Chapter III

Then pass as softly: shed no tear
Nor flaw with sighs the peace that’s here;
The pallid silence, far and near,
So weary grown;
Nor bring the world to jar the ear
So weary grown.

SIN

There is a legend of an old Hartz tower
That tells of one, a noble, who had sold
His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old
On this condition: that the Demon’s power
Cease every midnight for a single hour,
And, in that hour, his body should lie cold
With limbs up-shriveled, and with face, behold!
Shrunk to a death’s-head in the taper’s glower.--
So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts
Make all his outward seeming beautiful
Before the world; but in his heart of hearts
Abides an hour when her strength is null;
When he shall feel the death through all his parts
Strike, and his countenance become a skull.

THE HOUSE OF FEAR

Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where Death sits, listening to the wind and rain;
And dark the house, where I shall meet again
That long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown:
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And hollow eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,--
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling slantwise down the cheek’s dead white;--
And I have dreamed not even God can save
Me and my soul from that arisen Sin.

SATAN

Still shall I stand the everlasting hate
Colossal Chaos builded ’neath thine eyes,
The symbol of all evil, that defies
Thy victory, and, vanquished, still can wait.
Scar me again with such vast flame as late
Hurled abrupt thunder and archangel cries,
’Mid fiery whirlwinds of the terrible skies,
Down the deep’s roar against Hell’s monster gate!
Thy wrath can not abolish or make less
Me, an eternal wile opposed to wrath:
Me, who to thwart thee evermore shall plan!
Behold thy Eden’s vanished loveliness!--
Why hast thou set a sword within its path,
And cursed and exiled thine own image, Man?

OSSIAN

Long have I heard the noise of battle clash
Along the windy sea that roared again;
Seen helmets rise, and on the clanking plain
Barbaric chieftains meet and, howling, dash
Their mailéd thousands down, with crash on crash,
Like crags contending with the roaring main;
Torrents of shields, like rivers of rolling rain,
I have beheld within the moon’s pale flash;
The moon, that, like a spirit, o’er the wood
Hung white as steel, glimmering the spears and swords,
That shone like ripples in the iron flood,
The streams of war, that beat in heathen hordes
About their rock-like kings, whence wave-like far,
Circled the battle, warrior on warrior.

QUATRAINS

I

_The Love Chase_

On, towards the purlieus of impossible space,
From Death, enamoured, Life, capricious, flies:
Communicated sorrow of his face
Freezing her ever backward burning eyes.

II

_The Garden of Days_

Man’s days are planted as a flower-bed
With labor’s lily and the rose of folly:
Beneath grief’s cypress, pale, uncomforted,
The phantom fungus blooms of melancholy.

III

_Faith and Facts_

With starry gold Night still endorses what
Man’s soul hath written, guessing at the skies:
Day on Night’s scribble drops a fiery blot,
And ’thwart the writing scrawls, “The lie of lies.”

IV

_Hell and Heaven_

And it may be that, seamed with iron scars,
One in vast Hell oft lifts fierce eyes above,
And one, inviolate as God’s high stars,
Looks from far Heaven, sighing: “Alas, O love!”

V

_Alchemy_

Into her heart’s young crucible Life threw
Affliction first, then Faith,--by which is meant
Hope and Humility:--Love touched the two,
And, lo! the golden blessing of Content.

VI

_Trial_

As oft as Hope weighed, coaxing, on this arm,
On that Despair dashed heavily his fist:
He knew no way out of Grief’s night and storm,
Until a child, named Effort, came and kissed.

VII

_Nightmare_

Some obscene drug in her dull draught Sleep gave,
For dead I lay, yet heard a man-faced beast
Dig, dig with wolfish fingers in my grave,
With horrible laughter to a horrible feast.

VIII

_Clairvoyance_

Some few may pierce the phantom fogs, that veil
Life’s stormy seas, into futurity,
And see the Flying Dutchman’s ominous sail,
Portentous of dark things that are to be.

IX

_The Flying Dutchman_

Through hissing scud, mad mist, and roaring rain,
On thundering seas, I see her drive and drive,
Crowding wild canvas ’gainst the hurricane,
Her demon ports with glow-worm lamps alive.

X

_Destiny_

Within the volume of the universe
With worlds she writes irrevocable laws:
From everlasting unto everlasting hers
The evolutions of effect and cause.

XI

_Fame, the Mermaid_

A mirror, brilliant as a beautiful star,
She lifts and sings to her own loveliness:
Not till her light and song have lured him far
Does man behold the lie he did not guess.

XII

_The Hours_

With stars and dew and sunlight in their hair,
They come, the daughters of the Day, who saith:
“The gifts my children bring are rest and care,
Of which the last is Life, the first is Death.”

XIII

_Despair_

So sick at heart, so weary of the sun,
In her sad halls the Soul sits desolate,
Her Hope surrendered to Oblivion,
Whose coal-black charger neighs outside the gate.

XIV

_The Misanthrope_

Shut in with its own selfishness his soul
Sees,--as a screech-owl in a dead tree might,
Blinking avoided daylight through one hole,--
The white world blackened by his own dull sight.

XV

_The Hun_

On splendid infamies--a thousand years
Heaven tolerated--like a Word that trod
Incarnate of the Law, vast wrath and tears
In pagan eyes, behold the Scourge of God!