Chapter IX: Part III: After Civilisation (1)

_We are a menace to you, O civilisation!_

_We have seen you—we allow you—we bear with you for a time,_

_But beware! for in a moment and, when the hour comes, inevitably,_

_We shall arise and sweep you away!_

AFTER CIVILISATION

In the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on the ground—

Forth from the city into the great woods wandering,

Into the great silent white woods where they waited in their beauty and majesty

For man their companion to come:

There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilisations,

I saw a new life arise.

* * * * *

Slowly out of the ruins of the past—like a young fern-frond uncurling out of its own brown litter—

Out of the litter of a decaying society, out of the confused mass of broken down creeds, customs, ideals,

Out of distrust and unbelief and dishonesty, and Fear, meanest of all (the stronger in the panic trampling the weaker underfoot);

Out of miserable rows of brick tenements with their cheapjack interiors, their glances of suspicion, and doors locked against each other;

Out of the polite residences of congested idleness; out of the aimless life of wealth;

Out of the dirty workshops of evil work, evilly done;

Out of the wares which are no wares poured out upon the markets, and in the shop-windows,

The fraudulent food, clothing, drink, literature;

Out of the cant of Commerce—buying cheap and selling dear—the crocodile sympathy of nation with nation,

The smug merchant posing as a benefactor of his kind, the parasite parsons and scientists;

The cant of Sex, the impure hush clouding the deepest instincts of boy and girl, woman and man;

The despair and unbelief possessing all society—rich and poor, educated and ignorant, the money-lender, the wage-slave, the artist and the washerwoman alike;

All feeling the terrible pressure and tension of the modern problem:

Out of the litter and muck of a decaying world,

Lo! even so

I saw a new life arise.

* * * * *

The winter woods stretched all around so still!

Every bough laden with snow—the faint purple waters rushing on in the hollows, with steam on the soft still air!

Far aloft the arrowy larch reached into the sky, the high air trembled with the music of the loosened brooks.

O sound of waters, jubilant, pouring pouring—O hidden song in the hollows!

Secret of the earth, swelling sobbing to divulge itself!

* * * * *

Slowly, building lifting itself up atom by atom,

Gathering itself together round a new centre—or rather round the world-old centre once more revealed—

I saw a new life, a new society, arise.

Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature;

[The old old story—the prodigal son returning, so loved,

The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain things]—

The child returning to its home, companion of the winter woods once more,

Companion of the stars and waters, hearing their words at first hand (more than all science ever taught),

The near contact, the dear dear mother so close, the twilight sky and the young tree-tops against it;

The huts on the mountain-side, companionable of the sun and the winds, the lake unsullied below;

The daily bath in natural running waters, or in the parallel foam-lines of the sea, the pressure of the naked foot to the earth;

The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life—the food and population question giving no more trouble;

[No hurry more, no striving one to override the other:

Each one doing the work before him to do, and taking his chance of the reward,

Doubting no more of his reward than the hand doubts, or the foot, to which the blood flows according to the use to which it is put;]

The plentiful common halls stored with the products of Art and History and Science to supplement the simple household accommodations;

The sweet and necessary labor of the day;

All these I saw—for man the companion of Nature.

* * * * *

Civilisation behind him now—the wonderful stretch of the past;

Continents, empires, religions, wars, migrations—all gathered up in him;

The immense knowledge, the vast winged powers—to use or not to use—

He comparatively indifferent, passing on to other spheres of interest.

* * * * *

The calm which falls after long strife, the dignity of rest after toil;

Hercules, his twelve labors done, sitting as a god on the great slope of Olympus,

Looking out over the Earth, on which he was once a mortal.

THE WORD DEMOCRACY

Underneath all now comes this Word, turning the edges of the other words where they meet it.

Politics, art, science, commerce, religion, customs and methods of daily life, the very outer shows and semblances of ordinary objects—

The rose in the garden, the axe hanging behind the door in the outhouse—

Their meanings must all now be absorbed and recast in this word, or else fall off like dry husks before its disclosure.

* * * * *

Do you not see that your individual life is and can only be secured at the cost of the continual sacrifice of other lives,

And that therefore you can only hold it on condition that you are ready in your turn to sacrifice it for others?

The law of Indifference which must henceforth be plainly recognised and acted upon.

* * * * *

Art can now no longer be separated from life;

The old canons fail; her tutelage completed she becomes equivalent to Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with the clouds and waterfalls;

Science empties itself out of the books; all that the books have said only falls like the faintest gauze before the reality—hardly concealing a single blade of grass, or damaging the light of the tiniest star;

The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classifications and definitions;

[Beautiful the form of man emerges, the celestial ideal—

The feet pressing the ground, the supple strong ancles and wrists, the cleave of the loins, the shoulders, and poised head aureoled by the sun;]

The politician turns round upon himself—like the scientist he acknowledges his brain baffled by the problems; he reaches his hand for help to the hand of the People;

The commercial man turns round—the firm ground gives way beneath his feet also; to give now seems better than to get—and what sort of a trade-motto is that?

All the customs of society change, for all are significant; and the long-accepted axioms of every day life are dislocated like a hill-side in a landslip;

The old structures can no longer stand—their very foundations are shifted—

And men run forth in terror from the old before they can yet find firm ground for the new.

* * * * *

In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses,

The ground of society cracking, the fire showing through,

The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent heart heaving as though it would break—

At the sound of the new word spoken—

At the sound of the word Democracy.

* * * * *

No volcano bursting up through peaceful pastures is a greater revolution than this;

No vast mountain chain thrown out from ocean depths to form the primitive streak of a new continent looks further down the future;

For this is lava springing out of the very heart of Man;

This is the upheaval of heaven-kissing summits whose streams shall feed the farthest generations,

This is the draft and outline of a new creature,

The forming of the wings of Man beneath the outer husk—

The outspread pinions of Equality, whereon arising he shall at last lift himself over the Earth and launch forth to sail through Heaven.

THE MEANING OF IT ALL

Ages and ages back,

Out of the long grass with infinite pain raising itself into the upright position,

A creature—fore-runner of Man—with swift eyes glanced around.

* * * * *

So to-day once more,

With pain pain and suffering—driven by what strange instinct—who can tell?

Out of the great jungle of Custom and supposed Necessity, into a new and wonderful life, to new and wonderful knowledge,

Surpassing words, surpassing all past experience—the Man, the meaning of it all,

Uprears himself again.

THESE POPULATIONS

These populations—

So puny, white-faced, machine made,

Turned out of factories, out of offices, out of drawing-rooms, by thousands all alike—

Huddled, stitched up, in clothes, fearing a chill, a drop of rain, looking timidly at the sea and sky as at strange monsters, or running back so quick to their suburban runs and burrows,

Dapper, libidinous, cute, with washed-out small eyes—

What are these?

Are they men and women?

Each denying himself, hiding himself?

Are they men and women?

So timorous, like hares—a breath of propriety or custom, a draught of wind, the mere threat of pain or of danger?

* * * * *

O for a breath of the sea and the great mountains!

A bronzed hardy live man walking his way through it all;

Thousands of men companioning the waves and the storms, splendid in health, naked-breasted, catching the lion with their hands;

A thousand women swift-footed and free—owners of themselves, forgetful of themselves, in all their actions—full of joy and laughter and action;

Garbed not so differently from the men, joining with them in their games and sports, sharing also their labors;

Free to hold their own, to grant or withhold their love, the same as the men;

Strong, well-equipped in muscle and skill, clear of finesse and affectation—

(The men, too, clear of much brutality and conceit)—

Comrades together, equal in intelligence and adventure,

Trusting without concealment, loving without shame but with discrimination and continence towards a perfect passion.

* * * * *

O for a breath of the sea!

The necessity and directness of the great elements themselves!

Swimming the rivers, braving the sun, the cold, taming the animals and the earth, conquering the air with wings, and each other with love—

The true the human society!

ANDROMEDA

Now over the Mediterranean shore, fronting the sun,

In the great woods where only the peasant comes

And brings his bottle of wine, and figs, and goat-milk cheese—

The Gods yet dwell, but are not seen of men.

* * * * *

Steeply the ground slopes from the chestnut woods above,

Through tangles of pine and arbutus, myrtle and rosemary,

Down to the sea.

The tasseled evergreen oak grants densest shade—the acacia showers its fragrance on the air;

In open spots the rock-rose blooms,

And the green lizard’s little heart beats fast in the sun.

* * * * *

Here all day long mindful of times gone by

The sun yet lingers; from the slumbering sea

(On whose clear sands the yellow and hornéd poppy loves to stray)

Sometimes fair Aphrodite lifts an arm

Unseen of mortals.

The Dryads in the aspen branches wave

Their trembling fingers, and young Hyacinth

Droops earthward once more wounded by his lover.

* * * * *

But none resume their ancient human form.

He, the great Liberator, with the wand of love so wonderful

(Who dwelt on earth, and dwells not, but must dwell again),

He comes not—whom they wait.

The rocks, the trees, the flowers, the loving animals,

The sea, the heavenly winds,

The human form that chained within them all

Pleads for deliverance—

He comes not whom they wait.

* * * * *

Only the train shrieks by with monkey faces staring out of the windows;

Hotel and villa desecrate the land;

Wealth trails its slime; the Greek has fled; and Civilisation like a dismal dragon guards its prey.

THE TRIUMPH OF CIVILISATION

On the outskirts of a great city,

A street of fashionable mansions well withdrawn from all the noise and bustle;

And in the street—the only figure there—in the middle of the road, in the bitter wind,

Red-nosed, thin-shawled, with ancles bare and old boots,

A woman bent and haggard, croaking a dismal song.

* * * * *

And the great windows stare upon her wretchedness, and stare across the road upon each other,

With big fool eyes;

But not a door is opened, not a face is seen,

Nor form of life down all the dreary street,

To certify the existence of humanity—

Other than hers.

THE DEAD CHRIST

(_After the picture by Fra Bartolomeo_)

Once more the dead Christ lies—borne down the ages.

O precious head, still fragrant with the box of ointment broken,

O feet for kisses,

Thin shrunken knees, and hands yet worn with toil,

Dear Mother bending over, breathing clouds

Of love and pity!

Ah! the cruel fate!

Sweet lips she suckled, hands that pressed so small

Against her breasts—pierced now with shameful wounds!

The dead-pale face so gentle, the dear god

She brought forth on the Earth!

* * * * *

O People crucified in every land,

Mothers in all the earth weeping your sons!

Sisters and lovers kissing the feet of love,

Poor way-worn feet, gross toil-disfigured hands,

So loved, so loved!

* * * * *

Once more the dead Christ lies—borne down the ages.

CHRISTMAS EVE

Hark! the bells ringing!

In the deep night, in the depth of the winter of Man,

Lo! once more the son is born.

* * * * *

O agelong, not in Nazareth alone,

Nor now to-day—but through all ages of the past,

The bells of Christmas ringing:

The Savior-music like a dream from heaven

Touching the slumbering heart.

* * * * *

Sweet promise which the people with unerring instinct cling to!

O winter sun arising never more to set!

O Nature slowly changing, slow transforming to the hearts of men,

Shrine of the soul, shrine of the new-born god—of Man himself.

_Little heart within thy cage so many years—year after year—_

_Beating, still beating, so tenderly yearning_

_For Comrade love, the love which is to come;_

_Often near stopping, or wounded like a bird, so full of pain—thy thread of life almost snapt—_

_Yet with joy so wonderful over all and through all continuing:_

* * * * *

_Soon altogether shalt thou stop, little heart, and the beating and the pain here shall cease;_

_But out of thee that life breathed into the lips of others shall never stop nor cease._

_Through a thousand beautiful forms—so beautiful!—through the gates of a thousand hearts—emancipated freed we will pass on:_

_I and my joy will surely pass on._

WHEN I AM NEAR TO YOU

Now when I am near to you, dear friend,

Passing out of myself, being delivered—

Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so ardently loved,

I am become free;

In the sound of your voice I dwell

As in a world defended from evil.

* * * * *

What I am accounted by the world to be—all that I leave behind:

It is nothing to me any longer.

Like one who leaves a house with all its mouldy old furniture and pitches his camp under heaven’s blue,

So I take up my abode in your presence—

I find my deliverance in you.

CRADLED IN FLAME

Cradled in flame,

Or like a tiny charm-figure within an agate reclining, from that which encloses it inseparate, indivisible—

So, deep in my heart, through all that chances,

Thy form, thy form, indelible remains.

ALL NIGHT LONG

All night long in love, in the darkness, passing through your lips, my love—

Breathing the same breath, being folded in the same sleep, losing sense of Me and Thee,

Into empyreal regions, beloved of the gods, united, we ascend together.

* * * * *

Then in the morning on the high hill-side in the sun, looking down upon the spires of the larches and Scotch firs,

Mortal, we tread again the earthy floor.

* * * * *

O Earth, the floor of heaven—

O Sun, shining aloft in the sky so pure—

O children of the sun, ye flowers and streams, and little mortals walking the earth for a time—

And we too gazing for a time, for a time, for a time, into each other’s eyes.

OF THE PAST

Of the Past—of those that come no more—

Of the feet that tread the door-sill no more, of the eyes we no more can look into—

The sound of the voice so longed for, but it is not heard,

The one human form sought for over all the world, in all the throngs of cities, by sea-coasts and bays, over far continents and islands,

Among all the habitations of the stars, but it is not there—

* * * * *

Of the self swooning down, dying utterly,

Of love, love, without end and without beginning,

Visiting all mortals, the sum of human life,

With wings like a vast bird passing in the night—veiled awful form so close, yet impossible to detain:

Why dear face so white in the night—so white in the moon’s faint light as it steals along the hill-top—

Dear face gazing up into mine, dost thou remind me?

LOVE’S VISION

At night in each other’s arms,

Content, overjoyed, resting deep deep down in the darkness,

Lo! the heavens opened and He appeared—

Whom no mortal eye may see,

Whom no eye clouded with Care,

Whom none who seeks after this or that, whom none who has not escaped from self.

* * * * *

There—in the region of Equality, in the world of Freedom no longer limited,

Standing as a lofty peak in heaven above the clouds,

From below hidden, yet to all who pass into that region most clearly visible—

He the Eternal appeared.

NEARER THAN EVER NOW

If I should be taken up into Thee, O blue blue sky—to pass the bounds of myself, to share thy life, O Nature:

Pouring pouring upon all the words which now are distilled only painfully from me—pressed out, expressed—

To mingle my breath with Thy breath, my body and its liquids with the earth and the sea—losing my mortal outline in Thine:

Ah! unto those that I love swiftly running I would become their life,

Nearer would I touch them then, than ever now that I am prisoned in this form.

O THOU WHOSE FORM

O thou whose form is ever in my heart,

O flesh that holds me pent with terrible force,

Dear limbs and lips that seize upon my life

And in your fire consume it—O sweet love:

Lo all I see—

The clear and sunny hills, the woods, the streams,

The orchards, fields, the lines of poplars tall,

The belfried towns, the river at my feet,

The great blue sky, yea He who stands behind it—

Are mine for thee, to lose themselves in thee.

THE ELDER SOLDIER IN THE BROTHERHOOD TO THE YOUNGER

Dear comrade, at whose feet thus now I kneel,

Of you perhaps so soon to be seen no more—

Here I give you my charge, that afterwards remembering and desiring me,

You may find me again in these others.

* * * * *

Slowly out of their faces I will emerge to you—lo! I swear it,

By the falling rain and dimpled thunderclouds in the East I swear it—

[To become your life whom I have loved so long]

With love absorbing, joy and blessedness enclosing,

I will emerge to you.

* * * * *

That you now to other comrades, and these again to others,

Over the whole world may bear the glad covenant, perfected, finished—

To form an indissoluble union and compact, a brotherhood unalterable,

Far-pervading, fresh and invisible as the wind, united in Freedom—

A golden circle of stamens, hidden beneath the petals of humanity,

And guarding the sacred ark.

* * * * *

Through heroisms and deaths and sacrifices,

Always for the poor and despised, always for the outcast and oppressed,

Through kinship with Nature, and the free handling of all forms and customs,

Through the treasured teaching of inspired ones—never lost and never wholly given to the world, but always emerging—

Through love, faithful love and comradeship, at last emancipating the soul into that other realm (of freedom and joy) into which it is permitted to no mortal to enter—

Thus to realise the indissoluble compact, to reveal the form of humanity.

* * * * *

To you, dear comrade, I transmit this charge—bequeathed also to me—

In love remaining faithful to you, as now, never to change,

Through all times and vicissitudes faithful faithful to you.

Here now at your feet, leaning on your knees, in your eyes deep-looking,

All that I have said I confirm.

INTO THE REGIONS OF THE SUN

So at last passing (the great sea stilled, the raging ocean)—passing away,

All sorrow left behind, the great intolerable burdens which men vainly try to carry,

All all abandoned, left there lying—

Suddenly lightened, like a bird that shakes itself free from the limed twigs,

Soaring, soaring, into joy supernal passing,

Lo! the dead we leave behind and pass to the realms of the living.

* * * * *

And not we alone.

By our love poured out, by the manifold threads and strands of attachment to others— which cannot now be severed;

By not one inwardly refused or disowned whom we have ever met;

By the dear arms of lovers circling each other all night long, by their kisses and mingled breath,

And love by night and day—thinking of each other when absent, rejoicing so to be near;

By tramps over the hills, and days spent together in the woods and by watersides;

By our life-long faithful love—(ah! what more beautiful, what in all this world more precious!)

By the life-long faithful comradeship now springing on all sides, the Theban band henceforth to overcome the world—its heroisms and deaths—

And him who gave the calamus-token first;

By all these—

Not alone, no longer alone—

* * * * *

But drawing an innumerable multitude with us,

Into the regions of the sun, into the supernal æther,

With love perfected, bodies changed, and joy—ah! joy on earth unutterable—

Lo! the dead we leave behind, and pass to the realms of the living.

AS IT HAPPENED

Cross-legged in a low tailor’s den, gasping for breath—

The gas flaring, doors and windows tight shut, the thick sick atmosphere;

The men in their shirt-sleeves, with close heat from the stove, and smell of sweat and of the cloth;

Stitching, stitching, 12 hours a day, no set time for meals—

Stitching, cross-stitching, button-holing, binding,

Silk twist, cotton twist, black thread, white thread,

Stouting, felling, pressing, damping,

Basting, seaming, opening seams, rantering,

With sore eyes, sick sick at heart, and furious,

In the low tailor’s den he sits.

* * * * *

All day in his mind—like a hunted criminal—he revolves: How shall I escape?

How change this miserable pittance for Freedom, and yet not starve?

At night after some brief dream of joy he wakes to tears, tears, tears—

Drenching his bed with tears.

* * * * *

No God, no Truth, no Justice—and under it all, no Love.

[This is what is slowly killing him—no Love.]

A little fire burns in his heart, burns night and day;

The slow pain kills—no Love.

* * * * *

O the deep deep hunger!

The mean life all around, the wolfish eyes, the mere struggle for existence, as of men starving on a raft at sea—no room for anything more.

All that he has read in books, all the stories of other times and lands—Mignon, Eloise, Eros the beautiful boy wandering over the world—so wonderful a world, and he in this prison, this filthy den!

O the deep deep hunger of Love!

All the obscene talk of the shop is neither here nor there: it cannot fill the void:

The shallow laughter of his companions and the bought kisses of the street-girls are the mere husks that the swine did eat.

* * * * *

O little heart, beating, beating!

Heart once so strong, full-pulsed; now often at night out of some dream of Splendor—

[Dream of Love—some shining form within a garden and at the gate stands a bearded man, dagger in hand, saying “Thou canst not enter here, except thou pass the Ordeal.”

And he in his dream, beholding Love beyond, bares his breast gladly to the knife, and feels the sharp point turn within his heart]—

Waking thus oft to pain and sick sick powerless days,

At last little heart thy strength gives way indeed.

Stumbling, with strange uncertain motion, like one confused—now hurrying on,

Now halting in thy pace as near to stop,

That something’s wrong with thee is past a doubt.

* * * * *

And the grave doctor comes and says the valves are weak, and recommends rest and good food and fresh air and other things that are not to be had: but says nothing of that which lies nearest to the patient.

And he, the patient, half misdoubts himself—thinks likely the doctor knows best—feels only strangely dull and indifferent; and after a while rises and goes back to his den and takes his place once more cross-legged amongst the rest, stitching, stitching; and the horns on his heel and ancle grow again, and the air seems closer and more suffocating than ever; but he drags through the days, ever more lethargic growing, caring not much whether he die or live—thinking perhaps to die on the whole were better.

* * * * *

When, as it happened—and this was the strangest of all—quite suddenly, the most unexpected thing in the world,

To a casual little club, which once a week he was in the habit of attending, there came one night a new member,

Of athletic strength and beauty, yet gentle in his manners,

And with a face like a star—so stedfast clear and true that he the sufferer felt renewed by merely looking on it.

But what was even more strange, the newcomer turning spoke friendly to him, and soon seemed to understand,

And from that time forward came and companioned and nursed him, and stayed whole nights and days with him and loved him.

* * * * *

And out of his despair there grew something so glorious that he forgets it not, night nor day;

Great waves of health and strength come to him—as to a man who after the long Arctic night bathes in the warmth and light of the re-arisen Sun;

Even the wretched tailor’s den is transformed; but soon leaving that he accepts by preference the poorest work in the open under heaven,

And breathes again, and tastes the sweet air afresh;

And watches a new sun rise in the mornings and a new transparency among the stars at night;

And the body grows strong and hardy, and the little heart gathers and knits itself together,

And sings, sings, sings:

Sings all day to its friend whether present or absent.

PARTED LIPS

Parted lips, between which love dwells—

Only a little space of breath and shadow,

Yet here the gate of all the world to me.

SUMMER HEAT

Sun burning down on back and loins, penetrating the skin, bathing their flanks in sweat,

Where they lie naked on the warm ground, and the ferns arch over them,

Out in the woods, and the sweet scent of fir-needles

Blends with the fragrant nearness of their bodies;

* * * * *

In-armed together, murmuring, talking,

Drunk with wine of Eros’ lips,

Hourlong, while the great wind rushes in the branches,

And the blue above lies deep beyond the fern-fronds and fir-tips;

* * * * *

Till, with the midday sun, fierce scorching, smiting,

Up from their woodland lair they leap, and smite,

And strike with wands, and wrestle, and bruise each other,

In savage play and amorous despite.

A RIVEDERCI

Once more in dreams, wandering along the road by the sea,

I tarry a moment leaning my elbows on the wall beside you—

I look out over the blue waves with your eyes, and feel the sun on me as you that feel it;

My mother it is that sits in the balcony among her pots of oleander in the little narrow street, my boat that lies half-heeled upon the sand;

These are my mountains that I love,

This is your face and mine clear-cut upon the air,

Your life-warm lips I kiss and mine you kiss again,

And laughing part with bright _a rivederci_.

WHO WILL LEARN FREEDOM?

Who will learn Freedom?

* * * * *

Lo! as the air blows wafting the clinging aromatic scent of the balsam poplar, dear to me,

Or the sun-warm fragrance of wallflowers, tarrying here for a moment, then floating far down the road and away;

Or as the early light edging the hills, so calm, unprejudiced, open to all;

So shall you find what you seek in men and women—your passage and swift deliverance.

* * * * *

As when one opens a door after long confinement in the house—so out of your own plans and purposes escaping,

Out of the many mirror-lined chambers of self (grand though they be, but O how dreary!) in which you have hitherto spent your life—

In these behold once more the incommunicable freedom of the sky, the green hills, the woods and the waters,

To pass in and out for ever, having abandoned your own objects, looking calmly upon them, as though they did not exist.

* * * * *

Now who so despised and lost, but what shall be my Savior?

Is there one yet sick and suffering in the whole world? or deformed, condemned, degraded?

Thither hastening I am at rest—for this one can absolve me.

O I am greedy of love—all all are beautiful to me!

You my deliverers every one—from death, from sin, from evil—

I float, I dissolve in you!

* * * * *

O bars of self you cannot shut me now.

O frailest child, O blackest criminal,

Whoe’er you are I never can repay you—though the world despise you, you are glorious to me;

For you have saved me from myself,

You delivered me when I was in prison—

I passed through you into heaven,

You were my Christ to me.

AFTER ALL SUFFERING

After all suffering, after all weariness and denial—

The heart almost stopped, food ceasing to nourish, grief making the tongue dry,

All pleasure in life ceasing, unable to rouse interest in any object or pursuit,

But love—and that gone far away!

After all,

Nearer to thy heart, O humanity,

By this of suffering we come.

* * * * *

I know that thou canst not deny me:

I know that each pain is a door by which I approach one degree nearer to thee.

What sorrow is there but I have shared it?

What grief but it has removed an obstruction between me and some one else?

Look in my face and see. You cannot bar me now.

I pass all doors, and am where I would be.

WHEN A THOUSAND YEARS HAVE PASSED

Think not that the love thou enterest into to-day is for a few months or years:

The little seed set now must lie quiet before it will germinate, and many alternations of sunshine and shower descend upon it before it become even a small plant.

When a thousand years have passed, come thou again. And behold! a mighty tree that no storms can shake.

* * * * *

Love does not end with this life or any number of lives; the form that thou seekest lies hidden under wrapping after wrapping;

Nevertheless it shall at length appear—more wondrous far than aught thou hast imagined.

Therefore leave time: do not like a child pull thy flower up by the roots to see if it is growing;

Even though thou be old and near the grave there is plenty of time.

A MESSAGE COMMITTED TO THE WAVES

I see the waters flowing as of old—dancing, rippling,

O so light and beautiful;

The river-banks, and pollard willows leaning, and bulrushes where as boys we used to linger.

* * * * *

All transmuted, turned into words and tongues, licking me round like flames—unearthly, scorching;

All transmuted—the soft water-depths, the weeds below, the dimples of sunlight dancing,

The shrill piping of the lark, the kine knee-deep in grass, and the piled thunderclouds floating in the summer haze—

Like flames, unearthly, scorching.

* * * * *

For here on this water and round these banks we came floating—troops of friends—yet not on this water; by these banks, yet not by them.

And the dimples glanced, and the birds sang—as now, yet O how different!

* * * * *

Mystery, mystery!

O wonderful orb of creation!

O frame, beauteous ever-living twining frame of human love, chalice of precious drops poured out, mystic scroll on which our lives in blood are written,

Great great awful indivisible Nature—birthplace and grave of Humanity!

* * * * *

Tremble tremble, O waves—bear my love too on your breasts to generations yet unborn;

(Lo! to you I commit it!)

Hear me ye perennial tongues and flames, ye fields and skies speak speak what I command you!

Ye hieroglyphics stand untampered to remotest time!

O grasses growing so lush about my feet and the feet of those who pass, while ever you grow on earth forget not the bleeding drops wherewith you have been watered!

Waft, O breezes, our love and the love of all true lovers, and fail not while you blow to bring glad messages to those who faint;

For we are borne upon you—

I am borne upon you. From this body, broken and useless, from this mortal here and there, I fade, I fail utterly; I cannot remain, it is no use;

Pouring pouring out, losing my name and place, flowing abroad, surrendering myself to all—I depart, to join the invisible.

Ah heaven! Ah sounds of harmony ineffable!

Ah tears, and deeps of sorrow dread and soundless!

Ah love! ah precious love including all!

* * * * *

So still to all—

To those lingering in prison,

To the aged and forsaken, stranded like wrecks on the bleak shore of life,

To the heartbroken and weary, to those stunned with despair;

To the wife awaking to the treachery of her husband;

To the exile leaving his dear ones, and probably for ever; to the crippled and incapable and diseased;

To the pinned workers in back streets oscillating drearily between the home and the workshop;

To those of the hopeless sad mechanical days over all the earth—the outcast, the shunned, the persecuted;

The closing days, the narrowing grooves, the heart touched no more by the sweet illusions, no more to hope responding, no more to the call of religion;

Ah to all in the mighty brotherhood sufferers—

Dearest, most precious ones,

Corner-stones of human life, hidden bearers of burdens, under-girders of the great ship with its incalculable freight!

Dearest and most precious of all—ah, sufferers, sufferers,

To you we give our love—

Arise! for great is your triumph!

REST AT LAST

Ah! love—having journeyed through all of life, having become freed even from thee—there remains nothing glorious but thee.

Exhaled out of all frailty, out of this little tenement of flesh, so ephemeral,

Out of these hands and feet which are and are not—out of these eyes through which I look, on which I look—

THOU hast taken possession of earth and heaven: the sun is thy right hand and the moon thy left:

In Thee all forms, of all I seek, are mine,

And I in them attain at last to rest.

THE WIND OF MAY

O glorious wind, that in my lover’s face blowest,

Even as now in mine—though the deep sea part us—

Fragrant wind, with heart so tenderly laden,

Tell him, my lover, against whose face thou goest,

In his ears and nostrils and eyes and thick hair rippling—

Whose passion-fountain he too, nightlong, daylong,

Drinks at, inbreathing thee—sweet wind, O tell him

My love like thine for ever endures, and fails not.

* * * * *

Great cloud-wet wind, through the thick woods heavily trailing,

Mid millions of flowers their sex-life’s sweetness exhaling,

Hyacinth-bell and May-bloom in countless beauty:

Feed him, body and soul, with secrets fairest,

Disclose thy heart, O wind, and the love thou bearest.

_O Earth, scene of what toil and anguish!_

_Century after century, thousands thousands of years,_

_What reek of battles, smoke of vast wilderness-cities,_

_Going up from age to age, losing itself in the calm immeasurable blue._

* * * * *

_O wonderful unutterable secret! the moon gliding through the trees!_

_The soul of man slowly transforming itself, growing bursting through the sheaths—the stars looking on!_

_The new creature born anew, in travail and in suffering, ascending into heaven;_

_Ah! songs and harmonies angelic sounding—ah! joy the mortal frame can scarce sustain!_

A VOICE OVER THE EARTH

The sound of a voice floating round the Earth, saying:

Lo! I float over the world and over all cities and lands—wherever men and women are at home I am at home.

I

The snowy peaks, in ranges, that guard the cradles of the human race—rising over their rocky cliffs, out of their valleys full of trees—the wind fluctuating the forests, the clouds swift-flying over the topmost jags;

The great plains, and lower lands, dotted with farms and villages and cities, for scores, hundreds, thousands, of miles;

The winding rivers and the islands, and the broad seas;

All these I see, and those that inhabit them,

Over the world I float, I range all human experience.

II

The broad Italian landscape spreads below me—the lands of the upper Po and Bormida;

I see the wave-like congregated hills terraced with vines to their very tops, the pink or yellow painted homesteads dotted here and there, the arched stone barns, and villages clustered on the hill tops with belfries high against the sky.

The old woman, my mother, with walnut brown skin haunts the lonely farmhouse all day while the others are in the field;

She wanders from chamber to chamber, hardly knowing what she is doing. Her memory carries her back to the far past—she lives not in the present.

Sometimes into the great attic overhead she climbs, with its huge roof-beams and brick floor, and spreads the grapes to dry or leisurely picks them over.

The haymakers work barefoot in the clover patch, turning the clover and loading the low-wheeled waggon in the fragrant transparent evening;

The peasant plows with his one-stilted plow, or creaks along the road with his cart and yoke of cream-colored oxen;

The girls and women with red or yellow kerchiefs stand among the branches of the mulberry trees by the roadside, picking leaves for the silkworms;

The country folk congregate on the steps of the village church, looking out over the hills—the women passing in by ones and twos;

The men play _mora_ over their wine in the little hostelry; the boys play at ball down the narrow by-streets, using the roofs and buttresses to baffle their opponents’ strokes;

The old play of daily life goes on—the centuries-long play;

The ruins of the Roman aqueduct still cross the bed of the river, the ruins of Roman words and customs still lie embedded in the life of to-day;

The old blood still runs in the veins, the water runs in the rivers, the crops grow in the fields—the light of youth, of love, of old age, of death, shines in the eyes.

* * * * *

From the accident of here and now,

From this hill whence for a moment I overlook the fair garden of human life, from this few feet of human flesh which I inhabit,

From these fierce desires which hem me in, these defects, these limitations, these mortal sufferings,

This little creature-dom, this brief emprisonment of life,

I descend, I pass, I flow down,

[O words so vain to tell—O strange incredible transformation!]

I pass, I flow down, into the freedom of all times, into the latitude of all places.

* * * * *

I work on the hills once more with the slave and the freedman among the vines, I mix the mortar for them that build the aqueduct;

The lover and his girl lean against my breast in the moonlight long ages back as now;

The face of the mother understands my face a thousand and ten thousand years ago, as it does to-day;

I am the cream-colored ox with mild eyes, and I am the driver who curses and goads it;

I am the lover and the loved—I have lost and found my identity.

III

The Piedmontese peasant takes me again into his little cottage of sun-dried bricks among the vineyards, and gives me a glass of cool wine in the shade;

I see again the scantily furnished interior, the floor of native rock, the rickety ladder which serves for staircase to the chamber above, the table and chairs and one or two cooking utensils;

And the great frame of sticks and canes, big as a four-poster bedstead, where he breeds his thousands of silkworms.

But here too, alas! there is grief; for the poor son, so passionately loved of his mother, is wasting away apparently in a decline;

All day with shawl thrown over him he squats in the sun by the door, or walks feebly to and fro, unable to help his father in the field—at night he lies awake and hears the wearisome rustle of the silkworms eating their food;

The mother prays the good God, but knows not whether anything comes of it—the little figure of Mary in the niche of the wall looks just the same though hearts are breaking.

IV

Ah! fragrance of human love exhaled!

Great clouds from frail and perishable forms escaping silently,

Into the night, into the vast aerial night of Time!

The little flash of youth, the reaching of hands to hands, of hearts to hearts, of lips to lips,

The closing in of the outer shell, the chrysalis-death, and the terrible struggles for liberation;

The larvæ crawling the earth for a time—on hill-sides and in valleys, in huts and palaces—chained to their little plots of earth, their few frail feet of flesh;

The great thunderclouds passing over from snowy range to range, touching the little creatures with their shadows;

The great sun out of the unfathomable touching them too with his finger—breeding slowly but surely within them the life which must destroy their mortality.

V

Onwards, onwards, I float.

The smoke and glare, the confused roar and tumult of a manufacturing town spread all around; sounds of voices ascend past me into the silent supernal blue.

In the tobacco factory amid rows of girls, with my little bit of mirror or comb concealed in a nook of my bench—I sit—or photograph placed where I can see it as I work;

Or in the printing office of the daily paper—printing reports of law-courts and cricket-matches—I scramble with five or six others to the boxes for a fat take.

* * * * *

The long trial is over, and I am the prisoner on whom sentence has been pronounced.

The judge in scarlet and ermine, preceded by liveried heralds blowing trumpets, strides down the corridors and through the crowd thronging the steps of the Town Hall, into his blue and silver paneled coach;

Hustled and thumped and buffeted by the police, I am fetched from the dock by underground passages to the prison van, and bumped through the streets to the gaol—there to await my execution.

* * * * *

Pale and desperate in the cutlery buffing shop boys and girls bend over their wheels;

In squalor and monotony the winter daylight through dirty windows dawns and dies away again upon them;

In squalor and monotony the light of youth and of hope dawns and dies away again from their eyes;

The master looks round with his hands in his pockets, well satisfied;

The cheap goods ready to fall to pieces as soon as used are duly packed and despatched to African and Pacific Island traders.

* * * * *

Civilisation plays its part in the history of each nation and each individual,

Unerringly the time of its unfoldment to each arrives, and again the time of its dismissal and departure.

* * * * *

Brawny figures move to and fro in the iron works, halfseen through clouds of flying steam or against the glare of furnaces;

The flame of the Bessemer cupola roars, with showers of sparks, and rattling of cranes, and shouts of men;

The foreman stands calmly aside, spectroscope in hand, or gives a signal with uplifted arm;

I see the reversing of the cupola, and the outpour of molten steel, lilac with yellowing vapor around it;

The rose-colored shafts of sunlight through the high roof, the terraces and platforms, the glints and halos amid the vapor;

The balcony where the men stand with their hydraulic handles controlling the huge lifts and cranes beneath them;

The groups steadying with iron poles and hooks the great lifted ingots of steel, or regulating the outflow of liquid stuff into the moulds;

The man in a corner washing his shoulders and head in a bucket of water;

The steam-hammers, the blocks of yellow-hot iron shimmering in the heated air;

The steel-melter’s men around the crucibles with their tongs—their feet and legs swathed in rags to keep off the heat, their sweat-handkerchiefs held between their teeth;

The daring, recklessness even at times, the delight in the power and endurance—the drink, gross talk, rough jokes—throwing the great pressures upon the novices or shamming to pick quarrels with them;

The planing and cutting of armor-plates, the huge resistless steam-driven machinery, the gouges and drills,

The shaping of the plates (each one numbered) to the lines of the ships they are intended for—the careful drawing and planning, and following out of the plans;

The transporting of them to the sea-coast, the riveting of them each in its place;

And the floating away of these thousands of tons over the ocean and round the bend of the world.

* * * * *

And he at the forge streaming with sweat, the striker, with bared breast, turning out claw-hammer heads by the score,

Keeps dreaming and dreaming all day between the strokes, of love which is to come and change our earth into heaven;

But his brother who works with him laughs at his dreams—and the spring comes in the woods to all alike:

The gnarled oak breaks into pale yellow buds against the blue, the mouse stirs under the dry grass, and the corn-crake runs with head erect among the young green blades of corn.

VI

Each morning anew the mist rests on the hills; the sun rises on fresh clouds to be dispersed;

It splinters its shafts against the great rock face, and brings out in bold relief the figure of the quarryman in his loose blue-checked shirt;

Where on a projecting angle he stands, with mighty hammer-stroke driving the brods and wedges;

Now he splits off a great mass and displaces it with the crowbar,

While overhead among the tree-roots, in a sunny niche of the barings,

A sparrow chirps cheerfully to him.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the scythe-smith goes to see what he can do for his brother in prison;

He takes the train and finds out the public-house to which the turnkey goes, and gives him half-a-sovereign to get his brother something to eat.

The turnkey is a mild old man and would not willingly harm anybody;

He says nothing to the prisoner, but when he leaves his cell each day he quietly drops a good-sized tommy behind him.

* * * * *

And this is the Hogarthian interior of the Lincolnshire dancing chamber: the gas, the smoke, the fiddle-scrape, the slopped drink;

The great projecting bay-window with seats in it, the twilight fading on the groups in the market-place without;

The Dutch-looking ramshackle rooms lighting into one another—farmers’ men and girls tumbling and sitting on each other’s knees;

Fat women gyrating together; the young man pressing his comrade to him in the dance;

The middle-aged farmer slipping off into a barn at the back with a great wench: she cries, “How good, how good it is, O come again!”

IN THE CHAMBER OF BIRTH

In the chamber of birth,

Calm and joyful the exhausted mother, with disheveled hair, lies obliquely across the bed—the little primitive conical-skulled god rests snug on the pillow in front of her:

The baffling infant face, with closed eyes and flexible upper lip, and storms and sunshine sweeping across its tiny orb, and filmy clouds of expression!

* * * * *

But for her O the rest, the rest and the peace now it is all over—no desire to move, only to lie and rest for joy!

While the bustling cheerful midwife is full of praises and congratulations, and the good anxious husband comes to the door smiling again at last.

A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS

Outside, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully upon the little cottage far away among the hills—

Where within the old human drama repeats itself.

The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow by the chimney-corner—her little grandson leans against her knee;

The other children (for some have come in from a neighboring cottage, and Christmas is now approaching) sing hymn after hymn in tireless trebles, and the old grand-dad tones the bass in now and then with still melodious voice;

While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of the week’s work, and of her runaway drunken husband) the mother strips her youngest naked in the firelight.

* * * * *

Ah! the tender dreams, the griefs, the passions, and the shattered hopes!

The long culminating experience!

The slow change of the words the children sing—to meanings unimagined!

* * * * *

The flickering light on joists and rafters of the low ceiling;

The old man bent with toil (road-mending now these fifty years);

The rosy children with wide open mouths; the dear god whom they sing of—ever-coming, ever-expected;

The rose-bud black-eyed boy against his granny’s knee;

And she—her white white hair, high brows, and pale transparent face—so sacred, calm,

Most like the moonlight shining there without.

ALICE

With little red frock in the fire-light, in the lingering April evening—

(The moonlight over the tree-tops just beginning to shine in at the cottage door)—

Her big brown eyes and comical big mouth for very gladness unresting, like a small brown fairy—

She stands, the five-year-old child.

* * * * *

Then, so gentle, with tiny tripping speech, and with a little wave of the hand—

“Good-night” she says to the fire and to the moon,

And kissing the elder wearier faces,

Runs off to bed and to sleep in the lap of heaven.

BABY SONG

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,

Sing song, all day long—

Father’s gone away for many a day, but he’ll come back again,

Over the waters, before long.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down,

Sun shine, winds blow—far behind baby the waters flow;

Winds and sun round him run, peep in his eyes and off they go—

All in fun.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, O what tears!

Little heart break, little breast shake—fie such tears!

Mother’s arms so tired with dancing,

All day long;

Baby baby—always baby—fretting crying all day long.

* * * * *

Baby baby, come to Mammy,

Stifle sobs upon her breast—

Little blunt gums on the nipple,

That’s the feel we both love best;

Sleep will soon come after titty,

Sobs will cease and baby rest.

* * * * *

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, sleeping sound:

By the door we stand a moment—moonlight dappled on the ground:

Winds are sleeping, waters calm,

Keep our little babe from harm.

* * * * *

The great Earth shall be his cradle,

Rocking rocking day by day;

Star-bespangled curtains spread

Every night above his head;

Suns on suns shall gild his brow:

Baby baby, What art Thou?

EARLY MORNING

The thrush sings meditative high in the bare oak-boughs—while the still April morning just drops with faint rain, and the honeysuckle climbs snakelike with green wings among the underwood;

The voice of the ploughman sounds across the valley, and the cackle of the farmyard mingles with the rumble of a distant train on its way to the great city:

* * * * *

Where, in her boudoir, by the light of the dying fire—the shutters yet closed and the candles guttered and gone out—she lies, the Paris beauty, naked on her low tiger-skin couch;

And he, her lover, naked too, on the floor beside her has slipped—his head bent forward, and asleep—with her hand in his dark short hair.

THE GOLDEN WEDDING

Now fifty years through wind and sun and rain,

Through the sweet heyday of youth, through life’s maturity and age,

We’ve bloomed and withered, dearest, side by side,

Two trees upon one root.

* * * * *

Rememberest thou

How hand in hand schoolwards we ran, we two,

With tiny feet? Yes, we two, is it not strange?

Or later how the merry pealing bells rang us to Church (no music I thought like them);

Then we reared five children, fell on troublous times, and toiled and suffered till we tired of life.

And they went one by one, and launched upon the world and sailed away,

Proud, with all canvas set, while we are left,