Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

He had a rich man or two
Who took up with him against the powerful frown
Which looked him down.
For you'll always find a rich man or two
To take up with anything.
There are those who can't get into society or bring
Their riches to a social recognition;
Or ill-formed souls who lack the real patrician
Spirit for life.
But as for him he didn't care, he passed
Where the richness of living was rife.
And like wise Goethe talking to the last
With cabmen rather than with lords
He sat about the markets and the fountains,
He walked about the country and the mountains,
Took trips upon the lakes and waded fords
Barefooted, laughing as a young animal
Disports itself amid the festival
Of warm winds, sunshine, summer's carnival--
With laborers, carpenters, seamen
And some loose women.
And certain notable sinners
Gave him dinners.
And he went to weddings and to places where youth slakes
Its thirst for happiness, and they served him cakes
And wine wherever he went.
And he ate and drank and spent
His time in feasting and in telling stories,
And singing poems of lilies and of trees,
With crowds of people crowded around his knees
That searched with lightning secrets hidden
Of life and of life's glories,
Of death and of the soul's way after death.

Time makes amends usually for scandal's breath,
Which touched him to his earthly ruination.
But this city had a Civic Federation,
And a certain social order which intrigues
Through churches, courts, with an endless ramification
Of money and morals to save itself.
And this city had a Bar Association,
Also its Public Efficiency Leagues
For laying honest men upon the shelf
While making private pelf
Secure and free to increase.
And this city had illustrious Pharisees
And this city had a legion
Of men who make a business of religion,
With eyes one inch apart,
Dark and narrow of heart,
Who give themselves and give the city no peace,
And who are everywhere the best police
For Life as business.
And when they saw this youth
Was telling the truth,
And that his followers were multiplying,
And were going about rejoicing and defying
The social order and were stirring up
The dregs of discontent in the cup
With the hand of their own happiness,
They saw dynamic mysteries
In the poems of lilies and trees,
Therefore they held him for a felony.

If you will take a kernel of wheat
And first make free
The outer flake and then pare off the meat
Of edible starch you'll find at the kernel's core
The life germ. And this young man's words were dim
With blasphemy, sedition at the rim,
Which fired the heads of dreamers like new wine.
But this was just the outward force of him.
For this young man's philosophy was more
Than such external ferment, being divine
With secrets so profound no plummet line
Can altogether sound it. It means growth
Of soul by watching,
And the creation of eyes
Over your mind's eyes to supervise
A clear activity and to ward off sloth.
What he had in mind was scotching
And killing the snake of Hatred and stripping the glove
From the hand of Hypocrisy and quenching the fire
Of falsehood and unbrotherly Desire.
What he had in mind was simply Love.

But he was prosecuted
As a rebel and as a rebel executed
Right in a public place where all could see.
And his mother watched him hang for the felony.
He hated to die being but thirty-three,
And fearing that his poems might be lost.
And certain members of the Bar Association,
And of the Civic Federation,
And of the League of Public Efficiency,
And a legion
Of men devoted to religion,
With policemen, soldiers, roughs,
Loose women, thieves and toughs,
Came out to see him die,
And hooted at him giving up the ghost
In great despair and with a fearful cry!

And after him there was a man named Paul
Who almost spoiled it all.

And protozoan things like hypocrites,
And parasitic things who make a food
Of the mysteries of God for earthly power
Must wonder how before this young man's hour
They lived without his blood,
Shed on that day, and which
In red cells is so rich.

WHAT YOU WILL

April rain, delicious weeping,
Washes white bones from the grave,
Long enough have they been sleeping.
They are cleansed, and now they crave
Once more on the earth to gather
Pleasure from the springtime weather.

The pine trees and the long dark grass
Feed on what is placed below.
Think you not that there doth pass
In them something we did know?
This spell--well, friends, I greet ye once again
With joy--but with a most unuttered pain.

THE CITY

The Sun hung like a red balloon
As if he would not rise;
For listless Helios drowsed and yawned.
He cared not whether the morning dawned,
The brother of Eos and the Moon
Stretched him and rubbed his eyes.

He would have dreamed the dream again
That found him under sea:
He saw Zeus sit by Hera's side,
He saw Hæphestos with his bride;
He traced from Enna's flowery plain
The child Persephone.

There was a time when heaven's vault
Cracked like a temple's roof.
A new hierarchy burst its shell,
And as the sapphire ceiling fell,
From stern Jehovah's mad assault,
Vast spaces stretched aloof:

Great blue black depths of frozen air
Engulfed the soul of Zeus.
And then Jehovah reigned instead.
For Judah was living and Greece was dead.
And Hope was born to nurse Despair,
And the Devil was let loose.

* * * * *

Far off in the waste empyrean
The world was a golden mote.
And the Sun hung like a red balloon,
Or a bomb afire o'er a barracoon.
And the sea was drab, and the sea was green
Like a many colored coat.

The sea was pink like cyclamen,
And red as a blushing rose.
It shook anon like the sensitive plant,
Under the golden light aslant.
The little waves patted the shore again
Where the restless river flows.

And thus it has been for ages gone--
For a hundred thousand years;
Ere Buddha lived or Jesus came,
Or ever the city had place or name,
The sea thrilled through at the kiss of dawn
Like a soul of smiles and tears.

When the city's seat was a waste of sand,
And the hydra lived alone,
The sound of the sea was here to be heard,
And the moon rose up like a great white bird,
Sailing aloft from the yellow strand
To her silent midnight throne.

Now Helios eyes the universe,
And he knows the world is small.
Of old he walked through pagan Tyre,
Babylon, Sodom destroyed by fire,
And sought to unriddle the primal curse
That holds the race in thrall.

So he stepped from the Sun in robes of flame
As the city woke from sleep.
He walked the markets, walked the squares,
He walked the places of sweets and snares,
Where men buy honor and barter shame,
And the weak are killed as sheep.

He saw the city is one great mart
Where life is bought and sold.
Men rise to get them meat and bread
To barter for drugs or coffin the dead.
And dawn is but a plucked-up heart
For the dreary game of gold.

"Ho! ho!" said Helios, "father Zeus
Would never botch it so.
If he had stolen Joseph's bride,
And let his son be crucified
The son's blood had been put to use
To ease the people's woe."

"He of the pest and the burning bush,
Of locusts, lice, and frogs,
Who made me stand, veiling my light,
While Joshua slaughtered the Amorite,
Who blacked the skin of the sons of Cush,
And builded the synagogues."

"And Jehovah the great is omnipotent,
While Zeus was bound by Fate.
But Athens fell when Peter took Rome,
And Chicago is made His hecatomb.
And since from the hour His son was sent
The hypocrite holds the state."

Helios traversed the city streets
And this is what he saw:
Some sold their honor, some their skill,
The soldier hired himself to kill,
The judges bartered the judgment seats
And trafficked in the law.

The starving artist sold his youth,
The writer sold his pen;
The lawyer sharpened up his wits
Like a burglar filing auger bits,
And Jesus' vicar sold the truth
To the famished sons of men.

In every heart flamed cruelty
Like a little emerald snake.
And each one knew if he should stand
In another's way the dagger-hand
Would make the stronger the feofee
Of the coveted wapentake.

There's not a thing men will not do
For honor, gold, or power.
We smile and call the city fair,
We call life lovely and debonair,
But Proserpina never grew
So deadly a passion flower.

Go live for an hour in a tropic land
Hid near a sinking pool:
The lion and tiger come to drink,
The boa crawls to the water's brink,
The elephant bull kneels down in the sand
And drinks till his throat is cool.

Jehovah will keep you awhile unseen
As you lie behind the rocks.
But go, if you dare, to slake your thirst,
Though Jesus died for our life accursed
Your bones by the tiger will be licked clean
As he licks the bones of an ox.

And the sky may be blue as fleur de lis,
And the earth be tulip red;
And God in heaven, and life all good
While you lie hid in the underwood:
And the city may leave you sorrow free
If you ask it not for bread.

One day Achilles lost a horse
While the pest at Troy was rife,
And a million maggots fought and ate
Like soldiers storming a city's gate,
And Thersites said, as he looked at the corse,
"Achilles, that is life."

* * * * *

Day fades and from a million cells
The office people pour.
Like bees that crawl on the honeycomb
The workers scurry to what is home,
And trains and traffic and clanging bells
Make the cañon highways roar.

Helios walked the city's ways
Till the lights began to shine.
Then the janitor women start to scrub
And the Pharisees up and enter the club,
And the harlot wakes, and the music plays
And the glasses glow with wine.

Now we're good fellows one and all,
And the buffet storms with talk.
"The market's closed and trade's at end
We had our battle, now I'm your friend."
And thanks to the spirit of alcohol
Men go for a ride or walk.

Oh but traffic is not all done
Nor everything yet sold.
There's woman to win, and plots to weave,
There's a heart to hurt, or one to deceive,
And bargains to bind ere rise of Sun
To garner the morrow's gold.

The market at night is as full of fraud
As the market kept by day.
The courtesan buys a soul with a look,
A dinner tempers the truth in a book,
And love is sold till love is a bawd,
And falsehood froths in the play.

And men and women sell their smiles
For friendship's lifeless dregs.
For fear of the morrow we bend and bow
To moneybags with the slanting brow.
For the heart that knows life's little wiles
Seldom or never begs.

"Poor men," sighed Helios, "how they long
For the ultimate fire of love.
They yearn, through life, like the peacock moth,
And die worn out in search of the troth.
For love in the soul is the siren song
That wrecks the peace thereof."

* * * * *

Helios turned from the world and fled
As the convent bell tolled six.
For he caught a glimpse of an agéd crone
Who knelt beside a coffin alone;
She had sold her cloak to shrive the dead
And buy a crucifix!

THE IDIOT

Two children in a garden
Shouting for joy
Were playing dolls and houses,
A girl and boy.
I smiled at a neighbor window,
And watched them play
Under a budding oak tree
On a wintry day.

And then a board half broken
In the high fence
Fell over and there entered,
I know not whence,
A jailbird face of yellow
With a vacant sulk,
His body was a sickly
Thing of bulk.

His open mouth was slavering,
And a green light
Turned disc-like in his eyeballs,
Like a dog's at night.
His teeth were like a giant's,
And far apart;
I saw him reel on the children
With a stopping heart.
He trampled their dolls and ruined
The house they made;
He struck to earth the children
With a dirty spade.
As a tiger growls with an antelope
After the hunt,
Over the little faces
I heard him grunt.

I stood at the window frozen,
And short of breath,
And then I saw the idiot
Was Master Death!

A bird in the lilac bushes
Began to sing.
The garden colored before me
To the kiss of spring.
And the yellow face in a moment
Was a mystic white;
The matted hair was softened
To starry light.
The ragged coat flowed downward
Into a robe;
He carried a sword and a balance
And stood on a globe.
I watched him from the window
Under a spell;
The idiot was the angel
Azrael!

HELEN OF TROY

On an ancient vase representing in bas-relief the flight of Helen.

This is the vase of Love
Whose feet would ever rove
O'er land and sea;
Whose hopes forever seek
Bright eyes, the vermeiled cheek,
And ways made free.

Do we not understand
Why thou didst leave thy land,
Thy spouse, thy hearth?
Helen of Troy, Greek art
Hath made our heart thy heart,
Thy mirth our mirth.

For Paris did appear,--
Curled hair and rosy ear
And tapering hands.
He spoke--the blood ran fast,
He touched, and killed the past,
And clove its bands.

And this, I deem, is why
The restless ages sigh,
Helen, for thee.
Whate'er we do or dream,
Whate'er we say or seem,
We would be free.

We would forsake old love,
And all the pain thereof,
And all the care;
We would find out new seas,
And lands more strange than these,
And flowers more fair.

We would behold fresh skies
Where summer never dies
And amaranths spring;
Lands where the halcyon hours
Nest over scented bowers
On folded wing.

We would be crowned with bays,
And spend the long bright days
On sea or shore;
Or sit by haunted woods,
And watch the deep sea's moods,
And hear its roar.

Beneath that ancient sky
Who is not fain to fly
As men have fled?
Ah! we would know relief
From marts of wine and beef,
And oil and bread.

Helen of Troy, Greek art
Hath made our heart thy heart,
Thy love our love.
For poesy, like thee,
Must fly and wander free
As the wild dove.

O GLORIOUS FRANCE

You have become a forge of snow white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Or seventy years.

These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguinéd ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendor of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid. And in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.

This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.

As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: How the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.

And you say:
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields--
The prison house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!

FOR A DANCE

There is in the dance
The joy of children on a May day lawn.
The fragments of old dreams and dead romance
Come to us from the dancers who are gone.

What strains of ancient blood
Move quicker to the music's passionate beat?
I see the gulls fly over a shadowy flood
And Munster fields of barley and of wheat.

And I see sunny France,
And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light,
And faces, faces, yearning for the dance
With wistful eyes that look on our delight.

They live through us again
And we through them, who wish for lips and eyes
Wherewith to feel, not fancy, the old pain
Passed with reluctance through the centuries

To us, who in the maze
Of dancing and hushed music woven afresh
Amid the shifting mirrors of hours and days
Know not our spirit, neither know our flesh;

Nor what ourselves have been,
Through the long way that brought us to the dance:
I see a little green by Camolin
And odorous orchards blooming in Provence.

Two listen to the roar
Of waves moon-smitten, where no steps intrude.
Who knows what lips were kissed at Laracor?
Or who it was that walked through Burnham wood?

WHEN LIFE IS REAL

We rode, we rode against the wind.
The countless lights along the town
Made the town blacker for their fire,
And you were always looking down.

To 'scape the blustering breath of March,
Or was it for your mind's disguise?
Still I could shut my eyes and see
The turquoise color of your eyes.

Surely your ermine furs were warm,
And warm your flowing cloak of red;
Was it the wild wind kept you thus
Pensive and with averted head?

I scarcely spoke, my words were swept
Like winged things in the wind's despite.
We rode, and with what shadow speed
Across the darkness of the night!

Without a word, without a look.
What was the charm and what the spell
That made one hour of life become
A memory ever memorable?

* * * * *

All craft, all labor, all desire,
All toil of age, all hope of youth
Are shadows from the fount of fire
And mummers of the truth.

How bloodless books, how pulseless art,
Vain kingly and imperial zeal,
Vain all memorials of the heart!
When Life itself is real!

We traced the golden clouds of spring,
We roved the beach, we walked the land.
What was the world? A Phantom thing
That vanished in your hand.

You were as quiet as the sky.
Your eyes were liquid as the sea.
And in that hour that passed us by
We lived eternally.

THE QUESTION