Chapter II

Grim where the black bars cast
Their shadows o'er his bed,
He waits to pay the cost
Of blood his hands have shed.
The mother kneels and sobs:
"God, he shall always be,
In spite of Cain's red brand,
A stainless child to me."

THE VOICE OF THE NORTH.

You have builded your ships in the sun-lands,
And launched them with song and wine;
They are boweled with your stanchest engines,
And masted with bravest pine;
You have met in your closet councils,
With your plans and your prayers to God
For a fortunate wind to waft you
Where never a foot has trod.

And now you follow the polar star
To the seat of the old Norse Kings,
Past the death-white halls of Valhalla,
Where the Norn to the tempest sings--
Follow the steady needle
That cleaves to its steady star
To the uttermost realms of Odin
And the warlike thunderer, Thor.

Far through the icy silence,
Where the glacier's teeth hang white,
And even the sun-god Baldur,
Looks down in vague affright,
You flutter like startled spectres,
With a prayer on your lips for the goal--
To stand for one thrilling moment
At the awful, nameless Pole.

But lo! in that hour shall greet you,
At the end of your perilous path,
A mockery far more bitter
Than the sting of the frost king's wrath,
For this is the meed you shall gather
In the lands no man has trod:
The finger that beckoned you onward
Shall lift and point to God!

1903

TO C. 33.

(Oscar Wilde.)

I gazed upon thee desolate and heard
Thine anguished cry when fell the iron gin
That all but broke thy soul, yet gave thy word
The strength to ask forgiveness of thy sin.

I saw thee fleeing from the cruel light
Of thine own fame; I saw thee hide thy face
In alien dust to cover up the blight
Upon thy brow that time may yet erase.

I knew thy creed, although thy lips were mute;
I knew the gods thou didst not dare to own;
I knew the Upas poison at the root
Of thy last flower of song, in prison blown.

And out of all thy woe there came to me
This miracle of dogma, like a cry:
"No law but freedom for the vagrant bee--
No love but summer for the butterfly."

SILENCE.

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid,
The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute,
The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,
The flower of faith that grows to unseen fruit.

I am the speech of prophets when their eyes
Behold some splendid vision of the soul;
The song of morning stars, the hills' replies,
The far call of the immaterial pole.

And, since I must be mateless, I shall win
One boon beyond the meed of common clay:
My life shall end where other lives begin,
And live when other lives have passed away.

COLUMBUS' LAST VOYAGE.

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.)

Once more upon the ocean's heaving breast
He lays his head, not like the lover bold
Who in the brave, chivalric days of old
Wooed from her lips the secret of the West,
But like a tired man going to his rest,
No hopes to thrill, no yearnings to inspire,
No tasks to burden, and no toil to tire,
No morn to waken to a day of quest.
Again upon the trackless deep,--again
About him as of yore the wild winds play;
Behind him lies the world he gave to men,
Before a grave in old Castile for aye:
Peace, winds and tides! Be calm, thou guardian sky,--
The lordliest dust of earth is passing by!

ATONEMENT.

You were a red rose then, I know,
Red as her wine--yea, redder still,--
Say rather her blood; and ages ago
(You know how destiny hath its will)
I placed you deep in her gorgeous hair,
And left you to wither there.

Wine and blood and a red, red rose,--
Feast and song and a long, long sleep;--
And which of us dreamed at the drama's close
That the unforgetful years would keep
Our sin and their vengeance laid away
As a gift to this bitter day?

Now you are white as the mountain snow,
White as the hand that I fold you in,
And none but the angels of God may know
That either has once been stained with sin;
It was blood and wine in the old, old years,
But now it is only tears.

And so at the end of our several ways
We have met once more, and the truth is clear
That our heart's own blood no surer pays
For our sin in the past than atonement here;
But the end has come as God knows best:
Now we shall be at rest.

THE POET SHEPHERD.

Down in the vale the lazy sheep
Are roaming at their will,
But I would be away to weep
Upon the windy hill,

For Summer's song is in my heart,
Her kiss is on my brow,
As here I kneel alone, apart,
To consecrate our vow.

Ah, doubly poor the gift shall be
That links my soul with hers,
For she has given her all to me
While I can give but tears!

OUR DAILY BREAD.

"Give us this day our daily bread!" O prayer
By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry
For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair--
A beggar's plaint when Dives passes by.

We have forsook the Temple of the Soul
To carp with sordid tradesmen face to face;
No more we hear the Sinaian thunders roll,
Or Jesus preaching in the market-place.

The money-changers flaunt their silks and gold;
Within the Temple gates they ply their trade,
Forgetful of the Voice that cried of old:
"A den of thieves my Father's house is made!"

A MOTHER TO THE SEA.

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
To a sky that is voiceless, too.

Upward the vast blue arch,
Downward the blue abyss,
With a line of foam where your lips
Meet in a passionless kiss.

But the silence is breaking my heart,
And tears cannot comfort me
With God in His cold blue sky,
And my boy in the cold blue sea.

THE FEAST OF THE PASSIONS.

It wouldn't be fair to Belshazzar
When speaking of madness and mirth,
To draw from his revel a moral
For conscienceless sin in the earth,
For 'tis certain the King of Chaldea
Took note of the hand on the wall,
But here at the Feast of the Passions
We never take heed at all.

The same gods grin at the banquet--
The idols of silver and gold--
While we drink from the cups of the Temple
As they did in the days of old,
But the finger of God is unheeded,
His warning misunderstood,
As "Mene" is written in lightning,
And "Tekel" inscribed in blood.

No lesson of Nebuchadnezzar
Turned out with his swinish kin
Creeps in like a baneful vision
At the Babylonian din;
We have stilled the tongue of our Daniel
Lest sudden he rise and cry:
"Behold! thy kingdom is numbered;
This night shall Belshazzar die!"

So it wouldn't be just to Belshazzar,
When speaking of madness and mirth,
To hold up his feast as a warning
To conscienceless sin in the earth,
For 'tis certain the King of Chaldea
Took note of the hand on the wall,
But here at the Feast of the Passions
We never take heed at all.

THE HUMAN WORLD.

Here is one picture of the human world:
An unreaped field and Death, the harvester,
Taking his rest beside a gathered sheaf
Of poppy and white lilies. At his side
Passion, with pilfered hour-glass in her hand
Jarring the sluggish sands to haste their flow.

THE VOW FORSWORN.

Unweariedly he watches for the sign,
The sign I promised from the farthest goal,
My lover of a world no longer mine,
My human lover with his human soul.

Unweariedly he waits from day to day,
Nor knows, as I know now, that when we meet,
'Twill be as dewdrop on the hawthorn spray,--
The ultimate of God at last complete.

He still remembers that my eyes were blue,
Still dreams the autumn russet of my hair;
"In God's own time," he said, "I'll come to you;
You will be waiting; I will find you there!"

But now I know that he must never hear
The message that I promised to impart,
For should I breathe the secret in his ear
His soul would hearken--but 'twould break his heart!

CONFESSION.

As one, a poet of a fairy's train,
Might sit beside a violet's stem and view
Its opening petals, watch the wondrous blue
Thrill through their fibers, and their secret gain
Of how the earth and sky and wind and rain
Had given them life and form and scent and hue,--
So I have gazed into the eyes of you,
Those rare blue eyes, and have not looked in vain;
For they have told me all that I would know,
Even as the violets their secret tell
Unto the wistful spirits of the grove--
Ay, more than this, for, in their tender glow,
I've learned their secret, found their winsome spell,
The sweet and simple message of their love.

LOVE AND ART.

I.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears passion-throated Art
Singing where the future lies
Wrapped in hues of Paradise,
Pleading with her poignant note
That forever seems to float
Farther down the vista that is calling to thy heart.
Hearken! From the heights
Where thy soul alights
Bend thine ear to listen for the lute of Love is sighing:
"Eagle-heart, child-heart,
Love is love, and art is art;
Answer while thy lips are red;
Wilt thou have a barren bed?
Choose between us which to wed:
Answer, for thy bride awaits, and fragile hours are flying!"

II.

Eagle-heart, child-heart, bonnie lad o' dreams,
Far away thy soul hears Love's enraptured strain,
Calling with her plaintive note,
Pleading lute and pensive oat,
Burning, yearning, ever turning back to one refrain:
"Choose between us which to wed;
Love is love, and art is art;
Wilt thou have a barren bed?
Joyless mate and bloodless heart?
She will bring thee for her dower
Shrunken limb and shriveled breast,
Bitter thralldom, bootless power,
Days and nights of endless quest,
She will take thee heart and brain,
Hold thee with a vampire charm,
Kiss thee cold in every vein,
Drink thy blood to make her warm!"