Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

The part we played in the battle is briefly as follows. We broke camp about 11 o'clock the night of the 24th, and marched up through ruined Souain to our place in one of the numerous 'boyaux' where the 'troupes d'attaque' were massed. The cannonade was pretty violent all that night, as it had been for several days previous, but toward dawn it reached an intensity unimaginable to anyone who has not seen a modern battle. A little before 9.15 the fire lessened suddenly, and the crackle of the fusillade between the reports of the cannon told us that the first wave of assault had left and the attack begun. At the same time we received the order to advance. The German artillery had now begun to open upon us in earnest. Amid the most infernal roar of every kind of fire-arms, and through an atmosphere heavy with dust and smoke, we marched up through the 'boyaux' to the 'tranchees de depart'. At shallow places and over breaches that shells had made in the bank, we caught momentary glimpses of the blue lines sweeping up the hillside or silhouetted on the crest where they poured into the German trenches. When the last wave of the Colonial brigade had left, we followed. 'Bayonette au canon', in lines of 'tirailleurs', we crossed the open space between the lines, over the barbed wire, where not so many of our men were lying as I had feared, (thanks to the efficacy of the bombardment) and over the German trench, knocked to pieces and filled with their dead. In some places they still resisted in isolated groups. Opposite us, all was over, and the herds of prisoners were being already led down as we went up. We cheered, more in triumph than in hate; but the poor devils, terror-stricken, held up their hands, begged for their lives, cried "Kamerad", "Bon Francais", even "Vive la France". We advanced and lay down in columns by twos behind the second crest. Meanwhile, bridges had been thrown across trenches and 'boyaux', and the artillery, leaving the emplacements where they had been anchored a whole year, came across and took position in the open, a magnificent spectacle. Squadrons of cavalry came up. Suddenly the long, unpicturesque 'guerre de tranchees' was at an end, and the field really presented the aspect of the familiar battle pictures, -- the battalions in manoeuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent to danger, galloping about on their chargers. But now the German guns, moved back, began to get our range, and the shells to burst over and around batteries and troops, many with admirable precision. Here my best comrade was struck down by shrapnel at my side,--painfully but not mortally wounded.

I often envied him after that. For now our advanced troops were in contact with the German second-line defenses, and these proved to be of a character so formidable that all further advance without a preliminary artillery preparation was out of the question. And our role, that of troops in reserve, was to lie passive in an open field under a shell fire that every hour became more terrific, while aeroplanes and captive balloons, to which we were entirely exposed, regulated the fire.

That night we spent in the rain. With portable picks and shovels each man dug himself in as well as possible. The next day our concentrated artillery again began the bombardment, and again the fusillade announced the entrance of the infantry into action. But this time only the wounded appeared coming back, no prisoners. I went out and gave water to one of these, eager to get news. It was a young soldier, wounded in the hand. His face and voice bespoke the emotion of the experience he had been through, in a way that I will never forget. "Ah, les salauds!" he cried, "They let us come right up to the barbed wire without firing. Then a hail of grenades and balls. My comrade fell, shot through the leg, got up, and the next moment had his head taken off by a grenade before my eyes." "And the barbed wire, wasn't it cut down by the bombardment?" "Not at all in front of us." I congratulated him on having a 'blessure heureuse' and being well out of the affair. But he thought only of his comrade and went on down the road toward Souain nursing his mangled hand, with the stream of wounded seeking their 'postes de secours'.

==

He then tells how, in spite of substantial gains, it gradually "became more and more evident that the German second line of defence presented obstacles too serious to attempt overcoming for the moment, and we began going up at night to work at consolidating our advanced trenches and turning them into a new permanent line." To this time, perhaps, belongs the incident related by Rif Baer, an Egyptian, who was his comrade and best friend in the regiment. A piece of difficult trench work was allotted to the men, to be finished in one night. "Each was given the limit, that he was supposed to be able to complete in the time. It happened that Rif Baer was ill, and, after working a while, his strength gave out. Alan completed his own job and R. B.'s also, and although he was quite exhausted by the extra labour, his eyes glowed with happiness, and he said he had never done anything in his life that gave him such entire satisfaction."

Summing up the results of the battle, Alan wrote (still in the same letter, October 25): "It was a satisfaction at least to get out of the trenches, to meet the enemy face to face and to see German arrogance turned into suppliance. We knew many splendid moments, worth having endured many trials for. But in our larger aim, of piercing their line, of breaking the long deadlock, of entering Vouziers in triumph, of course we failed." Then he proceeds:

==

This affair only deepened my admiration for, my loyalty to, the French. If we did not entirely succeed, it was not the fault of the French soldier. He is a better man, man for man, than the German. Anyone who had seen the charge of the Marsouins at Souain would acknowledge it. Never was anything more magnificent. I remember a captain, badly wounded in the leg, as he passed us, borne back on a litter by four German prisoners. He asked us what regiment we were, and when we told him, he cried "Vive la Legion," and kept repeating "Nous les avons en. Nous les avons en." He was suffering, but, oblivious of his wound, was still fired with the enthusiasm of the assault and all radiant with victory. What a contrast with the German wounded on whose faces was nothing but terror and despair. What is the stimulus in their slogans of "Gott mit uns" and "Fuer Koenig und Vaterland" beside that of men really fighting in defense of their country? Whatever be the force in international conflicts of having justice and all the principles of personal morality on one's side, it at least gives the French soldier a strength that's like the strength of ten against an adversary whose weapon is only brute violence. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, forced to yield, could behave as I saw German prisoners behave, trembling, on their knees, for all the world like criminals at length overpowered and brought to justice. Such men have to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated. But the Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison.

==

A report appeared in the American newspapers that he had been killed in the battle of Champagne. On learning of it, he wrote to his mother:

==

I am 'navre' to think of your having suffered so. I should have arranged to cable after the attack, had I known that any such absurd rumours had been started. Here one has a wholesome notion of the unimportance of the individual. It needs an effort of imagination to conceive of its making any particular difference to anyone or anything if one goes under. So many better men have gone, and yet the world rolls on just the same.

==

After Champagne, his regiment passed to the rear and did not return to the front until May 1916. On February 1st he writes: "I am in hospital for the first time, not for a wound, unfortunately, but for sickness." Hitherto his health, since he joined the army, had been superb. As a youth he had never been robust; but the soldier's life suited him to perfection, and all remnants of any mischief left behind by the illness of his childhood seemed to have vanished. It was now a sharp attack of bronchitis that sent him to hospital. On his recovery he obtained two months 'conge de convalescence', part of which he spent at Biarritz and part in Paris. About this time, much to his satisfaction, he once more came into the possession of "Juvenilia". On April 13th he wrote to his mother:

==

Did I tell you that the Embassy have managed to get my M.S. for me? It was very interesting to re-read this work, which I had almost forgotten. I found much that was good in it, but much that was juvenile too, and am not so anxious to publish it as it stands. I shall probably make extracts from it and join it with what I have done since. I shall go back to the front on the first of May without regrets. These visits to the rear only confirm me in my conviction that the work up there on the front is so far the most interesting work a man can be doing at this moment, that nothing else counts in comparison.

==

On May 13th he wrote to his "marraine", Mrs. Weeks: "The chateau in the grounds of which we are barracked, has a most beautiful name -- Bellinglise. Isn't it pretty? I shall have to write a sonnet to enclose it, as a ring is made express for a jewel. It is a wonderful old seventeenth-century manor, surrounded by a lordly estate. What is that exquisite stanza in 'Maud' about 'in the evening through the lilacs (or laurels) of the old manorial home'?* Look it up and send it to me." Ten days later he wrote to the same lady:

--

* He was doubtless thinking of this:

Alas for her that met me,
That heard me softly call,
Came glimmering thro' the laurels
In the quiet evenfall,
In the garden by the turrets
Of the old manorial hall.

--

==

The week in the trenches was a week of the most beautiful weather. . . . These days were saddened by the death of poor Colette in the bombardment, and by the suffering of his brother who has now returned after the burial. They were marked on the other hand by two afternoons of rather memorable emotion. Exasperated by the inactivity of the sector here, and tempted by danger, I stole off twice after guard, and made a patrol all by myself through the wood paths and trails between the lines. In the front of these, at a crossing of paths not far from one of our posts, I found a burnt rocket-stick planted in the ground, and a scrap of paper stuck in the top, placed there by the boches to guide their little mischief-making parties when they come to visit us in the night. The scrap of paper was nothing else than a bit of the 'Berliner Tageblatt'. This seemed so interesting to me that I reported it to the captain, though my going out alone this way is a thing strictly forbidden. He was very decent about it though, and seemed really interested in the information. Yesterday afternoon I repeated this exploit, following another trail, and I went so far that I came clear up to the German barbed wire, where I left a card with my name. It was very thrilling work, "courting destruction with taunts, with invitations" as Whitman would say. I have never been in a sector like this, where patrols could be made in daylight. Here the deep forest permits it. It also greatly facilitates ambushes, for one must keep to the paths, owing to the underbrush. I and a few others are going to try to get permission to go out on 'patrouilles d'embuscade' and bring in some live prisoners. It would be quite an extraordinary feat if we could pull it off. In our present existence it is the only way I can think of to get the Croix de Guerre. And to be worthy of my marraine I think that I ought to have the Croix de Guerre.

==

He had hoped to have been in Paris on Decoration Day, May 30th, to read, before the statue of Lafayette and Washington, the "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France", which he had written at the request of a Committee of American residents; but his "permission" unfortunately did not arrive in time. Completed in two days, during which he was engaged in the hardest sort of labour in the trenches, this Ode is certainly the crown of the poet's achievement. It is entirely admirable, entirely adequate to the historic occasion. If the war has produced a nobler utterance, it has not come my way. On June 24th, he again wrote, giving an account of a march, which was "without exception the hardest he had ever made" -- "20 kilometers through the blazing sun and in a cloud of dust. Something around 30 kilograms on the back. About 50 per cent dropped by the way. By making a supreme effort, I managed to get in at the finish, with the fifteen men that were all that was left of the section." He now knew that the great offensive was imminent. "The situation," he wrote, "is most interesting and exciting, but I am not at liberty to say anything about it. My greatest preoccupation now is whether this affair is coming off before or after the 4th of July. The indications are that it is going to break very soon. In that case nothing doing in the way of permission. But I still have hopes of getting in."

His hopes of getting to Paris were frustrated, as were all his other hopes save one--the hope of

That rare privilege of dying well.

On July 1st, the great advance began. At six in the evening of July 4th, the Legion was ordered to clear the enemy out of the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. Alan Seeger advanced in the first rush, and his squad was enfiladed by the fire of six German machine guns, concealed in a hollow way. Most of them went down, and Alan among them -- wounded in several places. But the following waves of attack were more fortunate. As his comrades came up to him, Alan cheered them on; and as they left him behind, they heard him singing a marching-song in English: --

Accents of ours were in the fierce melee.

They took the village, they drove the invaders out; but for some reason unknown--perhaps a very good one -- the battlefield was left unvisited that night. Next morning, Alan Seeger lay dead.

There is little to add. He wrote his own best epitaph in the "Ode": --

And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,
And on the tangled wires
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: --
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops,
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours.

His death was briefly noticed in one or two French papers. The 'Matin' published a translation of part of the poem, "Champagne, 1914-15", and remarked that "Cyrano de Bergerac would have signed it." But France had no time, even if she had had the knowledge, to realize the greatness of the sacrifice that had been made for her. That will come later. One day France will know that this unassuming soldier of the Legion,

Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,
Came back the generous path of Lafayette,

was one whom even she may be proud to have reckoned among her defenders.

The "Last Poems" speak for themselves. They contain lines which he would doubtless have remodelled had he lived to review them in tranquillity -- perhaps one or two pieces, sprung from a momentary mood, which, on reflection he would have rejected.* But they not only show a great advance on his earlier work: they rank high, or I am much mistaken, among the hitherto not very numerous poems in the English language produced, not in mere memory or imagination of war, but in its actual stress and under its haunting menace.

--

* Neither in the "Juvenilia" nor in the "Last Poems"
has anything been suppressed that he himself ever thought of publishing.
Indeed nothing at all has been omitted, except two early poems
on which he had written "These are worthless."

--

Again and again in the "Last Poems"--notably in "Maktoob" with its tribute to

The resignation and the calm
And wisdom of the East,

he returns to the note of fatalism. Here he has not only the wisdom of the East but the logic of the West on his side. Necessity is as incontrovertible to thought as it is incredible to feeling. But in the potent illusion of free-will (if illusion it be) rests all morality and all the admiration that we feel for good and evil deeds. Not even at Alan Seeger's bidding can we quite persuade ourselves that, when he took up arms for France, he was exercising no brave, no generous choice, but was the conscript of Destiny.

William Archer.

Poems by Alan Seeger

Juvenilia

1914

An Ode to Natural Beauty

There is a power whose inspiration fills Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, Like airy dew ere any drop distils, Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught Unseen which interfused throughout the whole Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed Such memories as breathe once more Of childhood and the happy hues it wore, Now, with a fervor that has never been In years gone by, it stirs me to respond, -- Not as a force whose fountains are within The faculties of the percipient mind, Subject with them to darkness and decay, But something absolute, something beyond, Oft met like tender orbs that seem to peer From pale horizons, luminous behind Some fringe of tinted cloud at close of day; And in this flood of the reviving year, When to the loiterer by sylvan streams, Deep in those cares that make Youth loveliest, Nature in every common aspect seems To comment on the burden in his breast -- The joys he covets and the dreams he dreams -- One then with all beneath the radiant skies That laughs with him or sighs, It courses through the lilac-scented air, A blessing on the fields, a wonder everywhere.

Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, Flung like the rose of dawn across the sea, Alone can flush the exalted consciousness With shafts of sensible divinity -- Light of the World, essential loveliness: Him whom the Muse hath made thy votary Not from her paths and gentle precepture Shall vulgar ends engage, nor break the spell That taught him first to feel thy secret charms And o'er the earth, obedient to their lure, Their sweet surprise and endless miracle, To follow ever with insatiate arms. On summer afternoons, When from the blue horizon to the shore, Casting faint silver pathways like the moon's Across the Ocean's glassy, mottled floor, Far clouds uprear their gleaming battlements Drawn to the crest of some bleak eminence, When autumn twilight fades on the sere hill And autumn winds are still; To watch the East for some emerging sign, Wintry Capella or the Pleiades Or that great huntsman with the golden gear; Ravished in hours like these Before thy universal shrine To feel the invoked presence hovering near, He stands enthusiastic. Star-lit hours Spent on the roads of wandering solitude Have set their sober impress on his brow, And he, with harmonies of wind and wood And torrent and the tread of mountain showers, Has mingled many a dedicative vow That holds him, till thy last delight be known, Bound in thy service and in thine alone.

I, too, among the visionary throng Who choose to follow where thy pathway leads, Have sold my patrimony for a song, And donned the simple, lowly pilgrim's weeds. From that first image of beloved walls, Deep-bowered in umbrage of ancestral trees, Where earliest thy sweet enchantment falls, Tingeing a child's fantastic reveries With radiance so fair it seems to be Of heavens just lost the lingering evidence From that first dawn of roseate infancy, So long beneath thy tender influence My breast has thrilled. As oft for one brief second The veil through which those infinite offers beckoned Has seemed to tremble, letting through Some swift intolerable view Of vistas past the sense of mortal seeing, So oft, as one whose stricken eyes might see In ferny dells the rustic deity, I stood, like him, possessed, and all my being, Flooded an instant with unwonted light, Quivered with cosmic passion; whether then On woody pass or glistening mountain-height I walked in fellowship with winds and clouds, Whether in cities and the throngs of men, A curious saunterer through friendly crowds, Enamored of the glance in passing eyes, Unuttered salutations, mute replies, -- In every character where light of thine Has shed on earthly things the hue of things divine I sought eternal Loveliness, and seeking, If ever transport crossed my brow bespeaking Such fire as a prophetic heart might feel Where simple worship blends in fervent zeal, It was the faith that only love of thee Needed in human hearts for Earth to see Surpassed the vision poets have held dear Of joy diffused in most communion here; That whomsoe'er thy visitations warmed, Lover of thee in all thy rays informed, Needed no difficulter discipline To seek his right to happiness within Than, sensible of Nature's loveliness, To yield him to the generous impulses By such a sentiment evoked. The thought, Bright Spirit, whose illuminings I sought, That thou unto thy worshipper might be An all-sufficient law, abode with me, Importing something more than unsubstantial dreams To vigils by lone shores and walks by murmuring streams.

Youth's flowers like childhood's fade and are forgot. Fame twines a tardy crown of yellowing leaves. How swift were disillusion, were it not That thou art steadfast where all else deceives! Solace and Inspiration, Power divine That by some mystic sympathy of thine, When least it waits and most hath need of thee, Can startle the dull spirit suddenly With grandeur welled from unsuspected springs, -- Long as the light of fulgent evenings, When from warm showers the pearly shades disband And sunset opens o'er the humid land, Shows thy veiled immanence in orient skies, -- Long as pale mist and opalescent dyes Hung on far isle or vanishing mountain-crest, Fields of remote enchantment can suggest So sweet to wander in it matters nought, They hold no place but in impassioned thought, Long as one draught from a clear sky may be A scented luxury; Be thou my worship, thou my sole desire, Thy paths my pilgrimage, my sense a lyre Aeolian for thine every breath to stir; Oft when her full-blown periods recur, To see the birth of day's transparent moon Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon Find me expectant on some rising lawn; Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn, Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs, Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse, Afoot when the great sun in amber floods Pours horizontal through the steaming woods And windless fumes from early chimneys start And many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heart Eager for aught the coming day afford In hills untopped and valleys unexplored. Give me the white road into the world's ends, Lover of roadside hazard, roadside friends, Loiterer oft by upland farms to gaze On ample prospects, lost in glimmering haze At noon, or where down odorous dales twilit, Filled with low thundering of the mountain stream, Over the plain where blue seas border it The torrid coast-towns gleam.

I have fared too far to turn back now; my breast Burns with the lust for splendors unrevealed, Stars of midsummer, clouds out of the west, Pallid horizons, winds that valley and field Laden with joy, be ye my refuge still! What though distress and poverty assail! Though other voices chide, yours never will. The grace of a blue sky can never fail. Powers that my childhood with a spell so sweet, My youth with visions of such glory nursed, Ye have beheld, nor ever seen my feet On any venture set, but 'twas the thirst For Beauty willed them, yea, whatever be The faults I wanted wings to rise above; I am cheered yet to think how steadfastly I have been loyal to the love of Love!

The Deserted Garden

I know a village in a far-off land Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain With tinted walls a space on either hand And fed by many an olive-darkened lane The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain, Winds off to that dim corner of the skies Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.

Here, among trees whose overhanging shade Strews petals on the little droves below, Pattering townward in the morning weighed With greens from many an upland garden-row, Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro Heard never from beyond its crumbling height Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.

But here where little lizards bask and blink The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run, At whose red bells the humming bird to drink Stops oft before his garden feast is done; And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun, Have covered part of this old wall, entwined With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.

And crowning other parts the wild white rose Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees. Above the old abandoned orchard shows And all within beneath the dense-set trees, Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows, That settled in its wavy depth one sees Grass melt in leaves, the mossy trunks between, Down fading avenues of implicated green;

Wherein no lack of flowers the verdurous night With stars and pearly nebula o'erlay; Azalea-boughs half rosy and half white Shine through the green and clustering apple-spray, Such as the fairy-queen before her knight Waved in old story, luring him away Where round lost isles Hesperian billows break Or towers loom up beneath the clear, translucent lake;

And under the deep grass blue hare-bells hide, And myrtle plots with dew-fall ever wet, Gay tiger-lilies flammulate and pied, Sometime on pathway borders neatly set, Now blossom through the brake on either side, Where heliotrope and weedy mignonette, With vines in bloom and flower-bearing trees, Mingle their incense all to swell the perfumed breeze,

That sprung like Hermes from his natal cave In some blue rampart of the curving West, Comes up the valleys where green cornfields wave, Ravels the cloud about the mountain crest, Breathes on the lake till gentle ripples pave Its placid floor; at length a long-loved guest, He steals across this plot of pleasant ground, Waking the vocal leaves to a sweet vernal sound.

Here many a day right gladly have I sped, Content amid the wavy plumes to lie, And through the woven branches overhead Watch the white, ever-wandering clouds go by, And soaring birds make their dissolving bed Far in the azure depths of summer sky, Or nearer that small huntsman of the air, The fly-catcher, dart nimbly from his leafy lair;

Pillowed at ease to hear the merry tune Of mating warblers in the boughs above And shrill cicadas whom the hottest noon Keeps not from drowsy song; the mourning dove Pours down the murmuring grove his plaintive croon That like the voice of visionary love Oft have I risen to seek through this green maze (Even as my feet thread now the great world's garden-ways);

And, parting tangled bushes as I passed Down beechen alleys beautiful and dim, Perhaps by some deep-shaded pool at last My feet would pause, where goldfish poise and swim, And snowy callas' velvet cups are massed Around the mossy, fern-encircled brim. Here, then, that magic summoning would cease, Or sound far off again among the orchard trees.

And here where the blanched lilies of the vale And violets and yellow star-flowers teem, And pink and purple hyacinths exhale Their heavy fume, once more to drowse and dream My head would sink, from many an olden tale Drawing imagination's fervid theme, Or haply peopling this enchanting spot Only with fair creations of fantastic thought.

For oft I think, in years long since gone by, That gentle hearts dwelt here and gentle hands Stored all this bowery bliss to beautify The paradise of some unsung romance; Here, safe from all except the loved one's eye, 'Tis sweet to think white limbs were wont to glance, Well pleased to wanton like the flowers and share Their simple loveliness with the enamored air.

Thrice dear to them whose votive fingers decked The altars of First Love were these green ways, -- These lawns and verdurous brakes forever flecked With the warm sunshine of midsummer days; Oft where the long straight allies intersect And marble seats surround the open space, Where a tiled pool and sculptured fountain stand, Hath Evening found them seated, silent, hand in hand.

When twilight deepened, in the gathering shade Beneath that old titanic cypress row, Whose sombre vault and towering colonnade Dwarfed the enfolded forms that moved below, Oft with close steps these happy lovers strayed, Till down its darkening aisle the sunset glow Grew less and patterning the garden floor Faint flakes of filtering moonlight mantled more and more.

And the strange tempest that a touch imparts Through the mid fibre of the molten frame, When the sweet flesh in early youth asserts Its heyday verve and little hints enflame, Disturbed them as they walked; from their full hearts Welled the soft word, and many a tender name Strove on their lips as breast to breast they strained And the deep joy they drank seemed never, never drained.

Love's soul that is the depth of starry skies Set in the splendor of one upturned face To beam adorably through half-closed eyes; Love's body where the breadth of summer days And all the beauty earth and air comprise Come to the compass of an arm's embrace, To burn a moment on impassioned lips And yield intemperate joy to quivering finger-tips,

They knew; and here where morning-glories cling Round carven forms of carefullest artifice, They made a bower where every outward thing Should comment on the cause of their own bliss; With flowers of liveliest hue encompassing That flower that the beloved body is -- That rose that for the banquet of Love's bee Has budded all the aeons of past eternity.

But their choice seat was where the garden wall, Crowning a little summit, far and near, Looks over tufted treetops onto all The pleasant outer country; rising here From rustling foliage where cuckoos call On summer evenings, stands a belvedere, Buff-hued, of antique plaster, overrun With flowering vines and weatherworn by rain and sun.

Still round the turrets of this antique tower The bougainvillea hangs a crimson crown, Wistaria-vines and clematis in flower, Wreathing the lower surface further down, Hide the old plaster in a very shower Of motley blossoms like a broidered gown. Outside, ascending from the garden grove, A crumbling stairway winds to the one room above.

And whoso mounts by this dismantled stair Finds the old pleasure-hall, long disarrayed, Brick-tiled and raftered, and the walls foursquare Ringed all about with a twofold arcade. Backward dense branches intercept the glare Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade; Eastward the level valley-plains expand, Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.

For through that frame the ivied arches make, Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye, Frequent with hamlet, grove, and lucent lake Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie; Far to the east where billowy mountains break In surf of snow against a sapphire sky, Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges, Changing from gold to pink as deepening sunset changes;

And over plain and far sierra spread The fulgent rays of fading afternoon, Showing each utmost peak and watershed All clarified, each tassel and festoon Of floating cloud embroidered overhead, Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn, Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free In peace and amplitude and bland tranquillity.

Dear were such evenings to this gentle pair; Love's tide that launched on with a blast too strong Sweeps toward the foaming reef, the hidden snare, Baffling with fond illusion's siren-song, Too faint, on idle shoals, to linger there Far from Youth's glowing dream, bore them along, With purple sail and steered by seraph hands To isles resplendent in the sunset of romance.

And out of this old house a flowery fane, A bridal bower, a pearly pleasure-dome, They built, and furnished it with gold and grain, And bade all spirits of beauty hither come, And winged Love to enter with his train And bless their pillow, and in this his home Make them his priests as Hero was of yore In her sweet girlhood by the blue Dardanian shore.

Tree-ferns, therefore, and potted palms they brought, Tripods and urns in rare and curious taste, Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced; Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught, And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed To light the lounger on some low divan, Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.

And there was spread, upon the ample floors, Work of the Levantine's laborious loom, Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom. Each morn renewed, the garden's flowery stores Blushed in fair vases, ochre and peach-bloom, And little birds through wicker doors left wide Flew in to trill a space from the green world outside.

And there was many a dainty attitude, Bronze and eburnean. All but disarrayed, Here in eternal doubt sweet Psyche stood Fain of the bath's delight, yet still afraid Lest aught in that palatial solitude Lurked of most menace to a helpless maid. Therefore forever faltering she stands, Nor yet the last loose fold slips rippling from her hands.

Close by upon a beryl column, clad In the fresh flower of adolescent grace, They set the dear Bithynian shepherd lad, The nude Antinous. That gentle face, Forever beautiful, forever sad, Shows but one aspect, moon-like, to our gaze, Yet Fancy pictures how those lips could smile At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the Nile.

And there were shapes of Beauty myriads more, Clustering their rosy bridal bed around, Whose scented breadth a silken fabric wore Broidered with peacock hues on creamiest ground, Fit to have graced the barge that Cydnus bore Or Venus' bed in her enchanted mound, While pillows swelled in stuffs of Orient dyes, All broidered with strange fruits and birds of Paradise.

'Twas such a bower as Youth has visions of, Thither with one fair spirit to retire, Lie upon rose-leaves, sleep and wake with Love And feast on kisses to the heart's desire; Where by a casement opening on a grove, Wide to the wood-winds and the sweet birds' choir, A girl might stand and gaze into green boughs, Like Credhe at the window of her golden house.

Or most like Vivien, the enchanting fay, Where with her friend, in the strange tower they planned, She lies and dreams eternity away, Above the treetops in Broceliande, Sometimes at twilight when the woods are gray And wolf-packs howl far out across the lande, Waking to love, while up behind the trees The large midsummer moon lifts--even so loved these.

For here, their pleasure was to come and sit Oft when the sun sloped midway to the west, Watching with sweet enjoyment interknit The long light slant across the green earth's breast, And clouds upon the ranges opposite, Rolled up into a gleaming thundercrest, Topple and break and fall in purple rain, And mist of summer showers trail out across the plain.

Whereon the shafts of ardent light, far-flung Across the luminous azure overhead, Ofttimes in arcs of transient beauty hung The fragmentary rainbow's green and red. Joy it was here to love and to be young, To watch the sun sink to his western bed, And streaming back out of their flaming core The vesperal aurora's glorious banners soar.

Tinging each altitude of heaven in turn, Those fiery rays would sweep. The cumuli That peeped above the mountain-tops would burn Carmine a space; the cirrus-whorls on high, More delicate than sprays of maiden fern, Streak with pale rose the peacock-breasted sky, Then blanch. As water-lilies fold at night, Sank back into themselves those plumes of fervid light.

And they would watch the first faint stars appear, The blue East blend with the blue hills below, As lovers when their shuddering bliss draws near Into one pulse of fluid rapture grow. New fragrance on the freshening atmosphere Would steal with evening, and the sunset glow Draw deeper down into the wondrous west Round vales of Proserpine and islands of the blest.

So dusk would come and mingle lake and shore, The snow-peaks fade to frosty opaline, To pearl the domed clouds the mountains bore, Where late the sun's effulgent fire had been -- Showing as darkness deepened more and more The incandescent lightnings flare within, And Night that furls the lily in the glen And twines impatient arms would fall, and then--and then . . .

Sometimes the peasant, coming late from town With empty panniers on his little drove Past the old lookout when the Northern Crown Glittered with Cygnus through the scented grove, Would hear soft noise of lute-strings wafted down And voices singing through the leaves above Those songs that well from the warm heart that woos At balconies in Merida or Vera Cruz.

And he would pause under the garden wall, Caught in the spell of that voluptuous strain, With all the sultry South in it, and all Its importunity of love and pain; And he would wait till the last passionate fall Died on the night, and all was still again, -- Then to his upland village wander home, Marvelling whence that flood of elfin song might come.

O lyre that Love's white holy hands caress, Youth, from thy bosom welled their passionate lays -- Sweet opportunity for happiness So brief, so passing beautiful--O days, When to the heart's divine indulgences All earth in smiling ministration pays -- Thine was the source whose plenitude, past over, What prize shall rest to pluck, what secret to discover!

The wake of color that follows her when May Walks on the hills loose-haired and daisy-crowned, The deep horizons of a summer's day, Fair cities, and the pleasures that abound Where music calls, and crowds in bright array Gather by night to find and to be found; What were these worth or all delightful things Without thine eyes to read their true interpretings!

For thee the mountains open glorious gates, To thee white arms put out from orient skies, Earth, like a jewelled bride for one she waits, Decks but to be delicious in thine eyes, Thou guest of honor for one day, whose fetes Eternity has travailed to devise; Ah, grace them well in the brief hour they last! Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.

Yet not without one fond memorial Let my sun set who found the world so fair! Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair, Be thou my tablet on the temple wall! Among the pious testimonials there, Witness how sweetly on my heart as well The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!

Speak of one then who had the lust to feel, And, from the hues that far horizons take, And cloud and sunset, drank the wild appeal, Too deep to live for aught but life's sweet sake, Whose only motive was the will to kneel Where Beauty's purest benediction spake, Who only coveted what grove and field And sunshine and green Earth and tender arms could yield --

A nympholept, through pleasant days and drear Seeking his faultless adolescent dream, A pilgrim down the paths that disappear In mist and rainbows on the world's extreme, A helpless voyager who all too near The mouth of Life's fair flower-bordered stream, Clutched at Love's single respite in his need More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed --

That coming one whose feet in other days Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more Than any purpose, felt the need to praise And seek the angelic image to adore, In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways Counting what most makes life worth living for, That so some relic may be his to see How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.

I sometimes think a conscious happiness Mantles through all the rose's sentient vine When summer winds with myriad calyces Of bloom its clambering height incarnadine; I sometimes think that cleaving lips, no less, And limbs that crowned desires at length entwine Are nerves through which that being drinks delight, Whose frame is the green Earth robed round with day and night.

And such were theirs: the traveller without, Pausing at night under the orchard trees, Wondered and crossed himself in holy doubt, For through their song and in the murmuring breeze It seemed angelic choirs were all about Mingling in universal harmonies, As though, responsive to the chords they woke, All Nature into sweet epithalamium broke.

And still they think a spirit haunts the place: 'Tis said, when Night has drawn her jewelled pall And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace Their mimic constellations, if it fall That one should see the moon rise through the lace Of blossomy boughs above the garden wall, That surely would he take great ill thereof And famish in a fit of unexpressive love.

But this I know not, for what time the wain Was loosened and the lily's petal furled, Then I would rise, climb the old wall again, And pausing look forth on the sundown world, Scan the wide reaches of the wondrous plain, The hamlet sites where settling smoke lay curled, The poplar-bordered roads, and far away Fair snowpeaks colored with the sun's last ray.

Waves of faint sound would pulsate from afar -- Faint song and preludes of the summer night; Deep in the cloudless west the evening star Hung 'twixt the orange and the emerald light; From the dark vale where shades crepuscular Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white, Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell, Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell.

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors, Shiny and sparkling,--arms and crowns and rings: Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -- To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down, Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again, And watch the glinting metal trickle off, Even as at night some fisherman, home bound With speckled cargo in his hollow keel Caught off Campeche or the Isle of Pines, Dips in his paddle, lifts it forth again, And laughs to see the luminous white drops Fall back in flakes of fire. . . . Gold was the dream That cheered that desperate enterprise. And now? . . . Victory waited on the arms of Spain, Fallen was the lovely city by the lake, The sunny Venice of the western world; There many corpses, rotting in the wind, Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er. Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets Came railing home at evening empty-palmed; And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone, Who, ounce by ounce, dear as their own life's blood Retreating, cast the cumbrous load away: They, when brown foemen lopped the bridges down, Who tipped thonged chests into the stream below And over wealth that might have ransomed kings Passed on to safety;--cheated, guerdonless -- Found (through their fingers the bright booty slipped) A city naked, of that golden dream Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky.

Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams, Helpless and manacled they led him down -- Cuauhtemotzin--and other lords beside -- All chieftains of the people, heroes all -- And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there On short stone settles sloping to the head, But where the feet projected, underneath Heaped the red coals. Their swarthy fronts illumed, The bearded Spaniards, helmed and haubergeoned, Paced up and down beneath the lurid vault. Some kneeling fanned the glowing braziers; some Stood at the sufferers' heads and all the while Hissed in their ears: "The gold . . . the gold . . . the gold. Where have ye hidden it--the chested gold? Speak--and the torments cease!"

They answered not. Past those proud lips whose key their sovereign claimed No accent fell to chide or to betray, Only it chanced that bound beside the king Lay one whom Nature, more than other men Framing for delicate and perfumed ease, Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth, Had weaned from gentle usages so far To teach that fortitude that warriors feel And glory in the proof. He answered not, But writhing with intolerable pain, Convulsed in every limb, and all his face Wrought to distortion with the agony, Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, The secret half atremble on his lips, Livid and quivering, that waited yet For leave--for leave to utter it--one sign -- One word--one little word--to ease his pain.

As one reclining in the banquet hall, Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers, Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he, Staunch in the ethic of an antique school -- Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind -- With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene, Himself impassive, silent, self-contained: So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched, Amid the tortured and the torturers. He who had seen his hopes made desolate, His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him, And watched while Pestilence and Famine piled His stricken people in their reeking doors, Whence glassy eyes looked out and lean brown arms Stretched up to greet him in one last farewell As back and forth he paced along the streets With words of hopeless comfort--what was this That one should weaken now? He weakened not. Whate'er was in his heart, he neither dealt In pity nor in scorn, but, turning round, Met that racked visage with his own unmoved, Bent on the sufferer his mild calm eyes, And while the pangs smote sharper, in a voice, As who would speak not all in gentleness Nor all disdain, said: "Yes! And am -I- then Upon a bed of roses?"

Stung with shame -- Shame bitterer than his anguish--to betray Such cowardice before the man he loved, And merit such rebuke, the boy grew calm; And stilled his struggling limbs and moaning cries, And shook away his tears, and strove to smile, And turned his face against the wall--and died.

The Nympholept

There was a boy--not above childish fears -- With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, Walked up into the mountains. One by one Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride Fell back, and ever wider and more wide The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed, From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed At that far length to which his path had led, He paused--at such a height where overhead The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill, And all was hushed and calm and very still, Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound Of tumbling waters rose, and all around The pines, by those keen upper currents blown, Muttered in multitudinous monotone. Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees, Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes; I think it was the same: some piercing sense Of Deity's pervasive immanence, The Life that visible Nature doth indwell Grown great and near and all but palpable . . . He might not linger, but with winged strides Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides -- Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine, By glade and flowery lawn and upland green, And never paused nor felt assured again But where the grassy foothills opened. Then, While shadows lengthened on the plain below And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow Looked back upon the world with fervid eye Through the barred windows of the western sky, Homeward he fared, while many a look behind Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined, Highland and hollow where his path had lain, Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.

The Wanderer

To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, Back of old-storied spires and architraves To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,

And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, Between new towers to waken and new bliss Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft under bulging crates, Coming to market with his morning load, The peasant found him early on his road To greet the sunrise at the city-gates, --

There where the meadows waken in its rays, Golden with mist, and the great roads commence, And backward, where the chimney-tops are dense, Cathedral-arches glimmer through the haze.

White dunes that breaking show a strip of sea, A plowman and his team against the blue, Swiss pastures musical with cowbells, too, And poplar-lined canals in Picardie,

And coast-towns where the vultures back and forth Sail in the clear depths of the tropic sky, And swallows in the sunset where they fly Over gray Gothic cities in the north,

And the wine-cellar and the chorus there, The dance-hall and a face among the crowd, -- Were all delights that made him sing aloud For joy to sojourn in a world so fair.

Back of his footsteps as he journeyed fell Range after range; ahead blue hills emerged. Before him tireless to applaud it surged The sweet interminable spectacle.

And like the west behind a sundown sea Shone the past joys his memory retraced, And bright as the blue east he always faced Beckoned the loves and joys that were to be.

From every branch a blossom for his brow He gathered, singing down Life's flower-lined road, And youth impelled his spirit as he strode Like winged Victory on the galley's prow.

That Loveliness whose being sun and star, Green Earth and dawn and amber evening robe, That lamp whereof the opalescent globe The season's emulative splendors are,

That veiled divinity whose beams transpire From every pore of universal space, As the fair soul illumes the lovely face -- That was his guest, his passion, his desire.

His heart the love of Beauty held as hides One gem most pure a casket of pure gold. It was too rich a lesser thing to hold; It was not large enough for aught besides.

The Need to Love

The need to love that all the stars obey Entered my heart and banished all beside. Bare were the gardens where I used to stray; Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.