Song-Surf

Down the palm-way from Eden in the mid-night
Lay dreaming Eve by her outdriven mate,
Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet
Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy.
Pitiful round her face that could not lose
Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn
Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh
Along her loveliness in the white moon.
Then sudden her dream, too cruelly impent
With pain, broke and a cry fled shuddering
Into the wounded stillness from her lips—
As, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand,
And tears, that had before ne'er visited
Her lids with anguish, drew from her the moan:

"Oh, Adam! What have I dreamed?
Now do I understand His words, so dim
To creatures that had quivered but with bliss!
Since at the dusk thy kiss to me, and I
Wept at caresses that were once all joy,
I have slept, seeing through Futurity
The uncreated ages visibly!
Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb
Of Time, and all with lamentable mien
Accusing without mercy, thee and me!
And without pity! for tho' some were far
From birth, and without name, others were near—
Sodom and dark Gomorrah—from whose flames
Fleeing one turned ... how like her look to mine
When the tree's horror trembled on my taste!
And Babylon upbuilded on our sin;
And Nineveh, a city sinking slow
Under a shroud of sandy centuries
That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes
Of women who e'er-bitterly gave birth!
Ah, to be mother of all misery!
To be first-called out of the earth and fail
For a whole world! To shame maternity
For women evermore—women whose tears
Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away!
To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou
Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear
The swooning ages suffer up to God!
And Oh, that birth-cry of a guiltless child
In it are sounding of our sin and woe,
With prophesy of ill beyond all years!
Yearning for beauty never to be seen—
Beatitude redeemless evermore!

"And I whose dream mourned with all motherhood
Must hear it soon! Already do soft skill,
Assuasive lulls, enticings and quick tones
Of tenderness—that will like light awake
The folded memory children shall bring
Out of the dark—move in me longingly.
Yet thou, Adam, dear fallen thought of God,
Thou, when thou too shall hear humanity
Cry in thy child, wilt groaning wish the world
Back in unsummoned Void! and, woe! wilt fill
God's ear with troubled wonder and unrest!"

Softly he soothed her straying hair, and kissed
The fever from her lips. Over the palms
The sad moon poured her peace into their eyes,
Till Sleep, the angel of forgetfulness,
Folded again dark wings above their rest.

MARY AT NAZARETH

I know, Lord, Thou hast sent Him—
Thou art so good to me!—
But Thou hast only lent Him,
His heart's for Thee!

I dared—Thy poor hand-maiden—
Not ask a prophet-child:
Only a boy-babe laden
For earth—and mild.

But this one Thou hast given
Seems not for earth—or me!
His lips flame truth from heaven,
And vanity

Seem all my thoughts and prayers
When He but speaks Thy Law;
Out of my heart the tares
Are torn by awe!

I cannot look upon Him,
So strangely burn His eyes—
Hath not some grieving drawn Him
From Paradise?

For Thee, for Thee I'd live, Lord!
Yet oft I almost fall
Before Him—Oh, forgive, Lord,
My sinful thrall!

But e'en when He was nursing,
A baby at my breast,
It seemed He was dispersing
The world's unrest.

Thou bad'st me call Him "Jesus,"
And from our heavy sin
I know He shall release us,
From Sheol win.

But, Lord, forgive! the yearning
That He may sometimes be
Like other children, learning
Beside my knee,

Or playing, prattling, seeking
For help—comes to my heart....
Ah sinful, Lord, I'm speaking—
How good Thou art!

ADELIL

Proud Adelil! Proud Adelil!
Why does she lie so cold?
(I made her shrink, I made her reel,
I made her white lids fold.)

We sat at banquet, many maids,
She like a Valkyr free.
(I hated the glitter of her braids,
I hated her blue eye's glee!)

In emerald cups was poured the mead;
Icily blew the night.
(But tears unshed and woes that bleed
Brew bitterness and spite.)

"A goblet to my love!" she cried,
"Prince where the sea-winds fly!"
(Her love!—it was for that he died,
And for it she should die.)

She lifted the cup and drank—she saw
A heart within its lees.
(I laughed like the dead who feel the thaw
Of summer in the breeze.)

They looked upon her stricken still,
And sudden they grew appalled.
("It is thy lover's heart!" I shrill
As the sea-crow to her called.)

Palely she took it—did it give
Ease there against her breast?
(Dead—dead she swooned, but I cannot live,
And dead I shall not rest.)

INTIMATION

All night I smiled as I slept,
For I heard the March-wind feel
Blindly about in the trees without
For buds to heal.

All night in dreams, for I smelt,
In the rain-wet woods and fields,
The coming flowers and the glad green hours
That summer yields.

All night—and when at dawn
I woke with the blue-bird's cheep,
Winter with all its chill and pall
Seemed but a sleep.

IN JULY

This path will tell me where dark daisies dance
To the white sycamores that dell them in;
Where crow and flicker cry melodious din,
And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance
Luscious enticings under briery green.
It will slip under coppice limbs that lean
Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants
Toward weedy water-plants
That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance.

I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap
And lady phlox within the hollow's cool;
Cedar with sudden memories of Yule
Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap.
The high hot mullein fond of the full sun
Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won
The hither wheat where idle breezes nap,
And fluffy quails entrap
Me from their brood that crouch to escape mishap.

Then I shall reach the mossy water-way
That gullies the dense hill up to its peak,
There dally listening to the eerie eke
Of drops into cool chalices of clay.
Then on, for elders odorously will steal
My senses till I climb up where they heal
The livid heat of its malingering ray,
And wooingly betray
To memory many a long-forgotten day.

There I shall rest within the woody peace
Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed
With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed,
Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece;
The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls
To Solitude thro' aged forest halls,
Will waft into me their mysterious ease,
And in the wind's soft cease
I shall hear hintings of eternities.

FROM ABOVE

What do I care if the trees are bare
And the hills are dark
And the skies are gray.

What do I care for chill in the air
For crows that cark
At the rough wind's way.

What do I care for the dead leaves there—
Or the sullen road
By the sullen wood.

There's heart in my heart
To bear my load!
So enough, the day is good!

BY THE INDUS

Thou art late, O Moon,
Late,
I have waited thee long.
The nightingale's flown to her nest,
Sated with song.
The champak hath no odour more
To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er—
But my heart it will not rest.

Thou art late, O Love,
Late,
For the moon is a-wane.
The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs,
Burns with my pain.
The lotus leans her head on the stream—
Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream,
Dream ere the night-cool dies?

Thou art late, O Death,
Late,
For he did not come!
A pariah is my heart,
Cast from him—dumb!
I cannot cry in the jungle's deep—
Is it not time for the Tomb—and Sleep?
O Death, strike with thy dart!

EVOCATION

(Nikko, Japan, 1905)

Dim thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Booms the temple bell,
Down from the tomb of Iêyasü
Yearning, as a knell.

Down from the tomb where many an æon
Silently has knelt;
Many a pilgrimage of millions—
Still about it felt.

Still, for I see them gather ghostly
Now, as the numb sound
Floats, an unearthly necromancy,
From the past's dead ground.

See the invisible vast millions,
Hear their soundless feet
Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded
Carven temple's seat.

And, one among them—pale among them—
Passes waning by.
What is it tells me mystically
That strange one was I?...

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Dies the bell—'tis dumb.
After how many lives returning
Shall I hither come?

Hither again! and climb the votive
Ever mossy ways?
Who shall the gods be then, the millions
Meek, entreat or praise?

THE CHILD GOD GAVE

"Give me a little child
To draw this dreary want out of my breast,"
I cried to God.
"Give, for my days beat wild
With loneliness that will not rest
But under the still sod!"

It came—with groping lips
And little fingers stealing aimlessly
About my heart.
I was like one who slips
A-sudden into Ecstasy
And thinks ne'er to depart.

"Soon he will smile," I said,
"And babble baby love into my ears—
How it will thrill!"
I waited—Oh, the dread,
The clutching agony, the fears!—
He was so strange and still.

Did I curse God and rave
When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas
A witless child?
No ... I ... I only gave
One cry ... just one ... I think ... because ...
You know ... he never smiled.

THE WINDS

The East Wind is a Bedouin,
And Nimbus is his steed;
Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin
Blue scimitar he flies afar,
Whither his rovings lead.
The Dead Sea waves
And Egypt caves
Of mummied silence laugh
When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench
And to wrench
From his clutch the tyrant's staff.

The West Wind is an Indian brave
Who scours the Autumn's crest.
Dashing the forest down as a slave,
He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves
A maelstrom for his breast.
Out of the night
Crying to fright
The earth he swoops to spoil—
There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath,
In his path
There is misery and moil.

The North Wind is a Viking—cold
And cruel, armed with death!
Born in the doomful deep of the old
Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose
From Niflheim's ebon breath.
And with him sail
Snow, Frost, and Hail,
Thanes mighty as their lord,
To plunder the shores of Summer's stores—
And his roar's
Like the sound of Chaos' horde.

The South Wind is a Troubadour;
The Spring 's his serenade.
Over the mountain, over the moor,
He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb
Blossom and leaf and blade.
He ripples the throat
Of the lark with a note
Of lilting love and bliss,
And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon,
Are a-swoon—
When he woos them with his kiss.

TRANSCENDED

I who was learnèd in death's lore
Oft held her to my heart
And spoke of days when we should love no more—
In the long dust, apart.

"Immortal?" No—it could not be,
Spirit with flesh must die.
Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea,
Reason would still outcry.

She died. They wrapped her in the dust—
I heard the dull clod's dole,
And then I knew she lived—that death's dark lust
Could never touch her soul!

LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD

We are not lovers, you and I,
Upon this sunny lane,
But children who have never known
Love's joy or pain.

The trees we pass, the summer brook,
The bird that o'er us darts—
We do not know 'tis they that thrill
Our childish hearts.

The earth-things have no name for us,
The ploughing means no more
Than that they like to walk the fields
Who plough them o'er.

The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills
Are not a World to-day—
But just a place God's made for us
In which to play.

AUTUMN

I know her not by fallen leaves
Or resting heaps of hay;
Or by the sheathing mists of mauve
That soothe the fiery day.

I know her not by plumping nuts,
By redded hips and haws,
Or by the silence hanging sad
Under the wind's sere pause.

But by her sighs I know her well—
They are like Sorrow's breath;
And by this longing, strangely still,
For something after death.

SHINTO

(Miyajima, Japan, 1905)

Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave
Find the worship and glory we
Give to the one God great and grave—

Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer
Here on your gates—the story see
And answer out of the earth and air.

For I am Nature's child, and you
Were by the children of Nature built.
Ages have on you smiled—and dew
On you for ages has been spilt—

Till you are beautiful as Time
Mossy and mellowing ever makes:
Wrapped as you are in lull—or rhyme
Of sounding drum that sudden breaks.

This is my prayer then, this: that I
Too may reverence all of life,
Lose no power and miss no high
Awe, of a world with wonder rife!

That I may build in spirit fair
Temples and torii on each place
That I have loved—Oh, hear it, Air,
Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace!

MAYA

(Hiroshima, Japan, 1905)

Pale sampans up the river glide,
With set sails vanishing and slow;
In the blue west the mountains hide,
As visions that too soon will go.

Across the rice-lands, flooded deep,
The peasant peacefully wades on—
As, in unfurrowed vales of sleep,
A phantom out of voidness drawn.

Over the temple cawing flies
The crow with carrion in his beak.
Buddha within lifts not his eyes
In pity or reproval meek;

Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow
A respite from the blinding sun,
The old priest—dreaming painless how
Nirvana's calm will come when won.

"All is illusion, Maya, all
The world of will," the spent East seems
Whispering in me; "and the call
Of Life is but a call of dreams."

A JAPANESE MOTHER

(In Time of War)

The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops,
Down on the brink of the river.
My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse—
The bamboo copse where the rice field stops:
The bamboos sigh and shiver.

The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill;
I must pray to Inari.
I hear her calling me low and chill—
Low and chill when the wind is still
At night and the skies hang starry.

And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead!
Your lord who went to battle.
How shall your baby now be fed,
Ukibo fed, with rice and bread—
What if I hush his prattle?"

The red moon rises as I slip back,
And the bamboo stems are swaying.
Inari was deaf—and yet the lack,
The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack,
I know not why—with praying.

For though Inari cared not at all,
Some other god was kinder.
I wonder why he has heard my call,
My giftless call—and what shall befall?...
Hope has but left me blinder!

THE DEAD GODS

I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss
Which is Oblivion, the house of Death.
I thought there blew upon my soul the breath
Of time that was but never more can be.

Ten thousand years within its void I thought
I lay, blind, deaf, and motionless, until—
Though with no eye nor ear—I felt the thrill
Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh.

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told
He once had been a god—"Persephone,
Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we
Are king and queen of Tartarus no more;
And that wan, shrivelled sceptre in thy hand,
Why dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away,
For now it hath no virtue that can sway
Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil.

"Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine:
Perchance some unobliterated spark
Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark.
Perchance—Vain! vain! love could not light such gloom."

He sank.... Then in great ruin by him moved
Another as in travail of some thought
Near unto birth; and soon from lips distraught
By aged silence, fell, with hollow woe:

"Ah, Pluto, dost thou, one time lord of Styx
And Acheron make moan of night and cold?
Were we upon Olympus as of old
Laughter of thee would rock its festal height.

"But think, think thee of me, to whom or gloom
Or cold were more unknown than impotence!
See the unhurlèd thunderbolt brought hence
To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!"

Too much it was: I withered in the breath;
And lay again ten thousand lifeless years;
And then my soul shook, woke—and saw three biers
Chiselled of solid night majestically.

The forms outlaid upon them were enwound
As with the silence of eternity.
Numbing repose dwelt o'er them like a sea,
That long hath lost tide, wave and roar, in death.

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names,"
A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul.
"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris—they who stole
The heart of Egypt from the God of gods:

"Aye, they! and these!" pointing to many wraiths
That stood around—Baal, Ormuzd, Indra, all
Whom frightened ignorance and sin's appall
Had given birth, close-huddled in despair.

Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope
Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh
From earth were drawn, by the unceasing mesh
Of Time to their irrevocable end.

"They are the gods," one said—"the gods whom men
Still taunt with wails for help."—Then a deep light
Upbore me from the Gulf, and thro' its might
I heard the worlds cry, "God alone is God!"

CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE

O call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white,
And I will call to mine.
Call to her by the meadow-gate,
And I will call by the pine.

Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white,
The windy wheat sways west.
Whistle again, call clear and run
To lure her out of her nest.

For when to the copse she comes, shy bird,
With Mary down the lane
I'll walk, in the dusk of the locust tops,
And be her lover again.

Ay, we will forget our hearts are old,
And that our hair is gray.
We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset
That summer's halcyon day.

That day, can it fade?... ah, bob, bob-white,
Still calling—calling still?
We're coming—a-coming, bent and weighed,
But glad with the old love's thrill!

THE DYING POET

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun,
Drawing my heart with thee over the west!
Done is its day as thy day is done,
Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose, then die:
Tho' to arise again out of the dawn:
Die as I praise thee, ere thro' the Dark Lie
Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life!
I like a child could cry for it again—
Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife,
Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight!
Opened its heart with the magic of grief!
Reaped every season—its day and its night!
Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod,
Never a flower swung sweet to my face,
Never a heart that was touched of God,
But taught me its grace.

Off from my lids then a moment yet,
Fingering Death, for again I must see
Lifted by memory all that I met
Under Time's lee.

There!... I'm a child again—fair, so fair!
Under the eyes does a marvel not burn?
Speak they not vision—and frenzy to dare,
That still in me yearn?...

Youth! my wild youth!—O, blood of my heart,
Still you can answer with swirling the thought!
Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart,
Joyous, distraught!...

Love, and her face again! there by the wood!—
Come, thou invisible Dark with thy mask!
Shall I not learn if she lives? and could
I more of thee ask?...

Turn me away from the ashen west,
Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk.
Something is stealing like light from my breast—
Soul from its husk ...

Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead,
Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls,
Bury me, near to the haunting tread
Of life that o'errolls.

THE OUTCAST

I did not fear,
But crept close up to Christ and said,
"Is he not here?"

They drew me back—
The seraphs who had never bled
Of weary lack—

But still I cried,
With torn robe, clutching at His feet,
"Dear Christ! He died

"So long ago!
Is he not here? Three days, unfleet
As mortal flow

"Of time I've sought—
Till Heaven's amaranthine ways
Seem as sere nought!"

A grieving stole
Up from His heart and waned the gaze
Of His clear soul

Into my eyes.
"He is not here," troubled He sighed.
"For none who dies

"Beliefless may
Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide,
And live alway."

Then darkness rose
Within me, and drear bitterness.
Out of its throes

I moaned, at last,
"Let me go hence! Take off the dress,
The charms Thou hast

"Around me strown!
Beliefless too am I without
His love—and lone!"

Unto the Gate
They led me, tho' with pitying doubt.
I did not wait

But stepped across
Its portal, turned not once to heed
Or know my loss.

Then my dream broke,
And with it every loveless creed—
Beneath love's stroke.

APRIL

A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud,
And April, oh, out under the blue!
The brook is awake and the blackbird loud
In the dew!

But how does the robin high in the beech,
Beside the wood with its shake and toss,
Know it—the frenzy of bluets to reach
Thro' the moss!

And where did the lark ever learn his speech?
Up, wildly sweet, he's over the mead!
Is more than the rapture of earth can teach
In its creed?

I never shall know—I never shall care!
'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love!
To laugh and warble and dream and dare
Are to prove!

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