Nirvana Days

Can heedless gazing teach me more than toil?
Can swaying of sere sedge along the slope,
Or the dull lisp of oaken limbs that foil
The sun's ensheathing fervor, interfuse
My vacant being with far meanings whose
Soft airs blow from the hidden seas of Hope?
Or can the wintry sumac sably stooping
So charm and lift my heart from heartless drooping
When other healings all were asked in vain?
Yes—there are witcheries in the things of earth
That breathe with an illimitable voice
Wisdom and calm to us, and lure to birth
Dim intimations bidding us rejoice
Even in the great mystery of Pain.

LOOK NOT TO THE WEST

Look not to the west where the sun is dying
On fields of darkening clouds!
Look not to the west where the wild birds nest
And the winds are hieing
To sweep away sleep from the forest,
And tatter the shrouds of sable silence
Lit by the fire-fly's morris-dance.
Look not to the west—
'Tis best for the heart to hear not the chants
Of Evening over day's death!

Look not to the west where the sun is dying—
The sun that rose with song!
Look not to the west where the closèd quest
Of thy soul seems lying;
Where every sorrow that ever
Was wed with wrong in human breast,
From the sea of its radiance never fades!
Look not to the west—
'Tis best for the heart to see not the shades
That rise—the wrecks of the Past!

A NIKKO SHRINE

Under the sway, in old Japan,
Of silent cryptic trees,
There is a shrine the worldliest
Would near with bended knees.

Green, thro a torii, the way
Leads to it, worn, across
A rivulet whose voice intones
With mystery of moss.

A mystery that is everywhere:
The god beneath his shrine
Seems but a mossy shape—yet so
Ensheathed is more divine.

For tho Nature has muffled him
And sealed him there away,
The meaning of all faith remains—
That men will ever pray.

Aye will, as long as soul has need,
As long as earth is sod
With tombs, bow down the knee to all
That wakens in them God.

THE QUESTION

I shall lie so one day,
With lips of Silence set;
Eyes that no tear can wet
Again: a thing of Clay.

I shall lie so, and Earth
Will seize again her dust—
Though she must gnaw and rust
The coffin's iron girth.

I shall lie so—and they
Who still the Day bestride,
Will stand so by my side
And with sad yearning say:

"What is he now, this man,
Shut in a pallor there,
His spirit that could dare,
What—what now is its span?

"A withered atom's space
Within a withered brain?
Or can it from the Wain
To far Orion race?"

And, like all that have died,
I shall but answer—naught.
Yet Time this truth has taught:
The Question—will abide.

I'LL LOOK NO MORE

I'll look no more! thro timeless hours my eyes
Without intent have watched the slowing flight
Of ebon crows across quiescent skies
Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird,
Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd
That flow far eastward to the coming night.
And as I turn again to foiling thought
My spirit leaves me—as faint zephyrs leave
The trees at evening; tho all day they've sought
A place to hide them in and fondly grieve.
And silently the slow oil sinks beneath
The noiseless burning wick of yellow flame.
It is as if God back to him would breathe
All the world's given life, and end its Aim.

NIGHT'S OCCULTISM

Northward the twilight thro dark drifts
Of cloud-wreck lingers cold.
Southward the sated lightning sinks
Beneath the wooded wold.

Eastward immovable deep shade
Is sealed with mystery.
Westward a memory of dead gold
Wakes on a sunset sea.

Under, is earth's still orbiting;
Over, a clearing star:
In all, the spirit litany
Of life's strange avatar.

UNCROWNED

I am not other than men are, you say?
But faulty and failing? And your love can lend
No glory of illusion to o'erlay
The lack, and make me seem one in whom blend
Nobilities wherein your heart may lose
All that it feels of flaw in me, or rues?

Can it so be? Did ever woman love
Whose faith wreathed not about the brow she chose
Aureolas illumining him above
All that another thinks he is, or knows?
I ask it bravely, for the way is long,
And, haloless, should I not lead you wrong?

WRITTEN IN HELL

(By Sir Giles, whom the Witch of Urm leads to Judas Iscariot)

Against a castle moated gloomily by a bitter drain of blood,
From whose fetid wave contumely
Of all truth was reeking fumily
And infectiously, I stood;
Waiting for her sign—
A shriek repeated nine.

I shrank at every aspish quivering fear set crawling in my breast.
But betimes I felt a shivering
Shriek cut ear and brain with slivering
Stings of terror, sin, unrest—
Christ! it raised the dead
Out of the moat's black bed.

Nine times—and then across the thickening reek a rusty draw was dropped;
Thro portcullis sped a quickening
Shadow past to where with sickening
Feet, befixed by awe I stopped—
There she laughed a laugh
No devil's soul could quaff.

I swear its clamor tore the stuttering leaves from shrub and shrunken tree;
Swear no limbo e'er heard muttering
Like that spawn of echoes sputtering
Midnight with their drunken glee—
Yet, ere half were done,
I could not hear a one.

She put her finger burning eerily to my lips—I heard them lock.
Led me then a marsh-way, cheerily—
Tho the quick ooze spurted drearily
Thro root-rotten curd and rock.
Things like water-ghouls
Slid slimily in pools.

She stepped just once upon a hideous burrow, dank and haired with grass;
Fixed upon me eyes perfidious
As a fiend's are, yet insidious—
Questioned if I dared to pass.
"I will search all Hell
To find him," from me fell.

And so was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead.
Where we heard them hoot palaverous
Drivel learned beneath unsavorous
Moulds, and saw a glutton's head
Grin to a hissing bat,
That scraped him as he spat.

Witch she was, I knew, turned shepherdess to a soul blind as a sheep's.
But I dogged her on o'er jeopardous
Steeps down which she sped with leopardess
Limbs into miasmic deeps.
"Swim," she gasped behind—
Then like a she-wolf whined.

It almost seemed to me as deadening as the sluice of dreary Styx.
Fire and foulness mixed with leadening
Slush I drank; but swam the reddening
Stuff a league with weary licks.
Up a sulphurous bank
We climbed, and there I sank.

Again she laughed that laugh—a shrivelling, ghastly, gaunt, uncanny spate.
Up I sprang and cursed my snivelling
Soul for weariness—for drivelling,
And for so forgetting Hate.
"You will find him there"
She pointed—thro her hair.

I write these words from Hell where bloodily locked with him in fight I woke.
Where we fall down caverns ruddily
Spilt with glazing gore and muddily
Dashed with stagnant night and smoke.
Yet I do not care,
For he groans by me—there.

AT THE HELM

(Nova Scotian)

Fog, and a wind that blows the sea
Blindly into my eyes.
And I know not if my soul shall be
When the day dies.

But if it be not and I lose
All that men live to gain—
I who have little known but hues
Of wind and rain—

Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.

DEAD LOVE

If this should never end—
This wandering in oblivious mood
Along a rutless road that leads
From wood to deeper wood—
This crunching with unheedful foot
Acorns, I think, and withered leaves ...
Perhaps a rotten root—

If this should never end—
This seeing with insentient eyes
Something that seems like earth, and, too,
Like overbending skies;
This feeling, well—that time is space,
Space, time; and each a pallid glass
In which Life sees her face—

If it should never end—
The road, the wandering and the feel
Of dead infinities that seem
O'er our dead sense to steal,
And like seas cease above—
Would it much matter, love?

MORTAL SIN

(Song for a drama)

Much the wind
Knows of my heart,
Though he whispers in my ear
That he has seen me burn and start
When I dream of your breast, my dear.

Much the wind
Knows of my soul!
For no soul has he to lose
On a mistress who can dole
Kisses that drug as poison-dews.

SEA-MAD

(A Breton Maid)

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me!
One said:
"Away! he is dead!
Upon my foam I have flung his head!
Go back to your cote, you shall never wed!—
(Nor he!)"

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
Two brake.
The third with a quake
Cried loud, "O maid, I'll find for thy sake
His dead lost body: prepare his wake!"
(And back it plunged to the sea!)

Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
One bore—
And swept on the shore—
His pale, pale face I shall kiss no more!
Ah, woe to women death passes o'er!
(Woe's me!)

THE DEATH-SPRITE

(A ballad for God)

A. D. 909

Three kings with naught of a care
To a hunting went;
Three kings of stirrup fair
And of yew-bow bent.

Away they rode with a song
On the summer tide;
Away from thrid and throng
By the blue lake side.

And "Ho!" they vaunted aloud
To the morning hills.
And "Ha!"—What reck the proud
For the God of Ills?

Naught! so they swagged thro the glade
Where the roe-buck rose:
She nosed the wind, affrayed
By the blod "Ho, hos!"

"Three arrows now to her heart!"
They shouted, and sped,
Each king, an evil dart
With a flinten head.

And O she staggered down—
O unpitied, slain!
But in her dreadful swoun
There was more than pain!

For Horror sprang from her blood,
A Spectre of Death!
It drew them thro the wood—
Where a Chapel saith

Masses for souls that are lost
In the wilds of sin—
There mumbled, "Ye'll pay cost
Ere to shrift ye win!"

Then led them to a bay tree
By an open grave,
Where three ghost-kings in three
Stony coffins clave.

Which spake, "Lo, we too were fair!"—
"Unto this ye'll come!"—
"Ay ye, who of naught beware!"—
So spake—and were dumb.

Then of fright and dread the kings flung
Away yew-tree bow
(The Chapel bell slow rung
With the bleak wind's blow).

And fast they fled thro the glade
To the castle hall.
But God had not been stayed—
They were lepers, all!

Woe then to kings! to the pelf
That men call pride!
Christ shrive us all from self,
From the Death-sprite hide!

WORMWOOD

(In Old England)

What is he whispering to her there
Under the hedge-row spray?
"Spring, Spring, Spring?"—Is the world so fair
To him, fool, that he has no care
As he cuckoos it all day?

Is he quite sure—quite sure the sap
Of life's not hate, but love?
If I should tell him there's no gap
Between her and a ... nameless hap,
Would he still want his "dove"?

Or would he go as blind to buds
As I am, who watch here,
While he is pouring poet floods
From his thin lips, and while his blood's
Burning for her so near?

It would be swords—swords!... And his steel
Should rip death from my breast.
But would he ever know the feel
Of Spring again, of its ribald reel,
As once I did, the best?

No! He would curse henceforward leaf
And flower and light—as I.
Spring?—It is fire, lust, ashes, grief—
All that a Hell can hold, in fief!...
He'll learn it ere he die.

QUEST AND REQUITAL

I

(Before He Comes)

Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist
September waves of forest overflow
The hills with crimson, amaranth and gold.
Winds warm with the memory of scented hours
Dead Summer gathers in her leafy lap,
Rustle the distance with dim murmurings
That sink upon the air as soft as shades
Dropt from the overleaning clouds to earth;
While golden-rod and sedge and aster hushed
In sunny silence and the oblivion
Of life drawn from the insentient veins of Time,
Await the searing swoon of Autumn's reign.
It is a day when death must seem as birth,
And birth as death; and life—till love comes—pain.

II

(He Has Come)

These are the leafy hills and listless vales
Of iridescent Autumn—this the oak
Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked
Away the sunny hours of afternoon.
Here are the bitter-sweet and elder sprays
I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow
Of breezes overhead—and here the word
I wrote unwittingly upon the soil.
How long ago it was I cannot tell:
The loneliness of unrequited love
Lies like a blank eternity between
Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart.
I only know all days I've ever seen
Must seem now of some other life apart!

III

(He Loves)

"Will you let any moment dip its wing
Into your heart and find no love of me
To tint with deathless Dream"—he said—"and Spring,
Its flight to the dim bourne of memory?
Will you have any grief that can forget
How grief should find forgetfulness in love?
And since your soul in my soul's zone is set
Will it sometimes ask other spheres to rove
Where touch and voice of me shall not be met?
Ah no! in all the underdeeps of Death
Or overheights of Life it still shall be
At tryst with mine thro moan or ecstasy.
In all!" ... Yet ere a year he'll draw no breath
But is another's!—Will God let it be?

IV

(Betrayed by Him)

All day I've bent my heart beneath the yoke
Of goading toil, remembering to forget,
To still upon my lips his kiss that woke
Me in elysian love one word has broke—
One stinging word of severance and regret.
All day I've blotted from my eyes his face,
But now at evening tide it comes again,
And memories into my darkened soul
Rush as the stars into high heaven's space.
As the bright stars! But, ah, tomorrow! when
Once more I must forget and see life's goal,
That was so green, with sering laurel hung.
Tomorrow and tomorrow! till is wrung
Peace from the piteous hours I strive among!

V

(Finding No Peace)

I say unto all hearts that cannot rest
For want of love, for beating loud and lonely,
Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only
Love that is passionless within the breast.
Pray that it may not be a haunting fire,
A vision that shall steal insatiably
All beauteous content, all sweet desire,
From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea.
But seek that soul and soul may meet together
Knowing they have forever been but one—
Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather
Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun.
Pray—pray! lost love uptorn shall seem as nether
Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion.

VI

(In After Years to Him)

You say that love then led us—you and me?
I say 'twas hate, that wore love's wanting eyes:
Hate that I could not tear away the lies
That wrapped you with their silken sorcery.
Hate that for you I could not open skies
Where beauty lives of her own loveliness;
That God would give me no omnipotence
To purge and mould anew your soul's numb sense.
Aye, hate that I could love you not tho love
Pent in me ached with passion-born distress—
While thro unfathomable dark the Prize
Seemed sinking, as my soul, from heaven above.
Love, say you? love? and hate rent us apart?
I tell you hate alone so tears the heart.

VII

(To Him After His Death)

God who can bind the stars eternally
With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought;
Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea
Unseverably, and count it as sheer naught;
With his All-might could bind not you and me.
For tho He pressed us heart to burning heart
And set then to the passion that enthralls
His sanction, still our souls stood e'er apart,
As aliens beating fierce against the walls
Of dark unsympathy that would upstart.
Stood aliens, aye! and would tho we should meet,
Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births,
Upon some world where Time cannot repeat
The feeblest syllable that once was earth's.

LOVE IN EXTREMIS

I care not what they say who hold
We should speak but of life and joy;
I have met death in one I love,
Death lusting to destroy.

And I have fought him vein by vein,
Loosened his cold and creeping clutch,
Driven him from her—twice and thrice—
With might too much.

Yet with too little! for I know
That she at last will lie there still.
Then all my fire of love shall fail
To thaw that chill;

For it will freeze light from her eyes,
Pulse from her breast and from her soul
Me, whom no opiate of peace
Can e'er console.

None: ... till I follow her, in time,
And find her, though all Dust deny!
With that to be I'll front the day,
And fronting die.

OVER THE DREGS

If I had died last year when Death
And I were at finger-tips, till Life
Slipping between blew her warm breath
Into my heart again and veins,
And opened my eyes and nulled my pains—

If I had died where would you be?
You so passionate, yet quick
To escape from passion's mastery,
When clasping and kiss and touch are gone,
And days and space are between us drawn?

Where would you be? My arms you chose—
Arms too ready to seize and sin—
And kept no burning forbiddance in those
Still eyes of yours, or else, I think ...
No! I unsay it! No!... So drink.

Drink! the last glass! And then ... "My thought?"
It is that when we've reached the last
Of pleasure we are like two who've fought,
Who have no common love but love
Of fighting—so does our passion prove!

For it is only passion—such!
Tho clasping and kiss and touch were love,
A little—and sometimes, maybe, much,
When soul and heaven looked far away,
And flesh seemed only flesh—and clay.

But, it is ended! So, drink!... How
You've ruined me, as I have you!
All that you might have been! and—now!
All that I was, until ... 'Tis clear
I should have died in Spring last year.

BEWITCHED

(On a Devon Moor)

Why do I babble of bitter chills—
And icy trees—and snowy fallows?
Why do I shudder as twilight spills
A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows
The moor with her wicked flame?
Why do the gibbering croons of the hag
In her hut by the wood
Go muttering, muttering in my blood—
Till the hoot of an owl
On the snag of a tomb
Breaks out of the gloom
Like the wail of a witch's name?

Ugh, it is drawing my feet away—
The road's gone! the moonlet's sunken!
What shall I do if it comes to fray
With fiends invisible, wild and drunken—
Fiends on a churchless fell!
Ha, is it cracking of ice in the bog
That is clutching my throat,
Or devils gnawing the widow's shoat?
By the Cross of the Christ,
There's a fog that is black
As—U-r-r!—at my back!—
They are dragging me ... down to ... hell!

QUARREL

And is it so
That two who stand
Heart closed in heart,
Hand knit to hand,
Can let love go
Asunder, so?
Speak hard—not understand?

That one asks much?
One gives too small?
And so is lost,
It may be—All?
That for a touch
Of pride we such
A heaven can let fall?

No!—But to Fate
Say with me, "Go:
Death may bring dross
But this I know;
Love can abate
Life's harshest hate,
So loving I bend low."

OF THE FLESH

(At Monte Carlo)

We met upon the street;
Quick passion sprung into the eye of each;
No dilettante heat!
For though I do not love her now, beseech
You, signor, do you think
We could face so in any spot, nor fear
To leap the fatal brink
Into each other's arms—that, once a-near,
Hell's self could make us shrink?

No, no! Such love as ours
Stabbed peace heart-deep and burnt the flesh to mad.
It scorned the simple powers
Of sympathy and mild repose, and had
One thirst alone—to hold
Each other mouth to still unsated mouth
Until, perchance, the cold
And damp of death should end some night its drouth.

But only day would come,
Unlock our arms and show us duty's eye
Calm, pale, and sternly dumb.
And so we'd swear never to kiss or sigh
Again—for well we knew
God grants such boons only to man and wife.
But night distilled the dew
Of loneliness—and so, once more, that life.

And how was the spell burst?
Each long embrace seemed sweeter than the last;
Each dulling heart-beat nurst
The shame, until I tore me from the past,
And cried, "I hate my soul,
And thine and this false love!" She fainted—fell.
I kissed her lips ... stole
The ring that choked her finger ... said farewell.

And since then Time has pressed
Ten restless years. But if I saw her lay
Her hand upon her breast,
As once she used, and send her soul to say
A word with those dark eyes ...
Ha, what is that, signor? "Respect?... My wife?"
That's as may be. You rise?
Adieu, signor. Fate deals the cards in life.

A DEATH SONG

(For a Drama)

Toll no bell and say no prayer,
Let no rose die on my bier.
All I hoped for shall appear
Or be well forgotten, there.
(Like the waves of yesteryear.)

Toll no bell and drop no sigh,
Bear me softly to the tomb;
Life was dark, but light is nigh—
Light no sorrow shall consume
(And no kiss of love—or cry).

Toll no bell; the clod will toll
Grief enough for any ear.
When the last has sounded clear,
Know that I have reached the Goal
(Which is God seen thro no tear).