Chapter II: Jesus Before Magistrate Ahaz

Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,
If you have wit to understand my plea.
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that's clear,
Poor man possessed of such is partly free,

Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains
May pluck while running, howling through the mire
And take a little gladness for his pains,
Some fury for unsatisfied desire.

But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,--
But then this lunatic had rights. You grant
Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew
His baffled spirit. How significant,

As they were legion and so named, the point
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath.
Desire puts a spirit out of joint.
Swine-devils are for swine, who have no path.

But man with many lusts, what is his way,
Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms?
He prays for night to come, and for the day
Amid the miry places and the tombs.

But hogs run to the sea. And there's an end.
Would I might cast the swinish demons out
From man forever. Yet the word attend.
The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?

What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved?
What loss of lands and houses, man being free?
Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved,
Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.

Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth,
Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw;
Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe
Free souls with courage to transgress the law

By casting demons out from self, or those
Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues
Would leave to battle singly with his woes--
What is a man's soul to a drove of hogs?

Which being lost, men play the hypocrite
And make the owner chief in the affair.
You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.

And into swine where better they belong,
Casting the swinish devils out of men
The devils have their place at last, and then
The man is healed who had them--where's the wrong

Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues
Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud
The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs.
This rule has been the statute from the flood.

Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw.
Is it not so with judges first and last--
You break the law to specialize the law?--
This is the devil that from you I cast.

WINGED VICTORY

Icarus, Daedalus, Medea's dragons,
Pegasus, Leonardo, Swedenborg,
Cyrano de Bergerac, with dew-filled flagons,
Bacon, who schemed with chemicals and forge,
Lana, of copper spheres of air exhausted,
Therefore made light to rise
Up where the pathless ways are frosted
In the blue vitriol of the skies.

Montgolfier, Franklin, von Zeppelin, Watt,
Edison, an engine must be, spiral springs,
Nor steam move not these more than condor wings
Of heaven's Argonaut,
Gathering the sun-set clouds for golden fleece.
Santos Dumont and Langley, over these
The Americans, the brothers Wright.
America finds wings for flight.
At last out of the New World wings are born
To wheel far up where cold is, and a light
Dazzling and immaculate,
In the heights where stands the temple of the Morn.
Winged Victory more beautiful than Samothrace's
For the New World opening the gate
Of heaven at last, where mortals enter in
Unconquerably and win
The great escape from earth, the measureless spaces
Of air across the inimical abyss
Between ethereal precipice and precipice.
Hail! spirits of the race's
Courage to be free, adventurers
Of infinite desire!
Hail! seed of the ancient wars,
Of burning glasses, catapults, Greek fire!
Hail! final conquerors,
Out of whose vision greater vision springs--
America with wings!

The vulture lags behind, the Gorgones,
Revealed or ambushed in the thunder clouds,
Would tear from heaven these audacities
Of deathless spirit, shatter them and spill
The blasphemy of genius from the sky.
Gods are you, flyers, whom no danger shrouds,
No terror shakes the will.
Gods are you though you suffer and must die,
Men winged as gods who fly!

Borelli, in the centuries that are gone,
With feathers made him wings, but steel
Soars for the petrol demon's toil,
Fed by the sap of trees far under earth
In the long eons past turned into oil.
The petrol demon in the enchanted coil
Of lightning howls and spins the invisible wheel
Which had its birth
In the rapt vision of Archimides.
Borelli, in the centuries that are gone,
With feathers made him wings. But now a swan,
A steel-borne beetle cleaves the immensities,
Fed with fire of amber and oil of trees,
And soars against the sun,
And over mountains, seas!

Flight more auspicious than the flight of cranes
In Homer's Troyland, or than eagles flying
Toward Imaus when the midnight wanes.
Victorious flight! symbol of man defying
Low dungeons of the spirit, darkness, chains.
Flight beyond superstition and the reigns
Of tyrannies where thought of man should be
Swift as his thought is free.
Flight of an era born to-day
That puts the past and all its dead away.

Locusts of the new Jehovah sent to scourge
All Pharaohs who enslave.
Hornets with multiple eyes,
Scorning surprise,
And armed to purge
The despot and the knave
Out of the fairer land where men shall live,
Winning all things which were so fugitive
Of wisdom, happiness and peace,
Of hope, of spiritual release
From fear of life, life's mean significance,
Till life be ordered, not a thing of chance.

The hopelessness of him who cried
Vanity of Vanities
Was justified,
But now no longer must abide.
Failure was his, and failure filled the hours
Of our fathers in the past--let it depart.
Triumph is come, and triumph must be ours.
The archangels of earth through Israel,
Through India and Greece
Shall find us wings for life and for increase
Of living, and shall battle down the hell
Whose fires still smolder and profane.
Life and the human heart
In living must become the aeroplane,
Not the yoked oxen and the cart.
Let but the thought of East and West be blent,
Europe, America, the Orient,
To give life wings as Time's last great event:
The final glory of wings to the soul of man
In an order of life human, but divine,
Fashioned in carefulest thought, powerful but of delicate design,
As the wings of the aeroplane are.
Where spirit of man is used to the full, but saved,
As the petrol demon, in this dragon of war,
Uses and saves his power.
Where neither thought, truth, love nor gifts, nor any flower
Of spirit of man, so mangled or enslaved
In the eras gone, is wasted or depraved.

Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised
With winning of his wings.
Dust he no more shall eat,
Who crawls not, but from feet
Has risen to wings!
Man shall no longer python be.
These wings are prophecies of a world made free!
Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised.
He has soared to the gate of heaven and gazed
Into the meadows of infinity,
Winged and with lightning shod,
Beyond the old day's lowering cloud and murk.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
Man shows His handiwork!

OH YOU SABBATARIANS!

Oh you sabbatarians, methodists and puritans;
You bigots, devotees and ranters;
You formalists, pietists and fanatics,
Teetotalers and hydropots,
You thin ascetics, androgynous souls,
Chaste and epicene spirits,
Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound,
Fingers insensitive,
Do what you will,
Make what laws you choose--
Yet there are high spaces of rapture
Which you can never touch,
They are beyond you and hidden from you.

We leave you to the dull assemblies,
Charades, cantatas and lectures;
The civic meetings where you lie and act
And work up business;
The teas of forced conversation,
And receptions of how-de-dos,
And stereotyped smiles;
The church sociables;
And the calls your young men of clammy hands
And fetid breath
Pay to anæmic virgins--

These are yours;
Take them--
But I tell you
In places you know not of,
We, the free spirits, the livers,
Guests at the wedding feast of life,
Drinkers of the wine made by Jesus,
Worshipers of fire and of God,
Who made the grape,
And filled the veins of His legitimate children
With ethereal flame--
We the lovers of life in unknown places
Shall taste of ancient wine,
And put flowers in golden vases,
And open precious books of song,
And look upon dreaming Buddhas,
And marble masks of genius.
We shall hear the sound of stringed instruments,
Voicing the dreams of great spirits.
We shall know the rapture of kisses
And long embraces,
And the sting of folly.
We shall entwine our arms in voluptuous sleep,
And in the misery of your denials
And your cowardice and your fears
You shall not even dream that we exist.

Unintelligible weeds! We, the blossoms of life's garden,
Flourish on the hills of variable winds--
We perish, but you never live.

PALLAS ATHENE

Athene! Virgin! Goddess! Queen! descend,
Come to us and befriend.
Set up your shrine among us and defend
Our realm against corruptions which impend.

* * * * *

Divinity of order and of law,
Most powerful and wise,
Our land reclaim.
Patron of the assemblies of the free,
Our cities shame!
Dethrone our bastard Demos, partisans
Of Moody, Campbell, all the Wesleyans.
Come down with awe,
Enceladus and Pallas strike, who rise
Against your father and his hierarchy.
Smite the giants Superstition, Force,
Fanaticism, Ignorance and Faith
In village gods, and bury them beneath
Volcanic mountains. Yoke them to the course
And labor of your wisdom. Fling your shield,
Medusa faced, before the brows of clay,
Who rule our clattering day;
Flash it before their brows and make
Stones for the pavement of the way
Whereon you drive your chariot, golden-wheeled.
Descend, O Goddess, for the memory's sake
And for the hope's sake of your son,
Franklin, your herald, Washington,
Who dreamed to make perpetual
Our Parthenon, column, court and hall.
And save it from the donjon, minaret,
The cross, the spire, the vane, the parapet!

* * * * *

We have no god but Jesus,
No god but Billiken.
Nature and Dionysius
Come back again!
Jehovah is an alien tyrant, rules us
From arid Palestine,
Who mouths a heaven that fools us,
And curses the olive and vine,
And the smiles of the lyric nine.
Gods are they, hard and full of wrath
Who drive us on the unintelligible path.
Gods are they, and unreckoning of their work
Too puerile or despotic, or with feet
That drip blood on a mercy seat.
They nerve our hands with hatred's dirk,
Or weaken us with poison sweet.
Drug us to mumble this is life, who feel
In our delirium, no less, that life
Is an ocean that breaks the grist stones and the wheel
Set up to feed this world of strife
By Mary's son, Mary the wife--
Come from the Islands of the Blest,
Goddess, and give us wisdom, vision, rest.
Reveal a Beauty for our hearts to love.
The wooden ark of Moses, overlaid
With strips of gold,
And all the spurious covenant thereof
By which our life is obelised
We would no more behold,
Who have so vainly with it temporized.
Fruitless our spirits have these centuries prayed
Before the Janus cross,
The oracle that speaks in riddles, asks
Penitence, obedience, tasks
Which nature interdicts.
We are the body on the crucifix,
Not Jesus; we, the race, are crucified,
And die upon the cross,
For centuries have died.
Come and restore our loss
Of truth, the eyes of spirits undeceived,
Courage with nature, strike the opiate joss
To ruin with your sword,
O most adored!
Give us Reality, O lover of men,
Republics, cities, lands.
Uplift our eyes to Beauty, once perceived
We may rebuild the Areopagus,
With wiser eyes and hands.
Bring Thought, the Argus, consciousness
That looks before and after,
And grace perpetual of Mnemosyne--
Remembering we shall be free!
Save us, O Goddess, from the drifting crowd,
Wondering, witless, loud,
The lovers of the minute who possess
No reverence and no laughter!

* * * * *

Goddess! with silver helmet, guardian
You may be, if we worship at your shrine,
Before the gates of Boston and New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, through the span
Of continents and isles; your heart incline
Toward our turbulent blood from many climes,
Worships and times.
Lift from our necks the brass and jeweled torque
Of restless zealots and of idiot mouths;
The locusts swarm, the land is cursed with drouths,
Bring rain and dew,
Plant olive trees,
Set on our hills the emblem of the vine;
Bring to our hearts the lofty purities
Of song and laughter, wisdom, and renew
Temples of beauty and academies!

* * * * *

Set up your golden altar
In Parthenons in every village and shire.
The crucifix and psalter,
The ikons and the toys of vain desire
We cast into the fire.
We keep the lover Jesus, for his hope,
His humanism and his flaming zeal.
He will approach your altar, he will kneel
At last before you, for the horoscope
Of life misread in youth
And youthful dreams and faith.
Goddess! our globe that hungers for the truth
Between the roar of life, silence of death
Cannot be stayed or cowed. But, oh, descend
First to our soil, Atlantis, and befriend.
Make us a light across the fathomless sea
Of centuries to be,
Even as Athens is, divinity!

AT SAGAMORE HILL

All things proceed as though the stage were set
For acts arranged. I have not learned the part,
The day enacts itself. I take the tube,
Find daylight at Jamaica, know the place
Through some rehearsal, all the country know
Which glides along the window, is not seen
For definite memory. At Oyster Bay
A taxi stands in readiness; in a trice
We circle strips of water, slopes of hills,
Climb where a granite wall supports a hill,
A mass of blossoms, ripening berries, too,
And enter at a gate, go up a drive,
Shadowed by larches, cedars, silver willows.
This taxi just ahead is in the play,
Is here in life as I had seen it in
The crystal of prevision, reaches first
The porte cochere. This moment from the door
Comes Roosevelt, and greets the man who leaves
The taxi just ahead, then waits for me,
Puts a strong hand that softens into mine,
And says, O, this is bully!

We go in.
He leaves my antecessor in a room
Somewhere along the hall, and comes to me
Who wait him in the roomy library.
How are those lovely daughters? Oh, by George!
I thought I might forget their names, I know--
It's Madeline and Marcia. Yes, you know
Corinne adores the picture which you sent
Of Madeline--your boy, too? In the war!
That's bully--tea is coming--we must talk,
I have five hundred things to ask you--set
The tea things on this table, Anna--now,
Do you take sugar, lemon? O, you smoke!
I'll give you a cigar.

The talk begins.
He's dressed in canvas khaki, flannel shirt,
Laced boots for farming, chopping trees, perhaps;
A stocky frame, curtains of skin on cheeks
Drained slightly of their fat; gash in the neck
Where pus was emptied lately; one eye dim,
And growing dimmer; almost blind in that.
And when he walks he rolls a little like
A man whose youth is fading, like a cart
That rolls when springs are old. He is a moose,
Scarred, battered from the hunters, thickets, stones;
Some finest tips of antlers broken off,
And eyes where images of ancient things
Flit back and forth across them, keeping still
A certain slumberous indifference
Or wisdom, it may be.

But then the talk!
Bronze dolphins in a fountain cannot spout
More streams at once: Of course the war, the emperor,
America in the war, his sons in France,
The dangers, separation, let them go!
The fate has been appointed--to our task,
Live full our lives with duty, go to sleep!
For I say, he exclaims, the man who fears
To die should not be born, nor left to live.
It's Celtic poetry, free verse. He says:
You nobly celebrate in your Spoon River
The pioneers, the soldiers of the past,
Why do you flout our Philippine adventure?
No difference, Colonel, in the stock, the difference
Lies in the causes. Well, another stream:
Mark Hanna, Quay and others, what I hate,
He says to me, is the Pharisee--I can stand
All other men. And you will find the men
So much maligned had gentle qualities,
And noble dreams. Poor Quay, he loved the Indians,
Sent for me when he lay there dying, said,
Look after such a tribe when I am dead.
I want to crawl upon a sunny rock
And die there like a wolf. Did he say that,
Colonel, to you? Yes! and you know, a man
Who says a thing like that has in his soul
An orb of light to flash that meaning forth
Of heroism, nature.

Time goes on,
The play is staged, must end; my taxi comes
In half an hour or so. Before it comes,
Let's walk about the farm and see my corn.
A fellow on the porch is warming heels
As we go by. I'll see him when you go,
The Colonel says.

The rail fence by the corn
Is good to lean on as we stand and talk
Of farming, cattle, country life. We turn,
Sit for some moments in a garden house
On which a rose vine clambers all in bloom,
And from this hilly place look at the strips
Of water from the bay a mile beyond,
Below some several terraces of hills
Where firs and pines are growing. This resembles
A scene in Milton that I've read. He knows,
Catches the reminiscence, quotes the lines--and then
Something of country silence, look of grass
Where the wind stirs it, mystical little breaths
Coming between the roses; something, too,
In Vulcan's figure; he is Vulcan, too,
Deprived his shop, great bellows, hammer, anvil,
Sitting so quietly beside me, hands
Spread over knees; something of these evokes
A pathos, and immediately in key
With all of this he says: I have achieved
By labor, concentration, not at all
By gifts or genius, being commonplace
In all my faculties.

Not all, I say.
One faculty is not, your over-mind,
Eyed front and back to see all faculties,
Govern and watch them. If we let you state
Your case against you, timid born, you say,
Becoming brave, asthmatic, growing strong:
No marksman, yet becoming skilled with guns;
No gift of speech, yet winning golden speech;
No gift of writing, writing books, no less
Of our America to thrill and live--
If, as I say, we let you state your case
Against you as you do, there yet remains
This over-mind, and that is what--a gift
Of genius or of what? By George, he says,
What are you, a theosophist? I don't know.
I know some men achieve a single thing,
Like courage, charity, in this incarnation;
You have achieved some twenty things. I think
That this is going some for a man whose gifts
Are commonplace and nothing else.

We rise
And saunter toward the house--and there's the man
Still warming heels; my taxi, too, has come.
We are to meet next Wednesday in New York
And finish up some subjects--he has thoughts
How I can help America, if I drop
This line or that a little, all in all.

* * * * *

But something happens; I have met a loss;
Would see no one, and write him I am off.
And on that Wednesday flashes from the war
Say Quentin has been killed: we had not met
If I had stayed to meet him.

So, good-by
Upon the lawn at Sagamore was good-by,
Master of Properties, you stage the scene
And let us speak and pass into the wings!
One thing was fitting--dying in your sleep--
A touch of Nature, Colonel, you who loved
And were beloved of Nature, felt her hand
Upon your brow at last to give to you
A bit of sleep, and after sleep perhaps
Rest and rejuvenation; you will wake
To newer labors, fresher victories
Over those faculties not disciplined
As you desired them in these sixty years.

TO ROBERT NICHOLS

England has found another voice in you
Of beauty and of truth,
True to their soul, as you are true--
Singer and soldier, yet a youth.

Out of the trenches and the rage of blood,
The hatred and the lies
You, like a wounded sky-lark, in a flood
Pour forth these melodies,

Of a spirit which has suffered, yet has soared
Above the stench of hell and death's defeats.
I look at you, as often I have pored
On the death mask of Keats.

Or the face of him quickly and gladly going
The waves of the sea under,
To the land of man's unknowing,
Or the land of wonder.

And the war had you! what can it give
In return for souls like yours
Mangled or blotted out?--who shall forgive
The war while time endures?

Back of the shouting mob, the brazen bands,
The soldiers marching well,
Gangrene cries out and Rupert Brooke's hands
Clutch in a hemorrhage of hell.

Yet you found God through this? through war,
Through love found vision, perhaps peace?
Keep them in your breast like the morning star--
May their light increase.

Waves on the sea's breast catch the light
While the hollows between
Are dark--you are a wave whose height
Is smitten by the Light unseen,

Urged by the Sea's power to the glory
Of the christening sun.
When the calm comes and darkness, transitory
Be your doubt, or none.

These words from me who have the hard way traveled
Of pain and thought,
In a weaving never wholly unraveled,
Or wholly wrought,

For your spirit and your songs, gladness
For the hope of you, and praise
To life, who gave you out of the world's madness
In these our days.

BONNYBELL: THE BUTTERFLY

As I shall die, let your belief
Find in these words too poor and brief
My soul's essential self.

My grief
Down to the day I knew you locks
Its secret word in paradox:
I who loved truth could not be true,
Could only love the truth and glow
With words of truth who loved it so,
Even while I dishonored you.
I who loved constancy was false,
And heeded but in part the calls
Of loveliness for love and you.
I am but half of that I hoped,
And that half hardly more than words
I cheered my soul with as it groped:
As from their bowers of rain the birds
Sing feebly, pining for the sun.
As I am all of this, by fate
Lose what I could so well have won,
Life leaves me half articulate,
My failure, nature half-expressed,
Or wholly hidden in my breast.
Yes, dear, the secret of me lies
Where words scarce come to analyze.
Yet who knows why he is this or that?
What moves, defeats him, works him ill?
What blood ancestral of the bat
Narrows his music to the shrill
Squeak of a flitting thing that hunts
For gnats, which never singing, fronts
The full moon flooding down the vale,
The perfect soul, the nightingale!

You have wooed music all your life,
And I have sought for love. I think
My soul was marked, dear, by a wife
Who loved a man immersed in drink,
Who crushed her love which would not die.
If this be true, my soul's great thirst
Was blended with a fault accursed.
My mother's love is my soul's cry.
My father's vileness, lies and lusts,
His cruel heart, inconstancy
That kept my mother with the crusts
Of life to gnaw, are in my blood.
My rainbow wings I scarce can loose,
Or if I free them, there's the mud
That weighs and mars their use.

You have wooed music. But suppose
The hampered hours and poverty
Broke down your spirit's harmony,
Then if you found you could achieve
The music in you, if you could
But pick a pocket or deceive,
Which would you call the greater good--
The music or a sin withstood?
Suppose you passed a window where
The violin of your despair
Lay ready for your hands! At last
You stole it as you hurried past,
And hid it underneath your rags
Until you reached your attic room,
Then tuned the strings and burned the tags.
And drew the bow till lyric fire
Should all your thieving thoughts consume:
In such case what is your desire--
The music or the violin?
And what in such case is your sin?
And if they caught you in your theft,
Would you, just to be honest, dear,
Forefront your thief-self as your deft
And dominant genius, or the ear
Which tortured you?

Would you not say,
Music intrigues me night and day?
My soul is the musician's. First
In my soul's love is music. Would
You falsify to keep your good?
Deny your theft, or put the worst
Construction on your soul, obscure
Thereby your soul's investiture
Of music's gift and music's lure?
If you were flame you would pretend
What you would fain be to the end,
Keep your good name and keep as well
The violin. May this not be
In some realm an integrity?

Now for myself, dear, though I lack
The gift of utterance to explain
My life's pursuit and passion, pain,
Or why I acted thus, concealed
Thoughts that you hold were best revealed,
Your eyes to heal themselves must track
And find my soul's way in its quest
Followed from girlhood without rest.
Music is not its hope, but love....
And I saw somehow I could lift
My life through you, and rise above
What I had been. And since your gift
Of love saw me as truthful, true
I kept that best side to your view,
And hoped to be what you desired
If I but struggled, still aspired.
And as for lapses, even while
I fooled you with the wanton's smile,
He was my lover till you came
To light my life with purer flame.
Was it, beloved, so great a sin?
He was a practice violin.
Oh, how I knew this when your strings
Sang to me afterward when I slept
Upon your breast again. I wept,
Do you remember? I was grieving
Neither for him, nor your deceiving,
Rather (how strange is life) that he
Was prelude to your harmony;
Rather that while I walked with him,
With you I found the cherubim,
Left my old self at last with wings,
Saw beauty clear where it was dim
Before through my imaginings.

Do you suppose the primrose knows
What skill adds petals to its crown?
How many failures laugh and frown
Upon the hand that crosses, sows?
The hand is ignorant of the power
Obedient in the primrose flower
To the hand's skill that toils to add
New petals till the flower be clad
In fuller glory. What's the bond
Between us two, that I respond
To what you are? Nor do you know
What lies within me fain to grow
Under your hand.

But if the worm
Should call itself the butterfly,
Since it will soon become one, I
Better to be myself affirm
That I am Beauty, Truth--for you
I would be Beauty, Truth, imbue
Your life with love and loveliness.
And you can make me Beauty, Truth,
And I can bring you soul success
If you but train my flower whose youth
Still may be governed, keep erect
My hope in this poor earthen sod.
I think this is a task which God
Appoints for us. We may neglect
The task in this life, but to find
It is a task we leave behind,
Only to meet it, till we see
Our fate worked out in lives to be.

O, from my lesser self to spread
My golden wings above your head,
Through love of love and you discard
The sting, the rings of green, the shard.
Oh, to be Psyche, passion tried
Through flesh, desire, purified!
Love is my lode-star, music yours--
Souls must go where the lode-star lures.

HYMN TO AGNI

God of fire,
God of the flame of our love,
Beyond whose might no God is,
And none in the realm of birth,
Agni! Adored one,
May we never suffer in thy friendship!

Thou, who art re-born each day,
And whose symbol is the sacred drill
Wherewith fire is made for the temple,
Morning by morning,
Freshly create our love as the sun awakes,
Preserve our love, O Agni!

The crocuses, the dandelions,
The golden forsythia
Perished in May.
But roses burn on the altar of earth,
Bridal blossoms, whitest of fire,
Dance in the winds of June.
Agni, remember us,
Remember our love!

We have prayed to you, powerful one--
Thou whose name is first
In the first of the sacred hymns;
Thou to whom sacrifices pass
To the Gods, thou messenger of the Gods,
Thou who art born a little lower than the most high Indra
Hast heard our prayer--
Hear still our prayer:
Abide with us, O Agni, and befriend;
Make our hearts as temples,
And our desire as the drill,
Wherewith fire is created
For the sacred sacrifice of love,
And for a light to our spirits--
Turn not away from our prayers,
O Agni!

Here before the fire of the Sun of June
Kneeling
Hand in hand,
Our eyes closed before the splendor of your spirit
Hear our prayer, O Agni:
May we never suffer in thy friendship.

EPITAPH FOR US

One with the turf, one with the tree
As we are now, you soon shall be,
As you are now, so once were we.

The hundred years we looked upon
Were Goethe and Napoleon.
Now twice a hundred years are gone,

And you gaze back and contemplate,
Lloyd George and Wilson, William's hate,
And Nicholas of the bloody fate;

Us, too, who won the German war,
Who knew less what the strife was for
Than you, now that the conqueror

Lies with the conquered. You will say:
"Here sleep the brave, the grave, the gay,
The wise, the blind, who lost the way."

But for us English, for us French,
Americans who held the trench,
You will not grieve, though the rains drench

The hills and valleys, being these.
Who pities stocks, or pities trees?
Or stones, or meadows, rivers, seas?

We are with nature, we have grown
At one with water, earth, and stone--
Man only is separate and alone,

Earth sundered, left to dream and feel
Illusion still in pain made real,
The hope a mist, but fire the wheel.

But what was love, and what was lust,
Memory, passion, pain or trust,
Returned to clay and blown in dust,

Is nature without memory--
Yet as you are, so once were we,
As we are now, you soon shall be,

Blind fellows of the indifferent stars
Healed of your bruises, of your scars
In love and living, in the wars.

Come to us where the secret lies
Under the riddle of the skies,
Surrender fingers, speech, and eyes.

Sink into nature and become
The mystery that strikes you dumb,
Be clay and end your martyrdom.

Rise up as thought, the secret know.
As passionless as stars bestow
Your glances on the world below,

As a man looks at hand or knee.
What is the turf of you, what the tree?
Earth is a phantom--let it be.

BOTTICELLI TO SIMONETTA

I would give you all my heart, and I have given
All my heart to you to have and keep
With your heart, where my heart has found its heaven
In a light immortal, and a peace like sleep.
Here is my heart, for you to have and treasure,
Your woman's heart will treasure it,
For a love that only love may find a measure,
And only love like yours can measure it.

In absence and in separation praying
Before your love, my heart receive,
My heart which kneels to you, so gently laying
Hands of deep prayer, too reverent to grieve
For lives divided, yet compassionate,
As my poor heart is pitiful for yours.
These hearts of ours, that know so deep a fate,
Even as a heart that silently endures,
Lie on an altar of consuming fire,
Our hearts together, taking life thereof.
Ashes must come of two hearts which aspire
To God, who has given love.

FLOWER IN THE GARDEN

Flower in the garden,
Wholly itself and free,
Yearning and joyous,
Breathing its charm
To the passer-by
On the sighing air--
Beloved flower!
Flower desired for something beyond
Itself as a flower;
Giving the promise of ecstasy
Beyond its own being,
Its place in the garden--
A shadowed flame
Of an absolute!

Flower that I have taken
From its place in the garden
To realize the ultimate Beauty;
Flower in the vase at my side,
Breathing a sweeter life
Into the air I breathe,
A spirit that makes me faint,
Sorrowful with a strange languor.
Flower no less beautiful,
But revealing an essence
That changes my flower.
O, my flower that is with me but lost,
Lost in the disclosure of other hues,
Other scents!

Flower of passion, flower of love,
Flower that I have won and lost,
Mystical flower!

INEXORABLE DEITIES

Deities!
Inexorable revealers,
Give me strength to endure
The gifts of the Muses,
Daughters of Memory.
When the sky is blue as Minerva's eyes
Let me stand unshaken;
When the sea sings to the rising sun
Let me be unafraid;
When the meadow lark falls like a meteor
Through the light of afternoon,
An unloosened fountain of rapture,
Keep my heart from spilling
Its vital power;
When at the dawn
The dim souls of crocuses hear the calls
Of waking birds,
Give me to live but master the loveliness.
Keep my eyes unharmed from splendors
Unveiled by you,
And my ears at peace
Filled no less with the music
Of Passion and Pain, growth and change.

* * * * *

But O ye sacred and terrible powers,
Reckless of my mortality,
Strengthen me to behold a face,
To know the spirit of a beloved one
Yet to endure, yet to dare!

ARIELLE

Arielle! Arielle!
Gracious and fanciful,
Laughing and joyous!
Arielle girlish, queenly, majestical;
Deep eyed for memory,
Pensive for dreams.
Arielle crowned with the light of thought,
Mystical, reverent,
Musing on the splendor of life,
And the blossom of love
Pressed into her hands--
Arielle!

Music awakes in the hall!
Shadowy pools and glistening willows,
And elfin shapes amid silver shadows
Are made into sound!
Arielle listens with hidden eyes,
Sitting amid her treasures,
A presence like a lamp of alabaster,
A yearning gardenia
That broods in a shaft of light...
Arielle clapping hands and running
About her rooms,
Arranging cloths of gold and jars of crystal,
And vases of ruby cloisonne.
Arielle matching blues and reds:
Pomegranates, apples in bowls of jade.
Arielle reposing, lost in Plato,
In the contemplation of Agni.
Arielle, the cup to her lips,
A laughing Thalia!
Arielle!

The breath of morning moves through the casement window--
Arielle taking the cool of it on her brow,
And the ecstasy of the robin's song into her heart.
Arielle in prayer at dawn
Laying hands upon secret powers:
Lead me in the path of love to my love.
Arielle merging the past and the present,
As light increases light--
Arielle adored--
Arielle!

SOUNDS OUT OF SORROW

Of all sounds out of the soul of sorrow
These I would hear no more:
The cry of a new-born child at midnight;
The sound of a closing door,

That hushes the echo of departing feet
When the loneliness of the room
Is haunted with the silence
Of a dead god's tomb;

The songs of robins at the white dawn,
Since I may never see
The eyes they waked in the April
Now gone from me;

Music into whose essence entered
The soul of an hour:--
A face, a voice, the touch of a hand,
The scent of a flower.

MOURNIN' FOR RELIGION

Brothers and sisters, I'm mournin' for religion,
But I can't get religion, it's my woman interferin'.
I sing and I pray, and I'm real perseverin',
But I can't get religion,
That's all I have to say.
I know there is a fountain, a Jesus, a comforter,
A heaven, a Jerusalem, a day of Pentecost,
Salvation for the wishin', blood for sin's remission,
A covenant, a promise for souls that are lost.
But I can't get religion, the salvation feelin',
The vision of the Lamb, forgiveness and healin'.
I have a sort of numbness
When I see the mourners kneelin'.
I have a kind of dumbness
When the preacher is appealin'.
I have a kind of wariness, even contrariness,
Even while I'm fearin'
The bottomless pit and the shut gates of heaven.
It's my woman interferin'--

For you see when they say:
Come to the mercy seat, come, come,
The spirit and the bride
Say come, come,
I think of my woman who bore so many children;
I think of her a cookin' for harvesters in summer;
I think of her a lyin' there, a dyin' there, the neighbors
Who came in to fan her and how she never murmured;
And then I seem to grow number and number,
And something in me says:
Why didn't Jesus help her for to die,
Why did Jesus always pass her by,
Let her break her health down as I was growing poorer,
Let her lie and suffer with no medicine to cure her,
I wouldn't treat a stray dog as Jesus acted to her.
If these are devil words, I'm a child of the devil.
And this is why I'm dumb
As the spirit and the bride say come!

* * * * *

I am old and crippled--sixty in December.
And I wonder if it's God that stretches out and hands us
Troubles we remember?
I'm alone besides, I need the Comforter,
All the children's grown up, livin' out in Kansas.
My old friend Billy died of lung fever....
But the worst of it is I'm really a believer,
Expect to go to hell if I don't get religion.
And I need this religion to stop this awful grievin'
About my woman lyin' there in the cemetery,
And you can't stop that grievin' simply by believin'.
So I mourn for religion,
I mourn for religion,
My old heart breaks for religion!

THYAMIS

Thyamis, a gallant of Memphis,
Where melons were served
Iced with snow from the Mountains of the Moon;
Thyamis, a philanderer in Alexandris
Rich in parchments and terebinth,
Lies here in the museum.
His lips are brown as peach leather,
Through which his teeth are sticking,
White as squash seeds.

* * * * *

Knowing that he must die and leave her
He slew the lovely Chariclea
Who sailed with him on the Nile
Under the moon of Egypt.
This is the body of Chariclea
Undesiring the arms of Thyamis.
This is the remnant of Chariclea,
Wrapped in a gunny sack,
Rotted with gums and balsams.

* * * * *

As the sands of the desert are stirred
By the wind when the sun sets,
The open door of the museum
Lets in the wind to shake
The cerements of Chariclea,
And the stray hairs on the forsaken head
Of Thyamis.

* * * * *

Of desire long dead;
Of a murder done in the days of Pharaoh;
Of Thyamis dying who took to death
The lovely Chariclea;
Of Chariclea who shrank
From the love death of Thyamis
The multitude passes, unknowing.

* * * * *