Chapter VII (2)

"'And so these crowds
Armed as it seemed, exulted, called me general,
And shouted forward. So we ran like mad
And came before a building with a dome--
You know--I've seen a picture of it somewhere.
And so the crowds yelled: let the bishop enter
And see the sepulchre, while we keep guard.
They pushed me in. But when I was inside
There was no dome, above us was the sky,
And what seemed walls was nothing but a fence.
Before us was a stable with a stall
Where two cows munched the hay. There was a farmer
Who with a pitchfork bedded down the stall.
"Where is the holy sepulchre?" I asked--
"My army's at the door." He kept at work
And never raised his eyes and only said:
"Don't know; I haven't time for things like that.
You're 'bout the hundredth man who's asked me that.
We don't know where it is, nor do we care.
We live here and we knew him, so we feel
Less interest than you. But have you thought
If you should find it it would only be
A tomb like other tombs? Why look at this:
Here is the very manger where he lay--
What is it? Just a manger filled with straw.
These cows are not the very cows you know--
But cows are cows in every age and place.
I think that board there has been nailed on since.
Outside of that the place is just the same.
Now what's the good of seeing it? His mother
Lay in that corner there, what if she did?
That lantern on the wall's the very one
They came to see the child with from the inn--
What of it? Take your army and go on,
And leave me with my barn and with my cows."

"'So all the glory vanished! Devil magic
Stripped all the glory off. No angels singing,
No star of Bethlehem, no magi kneeling,
No Mary crowned, no Jesus King, no mystic
Blood for sins' remission--just a barn,
A stall, two cows, a lantern--all the glory--
Swept from the gospel. That's my punishment:
My poor weak brain filled full of all this dream,
Which seems as real as life--to lie here dying
Too weak to shake the dream! To see Death there
Behind that cabinet--there--see him look--
By God forsaken--all theology,
All mystery, all wonder, all delight
Of spiritual vision swept away as clean
As winds sweep up the clouds, and thus to see
While dying, just a manger, and two cows,
A lantern on the wall.

"'And thus to see,
For blasphemy that duped an honest heart,
And took the pitiful dollars of the flock
To win you with--oh, woman, woman, woman,
A barn, a stall, a lantern limned so clear
In such a daylight of clear seeing senses
That all the splendor, the miraculous
Wonder of the virgin, nimbused child,
The star that followed till it rested over
The manger (such a manger) all are wrecked,
All blotted from belief, all snatched away
From hands pushed off by God, no longer holding
The robes of God.'

"And so the bishop raved
While I stood terrified, since I could feel
Death in the room, and almost see the monster
Behind the cabinet.

"Then the bishop said:
"'My dream went on. I crossed the stable yard
And passed into a place of tombs. And look!
Before I knew I stepped into a hole,
A sunken grave with just a slab at head,
And "Jesus" carven on it, nothing else,
No date, no birth, no parentage.'"

"'I lie
Tormented by the pictures of this dream.
Woman, take to your death bed with clear mind
Of gospel faith, clean conscience, sins forgiven.
The thoughts that we must suffer with and die with
Are worth the care of all the days of life.
All life should be directed to this end,
Lest when the mind lies fallen, vultures swoop,
And with their wings blot out the sun of faith,
And with their croakings drown the voice of God.'

"He ceased, became delirious. So he died,
And I still unrepentant buried him
There in Montreaux, and with what gold remained
Went on to Paris.

"See how I was marked
For God's salvation.

"There I went to see
The celebrated teacher Jean Strakosch,
Who looked at me with insolent, calm eyes,
And face impassive, let me sing a scale,
Then shook his head. A diva, as I thought,
Came in just then. They talked in French, and I,
Prickling from head to foot with shame, ignored,
Left standing like a fool, passed from the room.
So music turned on me, but God received me,
And I came back to Springfield. But the Lord
Made life too hard for me without the fold.
I was so shunned and scorned, I had no place
Save with the fallen, with the mockers, drinkers.
Thus being in conviction, after struggles,
And many prayers I found salvation, found
My work in life: which is to talk to girls
And stand upon this platform and relate
My story for their good."

She ceased. Amens
Went up about the room. The big drum boomed,
And the raucous brass horns mingled with the cymbals,
The silver triangle and the singing voices.

My friend and I arose and left the room.

NEANDERTHAL

"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry
I woke from deeper slumber--was it sleep?--
And saw a hooded figure standing by
The bed whereon I lay.

"Why do you keep,
O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard
About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep
Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,
As that unearthly shape was veiled to you
At Casa Magni?"

Then the room was starred
With light as I was speaking, and I knew
The god, my brother, from whose face the veil
Melted as mist.

"What mission fair and true,
While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale
Amid this solemn stillness, for your face
Unutterably majestic."

As when the dale
At midnight echoes for a little space,
The night-bird's cry, the god responded "Come,"
And nothing more. I left my bed apace,
And followed him with wings above the gloom
Of clouds like chariots driven on to war,
Between whose wheels the swift moon raced and swum.

A mile beneath us lay the earth, afar
Were mountains which as swift as thought drew near
As we passed over pines, where many a star
And heaven's light made every frond as clear
As through a glass or in the lightning's flash. ...
Yet I seemed flying from an olden fear,
A bulk of black that sought to sting or gnash
My breast or side--which was myself, it seemed,
The flesh or thinking part of me grown rash
And violent, a brain soul unredeemed,
Which sometime earlier in the grip of Death
Forgot its terror when my soul which streamed
Like ribbons of silk fire, with quiet breath
Said to the body, as it were a thing
Separate and indifferent: "How uneath
That fellow turns, while I am safe yet cling
Close to him, both another and the same."
Now was this mood reversed: That self must wing
Its fastest flight to fly him, lest he maim
With fleshly hands my better, stronger part,
As dragon wings my flap and quench a flame. ...
But as we passed o'er empires and athwart
A bellowing strait, beholding bergs and floes
And running tides which made the sinking heart
Rise up again for breath, I felt how close
The god, my brother, was, who would sustain
My wings whatever dangers might oppose,
And knowing him beside me, like a strain
Of music were his thoughts, though nothing yet
Was spoken by him.

When as out of rain
Suddenly lights may break, the earth was set
Beneath us, and we stood and paused to see
The Düssel river from a parapet
Of earth and rock. Then bending curiously,
As reaching, in a moment with his hand
He scraped the turf and stones, pried up a key
Of harder granite, and at his command,
When he had made an opening, I slid
And sank, down, down through the Devonian land
Until with him I reached a cavern hid
From every eye but ours, and where no light
But from our faces was, a pyramid
Of hills that walled this crypt of soundless night.
Then in a mood, it seemed more fanciful,
He bent again and raked, and to my sight
Upheaved and held the remnant of a skull--
Gorilla's or a man's, I could not guess.
Yet brutal though it was, it was a hull
Too fine and large to house the nakedness
Of a beast's mind.

But as I looked the god
Began these words: "Before the iron stress
Of the north pole's dominion fell, he trod
The wastes of Europe, ere the Nile was made
A granary for the east, or ere the clod
In Babylon or India baked was laid
For hovels, this man lived. Ten thousand years
Before the earliest pyramid cast its shade
Upon the desolate sands this thing of fears,
Lusts, hungers, lived and hunted, woke and slept,
Mated, produced its kind, with hairy ears,
And tiger eyes sensed all that you accept
In terms of thought or vision as the proof
Of immanent Power or Love. But this skull kept
The intangible meaning out. This heavy roof
Of brutish bone above the eyes was dead
Even to lower ethers, no behoof
Of seasons, stars or skies took, though they bred
Suspicions, fears, or nervous glances, thought,
Which silent as a lizard's shadow fled
Before it graved itself, passed over, wrought
No vision, only pain, which he deemed pangs
Of hunger or of thirst."

As you have sought
The meaning of life's riddle, since it hangs
In waking or in slumber just above
The highest reach of prophecy, and fangs
With poison of despair all moods but love,
Behold its secret lettered on this brow
Placed by your own!

This is the word thereof:
_Change and progression from the glazed slough,
Where life creeps and is blind, ascending up
The jungled slopes for prey till spirits bow
On Calvaries with crosses, take the cup
Of martyrdom for truth's sake._

It may be
Men of to-day make monstrous war, sleep, sup,
Traffic, build shrines, as earliest history
Records the earliest day, and that the race
Is what it was in virtue, charity,
And nothing better. But within this face
No light shone from that realm where Hindostan,
Delving in numbers, watching stars took grace
And inspiration to explore the plan
Of heaven and earth. And of the scheme the test
Is not five thousand years, which leave the van
Just where it was, but this change manifest
In fifty thousand years between the mind
Neanderthal's and Shelley's.

Man progressed
Along these years, found eyes where he was blind,
Put instinct under thought, crawled from the cave,
And faced the sun, till somewhere heaven's wind
Mixed with the light of Lights descending, gave
To mind a touch of divinity, making whole
An undeveloped growth.

As ships that brave
Great storms at sea on masts a flaming coal
From heaven catch, bear on, so man was wreathed
Somewhere with lightning and became a soul.
Into his nostrils purer fire was breathed
Than breath of life itself, and by a leap,
As lightning leaps from crag to crag, what seethed
In man from the beginning broke the sleep
That lay on consciousness of self, with eyes
Awakened saw himself, out of the deep
And wonder of the self caught the surmise
Of Power beyond this world, and felt it through
The flow of living.

And so man shall rise
From this illumination, from this clue
To perfect knowledge that this Power exists,
And what man is to this Power, even as you
Have left Neanderthal lost in the mists
And ignorance of centuries untold.
What would you say if learned geologists
Out of the rocks and caverns should unfold
The skulls of greater races, records, books
To shame us for our day, could we behold
Therein our retrogression? Wonder looks
In vain for these, discovers everywhere
Proof of the root which darkly bends and crooks
Far down and far away; a stalk more fair
Upspringing finds its proof, buds on the stalk
The eye may see, at last the flowering flare
Of man to-day!

I see the things which balk,
Retard, divert, draw into sluices small,
But who beholds the stream turned back to mock,
Not just itself, but make equivocal
A Universal Reason, Vision? No.
You find no proof of this, but prodigal
Proof of ascending Life!

So life shall flow
Here on this globe until the final fruit
And harvest. As it were until the glow
Of the great blossom has the attribute
In essence, color of eternal things,
And shows no rim between its hues which suit
The infinite sky's. Then if the dead earth swings
A gleaned and stricken field amid the void
What matters it to you, a soul with wings,
Whether it be replanted or destroyed?
Has it not served you?"

Now his voice was still,
Which in such discourse had been thus employed.
And in that lonely cavern dark and chill
I heard again, "Then what is life?" And woke
To find the moonlight on the window sill
That which had seemed his presence. And a cloak,
Whose hood was perked upon the moonbeams, made
The skull of the Neanderthal. The smoke
Blown from the fireplace formed the cavern's shade.
And roaring winds blew down as they had tuned
The voice which left me calm and unafraid.

THE END OF THE SEARCH

_There's the dragon banner, says Old King Cole,
And the tiger banner, he cries.
Pantagruel breaks into a laugh
As the monarch dries his eyes.--The Search_

_"The tiger banyer, that is what you call much
Bad men in China, Amelica. The dragon banyer.
That is storm, leprosy, no rice, what you call
Nature. See! Nature!"--King Joy_

* * * * *

Said Old King Cole I know the banner
Of dragon and tiger too,
But I would know the vagrant fellows
Who came to my castle with you.

* * * * *

And I would know why they rise in the morning
And never take bread or scrip;
And why they hasten over the mountain
In a sorrowed fellowship.

* * * * *

Then said Pantagruel: Heard you not?
One said he goes to Spain.
One said he goes to Elsinore,
And one to the Trojan plain.

* * * * *

Faith, if it be, said Old King Cole,
There is a word that's more:
Who is it goes to Spain and Troy?
And who to Elsinore?

* * * * *

One may be Quixote, said Pantagruel,
Out for the final joust.
One may be Hamlet, said Pantagruel
And one I think is Faust.

* * * * *

Whoever they be, said Pantagruel,
Why stand at the window and drool?
Let's out and catch the runaways
While the morning hour is cool.

* * * * *

Pantagruel runs to the castle court,
And King Cole follows soon.
The cobblestones of the court yard ring
To the beat of their flying shoon.

* * * * *

Pantagruel clutches the holy bottle,
And King Cole clutches his crown.
They throw the bolt of the castle gate
And race them through the town.

* * * * *

They cross the river and follow the road,
They run by the willow trees,
And the tiger banner and dragon banner
Wait for the morning breeze.

* * * * *

They clamber the wall and part the brambles,
And tear through thicket and thorn.
And a wild dove in an olive tree
Does mourn and mourn and mourn.

* * * * *

A green snake starts in the tangled grass,
And springs his length at their feet.
And a condor circles the purple sky
Looking for carrion meat.

* * * * *

And mad black flies are over their heads,
And a wolf looks out of his hole.
Great drops of sweat break out and run
From the brow of Old King Cole.

* * * * *

Said Old King Cole: A drink, my friend,
From the holy bottle, I pray.
My breath is short, my feet run blood,
My throat is baked as clay.

* * * * *

Anon they reach a mountain top,
And a mile below in the plain
Are the glitter of guns and a million men
Led by an idiot brain.

* * * * *

They come to a field of slush and flaw
Red with a blood red dye.
And a million faces fungus pale
Stare horribly at the sky.

* * * * *

They come to a cross where a rotting thing
Is slipping down from the nails.
And a raven perched on the eyeless skull
Opens his beak and rails:

* * * * *

"If thou be the Son of man come down,
Save us and thyself save."
Pantagruel flings a rock at the raven:
"How now blaspheming knave!"

* * * * *

"Come down and of my bottle drink,
And cease this scurvy rune."
But the raven flapped its wings and laughed
Loud as the water loon.

* * * * *

Said Old King Cole: A drink, my friend,
I faint, a drink in haste.
But when he drinks he pales and mutters:
"The wine has lost its taste."

* * * * *

"You have gone mad," said Pantagruel,
"In faith 'tis the same old wine."
Pantagruel drinks at the holy bottle
But the flavor is like sea brine.

* * * * *

And there on a rock is a cypress tree,
And a form with a muffled face.
"I know you, Death," said Pantagruel,
"But I ask of you no grace."

* * * * *

"Empty my bottle, sour my wine,
Bend me, you shall not break."
"Oh well," said Death, "one woe at a time
Before I come and take."

* * * * *

"You have lost everything in life but the bottle,
Youth and woman and friend.
Pass on and laugh for a little space yet
The laugh that has an end."

* * * * *

Pantagruel passes and looks around him
Brave and merry of soul.
But there on the ground lies a dead body,
The body of Old King Cole.

* * * * *

And a Voice said: Take the body up
And carry the body for me
Until you come to a silent water,
By the sands of a silent sea.

* * * * *

Pantagruel takes the body up
And the dead fat bends him down.
He climbs the mountains, runs the valleys
With body, bottle and crown.

* * * * *

And the wastes are strewn with skulls,
And the desert is hot and cursed.
And a phantom shape of the holy bottle
Mocks his burning thirst.

* * * * *

Pantagruel wanders seven days,
And seven nights wanders he.
And on the seventh night he rests him
By the sands of the silent sea.

* * * * *

And sees a new made fire on the shore,
And on the fire is a dish.
And by the fire two travelers sleep,
And two are broiling fish.

* * * * *

Don Quixote and Hamlet are sleeping,
And Faust is stirring the fire.
But the fourth is a stranger with a face
Starred with a great desire.

* * * * *

Pantagruel hungers, Pantagruel thirsts,
Pantagruel falls to his knees.
He flings down the body of Old King Cole
As a man throws off disease.

* * * * *

And rolls his burden away and cries:
"Take and watch, if you will.
But as for me I go to France
My bottle to refill."

* * * * *

"And as for me I go to France
To fill this bottle up."
He felt at his side for the holy bottle,
And found it turned a cup.

* * * * *

And the stranger said: Behold our friend
Has brought my cup to me.
That is the cup whereof I drank
In the garden Gethsemane.

* * * * *

Pantagruel hands the cup to Jesus
Who dips it in sea brine.
This is the water, says Jesus of Nazareth,
Whereof I make your wine.

* * * * *

And Faust takes the cup from Jesus of Nazareth,
And his lips wear a purple stain.
And Faust hands the cup to Pantagruel
With the dregs for him to drain.

* * * * *

Pantagruel drinks and falls into slumber,
And Jesus strokes his hair.
And Faust sings a song of Euphorion
To hide his heart's despair.

* * * * *

And Faust takes the hand of Jesus of Nazareth,
And they walk by the purple deep.
Says Jesus of Nazareth: "Some are watchers,
And some grow tired and sleep."

BOTANICAL GARDENS

He follows me no more, I said, nor stands
Beside me. And I wake these later days
In an April mood, a wonder light and free.
The vision is gone, but gone the constant pain
Of constant thought. I see dawn from my hill,
And watch the lights which fingers from the waters
Twine from the sun or moon. Or look across
The waste of bays and marshes to the woods,
Under the prism colors of the air,
Held in a vacuum silence, where the clouds,
Like cyclop hoods are tossed against the sky
In terrible glory.

And earth charmed I lie
Before the staring sphinx whose musing face
Is this Egyptian heaven, and whose eyes
Are separate clouds of gold, whose pedestal
Is earth, whose silken sheathed claws
No longer toy with me, even while I stroke them:
Since I have ceased to tease her.

Then behold
A breeze is blown out of a world becalmed,
And as I see the multitudinous leaves
Fluttered against the water and the light,
And see this light unveil itself, reveal
An inner light, a Presence, Secret splendor,
I clap hands over eyes, for the earth reels;
And I have fears of dieties shown or spun
From nothingness. But when I look again
The earth has stayed itself, I see the lake,
The leaves, the light of the sun, the cyclop hoods
Of thunder heads, yet feel upon my arm
A hand I know, and hear a voice I know--
He has returned and brought with him the thought
And the old pain.

The voice says: "Leave the sphinx.
The garden waits your study fully grown."
And I arise and follow down a slope
To a lawn by the lake and an ancient seat of stone,
And near it a fountain's shattered rim enclosing
An Eros of light mood, whose sculptured smile
Consciously dimples for the unveiled pistil of love,
As he strokes with baby hand the slender arching
Neck of a swan. And here is a peristyle
Whose carven columns are pink as the long updrawn
Stalks of tulips bedded in April snow.
And sunk amid tiger lillies is the face
Of an Asian Aphrodite close to the seat
With feet of a Babylonian lion amid
This ruined garden of yellow daisies, poppies
And ruddy asphodel from Crete, it seems,
Though here is our western moon as white and thin
As an abalone shell hung under the boughs
Of an oak, that is mocked by the vastness of sky between
His boughs and the moon in this sky of afternoon. ...
We walk to the water's edge and here he shows me
Green scum, or stalks, or sedges, grasses, shrubs,
That yield to trees beyond the levels, where
The beech and oak have triumph; for along
This gradual growth from algae, reeds and grasses,
That builds the soil against the water's hands,
All things are fierce for place and garner life
From weaker things.

And then he shows me root stocks,
And Alpine willow, growths that sneak and crawl
Beneath the soil. Or as we leave the lake
And walk the forest I behold lianas,
Smilax or woodbine climbing round the trunks
Of giant trees that live and out of earth,
And out of air make strength and food and ask
No other help. And in this place I see
Spiral bryony, python of the vines
That coils and crushes; and that banyan tree
Whose spreading branches drop new roots to earth,
And lives afar from where the parent trunk
Has sunk its roots, so that the healthful sun
Is darkened: as a people might be darkened
By ignorance or want or tyranny,
Or dogma of a jungle hidden faith.
Why is it, think I, though I dare not speak,
That this should be to forests or to men;
That water fails, and light decreases, heat
Of God's air lessens, and the soil goes spent,
Till plants change leaves and stalks and seeds as well,
Or migrate from the olden places, go
In search of life, or if they cannot move
Die in the ruthless marches.

That is life, he said.
For even these, the giants scatter life
Into the maws of death. That towering tree
That for these hundred years has leafed itself,
And through its leaves out of the magic air
Drawn nutriment for annual girths, took root
Out of an acorn which good chance preserved,
While all its brother acorns cast to earth,
To make trees, by a parent tree now gone,
Were crushed, devoured, or strangled as they sprouted
Amid thick jealous growth wherein they fell.
All acorns but this one were lost.

Then he reads
My questioning thought and shows me yuccas, cactus
Whose thick leaves in the rainless places thrive.
And shows me leaves that must have rain, and roots
That must have water where the river flows.
And how the spirit of life, though turned or driven
This way or that beyond a course begun,
Cannot be stayed or quenched, but moves, conforms
To soil and sun, makes roots, or thickens leaves,
Or thins or re-adjusts them on the stem
To fashion forth itself, produce its kind.
Nor dies not, rests not, nor surrenders not,
Is only changed or buried, re-appears
As other forms of life.

We had walked through
A forest of sequoias, beeches, pines,
And ancient oaks where I could see the trace
Of willows, alders, ruined or devoured
By the great Titans.

At last
We reached my hill and sat and overlooked
The garden at our feet, even to the place
Of tiger lilies and of asphodel,
By now beneath the self-same moon, grown denser:
As where the wounded surface of the shell
Thickens its shimmering stuff in spiral coigns
Of the shell, so was the moon above the seat
Beside the Eros and the Aphrodite
Sunk amid yellow daisies and deep grass.
And here we sat and looked. And here my vision
Was over all we saw, but not a part
Of what we saw, for all we saw stood forth
As foreign to myself as something touched
To learn the thing it is.

I might have asked
Who owns this garden, for the thought arose
With my surprise, who owns this garden, who
Planted this garden, why and to what end,
And why this fight for place, for soil and sun
Water and air, and why this enmity
Between the things here planted, and between
Flying or crawling life and plants, and whence
The power that falls in one place but arises
Some other place; and why the unceasing growth
Of all these forms that only come to seed,
Then disappear to enrich the insatiate soil
Where the new seed falls? But silence kept me there
For wonder of the beauty which I saw,
Even while the faculty of external vision
Kept clear the garden separate from me,
Envisioned, seen as grasses, sedges, alders,
As forestry, as fields of wheat and corn,
As the vast theatre of unceasing life,
Moving to life and blind to all but life;
As places used, tried out, as if the gardener,
For his delight or use, or for an end
Of good or beauty made experiments
With seed or soils or crossings of the seed.
Even as peoples, epochs, did the garden
Lie to my vision, or as races crowding,
Absorbing, dispossessing, killing races,
Not only for a place to grow, but under
A stimulus of doctrine: as Mahomet,
Or Jesus, like a vital change of air,
Or artifice of culture, made the garden,
Which mortals call the world, grow in a way,
And overgrow the world as neither dreamed.
Who is the Gardener then? Or is there one
Beside the life within the plant, within
The python climbers, wandering sedges, root stalks,
Thorn bushes, night-shade, deadly saprophytes,
Goths, Vandals, Tartars, striving for more life,
And praying to the urge within as God,
The Gardener who lays out the garden, sprays
For insects which devour, keeps rich the soil
For those who pray and know the Gardener
As One who is without and over-sees? ...

But while in contemplation of the garden,
Whether from failing day or from departure
Of my own vision in the things it saw,
Bereft of penetrating thought I sank,
Became a part of what I saw and lost
The great solution.

As we sat in silence,
And coming night, what seemed the sinking moon,
Amid the yellow sedges by the lake
Began to twinkle, as a fire were blown--
And it was fire, the garden was afire,
As it were all the world had flamed with war.
And a wind came out of the bright heaven
And blew the flames, first through the ruined garden,
Then through the wood, the fields of wheat, at last
Nothing was left but waste and wreaths of smoke
Twisting toward the stars. And there he sat
Nor uttered aught, save when I sighed he said
"If it be comforting I promise you
Another spring shall come."

"And after that?"
"Another spring--that's all I know myself,
There shall be springs and springs!"