Chapter II

Then song turns sour on my lips,
And the warmth goes out of my blood,
And I turn me back to the beaker,
And re-draining my cup of dream,
I drown the whispering voices,
I banish the ghostly question
As to which in the end is true:
The wine and the open road?
Or the waiting Door?

THE GIFT OF HATE

Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love,
Their claim that love is the only thing that survives.
For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate,
Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin,
I can hate as strong and as long as I love!

There are hours and issues I hate;
There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate;
There are men I hate to the uttermost;
And although in their graves they listen and weep,
Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace,
I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate!

THE DREAM

I lay by your side last night.
By you, in my dreams,
I felt the damp of the grave.
I was dead with you--
And my bones still ache with Death.
For my hand went out and I touched your lips,
And I found them fallen away,
Wasted and lost!
Those lips once warm with life
Were eaten and gone!
And my soul screamed out in the dark
At the intimate blackness of Death.
And then I arose from the dead
And returned to the day;
And my bones and my heart still ache with it all,
And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life,
The crowd in the hurrying street,
The tumult and laughter and talk,
To make me forget!

ONE ROOM IN MY HEART

One room in my heart shall be closed, I said;
One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked!
I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it!
But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands,
You came with this trivial key,
And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back,
And disdainfully now you wander and brood and wait
In this room that I thought was my own!

THE MEANING

It isn't the Sea that I love,
But the ships
That must dare and endure and defy and survive it!
It isn't the flesh that I love,
But the spirit
That guides and derides and controls and outlives it!
It isn't this earth that I love,
But the mortals
Who give to it meaning and colour and passion and life!
For what is the Sea without ships?
And what is the flesh without soul?
And what is a world without love?

THE VEIL

You have said that I sold
My life for a song;
Laid bare my heart
That men might listen
And go their ways--
My inchoate heart
That I dare not plumb,
That goes unbridled
To the depths of Hell,
That sings in the sun
To the brink of Heaven!
I have tossed you the spindrift
Born of its fretting
On its shallowest coast,
But over the depths of it
Bastioned in wonder
And silent with fear
God sits with me!

THE MAN OF DREAMS

All my lean life
I garnered nothing but a dream or two,
These others gathered harvests
And grew fat with grain.
But no man lives by bread,
And bread alone.
So, forgetful of their scorn,
When starved, they cried for life,
I gave them my last dreams,
I bared for them my heart,
That they might eat!

APRIL ON THE RIALTO

A canyon of granite and steel,
A river of grim unrest,
And over the fever and street-dust
Arches the azure of dream.
And fretting along the tumult,
Threading the iron curbs,
Tawdry in tinsel and feather
Drift the daughters of pleasure,
The sad-eyed traders in song,
The makers of joy,
The Columbines of the city
Seeking their ends!
But under the beaded eye-lash,
Under the lip with its rouge,
Under the mask of white
Splashed with geranium-red,
As God's own arch of azure
Leans softly over the street,
Surely, this day, runs warmer
The blood through a wasted breast!

THE SURRENDER

Must I round my life to a song,
As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone?
Shall the mortal beat and throb
Of this heart of mine
Be only to crumble a dream,
And fashion the pebbles of fancy,
That the tides of time may cover,
Or a child may find?

Little in truth it matters;
But this at the most I know:
Infinite is the ocean
That thunders upon man's soul,
And the sooner the soul falls broken,
The smoother will be its song!

THE PASSING

Ere the thread is loosed,
And the sands run low,
And the last hope fails,
Wherever we fare,
O Fond and True,
May it fall that we come in the end,
Come back to the crimson valleys,
Back to the Indian Summer,
Back to the northern pine-lands,
And the grey lakes draped with silence,
And the sunlight thin and poignant,
And the leaf that flutters earthward,
And the skyline green and lonely,
And the ramparts of the dead world
Ruddy with wintry rose!
May we fare, O Fond and True,
Through our soft-houred Indian Summer,
Through the paling twilight weather,
And facing the lone green uplands,
And greeting the sun-warmed hills,
Step into the pineland shadows
And enter the sunset valley
And go as the glory goes
Out of the dreaming autumn,
Out of the drifting leaf
And the dying light!

PROTESTATIONS

If I tire of you, beautiful woman,
I know that the fault is mine;
Yet not all mine the failure
And not all mine the loss!
In loveliness still you walk;
But I have walked with sorrow!
I have threaded narrows,
And I have passed through perils
That you know nothing of!
And I in my grief have gazed
In eyes that were not yours;
And my emptier hours have known
The sigh of kindlier bosoms,
The kiss of kindlier mouths!
Yet the end of all is written,
And nothing, O rose-leaf woman,
You ever may dream or do
Henceforth can bring me anguish
Or crown my days with joy!

_Three tears, O stately woman,
You said could float your soul,
So little a thing it seemed!
Yet all that's left of life
I'd give to know your love,
I'd give to show my love,
And feel your kiss again!_