Chapter III

All night hath thy loving mother,
Beautiful Sleep,
Lying beside me, listened
And heard me weep.
But ever thou soughtest another
Who sought thee not;
For him thy soft smile glistened--
I was forgot.
When shall my soul behold thee
As before?
When shall my heart enfold thee?--
Nevermore? nevermore?

PROCESSIONAL

Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.

There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.

There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.

There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.

There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.

Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.

In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom poured and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:--

He has read how good and evil,--
In creation's wild upheaval,--
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.

He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.

Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.

These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed it all at last?
We shall pass as they have passed.

Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?

In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom poured and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.

SONG AND STORY

TO HARRISON S. MORRIS

_Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold
God's message of Promethean fire!
The flame that fell on bards of old
To hallow and inspire._

_Yet let the soul dream on and dare
No less Song's heights where these repose:
We can but fail; and may prepare
The way for one like those._

SONG AND STORY

I was destined, when a baby,
For that land which lieth hidden
In the moon; and whither, may be,
At their birth all souls are bidden.

She bewitched me then and bound me,
She a daughter of Apollo,
In a golden snare who wound me,
And compelled me thus to follow:--

Once she sent a stallion, sired
Of the Wind; a mare his mother,
Whom Thessalian madness fired,
And the Hurricane his brother.

And a voice said, "Do not tarry!
Mount him while the world is sleeping:
He, my beautiful, will carry
You, my Soul, into my keeping."

And I mounted: tempest whistled
In my ears, and, yawning o'er us,
Flamed the lightning; boomed the missiled
Thunder, crashing far before us.

On we hurled. The world was rubble
Underneath us; and the wonder
Of our passage seemed to double
Heaven's tempest and its thunder.

With us rode the air's wild races:
Wisps and witches; all the Brocken,
Stunted, gnarled, with fiendish faces,
Seemed around us, gibing, mocking:

Hate, that shook the heart with hooting:
Humpbacked Horror; gibbet-headed
Murder: and,--great ravens shooting
Over,--Fear, in bats embedded.

All were left; were passed like water
Hurling headlong from a mountain,--
Hag and elf and demon's daughter,--
Ere we reached that mystic fountain.

There we stopped. I drained a beaker
Old as Earth: the draught was fire:
On my soul the burning liquor
Acted like a new desire.

On again! The darkness lifted
Like an up-rolled banner. Scattered
Overhead, in points that shifted,
Shone the stars through tempest tattered.

Then the moon rose. Slowly, slowly,
Of a wild and copper color,
Rose the moon, in melancholy
Deeps; and all the stars grew duller.

And we passed,--an instant's scanning,--
Swift as thought, the spider-arches
Of the ray-built bridges spanning
Space between her lunar marches.

So I reached her kingdom, olden
As the God that was its maker,
Where the rocks and trees are golden,
And the sea and air are nacre.

Where, 'mid ingot-glowing flowers,
Over streams of diamond brightness,
Palaces of pearl and towers,
Wrought of topaz, loom in whiteness.

Here she met me with a chalice,
Like the Giamschid ruby burning;
And I entered in her palace,
From the world forever turning.

Centuries have passed, have vanished;
Still she holds me with her glory,
She, whom Earth long since hath banished?
She, the Soul of Song and Story.

AN INDIAN LEGEND

On a mountain by a fountain,
By a faintly falling stream,
Where upon the moss and flowers,
Sparkling, fell the spray in showers,
In the moonlight's mystic beam,
Once a maiden came to dream,
Came to sit and sigh and dream:
On a mountain by a fountain,
By a faintly falling stream.

To the fountain on the mountain
Rode a youth upon a steed;
In his hair an eagle's feather;
Round his waist a belt of leather,
Wampum-wrought with shell and bead;
In his hands a hollow reed,
In his hands a magic reed:
To the fountain on the mountain
Rode a youth upon a steed.

On the mountain by the fountain,
When the moon shone overhead,
While the maiden by him wavered,
Low upon his reed he quavered,
Piped and played and singing said,--
"Listen and be comforted!
Heart of mine, be comforted!"
On the mountain by the fountain
When the moon shone overhead.

By the fountain on the mountain,
So the Indian legend saith,
Paler, paler grew the maiden,
Paler as if sorrow laden,
Frailer, paler at each breath,
Saying, "Art thou Love or Death?"
And he answered, "I am Death."
By the fountain on the mountain
So the Indian legend saith.

Gone the mountain and the fountain
Where the maiden's soul was lost:
But in every stream you hear it
Whispering, sighing, like a spirit,
Hear the Indian maiden's ghost,
In the foam as white as frost,
Whiter than the winter's frost:
Gone the mountain and the fountain
Where the maiden's soul was lost.

JOHN DAVIS, BOUCANIER

High time, high time, good gentlemen, to sail the Spanish Main!
Three months we've watched for galleons and treasure bound for Spain;
Three months! and not a vessel, neither barque nor brigantine!
No Cartagena plate-ship, or De Dios, have we seen.
Our sails are idle as the wind, our ships as gulls or waves.--
And shall inaction rot us like a gang of shackled slaves?
Up, boucaniers! the land is wide, and wider far the sea--
Somewhere between the dusk and dawn and dusk some hope must be;
Some ship somewhere or city there beneath the Indian sky--
What matter whether east or west!--some ship with decks built high,
With treasure packed from stem to stern: some huge ship of the line,
Against whose ports we'll cram our ports, while all our cannon shine
And thunder; then, with blade to blade, and shouting horde on horde,
Swarm up her sides and sweep her decks with pistol and with sword;
And, sink or swim, our flag flies there, we boucaniers aboard.

Say, what availed your patron saints, Iago and Saint Marc,
Lanceros, Adelantados, against Ravenau's barque?
O butchers of good Jean Ribault, well might your cheeks turn pale
When Montebaro's brigantine shook to the wind her sail!
Around the coasts where New Spain boasts the haughtiness of Old,
Her tyranny, her bigotry, her sordid greed for gold,
From east to west, from north to south, among the Carib Isles,
Swift to revenge the Frenchman swept across the foaming miles.
The spirit of Pierre-le-Grand and of his gallant crew,
Who took a galleon with a boat, beneath the tropic blue,
Be with us now!--Up, gentlemen! and, Spain, oh, woe to you!

Prime arquebus and brighten blade, and let the culverin
Gleam, burnished as the morning-star, as through the foam we spin;
And now be glad as when we had Granada in our hold,
And stabbed the city's sentinels and took the city's gold:
New Spain's good homes and churches, aye, will not forget too soon
The boucanier, John Davis, sirs, who taught their Dons a tune--
Dutch serenades of belts and blades they danced to by the moon!

What helped the Latin of their monks to curse what Satan blessed!
Those pieces,--broad,--of eight and plate we counted in our chest.
And now that we may double or may treble every piece,
Pipe up the anchor, boatswain! and, before the hawser cease,
Let every sail salute the gale and every rope be taunt--
The Devil take all care and us, if jaundiced colors daunt!

The sea-gulls dip and dive and float, and swim and soar again;
Be like them, merry gentlemen, high-hearted!--May it rain
Rich galleons for us!--Mix a bowl and drink, "The ships of Spain!"
Be merry as the sea-gulls are; and, as the case may go,
Who cares a curse for wealth!--Now drink: "Here's to Spain's
overthrow!"--
Doff caps and follow: though the prize be over-fat or lean,
Kneel down now; give her praise who leads, Dame Fortune, our good
Queen!
Upon our prow she guides us now!--On to Saint Augustine!

VOYAGERS

Where are they, that song and tale
Tell of, lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Fairy-lands that trail
Morning summits, wet with dew,
Crimson, o'er a crimson sail?

Where, in dreams, we entered on
Wonders eyes have never seen:
Whither often we have gone,
Sailing a dream-brigantine
On from voyaging dawn to dawn.

Leons seeking lands of song;
Fabled fountains pouring spray;
Where our anchors dropped among
Corals of some blooming bay,
With its swarthy native throng.

Shoulder axe and arquebus!--
We may find it, past yon range
Of sierras, vaporous,
Rich with gold and wild and strange,
That dim region lost to us.

Yet, behold, although our zeal
Darien summits may subdue,
Our Balboa eyes reveal
But a vaster sea come to;
New endeavor for our keel.

Yet!--who sails with face set hard
Westward, while behind him lies
Unfaith; where his dreams keep guard
Round it, in the sunset skies,
He may reach it--afterward.

HIEROGLYPHS

I

All dreams are older than the seas,
Being but newer forms of change;
Some savage dreamed mine; and 'twas these
De Leon sought where seas were strange.

All thoughts are older than the Earth
Being of beauty ages wrought;
Old when creation gave them birth,
When Homer sang them, Shakespeare thought.

II

If souls could travel as can thought,
Beyond the farthest arcs that span
Imagination, what would man
Not know and see at last?
One would explore the stars; and one
Would search the moon and one the sun
And tell us of their past.

And one would seek out Hell; and, wise
In tortures of the damned, return
To tell us if they freeze or burn,
And where God's red Hell lies:
And one would look on Heaven; and, mute
With memories of harp and lute,
Sit silent as the skies.

But I--on condor wings would sweep
To some new world, and, soaring, sit
'Mid firmaments volcano-lit,
And see creation heap
Its awful Andes, vague and vast,
About its Inca-peopled past,
While deep roared out to deep.