Chapter VII: Part III: Lincoln Makes a Memorandum (3)

Over too soon! Yet truth to tell
It was a lasting festival.
Guests had to leave--and that was all.
To each some different thing befell.
The party went on just the same.
First guests departed, late arrived;
Fresh candles burned with brighter flame;
New cakes were cut, and laughter thrived
Over a wit re-sharpened. Crumbs
Of eaten things were brushed away;
Dishes were cleared and lovelier bowls
Were piled with new picked grapes and plums.
The place the while was mad and gay
Because of sad and merry souls.
There was a room for love’s romancing;
A room for talk, a room for dancing;
A room for globes and maps and books;
A room with sky lights, a room of nooks;
A room of pictures, marbles, bronzes;
Guns, gauntlets, spears, armor, sconces;
A room of racks and torture hooks;
A room of ikons, shrines and josses;
A room of crosiers, cups and crosses;
A room--but everything was here--
That brain can think of, plan or make
To shackle spirits, honor brows,
To thrill the heart, or start the tear,
Or stir a rapture, or an ache--
It was a wonder house!

I noticed this: You enter with
Fellow arrivers, ill at ease.
The rooms are full, and some of these
Know you, but only with their eyes
Acknowledge you in mild surprise.
Listen! and you will get the pith
And meaning of what went before
From these. The high ones talk in myth,
Who own the rooms--in loose ellipsis
Show what their tried out fellowships’
Inner communion is and lore.
But kinder souls say: “Some one great
Was here before you came.” “This thing
Happened this morning.” “Look! that one
Just going out, is so and so.”
“There comes the waiter with your plate!”
“You should have heard that woman sing!
She’s going!” “Oh, we’ve had such fun.”
“What happened? What’s ahead? Its slow!”
Late stayers stare your ignorance:
“Why don’t they tell us?” “Oh, no use,
You wouldn’t understand. You’ll know
Later, perhaps, by happy chance.
And if you don’t, it’s too abstruse,
We have no words. Feed on and run
The rooms around. You’ll see what we
Have felt, seen, suffered and enjoyed.”

And so it is to father and son,
Mother and maid. Then what should be?
The bell rings, some are glad, annoyed:
New guests are coming, and for some
The Chauffeur rings, the Car has come!
And we who were the novices,
And wondered, stared, deferred, inquired,
Are now in charge, and take amiss
Curious questions, have acquired
The Party’s manner, secrets, speech.
And see, as those before us saw,
New and old groups are troubled, each
Is deaf and dumb. How can we draw
Their wordless wonder to the point?
What would you know? How can we reach
And vocalize your dumbness? What
To ask of us you do not know,
And what to tell you we know not--
Groups, therefore, clearly out of joint.

Yes, but they do not know us now.
Most here are strange. Where is the throng
With whom we came? Where is the brow
Sunny of hair, the voice of song?
Where is the hand that understood,
Without a word? There’s none to hear,
And know our meaning as he would ...
New wine is opened. No more wine!
New cake is cut. I must instead
Drink brandy, bitters, heavy beer.
I rather like this coarse, black bread.
Strange music plays, not high and clear.
No matter! For you might inspect
The pictures, marbles, once again,
Look at the books some more, correct
First errors. Surely that were well.
And you can do it, having fared
So differently. Was that the bell?
“Your chauffeur’s here!” “Why speed me so?”
“Too bad! Too bad you have to go!”

Yes, but the party’s over! No?
Over for me. And I am tired.
Desire for what I once desired
Is dying or is satisfied.
Tell him to wait a moment--yes
I wish to see what may betide;
Watch the new corners laugh and feast;
Watch eyes that glance, and breasts that heave;
Watch cunning, aspiration, pride;
Watch soldier, statesman, poet, priest;
Watch those who doubt and who believe,
Untangle, tangle, spin and weave.
I’ve helped to make the party, still
The party is not to my will.
I can re-make it, now I know
How to enjoy it better, use
Its hour more wisely. “By your leave.
Just wait a moment!” “Well, your car
Is at the door and must not park;
The way you go is rather far,
Besides it’s growing dark.”
Bowed out! No matter! I am due
At a better party, so they say.
To-morrow is a better day--
Always to-morrow. “What of you?
You’re coning? Well, I hope you may.”
“Meantime good night, a safe return,
And blessings on your way.”

CELSUS AT HADRIAN’S VILLA

This is the place, my friend Aristo. Here
We sit and muse on the state of the world. Alas!
What are we coming to?

The tufa walls
Inlaid with yellow lichens look like bronze
Gold filagreed. And through those rifts and breaks
There are the trunks of ilex, gnarled and dark.
Look! Nature mocks us. Hadrian is asleep
These nearly hundred years. Does cyclamen
Crimson about these walls grow less profuse?
Or these anemones laugh less to the sun?
Or bramble, honeysuckle, bougainvillea
Desert the gardens of the emperor?
The merle and golden-crested wrens build nests,
Sing the hymeneal song! But man, poor man,
Forsakes his triumphs, work, his palaces.
And barbarous weeds sprout over them and creep,
And choke his wisdom and his art.

Let’s sit
Here in this colonnade. Philosophers
From Rome and Athens, Alexandria,
From mystic India, walked this colonnade,
And let the mind run free. It is no more,
Unless we fight the human weeds that spring
Under the rains that darken Rome. Let’s up
With hoes and root them.

Here’s cat-brier--chop!
Cat-brier, Christian meekness, fair to view--
But how it stinks! And briars: pain and loss
For ecstasy and gain beyond--I chop!
Chop here, Aristo, get your friends to chop,
Lest all the world be given up to weeds,
As Hadrian’s Villa is about to be.
Rome soon will stretch her templed neck to breathe
Above the thorns, the hyssop. Even now
The state is crumbling with the heresy
That Rome should not be reverenced and saved,
But every soul saved. The Imperial City
To which each Roman is a servitor
Put by for doctrine making every heart
Worthy of saving from the wreck of life--
I chop this weed. And for the soul of Rome,
The lazar soul, the slave, the fuller, cobbler,
The fool, the God-forsaken and the child ...
What if Rome fall? The City of God remains
Eternal in the Heavens. Yes, but Earth,
Where is thy city, if it be not Rome?
Destroy your Romans, Hadrians, what is left?--
Itinerant exorcists and prophets, idlers,
And sacred beggars, leper lips that curse
Rome and her beauty? These the citizens
Of the City of God! What will that city be?
Themselves externalized, as Rome has flowered
From Roman minds; but never a Hadrian Villa
In the City of God, never from scowls and sores!
No You shall have a world of trade and lies,
Of itching and denials, for a world
Of freedom and expression, wine and song.
These huckstering Jews are planting in our Rome
The faith that they persuaded God to kill
His Son to save them. And a huckstering
Will taint the flesh of all who eat this god.
But yet how they will rub their palms and coo
And ape a meekness. Here! Aristo, chop!...

But just so long as stories remain in place
Of Hadrian’s Villa, eyes will look upon them
And sense the mind of Rome, and what it was:
That eyes were made for seeing, ears for hearing,
Hands made to touch, tongues made to taste, minds made
To think, imagine, love given to indulge
For rapture. There’s no law of heaven or earth
That trims eyes, ears, the senses,
Of use; but all were made to leaf and bloom
The idea of the eye, the ear, the hand.
And only reason with regard for health
Of eyes, ears, hands, may guide and say: how far....
See now what Hadrian’s mind created here:--
A tragic theatre, a comic theatre.
What for? For eyes’ sake, for exploring life.
Katharsis? Yes. But use? No use to him
Who thinks life sin, the world’s end near, for Jews
Who like the frogs in marshes croaking, say:
“For our sakes was the world created, we
Alone are chosen of God.” No use for him
Who sees enough of suffering in life
Without its mimicry; sees not the art
Of shooting light between the mystery
Of human fate, and waking sympathy
Through understanding. Christian weeds I chop,
Whose roots begin to sap the tragic roots
Of Sophocles.

But I say eyes may see:
And if I wish to watch the lions fight
What interdicts me, and what reason for it?
Now look how Hadrian’s mind puts into flower:
A temple for Greek books, and one for Latin;
And there’s the stadium, and there’s the baths.
These Christians frown the bath. If I make out
Jesus may come today, and wherefore wash?
Besides the naked bathers cling and kiss
Within the tepidarium at times, and hence
Out with all bathing!

There’s the palace too
Which o’ertops Nero’s Golden House, they say.
And what guest chambers here! The laughing soul
Of Hadrian glows amid his friends. What’s best
In life, Aristo? Why, when the soul is freed,
From business, traffic, grasping, thought of self,
The aches of the day, and being freed shines forth
As star companions star, in smiles and words
Of praise, affection. Hadrian loves the faith
Of happiness, and lets his guests fare free,
Wander eight miles of garden, enter vales
Of Tempe, watch a mimic Peneus
Flow by; encounter fauns amid the brakes;
Surprise Bacchantes sleeping; hear from hills
A chorus of Euripides soothe their souls
With dreams before Faustina’s sculptured face,
Or Antinous, Apollo, Venus; bathe
Their glowing bodies in the pools; partake
Of food or wine, gifts of the gods. Such life
Is passing, soon will pass. Aurelius
Lies under thought, which thrived before the day
Of Paul for all of that, the folly sees not
Of slaving Christians, while himself is teaching
The Christian doctrine! Ugliness, denial,
Self-laceration, beggary, are older
Than Jesus--and I chop!

But let the world
Submit to weeds, in time what will you have?
Not Hadrian’s Villa, but a villa walled,
Walls spiked and guarded, and a house of walls
Empty of sculpture, where a miser-man,
Guarding his gold, a lone man eating bread
And milk, rules realms and countries from the book
Of Enoch, Exodus, the Septuagint,
And these purported writings of one Paul;
And who has made his heart a granary
For seed of faith and trade. This weed I chop!
For then your world lies flatter than the land
Of that campagna, made a marsh for frogs,
Dull grass and feculent roots, as it would lie
If once invaders smashed the aqueducts
And drowned our lovely plain!

You see, my friend
Why I fight back the weeds. This is not all,
For I know what engenders Christian faith:
Man dreams he can be saved, but saved from what?
Sin? What is sin? Age? What can save from age,
What keep the spring of youth, its rosy flesh,
Its spirit never tiring, hope undarkened,
Its courage without fears, long dreams and days?
Why nothing! All’s illusion that holds forth
A medicine for wrinkles, shrunken arms.
Therefore what saves from death? Does Jesus save?
Does Jesus ease a soul’s pain, cure a loss
Save as these devotees may soothe their hearts
With prospects of to-morrow, or of heaven?
No! good Aristo, all this Roman realm,
Washed by this sea, for centuries has been
As fertile as the valley of the Nile
For seed of this salvation dream, the seed
Of Mithra and Osiris, Krishna, Budda,
Adonis, Tammuz, Dionysus, Attis,
What is this seed of Jesus? Nothing new:
The virgin birth? That’s old as human dreams.
There’s Dionysus born of Semele,
A virgin, and of Zeus; great Dionysus
The resurrection of the year, the mad
Intoxicating power of nature, wine.
There is a myth that Jesus at a feast
Turned water into wine, a Bacchic feat.
One myth blends in another like mosaics
Of microscopic jewels. I go on.
Zeus fathers many sons of virgins born,
Is not content with one. He takes Danæ
And Perseus is the fruit, who slays the Gorgons
And saves Andromeda, the human soul.
Devaki is a virgin, weds Vishnu,
And Krishna comes. A virgin is the mother
Of Budda. Horus springs from virgin Isis,
Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea,
Mother of God, so called for centuries
Before the days of Mary. Neith, the virgin,
Was mother of Osiris. Mithra’s born
Of a virgin mother.

This is what I mean
By fertile soil of Egypt, Persia, Greece,
That crops the seed of Jesus. Is this all?
All saviours tally fully. All were born
In caves or stables, chambers under ground;
All labored for the welfare of the race;
All were light bringers, healers, mediators
Between the gods and men. All fell in death,
Descended to the underworld. All rose
To strive for men in heaven; all created
Communions, churches, rites of water, wine,
Last suppers, brought the entheos, spilt their blood;
God, Krishna, Dionysus, Hercules.
And as for that Tammuz was crucified,
Prometheus was nailed and chained.

You know!
These from the mysteries of the heart, from life;--
Death of the year, birth of the year, the hope
That shines amid the mist of doubts and days;
The dream that says if nature leave the grave
Of winter, what’s the life of man, to be
Shut from the law that wakes the fallen seed?
If God renews the wine, I drink the juice
Of the grape and live! If God be in the bull,
And must be, life is life, and all is life
Of one divinity, I drink the blood,
I wash therein, cleanse sin, and celebrate
A ritual of salvation, endless life!...
I trace all Krishnas, Mithras in this god,
Hope’s latest dream.

What’s needed but a flame
That draws these older flames? What but a man
Of inspiration, labor, sacrifice,
A poet, hater of the scurvy times,
Killed for his blasting eyes, accusing tongue,
To have your Christos? Jesus lived. Why not?
’Tis credible; killed by the Jews, why not?
And made a sacrifice for many--doctrine
World old and wide. From Babylon the Jews
Brought Hammurapi, brought Sacaea too,
A ritual for prisoners doomed to die,
By which they would be decked in kingly robes,
Stripped, scourged and hanged even as we have done
At Saturnalia. How else “King of the Jews,”
Except by ancient custom? Think, Aristo,
Would great Tiberius suffer such sedition
Except as drama and in mockery?
Aristo, if this Jesus were the god
As Mithra, Dionysus are, ’twere well
With Rome and Hadrian’s Villa. Understand
If these infatuate zealots, Jews would keep
Their god, belief, but still conform to Rome,
Rome’s gods, the empire reverence, who would care?
No Roman! No one! But to hear these prophets
Cry through our cities, camps: to everlasting
Flames commit our cities and our lands,
And curse us out of Jewish scriptures, draw
The imprecations of the epileptic
Paul upon us, this I fight, I chop!
I stand with sword against the enervation
Of private judgment, that the common man
Is heaven’s prize. This demos mania
And ruin of the empire I oppose.
And when these plagues of Christians grow too loud,
And Rome arouses, wants the lions fed,
Or crosses painted with a little red,
I go to see. These anarch colleges,
Illicit schools, called churches, quiet down
When in the circus Christian bones are crunched....

Now for my consolation if Rome fall;
If lowliness and other worldiness;
If meekness, sacrifice; if life’s denial;
If all this creed out of inverted thought,
Shame for the lust of life, the Orient’s
Sick perfume, drugs, if all of this be taken
Into the body of Rome, the world; the poison
Of Jesus swallowed--this my consolation:
Life, being God, is stronger than God’s Son;
Life will digest it, and evacuate
What cannot be digested, and retain
What can be used. Another Rome will rise
If our Rome fall. Let’s go up there, a while,
And watch the waterfalls, and have some wine.

INVOCATION TO THE GODS

I

Goddess, born of the mother of all things, the sea,
Goddess of beauty, goddess of rapture,
Goddess whose girdle is life,
Come down to us, O Aphrodite.
We are sunk in the slough of our shame;
We are torn with denials and fears,
Who have turned from thy altar,
And rejected thy worship
And mangled the gift of love
For the ritual of Mary the Virgin.
Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face--
We have no goddess like thee
O Aphrodite!

II

And thou, equal sister, O goddess
Whose temple yet stands enthroned rock-bound above
The grotto of Mary of Galilee,
Eternal symbol!
Come down to us:
Preserver of the state
In peace and war,
With the healing of harmonious thought.
Stern goddess of an equal law,
And ruler of the mind.
Guardian of temples and republics.
Lover and inspirer of the arts,
Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
We have no goddess like thee
Pallas Athena!

III

Thou soul of the Sun
And master of fire,
Law-giver, ruler, warder,
Founder of templed cities,
Founder of states invincible and free;
Thou voice of prophecy, wisest friend
Of commonwealths;
Lord of music, lord of words and sounds,
And brother of the muses.
Come down that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
We have no god like thee
O great Apollo!

IV

Of old amid the mountains sat the father
Of gods and men!
Broad souled as nature, being nature.
Human and gracious, laughing, wise as time.
Ruler of earth and heaven--all but fate;
And promising no life that was not fate;
No wonder and no change
Beyond the rule of fate.
Great Zeus whose fruitful loins
Peopled Olympus
With gods and goddesses, well belovéd.
Not father of one son, but many sons;
Not father of one daughter, but many daughters,
Begotten of thee, immaculately,
Being begotten in nature.
Great father of redeemers who redeemed
Through truth which frees through being known,
Not faith in truth which is not known.
Beauty and not belief,
Mystical waters, curses, flames and death!
Come down, O Father Zeus, while we re-make
Our faces in the likeness of thy face.
We have no god like thee
O sovran Zeus!

V

Thou Thunderer, whose mood was wine and love,
Miraculous life, creativeness
Of color and sound,
Out of the lightning, out of the mist,
Out of the beat and urge of the sea,
Out of mountains, sacred groves and streams.
Thou king and father of the virgin daughter
Templed in pure, in deathless stone
In sacred Athens.
Not always striking at the foes of Hellas;
Nor sending fury on her enemies;
Nor bathing swords in heaven
To smite the foes of Hellas;
Nor treading grapes in anger;
Nor sprinkling blood on garments
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor breeding worms that die not,
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor stirring envy like a man of war
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor preaching words of gladness to the meek;
Nor opening prison doors
To sound the day of vengeance,
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor saying, eat the riches of thy foes,
And suck their milk;
And make them plowmen;
And take dominion over them and power.
I am the one, the only god, go forth
And make all peoples worship, I am Zeus!

VI

The hunted ghost of Delphos steals
From land to land.

Thy lyre has been weighed in the balances
Of the money changers, and rejected.
The Prince of Peace has brought the sword
Even as he prophesied.
All peoples are at strife
Between his ritual and the will to life.
Vengeance, hypocrisy and darkness
Are over us, we are vipers
Coiled in a cistern.
We wait for blood in the moon,
For darkness in the Sun,
For a voice from clouds of glory:
Depart from me, accursed; into fire.
I shut the gates of heaven
And burn the world with wrath!

Thou in Olympus tombed
With all thy sons and daughters,
Palace no more, a footstool
For Jehovah of Judea,
Come back that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
O, father Zeus,
Wake when Jesus shuts
The gates of heaven,
And take us to Olympus!

PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES

I

Muse of the meditative hymn, and Muse
Of chronicles and the scroll, to us refuse
No gift to sing the daimon, the divine
God-head of Nature, Freedom and the Vine.
Nor less that Orpheus of the Mysteries:
Stars and the Soul and Heaven, and the Seas
Of tangible streams made light above the dust
Of this bewildering earth of Flesh and Lust.

II

First from what Thracian land
Did your attendants come
In coon-skin caps and jeans,
Into this wilderness, spanned
By mountains, to this home
Of the Corn-mother, clothed in variable greens
Of barley, oats and wheat?
Hither hurried your adventurous feet
From England, and from the hills
Above the Rhine, and out of the valleys
Of the populous plain
Of Lombardy, around the Seine,
You came
Like flame that follows flame!
From Galway, Lyons, Bergen, Budapest,
Onward you pressed,
With hearts that sang, and brave,
Like wave that runs to wave!
And from all northlands of new dreams, from ills
That stir the Spring awakening and the quest.
Thence were these swarming sallies
Into New England, and the great Northwest--
Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee.
Thracians you were, attending Dionyse,
And seeking realms of Nature to be free.
Ciders from orchards would have ease,
And wine from vineyards, to be planted,
Where the roar of mountain torrents haunted
Heights of the pine and slopes of fragrant grasses
From plains to granite passes.
Rocks sealed with frost and ice which prisoned
The secret wine of Life new sensed and newly visioned
Flowed when the Spring of a great Age, and its Herakles,
Fire of the Sun of Liberty, melted the locks
Of ancient and forbidding rocks
Binding the torrent: human and divine
Strength and adventure: Mænads and Thyiades,
Bacchæ, Bassarides:
Spirits and evangels of new wine.
Mad Ones: armed for war.
And Rushing Ones: defying Strife.
Inspired Ones: trailing the Star
Of larger life.

III

And with this swift descent,
To this far occident,
Tracking the gleam, the god, the freer fields;
Rejoicing, but in rites
For the Mystery, the delights
Of living and of thought, which moulds and wields,
These hunters, fur-capped, like the devotees
Out of the Thrace of old, worshipping and defending
The wine-grower, and temple-builder, Dionyse,
Carved from the fire impregnate Earth the sovereignties
Of Maryland, New York, and Tennessee’s
Mountainous realm, to the blending
Of foothills with the meadows of Illinois.
And made initiate in great liberties
The farthest West, until the Orient sea’s
Soft thunder lustrates California, bending
Above green water, clothed in purple and gold.
Carved these with hope their children would uphold,
And no hand would destroy
The altars of States heaped full of grapes and grain:
Births of the Sun and earth, to be adored,
And gathered in high festival and joy
From mountain side and plain;
And drunk from golden kantharoi,
God entering into man, thereby: restored
By the blood and flesh of the god, the lord,
To strength and vision to unveil
Deep mysteries and raptures, worshippings
Of nature, love for man, for deities
Quick intimations, quiverings through the wings
Of larger life, and sweeter music, cities
Of higher fellowships and lovelier ways
Of wisdom, where the phantoms of the Pities,
And the Hatreds, the Agonies
Of Melancholy, Madness, Soul’s Disease
From horrors, and from idiot pieties
Are softened or dispelled in Freedom’s praise.

IV

Pentheus in the tree-top spies upon
The wild white women, the dance, the festival.
And Judas spies on Jesus
In the epiphany of Orpheus out of Dionysus.
But the cup is drunk by the lover, the singer John.
Who finding the ecstasy of sorrow, and sounding the deeps
Of love and vision, human and mystical
In the wine cup, oh, beloved guest,
Sinks in a moment of ineffable rest,
And rid of the flesh, half sleeps
Upon the Master’s breast.
Judas alert for treasure and for treason
Dips in the sop his bread--
Judas the founder of the sect which fouls
The feast of Life, lizards and owls.
But where the liknon is borne, the cradle heaped
With fruits and flowers at the bridal feast,
O, Dionysiac Christ, you passed the cup;
And at the supper of parting, O lovely priest,
At the time of the fan, and the purging of the floor,
You served the blood of the grape, and you did sup
With fur-capped fellows, and revealed the lore
Of remembrance for the mysteries you had spoken
Over the purple hills, and by the yellow shore
In wine quaffed and bread broken.

V

Thin lips where cruel smiles betray
Envy and frigid spirits, souls of gray
Who will descend upon you, rend and slay?
Unknowers of the cycle of Man’s day:
That nourished flesh grows spirit, and that wine
Is the oil of the lamp of the soul, and feeds the flame
That lights the world with Art! Who will waylay
Your spying and your hatred, limb from limb
Tear you, or drive you to a death of shame,
Like Judas self-hung? As if in paradigm,
Purple but horrible! Cut-throats of the rites
Of amity and dreams, the blossoming,
The release from the flesh to soul’s delights,
Intenser life in soft intoxication--
And from that life, and rapturous elation
Who are you who restrain,
Making a cult of undelivered pain?--
Through which men love and fashion, sing.
You false salvationists and street haranguers,
Self-drunk with soul suppression and perversion,
Who shout the terror of putrescence, never beauty;
You with suspicions of the peasant Persian;
You foul-breathed ranters of Duty
About these states, you vermin-eaten clangers
Of hog-ribs, paper tambourines:--
Degenerate instruments for an imbecile faith,
And mockeries of bright silver (touched by queens,
The Muses), and the ebony crotola.
You scare-crows of the Mænads and the Muses,
Breastless or babeless women who would vote
For rulership of other homes, not yours.
And you who moralize and gloat
On the refuse of banquets in the sewers.
You preachers of Denial and of Death,
And maniacs of repression which refuses
The cup of life! And in this bacchanalia,
You followers of Orpheus, as reformer,
Plain dressed in alpaca and string ties,
Who bellow forth your prophecies and curses
Not that man lives, but that man dies.
You carriers of umbrellas, not the thyrsos,
Or rifles of the fur-capped pioneers;
Slick spouters who fill fat penurious purses
Out of inevitable tears.
You Judases to Beauty, the sneak, informer,
Blind that all Canas must precede
The soul’s Gethsemanes, that there can be
Save Cana strengthens, no Gethsemane;
And if no living then no heart to bleed
Its blood to make us like the god, the Christ.
No flower of spirit without root and vine,
Nor loveliness for our sakes sacrificed;
No beauty without wine--
You who these mysteries see not, or gainsay
Who will tear limb from limb of you and slay?

VI

You who behold no spirit in earth and sun,
And in their marriage no symbol of increase;
And you who plan or plot or brood, but run
About the wine press never, and who shun
The kinship which makes one of beasts and man,
Blossoms and vines and trees.
You who see not the mystery of food,
The ecstasy of the feast, replenishment
Of spirit in the wine-cup, and who ban
In fear or loathing, swooning of the blood;
You who can take as memory’s sacrament
The wafer and the thimble of vapid juice,
And yet deny us, seekers of elation,
Re-birth through Dionysus, the youthful Christ:
Living, rejoicing in Life’s thrilling spring,
Not grieving in its autumn and decline,
Bridal, not funeral wine
In the hour of memory and of parting;
You who forbid our ritual and our use
Of Nature’s secrets, our illumination,
Our sleep, our peace,
Our freedom from the Fears, intoxication
In which our souls are paradised;
Our insight, charities, and our release
From the grave of the day’s flesh, our Orphic lips
Through which we find creations, sun-lit wings,
Love, wanderings of the soul, and fellowships--
You who these wisdoms see not, or gainsay
Who will tear limb from limb of you, and slay?

Will the old States never come to us, never again,
And the sovereignty of men,
In the mountains of our fathers, along the boundless plain?
Has the will of the people perished, or passed into the hand
Of the oafs and boors and lunk-heads of the land,
And the bigot, Puritan,
And the martyrs to the martyrdom of Pain,
Seeking remembrance not for Life, but Death?
Have we given up the sister realms, the freedom of the States
Through a tyranny of shame
In the South land where the black-man wears the gag?
Shall we bear the blight of cities, charged to electorates
In the silence of the bearers of the flag?
Shall the cowardice of sycophants commissioned to obey
Defeat the trust, but call it still our voice?
Shall we who give you, as we wish, the choice
Of freedom to be solemn or rejoice,
Avenge not your injustice, nor gainsay,
Nor strew you limb from limb along the way?

COMPARATIVE CRIMINALS

Marion Strode, my friend, a chanting voice
For heaven’s kingdom on this earth, a hand
Ready to open prisons, heal the bruised,
Bring liberty to men, was wrought to fire
Over the martyrdom of Ott. He called it
A martyrdom, and said: “Come go with me
And comfort Ott in prison.” So he went.

And on the train I read what Ott had said,
For which he suffered prison. Jail for words
Is older than Saint Paul; as old as cities,
And fear that dreads the change that words may bring.
I also saw a picture of this Ott:
Head like a billiard ball, a little cracked,
Warped egg-like too. A homeless cat made furtive
By missive cans and frightful hoots. A ragged
Gabriel shut from heaven’s bliss. A porter
Of righteousness compelled to open the gate
Of paradise for Mark Hanna, but himself
Debarred an entrance. Asking nothing either,
Yet facing God to sift him, find him pure
As those who enter.

Here’s a man who never
To eighty years loses from brightening eyes
Flames from the stake reflected, or the shadows
Of prison for the sake of conscience. Thinks
No one who has soft raiment ever reads
“The Ancient Lowly,” or the “Martyrdom
Of Labor,” history, science; none are wise
But radicals.

And then I read in full
What Ott had said for which they prisoned him.
They charged him with obstructing the enlistment.
But in his speech there isn’t a single word
Advising a resistance to the draft,
By just so many words concretely. Quite
Adroit this speech, quite foxy. Yet it’s true
If you knew you could get a man to act
On what was in his mind, long brooded on
By giving him a shot of alcohol;
And if you gave it and he did the deed
You would be an inciter, principal
And doer of the deed.

Now take this speech
Which glorifies the socialistic cause;
Lauds divers martyrs tried, already jailed
For words against the draft; denounces Prussia,
Oh, yes! but in such words as hit the home
Of the brave, the free America! Ouch! Quit!
Says that the master class has always made
The wars in which the subject class was used,
Which never had a voice in making war:
Affirmative universal! What’s the answer?
He means this war, this holy war, the traitor!
Denounces capital, exhorts the crowd
To strive for something better than to be
Fodder for cannon. What? The prize of death
In battle called a foddering of the cannon!
What better thing to strive for? Throw him out!
The price of coal is due to plutocrats;
They’re bleeding you, and say it’s for the war.
They lie! What’s treason? Not disloyal
To those you work for, but disloyalty
To truth, your better self.

If you believe this
Would you become a soldier, or say no,
I will not fight for such a cause or country?...
I see, said Voltaire, three times one are one.
A man in heat might flout the trinity;
But when he studies out some persiflage
With which to flout it--well--here’s Ott who has
Contempt aforethought for the war and draft,
And squirts his venom through closed teeth, the better
To shoot it further, make it hit.

I said:
“Your Mr. Ott is guilty of the charge.
No use to talk of constitutions. No.
He loves the Lovejoys, Garrisons and Paines,
The Brunos, martyrs, let him stand his ground.”
And Marion Strode replied: “Yes, Ott is guilty.
But did he speak the truth? Yes? Very well.
It must have been the time and place that made
The penitentiary for twenty years
A fitting penalty. But when’s the time
To talk against war’s horror? When there’s war,
And words are vivid, or when war is not,
And talks against it sound like when you say
‘Look out for bears’ to children?

“War-lords talk
In peace and war to be prepared. May I
Prepare for peace in war time, when my words
Have demonstrations in the events of war?
You think not? The majority has spoken!
Well, has it? Point me out a plebiscite
That asked for war. But take your point at full
The majority has spoken: why forbid
The back-hall, soap-box rostrum; what will come?
The majority will stick and go ahead;
Or else the soap box will persuade it back
And end the war. Is there another term?
The great majority annoyed, obstructed,
Delayed, distracted, harried! Well, you know
The Tories did that to George Washington.
And Lincoln! Why, the people at the polls
Returned a critical congress. And if trials
Strengthen the character of a man, why not
Obstructions for majorities howling war
To clarify and strengthen them? God works
In ways mysterious, but in every way;
Whatever is is true.

“Ott, as I see it,
Was jailed for twenty years for speaking truth
At the wrong time and place. A heavy fine
For wrong a æsthetics, etiquette.

“I go deeper,
I pass the law that jailed him, all æsthetics,
All etiquette, all wrong of time and place.
Let’s enter in a realm of realer things.
What does Ott stand for in a war or peace?
Is it not freedom, equal rights, the end
Of poverty, disease? Has he not held
The torch of science up, the torch of thought
Interpreting the greatest minds to win
Attention to them and adherence to them?
If he did this, has not his life been given
To making America a brighter light,
A sounder realm, her breed a stronger breed?
If he be not a light himself, but only
A humble trimmer of the wick, let’s say
The wick of Socrates, or Franklin, Paine,
Or Jesus as the prophet in the work
Of freeing for the truth, then what of that?
Who gets the judgment in the years to come,
A parlor lamp of yellow flame, that smells
Of coal oil, or your Ott?

“Let’s take a type:
He woos the average man, appeals to him;
The average man whose morals, art and books
Are just victrola records, microscopic
Echoes of small realities of the past.
He sees what he can do with this America
Of the average man, the common people called.
He follows them and gives them vapid stuff
Of morals, laws and politics. His aim?
Talk which will win the very largest nod
Of ignorant assent. Result? Why look,
He is a daily of a million sale,
He coins the money lecturing, uses too
His following to keep America
Upon the level of the common man
In morals, freedom, thought, virility.
He scoffs at science and the noodles giggle.
Music? Why, who’s Beethoven? Let me hear
‘Lead Kindly Light.’ The drama? Well, Ben Hur
Is moral and historical. Sculpture? Look
At those bronze figures by the mantel clock--
That’s Faith and Hope. Freedom of speech and press?
Within the limits of the law! And war?
I loathe it, I opposed it, but when war
Is by the law decreed, I enter too
And howl for what I hissed, for what I called
An evil and a wrong.

“Now hear me out:
Suppose he could persuade America
To take his books, and music, sculpture, ethics--
That is his purpose, to persuade us all
To take them, as it was the aim of Ott
To stay enlistment and so stop the war--
What of our civilization? It would fall.
If so who should be jailed, this orator
Or Ott?

“Now we’ve arrived, can test these souls.
Ott fights the war and sticks, your orator
Opposes the war and quotes the Nazarene.
But does he stick? Why no! The truth remains.
He changes, lifts his nose for noting when
The noses of the majority are lifted.
Our Mr. Ott winters behind the bars.
Our orator retires to Florida;
Emerges slick and strong when April comes
To lecture, get the money.

“Now suppose
Ott by his talk had balked the war, that crime
Is nothing by the side of the other crime
Of keeping common followers commoner;
Corrupting thought. The war is over now.
With Ott in prison and the orator out.
Let’s test them on the whole, and wholly freed
From war tests; Ott’s a trimmer of great wicks;
Your orator a parlor lamp that smells
Of coal oil. And the larger truth would open
The prison doors for Ott, and push the orator
Behind the doors and lock them.”

Marion Strode
Went on till we arrived. And there was Ott
Serene and smiling in his prison clothes.

“We mean
To get a pardon for you,” Marion Strode
Spoke out at once, “and give this prison cell
To a certain orator of the commonplace.”
Ott laughed and said, “What for? You’d break his puerile
And shifty heart. This is a place for men
Who stand their ground. I may not have much brains,
But what I have I use as Socrates
Devoted his. I want to share the greatness
Of the great with what brains I possess. I like
This cell because it helps me do this.”

Then
We shook the hand of Ott and turned away!

THE GREAT RACE PASSES

They were the fair-haired Achæans,
Who won the Trojan war;
They were the Vikings who sailed to Iceland
And America.
They became the bone of England,
And the fire of Normandy,
And the will of Holland and Germany,
And the builders of America.

Their blood flowed into the veins of David,
And the veins of Jesus,
Homer and Æschylos,
Dante and Michael Angelo,
Alexander and Cæsar,
William of Orange and Washington.
They sang the songs,
They won the wars.

They were chosen for might in battle;
For blue eyes and white flesh,
For clean blood, for strength, for class.
They went to the wars
And left the little breeds
To stay with the women,
Trading and plowing.

They perished in battle
All the way along the stretch of centuries,
And left the little breeds to possess the earth--
_The Great Race is passing._

They went forth to free peoples,
White and black.
They fought for their own freedom,
And perished.
They founded America,
And perished--
_The Great Race is passing._

On State street throngs crowd and push,
Wriggle and writhe like maggots.
Their noses are flat,
Their faces are broad,
Their heads are like gourds,
Their eyes are dull,
Their mouths are open--
_The Great Race is passing._

The meek shall inherit the earth:
Crackers and negroes in the South,
Methodists and prohibitionists,
Mongrels and pigmies
Possess the land.
A president sits in a wheel chair
Sick from the fumes of his own idle dreams--
_The Great Race is passing._

DEMOS THE DESPOT

Not in the circus before your thumbs inverted,
Demos, the despot, do we stand;
But amid the swarming half-born girted,
And amid the idiot millions who command
Have we our freedom re-asserted--
Rule us you cannot, though you rule the land.

Frederick and Charles and Philip the misbegotten
Destroyed the body with fagots and with fetters,
Until the finger magic of movable letters
Choked them out of a world that they made rotten
With blood and corpses. But, O Demos, you
Plague us with dwarfs that trip us, run and hide;
Foul us with frogs that froth our ancient wine;
Scourge us with locusts, and with snakes that twine,
And hiss but do not kill. With lice subdue
Our patience, and our time divide
In seeking the favored hour. And then you say:
Have you not freedom, pray?
Do you not think and print? You do not bleed
For freedom’s sake! You do not die at once.
And if you starve, have you not had your way?
We let you print, but do we have to read?

Or suffer what you print to be displayed?
What you call liberty affronts
Our white-frog breasts, the laws we made.
All rightful rights remain.
Neglect and want shall be your ball and chain
If you trespass our rules--
In other times you would be burned or slain!

Such being the freedom that you grant, O Demos,
Our olden task is this: we fire the rushes
Of yesteryear, and beat with sticks of truth
The little snakes and dwarfs that hide in bushes;
Drain the dead water, set exhilarant youth
With ploughs upon the musty marsh to turn
The scum and green decay, and chase the frogs.

Then after we cut and drain and burn
All will be sweet and clean awhile.
But soon the weeds and crawlers will defile
Our labor. Then the demagogues
Will lead the chorus of the frogs:
This is the land, this is the field
This is the age of freedom, long revealed.
This is the age most blest,
This is the country freest, best,
This is the country that fulfills
Ancient hope and prophecy,
This is the age, this is the land,
The land, the age, the realm most free....

Then in that hour we shall be dancing,
And feasting with new gods upon the hills;
And graving images of lovelier Beauty;
And building altars of a purer Duty;
And singing rituals of a deeper Faith.
And living life, and facing death
As fairer gods would have us. And for you
O frogs, the fated sharers
Of all we dream and do,
We the dreamers, the preparers,
Shall then be gathering strength to burn
Bushes and plow again
The frog marsh and the weedy plain!

A REPUBLIC

Her faith abandoned and her place despised,
Her mission lost through ridicule, hooted forth
From the forum she erected, by cat calls,
And tory sneers and schemes. Her basic law
Scoffed out of court, amended at the need
Of stomachology by the judges, or
A majority of States, as it is said--
Rather by drunks and grafters, for the time
The spokesmen of the States, coerced and scared
By Methodists with a fund to hire spies,
And unearth women scrapes, or other sins
With which to say: “Vote dry, or be exposed.”
A marsh Atlantic drifting, towed at last
By pirates into harbor, made a pasture
For alien hatreds, greeds. A shackled press,
And voices gagged, creative spirits frozen,
Obtunded by disgust or fear. War only,
Armies and navies speak the national mind,
And make it move as a man; for other things
Resistance, thought divided, ostracism,
Or jail for their protagonists. At the mast
The cross above the crossbones, in between
The starry banner. A people hatched like chickens:
Of feeble spirit for much intercrossing,
Without vision and without will, incapable
Of lusty revolution whatever right
Is spit upon or taken. A wriggling mass
Bemused and babbling, trampling private right
As a tyrant tramples it, calling it law
Because it speaks the majority of the mob.
A land that breeds the reformer, the infuriate
Will in the shallow mind, the plague of frogs
That hop into our rooms at Pharaoh’s will,
And soil our banquet dishes, hour of joy.
A giantess growing huger, duller of mind,
Her gland pituitary being lost.

THE INN

Low windows in the room
That tunnel the darkness with light!
The tick of a clock in the fog that hovers
From the cave and slide of the darkness
Into the tunnels of light.
A cannon stove, a dog at my feet;
Cheap magazines on a table,
Dead flies, an atlas;
A register for guests,
And stillness! Not a voice, a step--
Only the tick of the clock!

Mists of Fear, Mists of Memory, swirl and writhe,
Dive, curl and coil
From the mountain tops.
A stretch of ochre grass by the river;
Bent trees imploring the sun;
And by the inn a road that stretches
Along the river, full of dead dreams, patience,
Weariness long endured!

Second morning of rain.
Second morning of separation, death in loneliness!
The wind rushes to the corner of the porch
And sighs as it hides.
Second morning that I see
The walker of the road:
An opera cloak of blue blows round him,
Flaps out a lining of red.
And an Alpine hat comes down to his little ears.
He is booted, he limps a little.
But he’s a figure compacted of iron,
He’s master of the landscape;
He has cowed it, kicks it about him,
As if to say: “A village, a road,
A river, mountains, rain, an inn,
And a lonely soul in the inn.
Well, what of it? To-morrow Benares,
To-morrow Bactria--who knows?”

And I know as well as I know dead flies,
And the tick of the clock
He wants me, passes the inn to draw me.
Strides to my view, though he never looks in.
The flap of his cloak is a gesture;
His eyes fixed straight ahead allure.
He is passing again, returns and passes.
I can stand no more!

I walk from the room, and haste to his side.
A rusty hand out of the blue of his cloak
Reaches for mine; silken soft in the palm
Like an anthropoid’s, but boned
To the strength of bronze in the fingers.
Red scar on his cheek--a sabre cut!
Or was it an aiguille gashed him
When he fell headlong like a meteor,
And rolled to a valley, got up, shook out,
And dusted himself, set forth to travel
From Ctesiphon to Sarajevo?...

But now the blue and red,
The Alpine hat, the little ears,
Against the ochre of stricken grass
Are shrunk to the rust of jowl and jaw,
And the scar, like lips grown to;
And the smile of Jenghiz Khan....
His voice is the lowest octave
Of riotous thought, conscienceless as nature.
No talk, much thought. The earth’s a treadmill,
And spheres back of us to toes dug in,
Until we come to a mountain lake
Clear and calm as a sky.
Green shadows rich as moss around the shores;
Clouds, clear blues at the centre!
We are bending over, see each other’s faces
In the water.
What was it? Red scar on his cheek,
Or red feather in the Alpine hat?
I thrill! For I see his eyes at last;
They are the fires of burning cities,
Carthage, Athens.
Quick! And we are lying
Looking up into the sky.
When a whiff of rotting men--I turn
But he stays me with his hand.
The scent passes--he talks
To me--the sky!

“I am a soul fancier and catcher,
A catcher and cager of birds,
Whether they be kites, condors, cormorants,
Crows, cow-birds, vultures,
Or martins, mocking-birds, or hawks,
Shrikes, orioles, clarindas, thrushes,
Songsters, or scavengers, I catch them,
And in these mountains, call them of memory
Or bitter reflection,
I cage them.
But to be brief: Your bird of prey I catch
By luring him with carrion;
And your mocking bird with sounds
Sweet as his own soul’s echo, as it were
Unreal made real. But whether bird of prey,
Or songster, it’s to fool them
Always, until my hand cups over so--
Then a cottage, in the mountains of memory!

“I prize the soul called mocking bird
Mimetic of all spirits, would be all,
Self-fooler, and world fooler!
Coos in scourged kingdoms like the dove,
Presaging peace;
Croaks like the eagle where the serfs implore
Omens and leadership.
I caught one lately, big as any crow.
And cooped him--you shall see!
But first as far as Prague, borne over seas,
I heard the eagle, yes, was nearly fooled,
Me, the expert in songsters, souls!
I looked my soul-bird up and found
My eagle was a mocking-bird;
And when he croaked of counsel and debate,
And breathing bracing air of matching minds,
He was the mocking bird embowered and hidden
In scented leaves of dreams,
And sang what he would be, but could not be!
A lyrist who sang down seclusion, still
Could live nowhere but in concealment.
A seeker of sweet notes from rich thesauri,
Slaved to the habit of the lexicon.
I would not catch him yet! Believe me now
There is that in each soul which builds its cage,
Achieves its capture, be it thirst or lust,
A lexicon or rhetoric, singing notes
Which makes the world say: ‘Hear the eagle cry!’
The world is fooled, but not the self is fooled;
It sleeps, submits to singing, but arouses
When soul is highest charmed with its own song,
And at the apex of the life, and treats
The man as mocking bird for what he is!...
The self as mocking bird betrays and leads,
Not eagle-wings, but weak wings to the fray,
And there the realest self is seen at last
Of self and all. To capture them or slay
Is where I come and act.

“Sweet bird of dawning, dreaming of Fourteen,
Who carried Christ across a stream,
And gained the magic sack,
Into the which whatever he wished would come
When saying Artchila and Murtchila.
But, he, this Fourteen, bird of dawning, mock-bird
How could he carry Christ? What magic bag
Would gather in, to words like ‘counsel,’ ‘process’?
So charmed with voice of self he flew alone
To a parley of fowls. And there amid rich crumbs,
Silk vestured falconers, birds of paradise,
Mock eagle fails, but true to song
Utters what self of him destroys him for.
Then I, to end, come in!

“Wouldn’t you think he’d know what had been done
To him, his counsels, processes?
Voice of the eagle sometimes, but the talons
And wings, where were they?
How was he Christopherus, how Fourteen?
I step in here and send him
On a great tour of singing, laugh in my sleeve
To see him start with his empty magic bag--
Empty? Great wars to come and woes,
Hatreds and desolations, blight of unfaith,
And distillate of night-shade: Soul’s despair
Were in the bag now.
But I forget--all could not see these in it,
Though most could see an empty bag. Well, now
My project was to send him forth to chant
The rhetoric of a life-time, tent him to
The repetend and echo, the refrain
That hides a hollow courage, and a brain
Tired of its make-believe, and borrowed moods.
My plan went further: Thus to send him forth,
And in keen lighting have him see himself
As some ten thousand saw him; in one moment
Together by him and them! flash picture
Photographed on a mountain’s wall,
And visible for ages! So it was!
I laughed, but being master I could pity....
My hand goes over him cup-like now, shuts eyes
From sight of how he pecked me peevishly,
Like a stud-sparrow shrilled. Time for the cage
For our mock-eagle, logolyrist, truly!--
You shall know them by their words.”

“How’s this so quick, on a peak?”
I said, for there we were, and the lake lost.
Below us the plum world, pitted with gums: oceans.
Streaked with streams: white-wash excrement of sparrows;
Pine forests: fuzz on the rind; lice green and brown: men.
I bawl in his ear against the breeze
Whirl-pooled around us:
“No Jesus business, no Budda business,
I wouldn’t give a damn for it all.”
“You lie,” he said. “You’re like the rest
Esophagus, coil of guts, a vent.”
“Man is a spirit.” “Man is a smell.”
Just then up from the world’s valley a breeze
Bearing the stench of ten million corpses--
“Hey! I faint.”
I back away, bump into a cottage wall, a door
Which opens--and there
Is logolyrist caged, in durance,
Twittering to himself the habitual notes,
Impotent, damned, alone!

“Night comes quickly these days,” says the landlady
Lighting the lamp. I stretch out of sleep
And pat the head of an honest dog.

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY

I