Chapter II

Of old betwixt the gods and earth
High-headed, girt with cloud
Dividing misery and mirth,
Old Atlas stood and bowed.

Close to the high celestial gate
He bent a drowsy brain:
While far below his feet set weight
On furrowed fields of pain.

The earth’s far cry sang faint, and dim
Her face toward him grew:
His head was crowned with light; round him
The immortal laughters flew.

And yet he tired of that high place,
And thrust away the prize:
Lifting a dead, indignant face
Of stone toward the skies.

TWO breasts to her unhappy brood
Uplifts our mother Earth,
And tenders to their cry for food
Her ministry of dearth.

So, wistfully from breast to breast
She draws the lips that crave;
And lies importunately pressed
By mouths she may not save:

As if her violated clay,
Sown with unnatural seed,
Had by some god’s despotic sway
Given forth a monster breed.

So half her breast she shrouds in leaves
To hide the piteous scars;
And half, a barren breast, she heaves
And bares to all the stars.

O mother, lift me from the land,
And give me breast by sea;
And leave me room where I may stand
And starve unnursed by thee!

THE land’s arms loose me, and I taste
The full draught of the sea:
Out of the flesh and all its waste
A spirit plucks at me.

O spirit, brooding on the waves,
Blow through me with thy breath;
And bear me to the unmounded graves
Which thou hast smoothed for death!

And in the welcome of thy smile,
Old furrowed face of dearth,
Fold me, and let me for a while
Forget my mother earth.

WHAT farewell can I wish you now,
Of all farewells the best?
Love, if my lips no words allow,
There must confession rest:

Against this lonely heart to tell
The best wish that may be:
Oh, may you, if you would fare well,
Fare well away from me!

AH, no! beloved, you part not hence:
In the most middle night,
I hold close gathered to each sense
Love that outpasses sight.

Out of this coil is no escape;
And naught can parting do!
I look upon too like a shape,
Love, when I look on you.

So let me bear until I die
An undeparting guest:
O face of love, come back and lie
In shadow on my breast!

ROUND this dark ship that bears me on
There broods a wasteful calm;
As though it breathed from Avalon,
The sea-breeze pours its balm.

And night and day beside the ship
There walks upon the wave
A form I know, with prayer on lip,
And hands too weak to save.

Yet, should I stoop my lips to drain
The draught they long for best,
Those hands would have me fast again
And snatch me back from rest.

DARK to its nest the light has gone;
An unseen force prevails,
And hands of storm lay hold upon
The rigging and the sails.

High heaves the heart of night, and loud
The water sobs and breaks,
And overhead one helmet-cloud
Its cap of darkness makes.

Strong wants whereto the welkin moves,
They are but waifs like me;
And all a storm of severed loves
That strain across the sea!

THE death-white horses crest and turn,
Their gleaming saddles glide:
Have I no senses to discern
The riders as they ride?

O death-white horse, in this dark race
Outcresting all your crew,
With foaming flank, and furious pace,
Who is it rides on you?

Nay, follow not so hard on me,
Who ride to death alone:
White horse, pace gently, lest I see
Your rider overthrown!

OH, like-unlike, a difference strange
Your soul from mine divides:
Out of one prison-house we range
To follow different guides.

And led by hands of death or birth
To live again or die,
Severed by all the paths of earth
Our fates divided lie.

And still ’twixt life and death I ask
The Darkness named divine,
Why bound He in so fair a mask
A soul so close to mine?

HERE where the Rome of nations stands
On mounds of buried breath,
Sits one who holds in hollow hands
The keys of life and death.

Oh, heavy come the poor in heart,
And rich return they home;
Since well performs his proper part
The middleman of Rome!

About the holy beaten ground
The nations on their knees
Hark, while with apostolic sound
Loud creak the golden keys.

And, though the hingeless doors be dumb,
With solemn hand and show
The porter lets the weak man come,
And lets the strong man go.

But while he spreads his lavish hands
Across the hill-tops seven,
Dark Angelo like Atlas stands
Dividing earth from Heaven.

In the Sistine Chapel

Where, perfected in flesh and bone,
Earth’s crowned creation ends:
There with a universal groan
The cry of life ascends.

To Heaven’s dark doors soul bound in sense
Has pushed its furthest cry,--
“Reach down, O Lord, and take us hence
That neither live nor die!

“Thou, that hast shaped our suffering thus,
Grant us this last relief:
Be sorry now, and loose from us
The glory and the grief!

“Since Thou hast given us to corrupt
Flesh and fair earth, now scan
Thy making, surfeited and supped,
Thy maggot-worker, man!”

O Counsel-Darkener, over me
Still let Thy glooms expand;
More darkness, Lord!--lest I should see
Thy Face, and understand!

GREAT Mother, dwelling in the shade
Of altars, over glooms
Monastic, where long prayer is made
By dead men out of tombs:

Thou hearest how thy barren sons
For life’s denial beseech:
Yet some of those were fruitful once,
Their lips found flowers to reach.

Therefore, to cheer their hearts, send down,
Even to the lowest place,
Thy mother-word from that fair Town
Where loves come face to face.

’Mid shadowing of celestial doves
Bring pity to the dead,
O Thou Madonna of the loves
Of hearts that could not wed!

But here, O Maiden of the East,
To me Thy voice is dumb;
Unto thy final gathering-feast
My love can never come.

For I am bound to other marts
Where meagre are Love’s doles,
And men lay by their broken hearts,
But not their broken souls.

IN sackcloth shrouds they rise from rest;
They pray from bleeding knees:--
Ah, Christ! what grapes of love grow pressed
Against the lips of these?

Out of the smitten flesh and bone,
Old heats of earlier days,
A blood-red vintage fills with moan
The wine-press of Thy praise.

Which at Thy feast being lifted up
Before celestial eyes:--
What ghosts out of the bloody cup,
What ghosts of men must rise!

TO the Tree of Life on Judgment Day
Spake the poor poison-tree,
“Within my sap came death to stay
When life first looked on me.

“But from thy boughs there went a breath,
Thy shadow on me fell:
And nothing have I done for death,
Because I loved thee well.

“So I was barren for thy sake,
Though little else I did:
Here, Lord, as in a napkin take
The talent that I hid!

“Now am I weary: therefore shift
The burden of thy breath;
Have back again thy bitter gift,
Who gavest life to Death!”

AGAINST my flesh Love hangs to die
As on the accursèd tree:
I am the rood where he lays by
His wronged humanity.

The wounds which pierce the hands of Love,
Driven by the hands of hate,
Stand also in my flesh to prove
The bitterness of fate.

Here Love lies dying on my breast,
His sorrow half laid by:
Soon shall he enter to his rest,
When, ah, no rest have I!

An empty Hermitage

How this sad place deserted grown
Speaks of an old despair:
In ghostly dints the weary stone
Is hollowed out with prayer;

As if each day, where lips of dearth
Cried for a barren clod,
Some want had worn the face of earth,
Since not the Face of God.

Who knows in what dark anguish ailed
Yon soul of flesh and bone?
The prayer, because the spirit failed,
Hath carved itself in stone.

O hollow stone, of hollow prayer
You make a weary jest:
For prayers that failed did earth prepare
This hollow place of rest?

The Holy Sepulchre

This is the grave which year by year
Gives up its ghostly dead:
Of all poor graves least rest is here,
Where Love laid down his head!

The heart’s desire of heart-sick lands
How shall men leave alone?
Therefore they come with pious hands
And roll away the stone.

So year by year, as dawn brings gloom
To light, and earth waits dumb,
Uneasy from the open tomb
The ghostly Easters come.

A Prayer to the giver of Evil

From these thy servants who behold
Thy face continually,
To whom I gave sad gifts of gold;--
Shall this my guerdon be?

Since once I served them, wasting so
My substance at their board,
Have they no broken meats to throw
The beggar of their lord?

Thy swine, they lack not to be fed,
Though I stand famished by;
And all thy hirelings eat thy bread,
When I for hunger die!

The meats stand ready to be carved,
The sparkling wines are spiced:
Then, give me room, lest I be starved
Back to the Feet of Christ!

“SING once for joy!” spake Love, and bowed
His light toward my face,
From that deep covering of cloud
Which is his dwelling-place.

I lifted up my heart, and sang;
And far aloft went loud
A shuddering note of joy which sprang
To kiss the upper cloud.

But on that fair celestial tent
My praises cast a stain:
The cloud that was Love’s covering rent
And poured itself in rain.

ACROSS these barren clods of clay
Whenever a wind blows,
Between them and the warmth of day,
Stir shadows of the rose.

There, while the roses dance in air
And light winds whisper round,
Below them shadows foot to share
A ghostly dance on ground.

How coldly feels that barren bed
Those motions of delight!
It cares not if the rose be red,
Or if the rose be white.

For be the roses white as snow,
Or be they red as shame,
With ghostly footsteps to and fro
Their shadows walk the same.

“Alas!” complains the barren clod,
“Their dance is never done:
And all their duty is to nod
Between me and the sun!”

I, TOO, hear how the lover sings
Love like a flower unfurled;
I hear the viols, the flutes and strings
Of this great moaning world.

I feel the innumerable dance
Tingle beneath my tread;
I see the season’s happy chance,
And grain-fields harvested.

I, too, could sing had I not this
To bind upon my brain,
That all these myriad notes of bliss
Make one great voice of pain:

That, though I lay all sorrow by
And make glad songs my own,
They will not lessen as they die
The universal moan.

ONLY two hands has Love to lend
The many hands that plead,
Only one heart where to befriend
All kindred hearts in need.

Eyes, lips, and hands, cannot suffice
To comfort the sick earth,
Whose children bear the hard device
And bondage of their birth.

But one illimitable share
Is theirs, that all who will,
In want and weakness and despair
Can take their utmost fill:

One gift that brings a sure relief
To toiling human breath,
That through a thousand wounds of grief
Each heart may bleed to death.

LIVING, I feel the feet that tread
My burial-plot of ground,
As if they grudged the tired dead
A sleep that is too sound.

Tread softly, you, and you, for I,--
Truly I know you not!
Leave, where the dead man has to lie,
The quiet of his lot.

But if, at crossing of love’s ways,
Feet from a distant land
Stood now, where after many days
I shall come, not to stand;

Then there would grow a light above
This darkness of my breast,
And I should know the feet I love
Had touched my place of rest.

HIGH overhead the clock that tolls
The passing knell of noon
Suspends its sentence, and there rolls
No prelude of its tune.

The heavy minute-hand creeps in,
And hard upon the hour
The other hand keeps hold to win
The voices from the tower.

Till half they seem like faring feet
Toward that destined spot
Where the two hands of Time shall meet
On me, and I be not.

Oh, let my brain get quit of power,
And let the word be soon,
When iron hands shall clasp the hour
That cries my note of noon!

LIFE flutters from the wooded brow,
A slow breath sadly drawn:
With gray wings beating comest thou,
Shy heron of the dawn!

And ever on from deep to deep
Of space the errand flies,
And breaks in starry pools of sleep
The dreams of lover’s eyes.

Then on until, where east is west,
Still westward called away,
On weary feathers sinks to rest
A tender-breasted day.

And once again I dream how light
Across the breasts of space
Goes moving onward into sight
Of one belovèd face;

Till cold across the ashen east
Returns the gray-winged day:
And, beak and claws flushed red from feast,
There hangs a bird of prey!