Nineveh, and Other Poems by George Sylvester Viereck
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Title:Nineveh and other poems / George Sylvester Viereck [electronic text]

Author:Viereck, George Sylvester, 1884-1962

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Print Source:Nineveh and other poems George Sylvester Viereck

Moffat, Yard & Company

New York

1907

Page [i]

NINEVEH

AND

OTHER POEMS

Page [ii]

Page [iii]

NINEVEH

AND

OTHER POEMS

BY

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK

NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY

1907

Page [iv]

Copyright, 1907, by MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY NEW YORK

Published April, 1907 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Page [v]

To

Richard Le Gallienne

Page [vi]

Page [vii]

NOTE

The author desires to express his obligation to his friends, Mr. William Ellery Leonard and Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn, for their permission to reprint in the present collection their respective versions of “Prince Carnival” and “The Scarlet Flower.” Nor can he send forth this book without a word of gratitude to his other friends, especially Mrs. Elsa Barker, Mr. A. I. du P. Coleman and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, for helpful suggestion and generous assistance.

Page [viii]

Page [ix]

Page [x]

CONTENTS

SALUATION

THE SUPPLIANT3

PRAYER4

PREMONITION5

NINEVEH

THE EMPIRE CITY11

NINEVEH15

THE BOOK OF IDOLS

TO *33

THE DUMB IDOL34

KAKODAIMON38

PRINCE CARNIVAL40

THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX42

WHEN IDOLS FALL47

THE SPHINX50

A BALLAD OF SIN57

GOLGOTHA

CONFESSION65

PROVOCATIO AD MARIAM67

BEFORE THE CROSS69

THE GARDEN OF PASSION

SPRING73

A SPRING BLESSING75

LOVE’S SILENCE78

REDEEMED79

LOVE TRIUMPHANT81

SUNSET84

THE SCARLET FLOWER85

MR. W. H.87

FOR ANTINOUS IN HIS OLD AGE88

TO SLEEP89

PRAYER OF SOULS IN NEED90

RESURRECTION91

THE BALLAD OF NUN AND KNIGHT92

LOVE IN DREAMLAND94

FRIENDSHIP96

WASTED SONGS97

LORD EROS98

AT CROSS-ROADS99

AUTUMN100

LOVE CRUEL102

SILENTIUM POETĆ103

THE LAST CHORD104

A LEAVE TAKING 105

Page xi

SOUTHERN SUMMER106

LOVE’S QUEST107

IN THE AGORA

TO A DEFEATED CANDIDATE111

HEINE IN NEW YORK112

THE NEW COLOSSUS IN 1907113

MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM

AIOGYNE117

AIANDER121

THE MAGIC CITY

A POET’S CREED127

TO SWINBURNE128

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE129

THE POET131

CONSOLATION132

HADRIAN133

ART137

THE MAGIC CITY142

THE HAUNTED HOUSE149

THE THREE SPHINXES153

Page [xii]

Page xiii

PREFACE

THE splendid heritage of two languages has fallen to me from a German father and an American mother. My ears have listened to the music of two worlds. Many of the poems in the present collection were written in the language in which they are here presented. Others were originally composed in German and rewritten in English. The latter are as metals transmuted by verbal alchemy and, with the exception of two, in no sense translations. I cannot, therefore, claim, for any part of my work, the indulgence commonly granted to painstaking translators by benevolent critics. Each of my poems must be judged by whatever intrinsic value it may possess. It must also be judged as a whole. It must not be viewed from one narrow angle of vision 
moral, ćsthetic, or philosophic. The truth, I take it, has many sides.

Art, like life, is Janus-faced. In fact, it has many faces. The hopelessly Puritanical attitude which has found its most characteristic utterance,

Page xiv

and  it was to be hoped  its extinction, in the pitiful voice of Robert Buchanan, is no more absurd than the affectation of those who, proclaiming their discipleship to art for art’s sake, in reality crown pose with the diadem of emotion, and upon the throne of beauty set technique.

The question arises: Is there any positive test of literary achievement?

Matthew Arnold’s definitions, set forth in his introduction to Ward’s “English Poets,” are suggestive, if unsatisfactory. In every poet’s work we discover single poems, which, by common consent, outshine their companions without necessarily excelling in earnestness of purpose or verbal beauty, rhythmic splendour or originality of conception. They throb with a mysterious vitality which, while it may elude definition, is unmistakably felt. Arnold’s “touch-stones” of poetry fall under this category; likewise Leigh Hunt’s “Jenny Kissed Me,” Rossetti’s “Blessed Damozel,” Markham’s “Man with the Hoe,” Poe’s “Raven,” and Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol.” I have purposely chosen dissimilar examples. The pieces have, however, one quality in common, which, for lack of a better name, I should like to term finality of expression. That is, they solve without a remainder the equation between thought and utterance. They express,

Page xv

with supreme aptitude, finally and for all time, some mundane experience, some note in the infinite scale. No latter poet can add to them, or detract. Their impressiveness is enduring, their vitality ultimate. The measure of a poet’s art is the frequency with which he attains or, at least, approaches finality of expression.

Form and content in poetry are co-ordinate. In order to achieve finality it is essential that the metric coat shall fit exactly. Existing conventional forms, like ready-made garments, may at times fulfil the requirements; frequently they will not. It then behooves a poet to modify them or, better still, to create new forms intimately adapted to the exigencies of the occasion. Though the instinctive sureness of Milton’s touch enabled him to set aside traditional restrictions, the eighteenth century crushed freedom within form so effectually that, in spite of the romantic revival, our poets have not, as a rule, followed in his steps.

Thought is now stretched out, now mangled upon the Procrustean bed of conventional music. Men have forgotten that rhyme and metre are only means to an end. In art, at least, the end justifies the means. The poet’s ear, not the number of feet, is the plenipotent arbiter of form, and the melodious impressiveness of a poem as a whole, the final criterion

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of poetic technique. The poet of the future will be an impressionist. By unheard-of devices he will wrest new music from the language, and raise a crop of roses from gardens hitherto neglected and sterile. He will also utilise, not repudiate, the resources already at hand, and put to a nobler and broader application the sonant heirloom of the past. It is the freedom of Pindar for which I plead, not the freedom of Whitman. I plead for this freedom, not only in the ode, but in all poetry. Thus form will not be overthrown, but more firmly and exquisitely established. Not the line or stanza, but the whole poem will be the unit of the new poetry, and each poem will possess a rhythmic individuality unique to itself.

In the majority of my own poems I made concession to time-honoured canons.

Then, instinctively, at first, I began to strive for a rhythmic speech more flexible, and, if possible, more musical. In “A Ballad of Sin” and “The Smile of the Sphinx” I was groping for the new form. In “Kakodaimon”

I came nearer to it, and in “A Spring Blessing,” “Art,” “The Magic City”

and “The Three Sphinxes” my efforts are most consciously directed and most fully developed. If I am right, I have extended the borderland of poetry into the domain of music on the one side, into that of the intellect on the other. The new

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form, new in that it has never before been consciously applied, brings into play hidden possibilities of speech, and enables the authentic poet to multiply rhymes and rhythmic effects without straining the sense. The lyre, henceforth obeying only a master-hand, will slip from the grasp of the tyro, and poetry become once more the vehicle of great thought. The lyrist who fully adopts the new form and its practically limitless resources will accomplish for poetry what Wagner has accomplished for music. Along the lines here indicated lies the poetry of to-morrow.

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.

Page [xviii]

Page [1]

SALUTATION

Page [2]

Page 3

THE SUPPLIANT

Beyond the sea a land of heroes lies,

Of fairy heaths and rivers, mountains steep, O’ergrown with vine  her memory I shall keep Most dear, her heritage most dearly prize.

But lo, a lad, I left her, and mine eyes Fell on the sea-girt mistress of the deep, What time my boy’s heart heard as in a sleep The choral walls of rhythmic beauty rise.

O lyric England, thee I call mine own; With lyre and lute and wreath I come to thee; The realm is thine of song and of the sea, And thy mouth’s speech is heard from zone to zone: Turn not in scorn thine ivied brow from me, Who am a suppliant kneeling at thy throne!

Page 4

PRAYER

I stood upon the threshold; musical

Reverberant footsteps ghostlike came and went, And my lips trembled as magnificent

Before me rose a vision of that hall

Whereof great Milton is the mighty wall, Shakespeare the dome with incense redolent, Each latter singer precious ornament,

And Holy Writ the groundwork, bearing all.

“Lord,” sobbed I, “take Thy splendid gift of youth For the one boon that I have craved so long: Mould Thou my stammering accents and uncouth, With awful music raise and make me strong; A living martyr of Thy vocal truth,

A resonant column in the House of Song!”

Page 5

PREMONITION

This is my singing season, and the dearth Of music ended; I am pregnant thus

With sound and colour, and melodious

Mine unborn poems clamour after birth.

Perchance, arising from the tuneless earth To bring sweet gifts of cadence unto us, Some vocal brother to Theocritus

Inspires my lips with his diviner worth.

Or yet, some ghostly elder singer’s breath Is floating to me, and strange voices ring On my soul’s ear with sound that quickeneth: “Build now or never,” say they, and they bring.

The premonition of an early death

That bids me hasten with my harvesting.

Page [6]

Page [7]

NINEVEH

Page [8]

Page [9]

PRELUDE

Page [10]

Page 11

THE EMPIRE CITY

HUGE steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air Her Babylonian towers, while on high

Like gilt-scaled serpents glide the swift trains by, Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair.

A thousand lights are jewels in her hair, The sea her girdle, and her crown the sky, Her life-blood throbs, the fevered pulses fly, Immense, defiant, breathless she stands there And ever listens in the ceaseless din, Waiting for him, her lover who shall come, Whose singing lips shall boldly claim their own And render sonant what in her was dumb: The splendour and the madness and the sin, Her dreams in iron and her thoughts of stone.

Page [12]

Page [13]

I

Page [14]

Page 15

NINEVEH

O NINEVEH, thy realm is set

Upon a base of rock and steel

From where the under-rivers fret

High up to where the planets reel.

Clad in a blazing coat of mail,

Above the gables of the town

Huge dragons with a monstrous trail

Have pillared pathways up and down.

And in the bowels of the deep

Where no man sees the gladdening sun,

All night without the balm of sleep

The human tide rolls on and on.

Page 16

The Hudson’s mighty waters lave

In stern caress thy granite shore,

And to thy port the salt sea wave

Brings oil and wine and precious ore.

Yet if the ocean in its might

Should rise confounding stream and bay, The stain of one delirious night

Not all the tides can wash away.

Page 17

Thick pours the smoke of thousand fires, Life throbs and beats relentlessly 

But lo, above the stately spires

Two lemans: Death and Leprosy.

What fruit shall spring from such embrace?

Ah, even thou wouldst quake to hear!

He bends to kiss her loathsome face,

She laughs  and whispers in his ear.

Sit not too proudly on thy throne,

Think on thy sisters, them that fell;

Not all the hosts of Babylon

Could save her from the jaws of hell.

Page [18]

Page [19]

II

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Page 21

Through the long alleys of the park

On noiseless wheels and delicate springs, Glide painted women fair and dark,

Bedecked with silks and jewelled things.

In peacock splendour goes the rout

With shrill, loud laughter of the mad 

Red lips to suck thy life-blood out,

And eyes too weary to be sad!

Their feet go down to shameful death,

They flaunt the livery of their wrong, Their beauty is of Ashtoreth,

Her strength it is that makes them strong.

Page 22

Behold thy virgin daughters, how

They know the smile a wanton wears;

And oh! on many a boyish brow

The blood-red brand of murder flares.

Page 23

See, through the crowded streets they fly, Like doves before the gathering storm.

They cannot rest, for ceaselessly

In every heart there dwells a worm.

They sing in mimic joy, and crown

Their temples to the flutes of sin;

But no sweet noise shall ever drown

The whisper of the worm within.

Page 24

They revel in the gilded line

Of lamplit halls to charm the night,

But think you that the crimson wine

Can veil the horror from their sight?

Ah, no  their staring eyes are led

To where it lurks with hideous leer:

Therefore the women flush so red,

And all the men are white with fear.

Page 25

As in a mansion vowed to lust,

Where wantons with their guests make free, ‘Tis thus thou humblest in the dust

Thy queenly body, Nineveh!

Thy course is downward; ‘tis the road

To sins that even where disgrace

And shameful pleasure walk abroad

Dare not unmask their shrouded face!

Surely at last shall come the day

When these that dance so merrily

Shall watch with terrible faces gray

Thy doom draw near, O Nineveh!

Page [26]

Page [27]

III

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Page 29

I, too, the fatal harvest gained

Of them that sow with seed of fire

In passion’s garden  I have drained

The goblet of thy sick desire.

I from thy love had bitter bliss,

And ever in my memory stir

The after-savours of thy kiss 

The taste of aloes and of myrrh.

And yet I love thee, love unblessed

The poison of thy wanton’s art;

Though thou be sister to the Pest

In thy great hands I lay my heart!

And when thy body Titan-strong

Writhes on its giant couch of sin,

Yea, though upon the trembling throng

The very vault of Heaven fall in;

And though the palace of thy feasts

Sink crumbling in a fiery sea 
l, like, the last of Baal’s priests,

Will share thy doom, O Nineveh.

Page [30]

Page [31]

THE BOOK OF IDOLS

Page [32]

Page 33

TO *

THE flowers I plucked, with youthful freedom straying Through fields with dreamy poppies sown, I bring, a priest sad scornful homage paying Before an idol-throne!

If careless you should please to turn the pages In which my soul its growth can trace, ‘Twill bring, the memory of those early stages, A smile across your face.

And if some day the shadows come to linger, And care press down your diadem,

Bethink you sometimes of the boyish singer That kissed your mantle’s hem.

You took my all when youth was free for roving, Youth that so short a space endures:

Then take these gifts of hating and of loving, These songs  for they are yours!

Page 34

THE DUMB IDOL

“… . Upon a golden throne sate a gleaming idol. And it had a soul .

. . But those who came thither knew it not. And they were not to know it. For it was the awful punishment of this dumb idol that it had a soul and might not reveal it, if it would not suffer the torments of the lost. Then both Heaven and Hell lamented its immeasurable sorrow which neither could assuage, because it was too deep for the light and too deep for the darkness.”

 OLD LEGEND.

FAR, far away, within a lonely vale

There stands a temple old  so old and gray, Unwarmed by rays of sunshine; only pale Cold moonbeams o’er it play.

Yet nearer draw and see what crimson flood Of light streams through the windows: never rose Could flush so deep a red, but that high Blood For sin that ever flows.

Page 35

Around the altar, deep in silent prayer, The faithful kneel beside the ivory shrine That still enfolds, with all the ancient care, An image once divine.

A king draws near in purple robes of state, Bearing the sceptre of his sovereignty; A bishop comes, and all around him wait His priests full reverently.

So as the years go by, they come to plead Before the altar, happier to return,

But for the poor dumb idol ‘tis decreed No light of hope shall burn.

It looks not down upon the kneeling throng; But from its staring stony eyes there go Great waves of torturing anguish, not less strong For being silent woe.

Ah, deeper woe than ever man has known, Ah, ceaseless longing that no sacrifice Ever assuages  there above the throne Poor pleading, helpless eyes!

Page 36

At times it seems the features cold and set Some gentler thought of passing hope would tell; And one could fancy that a tear made wet The cheeks immovable.

Yet, clasped like some strange book of sorcery, Those lips can never speak. The curse must come That sterner godheads have pronounced on thee, Sad idol pale and dumb!

Full many a Christ has trod the long steep way Unto all souls God’s mercy to impart;

Surely the sad-eyed Nazarene shall lay His hand upon thy heart?

His grace is shed abroad from rise of sun Unto the furthest islands of the west: Shalt thou, when all the healing work is done.

Thou only, not be blest?

Slow cycles roll against time’s timeless reef, (The eyes of Mary shine with mercy mild!) But still the idol stands in silent grief, Helpless, unreconciled.

Page 37

Thus shall it wait, speechless for evermore, Until at last the fateful trumpet call, And all the lands and all the oceans o’er, The Dusk of Idols fall!

Page 38

KAKODAIMON

THE mockery of thy lips adored,

Thy lovely languid head

Enwreathed with poppies red

Is my loadstone:

Because thou art cruel, therefore be my Lord, Kakodaimon!

Thy glorious body, unto me made known, Is like a stately fane of alabaster

Where in procession, to thy praise alone, ‘Mid torches’ glimmer and organ’s pealing tone, Pass scarlet Sin, and Shame, and black Disaster, Kakodaimon!

Then blaze the windows bright

With weird unearthly light;

The outer throng fall prostrate at the sight, But guess not whence it is,

Nor hear the scornful hiss

Of thy contempt upon their offerings blown, Kakodaimon!

Page 39

Ah, but I know, and yet I have not gone 

Stand boldly fronting this my destiny, That my reward must my damnation be,

To wait in silence for the dread decree And find no mercy at Jehovah’s throne, Kakodaimon!

Thine is the blame if o’er my head shall roll His thunderous wrath: yet if one spake “Disown Thy love, or bid farewell to Mary’s Son!”

I should not grasp the priest’s absolving stole, But, choosing, at thy worshipped feet lie prone, O splendid evil genius of my soul.

Kakodaimon!

Page 40

PRINCE CARNIVAL

JINGLING bells and cracking whip,

Laughter and jest on every lip! 

Thou drew’st thy gorgeous mantle tight 

But lo! I marked and knew at sight.

In all this dazzling mirth the best,

A golden star upon thy breast,

The kingly sceptre in thy hand,

Thou gazest on thy fairyland.

Yet as thou tak’st the golden wine,

A glory round thy head will shine;

Then all will know along the hall

That it is thou  Prince Carnival!

A shout goes up from row to row,

The viols scrape and trumpets blow.

The quick hand swings the whip with art 

Thy laughter masters every heart.

But as into thine eyes I peep,

There looks on me a woe so deep 

Unutterable and hidden all,

Unhappy Prince of Carnival,

Page 41

‘Tis but a mask, this jesting part!

Mankind’s eternal pain thou art!

Once in the year, like storm long pent, Forth bursts thy heart-sick merriment.

An inward fire feverishly

Tortures and goads the blood in thee,

That on the moment thou dost forget

How poor, how sick thy heart is yet.

Therefore my heart it burns for thee,

Thou beautiful prince of faery,

And oh, my love, my Prince, is great 

As boundless as impassionate.

It is the deepest of all things

How man unto his sorrow clings 

His breast’s own pain, supreme through all; So I love thee, Prince Carnival.

Page 42

THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX

AND one day of late a dream oppressed me …

And in dreams through the long streets I wandered.

(Through the streets with many footsteps throbbing! ) And a burden lay upon my heart,

And my weary eyelids sadly quivered,

And a sob rose choking in my throat,

And the shadow of some rare disaster

Weighed upon the houses of the town,

And encircled by the sombre shadows,

Sombre men with tortured faces walked

( Pallid men with weary tortured faces! ) Through the streets unending to and fro.

Midnight sounded solemn from the tower, And the stillness trembled as it smote …

Further went I on the wonted pathway

Further … further . . through the darkling night.

Dark foreboding seized upon my heartstrings …

Yet no swifter would I tread the path, The appalling, vaguely-boded tidings

Later, somewhat later, to discover.

Nightly pilgrims of the monster-city

Stared behind me dimly wondering.

Page 43

And a woman, dark of hair and feature, With the gleaming of rapacious teeth,

And her scarlet feather ever nodding,

Seemed to smile …

Yet I went still onward, undeterred,

Ever onward, ever, ever onward,

Onward, onward through the darkling town.

And at last I came where stands thy dwelling; Ever slower grew my lagging footsteps, Ever slower …

Then my eyes beheld the sombre hangings; They beheld the heavy mourning symbol

That men hang upon their dreary doorways When a dead man slumbers in the house …

Slowly I ascended the steep stairway,

Pressed upon the bell with trembling fingers, And the heart rose leaden in my throat.

Footsteps …

And a woman with sad tear-stained eyes (Pallid woman with sad tear-stained eyes!) Set thy door wide open at my summons.

Neither spoke a word: I knew already

What for me within the house was waiting.

Page 44

But she beckoned and I followed her.

Slow and silent then the stairs we mounted, Till I stood before thy chamber door,

Where a breath of incense and of roses Sweetly, sadly floated out to meet me, And an icy shudder filled my veins …

On the bed half hid by fragrant blossoms, As in prayer thine hands so gently folded, Thou wast sleeping. Softly I came nearer One last kiss upon thy mouth to press.

But upon thy pallid, silent features

Was a smile … a weird and ghostly smile, Was a pallid, a mysterious smile,

Past explaining, strange as thou wert strange.

And it seemed as though thou wouldst have spoken, Given the hidden meaning of the riddle That the riddle of thine own existence, That the riddle of all riddles is 

When too soon the icy hand of Death

Came and sealed for evermore thy lips.

And the hour-hand of the quaint old timepiece That had vexed me with its solemn ticking When of old within the room I tarried

Stood at twelve … I shuddered … and I knew.

Page 45

But the pallid woman now was speaking

(Ah, so pale, and eyes with grief so heavy!) Seeing how I stood in helpless sorrow: “Yes, at twelve it was … when failed the light, And throughout the house a tremour passed, And a dark and sorrow-bringing angel

Stirred the heavy air with noiseless pinions, And I heard a long, despairing struggle, Then a fall (ah, dull and heavy fall!) …

Then a cry (ah, such a cry!) … And then Death, a shadow, brooded on the bed.”

And again I looked upon thy face,

And again I saw the same mysterious

Pallid smile upon thy quiet features,

And remembered how one night of June

I had seen it … flickering … on thy lips.

And anew I went into the night

From the house bedraped with signs of mourning, And the woman with the weary voice

(Pallid woman with wan tearful eyelids!) And the clock, its hands at twelve arrested, And the bed where Death kept solemn vigil, And the couch upon which one lay dead

Who was dear upon this earth to me.

Page 46

Ah, but still forever I am seeking

For the answer to the darksome riddle, That Death’s hand with icy touch has closed, And that now eternity keeps locked.

And wherever my sad footsteps wander,

Evermore I see that pallid smile,

See upon thy lips the hopeless riddle

Past explaining, strange as thou wert strange, That the riddle of all riddles is!

Page 47

WHEN IDOLS FALL

FOUL night-birds brood in fearsome throng About the path that I must tread:

Thou art not what I thought thee long, And oh, I would that I were dead!

Less bitter was the gall they ran

To offer Christ upon the tree,

Or the salt tears He shed for man,

Deserted in Gethsemane.

For thou wast all the god I had

While months on months were born and died, Thy lips’ sweet fragrance made me glad As holy bells at eventide.

Aye, for thy sake, my god on earth,

I joyed to suffer all I could,

And counted as of lesser worth

The chalice of the Saviour’s blood!

Entranced I knelt before thy shrine

And filled love’s chalice, I thy priest; With flowers as crimson as the wine

I decked our altar for the feast.

I gave thee more than love may give,

First-fruits of song, truth, honour  all!

Too much I loved thee: I must live

To see God’s awful justice fall.

Page 48

I bleed beneath a wound the years

That heal all sorrow shall not heal;

O barren waste, O fruitless tears!

I gave thee mine eternal weal.

My idol crumbled in the dust

(Ah, that I lived that day to see!)

There came a sudden piercing thrust,

And all my life was dead in me!

Thou spak’st a single hideous word,

And that one word became the knoll

Of all that made life dear, and blurred The lines of good within my soul.

Better the plague-spots ringed me round, The hangman gave the fatal sign,

Than that such monstrous word should sound From lips that once I held divine!

A veil of darkness hid the sun,

Night fell, and stars from heaven were hurled, For when this fearful thing was done,

It spelt the ruin of a world.

The string whose music won my bays

Snapped with a blinding thrill of pain; Through all the everlasting days

I shall not hear its note again.

Page 49

Amidst the gloom I grope for song;

The fires die out that passion fed:

Thou art not what I thought thee long, And oh! I would that I were dead!

Yet worse than all the pain of loss,

The smile that seals a traitor’s will, Is this: that knowing gold for dross,

I cannot choose but love thee still!

Page 50

THE SPHINX

I

WITHIN a sultry desert land,

Where neither flowers nor shadows are, Hid to the breast in shifting sand

There stands an image secular.

Where Pharaoh’s sceptre gave the laws, The thing that held me captive rests,

Strange compound of a panther’s claws

And of a woman’s rounded breasts.

Thus stood she when the princess found The infant in his secret bed;

Thus, when the young Bithynian wound

The death-wreath for his golden head.

And monarchs came with her to dwell

On whom mad dreams had laid their ban, From whose imperial shoulders fell

The purple cloak of Hadrian.

Page 51

II

O strange beyond the strangest fears

And hopes and ancient questionings,

That I who am so young in years

Have loved the oldest of all things!

Page 52

III

Ah, fount of pleasure salt with tears, Storehouse of cunning, well of guile!

Love of my boyhood’s troubled years,

Gray silent Sphinx beside the Nile!

No hoard of silver I possessed,

No purple brought from Tyrian mart,

So, as love’s guerdon, from my breast

With fevered hand I tore the heart.

Thy granite flanks upon the gift

Closed with a mighty fluttering,

Then first within thee rose the swift

Pulsation of a living thing.

And I forgot beneath thy spell

Mine was the life within thee grown,

And mine the heart that leapt and fell Illusory in thy breast of stone.

Mine was the folly, mine the tears

That wept the ending of my dream,

Love of my boyhood’s troubled years,

Gray silent Sphinx beside the stream!

Page 53

IV

O wanderer, stay where life is sweet,

And jubilant earth is glad of May,

Disturb not with incautious feet

The mystery of an elder day.

When we have sighed to fold our hands

And join the Pharaohs in the tomb,

She still shall stare across the sands And hearken for the crack of doom!

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A BALLAD OF SIN

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Page 57

IN dreams on a far-off shore I lay

(Dreams that were full of dread),

Where the purple clouds of a dying day Shadowed a sea of red 

Shadowed a sea as red as the blood

Of one that was slain in his lustihood, A sea as red as a lover’s blood

Struck down in his amorous lustihood.

A silver shallop glides to and fro,

Over the ghostly crimson sea,

(Over the ghostly crimson sea

I watch its oars as they come and go); The wavelets quiver and gleam:

No sounds are there that the silence break, But astern in the shallop’s silvery wake Strange circles swirl in the stream.

The moon shines down on the ghostly night, But pale and dim is its faint, far light, And now to the island the boat draws near (My veins run cold with fear!),

And the shadows spring to the magic shore 

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For each has known of a bliss before,

A sinful, sorrowful bliss before,

Of God and of man forbidden;

And each is wrapped in a robe of state, These in the moonlight that come so late (Where the quivering, shivering moonbeams mate) To their tryst on the island hidden.

Go further into the mystic shore

And see a castle rise,

A spirit-castle rise,

And a flood of light from the windows pour, From all the shimmering windows pour,

And colour the moonlit skies;

And hark to the magic melodies

(The ringing, singing melodies)

That float o’er the waves as red as the blood Of a lover slain in his lustihood.

The song goes deep to the inmost soul 

Its notes o’er the silent waters roll

In the heavy languorous pleading

Of a wanton will to which the grave

Never a moment of respite gave

And hearts that with love are bleeding.

(O ancient song of passionate dole,

Whose notes o’er the silent waters roll In heavy languorous pleading!)

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I am drawn by its might (there is none to save!) To the midst of the castle hall;

And there, escaped from the cold, cold grave, Sin holds its bacchanal

(Aye, there, escaped from the cold, cold grave, Lust holds its bacchanal) 

And ‘neath the flickering candle-light The dance of the shadows has reached its height!

They must renew, as the midnight chimes, The kisses that a thousand times,

A thousand times and in far-off climes, Have died on their lips enchanted:

The flowers that gleam in their tossing hair Are painted like flowers that otherwhere (Thousand times and in far-off climes) Long ages ago were planted.

Heaven had no hand in the pageantry

Of the wondrous scene that was shown to me!

With songs of pleasure they tread the measure, That throng so pale and wan 

These that of old for sinful pleasure

Through the gates of hell have gone,

Yet tossed forever on passion’s flood

Come sailing over the sea of blood.

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The queen of Egypt there I saw,

Tiberius and Caligula,

In silks and purples flaunting;

Aholibah, Alaciel,

And she whose love came straight from hell Were there, and boldly vaunting

Her skill in transport lubricous,

The shameless wife of Claudius.

With bliss that is bitter, pain that is sweet Shudders each ghostly form,

And stirred alone by their flying feet The scented air grows warm.

Madly the dancers revel and sway

In the dazzling colours that round them play.

The fire that heaven has kindled dies

When the joys of sight from the straining eyes Death’s endless night shall sever;

All vainly mounts the aspiring flame,

Each love that has a noble aim

Bears death at its heart forever;

And only the love that flaunts in red

Lives on when all things else are dead.

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For only the love that flaunts in red

A shadow of bliss can save,

And here in the night, though life be sped, Comes back from the cold, dark grave,

By sin’s old tyrannous longings led

Comes back from the cold, dark grave 

O’er waves as red as a lover’s blood

Struck down in his amorous lustihood!

O evil love in whose tossing hair

The fires of infamous longings glow,

We, too, shall not win sleep from care 

Where heaven’s high army hears

The anthems of its spheres,

Nor where majestic Lucifer,

In burning vesture fronts his Foe 

Condemned like them, sans hopes and fears Sans laughter or the gifts of tears,

Monotonously round to go

In endless pleasure’s endless woe.

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GOLGOTHA

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Page 65

CONFESSION

I KNOW of an odorous palm-forest

Filled with mysterious murmurings,

Where in the glow of the crimson west

A brilliant song-bird sobs and sings.

There is that in the note of the strange bright bird Makes heavy the heart within the breast; And whoso this evil song has heard

Forever forfeits his peace and rest.

But I know too of a wood in the north

With a heavenly perfume all its own,

Where the nightingales long ere dawn pour forth A ravishing flood of the purest tone.

The wanderer breathes once more and smiles As he comes in its soothing shade to sit 

For the air that blows through its cool green aisles Is no fierce blast from the stifling pit.

A ripe fruit hangs in the sultry place, For whose savour a man counts all but loss, Forgetting even his mother’s face

And the bleeding Head upon the cross.

In the cool green moss of the northern wood There blooms a flower of marvellous hue

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That speaks to the soul of naught but good, And tells of a world where all is new.

A witch-woman dwells in the palm-grove’s heat That is pale as the ghastly face of Death, But a red robe wraps her from head to feet, And through red, red lips comes her fevered breath.

Her kisses burn where they close and cling Like pain of longing or fire of hell,

And he that thrills with their adder-sting For them is ready his soul to sell.

In the northern wood stands a slender maid With eyes that are blue as God’s own sky 

Nor is she in scarlet robe arrayed,

But wrapped in her virginal purity.

“I have no part in the fires of sin,”

So runs her song, “for my name is Love!”

Yet he who looks in her eyes shall win A glimpse of the height of heaven above.

But I have walked where the sorceress dwells, Where poisoned blooms make the senses reel, And I have yielded me to her spells,

And lost forever my soul’s true weal.

For me no flower of good shall grow

In the ruined garden where hope lies dead 

And I need but look in your eyes to know The bliss my sin has forfeited!

Page 67

PROVOCATIO AD MARIAM

O MARY! Mother Mary! have mercy on my pain, And quench the fire of hot desire that flames in every vein!

O Mary! Mother Mary! commend me to thy Son, And tell Him that I perish before my course is run.

Poor helpless creatures we that walk where night and darkness frown, And so not mine the fault, not mine the might that drags me down.

O Mary! Mother Mary! heed thou my suppliant plea And say to God the Father a word of grace for me.

Before Him lies the mighty book in which with iron pen Are graven deep, while angels weep, the shameful sins of men.

O Mary! Mother Mary! think of thine own sweet Child,

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For whom thine eyes shed tears of blood, O Virgin undefiled.

I too am nailed unto the cross  unto a cross of ill; The nails that hold me are the joys for which I hunger still.

Give me no sop of gall, but pour the wine thy Son hath blessed, Wash off the stains of sin, and quench the fire within my breast!

The incense cloud shall rise for thee, the sacred tapers burn, If thou upon my sore distress a favouring eye wilt turn!

But Mary, Mother Mary, heeds neither prayer nor vow, Only my heart’s wild beating breaks on the stillness now.

O Mary! Mother Mary, hear! the tides of ruin swell; My feet are sinking in the sands about the mouth of hell!

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BEFORE THE CROSS

LONG have I struggled with my pain

And sought for peace and rest,

To still the madness in my brain,

The tumult in my breast.

There is no hope unless Thou heed

My abject misery 

Pale God that on the Cross dost bleed

I turn at last to Thee!

I walked where poisonous plants abound; In search of wisdom high

I stood before the Sphinx  and found

No answer to my cry.

Since truth refused her to my will,

I plucked in petulant wrath,

With reckless hand, the flowers of ill That grew about my path.

Then sin drew nigh in woman’s guise

And wrecked my hopes of peace.

Her body’s joy was all my prize,

Her clasp my only ease:

And so to kiss her mouth I yearned

That seemed so soft and fresh 

But knew what thing she was when burned The brand upon my flesh!

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Aye,‘twas a leper I caressed 

(Beneath the heavy weight

Of guilt, O Lord, I sink oppressed!)

And I was reprobate!

The good, the pure that I had known,

They passed me with a frown;

I dared not stand where from the throne The Face of God looks down.

Out of the depths of misery

Thy goodness I entreat;

Like some poor hunted beast I fly

To cast me at Thy feet.

Roses of blood I bring to Thee,

A heart that craves for grace 

O Jesus of Gethsemane,

Turn not from me Thy face!

And though the Sphinx her mystery weird Still offers as of yore,

And poisoned flowers their head have reared About the senses’ door,

No riddle has a stranger sound

Than this which tells for sooth

That peace in humble faith is found,

In God alone the truth!

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THE GARDEN OF PASSION

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Page 73

SPRING

For Peter Pan

SPRING came carolling through the land, Roses and laughter on every hand;

But I was gazing with steadfast eye

Where Christ was nailed on high.

Hawthorn blossoms were white and gay,

Promise of fruit in the laden spray 

Only the tree of the Cross bare naught Save the ruin that death had wrought!

Spring passed on, and a breath of bloom Swept through the casement, filled the room.

I cried in a sudden agony:

“Lord Jesus, set me free!

“See, I am young, and the blood is hot, Longing for what I compass not 

Love, and sunshine, and fond delight

In beauty warm and white.

“Lord, Thy Cross is a heavy load,

Thorny and steep the upward road 

Lord, from the woods astir I hear

Laughter and joyous cheer.

“Far be it from me, Lord, to scorn

The bitter anguish that Thou hast borne: But redder his mouth in its youthful pride Than the spear-wound in Thy side!

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“Ah, see how his hair like soft-spun gold Falls curling over his raiment’s fold, And his laughing eyes look out with glee The great wide world to see!

“I thrill at his music silvery sweet,

And I long to follow his dancing feet: For lo! where they fall the flowers are born 

And hearts no more forlorn!

“My soul goes out to him since the hour He passed me by in his winsome power,

And my blood is stirred by his witchery 

Prince Jesus, set me free!”

Bowed to my prayer the wounded Head,

Died in the west the sunset red 

And a slow, slow drop of blood ran down From under the thorny crown.

Strange, in the years that have gone, the Cross Had grown so dear to me that its loss

Went to my heart with a thrill of pain 

I had half turned back again!

O sweet Lord Spring, I am free at last To follow wherever thy feet have passed, Over the dales and over the rills

To the gladsome Grecian hills!

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A SPRING BLESSING

SPRING’S blessing be upon you, dear!

Such is the prayer most meet for one

Whose eyes look up so starry-clear 

With all his flowerets new-begun

Still may he bless your pathway, dear, Who weaves his golden threads around

Your heart and mine together bound:

Because your eyes are starry-clear 

Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child,

When all the earth with longing swells, And lilies ring their silver bells

For joy that he is nigh,

And open wide, their lord to greet,

Adoring humbly at his feet

(Ah, spring has come, and spring is sweet! ) Their inmost pageantry,

And all the earth with love is wild 

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

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Spring’s blessing be upon you, child,

And may the song of nightingales

Re-echo from the wooded dales 

Like women’s arms so soft and mild,

And as deep crimson roses wild,

(Such is the song of the nightingales, And sad as tears of one that wails

Where love’s high temple is defiled);

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

Spring’s blessing be upon your ways,

Before in life’s distracting maze

We fall on hopeless evil days!

True, summer comes more richly warm

And fraught with wilder passion’s storm Of torturing blisses;

But golden gleams spring’s youthful form, More sweet his kisses;

Soft breezes sing their roundelays 

Spring’s blessing be upon your ways!

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Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

His hair is decked with flowery cheer; Upon his brow the diadem

Shines out by right of youth immortal; His might brings glad release to them

That were condemned without the portal Of hope to live in sickening fear;

Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

And never may the wine-cup hold

One drop of bitter questioning.

May Death in spring-time find you, child 

But Love shall toss his locks of gold

And make all life an endless spring,

And fate and he be reconciled:

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

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LOVE’S SILENCE

ON crimson wings of passionate desire

I traversed gardens of a tropic clime

To pluck love’s strangest blossoms, and my lyre Tuning, I caught each heart-throb in a rhyme.

But now thy lashes burn me, and my head Is all confused with bitter love of thee; Yet never have I sung thy praise, or said How very pleasant was thy love to me.

I hush the songs that rise in me by day, That rise by day and in the depth of night, Lest  as a tiny bird that flies away

By some child’s laughter taken with affright 

At sound of lute-strings stirring in the wind, Love, half afraid, unfold his pinions fleet, And only leave upon the lawn behind

The perfumed imprint of his sandalled feet.

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REDEEMED

SLOW failed the twilight in my room,

That none might witness my dismay,

But, wide awake amidst the gloom,

I dreamed beyond the close of day.

There was a tumult in my soul,

And yet I knew not what I sought:

Toward a strange and hidden goal

I groped with fingers fever-fraught.

Then reared the ancient foe of good

His serpent’s crest: I strove no more, But rose and went until I stood

Where sin set wide its open door.

The air is thick as incense-wreaths

That waver in the candles’ gleam.

But what is this that softly breathes

Upon my brow as in a dream?

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A fairy vision of surprise

Toward my couch you seemed to glide:

There was no need to raise my eyes

To know that you were by my side.

And when your slender fingers strayed

In pity o’er my burning face,

The foul enchantment was afraid

And fled defeated from the place.

And when your mouth so soft and red

Clung to me, soothing where it fell,

With one light touch my pain was sped, I was redeemed from depths of hell!

Then drooped above me  and dismay

Beside the gate no longer stood 

White blossoms from a laden spray,

The wonder of your womanhood!

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LOVE TRIUMPHANT

YOUR body’s treasures are mine to-day, Though bitter as gall be their savour still; From head to foot shall my kisses play, Till naught is kept from their sovereign will!

The voice of my need supreme must guide My passionate love to its destined goal; My feverish fingers shall seek and glide Until at the last I hold the soul.

My hot strong hands will no veil endure That shadows your radiant nakedness;

Lay bare each beauty, conceal no lure, Leave naught to hinder my fond caress!

Young blood beats onward, unchecked by shame, When passion’s harvest is ripe to reap; For who shall speak with the raging flame, Or stay the cataract in its leap?

My armies have stormed at your city’s gate 

I have conquered you, hold you. Might is right With the beasts of the wild that celebrate In the jungle their primal marriage night.

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You too are moved by the selfsame power, Your quick breath tells in its shuddering fall: There is naught so strong as love this hour 

Call it god or beast, it is lord of all!

The god in me and the beast in me

And all deep things come up to light;

And I would barter my soul to be

The prize of love for a single night.

One long, long night of supreme desire, One long, long night of riot and rage; For you are the sea and I the fire,

And old as the world is the war we wage.

The old, old strife of woman and man

That ever has been, and still shall be Until the day when the vaulted span

Shall sink a wreck in the whelming sea.

Once fed, no longer the wolf-pack raves: But love can never of madness tire,

And I must drown in your passion’s waves, And you consume in my hot desire.

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This the law of the flowering south,

Of the snow-clad north where the world is white …

You shall faint and fall as I crush your mouth Beneath a conqueror’s ruthless might!

My life is poured in the stream of yours, But fire and flood were not meant to mate: We shall never be one while the world endures 

And the meaning of love at the last is hate!

My soul is drunk with your maddening charms; You have taken all  I have naught to lose.

About me tighten your slender arms

With the very grip of the hangman’s noose.

So let us struggle, both flame and flood, Let love and hate and sense have play

Till the slow dawn rises bathed in blood, And you and I are dead ere day!

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SUNSET.

WITH amber light the sinking day

Has tinged the stream below the town,

Before the pageant fades away,

And night’s black wings come swooping down.

The wind has heaped the clouds from far And rounded them like maiden’s breasts.

And out beyond the harbour bar

A violet shadow softly rests.

Thus drifting down the stream, I caught Far-blown a murmurous refrain,

(You know it well, dear!), and I thought With kindness of the past again.

So may your memories, too, be fraught

With no regret, or hate, or pain,

May all the bitterness be naught,

And all the sweet of love remain.

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THE SCARLET FLOWER

IT was in the days, in the days of the roses, When under your kisses my sorrow was sped, Now autumn blossoms the field encloses, And autumn blossoms enwreath our head 

And Love and rejoicing and May are dead, And the world is windy and waste and wide: The days of the roses have long since fled, And the scarlet flower of love has died.

Once thought I your lips with unperishing kisses To kiss, that as mantles of queens are red, Once thought I no love in the world as this is, O beautiful love, O dream that is dead 

But the wind’s in the tree tops, the leaves are all shed, They are borne down the terrible mountain side; All sweet things flee as our summer has fled, And the scarlet flower of love has died.

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We two of the honey of love have eaten, Have drunk deep draughts of the gold sunshine, But the key of the grove we were wont to meet in, Where bloomed that flower as red as wine, Is lost in some mystical land divine 

No refuge our love has, no place to abide: In our grove dwells the autumn, ‘mid woodland and vine 

And the scarlet flower of love has died.

L’ envoi

Nor fairy nor elf-queen can alter our fate, The magical word is forever denied;

The past is dead, and the charm too late, And the scarlet flower of love has died.

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MR.W.H.

“To Mr. W. H., the onlie begetter of the ensuing sonnets.”

 Inscription to Shakespeare’ s SONNETS.

I SOMETIMES dream and dreaming long

For thee, strange boy whose golden head With blossoms of unending song

Was garlanded.

Sad, surely, and contemptuous

And smiling thou beheld’st the game

Of life, as once Antinous

His splendid shame.

A softer light was in thine eyes

Than any that the moonbeam paints,

Or in some dead queen’s hair that lies Or blessed saint’s.

And yet, perchance thou hadst no art,

Nor depth, nor subtlety,  a boy

To whom a poet’s singing heart

Was but a toy.

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FOR ANTINOUS IN HIS OLD AGE

SNOWS in thy hair and wrinkles on thy brow, The years have strewn the ashes on thy face; Of all things wretched, wanting most in grace, Of all things sad, the saddest thing art thou.

Now has thy boyish smile become a leer, Thy lips are swollen and thy vision blinks, And in thy heart, more ancient than the Sphinx, Abide alone the memory and the tear.

O lovely lad reborn in many a land,

Of Shakespeare loved and Michelangelo!

Not thine this age’s crown of sorrow, and Thou shouldst have died these many years ago, Not grown into a spectre of the past,

To be a thing of horror at the last.

Page 89

TO SLEEP

O GENTLE sleep, turn not thine eyes away, But place thy finger on my brow and take All burthens from me and all dreams that ache; Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,

Seeing I am aweary of the day.

But now thy lips are ashen and they quake 

What spectral vision seest thou that can shake Thy sweet composure and thy heart dismay?

Perhaps the eyes of wicked murder gleam Upon my bedside, or some monstrous dream Would bring such fearsome guilt upon the head Of my unvigilant soul as might arouse

The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed, And startle Nero in his Golden House!

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PRAYER OF SOULS IN NEED

LORD of good pilots, kindly Father, hear us And teach our feet to walk Thy ways of pain; Lo, once again the awful head of Eros

Rises from seas of passion, and again

The hand to which love’s unblessed power is given Raising, he hurls a life against the shoal, And smiling marks adrift ‘twixt Hell and Heaven The shipwreck of a soul!

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RESURRECTION

AWAY, away, ghost of my dead desire,

Stir not again the ashes in my breast, Of all my loves I had made one great fire, And burned thine image even as the rest!

Now from his grave Love casts the covering, And once again there rises through the night, Like sudden water from a perished spring, The murdered music of my slain delight!

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THE BALLAD OF NUN AND KNIGHT

She speaks::

I DREAMED a dream of how the red sun fell, And on the plain beyond the city spread A joyous crowd, by Love and Laughter led; When sudden came, but faintly audible, A leper’s voice, and then the warning bell: Then passion paled  seized with a speechless dread, They tarried not to spit at him, but fled, As if that beggar were a thing from hell.

And so if once our love were known, O sweet!

The veriest harlot, roaming through the street, Would rather make the gutter her abode, And share the leper’s bed without a sigh, Than touch our hand, but praying thank her God That she is not even as thou and I.

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He speaks::

Full well I know that with its craggy rim The cup of wrath awaits us and the Doom, O Bride of Christ, thou for the love of whom To all hell’s torches these mine eyes were dim: Is He not Lord of all the Seraphim?

His all the gardens and all fruit the womb Of earth shall bear?  I took one little bloom.

Faithful to me, thou brokest faith with Him.

Yet though all saints turn from us, and hell’s gin Close fast upon us, and the red flames dwell On your gold hair, and where your mouth has been, Lovers shall know and sing of us, and tell How that our love was greater than our sin, And tears of pity reach the heart of hell.

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LOVE IN DREAMLAND

WHITE cloud-wonders waver and wander,

White mists rising and falling yonder

Are like chill fingers laid upon my heart; Ever the nightingale’s plaint grows fonder 

Can it be true that you and I must part?

Red, red roses hang in a cluster,

Red lips glow in the wine-cup’s lustre; Stay me, before I go, with wine and bread!

Round me an army of shadows muster

And weave a veil of darkness for my head.

Will o’ the wisp before me flying,

Pale sad faces like faint flames dying 

I walk alone beside a spectral mere;

Ghostly voices about me crying

Fill every crevice of my soul with fear!

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Lights of error and mists of terror,

On I go by the paths of error;

Far bells ring out in solemn warning tone.

I look in the moonlight’s magic mirror, And doubt the world’s existence and my own.

Voice of the sea in its anguished groaning, Old woods that never can cease from moaning, The song that rings and sings o’er hill and dale, False enchantments are all intoning 

I am a dream and you its shadow pale.

White cloud-wonders are soaring and sweeping 

Far away you are waiting, sleeping.

No passing madness now my vision mars: Our love is safe in the fairies’ keeping, Our kingdom set in worlds beyond the stars!

Page 96

FRIENDSHIP

LO, in my hour of need I called on thee, Asking thy friendship’s none too heavy toll; Comrades were we when I was glad and whole, And yet thou cam’st not, and at last I see Twain are the ways of friendship, and there be One that laughs with us o’er the fragrant bowl, And one that wanders with the troubled soul In the great silence of Gethsemane.

I can forgive, and while glad days abound Thou shalt be with me; but when Autumn flings The rose-leaf and the wine-cup to the ground, Then would I call upon the heart that hears WIth intimate love the depth of human things, The eye that knows the sanctity of tears.

Page 97

WASTED SONGS

FOR your dear sake I worked my own soul wrong, Yea, gave you all my splendid roses, wet With dew of my heart’s blood, O sweet, and set, Upon your brow a diadem of song.

These boons you blandly took  as though they were A thing as fleeting as the thin sea-foam, Or any gift of fruit or honey-comb 

With the light smile of those who do not care …

Page 98

LORD EROS

WHAT man is strong to bind and hold

The eagle in his proud estate,

Or from Love’s treacherous fairy-gold

To weave his woof of fate?

Lord Eros is no gentle god,

Nor human folly smiles upon,

His are the scourges and the rod

Without oblivion.

We deemed him but a winsome boy,

Until he clutched us by the throat;

We dallied with him, and the toy

Became a sword that smote.

The Book of Love is closed and sealed

With iron signet, and the night

Has smothered with her agate shield

The torches of delight.

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AT CROSS-ROADS

Frater, ave atque vale.

 Catullus.

ONE singing road we travelled both together, All day long side by side;

Now that the night is falling on the heather, Our ways divide.

If thou choose one path, I shall choose the other 

The whither, who can tell?

But ere we part I call to thee: My brother, Hail and farewell!

Page 100

AUTUMN

YOUTH’S first flush has left you; yet ‘tis sweet to rest Close against your beating heart  never maiden’s breast Made a softer pillow for my aching brow, Never swifter coursed the blood through my veins than now!

Like an elder sister’s, calm and mild your gaze, Finding gentle pardon for a boy’s impetuous ways.

“Child!” you call me, chide my freedom with a smile Yet I hear your heart-beats, know you love me all the while!

Page 101

Fate has used me kindly, granted to my prayer Deeper in life’s eyes to look than boyhood else may dare 

Unafraid to face its current sweeping strong: Gods and women with their love reward the poet’s song.

Calm autumnal beauty, still I wish you well, Still I pray no breath of harm may touch you with its spell.

‘Twas in you that first I knew how morn and eve could meet, Death’s majestic sadness, life’s transport wildly sweet!

Page 102

LOVE CRUEL

RIGHT true it is that once love’s bacchanal Had spent itself, and the devouring sea Of passion slept, that unrelentingly

I heaped upon you bitterness, and all

That sears the heart and kills it, yea the gall Poured down your throat, until you looked at me With sad wan smile that was a silent plea, Craving deliverance from the cruel thrall.

Right true it is I harass you with fears, With sudden mood, indifference, sharp surprise: I love you best, O sweetest, when the tears Moisten the perfect crystal of your eyes, And from their depths, as from mysterious meres, The blinding mists of utter anguish rise.

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SILENTIUM POETĆ

HERE in the dusk your lips against my face Cling close and sigh  you tremble in my arms, Make glad my heart with indescribable charms, And all my manhood hungers for your grace.

Yet I recall how friendship’s light embrace Awoke in me the soul divine that sings; The lyre that when Apollo touched the strings Found voice, but faintly Venus’ hand obeys.

What time I trod the path Catullus went, Where Shakespeare paced, before but still in view, My every heart-beat was a burst of song: But now a woman’s tresses redolent

Entwine about my fingers, and a new

Strange dumbness does my sacred calling wrong!

Page 104

THE LAST CHORD

WEARILY I leaned my head

Against your shoulder; not a word

Was heard

Or said.

As fragile fingers clutching anxiously Call forth no answer from the silent urn, So from the valley of deep mystery

No dead love shall return.

We were right glad at last to part,

And very wise 

But, when with sudden start

You felt in me the tears of pity rise, A gleam of hate came to your eyes,

And there was murder in your heart!

Page 105

A LEAVE-TAKING

THE heavy gang-chains clatter, and the boat Groans grievously like to some stricken knight, A sudden yearning rises in my throat,

And unshed tears half veil you from my sight.

Your love was like an incense-bearing vase That I have shattered, playing carelessly, Seeing that dearer than my Lady’s grace The lay of sainted poets was to me.

As we have loved, so let us part from love, And I shall walk into the outer night

Singing, at heart the sweet remembrance of Those violet-scented hours of delight.

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SOUTHERN SUMMER

UNRESTFUL rest and aching drowsiness,

Never a leaf to stir in tree or grass, The sands of time pass slowlier through the glass, And in its brilliant, many-colored dress The valley lies, all dumb and motionless, As if the angel of the Lord did pass

Leaving behind no trace of life. Alas, This is a summer of great weariness!

For I must wither in this tropic fire, These sickly fruits and blossoms I must dread, And on my heart has seized a great desire For the swift winds that lash my Northern home, Where brave men are of fair-haired women bred, Where heroes love and where the Vikings roam.

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LOVE’S QUEST

I HAVE sought Love, and sought him everywhere; Once in a wood I saw his gleaming hair Flash from afar, but drawing nearer found A startled satyr leaping from his lair.

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IN THE AGORA

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TO A DEFEATED CANDIDATE

SURELY we stumble toward an evil day,

For us of late is freedom’s path too steep, Her words perverted in our mouths; we keep Our bondage willing, aye, endure the sway Of trickster’s hands and redder hands that slay: Yet this no season to lament or weep,

But to arise and with tempestuous sweep Hurl the false idols from their seat of clay.

Thou whom the people’s voice acclaims their own, Thou their defender, shalt approach the throne Of the blind goddess with the awful rod, And she will know thee victor without flaw, Or else set Guile above the shrine of God, And break in twain the tablets of the Law.

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HEINE

( Professor Herter’s Heine Fountain, received by the City of New York, after it had been refused by well-nigh every important German community, has twice been injured; once by malice, and once through accident. Finally it was proposed to remove it from its present site to make room for a useless street.)

NOR life nor death had any peace for thee, Seeing thy mother cast thee forth, a prey To wind and water, till we bade thee stay And rest, a pilgrim weary of the sea..

But now it seems that on thine effigy

Thy very host an impious hand would lay: Go then and wander, praising on thy way The proud Republic’s hospitality!

Yet oft with us wreathed brow must suffer wrong, The sad Enchanter of the land of Weir

Is still uncrowned, unreverenced, and we fear The Lords of Gold above the Lords of Song.

Were it not strange, then, should we honour more The sweet-mouthed singer of a foreign shore?

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THE NEW COLOSSUS IN 1907

BEHOLD the myriads at the gate

Who from the Old World saw thy light,

Thy hand is strong to bless or smite

These pilgrims, and thy “yea” is fate.

They as our fathers come from far;

From shores where blazes Dante’s sun,

And from the bleak dominion

Where fall the lashes of the Czar.

Their strong untiring arms have hewn

A path o’er Alpine mountain-crest,

Them England nurtured at her breast,

And over them rose Erin’s moon.

Yet though their necks for menial toil Are bent to build our empire, they

Shall bear within no distant day

Strong sons and daughters of this soil.

But now we need their labour; mute

Our engines lie in barren rest,

And in our gardens south and west

Ungarnered rots the mellow fruit

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And the white cotton. We are shorn

Of many gifts of priceless worth;

The yellow gold cries from the earth

And from our fields the yellow corn.

They shall reap wealth from ore and coal Such as no Eastern king beheld,

And build the iron roads that weld

Our nation in one splendid whole.

Not only bent on distant quest

In tropic skies, thou shalt at length

Bethink thee of thy native strength,

Young Titan of the boundless West!

Within the compass God has set,

Between these shores from main to main, Thou hast new victories to gain,

And thou hast worlds to conquer yet!

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MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM

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AIOGYNE

WE are alone  are quite alone

Beneath the heavy canopy,

Only the crimson light, far-thrown

From the dim lamp gleams, fitfully.

Now passion’s rites have all been paid; Lean back in silence, gently, thus,

Until my dreaming eyes have strayed

Above your beauty luminous.

The sinuous glory of your hair,

The chiselled marble of your breast,

And, but for soft-showered rose-leaves bare, Each secret nook where love may rest.

I gaze in silence: you have stilled

The hunger of my soul’s disease,

Your body is with wonders filled,

And you creation’s masterpiece.

O mystery, O miracle,

Shall I extol your love or rue?

For you are heaven, and you are hell,

And God and beast are both in you.

You stood beside the Cross of shame

When wavering manhood failed and fled 

And yet I know you for the same

That tempted Satan to her bed!

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So short your memory, Magdalene?

Think you no longer of the day

His word went through you like the keen Sharp sword of judgment, and you lay

Before His feet with unbound hair

Who cleansed you of your leprosy,

And made a woman’s womb to bear

The Godhead’s awful majesty?

But ah! the fever in your breast

Craved not alone such holy grace;

Sin was your raiment, and your quest

Was evil, and your purpose base.

Your kisses taught our primal sire

The meaning and the might of lust,

O Lilith, half enchantress dire,

Half monster coiling in the dust.

Vultures that wheel where carrion lies, All vices followed in your train,

As vermin round the God of Flies;

Of fruit proscribed your lips were fain.

Strange fires of lust would leap and war Beneath your bosom’s ivory.

The white bull trembled when from far

He heard your step, Pasiphae!

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In Mitylene’s mountain glades

You breathed soft music on the pale

Breast-blossoms of your Lesbian maids, O sweet-mouthed Sappho, and the bale

Of barren passion held you thrall,

And in far Syria turned your heart

To brown-limbed lads upon the wall

Imprisoned by the painter’s art.

And grisly tales the Nile could tell

Of boys that dreamed a maddening dream, And how a lifeless body fell

Each night into the silent stream.

To-day, amid the sullen sands

Where once was Isis’ temple vast,

The Sphinx your dreadful image stands, Eternal symbol of your past!

When Rome’s imperial crown adorned

Your head, still sin was law to you:

No meanest slave’s embrace you scorned, The very streets your orgies knew.

Practiced in every wanton wile,

Your heart a lazar-house impure,

You made the name Faustina vile 

The serpent was your paramour!

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With mystic dye your tresses stained,

You watched to death the Baptist pass, And with your boon damnation gained,

O daughter of Herodias!

And when the road to Calvary

For you the Incarnate Saviour trod,

You grieved not that He went to die

But spat upon the face of God!

Long years have passed, the softly-curved Sweet lips have kissed full many a lord; But Sin, the master you have served,

Grants endless youth for your reward.

Eternal Woman! Good nor ill

Has left its stamp on charms like these: Your body is a wonder still,

And you creation’s masterpiece!

Away with visions that recall

Your nameless lust, your stranger woes, For whiter than the first snowfall

Your immemorial beauty glows.

Lean back in all your loveliness

Soft-bedded where red roses bleed:

A fool who would your secret guess,

And who has guessed it  poor indeed!

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AIANDER

THE proud free glance, the thinker’s mighty brow, The curling locks and supple, slender limbs, The eye that speaks dominion, victor’s smile 

All these I know. By them I hail thee Man, Lord of the earth. Thou art the woman’s slave, And yet her master …

I know thee when about thy sunburnt thighs Thou swing’st the tawny skin a tiger wore Till thy rude weapon dashed him to the ground.

I know thee also when thy shoulders bear The purple mantle of an emperor,

Stained with the blood of thousand tiny lives; The golden sandals clasped upon thy feet; Thy hair made rich with spikenard, and thy brow Graced with the gifts that mutual east and west Conspire to offer to their sovereign lord.

I know thee too in lust’s relentless rage, Dragging the chosen woman to thy lair, To frame upon her body at thy will

Sons in thine image, strong of loin as thou: And when, the bearer of thy father’s sins, Within the portals of the House of Shame

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Monstrous delight thy passion seeks to find In futile quest, and Nature pitiful

Will not transmit unto the future’s womb Thy weakened generation …

Image of God I know thee  God thyself.

Walking the world on India’s sun-parched plains Thy name was Rama; thou in desert sands Of Araby didst dream thy wondrous dream; The cradles of all races thou hast seen 

Thou Zarathustra  thou the Son of Man!

I know the wounds of hands and feet and side …

Ah, and I know the ring about thy neck Of ruddy curls! Say, Judas, in thine ear Make they sweet music still, the silver coins, As on the day the temple’s yell was rent?

So, in the far-stretched background of all time I watch thy progress through the sounding years 

Wielding the sceptre here, and there the lyre, The lord or servant of thy master-passion, Pure or polluted, fool or nobly wise.

And this it is that justifies the whole, This is thy greatness: thou hast stumbled oft, And straying often fallen. Yet all the while, Wandering the stony wilderness of life,

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Thine eyes were fixed upon the steadfast star That far-off stands above the Promised Land.

Rough is the road, beset by mocking heavens And false illusory hells  the strong, the weak Alike by dancing fires are led astray, And poisoned flowers bloom rankly on the path.

Self in the guise of selfishness approached, Frailty in garment of a god benign;

Pleasure with lying accents “I am sin”

Proclaimed, and vice, “I am bold action” cried; “I am contentment,” spoke the belly full, And the applause of groundlings, “I am fame.”

And so it came that only here and there In all the years a strong, unerring one Plucked boldly at the flowers of brief delight, Yet by the dust of tumult unconfused

Pressed on to reach the goal; the strong man’s goal: To rule and to enjoy, to hold command

Over both things and spirits, to enjoy All pleasant sounds and all sweet gifts, yet strive Untiring, ever upward to that sun

Which no world-master’s blind despotic will, But his own hand, with more than Titan strength, Unto the utmost firmament has flung.

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THE MAGIC CITY

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A POET’S CREED

“ASSUAGE the tempests in thy heart that toss, For now thy verse has a rebellious ring; Unto the people as a gift to bring

Transmute thy gold into the common dross!”

Nay, all who sang and singing bare the cross, Villon and Byron heard the selfsame thing; Yet had they heeded, had they ceased to sing, Were not the earth the poorer for their loss?

Stand back in silence, as with trembling awe Upon the masters of high song I call:

What though my heart be stained with many a flaw, What though my blind steps stumble, and I fall: There is no god save Beauty, and no law Save that of Numbers richly musical.

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TO SWINBURNE.

ELOQUENT master, thy melodious rage

Our latter song may not aspire to reach!

Our eyes beheld the magic of thy speech Conjure the love-queens of a perished age, Yea, clothe with life their spectral forms, and wage, When the sight stung thee, war with Heaven for each: Only the rolling anthem of the beach

Could break the spell and end thy vassalage.

The sea, thy true love, taught thy lyric tongue The mighty music of her mutiny:

Thy voice as hers the ages shall prolong, And, praising numbers, men shall ask of thee: “Is it the sea that thunders in his song, Or is it his song reverberates in the sea?”

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CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

LIKE a heart stabbed through with the sword of woe, The sun suffuses the sky with blood

And bathes the land in a crimson glow, With the colour of sin in a rushing flood.

I gaze on a pale, pale face afar

Agleam in the light of the dying day,

But whiter and colder than snow-wreaths are That the clouds on the Alpine fir-trees lay.

And a mouth as red as the wine that flows Where a monarch feasts with his warriors brave 

So glowing a red had never the rose

With its roots set deep in a murderer’s grave, Whose impious hand was raised to kill

The mother that bore him, and then knew how He must live his life ‘neath the curse of ill, With the brand of Cain on his burning brow.

And floating, fluttering round it fell Long locks like a regal robe of state, And ever enmeshed in their magic spell Great captive Titans humbly wait.

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And eyes so deep that they seem to know All depths yet reached since the world began 

Aye, deep as the bottomless pit they go, Or the wayward, wandering heart of man.

I heard a song, and I had no choice

But to listen as into my heart it stole …

Strange loves that speak with a siren voice, And lusts that rot both body and soul.

Ah, never again since it entered in

Have I known the peace of a moment’s rest 

For there is a note in this song of sin That wakes an echo within my breast.

You have travelled far into love’s demesne; You have pierced to the heart of the riddle of things: Your soul is an altar on which unseen

Burns the mystic flame that has scorched my wings.

You that sing of sin as but she has sung That lived before passion was bound by fear, In the Grecian land when the lyre was young, Brother and master, I hail you here!

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THE POET

ALBEIT my song is like a driven blade

And I am first in all your minstrel wars, I cannot break the elemental bars:

When stood the sun still while I sang, or stayed His chariot in a cloud to give me shade?

Nor shall my passion swerve the calendars Or melt the cold indifference of the stars Before whose light the Muse’s lamp must fade.

What though my strain stir all hearts and surpass Great Dante’s music drawn from blood and tears?

All I have wrought and praying wrought so well, Is in the iron chorus of the spheres

No more than beating of a sounding brass, Or empty tinkle of a jester’s bell.

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CONSOLATION

TO RICHARD WATSON GILDER

THE sun-god in his robe of gold

That trails the argent clouds upon,

One day shall be a story told,

And hidden in oblivion.

The thunder of his chariot

Seems but as playing on a lute

To the Most High, who careth not

If all the starry mouths be mute.

Yea, when the cosmic cycles ring

No more around the Central Throne,

Shall not the Void beyond Him sing

His praise in monstrous monotone?

The earth and her constellate peers

Are fleeting as an evening chime,

And the irrevocable years

Roll down the cataract of time.

Yet are we not all dust; the night,

By Love’s own breath made exquisite,

Shall for a space in passion’s might

Conjoin us with the Infinite.

And though the planets failing reel

We shall escape the primal curse,

And in immortal numbers feel

The heart-beat of the Universe.

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HADRIAN

How pale, how wan, my Cćsar, is thy smile, Grey with the ashes of the heart’s desire.

Shall not thy slave with sweet pleasaunce beguile The hosts of care that to thy hurt conspire?

Shall shimmering silks before thy throne be spread From the far sands where patient camels plod?

Or black-robed seers draw nigh, who long have read The secret lines that cross the face of God?

Shall steaming blood thine anguish drive away, When in the arena’s madness and its din Huge bright-eyed tigers crouch upon the prey, Or groan beneath the poisoned javelin?

Nay, wilt thou scourge the arrogant sea with chains, And make thy footstool of an ocean’s might?

Lo, at thy nod the storm-tossed ship regains The friendly shore, or sinks from human sight.

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Wilt thou, perfumed and burning as the fire, The grape’s red blood from jewelled chalice drain?

Till drunken gladness to the gods aspire, Shall vine-wreathed Bacchus revel with his train?

Far kingdoms sent unto thy regal seat, The fairiest maids with lucent step and glance, That at thy bidding shall with naked feet Swing in the maze of bacchanalian dance!

Or, shall the slave-boy from the Lydian land With sound of lute-string charm thine ear, and thou The minstrel raising, feel a lily hand Soft as the snow upon thine aching brow?

But the pale Cćsar sadly smiled and drear, “Enough,” he said, and yet again: “Enough, The purple fades, the laurel soon grows sere, Death lays his finger on the lips of love.

“Thy words, O slave, ring hollow as the tomb; Like evil damps, thine incense too shall pass, One thing alone escapes the general doom: Love’s haloed image in art’s magic glass!

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“Wounds past all cure are burning in my breast, Beauty’s last kiss on lips that perish thus, Bring, that at last my weary heart find rest, The marble statue of Antinous.

“I care not now for any earthly toy,

Life’s zenith lies behind me many a mile …

White lotus-blossoms bury all my joy,

And all my realm and all my self the Nile.

“His face was heavenly transport to mine eyes, Sweet was his breath, as scented winds that blow O’er fields of purple hyacinths and rise In the glad May-time from the floral snow.

“Approach in silence; holy is the ground Where beauty’s feet have trod the desolate earth.

Bow to the slave that freed my soul, and bound My love with loving to his greater worth.

“Throughout all time shall sound his far laudations, From sea to land and on from land to sea, I, even I, imperial lord of nations,

Before this shrine in worship bend the knee.

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“Antinous, thy beauty is not dead 

Thou liv’st in realms of marble and of song!”

And wearily the pallid Cćsar’s head

Sank on his breast. Then silence deep and long.

But where to Beauty sacrifice is given We too shall kneel to worship and adore, Whether its star resplendent rose in heaven From Grecian hill or Galilean shore.

Page 137

ART

ALL-EMBRACING

Eternal art,

That of the dust a handful takest,

And by thy touch a spirit makest,

In reverent praising

Of thy perfection I would bear my part; Thou alone art beauty, thou life’s inmost heart!

Thou hast redeemed me,

Thou set me free,

Broken the lifeless matter’s prisoning shell, Let my soul forth

To seek what beseemed me

And in the splendour of God’s face to dwell.

For Nature works with other powers,

Draws from predestined seed the flowers, And all things from their substance due; But thou, the source of endless light, Dost out of nothing by thy might

Create a world where all is new.

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While Nature’s careful tutelage

Confines, us in a narrow cage 

The single life is but a drop of rain

That falls in summer showers

In ceaseless round to be absorbed again Into the vast inane,

An insignificant atom, that the gale

Scatters its blast before, 

Art gives us mighty wings to soar,

With eagle sweep the infinite heights to scale, Storm at the gates

Of heaven’s high fortress barred,

Though time and space and all the fates Stood vainly on their guard.

Its gift is freedom  space to move,

Our latent powers to prove,

Towards an imperishable goal to strive, Self-conscious and alive!

Looking backward through the misty ages Over the record of man’s changeful way, Sudden I behold upon the pages

Of the ancient book a gleam of day.

Amid the broadening light

A new creation springs to sight.

Behold! the mists of chaos clear,

And art is here!

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Confusion yields to order; beauty’s curves, Fixed fast in marble, art preserves.

Night no longer glooms upon the way,

Colours gleam and flash where dawns the day; Already from the lyre uncouth

Speak faltering accents of eternal truth.

Upon the scene a sightless minstrel stands Who Ilion sings:

From Hellas and the Latian lands

The resonant echo rings.

Higher still and higher

Mounts the sacred fire,

And welling from her tuneful throat

Hear Sappho’s fond complaining note

Far o’er the Lesbian waters float;

Blessing with love or blasting in his ire, Catullus grasps the lyre!

Nor poesy alone

Delights us with its mystic tone.

For lo! from out the deep arise

The pillared glories of the Parthenon: The sculptor’s eyes

Unsealed behold, his hands devise,

Types of undying beauty, and in stone

Hold the white vision of the boy

Whose lustrous beauty was an emperor’s joy.

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Thus onward still

I trace the proud creative will;

I see the heaven-inspired throng

Press further in its purpose strong,

Watch Raphael ply his brush, and know

The mind of Michelangelo!

Flung out by art’s divinest discontent, New stars adorn the firmament,

Great Shakespeare’s glory burns,

And Goethe in his orbit turns

Above the deep horizon line

Where Wagner’s rising light will shine.

Adown the stream my fancy sweeps,

Where stately temples crown the steeps.

I sail through purple seas

With strange illumined argosies;

Flames of kindling supernal,

Flowers of beauty eternal

Burst on the eye;

And dimly in a vista I descry

Pale, ghostlike souls of men that stray Through some mysterious dreamland’s avenues And know not whether life or death to choose.

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Half seen through veils of shifting smoke Delicate fairy forms

And phantoms come in hovering swarms;

Shapes that never were on earth

And never shall have mortal birth

Art’s magic spells evoke!

No longer blinded by its majesty

We gaze upon the sunrise in the sea 

No more poor helpless drops of rain,

Or atoms that the summer gales

Drive scurrying on amain:

Now have we strength that avails

To mount where the planets wheel,

Trampling beneath our feet

The clouds of air, to feel,

Free from the bounds that aggrieved,

The world-heart’s rhythmic beat 

And all this deliverance

Art has achieved.

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THE MAGIC CITY

WHO knows where Babylon’s forgotten kings Now keep their state?

Laid to their rest ‘neath purple coverings, They meet the common fate.

No traces that abide

Of all the Christs who bled upon the Cross Ere Jesus died,

And by the Ganges sought the gain of loss: Behold their priestly mantle’s dye

Has faded, and their day gone by.

The witching girls with eyes so crystal-clear And honeyed tresses bright,

Full many a fool’s delight

And his heart’s all;

These with the snows of yester-year

Not Villon’s cry shall wake to light,

Asleep beyond recall.

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The tables of the law are broken;

The flocks are feeding on the grass that grows About each sculptured token

Of ancient empire, and the wild wind blows, Yet, though the spell of death and ruin lord The earth, above all mortal woes

Deathless, triumphant sounds the poet’s word, Clothed with thought’s flame, and
through the storm-fraught night.

Blazes like a mighty sword

Leaping to the fight.

Through the clang of battle, and the crash Of worlds that to destruction fall,

Song rings out like silver trumpets’ call, Or, heard though all,

Harmonious still, great chords consenting clash.

Never is melody silent on earth;

Faint, far-away, but forever rings the sound of its mirth, Not even the sun is eternal, but immortal, O Homer, thy birth!

And still the listening years

Repeat her lyric name,

Who wove song’s deathless garland from her tears And from her shame.

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And raised by music’s might

 High walls in battlemented line 

A magic city dawns before my sight:

Golden temples rear their haughty heads on high Domes like new suns blazing seem to span the sky.

I enter in, and straying stand at length Amazed before a vast cathedral’s door.

Immense it rises there, in conscious strength That many a tempest bore.

On the threshold swift I pause:

Sound of ghostly footsteps awes

My eager feet that would an entrance win, Bids me kneel and murmur low

Prayers of reverence, as I know

What holy thoughts, what wisdom dwell therein.

This is the home of high Teutonic speech Where beauty’s sacred fire forever glows.

Upon the Edda’s broad foundation rose

The soaring columns vaulted each to each,

Page 145

And Goethe, Shakespeare, Ibsen reach

Their spans across the hall:

And over all

A dome that holds the light,

The Over-Man, whose message mystical

Bade us be bold and laugh and seize delight, Before he vanished into endless night

At Zarathustra’s call!

Of song is made the painted windows’ sheen, The lustre of the lamps,

The tapestries shot with gold:

On each his own design some singer stamps, The very stones have voices, that proclaim The Magic City and uphold

Her deathless fame.

The Holy of Holies is this place;

Some hanging that the wall may grace

To weave with care,

Or with the smoking censer pace,

Or do least service in that blessed throng Is to claim kinship with God’s saints and wear The martyr’s crown of song.

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Page [147]

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

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Page 149

I LAY beside you … on your lips the while Hovered, most strange … the mirage of a smile, Such as a minstrel lover might have seen Upon the visage of some antique queen 

Flickering like flame, half choked by wind and dust, Weary of all things saving song and lust.

How many days and years and lovers’ lies Gave you your knowledge? You are very wise And tired, yet insatiate to the last.

These things I thought, but said not; and there passed Before my vision in voluptuous quest,

The pageant of the lovers who possessed Your soul and body even as I possess,

Who marked your passion in its nakedness And all your love-sins when your love was new.

They saw as I your quivering breast, and drew Nearer to the consuming flame that burns Deep to the marrow of my bone, and turns My heart to love even as theirs who knew From head to girdle each sweet curve of you, Each little way of loving. No caress,

But apes the part of former loves. Ah yes,

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Even thus your hand toyed in the locks of him Who came before me. Was he fair of limb Or very dark? What matter, with such lures You snared the heart of all your paramours!

To-night I feel the presence of the others, Your lovers were they and are now my brothers And I have nothing that has not been theirs, No single bloom the tree of passion bears They have not plucked. Beloved, can it be?

Is there no gift that you reserve for me 

No loving kindness or no subtle sin,

No secret shrine that none has entered in, Whither no mocking memories pursue

Love’s wistful pilgrim? I am weary too, With weariness of all your lovers, and when I follow in the ways of other men,

I know each spot of your sweet body is A cross, the tombstone of some perished kiss.

With all its beauty and its faultless grace Your body, dearest, is a haunted place.

When I did yield to passion’s swift demand, One of your lovers touched me with his hand.

And in the pang of amorous delight

I hear strange voices calling through the night

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THE THREE SPHINXES

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Page 153

BEFORE the image older than the world, Or ill or good,

By Titan hand into the desert hurled,

In the Egyptian sunset musing stood 

Long having travelled by fantastic roads Where in deep sands the tremulous footstep sinks 

The oldest and the youngest of the gods, Saying:

“Upon my life has fallen thy shadow,

O Sphinx!”

Replied the Sphinx: “O son of Aphrodite, Shall wisdom teach thee how the soul is won, Or the hot sands be balsam on thy lids?

Behold approach from Thebes and Babylon, Huge birds grotesque against the falling gloom, My far-come younger sisters.” And a mighty Thunder of pinions shook the pyramids, And made the mummies mumble in their tomb.

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The three stern sisters of the mystery Enduring and miraculously wrought

In granite and in porphyry,

Then, holding concourse in the desert, spake With the great sound of billows on the sea That rumble as they break:

“Thou, Eros, art the eternal riddle, we Are but in stone the semblance of thy thought.”

Limbed like the panther, featured like a man, The wisest of the Sphinxes thus began, That still had waited where the river steams And winds the caravan:

“In my brain’s cavern seven cubits span Dwell visions splendorous

Of the great lords of song and thought and might, Who in the large eyes of Antinous

Have read the Deeper Light.

Upon my lashes gleams

Still Shakespeare’s rhythmic tear;

Here Plato musing dreamed his dreams

Of spirit-passion; David here

In the long night-watch sang of Jonathan.”

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Then rose the winged Theban, figure dual Of maid and lion strangely wed;

“I am the blood that tingles, and the jewel Of all the world’s desire adorns my head 

The lithe-limbed youths that fell for Helen’s sake Have died for me,

The lads that wake

To ripeness curse me as they ache

Beneath my tyranny.

My mandates sweet and cruel

Nor prayer nor penance shall revoke:

I am the flame, men’s bodies are the fuel, Men’s souls the smoke.”

The pinioned Sphinx of Babylon,

Human in naught, Lord Eros thus addressed: “Wherever men have spat thy face upon

Or sought strange pleasure in unholy quest, My breath had made them mad.

I am the dream that Nero’s mother had

Ere burned his natal star.

I am the ghastly vision of de Sade:

Astarte and Priapus wage

War for my beauty monstrous, barren, bare; The Cretan knew me and from far

My image fell upon the crimson page

Of Swinburne and of Baudelaire.”

Page 156

The silence shivered as in tearless woe When they had done, the Foam-begotten broke Across his knee the sceptre and the bow: “The empyrean is beyond your reach,

Your substance earth of earth,

And ever she that called on Plato’s name Bears soilure of a mortal birth

The triple mirror are you of my shame

Half-beast are two, one wholly beast, in each Is something bestial, and your wings’ winds choke Within my heart the unadulterate flame.”

But the three Sphinxes mighty murmuring Thus answer made: “O Love,

Turn thou thy wrath above,

Where round God’s throne the cosmic sunsets fling The light that shall not fade.

Beneath his feet the countless ćons roll, His slow relentless purpose knows the goal Of things, and joining flesh and spirit made A beast the mansion of the soul.”

Page 157

And lo, the spring’s breath faded from Love’s charm, The sunshine from his hair,

And in his arm

The arrows turned to rods.

He heeded not the silent years that crawl Like uncouth spiders. Weary, cynical,

Self-conscious, disenchanted stood he there, The oldest and the saddest of the gods.

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Table of Contents

- THE BOOK OF IDOLS

- THE BOOK OF IDOLS