Chapter III

“And now the Powers of Water, Fire, and Air,
And that dread Thing behind the lightning’s light
Cry, _Master us, O man, for thou art fair;
To serve thee is our freedom and our might_.

“_We love the craft that found our hidden place—
The beauty of the cunning of thy hands;
We love the quiet empire of thy face:
Hook us with steel and harness us with bands!_

“_Make us the Genius of the crookèd plow;
The Spirit in the whisper of the wheels;
The unseen Presence sitting at the prow,
To urge the wanderings huge, sea-cleaving keels._

“They come from ocean and the sun’s blue tent;
He lays bright harness on them, and his word;
New pulse from continent to continent
Runs; the dead places of the world are stirred.

“Bearing the sceptres of the mystery,
Man rides at elbow with the flying gale,
Shrinks up the ancient spaces: land and sea
Dispute his wingèd way without avail—

“All but the Arctic silences, where stands
The Spirit of the Winters, and denies,
With incontestable gesture of white hands,
And lure of baleful beauty in her eyes.

“It is the hour of man: new Purposes,
Broad-shouldered, press against the world’s slow gate;
And voices from the vast eternities
Still preach the soul’s austere apostolate.

“Always there will be vision for the heart,
The press of endless passion: every goal
A traveler’s tavern, whence he must depart
On new divine adventures of the soul.”

Which Was Dream?

_Suggested by an ancient Chinese classic_

I thought that I dreamed a dream one night—
That I was a moth on a joyous flight,
Under a sky the west wind cools,
Over a sky of fields and pools.
Like a tinted leaf in the wind content,
Over a wonderful world I went:
Over a valley with wavering wing
My shadow flew like a startled thing.
On through the waters spread below,
I saw my delicate phantom go—
On, till a flash, and that bright world broke,
And I was a man at a sudden stroke!

And now a wonder is on my heart
Of that world that went at a sudden start—
Of this world that came at a stroke of hand,
Hung under stars at some high command!
For now I never can surely know
Whether in deed or in dream I go;
Whether I was in that other sky
Only a dream-moth straying by;
Or whether _that_ world was the world of truth
And _this_ one only a dream forsooth;
Whether perchance for a little span
A moth is not dreaming itself a man!

Our Deathless Dead

How shall we honor them, our Deathless Dead?
With strew of laurel and the stately tread?
With blaze of banners brightening overhead?
Nay, not alone these cheaper praises bring:
They will not have this easy honoring.

Not all our cannon, breaking the blue noon,
Not the rare reliquary, writ with rune,
Not all the iterance of our reverent cheers,
Not all sad bugles blown,
Can honor them grown saintlier with the years.
Nor can we praise alone
In the majestic reticence of stone:
Not even our lyric tears
Can honor them, passed upward to their spheres.
Nay, we must meet our august hour of fate
As they met theirs; and this will consecrate,
This honor them, this stir their souls afar,
Where they are climbing to an ampler star.

The soaring pillar and the epic boast,
The flaring pageant and the storied pile
May parley with Oblivion awhile,
To save some Sargon of the fading host;
But these are vain to hold
Against the slow creep of the patient mold,
The noiseless drill of the erasing rust:
The pomp, the arch, the scroll cannot beguile
The ever-circling Destinies that must
Mix king and clown into one rabble dust.

No name of mortal is secure in stone:
Hewn on the Parthenon, the name will waste;
Carved on the Pyramid, ‘twill be effaced.
In the heroic deed and there alone,
Is man’s one hold against the craft of Time,
That humbles into dust the shaft sublime—
That mixes sculptured Karnak with the sands,
unannealed, blown about the Libyan lands.
And for the high, heroic deeds of men,
There is no crown of praise but deed again.
Only the heart-quick praise, the praise of deed,
Is faithful praise for the heroic breed.

How shall we honor them, our Deathless Dead?
How keep their mighty memories alive?
In him who feels their passion, they survive!
Flatter their souls with deed, and all is said!
In the heroic soul their souls create
Is raised remembrance past the reach of fate.
The will to serve and bear,
The will to love and dare,
And take for God unprofitable risk—
These things, these things will utter praise and pæan
Louder than lyric thunders Æschylean;
These things will build our dead unwasting obelisk.

The Builders

I dwell near a murmur of leaves,
And my labor is sweeter than rest;
For over my head in the shade of the eaves
A throstle is building his nest.

And he teaches me gospels of joy,
As he gurgles and shouts in his toil:
It is brimming with rapture, his wild employ,
Bearing a straw for spoil.

So I know ‘twas a joyous God
Who stretched out the splendor of things,
And gave to my bird the cool green sod,
A sky, and a venture of wings.

But why are my brothers so still?
They are building a lordly hall—
They are building a palace there on the hill,
But there’s never a song in it all!

The Angelus

_Suggested by Millet’s painting with this title_

Far through the lilac sky the Angelus bell
Brings back again the hail of Gabriel.
Its refluent, three-fold, immemorial rhyme
Follows the fading sun, from clime to clime—
Ripples and lives a moment in the heart,
Wherever the dark hours come and the bright depart.
From land to fading land, the whole world round,
It airily runs, a rosary of sound—
Bursts silverly on sainted Palestine;
Lives for a moment on the Apennine;
Flings on the fields of France a far refrain;
Sends a sweet trouble on the bells of Spain;
Touches Manhattan; hurries on to be
A murmur on Saint Francis by the sea.

But dreamily here the hours of evening go,
With tented haycocks in the rosy glow—
Gray heaps that Homer saw in ages gone,
Sweet-smelling heaps that Abel rested on.
And two have heard the summons on the air,
And turned from labor, the embodied prayer;
Bowed with the fine humility of trees,
Of bended barley in the quiet breeze;
As faithful as the never-failing Earth
That gives us bread of rest and bread of mirth;
As patient as the rocks that have been still
Since put into their places on the hill;
In league with Earth and all her quiet things,
Whose lives are wrapped in shade and whisperings;
In league with Earth and all the things that live
To give their toil for others and forgive.

Pausing to let the hush of evening pass
Across the soul, as shadow over grass,
They cease their day-long sacrament of toil,
That living prayer, the tilling of the soil!
And richer are their two-fold worshippings
Than flare of pontiff or the pomp of kings.
For each true deed is worship: it is prayer,
And carries its own answer unaware.
Yes, they whose feet upon good errands run
Are friends of God, with Michael of the sun;
Yes, each accomplished service of the day
Paves for the feet of God a lordlier way.
The souls that love and labor through all wrong,
They clasp His hand and make the circle strong;
They lay the deep foundation, stone by stone,
And build into Eternity God’s throne!

He is more pleased by some sweet human use
Than by the learnèd book of the recluse;
Sweeter are comrade kindnesses to Him
Than the high harpings of the Seraphim;
More than white incense circling to the dome
Is a field well furrowed or a nail sent home.
More than the hallelujahs of the choirs
Or hushed adorings at the altar fires,
Is a loaf well kneaded or a room swept clean
With light-heart love that finds no labor mean.

The Suicide

Toil-worn, and trusting Zeno’s mad belief,
A soul went wailing from the world of grief:
A wild hope led the way,
Then suddenly—dismay!
Lo, the old load was There—
The duty, the despair!
Nothing had changed: still only one escape
From its old self into the angel shape.

The Ascension

_Mary Magdalene telleth to the family at Bethany the Story of the
Ascension_

In the gray dawn they left Jerusalem,
And I rose up to follow after them.
He led toward Bethany by the narrow bridge
Of Kedron, upward to the olive ridge.
Once on the camel path beyond the City,
He looked back, struck at heart with pain and pity—
Looked backward from the two lone cedar trees
On Olivet, alive to every breeze—
Looked in a rush of sudden tears, and then
Went steadily on, never to turn again.

Near the green quiets of a little wood
The Master halted silently and stood.
The figs were purpling, and a fledgling dove
Had fallen from a windy bough above,
And lay there crying feebly by a thorn,
Its little body bruisèd and forlorn.
He stept aside a moment from the rest
And put it safely back into the nest.

Then mighty words did seem to rise in Him
And die away: even as white vapors swim
A moment on Mount Carmel’s purple steep,
And then are blown back rainless to the deep.
And once He looked up with a little start:
Perhaps some loved name passed across His heart,
Some memory of a road in Galilee,
Or old familiar rock beside the Sea.

And suddenly there broke upon our sight
A rush of angels terrible with light—
The high same host the Shepherds saw go by,
Breaking the starry night with lyric cry—
A rush of angels, wistful and aware,
That shook a thousand colors on the air—
Colors that made a music to the eye—
Glories of lilac, azure, gold, vermilion,
Blown from the air-hung delicate pavilion.

And now His face grew bright with luminous will:
The great grave eyes grew planet-like and still.
Yea, in that moment all His face fire-white
Seemed struck out of imperishable light.
Delicious apprehension shook the spirit,
With song so still that only the heart could hear it.
A sense of something sacred, starry, vast,
Greater than Earth, across the being passed.

Then with a stretching of His hands to bless,
A last unspeakable look that was caress,
Up through the vortice of bright cherubim
He rose until the august form grew dim—
Up through the blue dome of the day ascended,
By circling flights of seraphim befriended.
He was uplifted from us, and was gone
Into the darkness of another dawn.

All-Men’s Inn

Death is the only host with thoughts so large
He cannot find it in his heart to charge.

He turns no guest away: madame and sir,
This inn has bed for every traveller.

I’ll meet you, emperor—I’ll meet you, clown,
At this last tavern as we leave the town.

The Field Fraternity

When God’s warm justice is revealed—
The Kingdom that the Father planned—
His children all will equal stand
As trees upon a level field.

There each one has a goodly space—
Each yeoman of the woodland race—
Each has a foothold on the Earth,
A place for business and for mirth.

No privilege bars a tree’s access
To Earth’s whole store of preciousness.
The trees stand level on God’s floor,
With equal nearness to His store.

And trees, they have no private ends,
But stand together as close friends.
They send their beauty on all things,
An equal gift to clowns and kings.

They worry not: there is enough
Laid by for them of God’s good stuff—
Enough for all, and so no fear
Sends boding on their blameless cheer.

So from the field comes curious news—
That each one takes what it can use—
Takes what its lifted arms can hold
Of sky-sweet rain and beamy gold;
And all give back with pleasure high
Their riches to the sun and sky.

Yes, since the first star they have stood
A testament of Brotherhood.

The Errand Imperious

Proud England brooding on the days to come—
Mother of peoples and of song undying—
Hears in all lands the doubling of her drum,
Sees on all winds of the world her lone flag flying.

And Russia, young, barbaric in her power,
With untried tendons, cramped in all her length,
Chafing in snowy lair, dreams of the hour
When she shall loose on Earth her hairy strength.

And Germany, whose blonde intrepid might
Once sent her Saxon fire on every land,
Hears the great Labor Angel down the night,
Crying, “Behold, my judgments are at hand!”

And elder kingdoms by the Midland Sea,
Whose every crag has burned with battle fire,
Feel the young pulses of the days to be,
And hear far voices call them to aspire.

But harken, my America, my own,
Great Mother, with the hill-flower in your hair!
Diviner is that light you bear alone,
That dream that keeps your face forever fair.

Imperious is your errand and sublime,
And that which binds you is Orion’s band.
For some large Purpose, since the youth of Time,
You were kept hidden in the Lord’s right hand.

You were kept hidden in a secret place,
With white Sierras, white Niagaras—
Hid under stalwart stars in this far space,
Ages ere Tadmor or the man of Uz.

‘Tis yours to bear the World-State in your dream,
To strike down Mammon and his brazen breed,
To build the Brother-Future, beam on beam;
Yours, mighty one, to shape the Mighty Deed.

The armèd heavens lean down to hear your fame,
America: rise to your high-born part!
The thunders of the sea are in your name,
The splendors and the terrors in your heart.

Love’s To-Morrow

_For Florence Sharon_

Ease of heart or ache of heart,
Tell me, Love, the thing to be:
Flower of dream or dust of dream,
You can choose the one for me.

Fire or ash of fire, who knows?
Both are folded in the flame.
Life all grey and life all rose
Are hidden in your name.

_January, 1900._

The Leader of the People

Swung in the Purpose of the upper sphere,
We sweep on to the century anear.
But something makes the heart of man forebode:
There is a new Sphinx watching by the road!
Its name is Labor, and the world must hear—
Must hear and answer its dread Question—yea,
Or perish as the tribes of yesterday.
Thunder and Earthquake crouch beyond the gate;
But fear not: man is greater than his fate.
For one will come with Answer—with a word
Wherein the whole world’s gladness shall be heard;
One who will feel the grief in every breast,
The heart-cry of humanity for rest.

So we await the Leader to appear,
Lover of men, thinker and doer and seer,
The hero who will fill the labor throne
And build the Comrade Kingdom, stone by stone;
That kingdom that is greater than the Dream
Breaking through ancient vision, gleam by gleam—
Something that Song alone can faintly feel,
And only Song’s wild rapture can reveal.

Thrilled by the Cosmic Oneness he will rise,
Youth in his heart and morning in his eyes;
While glory fallen from the far-off goal
Will send mysterious splendor on his soul.
Him shall all toilers know to be their friend;
Him shall they follow faithful to the end.
Though every leaf were a tongue to cry, “Thou must!”
He will not say the unjust thing is just.
Not all the fiends that curse in the eclipse
Shall shake his heart or hush his lyric lips.
His cry for justice, it will stir the stones
From Hell’s black granite to the seraph thrones!

Earth listens for the coming of his feet;
The hushed Fates lean expectant from their seat.
He will be calm and reverent and strong,
And, carrying in his words the fire of song,
Will send a hope upon these weary men,
A hope to make the heart grow young again,
A cry to comrades scattered and afar:
_Be constellated, star by circling star;
Give to all mortals justice and forgive:
License must die that liberty may live.
Let Love shine through the fabric of the State—
Love deathless, Love whose other name is Fate.
Fear not: we cannot fail—
The Vision will prevail.
Truth is the Oath of God, and, sure and fast,
Through Death and Hell holds onward to the last._

Art

_To Howard Pyle_

At her light touch, behold! a voice proceeds
Out of all things to chide our sordid deeds;
A beauty breaks, a beauty ever strange,
The Changeless that is back of all the change.
Lightly it comes as when a rose would be—
Takes feature yet remains a mystery.

On Seeing Vedder’s “Pleiades”

I hear a burst of music on the night!
Look at the white whirl of their bodies, see
The sweep of arms seraphical and free,
And over their heads a rush of circling light,
That draws them on with mystery and might:
But O the wild dance and the deathless song,
And O the lifted faces glad and strong—
Eternal passion burning still and white!

But she who glances downward, who is she,
Her face stilled with the shadow of a pain?
The one who let all go for that mad chance?
And does some sudden gust of memory,
Bringing the earth, sweep back into the brain?...
But O the wild white whirl of the wild dance!

The Muse of Labor

_And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth._—ST. JOHN.

I come, O heroes, to the world gone wrong;
I bring the hope of nations; and I bear
The warm first rush of rapture in my song,
The faint first light of morning on my hair.

I look upon the ages from a tower;
I am the Muse of the Fraternal State;
No hand can hold me from my crowning hour;
My song is Freedom and my step is Fate.

The toilers go on broken at the heart;
They send the spell of beauty on all lands;
But what avail? the builders have no part—
No share in all the glory of their hands.

I have descended from Alcyone;
I am the muse of Labor and of Mirth;
I come to break the chain of infamy,
That Greed’s blind hammers forge about the earth.

I have descended from the Hidden Place,
To make dumb spirits speak and dead feet start:
I feel the wind of battles in my face,
I hear the song of nations in my heart.

I stand by Him, the Hero of the Cross,
To hurl down traitors that misspend His bread;
I touch the star of mystery and loss
To shake the kingdoms of the living dead.

I wear the flower of Christus for a crown;
I poise the suns and give to each a name;
And through the hushed Eternity bend down
To strengthen gods and keep their souls from blame.

I come to overthrow the ancient wrong,
To let the joy of nations rise again;
I am Unselfish Service, I am Song,
I am the Hope that feeds the hearts of men.

I am the Vision in the world-eclipse,
And where I pass the feet of Beauty burn;
And when I set the bugle to my lips,
The youth of work-worn races will return.

I am Religion and the church I build,
Stands on the sacred flesh with passion packed;
In me the ancient gospels are fulfilled—
In me the symbol rises into Fact.

I am the maker of the People’s bread,
I bear the little burdens of the day;
Yet in the Mystery of Song I tread
The endless heavens and show the stars their way.

Even Scales

The robber is robbed by his riches;
The tyrant is dragged by his chain;
The schemer is snared by his cunning;
The slayer lies dead by the slain.

Dreyfus