Chapter VIII

All thoughts of nature are but forms
Of life and death, with which began
Love: love, that swept the heavens with storms,
Evolving worlds to perfect man.

Thoughts are the forms of mind; and come
And go, assuming every shape:
Science and art: through which we clomb,
And climb, to angel from the ape.

A LEGEND OF THE LILY

Pale as a star that shines through rain
Her face was seen at the window-pane,
Her sad, frail face that watched in vain.

The face of a girl whose brow was wan;
To whom the kind sun spoke at dawn,
And a star and the moon when the day was gone.

And oft and often the sun had said--
"O fair, white face, O sweet, fair head,
Come talk to me of the love that's dead."

And she would sit in the sun a while,
Down in the garth by the old stone-dial,
Where never again would he make her smile.

And often the first bright star o'erhead
Had whispered, "Sweet, where the rose blooms red,
Come look with me for the love that's dead."

And she would wait with the star she knew,
Where the fountain splashed and the roses blew,
Where never again would he come to woo.

And oft the moon, when she lay in bed,
Had sighed, "Dear heart, in the orchardstead
Come dream with me of the love that's dead."

And she would stand in the moon, the dim,
Where the fruit made heavy the apple limb,
Where never again would she dream with him.

So summer passed and the autumn came;
And the wind-torn boughs were touched with flame;
But her life and her sorrow remained the same.

Or, if she changed, as it comes about
A life may change through trouble and doubt,--
As a candle flickers and then goes out,--

'Twas only to grow more quiet and wan,
Sadly waiting at dusk and at dawn
For the coming of love forever gone.

And so, one night, when the star looked in,
It kissed her face that was white and thin,
And murmured, "Come! thou free of sin!"

And when the moon, on another night,
Beheld her lying still and white,
It sighed, "'Tis well! now all is right."

And when one morning the sun arose,
And they bore her bier down the garden-close,
It touched her, saying, "At last, repose."

And they laid her down, so young and fair,
Where the grass was withered, the bough was bare,
All wrapped in the light of her golden hair.

So autumn passed and the winter went;
And spring, like a blue-eyed penitent,
Came, telling her beads of blossom and scent.

And, lo! to the grave of the beautiful
The strong sun cried, "Why art thou dull?
Awake! awake! Forget thy skull!"

And the evening-star and the moon above
Called out, "O dust, now speak thereof!
Proclaim thyself! Arise, O love!"

And the skull and the dust in the darkness heard.
Each icy germ in its cerements stirred,
As Lazarus moved at the Lord's loud word.

And a flower arose on the mound of green,
White as the robe of the Nazarene;
To testify of the life unseen.

And I paused by the grave; then went my way:
And it seemed that I heard the lily say--
"Here was a miracle wrought to-day."

THE END OF THE CENTURY

There are moments when, as missions,
God reveals to us strange visions;
When, within their separate stations,
We may see the Centuries,
Like revolving constellations
Shaping out Earth's destinies.

I have gazed in Time's abysses,
Where no smallest thing Earth misses
That was hers once. 'Mid her chattels,
There the Past's gigantic ghost
Sits and dreams of thrones and battles
In the night of ages lost.

Far before her eyes, unholy
Mist was spread; that darkly, slowly
Rolled aside,--like some huge curtain
Hung above the land and sea;--
And beneath it, wild, uncertain,
Rose the wraiths of memory.

First I saw colossal spectres
Of dead cities: Troy--once Hector's
Pride; then Babylon and Tyre;
Karnac, Carthage, and the gray
Walls of Thebes,--Apollo's lyre
Built;--then Rome and Nineveh.

Empires followed: first, in seeming,
Old Chaldea lost in dreaming;
Egypt next, a bulk Memnonian
Staring from her pyramids;
Then Assyria, Babylonian
Night beneath her hell-lit lids.

Greece, in classic white, sidereal
Armored; Rome, in dark, imperial
Purple, crowned with blood and fire,
Down the deeps barbaric strode;
Gaul and Britain stalking by her,
Clad in skins, tattooed with woad.

All around them, rent and scattered,
Lay their gods with features battered,
Brute and human, stone and iron,
Caked with gems and gnarled with gold;
Temples, that did once environ
These, in wreck around them rolled.

While I stood and gazed and waited,
Slowly night obliterated
All; and other phantoms drifted
Out of darkness pale as stars;
Shapes that tyrant faces lifted,
Sultans, kings, and emperors.

Man and steed in ponderous metal
Panoplied, they seemed to settle,
Condors gaunt of devastation,
On the world: behind their march--
Desolation: Conflagration
Loomed before them with her torch.

Helmets flamed like fearful flowers:
Chariots rose and moving towers:
Captains passed: each fierce commander
With his gauntlet on his sword:
Agamemnon, Alexander,
Cæsar, Alaric, horde on horde.

Huns and Vandals: wild invaders:
Goths and Arabs: stern Crusaders:
Each, like some terrific torrent,
Rolled above a ruined world;
Till a cataract abhorrent
Seemed the swarming spears uphurled.

Banners and escutcheons, kindled
By the light of slaughter, dwindled--
Died in darkness:--the chimera
Of the Past was laid at last.
But, behold, another era
From her corpse rose, vague and vast.

Demogorgon of the Present!
Who in one hand raised a Crescent,
In the other, with submissive
Fingers, lifted up a Cross;
Reverent and yet derisive
Seemed she, robed in gold and dross.

In her skeptic eyes professions
Of great faith I saw; expressions,
Christian and humanitarian,
Played around her cynic lip;
Still I knew her a barbarian
By the sword upon her hip.

And she cherished strange eidolons,
Pagan shadows--Plato's, Solon's--
From whose teachings she indentured
Forms of law and sophistry;
Seeking aye for truth she ventured
Just so far as these could see.

When she vanished, I--uplifting
Eyes to where the dawn was rifting
Darkness,--lo! beheld a shadow
Towering on Earth's utmost peaks;
Round whom morning's El Dorado
Rivered gold in blinding streaks.

On her brow I saw the stigma
Still of death; and life's enigma
Filled her eyes: around her shimmered
Folds of silence; and afar,
Faint above her forehead, glimmered
Lone the light of one pale star.

Then a voice,--above or under
Earth,--against her seemed to thunder
Questions, wherein was repeated,
"Christ or Cain?" and "Man or beast?"
And the Future, shadowy-sheeted,
Turned and pointed towards the East.

THE ISLE OF VOICES

The wind blew free that morn that we,
High-hearted, sailed away;
Bound for that Island named the Blest,
Remote within the unknown West,
Beyond the golden day.

There, we were told, each dream of old,
Each deed and dream of youth,
Each myth of life's divinest prime,
And every romance, dear to time,
Put on immortal truth.

The love undone; the aim unwon;
The hope that turned despair;
The thought unborn; the dream that died;
The unattained, unsatisfied,
Should be accomplished there.

So we believed. And, undeceived,
A little crew set sail;
A little crew with hearts as stout
As any yet that faced a doubt
And tore away its veil.

And time went by; and sea and sky
Had worn our masts and decks;
When, lo! one morn with canvas torn,
A phantom ship, we came forlorn
Into the Sea of Wrecks.

There, day and night, the mist lay white,
And pale stars shone at noon;
The sea around was foam and fire,
And overhead hung, thin as wire,
A will-o'-wisp of moon.

And through the mist, all white and whist,
Gaunt ships, with sea-weed wound,
With rotting masts, upon whose spars
The corposants lit spectre stars,
Sailed by without a sound.

And all about,--now in, now out,--
Their ancient hulls, was shed
The worm-like glow of green decay,
That writhed and glimmered in the gray
Of canvas overhead.

And each that passed, in hull and mast,
Seemed that wild ship that flees
Before the tempest--seamen tell--
Deep-cargoed with the curse of Hell,
Through roaring rain and seas.

Ay! many a craft we left abaft
Upon that haunted sea;
But never a hulk that clewed a sail,
Or waved a hand, or answered hail,
And never a man saw we.

At last we came where--pouring flame--
In darkness and in storm,
Vast a volcano westward reared
An awful summit, lava-seared,
Like some terrific arm.

And we could feel beneath our keel
The ocean throb and swell,
As if the Earthquake there uncoiled
Its monster bulk, or Titans toiled
At the red heart of Hell.

Like madmen now we turned our prow
North, towards an ocean weird
Of Northern Lights and icy blasts;
And for ten moons with reeling masts
And leaking hold we steered.

Then black as blood through streaming scud
Land loomed above our boom,
An isle of iron gulfs and crags
And cataracts, like wind-tossed rags,
And caverns lost in gloom.

And burning white on every height,
And white in every cave,
A naked spirit, like a flame,
Now gleamed, now vanished; went and came
Above the windy wave.

No mortal thing of foot or wing
Made glad its steep or strand;
But voices, voices seemingly--
Vague voices of the sky and sea--
Peopled the demon land.

Yea, everywhere, in earth and air,
A lamentation wept;
That, gathering strength above, below,
Now like a mighty wind of woe,
Around the island swept.

And in that sound, it seemed, was bound
All life's despair of art;
The bitterness of joy that died;
The anguish of faiths crucified;
And love that broke its heart.

The ghost it seemed of all we'd dreamed,
Of all we had desired;
That--turned a curse, an empty cry--
With wailing words went trailing by
In hope's dead robes attired.

And could this be the land that we
Had sought for soon and late?
That Island of the Blest, the fair,
Where we had hoped to ease our care
And end the fight with fate.

O lie that lured! O pain endured!
O toil and tears and thirst!
Where we had looked for blesséd ground
The Island of the Damned we found,
And in the end--were curst!

THE WATCHER

Young was the dream that held her when
The world was moon-white with the May:
She watched the singing fishermen
Sail out to sea at break of day:
Soft, as the morning heavens then,
The eyes that watched him sail away.

Old was her grief when summer filled
The world with warm maturity:
Far off she watched the nets that spilled
Their twinkling foison by the sea:
Where on the rocks she sat and stilled
With song his infant on her knee.

Who to her love would make them lies--
Those vows his sea-slain manhood swore?
Beneath the raining autumn skies
The fishing vessels put to shore:
She watches with remembering eyes
For the brown face that comes no more.

AT THE SIGN OF THE SKULL

_It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below--
But the things of the world are a fleeting show._

The post-chaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;
Two horses strain its rusty brake
Named Pleasure and Disgust.

Our baggage totters on its roof,
Of Vanity and Care,
As Hope, the post-boy, spurs each hoof,
Or heavy-eyed Despair.

And now a comrade with us rides,
Love, haply, or Remorse;
And that dim traveler besides,
Gaunt Memory on a horse.

And be we king or be we kern
Who ride the roads of Sin,
No matter how the roads may turn
They lead us to that Inn:

Unto that Inn within that land
Of silence and of gloom,
Whose ghastly Landlord takes our hand
And leads us to our room.

_It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below--
But the things of the world are a fleeting show._

DUM VIVIMUS

I

Now with the marriage of the lip and beaker
Let Joy be born! and in the rosy shine,
The slanting starlight of the lifted liquor,
Let Care, the hag, go drown! No more repine
At all life's ills! Come, bury them in wine!
Room for great guests! Yea, let us usher in
Philosophies of old Anacreon
And Omar, that, from dawn to glorious dawn,
Shall lesson us in love and song and sin.

II

Some lives need less than others.--Who can ever
Say truly "Thou art mine," of Happiness?
Death comes to all. And one, to-day, is never
Sure of to-morrow, that may ban or bless;
And what's beyond is but a shadowy guess.
"All, all is vanity," the preacher sighs;
And in this world what has more right than
Wrong?
Come! let us hush remembrance with a song,
And learn with folly to be glad and wise.