University of Virginia Library

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.