Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's Notes: Italics are indicated by _underscores_.

STARVED ROCK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

STARVED ROCK

BY

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

Author of "Spoon River Anthology," "Songs and
Satires," "The Great Valley," "Toward
the Gulf," etc.

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919

Certain of these poems first appeared in _Reedy's Mirror_, _Poetry_, _The Cosmopolitan_, _The Yale Review_ and _The New York Sun_.

CONTENTS

PAGE

STARVED ROCK 1
HYMN TO THE DEAD 5
CREATION 10
THE WORLD'S DESIRE 13
TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING LETTERS 16
LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI 22
THE FOLDING MIRROR 29
A WOMAN OF FORTY 33
WILD BIRDS 34
A LADY 36
THE NEGRO WARD 40
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE 44
FOR A PLAY 47
CHICAGO 49
THE WEDDING FEAST 54
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 58
THE DREAM OF TASSO 60
THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN 69
THE LAMENT OF SOPHONIA 77
AT DECAPOLIS 79
WINGED VICTORY 83
OH YOU SABBATARIANS! 88
PALLAS ATHENE 90
AT SAGAMORE HILL 95
TO ROBERT NICHOLS 101
BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY 103
HYMN TO AGNI 109
EPITAPH FOR US 111
BOTTICELLI TO SIMONETTA 114
FLOWER IN THE GARDEN 115
INEXORABLE DEITIES 117
ARIELLE 119
SOUNDS OUT OF SORROW 121
MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION 122
THYAMIS 124
I SHALL GO DOWN INTO THIS LAND 126
SPRING LAKE 128
THE BARBER OF SEPO 138
THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW 145
NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN 156
THE OAK TREE 160
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL 162
WASHINGTON HOSPITAL 163
NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN REMAIN 170

STARVED ROCK

As a soul from whom companionships subside
The meaningless and onsweeping tide
Of the river hastening, as it would disown
Old ways and places, left this stone
Of sand above the valley, to look down
Miles of the valley, hamlet, village, town.

* * * * *

It is a head-gear of a chief whose head,
Down from the implacable brow,
Waiting is held below
The waters, feather decked
With blossoms blue and red,
With ferns and vines;
Hiding beneath the waters, head erect,
His savage eyes and treacherous designs.

* * * * *

It is a musing memory and memorial
Of geologic ages
Before the floods began to fall;
The cenotaph of sorrows, pilgrimages
Of Marquette and LaSalle.
The eagles and the Indians left it here
In solitude, blown clean
Of kindred things: as an oak whose leaves are sere
Fly over the valley when the winds are keen,
And nestle where the earth receives
Another generation of exhausted leaves.

* * * * *

Fatigued with age its sleepless eyes look over
Fenced fields of corn and wheat,
Barley and clover.
The lowered pulses of the river beat
Invisibly by shores that stray
In progress and retreat
Past Utica and Ottawa,
And past the meadow where the Illini
Shouted and danced under the autumn moon,
When toddlers and papooses gave a cry,
And dogs were barking for the boon
Of the hunter home again to clamorous tents
Smoking beneath the evening's copper sky.
Later the remnant of the Illini
Climbed up this Rock, to die
Of hunger, thirst, or down its sheer ascents
Rushed on the spears of Pottawatomies,
And found the peace
Where thirst and hunger are unknown.

* * * * *

This is the tragic and the fateful stone
Le Rocher or Starved Rock,
A symbol and a paradigm,
A sphinx of elegy and battle hymn,
Whose lips unlock
Life's secret, which is vanishment, defeat,
In epic dirges for the races
That pass and leave no traces
Before new generations driven in the blast
Of Time and Nature blowing round its head.
Renewing in the Present what the Past
Knew wholly, or in part, so to repeat
Warfare, extermination, old things dead
But brought to life again
In Life's immortal pain.

* * * * *

What Destinies confer,
And laughing mock
LaSalle, his dreamings stir
To wander here, depart
The fortress of Creve Coeur,
Of broken heart,
For this fort of Starved Rock?
After the heart is broken then the cliff
Where vultures flock;
And where below its steeps the savage skiff
Cuts with a pitiless knife the rope let down
For water. From the earth this Indian town
Vanished and on this Rock the Illini
Thirsting, their buckets taken with the knife,
Lay down to die.

* * * * *

This is the land where every generation
Lets down its buckets for the water of Life.
We are the children and the epigone
Of the Illini, the vanished nation.
And this starved scarp of stone
Is now the emblem of our tribulation,
The inverted cup of our insatiable thirst,
The Illini by fate accursed,
This land lost to the Pottawatomies,
They lost the land to us,
Who baffled and idolatrous,
And thirsting, spurred by hope
Kneel upon aching knees,
And with our eager hands draw up the bucketless rope.

* * * * *

This is the tragic, the symbolic face,
Le Rocher or Starved Rock,
Round which the eternal turtles drink and swim
And serpents green and strange,
As race comes after race,
War after war.
This is the sphinx whose Memnon lips breathe dirges
To empire's wayward star,
And over the race's restless urges,
Whose lips unlock
Life's secret which is vanishment and change.

HYMN TO THE DEAD

O, you who have gone from the ways of cities,
From the peopled places, the streets of strife,
From offices, markets, rooms, retreats,
Pastoral ways, hamlets, everywhere from the earth,
And have made of the emptiness of your departure
A land, a country, a realm all your own,
Set above the hills of our vision, an empire
Within, around, above our empire of days,
Of pain and clamorous tongues;
An empire which out of a sovereign silence
Stretches its power over the restless multitude
Of our thoughts, and the ceaseless music of our beings,
And surrounds us even as the air we breathe--
O ye majestic Dead, hear our hymn!

* * * * *

The clown, the wastrel and the fool in life
Are lifted up by you, O Death!
The least of these who has entered in
Your realm, O Death,
Is greater than the greatest of us,
And by a transfiguration has been clothed
With the glory and the wonder of nature.
He has drunk of the purple cup of apotheosis,
And passed through the mystical change,
And accomplished the cycle of being.
He has risen from the lowlands of earth
Into the air on wings of breath.
He has rejected the shell of the body, feet and hands,
He has become one with the majesty of Time,
And taken the kingdom of triumph
Whether it be cessation or bliss.
For he has entered into the kingdom of primal powers,
Being or ceasing to be,
Even as he has re-entered the womb of nature.
Or he has found peace,
States of wisdom, or vision--
Hail! realm of Silence,
Whence comes the unheard symphony too deep for strings,
Hail, infinite Light,
Darkness to eyes of flesh--
All hail!

* * * * *

What are we, the living, beside you the dead?
We of daily hunger, daily food, daily ablutions,
The daily rising and lying down,
Waking and sleep;
The daily care of the body's needs;
And daily desire to pass the gift of life;
And daily fears of the morrow to come;
And daily pains for things that are gone;
And daily longing for things that fly us;
And sorrow that follows wherever we go;
And love that mocks us, and peace that breaks,
And shame that tracks us, and want that gnaws.
But O ye Dead! Ye great ones,
Triumphant over these, released
From the duties of dust, all chains of desire,
And made inhabitants of breathless spaces,
Immanent in a realm of calm,
Rulers of a sphere of tideless air,
Victors returned from the war of death in life,
Victors over death in death!

* * * * *

For the growing soul turns in
Even as the seed turns in on itself,
And becomes hard, transparent,
An encased life, condensed
In the process of saving itself
From rains that beat in the fall,
And frosts that descend from skies grown cold.
And we who shed away old thoughts and hopes,
Days and dreams of life
Turn in, grow clear like grains of rice,
Until the realm of death
Is as snow delivered land
Luring the seed--
And it becomes our home, our country,
Our native land that calls us back
From this sojourn of adventure,
And place of profit;
For O ye majestic Dead, your absence draws us,
If it be naught but absence still you summon,
Your absence has become a very Presence,
A Power, a hierarchy of Life!

* * * * *

Even as leaves enrich the earth
Layer on layer,
Even as bodies of men enrich the soil
Generation on generation,
So do the spirits of those departed
Enrich our soil of life
With delights, wisdoms, purest hopes,
And shapes of beauty.
But oh beyond all these, is our life enriched
With exalted contemplations
Of you, O glorious Dead,
Who have eaten of the tree of life and become gods,
Friendly divinities to us who remain,
Dear familiars, as you were with us
Fathers, children, lovers, friends.
Ye who sense with the inner eye,
Since nothing in our days of living
Moves uncolored of your splendors,
Presences to which all things relate!

* * * * *

O realm of the Dead,
Black Mountain, if you be,
Which darkens heaven,
And shadows earth,
Round which our spirits flutter
Like startled moths.
Black mountain with whose blackness
The light of life is mixed,
Whereof all hues are made:
All thoughts, all lofty wanderings of the soul,
All meanings, divinations
Of briefest hours, and frailest joys,
All wonders of the spectrum of the soul
Out of life and death!

* * * * *

Realm of the Dead! Supreme Reality
All Hail!

CREATION

Passion flower unfolding in darkness!
Glow-worm under a spray of lilac!
Flame on the altar of love!
Beloved in your chamber!
The phoenix moon rising from the ashes of day
Spreads her wings of saffron fire
Above the enchanted garden.
And I brush away the leaves of night
To find the star of my love.
I part the curtains about the altar,
I enter your chamber, beloved.

* * * * *

I have entered your chamber, beloved,
I have found my star.
Between kisses and whispers
And the silken touch of flesh
Breast to breast, lips to lips,
Our souls are seeking and drifting!
As an albatross hovers and flies
With the running sea...
Powers of body, powers of spirit,
Divinities
Awakened never before,
Hidden in nerves asleep, in veins without a tide
Flow through us.
I give you my life, beloved,
For life of you, given to me--
O bride of love!

* * * * *

O hair of fire! O breasts of light,
Like double stars!
O voice like a lute that whispers
At midnight, in a bower of roses!
O body luminous as the nebulous waste
Across the midnight,
Pour on my breast, my hands, my brow
The sacred fire,
As our flesh becomes one
Upborne by your breasts,
White as bridal blossoms
Where there is yet no milk,
But only eddying blood
Circling in whirlpools of delirious ecstasy
In time with the blood of me.
Our lips together, our bodies together
While the yearning urn of porphyry
Waits to drink the silver stream,
And thirsts to drink,
And poises like a gold fish waiting
For the stream of silver fire....

* * * * *

But oh, hands of me that clasp your sunny head,
Drawing it close to my breast,
In rapture of its beauty!
O temple of your spirit!
Spirit of you which I woo and would win,
In rapture without will,
In rapture blind, save for the inspired urge,
In rapture seeking further rapture,
In rapture to wed your spirit fully,
And all your spirit, which my spirit
Through the unity of flesh would reach
And win, and keep--
Bride of lightning!
Bride of Life!

* * * * *

As when the butterfly slowly moves his wings
Drawing from the virgin core of honeysuckles
The sweetest drop of dew:--
So pause his wings spread wide
When all is gained.

* * * * *

Goddess of the white dawn,
Let my beloved sleep--
Robins that sing at dawn,
Wake not my beloved!
I sleep with my beloved,
And she sleeps with me,
And a life sleeps now
That will wake!

THE WORLD'S DESIRE

At Philae, in the temple of Isis,
The fruitful and terrible goddess,
Under a running panel of the sacred ibis,
Is pictured the dead body of Osiris
Waiting the resurrection morn.
And a priest is pouring water blue as iris
Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn
That from the body of the god is growing,
Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing.
And over the pictured body is this inscription
In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian:
This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees
Not to be named, the god of life and yearning,
Osiris of the mysteries,
Who springs from the waters ever returning.

At the gate of the Lord's house,
Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon:
Women with sorrow on their brows
In lamentation, weeping
For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping,
And for the summer gone.
Tammuz has passed below
To the house of darkness and woe,
Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor
Behind the winter's iron door;
And Ishtar has followed him,
Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim
With driving rain and mist,
And winds that mourn.
Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased;
No flower blossoms and no child is born.

But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb,
The women in the gardens of Adonis,
Crying, "The winter sun is yet upon us,"
Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom,
Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down
For the baskets' shallow soil.
Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil,
For leaves that withered, yellow and brown,
From the gardens of Adonis into the sea,
They cast the baskets of their hope away:
A ritual of the things that cease to be,
Brief loveliness and swift decay.

And O ye holy women, who at Delphi
Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius,
Who with an April eye
Looked up at them,
Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus,
Was found at Bethlehem!

For at Bethlehem the groaning world's desire
For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre,
And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire:
The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath
Beyond the body's death,
Even as nature which revives;
In consummation of the faith
That Tammuz, the Soul, survives,
And is not sacrificed
In the darkness where the dust
Lies on the bolt and on the floor,
And passes not behind the iron door
Save it be followed by the lover Christ,
The Ishtar of the faithful trust,
Who knocks and says: "This soul, which winter knew
In life, in death at last,
Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue.
For lo, the winter is past;
The rain is over and gone.
I open! It is dawn!"

TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING LETTERS

Trees of the forest ground to pulp,
Rolled into sheets and rabbit tracked
With nut-gall or with nigrosine--
Then look at spirits thrill, or gulp
A lost delight, a rising spleen
For love that grew intense or slacked...

Here are the letters, torn in bits,
Crammed in the basket, look how full!
Our little fireplace scarce admits
So much that once was beautiful.
Here where we sat and dreamed together
In March, and now when we should be
Friends in the glory of June weather,
We tear our letters up--oh, me!
Call Jane to take the basket down,
And throw these on the furnace fire.
Let ashes drift about the town
Of what was our desire!

What are we to the gods, I wonder?
Perhaps two crickets in the grass,
Who meet and drop their stomachs' plunder
To touch antennæ as they pass.
So kissing in such soul communion
The gardener's step is heard, and quick
The crickets break their spirits' union,
Hide under logs or bits of brick.
Does guilty conscience stir the crickets?
What does he care? Why not a snap.
He's trimming out the hazel thickets
For a tennis court and shooting trap....
You are afraid of God! Not that?
Some step has frightened you, I know.
Well, then it's gossip the alley-cat.
At least our hands grow cold as snow,
Relax their touch, and then we come,
Tear up the letters, sit and stare
Some moments, wholly dumb!

If we are crickets, still our breasts
Contain for us things real enough.
The gods may laugh, their interests
Are what? I wonder--not the love
Such as we knew. To be a god
Through love is what I hoped, and rise
Above the level of the clod.
They said it can't be, who are wise,
That's not the way to win the prize:
Or if it be, I don't know how;
Or you are not the one with whom
I might have won it. Well, my brow
Is turned into a whitened tomb
With all uncleanness in it; dreams
Rotting away with hopes as fair...
To me, the liver, nothing seems
Won that is lost. I can't invert,
Sophisticate the facts, or swear
My evil good. A hurt's a hurt,
A loss a loss, a scar a scar,
A spirit frustrate is inert.
To stretch your hands toward a star
And lose the star, or have it die
To ashes like a rocket, alters
The aspect of your being's sky.
You've learned no praise from earthly psalters
Can win the star, or else you've learned
The star you touched was quickly turned
To ashes while it burned.

Hell! Let us face it. Here it is
We had some walks, some precious talks,
Some hours of paradise and bliss.
Our blossom opened, we inhaled
All of its fragrance, now I scowl
Because our wonder blossom paled
For lack of water in the bowl
Tipped over by the alley-cat,
Or what not, change, distrust or fear;
Your pride, your will, a hovering gnat
I struck at striking you, a blear
Of eyes a moment, making blind
My vision, yours.... Or there's the age,
The age is frightful to my mind,
Nothing to do but stand it--well
I sit here and say "hell."

For it's really hell to have a will,
It's hell to hope and to believe,
That good can swallow up the ill,
That gods are working, will achieve.
They may be, yet they disregard
Our cricket feelings, so we shrill
Sonnets and elegies round the yard...
Let's talk a bit of chlorophyll:
The sun was useless for our life,
No wine, no beef, no watercress
Until this chlorophyll grew rife
Millions of years since, more or less.
And if no wine or beef, no love,
No pulp, no paper, nigrosine,
No letters which are made thereof.
Think! All we found and lost has been
Through chlorophyll.

And just suppose
Nature should lose the secret power
For making chlorophyll, the rose
We cherished would not come to flower.
No other man and woman more
Would burn their letters grieving--yet
We may be rising, for who knows
There may be something vastly better
Than love to flame and flay and fret,
And hate this letter and that letter,
Once rid of chlorophyll, in case
A subtler substance could be given
To this poor globe out of heaven--
We are a weak, if growing race!

Here, then, I think is a moral for us,
Another is tyrannosaurus--
Tyrannosaurus, what of him,
The monarch of this world one time,
Back in the æons wet and dim?
He faded like a pantomime.
And he could, well, step over trees,
Crunch up bowlders like cracking nuts,
Flip horses away like bumble-bees,
Stretch out in valleys as if they were ruts;
And hide a man in his nostril's hole,
And crush young forestry just like weeds.
He came and went, and what's your soul,
And what is mine with their crying needs?
And love that seemed eternal once,
Given of God to lift, inspire,
Well--now do we see? Was I dunce
Drunk with the wine of soul's desire?
Who made that wine, why did I drink it?
Why did I want it? What's the game?
Are spirits chaos? I scarce can think it.
Why fly for the light and get the flame?
Is love for souls of us chlorophyll
That makes us eatable, sweet and crisp
For Gods that raise us to feed their fill?
Who lives, the dreamer, the will o' the wisp?
Do Gods live, vanish, return again?
Who in the devil has love or luck?
One thing is true, there's rapture and pain.
As for the rest, I pass the buck.
Something occurs, and God knows what,
Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost.
That throws a light on our little lot,
Love that is won, love that is lost.
Even a hundred years from now,
If this poor earth is rolling still,
Hearts will quiver, break or bow--
Provided the plants have chlorophyll.

Oh well! Oh hell! We must be heroic,
And it helps to scan a million of years.
And to think of monstrous beasts mesoic,
Brightens, though it dries no tears.
I'll dream for life of our walks by the river--
That was March and it's now July.
And this remains: I'll love you forever--
Burn up the letters now--Good by!

LORD BYRON TO DOCTOR POLIDORI

No more of searching, Doctor--let it go.
It can't be lost. I have a memory
I put it in a drawer, or again
I seem to see me tuck it in a pocket
Of some portmanteau. If you find the letter
Deliver it to Moore. But if it's lost,
The story is not lost. I tell you this
To save the story from my side. Attend!
It was this way:

Allegra had become
A child requiring care, and nutritive
Instruction in religion, morals, well,
They call me blasphemer and sensualist,
But read my poems. Christianity
Was never of rejected things with me.
The Decalogue is good enough, I think.
And Shelley's theories, atheist speculations
I never shared--nor social dreams. The scheme
Of having all things, women, too, in common
Means common women. I have sinned, I know--
I call it sin. The marriage vow I honor,
And woman's virtue. Though I stray, I hold
That women should be chaste, though man is not.
That's why I placed Allegra in a convent....

Now to the letter, and my story of it.

The mother, Claire, Claire Claremont, as you know--
Pined for Allegra; would possess the child
And take her from the convent--where? No doubt
To Shelley's nest, where William Godwin's daughter
Raised on free love, and Shelley preaching it,
And Claire in whom 'tis bred, hold sway, who read,
Talk, argue, dream of freedom, all the things
Opposed to what is in the present order.
You know the notes to "Queen Mab." Well, I say
This suits me not.

So Shelley and his wife,
Mary, the planet of an hour, since quenched,
Conceive I keep Allegra where she is
From wounded pride, or pique. Hell fire! They think
I'm hurt for thinking Claire and Shelley join
Their lips in love, and masque my jealousy
By just this pose of morals, make reprisal
Under a lying flag, and keep Allegra
To punish Claire and sate my jealousy
By this hypocrisy--It makes me laugh.

But to pursue. A maid who was discharged
From Shelley's household told the credible tale
That Claire was Shelley's mistress, and the Hoppners
Heard and believed--why not? As she is fair,
And Shelley wrote "Love is like understanding
Which brighter grows gazing on many truths,
Increases by division," that himself
Could not accept the code, a man should choose
One woman and leave all the rest, why not?
As for myself, I have not preached this doctrine,
Though living it as men do in the world....

Oh yes, I know this love called spiritual,
Of which old maids, whose milk has gone to brain
And curdled in the process, and who hate me
For taking men and women as they are,
Talk to create belief for self and others.

Denial makes philosophies, religions.
Indulgence leaves one sane, objectifies
The eternal womanly, freeing brain of fumes,
To work with master hands with love and life.

The story rose, however.

Then comes Shelley
Bearing a letter from his wife, denying
That Claire and Shelley loved, you understand--
By the flesh. Sweet, was it not? Naïve!
This letter I should hand the Hoppners, who
Believed the story, and who held a place
Persuasive touching poor Allegra. Well,
So Shelley comes and makes the point, the child
Is in ill health, Claire, too, in a decline,
And hands this letter to me for the Hoppners.

And I've misplaced it. Frankly, from the first,
Had no fixed purpose to deliver it.
What principle makes me collaborator
With such fantastic business? To resume:
He acted like the boy he was. I smiled--
Against the flaming rage that burned his face--
My mocking smile, he thought, the Don Juan
Upcurved my lips. I read his very thought
Between words spoken; words that he suppressed:
It was that I was glad that Claire was ill
Because of that male mood when love of man
Finds sustenance where suffering lays low
The object of desire: If she suffers,
The man subdues, devours her. She escapes
If free of love. Oh yes, and this he thought:
That I was glad she suffered, since my glory
Had failed to hold her, failed to satisfy
Her noble heart! God's wounds! Why Shelley thought
She turned to him and with his spirit found
A purity of peace and sweetest friendship,
And faith that saves and serves, as men and women
Are to each other souls to serve and save!
Poor fool! I read it all, or pieced it out
With words that I picked up from time to time....

There was this further thing: I am a man,
So say they, who accepts the dying creed
That woman's love is lawless and a toy
When given if no priest has sanctified it--
Not quite, perhaps. The point is further on.

In any case 'tis this: that this belief,
Mine or part mine, and coloring my acts,
Shadowed no whit the brow of Lady Claire.
And that I, greatest lover of my time,
Had won this lady's body but to lose
The lady's soul, a soul that slipped and fled
Out of the hands that clasped her flesh, because
She knew me through her gift, thought less of me,
And no wise felt herself bound to my life
Because she gave her body. Kept her mind,
Soul, free, untouched by that gift, by the gift
Was cognizant of what is false and poor--
(I use some words I heard) in me. And thus
I lost her soul, though earlier I had gained
What seemed all to me, all I had the genius
To comprehend in woman! Then comes Shelley
And finds her soul, the genuine prize, and I
Grow sullen with a consciousness of vision
Inferior to his. All this they thought.
Oh Jesus, what a lie!

I have loved Nature, love her now: and woman
Is Nature, and my love for nature means
Inclusion of the sex. I have not soared
To heights that sickened me and made me laugh
At what I sought--or turned from it. No moons
Behind the clouds; no terrors and no symbols,
No Emilia Vivianni's have I had.
I know, believe me, love for woman calls
A man's soul up to heights too rare to live in.
I have not risen, therefore, will not rise
Where thinking stops, because the blood leaves brain
Therefore have had no falls, and no recoils
Chasing the Plato vision, the star, the wonder,
The beauty and the terror, harmony
Of nature's art; the passion that would make
The loved one of the self-same womb with me,
A sister, spouse or angel, dæmon, pilot
Of life and fate.

How much of truth is here?

Dreams seen most vividly by Petrarch, Dante,
Who loved without achievement, balking nature,
Till Passion, like an involute, pressed in
Harder and harder on its starving leaves,
Becomes a fragrance--sublimate of self
Sucked out of sorrow's earth, at last becomes
A meditative madness. All is written
Fairly across my page. "She walks in beauty:"
"When we two parted," "Could love like a river,"
"Bright be the place of thy soul." Lines, lines
In "Harold," "Don Juan." Yes, I have loved,
But saw how far love lures, how far to venture,
Knowing what can and what cannot be made
Of the mystery, the wonder, therefore never
Have had to laugh at self; find Vivianni
A housemaid shelling corn--not threading pearls.
Or sit, with idiot eyes, my bones half broken,
Icarus bumped amid a field of stones.

I know the hour of farewell. I have said it
When my heart trembled, stopped as when a horse
Braces its terrored feet to keep from plunging
Over the precipice. Farewell! Farewell!
I know to say, and turn, and pass my way.

Why! For that matter, even now behold!
Do I feel less than Shelley would in this?
I leave the Countess for the war in Greece.
What's done is done. What's lived is lived. Come, Doctor,
Let's practice with the pistols. Mother of God,
What is this thing called Life?

THE FOLDING MIRROR

A folding mirror! What may it be?
Nothing? Or something? Let me see!
Its silver chain is hung to the sky
On a planet nail. And it fronts my eye.
No stars reflect themselves at first,
The mirrors are dustless, vacant and clean.
Not even my face shows--am I cursed?
What may the mirrors mean?

* * * * *

I watch like a cat that waits to mangle
A breathless rat in an alley nook.
And a little figure steps into the angle
Made by the folding mirrors. Look!
His thin legs wobble, bend and dangle
Like radish roots. He takes the crook
Out of his arms and raises them up,
As if in panic, or supplication.
He bends and peers, whines like a pup,
Walks to and fro in his desperation,
Pinches his arms and beats his breast;
Runs quivering fingers between his hair,
Wavers for weariness, sighs for rest,
Looks up to the planet that seems to bear
The silver chain like a brad in the wall.
Upsprings, searches the mirrors again;
Sees for the first the prodigal
Waste of stars in the black inane.
Stamps with his feet upon the void
He stands on, paces on, why, he wonders
Is he upborned like an asteroid?
Hark! The limitless blackness thunders:
The Infinite growls, he whirls and shivers,
Runs to cover the mirrors to climb.
They yield like the waters of phantom rivers.
He acts like a soul new born that quivers
Before the mirrors of Space and Time.

* * * * *

Now what's to do? He must fill in.
This emptiness with horror is shod.
When did this pageant of things begin?
Somewhere hiding there is a God.
Some one drove that planet nail
Into the blue wall; some one hung
The silver chain. And what is the tale
Of the mirrors here in the blackness swung?
The soul is naked, weak and alone,
And sees its nakedness in the glass.
It must create from wood and stone,
Wire and reeds, color and brass.
It must create though it be but a mime,
Make a reality all its own
Before the mirror of white called Time,
Before the mirror of blue called Space.
Clasp the vastness between their folds,
Find laws, raise altars, dream of a face--
Make that real which the hope beholds.

* * * * *

Our terrored manikin commences,
Fattens his littleness with clothes.
With crowns and miters puffs his senses,
Crushes the grape to drown his woes.
Fills full the mirrors with faces. Now
They are dancing before them, age and youth,
Laurels or thorns are bound on a brow.
They hunt and slay for a thing called Truth.
Dig for treasure, toil for riches,
Struggle for place--it is well enough!
Some lift their busts into chosen niches.
All are hungry for peace and love.
And only a few are blind, dispute
The thing is a dream. If there be worth
It lies in the strings of the lyre or lute,
Sounds that never return to earth;
Dreams to seeing eyes reflected,
Caught from infinite realms afar.
How could they be seen, or recollected
Except for the Real--except for a Star?

* * * * *

God in the blackness, whirlwind, lightning,
God in the blinding fire of the sun
Before these empty mirrors brightening
See what we do, what we have done!
Out of an astral substance molding
Music and laws for our hearts' control,
Yes, and a hope that the mirrors' folding
Lets slip through a growing soul.
Are you not proud of us, do you not pity?
Is all the glory thine alone?
Then if it be, you must take the city
Builded, demolished stone from stone.
All of our madness, weariness, error,
Blindness, weakness, pain and loss,
Fumbling feebly before the mirror,
Yours is the crown, but yours the cross!
Yours is the juice of grape or poppies
To fill the void with a make believe;
Yours the hope where never a prop is,
The opiates, too, that dull, deceive,
No less than nature that lifts eternal
Vision of Life to quiet the heart:
Verse and color that stamp the infernal
Dragon of Fear with the feet of Art.
Yours and ours the consolations
In loneliness and in terror wrought
Out of our spirits' desolations,
Out of our spirits' love and thought!

A WOMAN OF FORTY

Eyes that have long looked on the world,
Taken and stored the soul of outward things,
Dread to look on themselves,
In the mirror to gaze upon their mirrorings!

There to behold what time has done, what thought
Has changed their look and light.
I have lost my face through sorrow and dreams
And dare not find it, lest it smite

This self to-day, since I may not restore
My old self who in gladness without terror
Beheld and knew myself
Each morning in the mirror!

In the long quest of love I may have found
A spirit after whom my passion lusted.
But I had trust not giving love,
I have given love to hearts I have not trusted.

One thing has come that I would never see,
Hidden or trembling in my eyes:
Love in the mirror shown fatigued and mild,
Hopeless and wise.

WILD BIRDS

The wild birds among the reeds
Cry, exult and stretch their wings.
Out of the sky they drift
And sink to the water's rushes.
But the wild birds beat their wings and cry
To the newcomer out of the sky!

Is he a stranger, this wild bird out of the sky?
Or do they cry to him because of remembered places
And remembered days
Spent together
In the north-land, or the south-land?

Is this the ecstasy of renewal,
Or the ecstasy of beginning?
For the wild bird touches his bill
Against a mate;
He brushes her wing with his wing;
He quivers with delight
For the cool sky of blue,
And the touch of her wing!

The wild birds fly up from the reeds of the water,
Some for the south,
Some for the north.
They are gone--
Lost in the sky!

In what water do these mates of a morning
Exult on the morrow?
What wild birds will cry to them as they sink
Out of an unknown sky?
To whose cry will she quiver
Through her burnished wings to-morrow,
In the north-land,
In the south-land,
Far away?

A LADY

She sleeps beneath a canopy of carnation silk,
Embroidered with Venetian lace,
Between linens that crush in the hand
Soft as down.
Waking, she looks through a window
Curtained with carnation silk,
Embroidered with Venetian lace,
The walls are hung with velvet
Embossed with a _fleur de lis_,
And around her is the silence of richness,
Where foot-falls are like exhalations
From carpets of moss.
Little clocks tinkle.
Medallions priceless as jewels
Lie by jars suspiring like coals of fire.
And a maid prepares the bath,
Tincturing delicious water with exquisite essences.
And she is served with coffee
In cups as thin as petals,
Sitting amid pillows that breathe
The souls of freesia!

All things are hers:
Fishes from all seas,
Fruits from all climes.
The city lies at her command,
And is summoned by buttons
Which are pressed for her.
Noiselessly feet move on many floors,
Serving her.
Wheels that turn under coaches
Of crystal and ebony,
And yachts dreaming in strange waters,
And wings--all are hers!
And she is free:
Her husband comes and goes
From his suite below hers.
She never sees him,
Nor knows his ways, nor his days.

But she is very weary
And all alone amid her servants,
And guests that come and go.
Her lips are red,
Her skin is soft and smooth--
But the page blurs before her eyes.
Her eyelids are languid,
And droop from weariness,
Though she will not rest
From the long pursuit of love!
Her hair is white;
The skin of her faultless neck
Edges in creases
As she turns her perfect head.
And the days dawn and die.
What day that dawns will bring her love?
And day by day she waits for the dawn
Of a new life, a great love!

But every morning brings its remembrance
Of the increasing years that are gone.
And every evening brings its fear
Of death which must come,
Until her nerves are shaken
Like a woman's hair in the wind--
What must be done?
Some one tells her that God is love.
And when the fears come
She says to self over and over,
"God is love! God is love!
All is well."
And she wins a little oblivion,
Through saying "God is love,"
From the truth in her heart which cries:
"Love is life,
Love is a lover,
And love is God!"

She is a flower
Which the spring has nourished,
And the summer exhausted.
Fall is at hand.
Weird zephyrs stir her leaves and blossoms;
And she says to herself, "It is not fall,
For God is love!"

My poor flower!
May this therapy ease you into sleep,
And the folding of jewelless hands!
You are beginning to be sick
Of the incurable disease of age,
And the weariness of futile flesh!

THE NEGRO WARD

Scarce had I written: it were best
To crush this love, to give you up,
Drink at one draught the bitter cup,
And kill this new life in my breast,
Than Parker's breathing seemed to give
Ominous sound the end was near.
I did so want this man to live--
This negro soldier, dear.

'Twas three in the morning, all was still
But Parker's rattle in the throat,
Outside I heard the whippoorwill.
The new moon like an Indian boat
Hung just above the darkened grove,
Where you and I had pledged our love,
When you were here. Such precious hours,
Such fleeting moments then were ours...
Alone here in the silent ward,
With Parker dying, I was scared.
His breath came short, his lips were blue.
I asked him: "Is there something more,
Parker, that I can do for you?"
"Please hold my hand," he said. Before
I took it, it was growing cold--
Death, how quick it comes!

Then next I seemed to hear the drums--
For I had fainted for his eyes
That stared with such a wide surprise,
As the lids fell apart they stared,
As if they saw what to behold
Had startled his poor soul which fared
Where it would not. I heard the drums,
The bugle next, lay there so faint
With Parker's eyes still in my view,
Like bubble motes which flit and paint
Themselves upon the heaven's blue.
An orderly had mailed meanwhile
That letter, to you, there I lay
Too weak to write again, unsay
What I had written.

Down the aisle,
Between our beds a step I heard,
A voice: "Our order's here, we leave
In half an hour for France." I stirred
Like a dead thing, could scarce conceive
What tragedy was come. No chance
To write you or to telegraph.
In twelve hours more, as in a trance
I looked from Ellis Island, where
My chums could gayly talk and laugh.
In two hours more we sailed for France.
All this was hard, but still to bear
The knowledge of you, your despair,
Or change, or bitterness, if you thought
That letter came from me, was wrought
Out of a heart that could not stake
Its own blood for your sake.

I will come back to you at length
If I but live and have the strength.
How will you like me with hair white,
And wasted cheeks, deep lined and pale?
It all began that dreadful night
Of Parker's death, the strain and fright,
The letter it seemed best to write--
From then to now I have been frail.
Our ship just missed a submarine,
And here the hardships, gas-gangrene,
The horrors and the deaths have stripped
My life of everything. Is it to prove
For duty, you, though bloody-lipped,
And fallen my unconquerable love
For country and for you through all,
Whatever fate befall?

What is my soul's great anguish for?
For what this tragedy of war?
For what the fate that says to us:
Part hands and be magnanimous?
For what the judgment which decrees
The mother love in me to cease?
For separation, hopeless miles
Of land and water us between?
For what the devil force that smiles
At man's immedicable pain?

I have not lost my faith in God.
Life has grown dark, I only say:
Dear God, my feet have lost the way.
Religion, wisdom do not give
A place to stand, a space to live.
I have not lost my faith in love,
That somehow it must rise above
The clouds of earth, I still can rest
In dreams sometimes upon your breast.
But, oh, it seems sometimes a play
Where gods are picking a bouquet:
The blossom of war, my soul or yours
More fragrant grown as it endures....

WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE

Homer saw nations, armies, multitudes--
You saw them in the intimate interludes
Of Brutus' soul at midnight in a tent
When the infection festers the event.
Ulysses' course is changed by the sea's trough.
You saw an epoch when a hat blows off.
Orestes fled the Furies, won his peace
Through Apollo in old Greece.
But who unbars the mouse traps of your world,
Or kills the ambushed serpent where it's curled?
Your Fates return, and Fortinbras draws in
On Hamlet's impotence and Gertrude's sin.
All oceans in a raindrop, drops of dew
Containing perfect heavens starred and blue;
Angels who mother Calibans, and hopes
Are of your vision--great mosaics hued
With thoughts of princes, poets, misanthropes,
Reveal their minute colors closer viewed.
Atomies, maggots, worms or gilded flies,
Nothing too small or foul is for your eyes.
You made a culture of dreams lost or won
Like Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson.
You looked in heaven when the lightning shone,
Then saw a fairy's whip of cricket bone.
For gods and men bacteriologist
Of spiritual microbes hidden which subsist
In moments of red joy--calm satirist
Of worlds forsaken for a woman's hair,
Kings slain, states crumbled, heroes false or fair,
The madness of the flesh, love on the wrack,
A white maid married to a soldier black.
Incests, adulteries and secret sins,
The fall of monarchs and of manikins.
All men at last a rattling empty pod,
All men destroyed like flies for sport of God.
All Life at last an idiot's furious tale--
You had the strength to say this and not quail!
For you what were the unities, the rules
Of Plautus, Corneille or the Grecian schools?
Flame through a pipe will sing, perhaps, when blown
Against the craftsman's silver, but the tone
Of worlds in conflagration, that's to be
The sacred fire with wings outspread and free,
Wherein an Athens falls, a Sidon stands,
And where a freezing clown may warm his hands.

If you could empty out a tiger's brain
And wire up its spinal cord again
To Sappho's brain, it would no doubt devour
The tiger's nerves and sinews in an hour.
Such muscles and such bones could not endure
The avid hunger of a fire so pure.
And you, Will Shakspeare, spirit sensitive,
You lived past fifty, that is long to live
And feed a flame like yours, and let the flame
Remake itself and lap at flesh and frame.
I say with Jesus, wisdom's eyes are blind
To seek a poet out and think to find
A slender reed that's shaken by the wind.
Come cyclops of the counter, millionaires,
Lawyers and statesmen in the world's affairs,
And thin away like flesh which acid eats
Under the passion even of John Keats.
But if you felt and saw love, agony,
As Shakspeare knew them you would quickly die.
There is no tragedy like the gift of song,
It keeps you mortal but demands you strong;
It gives you God's eyes blurred with human tears,
And crowns a thousand lives in fifty years.
Enter the breathless silence where God dwells,
See and record all heavens and all hells!

FOR A PLAY

Love began with both of them so gently
Meeting, neither thought nor looked intently.
Afterward her breath invoked the fire--
Breath to breath set burning their desire.

Is there aught in flesh or is it spirit
Conscious of its kindred soul when near it?
Woe to flesh or soul that's wholly wakened
While the other's soul-depths lie unshakened!

How could she give him all sacred blisses,
Long embraces, in the darkness kisses,
If she was not his, all else forgetting,
Lovers gone and other loves' regretting?

That was just the place her gold was leadened--
Flesh there too alive, to him all deadened.
She could harp not to his playing wholly,
Yet his heart strings trembled for her solely.

So this love play hastened to the curtain.
Each one spoke his lines in accents certain,
While at times behind the wings her glances
Warmed the prompter's treasonous advances.

Is there greater martyrdom than this is?
You have staked your soul where the abyss is.
You have given all--oh sorry barter
You have lit the fire for you the martyr.

You will still love on, or turn to hating,
Days depart, your heart stays in its waiting,
Where's the blame? She gave her heart's half measure,
All she had, for all your soul's full treasure.

What's the half to keep, could you achieve it?
What your treasure if you could retrieve it?
Never more shall you again bestow it...
Now you have a song if you're a poet.

Now you're ever dumb if song's denied you,
You shall be more dumb than all beside you,
While your soul is shaken by its torrents--
Dante songless in a Dante Florence.

Age shall not make strong, nor deeper learning.
Grief grows clearer with your eye's discerning.
Pass the years, but oh the soil grows faster--
Richer for the roots of your disaster.

Ends the play--for what is life but dying?
What is love but fire forever crying?
What your soul but love's pure carbon fuel?
Love and life make ashes of the jewel!

CHICAGO

I

On the gray paper of this mist and fog
With dust for the erasure and with smoke
For drawing crayons, be this charcoal scrawl:
The breed of Gog in the kingdom of Magog,
Skyscrapers, helmeted, stand sentinel
Amid the obscuring fumes of coal and coke,
Raised by enchantment out of the sand and bog.
This sky-line, the Sierras of the lake,
Cuts with dulled teeth,
Which twist and break,
The imponderable and drifting steam.
And restlessly beneath
This man-created mountain chain,
Like the flow of a prairie river
Endlessly by day and night, forever
Along the boulevards pedestrians stream
In a shuffle like dancers to a low refrain:
Forever by day and night
Pursuing as of old the lure of delight,
And the ghosts of pleasure or pain.
Their rhythmic feet sound like the falling of rain,
Or the hush of the waves, when the roar
Is blown by a wind off shore.

II

From a tower like a mountain promontory
The cesspool of a railroad lies to view
Fouling the marble of the city's glory:
A crapulous sluice of garbage and of cars
Where engines rush and whistle, smudge the blue
With filth like the trail of slugs.
It is a trench of steel which bars
Free access to the common shore, and hugs
In a coil of lazar arms the boulevard.
Cattle and hogs delivered here for slaughter
Corrupt the loveliness of the water front.
They low and grunt,
Switched back and forth within the tangled yard.
But from this tower the amethystine water,
The water of jade or slate,
Is visible with its importunate
Gestures against the sky to still retreats
In Michigan, of quiet woods and hills
Beyond the simmering passion of these streets,
And all their endless ills....