Chapter II (1)

I made my bed beneath the pines
Where the sea washed the sandy bars;
I heard the music of the winds,
And blest the aureate face of Mars.
All night a lilac splendor throve
Above the heaven's shadowy verge;
And in my heart the voice of love
Kept music with the dreaming surge.

A little maid was at my side--
She slept--I scarcely slept at all;
Until toward the morning-tide
A dream possessed me with its thrall.
She sweetly breathed; around my breast
I felt her warmth like drowsy bliss,
Then came the vision of unrest--
I saw your face and felt your kiss.

I woke and knew with what dismay
She read my secret and surprise;
She only said, "Again 'tis day!
How red your cheeks, how bright your eyes!"

THE SIGN

There's not a soul on the square,
And the snow blows up like a sail,
Or dizzily drifts like a drunken man
Falling, before the gale.

And when the wind eddies it rifts
The snow that lies in drifts;
And it skims along the walk and sifts
In stairways, doorways all about
The steps of the church in an angry rout.
And one would think that a hungry hound
Was out in the cold for the sound.

But I do not seem to mind
The snow that makes one blind,
Nor the crying voice of the wind--
I hate to hear the creak of the sign
Of Harmon Whitney, attorney at law:
With its rhythmic monotone of awe.
And neither a moan nor yet a whine,
Nor a cry of pain--one can't define
The sound of a creaking sign.

Especially if the sky be bleak,
And no one stirs however you seek,
And every time you hear it creak
You wonder why they leave it stay
When a man is buried and hidden away
Many a day!

WILLIAM MARION REEDY

He sits before you silent as Buddha,
And then you say
This man is Rabelais.
And while you wonder what his stock is,
English or Irish, you behold his eyes
As big and brown as those desirable crockies
With which as boys we used to play.
And then you see the spherical light that lies
Just under the iris coloring,
Before which everything,
Becomes as plain as day.

If you have noticed the rolling jowls
And the face that speaks its chief
Delight in beer and roast beef
Before you have seen his eyes, you see
A man of fleshly jollity,
Like the friars of old in gowns and cowls
To make a show of scowls.
And when he speaks from an orotund depth that growls
In a humorous way like Fielding or Smollett
That turns in a trice to Robert La Follette
Or retraces to Thales of Crete,
And touches upon Descartes coming back
Through the intellectual Zodiac
That's something of a feat.
And you see that the eyes are really the man,
For the thought of him proliferates
This way over to Hindostan,
And that way descanting on Yeats.
With a word on Plato's symposium,
And a little glimpse of Theocritus,
Or something of Bruno's martyrdom,
Or what St. Thomas Aquinas meant
By a certain line obscure to us.
And then he'll take up Horace's odes
Or the Roman civilization;
Or a few of the Iliad's episodes,
Or the Greek deterioration.
Or skip to a word on the plasmic jelly,
Which Benjamin Moore and others think
Is the origin of life. Then Shelley
Comes in a for a look of understanding.
Or he'll tell you about the orientation
Of the ancient dream of Zion.
Or what's the matter with Bryan.
And while the porter is bringing a drink
Something into his fancy skips
And he talks about the Apocalypse,
Or a painter or writer now unknown
In France or Germany who will soon
Have fame of him through the whole earth blown.

It's not so hard a thing to be wise
In the lore of books.
It's a different thing to be all eyes,
Like a lighthouse which revolves and looks
Over the land and out to sea:
And a lighthouse is what he seems to me!
Sitting like Buddha spiritually cool,
Young as the light of the sun is young,
And taking the even with the odd
As a matter of course, and the path he's trod
As a path that was good enough.
With a sort of transcendental sense
Whose hatred is less than indifference,
And a gift of wisdom in love.
And who can say as he classifies
Men and ages with his eyes
With cool detachment: this is dung,
And that poor fellow is just a fool.
And say what you will death is a rod.
But I see a light that shines and shines
And I rather think it's God.

A STUDY

If your thoughts were as clear as your eyes,
And the whole of your heart were true,
You were fitter by far for winning--
But then that would not be you.

If your pulse beat time to love
As fast as you think and plan,
You could kindle a lasting passion
In the breast of the strongest man.

If you felt as much as you thought,
And dreamed what you seem to dream,
A world of elysian beauty
Your ruined heart would redeem.

If you thought in the light of the sun,
Or the blood in your veins flowed free,
If you gave your kisses but gladly,
We two could better agree.

If you were strong where I counted,
And weak where yourself were at stake,
You would have my strength for your giving,
You would gain and not lose for my sake.

If your heart overruled your head,
Or your head were lord of your heart,
Or the two were lovingly balanced,
I think we never should part.

If you came to me spite of yourself,
And staid not away through design,
These days of loving and living
Were sweet as Olympian wine.

If you could weep with another,
And tears for yourself controlled,
You could waken and hold to a pity
You waken, but do not hold.

If your lips were as fain to speak
As your face is fashioned to hide--
You would know that to lay up treasure
A woman's heart must confide.

If your bosom were something richer,
Or your hands more fragile and thin,
You would call what the world calls evil,
Or sin and be glad of the sin.

If your soul were aflame with love,
Or your head were devoted to truth,
You never would toss on your pillow
Bewildered 'twixt rapture and ruth.

If you were the you of my dreams,
And the you of my dreams were mine,
These days, half sweet and half bitter,
Would taste like Olympian wine.

Oh, subtle and mystic Egyptians!
Who chiseled the Sphinx in the East,
With head and the breasts of a woman,
And body and claws of a beast.

And gave her a marvellous riddle
That the eyeless should read as he ran:
What crawls and runs and is baffled
By woman, the sphinx--but a man?

Many look in her face and are conquered,
Where one all her heart has explored;
A thousand have made her their sovereign,
But one is her sovereign and lord.

For him she leaps from her standard
And fawns at his feet in the sand,
Who sees that himself is her riddle,
And she but the work of his hand.

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN

The pathos in your face is like a peace,
It is like resignation or a grace
Which smiles at the surcease
Of hope. But there is in your face
The shadow of pain, and there is a trace
Of memory of pain.

I look at you again and again,
And hide my looks lest your quick eye perceives
My search for your despair.
I look at your pale hands--I look at your hair;
And I watch you use your hands, I watch the flare
Of thought in your eyes like light that interweaves
A flutter of color running under leaves--
Such anguished dreams in your eyes!
And I listen to you speak
Words like crystals breaking with a tinkle,
Or a star's twinkle.
Sometimes as we talk you rise
And leave the room, and then I rub a streak
Of a tear from my cheek.

You tell me such magical things
Of pictures, books, romance
And of your life in France
In the varied music of exquisite words,
And in a voice that sings.

All things are memory now with you,
For poverty girds
Your hopes, and only your dreams remain.
And sometimes here and there
I see as you turn your head a whitened hair,
Even when you are smiling most.
And a light comes in your eyes like a passing ghost,
And a color runs through your cheeks as fresh
As burns in a girl's flesh.
Then I can shut my eyes and feel the pain
That has become a part of you, though I feign
Laughter myself. One sees another's bruise
And shakes his thought out of it shuddering.
So I turn and clamp my will lest I bring
Your sorrow into my flesh, who cannot choose
But hear your words and laughter,
And watch your hands and eyes.

Then as I think you over after
I have gone from you, and your face
Comes to me with its grace
Of memory of unfound love:
You seem to me the image of all women
Who dream and keep under smiles the grief thereof,
Or sew, or sit by windows, or read books
To hide their Secret's looks.
And after a time go out of life and leave
No uttered words but in their silence grieve
For Life and for the things no tongue can tell:
Why Life hurts so, and why Love haunts and hurts
Poor men and women in this demi-hell.

Perhaps your pathos means that it is well
Death in his time the aspiring torch inverts,
And all tired flesh and haunted eyes and hands
Moving in painéd whiteness are put under
The soothing earth to brighten April's wonder.

IN THE CAGE

The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
Of morning over the water growing blue.
At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.

But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green
Leave the recesses of the room
With misty auras drawn around their gloom
Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.

You, standing between the window and the bed
Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie
Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye
Musing upon the contour of your head,
Watching you comb your hair,
Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,
Tied with white braid above your slender hips
Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare
And delicate legs by contrast white as milk.
And as you toss your head to comb its tresses
They flash upon me like long strips of sand
Between a moonlit sea, pale as your hand,
And a red sun that on a high dune stresses
Its sanguine heat.

And then at times your lips,
Protruding half unconscious half in scorn
Engage my eyes while looking through the morn
At the clear oval of your brow brought full
Over the sovereign largeness of your eyes;
Or at your breasts that shake not as you pull
The comb through stubborn tangles, only rise
Scarcely perceptible with breath or signs,
Firm unmaternal like a young Bacchante's,
Or at your nose profoundly dipped like Dante's
Over your chin that softly melts away.

Now you seem fully under my heart's sway.
I have slipped through the magic of your mesh
Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh,
You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play.
Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted
When I shall think of you half heavy hearted.
I know our partings. You will faintly smile
And look at me with eyes that have no guile,
Or have too much, and pass into the sphere
Where you keep independent life meanwhile.
How do you live without me, is the fear?
You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder
Of other loves I may have hidden under
These casual renewals of our love.
And if I loved you I should lie in flame,
Ari, go about re-murmuring your name,
And these are things a man should be above.

And as I lie here on the imminent brink
Of soul's surrender into your soul's power,
And in the white light of the morning hour
I see what life would be if we should link
Our lives together in a marriage pact:
For we would walk along a boundless tract
Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty
Would be of spirit, for I have not won
Mastered and bound your spirit unto me.
And if you had a lover in the way
I have you it would not by half betray
My love as does your vague and chainless thought,
Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns,
Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns,
Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought
Under my hands yet to no unison
Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink
I watch you now and think
Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken
Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall;
And all the pictures of a woman broken
By man's superior strength.

And there you stand
Your heart and life as firmly in command
Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all
Of man, the master, and his power to harm,
His rulership of spheres material,
Bread, customs, rules of fair repute--
What are they all against your slender arm?
Which long since plucked the fruit
Of good and evil, and of life at last
And now of Life. For dancing you have cast
Veil after veil of ideals or pretense
With which men clothe the being feminine
To satisfy their lordship or their sense
Of ownership and hide the things of sin--
You have thrown them aside veil after veil;
And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail,
Yet strong as nature, making comical
The poems and the tales of woman's fall....
You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air
Made by the closing door. I lie and stare
At the closed door. One, two, your tuftèd steps
Die on the velvet of the outer hall.
You have escaped. And I would not pursue.
Though we are but caged creatures, I and you--
A male and female tiger in a zoo.
For I shall wait you. Life himself will track
Your wanderings and bring you back,
And shut you up again with me and cage
Our love and hatred and our silent rage.

SAVING A WOMAN: ONE PHASE

To a lustful thirst she came at first
And gave him her maiden's pride;
And the first man scattered the flower of her love,
Then turned to his chosen bride.

She waned with grief as a fading star,
And waxed as a shining flame;
And the second man had her woman's love,
But the second was playing the game.

With passion she stirred the man who was third;
Woe's me! what delicate skill
She plied to the heart that knew her art
And fled from her wanton will.

Now calm and demure, oh fair, oh pure,
Oh subtle, patient and wise,
She trod the weary round of life,
With a sorrow deep in her eyes.

Now a hero who knew how false, how true
Was the speech that fell from her lips,
With a Norseman's strength took sail with her,
And landed and burnt his ships.

He gave her pity, he gave her mirth,
And the hurt in her heart he nursed;
But under the silence of her brows
Was a dream of the man who was first.

And all the deceit and lust of men
Had sharpened her own deceit;
And down to the gates of hell she led
Her friend with her flying feet.

For a bitten bud will never bloom,
And a woman lost is lost!
And the first and the third may go unscathed,
But some man pays the cost.

And the books of life are full of the rune,
And this is the truth of the song:
No man can save a woman's soul,
Nor right a woman's wrong.

LOVE IS A MADNESS

Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers--
Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam
Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours.

Will the look return to your eyes, the warmth to your hand?
Love is a doubt, an ache, love is a writhing fear.
Love is a potion drunk when the ship puts out from land,
Rudderless, sails at full, and with none to steer.

The end is a shattered lamp, a drunken seraph asleep,
The upturned face of the drowned on a barren beach.
The glare of noon is o'er us, we are ashamed to weep--
The beginning and end of love are devoid of speech.

ON A BUST

Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce--
They do not justify your head in bronze!
Your essays! talent's failures were to you
Your philosophic gamut, but things true,
Or beautiful, oh never! What's the pons
For you to cross to fame?--Your head in bronze?

What has the artist caught? The sensual chin
That melts away in weakness from the skin,
Sagging from your indifference of mind;
The sullen mouth that sneers at human kind
For lack of genius to create or rule;
The superficial scorn that says "you fool!"
The deep-set eyes that have the mud-cat look
Which might belong to Tolstoi or a crook.
The nose half-thickly fleshed and half in point,
And lightly turned awry as out of joint;
The eyebrows pointing upward satyr-wise,
Scarce like Mephisto, for you scarcely rise
To cosmic irony in what you dream--
More like a tomcat sniffing yellow cream.
The brow! 'Tis worth the bronze it's molded in
Save for the flat-top head and narrow thin
Backhead which shows your spirit has not soared.
You are a Packard engine in a Ford,
Which wrecks itself and turtles with its load,
Too light and powerful to keep the road.
The master strength for twisting words is caught
In the swift turning wheels of iron thought.
With butcher knives your hands can vivisect
Our butterflies, but you can not erect
Temples of beauty, wisdom. You can crawl
Hungry and subtle over Eden's wall,
And shame half grown up truth, or make a lie
Full grown as good. You cannot glorify
Our dreams, or aspirations, or deep thirst.
To you the world's a fig tree which is curst.
You have preached every faith but to betray;
The artist shows us you have had your day.

A giant as we hoped, in truth a dwarf;
A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf,
Which seemed at first a vessel with sweet wine
For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline
You went through sloven spirit, craven heart
And cynic indolence. And here the art
Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce
And made your shame our shame--your head in bronze!
Some day this bust will lie amid old metals
Old copper boilers, wires, faucets, kettles.
Some day it will be melted up and molded
In door knobs, inkwells, paper knives, or folded
In leaves and wreaths around the capitals
Of marble columns, or for arsenals
Fashioned in something, or in course of time
Successively made each of these, from grime
Rescued successively, or made a bell
For fire or worship, who on earth can tell?
One thing is sure, you will not long be dust
When this bronze will be broken as a bust
And given to the junkman to re-sell.
You know this and the thought of it is hell!

ARABEL

Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers,
The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room.
Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral
Sit the readers of poems one by one.
And all the room is in shadow except for the blur
Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall.

And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever
Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings
Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul.
And after a time under the lamp a man
Begins to read a letter having no poem to read.
And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse
Dampened by rain--it's a dying mind that writes
What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks.
And a sickness enters our hearts. The jewelled hands
Clutch at the arms of the chairs--about the room
One hears the parting of lips, and a nervous shifting
Of feet and arms.

And I look up and over
The reader's shoulder and see the name of the writer.
What is it I see? The name of a man I knew!
You are an ironical trickster, Time, to bring
After so many years and into a place like this
This face before me: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness,
Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids
Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes.
Such was your look in a photograph I saw
In a silver frame on a woman's dresser--and such
Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone!

And then
As a soul looks down on the body it leaves--
A body by fever slain--I look on myself
As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read:

I enter a box
Of a theater with Jim, my friend of fifty,
I being twenty-two. Two women are in the box
One of an age for Jim and one of an age for me.
And mine is dressed in a dainty gown of dimity,
And she fans herself with a fan of silver spangles
Till a subtle odor of delicate powder or of herself
Enters my blood and I stare at her snowy neck,
And the glossy brownness of her hair until
She feels my stare, and turns half-view and I see
How like a Greek's is her nose, with just a little
Aquiline touch; and I catch the flash of an eye,
And the glint of a smile on the richness of her lips.
The company now discourses upon the letter
But my dream goes on:

I re-live a rapture
Which may be madness, and no man understands
Until he feels it no more. The youth that was I
From the theater under the city's lights follows the girl
Desperate lest in the city's curious chances
He never sees her again. And boldly he speaks.
And she and the older woman, her sister
Smile and speak in turn, and Jim who stands
While I break the ice comes up--and so
Arm in arm we go to the restaurant,
I in heaven walking with Arabel,
And Jim with her older sister.
We drive them home under a summer moon,
And while I explain to Arabel my boldness,
And crave her pardon for it, Jim, the devil,
Laughs apart with her sister while I wonder
What Jim, the devil, is laughing at. No matter
To-morrow I walk in the park with Arabel.

Just now the reader of the letter
Tells of the writer's swift descent
From wealth to want.

We are in the park next afternoon by the water.
I look at her white throat full as it were of song.
And her rounded virginal bosom, beautiful!
And I study her eyes, I search to the depths her eyes
In the light of the sun. They are full of little rays
Like the edge of a fleur de lys, and she smiles
At first when I fling my soul at her feet.

But when I repeat I love her, love her only,
A cloud of wonder passes over her face,
She veils her eyes. The color comes to her cheeks.
And when she picks some clover blossoms and tears them
Her hand is trembling. And when I tell her again
I love her, love her only, she blots her eyes
With a handkerchief to hide a tear that starts.

And she says to me: "You do not know me at all,
How can you love me? You never saw me before
Last night." "Well, tell me about yourself."
And after a time she tells me the story:
About her father who ran away from her mother;
And how she hated her father, and how she grieved
When her mother died; and how a good grandmother
Helped her and helps her now. And how her sister
Divorced her husband. And then she paused a moment:
"I am not strong, you'd have to guard me gently,
And that takes money, dear, as well as love.
Two years ago I was very ill, and since then
I am not strong."

"Well I can work," I said.
"And what would you think of a little cottage
Not too far out with a yard and hosts of roses,
And a vine on the porch, and a little garden,
And a dining room where the sun comes in,
When a morning breeze blows over your brow,
And you sit across the table and serve me
And neither of us can speak for happiness
Without our voices breaking, or lips trembling."

She is looking down with little frowns on her brow.
"But if ever I had to work, I could not do it,
I am not really well."

"But I can work," I said.
I rise and lift her up, holding her hand.
She slips her arm through mine and presses it.
"What a good man you are," she said. "Just like a brother--
I almost love you, I believe I love you."

The reader of the letter, being a doctor,
Is talking learnedly of the writer's case
Which has the classical marks of paresis.

Next day I look up Jim and rhapsodize
About a cottage with roses and a garden,
And a dining room where the sun comes in,
And Arabel across the table. Jim is smoking
And flicking the ashes, but never says a word
Till I have finished. Then in a quiet voice:
"Arabel's sister says that Arabel's straight,
But she isn't, my boy--she's just like Arabel's sister.
She knew you had the madness for Arabel.
That's why we laughed and stood apart as we talked.
And I'll tell you now I didn't go home that night,
I shook you at the corner and went back,
And staid that night. Now be a man, my boy,
Go have your fling with Arabel, but drop
The cottage and the roses."

They are still discussing the madman's letter.

And memory permeates me like a subtle drug:
The memory of my love for Arabel,
The torture, the doubt, the fear, the restless longing,
The sleepless nights, the pity for all her sorrows,
The speculation about her and her sister,
And what her illness was;
And whether the man I saw one time was leaving
Her door or the next door to it, and if her door
Whether he saw my Arabel or her sister....

The reader of the letter is telling how the writer
Left his wife chasing the lure of women.

And it all comes back to me as clear as a vision:
The night I sat with Arabel strong but conquered.
Whatever I did, I loved her, whatever she was.
Madness or love the terrible struggle must end.
She took my hand and said, "You must see my room."
We stood in the doorway together and on her dresser
Was a silver frame with the photograph of a man--
I had seen him in life: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness
Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids
Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes.
"There is his picture," she said, "ask me whatever you will.
Take me as mistress or wife, it is yours to decide.
But take me as mistress and grow like the picture before you,
Take me as wife and be the good man you can be.
Choose me as mistress--how can I do less for dearest?
Or make me your wife--fate makes me your mistress or wife."
"I can leave you," I said. "You can leave me," she echoed,
"But how about hate in your heart."

"You are right," I replied.

The company is now discussing the subject of love--
They seem to know little about it.

But my wife, who is sitting beside me, exclaims:
"Well, what is this jangle of madness and weakness,
What has it to do with poetry, tell me?"

"Well, it's life," Arabel.
"There's the story of Hamlet, for instance," I added.
Then fell into silence.

JIM AND ARABEL'S SISTER

Last night a friend of mine and I sat talking,
When all at once I found 'twas one o'clock.
So we came out and he went home to wife
And children, and I started for the club
Which I call home; and then just like a flash
You came into my mind. I bought a slug
And stood, in the booth, with doubtful heart and heard
The buzzer buzz. Well, it was sweet to me
To hear your voice at last--it was so drowsy,
Like a child's voice. And I could see your eyes
Heavy with sleep, and I could see you standing
In nightgown with head leaned against the wall....

Julia! the welcome of your drowsy voice
Went through me like the warmth of priceless wine--
It showed your understanding, that you know
How it is with a man, and how it is with me
Who work by day and sometimes drift by night
About this hellish city. Though you know
That I am fifty-one, can you imagine
My feeling with no children growing up?
My feeling as of one who sees a play
And afterwards sits somewhere at a table
And talks with friends about the different parts
Over a sandwich and a glass of beer?
My feeling with this money which I've made
And cannot use? Sometimes the stress of working
The money dulls the fancy which could use it
In splendid dreams or in the art of life.
Well, here was I ringing your bell at last
At half-past one, and there you stood before me
With a sleepy voice and a sleepy smile, with hands
So warm, and cheeks so red from sleep, not vexed,
But like a child, awakened, who smiles at you
With half-shut eyes and kisses you, so you
Gave me a kiss. The world seems better, Julia,
For that kiss which you gave me at the door....

Breakfast? Why, toast and coffee, not too strong,
My heart acts queer of late....

I want to say
Lest I forget it, if you ever hear
From Arabel or Francis what I said
To Francis when he told me he intended
To marry Arabel, why just remember
Our talk this morning and forget I said it--
I'm sorry that I said it. But, you see,
That night we met, I being fifty-one
And old at what men call the game, looked on
With steady eye and quiet nerve, I saw you
Just as I'd see a woman anywhere;
And I found you as I'd found others before you,
But with this difference so it seemed to me:
What had been false with them was real with you,
What had been shame with them with you was life,
What had been craft with them with you was nature,
What had been sin with them to you was good,
What had been vice with them to you the honest
And uncorrupted innocence of a human
Heart so human looking on our souls.
What had been coarse to them to you was clean
As rain is, or fresh flowers, all things that grow
And move and sing along creation's way.
You came to me like friendship, what you gave
Was friendship's gift, when friends think least of self
And least of motive. And it is through you
That I have risen out of the pit where sneers
And laughter, looks and words obscene,
Blaspheme our nature. It is through you, Julia,
As one amid great beach trees where soft mosses
Pillow our heads and where we see the clouds
Upon their infinite sailings and the lake
Washes beneath us, and we lie and think
How this has been forever and will be
When we are dust a thousand, thousand years,
Yet how life is eternal--just as one
Who there falls into prayer for ecstasy
Of wonder, prophecy could not blaspheme
The Eternal Power (as he might well blaspheme
The gospel hymns and ritual) that I
Cannot blaspheme you, Julia.
For what is our communion, yours and mine,
If it be not a way of laying hold
On that mysterious essence which makes one
Of heaven and earth, makes kindred human hands....
Tears are not like you, Julia; laugh, that's right!
Pour me a little coffee, if you please.

I'll take from my herbarium certain species
To make my points: Now here there is the woman
Of life promiscuous, or nearly so.
She fixes her design upon a man,
Who's married and the riotous game begins.
They go along a year or two perhaps.
Then psychic chemistry performs its part:
They are in love, or he's in love with her.
What shall be done with love? Now watch the woman:
That which she gave without love at the first
She now withdraws in spite of love unless
He breaks his life up, cuts all former ties
And weds her. Do you wonder sometimes men
Kill women with a knife or strangle them?
Well, here's another: She has been to Ogontz,
You meet her at a dinner-dance, we'll say.
She has green eyes and hair as light as jonquils;
She wears black velvet and a salmon sash.
And when you dance with her she has a way
Of giving you her flesh beneath thin silk,
Which almost lisps as she caresses you
With legs that scarcely touch you; and she says
Things with a double meaning, and she smiles
To carry out her meaning. Well, you think
The girl is yours, and after weeks of chasing
She lands you up at the appointed place
With mamma, who looks at you with big eyes,
That have a nervous way of opening
And closing slowly like a big wax doll's,
From which great clouds of wrath and wonder come;
Which meeting is a way of saying to you:
The girl is yours if you will marry her,
And let her have your money.

Julia, be still;
I can't go on while you are laughing so.
I know that men are easy, but to see
Women as women see them is a gift
That comes to men who reach my age in life....

Well, here's another, here's the type of woman
Whose power of motherhood conceals the art
By which she thrives, through which she reaches also
An apotheosis in society.
Her dream is children conscious or unconscious.
And her strength is the race's, and she draws
The urgings of posterity and leans
Upon the hopes and ideals of the day.
To her a man must sacrifice his life.
But women, Julia, of whatever type,
Are still but waiting ovules seeking man,
And man's life to develop, even to live.
And like the praying mantis who's devoured
In the embrace, man is devoured by women
In some way, by some sort. Love is a flame
In man's life where he warms him but to suck
The invisible heat and perish. Life is cramped,
Bound down with many ropes, shut in by gates--
Love is not free which should be wholly free
For Life's sake.

On Michigan Avenue
At lunch time, or at five o'clock, you'll see
In rain or shine a certain tailor walk
In modish coat and trousers, with a cane.
That fellow is the pitifulest man I know.
He has no woman, cannot find a woman,
Because all women, seeing him, divine
What surges through him, and within their hearts
Laugh slyly and deny him for the fun
Of seeing how denial keeps him walking
All up and down the boulevard. He's found
No hand of human friendship like yours, Julia.
I use him for my point. If we could make
Some fine erotometer one could sit
And watch its trembling springs and nervous hands
Record the waves of longing in the city,
And the urge of life that writhes beneath the blows
Of custom and of fear. Love is not free,
Which should be wholly free for Life's sake.

Julia.
So much for all these things, and now for you
To whom they lead.

You'll find among the marshes
The sundew and the pitcher plant; in shallows,
Where the green scum floats languidly you'll find
The water lily with white petals and
A sickly perfume. But the sundew catches
The midges flitting by with rainbow wings,
Impales them on its tiny spines, in time
Devours them. And the pitcher plant holds out
Its cup of green for larger bugs, which fall
Into the water, treasured there like tears
Of women, and so drowned are soon absorbed
Into the verdant vesture of its leaves.
The pitcher plant and sundew, water lily
Well typify the nature of most women
Who must have blood or soul of man to live--
Except you, Julia. For my friend at Hinsdale
Who raises flowers laid out a primrose bed.
He read somewhere that primroses will change
Under your eyes sometimes to something else,
Become another flower and not a primrose,
Another species even. So he watched
And saw it, saw this miracle! The seed
Has somewhere in its vital self the power
Of this mutation. What is the origin
Of spiritual species? For you're a primrose, Julia,
Who has mutated: You are not a mother;
Nor are you yet the woman seeking marriage;
Nor yet the woman thriving by her sex;
Nor yet the woman spoken of by Solomon
Who waits and watches and whose steps lead down
To death and hell. Nor yet Delilah who
Rejoices in the secret of man's strength
And in subduing it.

You are a flower
Designed to comfort such poor men as I,
And show the world how love can be a thing
That asks no more than what it freely gives,
And gives all--all some women call the prize
For life or honor, riches, power or place.
You are a blossom in the primrose bed
So raised to subtler color, sweeter scent.
You have mutated, Julia, that is it,
This flower of you is what I call _The Lover_!

THE SORROW OF DEAD FACES

I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death--
But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain.
There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life;
And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through;
Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white;
And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy.
Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall,
Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea,
Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream.
All of these I have seen--but the face of Harold the bold
Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise.

For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life.
And the ardent heat of his blood was cold as the sweat of a stone.
Life came in an evil hour and stabbed with a poisoned word
The heart of a girl who faintly smiled through her tears.
And her little life was tossed as the eddies that whirl in the hollows
From the great world-currents that wreck the battle ships at sea.
And the face of dead Lillian seemed like a rain-ruined flower.

Or what is writ on the brow of the babe as the mother wails for the day
When it leaped in the light of the sun and babbled its pure delight?

But the face of William the Great was fashioned by life and thought;
And death made it massive as bronze, and deepened the lines thereof:
Some for the will and some for patience, and some for hope--
Hope for the weal of the world wherein he mightily strove--
Yet what did it all bespeak--what but submission and awe,
And a trace of pain as one with a sword in his side?

I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death
But the sorrow thereof is dumb like the cloth that lies on the brow.
So what should be said of the faun surprised in the woodland dances,
Of Harold the light of heart who fought with fear to the last?

THE CRY

There's a voice in my heart that cries and cries for tears.
It is not a voice, but a pain of many fears.
It is not a pain, but the rune of far-off spheres.

It may be a dæmon of pent and high emprise,
That looks on my soul till my soul hides and cries,
Loath to rebuke my soul and bid it arise.

It may be myself as I was in another life,
Fashioned to lead where strife gives way to strife,
Pinioned here in failure by knife thrown after knife.

The child turns o'er in the womb; and perhaps the soul
Nurtures a dream too strong for the soul's control,
When the dream hath eyes, and senses its destined goal.

Deep in darkness the bulb under mould and clod
Feels the sun in the sky and pushes above the sod;
Perhaps this cry in my heart is nothing but God!

THE HELPING HAND

Mother, my head is bloody, my breast is red with scars.
Well, foolish son, I told you so, why went you to the wars?

Mother, my soul is crucified, my thirst is past belief.
How are you crucified, my son, betwixt a thief and thief?

Mother, I feel the terror and the loveliness of life.
Tell me of the children, son, and tell me of the wife.

Mother, your face is but a face among a million more.
You're standing on the deck, my son, and looking at the shore.

I lean against the wall, mother, and struggle hard for breath.
You must have heard the step, my son, of the patrolman Death.

Mother, my soul is weary, where is the way to God?
Well, kiss the crucifix, my son, and pass beneath the rod.

THE DOOR

This is the room that thou wast ushered in.
Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win?
Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath?
There is no door but death.

Do shadows crouch within the mocking light?
Stand thou! but if thy terrored heart takes flight
Facing maimed Hope and wide-eyed Nevermore,
There is no less one door.

Dost thou bewail love's end and friendship's doom,
The dying fire, drained cup, and gathering gloom?
Explore the walls, if thy soul ventureth--
There is no door but death.

There is no window. Heaven hangs aloof
Above the rents within the stairless roof.
Hence, soul, be brave across the ruined floor--
Who knocks? Unbolt the door!

SUPPLICATION

_For He knoweth our frame, He remembereth that we are dust._--PSALM CIII. 14.

Oh Lord, when all our bones are thrust
Beyond the gaze of all but Thine;
And these blaspheming tongues are dust
Which babbled of Thy name divine,
How helpless then to carp or rail
Against the canons of Thy word;
Wilt Thou, when thus our spirits fail,
Have mercy, Lord?

Here from this ebon speck that floats
As but a mote within Thine eye,
Vain sneers and curses from our throats
Rise to the vault of Thy fair sky:
Yet when this world of ours is still
Of this all-wondering, tortured horde,
And none is left for Thee to kill--
Have mercy, Lord!

Thou knowest that our flesh is grass;
Ah! let our withered souls remain
Like stricken reeds of some morass,
Bleached, in Thy will, by ceaseless rain.
Have we not had enough of fire,
Enough of torment and the sword?--
If these accrue from Thy desire--
Have mercy, Lord!

Dost Thou not see about our feet
The tangles of our erring thought?
Thou knowest that we run to greet
High hopes that vanish into naught.
We bleed, we fall, we rise again;
How can we be of Thee abhorred?
We are Thy breed, we little men--
Have mercy, Lord!

Wilt Thou then slay for that we slay,
Wilt Thou deny when we deny?
A thousand years are but a day,
A little day within Thine eye:
We thirst for love, we yearn for life;
We lust, wilt Thou the lust record?
We, beaten, fall upon the knife--
Have mercy, Lord!

Thou givest us youth that turns to age;
And strength that leaves us while we seek.
Thou pourest the fire of sacred rage
In costly vessels all too weak.
Great works we planned in hopes that Thou
Fit wisdom therefor wouldst accord;
Thou wrotest failure on our brow--
Have mercy, Lord!

Could we but know, as Thou dost know--
Hold the whole scheme at once in mind!
Yet, dost Thou watch our anxious woe
Who piece with palsied hands and blind
The fragments of our little plan,
To thrive and earn Thy blest reward,
And make and keep the world of man--
Have mercy, Lord!

Thou settest the sun within his place
To light the world, the world is Thine,
Put in our hands and through Thy grace
To be subdued and made divine.
Whether we serve Thee ill or well,
Thou knowest our frame, nor canst afford
To leave Thy own for long in hell--
Have mercy, Lord!

THE CONVERSATION

_The Human Voice_

You knew then, starting let us say with ether,
You would become electrons, out of whirling
Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting
Till through Yourself in other atoms moving
And by the fine affinity of power
Atom with atom massed, You would go on
Over the crest of visible forms transformed,
Would be a molecule, a little system
Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets
With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build
From star-dust, as electron to electron,
The same attraction drawing, molecules
Would wed and pass over the crest again
Of visible forms, lying content as crystals,
Or colloids--ready now to use the gleam
Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match,
As one in darkness lights a candle, and one
Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room
Until the candle's lighted? Even his form
Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands
So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked
Whether You knew the cell born to the glint
Of that same lighted candle would not rest
Even as electrons rest not--but would surge
Over the crest of visible forms, become
Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye
However aided,--as above our heads
Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl
Beyond the telescope,--become bacilli,
Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land
The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey
The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on
Surging above the crest of visible forms until
The ape came--oh what ages they are to us--
But still creation flies on wings of light--
Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields
Neither man nor ape,--we found his jaw, You know,
At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on
Till Babylon was builded, and arose
Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome,
Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin,
New York, Chicago--did You know, I ask,
All this would come of You in ether moving?

_A Voice_

I knew.

_The Human Voice_

You knew that man was born to be destroyed,
That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease,
Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed
And rises o'er the crest of visible things
To something else--that man must pass as well
Through equal transformation. And You knew
The unutterable things of man's life: From the first
You saw his wracked Deucalion-soul that looks
Backward on life that rises, where he rose
Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward
Over the purple mists that hide the gulf.
Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell
You saw the sequences of thought--You saw
That one would say, "All's matter" and another,
"All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image,
Could not envision it. That even worship
Of what you are would be confused by cries
From India or Palestine. That love
Which sees itself beginning in the seeds,
Which fly and seek each other, maims
The soul at the last in loss of child or friend
Father or mother. And You knew that sex,
Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us
Had ties of filth--And out of them would rise
Diverse philosophies to tear the world.
You knew, when the green cell arose, that even
The You which formed it moving on would bring
Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves,
The idiot child, the murderer, the insane--
All springing from the action of one law.
You knew the enmity that lies between
The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew
How man would rise to vision of himself:
Immortal only in the race's life.
And past the atom and the first glint of life,
Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed
Amid self-consciousness!

_A Voice_

I knew.
But this your fault: You see me as apart,
Over, removed, at enmity with You.
You are in Me, and of Me, even at one
With Me. But there's your soul--your soul may be
The germinal cell of vaster evolution.
Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell
Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this:
"After me what, a stalk, a flower, life
That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you
Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed
By the water's edge"--how could the cell foresee
What the reed is, bending beneath the wind
When the lake ripples and the skies are blue
As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness
Becoming light in suns and light in souls
And mind with thought--for what is thought but light
Sprung from the clash of ether?--I am with you.
And if beyond this stable state that stands
For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced
Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking
And building up to higher life), there is
No memory of this world nor of your thought,
Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne;
Or whether you remember, know yourself
As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired--
What does it matter?--you cannot be lost,
As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace.
And from the laws whose orbits cross and run
To seeming tangles, find the law through which
Your soul shall be perfected till it draw,--
As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns
Its chemical effulgence into life--
My inner splendor. All the rest is mine
In infinite time. For if I should unroll
The parchment of the future, it were vain--
You could not read it.

TERMINUS

Terminus shows the ways and says,
"All things must have an end."
Oh, bitter thought we hid away
When first you were my friend.

We hid it in the darkest place
Our hearts had place to hide,
And took the sweet as from a spring
Whose waters would abide.

For neither life nor the wide world
Has greater store than this:--
The thought that runs through hands and eyes
And fills the silences.

There is a void the agéd world
Throws over the spent heart;
When Life has given all she has,
And Terminus says depart.

When we must sit with folded hands,
And see with inward eye
A void rise like an arctic breath
To hollow the morrow's sky.

To-morrow is, and trembling leaves,
And 'wildered winds from Thrace
Look for you where your face has bloomed,
And where may bloom your face.

Beyond the city, over the hill,
Under the anguished moon,
The winds and my dreams seek after you
By meadow, water and dune.

All things must have an end, we know;
But oh, the dreaded end;
Whether in life, whether in death,
To lose the cherished friend.

To lose in life the cherished friend,
While the myrtle tree is green;
To live and have the cherished friend
With only the world between.

With only the wide, wide world between,
Where memory has mortmain.
Life pours more wine in the heart of man
Than the heart of man can contain.

Oh, heart of man and heart of woman,
Thirsting for blood of the vine,
Life waits till the heart has lived too much
And then pours in new wine!

MADELINE

I almost heard your little heart
Begin to beat, and since that hour
Your life has grown apace and blossomed,
Fed by the same miraculous power,

That moved the rivulet of your life,
And made your heart begin to beat.
Now all day your steps are a-patter.
Oh, what swift and musical feet!