Chapter V

The shouts ceased, and the exultation died
Slowly into a sort of empty wail,
Half hope and half despair, for still the sign
Had not yet blazed upon their eager eyes.
Then as I sat in wondering agony,
Praying, yet fearing, for the greatest cause
That ever souls of men in balance set
'Gainst everlasting doom, there rose again
The voice of their great leader, Lucifer,
The rebel angel, and outcast of God:
"Lo, hosts of Hell," he cried, "inheritors
Of death diurnal, strangely mingled with
Relentless life, what shall we say to God
Who waits and watches? Shall we pray or curse,
Implore or threaten? Can we move Him thus?
Burn not the lightnings yet in His right hand
With which He struck us to confusion once?
And laughs He not in thunderbolts the same
As once pursued our howling flight to Hell?
Befits it rather, think ye not, my hosts,
That we should send on high in one accord
A mighty threnody--a hymn of Hell,
Inspired by pain and sung in bitterest woe,
As our best offering,--and await His word?"

He ceased, and for the moment all was still;
Then plaintive as the rhythmic dawn of stars
Upon a night of sorrow, rose a strain
Of lamentation, such as when the sea
Makes moan unto an earthquake's inward throes.
Then circling outward passed the rising tones
Of that sad minstrelsy, and then again
Backward it swept like a great tidal wave
Of anguish, all Hell's anarchy of grief
Set to a sounding fugue. Grim-throated rose
The awful hymn, and mingling with the wail
Of voices, pealed the cymbals' brassy clang;
The thunderous organs bellowed through the gloom,
And, rocking Hell's foundations, burst a blare
Of stormy trumpets crying: "Woe, woe, woe!"
Methought the angels must have wept to hear,
Methought their tears had dropt like healing rain
Upon the fires of torment, and assuaged
Their blazing wrath, so piteous was the strain.

The music ceased, the echoes sobbed away
Like a tumultuous sorrow, when, behold!
The black veil lifted from the mountain's crest,
And on its glorious summit flamed _the Star_!

HYMN OF THE TOMB BUILDERS.

_They were three old men with hoary hair
And beards of wintry gray,
And they digged a grave in the yellow soil,
And they crooned this song as they plied their toil,
In the fading light of day:_

Hither ye bring your workmen,
Like tools that are broken and bent,
To pay your due to their cunning
After their skill is spent;
Hither ye bring them and lay them,
And go when your prayers are said,
Back where the stress of your living
Makes mock of the peace of your dead.

From the iron-paved roads of traffic,
From the shell-scarred fields of war,
From the lands of earth's burning girdle
To the snows of her uttermost star,
Ye bring in your sons and daughters
From the glare and the din of today,
Giving them back unto silence,
And sealing their lips with clay.

Some drunk with the wine of carnage,
Some clothed with the shreds of power,
Some stark from the fields of famine,
Some decked for the pleasaunce bower,
And all with their still clay fingers
To their cold clay bosoms laid
To sleep from aeon to aeon
At the lowly Sign of the Spade.

Afar through the quickening ages
Fell the first keen notes of strife,
And they held out their hands in the darkness
Toward that blatant boon called life;
And they heard the building of empires,
And the restless trampling of men,
And the dust that was made for heartbreak
Grew poignant even then.

Your bones they are moist with marrow,
And with milk your breasts are full;
Your hands they are strong and subtle,
And your life-blood never dull;
But fail at the sword or the plowshare,
Or fall at the forge or the wheel,
And ye only mar earth's bosom
With a wound that her dust will heal.

Hither ye bring your workmen,
And it's ever the tale retold
Of the useless tools of the builders,
Battered and broken and old;
Hither ye bring them and lay them,
And go when your prayers are said,
For the blood of your living is dearer
Than the idle dust of your dead.

_They were three old men with hoary hair
And beards of wintry gray,
And they shouldered their spades, for their work was done,
And they left behind at the set of sun
A grave in the yellow clay._

THE TORNADO.

God let me fall from His hand
One day at His forge when the elemental world
Was shaping. I am but a breath from His great bellows,
But here among the workshops of mankind
I am a fateful scourge.

I tear red strips from the proud cities of men;
I name my passage the Highway of Instant Death;
I splinter world-old forests with my laugh,
And whirl the ancient snows of Hecla sheer into Orion's eyes.
I dance on the deep under the big Indian stars,
And wrap the water spout about my sinuous hips
As a dancer winds her girdle. The ocean's horrid crew,
The octopus, the serpent, and the shark, with the heart of a coward,
Plunge downward when they hear my feet above on the sea-floor,
And hide in their slimy coverts. Brave men pray upon the straining
decks
Till comes my mood to end them, and I strew the racing foam with
wreckage.

I am a breath from God's forge. I remember His awful workshop,
How the hot globes spun off into infinite darkness, as system by
system,
The universe was wrought; and then I remember the birth of the sun,
How God cried: "Let there be light!" and, blinding, bewildering,
exulting,
The great orb flamed from His furnace, and only the Creator stood
upright.
In that hour I fell from His hand.

I am a breath from God's forge,
And, being a part of creation, I shall also be a part of the end.
He has told me that there shall come a day
When the Seventh Angel shall open his last vial of wrath in the
mid-air,
And in that day I shall dance with the thunder, the lightning, and
the earthquake,
And, dancing, hear His voice cry out from Heaven's temple: "It is
done!"

VOICES.

_Earthquake._

I am a memory of cosmogony,
That first great hour of travail when the voice
Of God called suns and systems from the void;
I am the dream He dreams of that last day
When mountains by the roots shall be plucked up
And headlong flung into the raging sea!

_Hurricane._

I am the breath that fills the organ pipes
When through the vast cathedral of the world
Death's stormy threnody sweeps, wave on wave,
The symboled note that one day will be blown
By a great angel standing in the sun,
At which the heaven and earth shall pass away!

_Fire._

I am the letters of that fateful word
Writ with a flaming sword above the gates
Of Eden when God spelled the doom of man;
I am the wrath that on the judgment day
Shall waste the seas, and wither up the stars,
And roll the heavens together like a scroll!

_God._

I am the earthquake, hurricane and fire!
Through them I speak with man as through the stars,
The dews, the flowers, and every gentler thing;
Some learn my lesson in the paths of peace;
Some con it low at desolation's knee;
Only the fool hath said: "There is no God!"

A SONG FOR THE HILLS.

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;
Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
But here there is naught but silence,--peace, and the wide, wide sky.

Here are the dawn's first footfalls, and the twilight's last farewell,
The benediction of starlight, and the moon's sweet canticle;
Here is one spot as God made it, far from the plainsman's range,
Or the march of the cycling seasons with their everlasting change.

Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die;
But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay,
For God still keeps one playground where He and His whirlwinds play.

ROMANY.

The city frets in the distance, lass,
The city so grim and gray,
A glare in the sky by night, my lass,
And a blot on the sky by day;
But we are out on the long white road,
And under the wide free sky,
And the song that was born in my heart today
Will sing there till I die.

The long white road and the wide free sky,
And the city far away;
A good-night kiss in the twilight, lass,
And a kiss at the break of day;
For light are the loads we bear, my lass,
By highway and hill and grove,
And the sunlight is all for life, my lass,
And the starlight all for love.

IDOLS.

I.

Mouths have they, but they speak not:
Yet something in the certainty of faith
To their disciples saith:
"Believe on me and vengeance I will wreak not."
The word that conquers death--
The immutable and boundless gift of grace--
Dwells in that stony face,
And every supplication answereth.
Mouths have they, but they speak not;
Yet one supernal will that shapes to suit
A great decree that can not be belied
Utters from voiceless lips those creeds that guide
The tribes that never heard
The living, saving Word,--
That have their dead gods and are satisfied.

II.

Eyes have they, but they see not:
Yet the pagan builds his shrine,
And keeps his fires divine
Forever bright, nor darkly doubts there be not
Enough of grace and power
Within those eyes that glower
To read his soul. To him they are not blind,
For some dim, undefined
Reward of faith that thrills his untaught breast
Links up his baser mind
To the clear eyes of God that burn behind
The stony brow. It is a creed professed
Before a deity not quenched in space,
But one to whom his bands
Can lift adoring hands,
And see and touch and worship face to face.