Chapter III

Ears have they, but they hear not:
Yet the heathen kneel and pray,
Nor in their madness say:
"Thou art no god, and therefore I will fear not;
What if I disobey?
Thou art but stone or clay."
They hear not, but their worshippers impute
Them faculties to suit
The divination of the prayers they say;
And Christ, who understands
His children in all lands
When from the dark their dying souls have cried,
Shrines His great heart of love within the clod
The savage calls his god
And all idolatry is deified.

ODE TO THE NEW CENTURY.

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,
The day has finished the year that dies with a century's birth;
Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:
"Lo! the Great Mother travaileth, a king is born to the earth!
King of a hundred years, and king of a million tombs,
Sovereign of infinite joys, keeper of countless tears;
Peace to the throneless dead, hail to the ruler who comes,
King of a million tombs, and king of a hundred years!"

Time and his tenant Death, for the space of a moment's flight
Stand on the bare, black ridge dividing eternities twain;
One looks back to his realm all waste in the hopeless night,
One with the eyes of hope sees it rebuilded again.
Behind are the gray, gleaned fields with their worthless stubble of
graves,
Strewn with the thistles of sin, and the trampled chaff of desire;
Before are the acres of love, not furrowed by hands of slaves,
Not sown with sorrow and strife, not wasted with flood or with fire.

Great is the hour, my Soul, and great is the wonder to see;
Prophet-like dost thou look to yonder portentous sky
Where lo! the scroll is unfolding--the scroll of the great To Be:--
Look to the east, O Soul, and clear and strong be thine eye!
Look to the west where once waved the cherubic sword
Over man's Eden lost, and see in the heavens above
Not the angels of wrath bearing God's angry word,
But the angels of Mercy and Peace, the angels of Hope and of Love.

Great is the hour, O Soul, and great are the voices to hear--
Voices of choral stars, and the calling of deep unto deep
Like to the natal hour when rolling sphere upon sphere
Sprang from the bosom of God and sang of their limitless sweep!
Great is the hour, O Soul, and thou art a seer who looks
Far through the mystic night and seeth the great unseen,
Truth that to us is blind, and the lies of our prophets' books,
Heaven and Hell and the land called Life that lies between.

The region of shapes called Life, with shadows behind and before--
Shadows voiceless as Death, and dark as the sunless tomb,--
Shapes whose anguish and strife seem a glimpse of Hell's grim shore--
Shadows that gave them life and shadows that hail them home.
Great is the hour, O Soul, and great is the wonder to see!
Thou art alone with God as he writes on the future's page
Two words in letters of fire--(one Doom,--one Mystery,--
Alpha the last, and the first Omega) and names it an Age.

[December 31, 1900.]

A CLOWN'S PRELUDE.

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears
A moment's weakness left upon my cheek,
And hush my heart a little ere I speak
Lest the false note ring true on other ears;
The music rises and the empty cheers
Proclaim the harlequin, and lo! I stand
The painted fool again and kiss my hand
With jocund air to Folly's worshippers.
So day by day life's bitter bread is earned
With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke,
And frailer grows the soul that once was strong,--
The joyless soul of one whose trade has turned
Life's tragic mantle to a jester's cloak,
Life's diapason to a jester's song.

A LEGEND OF GOLD.

Lucifer craved one boon of God
After his fall, as his own to hold;
So He gave him a mite in heaven's sight,
But lo! the gift that He gave was--Gold.

And Lucifer wrought with the rugged ore
Till he fashioned it wondrous fair, and then
He set a price on the precious store,
And the price was the blood and tears of men.

Blood and tears! and the price was paid;
Blood was nothing, and tears were free;
And Lucifer smiled at the fools and said:
"Surely your souls should belong to me!"

So he offered the earth with its golden heart,
And the seas with their fleets from pole to pole;
And they looked with lust on the world-wide mart,
And said in their hearts,--"It is worth the soul!"

And kings were they, and they ruled right well;
Gorgeously sped their sovereign day ...
But Lucifer hath their souls in Hell,
And their gold and their empires--where are they?

THE EAGLE AND THE FLOWER.

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliff
That the glacier's torrent thundered under;
And the unfledged eaglet's lifted eye
Looked out on the world of peak and sky
In silent wonder.

The mountain daisy, dainty white,
That grew by the side of the lofty eyrie,
Saw the young wings beat on the eagle's breast,
And the restless eyes in the fagot-nest
Grow grim and fiery.

The days went by and the wings grew strong,
And the crag-built home was at last deserted;
But, close to the nest that her love had left,
The daisy clung to the rocky cleft,
Half broken-hearted.

The days went by and the wan, white flower
Waited and watched in the autumn weather;
Far down the valley, far up the height,
The forest blazed, and a wizard light
Crowned hill and heather.

And he came at last one eventide,
His breast was pierced and his plumes were gory;
For home is best when we come to die,
And we love the love that our youth puts by,--
And there's my story.

SUNSET IN THE CITY.

Down at the end of the iron lane
I see the sunset's glare,
And the red bars lie across the sky
Like steps of a wondrous stair.

Below, the throng, with unlifted eye,
Sweeps on in its heedless flight
Where the street's black funnel pours its tide
Out into the deepening night.

And no one has stopped to read God's word
On the fiery heavens scrolled
Save an old man dreaming of boyhood's days,
And a boy who would fain be old.

THE ADMIRAL'S RETURN.

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.)

Brave ships are these that bear thee home again
From under far-off skies--brave flags that fly
Above the deck whereon thine ashes lie,
Waiting their urn beyond the alien main;
The nations pause to view thy funeral train
As slowly moving up 'twixt sea and sky
It comes with stately pomp, and Liberty
Holds out her hands and calls thy name in vain.
And yet, mayhap, in vision vague and sweet,
Another sight thou seest beyond the boast
Of patriot pride--beside the new-born fleet,
Spectral and strange, no guest for such a host,
Yet making thy home-coming all complete,
The old "Bon Homme Richard's" unlaid ghost.

THE DUNGEONED ANARCHIST.

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,
Forgot of all things save his jailer's hate
That turns the daylight from his iron grate
To make his prison more and more a hell;
For him no coming day or hour shall spell
Deliverance, or bid his soul await
The hand of Mercy at his dungeon gate:
He would not know even though a kingdom fell!
The black night hides his hand before his eyes,--
That grim, clenched hand still burning with the sting
Of royal blood; he holds it like a prize,
Waiting the hour when he at last shall fling
The stain in God's face, shrieking as he dies:
"Behold the unconquered arm that slew a king!"

AT THE PLAY.

The poet painted a woman's soul,
Human, trusting and kind,
And then he drew the soul of a man,
Brutal and base and blind;

And the woman loved in the old, old way,
And the man in the way of men,
And the poet christened their lives "A Play,"
And he sat down to watch it, and then ...

A woman rose with a bitter laugh,
And her eyes were as dry as stone
As she bowed her head at the poet's stall
And said in a strange, cold tone:

"He paints the best who has dipped his brush
In the heart's own blood, they say;
You took my love and you took my life,
But you gave the world--a play!"

THE DERELICT.

North and south with the fickle tides,
With the wind from east to west,
The death-ship follows her track of doom,
But finds no port or rest.

Day after day the far white sails
Come up and glimmer and die,
And night by night the twinkling lights
Crawl down the distant sky.

Day after day her black hull lifts
And sinks with the swell's long roll,
And the white birds cling to her rotting shrouds
Like prayers of a stricken soul,

But ever the death-ship keeps her track
While the ships of men sail on,
For God is her skipper and helmsman, too,
And knoweth her port alone.

ZOROASTER.

I.

The light of a new day was on his brow,
The faith of a great dawn was on his tongue;
Out of the dark he raised his voice and sung
The high Messiah who should overthrow
The gods that Superstition crowned with might
And set above the world,--the coming Christ
Whose unshed blood should be the holy tryst
'Twixt man and his lost Eden, washing white
From his rebellious soul the serpent's blight.

II.

The fire that on the Magi's altars glowed
Spake to his soul in symbols and expressed
The immortal purity that without rest
Strives with the mortal grossness whose abode
Is in the heart. Their symboled fire showed One
Whose spirit on the altar of the world
Burns ceaselessly,--where, if all vice be hurled,
It shall be purged with fire that shall atone,--
Christ's love the flame, man's sin th' alchemic stone.

III.

The light of a new day was on his brow,
The faith of a great dawn was on his tongue;
Above the old Chaldean myths he sung
The message of the peace that men should know
Through God's own Son. Out of the hopeless night
He saw the star of Bethlehem arise,
And o'er the wasted gates of Paradise
Beheld it mount, and heard, to hail its light,
The everlasting groan of hell's despite.

THE NORTH WIND.

I.

Wind of the North, I know your song
Out on the frozen plain,
But here in the city's streets you seem
Only a cry of pain.

II.

I know the note of your lusty throat
Where the black boughs toss and roar,
But here it is part of the old, old cry
Of the hungry, homeless poor.