,
And in the mystic strife and dance of particles
Repelling and attracting
Each and all,
In ever-interacting
Rise and fall
And ebb and flow
That quiver to and fro,
This turns the white cheek ruddy
On the maid
Who lingers with her love yet half afraid,
And on the peach that fires the garden wall,
And frames the study
Of some saintly Paul,
An antechamber to the bliss
Of heaven,
With all its holy leaven
In one kiss.
This makes the road so mired less muddy,
Brings
The ragged beggars purple robes of kings
And crowns,
And wipes away the bloody
Frowns
From garments rolled in battle;
And a child
Can draw
By the sweet tether of its law
And tender prattle
Bosoms rude and wild,
And fiercest cattle
Home subdued and mild.
The harlot steps that clamber
To the bed
Beneath the moon's white witness calm and still,
The bloom that is a bridal chamber
Shed
Even as you clasp it at your careless will;
The baby form that shows
A face averted—
A bond asserted,
As the sunrise glows;
The crash of antlered heads,
The lone dark stations
Which duty treads,
The chemist's combinations,
The rush of elements and souls
That marry,
The force that conquers and controls
Prince Harry—
They all are one,
And all alike are done
In man and metal
By the same sweet yoke
That woke
A great peninsula or petal.
The sexual fire
That roses morning's brows
And bows
And tames the Titan's awful ire,
Illumes the glow-worm's lamp
And sets its stamp
Upon the flies that deck
The snowy deck
And midnight tresses of the beauteous Mexican,
And strikes its flame
Of glorious burning shame
In the crabbed student at his musty lexicon.
Two portions of one Broken Heart,
His Heart,
God set apart,
Who fashioned earth and all
And set eternity in great and small
For man to win
And find himself therein
With God;
And by the blessed light of love
Whereby he trod,
Which bound in one bright tether
Though parted things below and things above,
He bade man draw
(By that benignant law)
All things alike in earth and heaven together
Closer and closer still;
That God and man
And Nature
With the one same legislature
Might so be one in will
And perfect being,
And one in seeing
In the shade and shine,
By the great sexual human thirst divine.”
She spoke, and all the wonder
Of all flowers
With flushes drawn from under
By warm showers,
Flashed out in fire asunder
All their powers
Above her and around her,
And the rose
With crimson wreaths enwound her
White repose.
But from her golden tresses
Fell a rain
Of lilies, like caresses
Sweet as pain.
And in her conquering glances
Glowed the light
And love of all romances
And delight.
And, lo, the sound of thunder
Of far climes,
And music with the plunder
From all times!
She breathed on me the story
Of the lands,
And bathed me in the glory
Of her hands;
She clothed me with her kisses
And her grace,
And steeped me in the blisses
Of her face;
Till in me dawned the seeing
Beyond strife,
And through me glowed the being
Of all life.
But then at last
The Vision past,
And left
A rose at rest
Upon my breast
Bereft.
And still at morn
I know the thorn
Must be,
And when it burns
That face returns
To me.
And all the world is that one glorious sight,
And all the world is fire and dew and light.

THE ARCHITEKTON.

Day by day the fabric rose
Rich in marble court and column,
Very calm and white and solemn,
In a rapture of repose
And a beauty
That seemed duty,
Just as flowers in spring unclose.
Line on line
The splendour sprang,
Shaped into a holy shrine,
Earthly half and half divine;
Leaf with blossom did entwine;
Though no clink of chisel rang
Nor the clang
Of any hammer,
With its clamour
Talking in its eager tones
To the echoes and the stones;
Never tool,
Used in any sculptor's school,
Sounded forth
Messages to south or north,
Playing brightly,
Straying lightly
On a bevelled edge or curve,
That a hair's breadth would not swerve.
Stone on stone
The fabric stept,
Always higher,
Always nigher
To the stars upon their throne,
Which above it sleepless kept
Watch alone,
When mortals slept;
While the Architekton wept.
Mortals ate and drank and married
And about the winecup tarried
Sad and soiled,
While the maker of it toiled
Day and night and upward carried
Still his thought,
And grimly wrought
As for life
In an ecstasy of strife.
No one heard
The temple grow,
Though all heaven itself was stirr'd
And it mounted ever on,
Perfect as a Parthenon
White as snow,
Washed in sunset's crimson glow;
As in silence the adept
Worked and wept
With glorious tears,
Hopes and fears
Whose lightning spears,
Stabbed and stoled the dolorous years;
And men crept;
Till to light each turret leapt.
No one heard
The builded word,
No one saw
The gates of gold,
Wonderful without a flaw
And obedient to its law
Like the gates of dawn unfold
In expectancy and pride,
Which for God himself divide,
When He treads across the sky
Out of gloom
Into day's young rosy room,
Through His calm eternity,
Here in gleam
And there in glimmer,
Like a dream
Now bright, now dimmer.
No one saw
The scene of awe.
No one felt
A poet dwelt
Royally among the rabble
That could only buzz and babble,
Steal and smite
And bark and bite
And in dirty pleasures dabble;
As he moved
In mystic way,
As he proved
The iron and clay,
Fashioning with love profuse
And his skill
Each old abuse
And grey ill,
From above reborn again
Out of death in fiery pain,
To the wonder of his will;
While he knelt
Before the shrine
And became himself divine.
No one felt,
What love he dealt.
No one knew
The dreadful dew,
Blood and tears and burning sweat
Wherewith course on course was set,
Arch on arch
In upward march,
Till in crowning grace they met
In the wedlock of the arts,
Breathing passion through all parts;
While it flashed
Aloft like flame,
And was dashed
Through its white frame
With the light of sun and moon
And the stars when night has noon,
And was splashed
With other rays
Like the glow of bygone days.
No one knew,
The way it grew,
No one cared
How ill he fared,
When the poet's life was smitten
And the shadow of a ban
Passing fell athwart the plan
Which upon his heart was written;
While he spent himself for men,
In a more than cosmic ken,
Drawing riches
From all lands,
For proud niches
Where calm hands
Moved and moulded,
And unfolded
Leaf and bosom
Of pure blossom,
Bud and bristle
Of the thistle,
And the smile of angel faces
Peeping from the thorns' embraces,
And the glimpse of sudden feet
In their naked beauty sweet.
No one cared,
What deeds he dared.
Yet each day from some new spiracles
Breathed new miracles,
As the fabric spread through space,
Hourly soared and gathered grace
From the noonshine
And the moonshine,
From the motion
Of the ocean,
From the freshness of the air
When the morning
In adorning
Laughs to find itself so fair;
Dim with porches
Deep in shade,
Where red torches
Figures made.
O the joys above and under,
As if heaven were burst asunder!
Corridors that ran for ever
In the flight
Of marble might
With an infinite endeavour,
Through the marvel of the mazes'
Mystic sight,
Now in blackness, now in blazes
Of fierce light;
Vestibules with veiled portals
Opening into chambers vast,
Where immortals
Might recline at God's repast;
Jewelled chairs,
And stately stairs
Climbing by degrees of glory
Through their stages
Like a story
Stamped in mighty marble pages,
From the mint
Of imperishable print.
Yet invisibly it grew,
Yet inaudibly it towered
As it flowered,
As it drew
All the glamour of the rose,
All the freshness of the dew
When the pearly dawn is new,
All the world of white repose
In the lilies which disclose
Secrets only breathed to few,
Every bloom
And every gloom,
Cloud and light
And day and night,
Virgin leaves
And yellow sheaves,
Sun and showers
And snowy bowers,
Madness, mirth
And fiery leaven,
All the poetry of earth,
All the ecstasies of heaven—
All those to itself it drew,
As it grew
And great branches outward threw.
No one heeded,
No one stood
Wondering before the pile,
Though the lands its lessons needed
And the smile
Vesting it like maidenhood,
Rippling down each rosy aisle
Touched with sunset's lingering guile.
But the Master
Toiled the faster,
For he knew
Art was long and life was brittle—
Life was little,
And disaster
To the rocks of ruin blew,
If men nodded
And but plodded
Though with wings that heavenward flew.
And at times
The great Architekton caught
The far chimes
Of grand past ages,
Grace unsought
And gifts unbought
By mere wages,
And enwove them in his song
With a music low and long,
New and old,
Marvellous and manifold:
With the echoes sounding on,
Sounding on
And leaping, talking,
Running, walking,
Climbing, creeping,
Laughing, weeping,
Flying, calling,
Rising, falling,
Now aloud, then mild and meek
As they played at hide and seek
Round the corners,
In the shimmer and the shade
Of the ghostly colonnade,
Merry here and there as mourners
Sad and low
And soft and slow,
Up and down and to and fro,
Through the pillared portico;
Then with sighing
And with crying,
And the whisper
As of some wee baby lisper,
Dying, dying, dying, dying,
All in play
And far away,
Far away.
For many nations,
Many æons,
Dirges, lullabies and pæans
In his harmony were one;
And he laid the vast foundations
Of those flame-like exaltations
In his eldest dearest son;
And the gates
Arose like fates
All insatiable in hunger,
And devoured
At last the younger
Only thus with blood endowered;
As in ages long ago,
Long ago,
Builded under night and noon,
Builded to the magic moon,
Hiel raised his Jericho;
While the palm trees' stately bound
Stood like sentinels around,
And the roses flashed like fire
In their red and white attire,
And the Moab mountain's hue
In the distance
Dim as fairy land's existence
Melted blue.
So the Architekton wrought
Thrones of thought
And for sacramental wine
Chiseled chalice,
Pure, divine,
And solemn tables
Starting out from sudden gables,
Though the malice
As of destiny withstood,
In his holy hardihood.
And his knife
With separation's
Consecrations
Spared not treasure, time or toil,
Love or life—
Built his being and his heart
(Burning like the sacred oil)
With the cunning of his art
Wooed as passion wooes a wife—
Built the calmness and the strife
And the spoil
Of every feeling
(As he laboured, fighting, kneeling)
In each part, throughout the whole,
Till the splendid work was finished
And no more
From his great store
Could be added, nought diminished,
And it was a living soul.
Then he bade
The people enter
Through a hundred carven doors,
Each a centre
Of the goldshine and goldshade,
Where the floors
Ran in marble left and right
Warm and wonderful and bright,
Spreading spaciously
Until graciously
Lost in light;
Where the fountains leapt and luted
To each other's
Strains as brothers,
With the flitting birds that fluted
Notes that tingled
And that mingled
With the waves that soared and sang,
Till the roof with music rang.
There the hall
Serene and tall
Stretched its thousand stately pillars
White and strong
And proud and long,
As if stepping to a song
And the highest art's fulfillers,
In its royalty of room
With its riches all abloom
By the birds like lightning crost
And with flowers like coloured snow
Torn and tost
And paved below;
While clear faces calm and grave,
Poet and philosopher,
From the chastened chapiter
And the august architrave
Looked in love
From bliss above.
But the people mouthed and mocked,
As they flocked
To the wonder of his art,
Wherein he had wrought his heart
And his life;
And they murmured, “Give us bread,
Give us butter,
And the blessings of the gutter;
For the world is over rife
With cathedral forms and fables
And their parts;
We would rather styes and stables
Than your arts.”
So they turned away in scorn
From that miracle of grace,
And the new and fairer morn;
Clouds fell on the Poet's face;
Every thought became a thorn,
And his birth his burying place.
Wealth and wisdom, toil and time,
All he was and all he had,
Chant of battle, ocean chime,
Treasure plucked from every clime,
Truths that leave the bosom glad,
Summer's breath
And life and death,
Spells that make a people mad
With the might
Of pure delight,
Met and mingled in the glory
And the gloom
Of his great story,
Clasping heaven with sacred tie,
Though it only told his doom—
Though it only was his tomb;
But it lived, and cannot die.

EASTER EVE.

THE SECRET.

'Twas dusk, and one was walking by my side
In all the glorious dawn
Of maiden joy—
The blessed inextinguishable pride
From heavenly fountains drawn,
Divinely coy.
But neither spoke, though music more than sound
And more than studied arts
With every power,
Flowed from the silence with the darkness wound,
Until our wedded hearts
Burst into flower.
And then the ages backward roll'd their gates
Of endless space and time,
And truth unsought
With all the wonders of all worlds and fates
Met in one perfect chime,
A single thought.
And we beheld the secret treasured long,
Through golden mists of centuries and song.

THE DAFFODIL.

A DIRTY NIGHT.

“A Dirty Night” the coastguard said!
I leaned into the dark
And stabbed the shadows with quick looks
Too fond to be afraid,
That read the farthest flickering spark
As written broad in books.
Where was my child, my sailor boy,
My light, my life, my only joy,
Who early sailed that morning
My dread of danger scorning,
As if the ocean were his toy,
In all his young adorning?
His kiss was tingling on my brow—
I feel it now,
Though fifty empty years have past
Nor brought at last
Beneath the blue or clouded dome
My darling home.
It was a dreadful night, the surf
Drove inland far on tree and turf,
And scared the seabirds flew
All draggled shoreward
As I gazed nor'ward,
The blast so fiercely blew;
With slant wings rumpled
And feathers crumpled,
As higher still it grew.
A horror from the break of day
Upon me like the sunset lay,
And as I leaned into the night
Which my great famished love made bright,
I would the billows
Were my pillows
To bear me to my heart's delight.
The hungry waves
Seemed rolling graves
Heaped high above the myriads fled,
Who voyaged forth nor dreamed of wrack
But never to their own came back,
And now were numbered with the dead.
And where was he
So dear to me,
Who gaily sallied out to roam
Upon the cruel climbing foam,
As bold and bright
As morning's light
Athwart his yellow native loam?
I saw no sign
But gloom malign
On the horizon and the sea,
My breast was numb,
And heaven seemed dumb
To my heart-broken voiceless plea.
I gave the passing coastguard hail
And told him of the lingering sail
That soon must bring my darling back;
He turned a troubled eye on me,
And slewing slowly on his track,
“It is a dirty night,” said he.

THE BABY PILGRIMS.

THE LIVING DEAD.

CLOUDLAND.

SHE CAME.

THE YELLOW LEAF.

THE CROSS OF FIRE.

THE RIVER OF TEARS.

I came to the River of Tears,
Where the maidens watched and wept
And the thistles with threatening spears
Through the shivering shadows crept.
I said to myself, “I will track
This dolorous tide to its source,
I will follow the windings back
By the snares of the snaky course.”
But the thorns arose in their might
And they thrust with maligant arms,
And white bosoms of warm delight
Met mine with voluptuous charms.
And white hands like the clambering vine
With the scent of the drowsy grape,
Caught my own, and through dews divine
Burst the bloom of each shining shape.
But I hurried along in haste,
Though the small feet glimmered white
And the sinuous easy waist
Had a joy that was infinite.
While the languorous hot breath came
And went on my very cheek,
And the lips with their scarlet flame
Made my purpose wan and weak.
O the bliss of the fragrant face,
O, the passion of clinging hands,
O the madness of naked grace
In the loves of those poppied lands!
But I passed through the purple air
And the limbs that disdained their 'tire,
And the gold of the gloried hair,
Like a brand redeemed from fire.
I refused the eyes, though they flashed
With a cruel and conquering light,
Through their curtains heavily lashed,
In the quest of a vaster sight.
They were only a dream to me,
A dream of the summer south,
Bare shoulder and amorous knee
And the ravishing rosy mouth.
So I came to the Holy Mount,
In a dim and delicious land;
And lo, there was a silvery Fount
That gushed from a Baby's hand.
And I said to myself, “O this
At last is the blessed Source
Of the tide with the sad abyss,
And its never-ending course;
I have traversed the world of the dead
And the world of the beautiful fears,
I have come to the solemn head
Of the sacred River of Tears.”
But the Baby pointed up
To the misty peaks of blue,
For the hand with its lily cup
Was not the rejoicing clue.
So I looked, and again the stream
Brake full on my troubled gaze,
Like a ghastly tide in a dream
That is seen through a mocking haze.
But the pathway grew to a height
And the bounding walls were steep,
And the waves in their weary flight
Did nothing but wail and weep.
And I struggled yet sternly on
Up the arduous narrowing space,
Through the garish gleam that shone,
Like the smile on a dying face.
And the rocks were terrible swords
As if human flesh were sweet,
And the briars were gins and cords
That gript at my tottering feet.
And they turned into loathsome shapes,
Now in glimmer and now in gloom,
As if scowling fiends or apes
Were shutting me in to doom;
Till I closed my desperate eyes
With the torturing stress and strain,
For the lurid and scornful skies
Beat down on my haunted brain.
Then I came with my burden of care
To a bar on the bitter road,
Where a skeleton bleached and bare
Lay crushed by a heavier load;
And a gurgling groaning thread
Trickled down, but could scarce escape
From the mouldering sides of the dead,
As it rotted with ribs agape.
And I said to myself, “At length
I arrive at the evil Source,
Which saps our desires and strength
With the blight of its barren course;
For here in this mortal mass
Is the taint of the murmuring years,
That smothers the smiles that pass
With the rolling River of Tears.”
But a fleshless hand uprose,
While the bones with a gruesome thrill
Seemed to sigh in their grim repose,
And it pointed me forward still.
Yes, it beckoned me higher yet
To the home of the thunder cloud,
Where the sun was about to set
In the shade of a crimson shroud.
But now I could hardly scale
The fence of the iron crags,
As they loomed before me pale
With their horrible juts and jags.
And the lightning leapt and fell
On the track of the trembling peaks,
Till I seemed like a soul in hell
In the rain that the judgment wreaks;
For it toyed with my draggled hair
And I bathed in the quivering fire,
While the boding sulphurous air
Was the breath of a funeral pyre.
But above me yet the tide
Dropt down in a dwindling flood,
From the toppling mountain side
In a blazing streak of blood.
I could scarcely climb and crawl
Up the threatening thwart sheer path,
That rose a forbidding wall
With ruin and woe and wrath.
But I still toiled feebler on
With trouble of foot and hand,
Till the setting sun was gone
Burnt out like a smouldering brand.
And I said to myself, “The Night
With its cloak is the fatal Source,
I have followed the stream aright
Through the maze of its upward course;
In its mould is the mischief cast
Of the withering joys and ears,
I have solved the riddle at last
And the truth of the River of Tears.”
But from out of the shadowy womb
With its terrors grim and great,
As a voice from a sealed tomb
Came a message of fearful fate.
And the lightning made a sign
With its crooked finger of red,
And it scrabbled a score malign
On the darkness overhead;
And it pointed me still more far
To the infinite depths of Space,
To the dim and distant star
And the planet's dwelling place.
So I mounted the ladder of air,
And it felt beneath my feet
Like the steps of a giant stair
Where the stone of the iron meet.
But the stream was my comrade still
With its gossamer thread of fire,
Like an almost viewless rill
Or the ghost of a dead desire.
And the breezes buoyed me up
When I stumbled upon the brink,
And the cloud was an ebon cup
That gave of its treasures to drink.
Lo, my weakness passed away
And my paces refused to halt,
As I climbed without one delay
To the purple spangled vault.
For the waft as of sweeter lips
And the hold as of stronger hands,
Dispelled the last weary eclipse,
While I traversed those wonder lands.
Till at last in my journey I came
To a marvellous Gate of Light,
And a bubbling Fount of Flame
That arose from the realms of Night.
But, behold, as I stricken stopt,
At the porch of the blasting flood,
From the dreadful threshold dropt
Little globes as of living blood.
And I said to myself, “Ah, here
Lies the seat of the very Source,
In the breast of the burning sphere,
Is unravelled the endless course;
I see the beginning of all
The sorrow that flows and sears,
I descry the fount of the fall
Of the terrible River of Tears.”
But then from the mystery broke
The sound of a sudden breath,
And the awful Silence spoke
The enigma of life and death.
“The stream has the blessed start
That you sought, as you blindly trod,
In the riven and bleeding Heart
Of the homeless crucified God.”

NATURE'S SECRET.

I asked the red rose, how its colour came
From cold black earth in blushing robes of flame;
I asked the lily, how the snood of snow
Grew on its dewy form from death below;
I asked the violet, how it got the scent
Which touched our souls like some sweet instrument;
I asked the leaf, how to that living green
Laboratories toiled with hand unseen;
I asked the poet, how he caught the song
Which to its music rolled the world along;
I asked the speaker, how his dream's desire
Like lightning flashed and set the earth afire;
I asked the soldier, how his conquering sword
Razed mountains in the battles of the Lord;
I asked the woman, how her scarlet lips
Wrought mischief more than earthquake and eclipse;
I asked the baby, how it drew the trust
Which leapt to God like incense from the dust;
I asked the ocean, how it won the grace
Of freedom shadowed in a maiden's face;
I asked the heart, how rose the hungering cry
That nought could answer but Eternity;
And one response from all in concert fell,
“We know the secret but we cannot tell.”

MY CASTLE IN THE AIR.

THE DARK ANGEL.

In the fair and free beginning of the bright and happy years,
I was born in shine and shadow
Of the mountain and the meadow,
With the lisping as of laughter, and a trouble as of tears.
Ah, the prophet found me helpful and the priest he bound me slave,
And in temples dim and awful
With their bloody rites unlawful
I was present at the sacrifice and dug the victim's grave.
Out of ghastly groves that stretched strange arms and reared a horrid head
Making dusky court and column,
With a murmur sad and solemn
I arose in garments grey and held my converse with the dead.
Weeping mothers knew and cursed me as they heard my trailing robe,
When it rustled round the bosom
With its lily baby blossom,
As I came in mournful mission for the treasures of the globe.
And the children fled with seared and sobbing breasts when I drew near
From my ghostly track of terror,
And the foot that with no error
Strode straight onward though through iron ranks of clashing sword and spear.
But I see nought of the sadness with these eyes bereaved and blind,
And from trodden paths of duty
Yet I reap my bliss and beauty,
Though I leave such ruined homes, and scared and broken hearts behind.
I am simply a Dark Angel and must go where I am bid
On my errand long and lonely,
Up and down the earth, and only
In the curtained haunts of twilight and the tomb or coffin-lid.
And I strike in love and mercy and the majesty of strength,
Just to make the heedless careful
Or the ribald lips more prayerful
And to light the world with vigils through its corridors at length.
If I bring but shade and sorrow and my trembling touch is cold
And to weakness gloom and anguish,
While the little flowerets languish
At my breath, it is because my sleepless frame is thin and cold.
But I am the foe of sickness and I ever fight with sin
On my veiled and endless journey,
Like a knight who rides a tourney
For the beautiful and noble and is sure that he must win.
Though I forage oft with famine and the pestilence and blood
And red clouds of wrathful sunset,
And no night can stay my onset,
Yet I fill the shrines with suppliants and cleanse the tainted flood.
For where love is baulked or powerless I know my task, I hear,
And from stormy deeps or stillness
In the brooding hour of illness
I awake, with all my scourges of the Night—for I am FEAR.

THE RULING PASSION.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.

THE BRIDGE OF DREAD.

FOLLOW THY STAR.

WIND OF THE IRON PEAKS.

THE MANDATE OF SILENCE.

OUR LOST LADY OF HONOUR.

THE MOUNTAIN-TOP VIEW.

(A Theophany).

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.

GENIUS IS WAITING.

THE SORROW OF IT.

NEPENTHE.

WHAT IS THE VISION?

THE LARK.

LIFE AND DEATH.

AT TIMES.

THE NEW WORLD.

THE SPIRIT OF THE MOOR.