Chapter II

There is a blackness in the apple-trees
Of tempest,--like the ashes of an urn
Hurt hands have gathered upon blistered knees,
With salt of tears, out of the flames that burn:--
And there is death among the blooms, that fill
The night with breathless scent,--as when, above
The priest, the vision of his faith doth will
Forth from his soul the beautiful form thereof,
Saying: “Behold! a silence never still:
And love that’s more than love.”

ELEUSINIAN

Praxitelean marbles, fairer forms
Than Phryne’s and than hers,--who loved and knew
The Attic cynic’s soul,--the rosy charms
Of lovely Laïs, gradually grew
Before his eyelids, like a floating mist,
Out of the music of the citharist.

And there were Dryads, laughing sidewise eyes,
Among Cithæron’s ash-trees; and uncouth
Brown Satyrs, dancing ’neath Bœotian skies;
And by a fountain sat a beautiful youth,
Like some white flow’r, with dim, dejected grace,
In love with the reflection of his face.

And then a chord of soft bewitchment swept
Along his soul; and, oh! within a vale,
Like some young god, a godlike mortal slept;
And there was splendor on the heights, and pale
The presence of supernal purity,
Whose face was as a marble melody.

And now two chords, that were two hands that strewed
Innumerable memories upon
His eyelids--and his spirit understood
How, ages past, he was Endymion,--
And, lo! again the old, wild rapture of
Immortal sorrow and immortal love.

ARGONAUT

His argosy spreads dawn-kissed sails,
His trireme oars the dusk,
On mythic seas whereover gales
Of summer breathe their musk.

He hears the hail of Siren bands
From headlands sunset-kissed;
The Lotus-eaters wave him hands
Pale in a land of mist.

For many a league he hears the roar
Of the Symplegades;
And through the far foam of its shore
The Isle of Circe sees.

All day he looks with hazy lids
At sea-gods cleave the deep;
All night he hears the Nereïds
Sing their wild hearts to sleep.

When heaven thunders overhead,
And hell upheaves the Vast,
Dim faces of the ocean’s dead
Gaze at him from his mast.

He but repeats the oracle
That bade him first set sail;
And cheers his soul with, “All is well!
Sail on! I will not fail!”

Behold! he sails no earthly barque,
And on no earthly sea--
Adown the years he sails the dark
Deeps of futurity.

Ideals are the ships of Greece
His purpose steers afar:
His seas, the skies, the Golden Fleece
He seeks, the farthest star.

SIC VOS NON VOBIS

If on the thorns thy feet be pierced to-morrow,
And far the fierce sands glare,
Unbind thy temples! thank life for its sorrow,
Its longing and despair.

With love within, what heart shall halt and wither,
Athirst for rivered hills?
Moaning, “Mine! mine! what hate hath led me hither
Unto a sky that kills?”

Unworthy thou! if faith should sink and falter;
Blind hand and blinder eye
Bind the blind hope upon thy doubt’s old altar
And stab it till it die.

Thou canst not say thy toil and tears have never
Communed with lovely sleep!
Had night before thine eyeballs--night forever
To lead thee to the deep!

Ay! wouldst thou have thy self-love for a burden,
A fardel bound with tears,
To sweat beneath and gain at last, for guerdon,
From hands of wasted years?

To find thy stars are glow-worms, feebler, thinner
Than glimmers of the moon:
Dead stars, and all the darkness of the inner
Self’s deader plenilune.

To see at last,--beneath Death’s sterner learning,
--Through sockets sealed with frost,
The awful sunsets of Doom’s heavens burning
God’s baffling pentecost.

WITH THE TIDE

Once when the morning flashed athwart the breakers,
And on the foaming sand,
In exultation, by the ocean’s acres,
Love took command.

And so we sailed, æolian music melting
Around our silken sails;
The bubbled foam our prow of sandal pelting
With rainbow gales.

We watched the beach, with prickly cactus hateful,
And gnarled palmetto, pass
Beyond our vision; coasts where Life walked fateful
With Time’s slow glass.

Though hateful now, who could forget the beauty
Of dim and fragile shells,
That strewed the shores of Patience and of Duty
Like asphodels?

The rocks of Care, where Faith’s meek flow’r suffices
To lead Love up and on,
To levels, that the Bible’s lily spices,
Divine with dawn?

On, on we sailed, Love laughing at to-morrow,
Past sunny isle and cape:
Three were we now:--My Soul and Love and--Sorrow,
A tall, dim shape.

On, on we sailed, Love at the golden rudder,
On till the day waxed late,
When, lo! beside him, like an icy shudder,
Rose pallid Hate.

On, on we sailed, Love seeing me, no other:
None crowned with bleeding thorn,
None armed with violence, and now another--
Unyielding Scorn.

And then Love saw; Love, who had naught demanded,
Love saw, and summoned Pride:
The darker three, against the bright two banded,
Stood side by side.

On through the night our barque went drifting, drifting;
My stricken Soul alone;
A white face cold as moonlit marble lifting,
And still as stone.

APPORTIONMENT

If grief must fill my heart with tears, and Time
Abate no hour
Of agony with any happy rhyme,--
Be grief my dower.

If days must sing to my attentive soul
Joy’s cradle-song,
Nor lift one grave note in the gladsome whole,
Let joy be long.

Bring me pale flowers of the handselled hills,
To braid and lay
On coffined brows, sad separation fills
With death’s dismay.

Or dreams to drug my soul’s life-cup with pure
Ideal love;
Glad dreams of life whose beauties aye allure
The soul above.

A harp, to hold against my heart and smite
With smiles and tears,
To sing bereavement or my soul’s delight
Through all the years.

Make of my heart a lute, for Love to wake
With tripping tune;
Or Loss to crush against her breast and break
With wilder croon.

Upon the mountains of the morning lands,
Where all may look,
Let Hope arise and lift with astral hands
His starry book.

Up bars of stars, the golden notes of skies,
On night’s black scroll
Let the moon’s music lift, and with it rise
Despair’s dark soul.

Apportion, O my God, the hope or fear,
The grief or glee!
Thine be the purpose of each smile, each tear
Eternally.

ESOTERIC BEAUTY

I

Within the old, old forest
The wind hath whispered me
Thou dwellest--thou, who warrest
With birds in melody,
And all the wood-ways starrest
With wild-flow’rs fragrantly,
Thou presence none may see!

II

If I should find thee sitting
Beneath the woodland tree,
The elder-blossoms knitting
In wreaths of witchery,
Between the glimpse and flitting,
What wouldst thou show to me,
Thou presence none may see?

III

O thou, who, haply, hidest,
A flower upon the tree;
Or in a color glidest,
Or murmur of a bee;
Or in a scent abidest,
A fragrance,--show to me
The things no man may see!

IV

If I should find thee dreaming
Upon the wild-rose lea,
The heart within thee gleaming
And breathing like a bee,
Between the real and seeming,
What wouldst thou say to me,
Thou presence none may see?