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Title: Starved Rock
Author: Edgar Lee Masters
Release date: July 5, 2014 [eBook #46197]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Charlene Taylor, Dianne Nolan, Bryan Ness and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STARVED ROCK ***
STARVED ROCK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
STARVED ROCK
BY
EDGAR LEE MASTERS
Author of "Spoon River Anthology," "Songs and
Satires," "The Great Valley," "Toward
the Gulf," etc.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1919
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1919
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919
Certain of these poems first appeared in Reedy's Mirror,
Poetry, The Cosmopolitan, The Yale Review and The
New York Sun.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Starved Rock | 1 |
| Hymn to the Dead | 5 |
| Creation | 10 |
| The World's Desire | 13 |
| Tyrannosaurus: or Burning Letters | 16 |
| Lord Byron to Doctor Polidori | 22 |
| The Folding Mirror | 29 |
| A Woman of Forty | 33 |
| Wild Birds | 34 |
| A Lady | 36 |
| The Negro Ward | 40 |
| William Shakspeare | 44 |
| For a Play | 47 |
| Chicago | 49 |
| The Wedding Feast | 54 |
| By the Waters of Babylon | 58 |
| The Dream of Tasso | 60 |
| The Christian Statesman | 69 |
| The Lament of Sophonia | 77 |
| At Decapolis | 79 |
| Winged Victory | 83 |
| Oh you Sabbatarians! | 88 |
| Pallas Athene | 90 |
| At Sagamore Hill | 95 |
| To Robert Nichols | 101 |
| Bonnybell: The Butterfly | 103 |
| Hymn to Agni | 109 |
| Epitaph for Us | 111 |
| Botticelli to Simonetta | 114 |
| Flower in the Garden | 115 |
| Inexorable Deities | 117 |
| Arielle | 119 |
| Sounds out of Sorrow | 121 |
| Mournin' for Religion | 122 |
| Thyamis | 124 |
| I Shall Go Down into This Land | 126 |
| Spring Lake | 128 |
| The Barber of Sepo | 138 |
| They'd Never Know Me Now | 145 |
| Nel Mezzo Del Cammin | 156 |
| The Oak Tree | 160 |
| The House on the Hill | 162 |
| Washington Hospital | 163 |
| Neither Faith nor Beauty Can Remain | 170 |
STARVED ROCK
As a soul from whom companionships subside
The meaningless and onsweeping tide
Of the river hastening, as it would disown
Old ways and places, left this stone
Of sand above the valley, to look down
Miles of the valley, hamlet, village, town.
*****
It is a head-gear of a chief whose head,
Down from the implacable brow,
Waiting is held below
The waters, feather decked
With blossoms blue and red,
With ferns and vines;
Hiding beneath the waters, head erect,
His savage eyes and treacherous designs.
*****
It is a musing memory and memorial
Of geologic ages
Before the floods began to fall;
The cenotaph of sorrows, pilgrimages
Of Marquette and LaSalle.
The eagles and the Indians left it here
In solitude, blown clean
Of kindred things: as an oak whose leaves are sere
Fly over the valley when the winds are keen,
And nestle where the earth receives
Another generation of exhausted leaves.
*****
Fatigued with age its sleepless eyes look over
Fenced fields of corn and wheat,
Barley and clover.
The lowered pulses of the river beat
Invisibly by shores that stray
In progress and retreat
Past Utica and Ottawa,
And past the meadow where the Illini
Shouted and danced under the autumn moon,
When toddlers and papooses gave a cry,
And dogs were barking for the boon
Of the hunter home again to clamorous tents
Smoking beneath the evening's copper sky.
Later the remnant of the Illini
Climbed up this Rock, to die
Of hunger, thirst, or down its sheer ascents
Rushed on the spears of Pottawatomies,
And found the peace
Where thirst and hunger are unknown.
*****
This is the tragic and the fateful stone
Le Rocher or Starved Rock,
A symbol and a paradigm,
A sphinx of elegy and battle hymn,
Whose lips unlock
Life's secret, which is vanishment, defeat,
In epic dirges for the races
That pass and leave no traces
Before new generations driven in the blast
Of Time and Nature blowing round its head.
Renewing in the Present what the Past
Knew wholly, or in part, so to repeat
Warfare, extermination, old things dead
But brought to life again
In Life's immortal pain.
*****
What Destinies confer,
And laughing mock
LaSalle, his dreamings stir
To wander here, depart
The fortress of Creve Coeur,
Of broken heart,
For this fort of Starved Rock?
After the heart is broken then the cliff
Where vultures flock;
And where below its steeps the savage skiff
Cuts with a pitiless knife the rope let down
For water. From the earth this Indian town
Vanished and on this Rock the Illini
Thirsting, their buckets taken with the knife,
Lay down to die.
*****
This is the land where every generation
Lets down its buckets for the water of Life.
We are the children and the epigone
Of the Illini, the vanished nation.
And this starved scarp of stone
Is now the emblem of our tribulation,
The inverted cup of our insatiable thirst,
The Illini by fate accursed,
This land lost to the Pottawatomies,
They lost the land to us,
Who baffled and idolatrous,
And thirsting, spurred by hope
Kneel upon aching knees,
And with our eager hands draw up the bucketless rope.
*****
This is the tragic, the symbolic face,
Le Rocher or Starved Rock,
Round which the eternal turtles drink and swim
And serpents green and strange,
As race comes after race,
War after war.
This is the sphinx whose Memnon lips breathe dirges
To empire's wayward star,
And over the race's restless urges,
Whose lips unlock
Life's secret which is vanishment and change.
HYMN TO THE DEAD
O, you who have gone from the ways of cities,
From the peopled places, the streets of strife,
From offices, markets, rooms, retreats,
Pastoral ways, hamlets, everywhere from the earth,
And have made of the emptiness of your departure
A land, a country, a realm all your own,
Set above the hills of our vision, an empire
Within, around, above our empire of days,
Of pain and clamorous tongues;
An empire which out of a sovereign silence
Stretches its power over the restless multitude
Of our thoughts, and the ceaseless music of our beings,
And surrounds us even as the air we breathe—
O ye majestic Dead, hear our hymn!
*****
The clown, the wastrel and the fool in life
Are lifted up by you, O Death!
The least of these who has entered in
Your realm, O Death,
Is greater than the greatest of us,
And by a transfiguration has been clothed
With the glory and the wonder of nature.
He has drunk of the purple cup of apotheosis,
And passed through the mystical change,
And accomplished the cycle of being.
He has risen from the lowlands of earth
Into the air on wings of breath.
He has rejected the shell of the body, feet and hands,
He has become one with the majesty of Time,
And taken the kingdom of triumph
Whether it be cessation or bliss.
For he has entered into the kingdom of primal powers,
Being or ceasing to be,
Even as he has re-entered the womb of nature.
Or he has found peace,
States of wisdom, or vision—
Hail! realm of Silence,
Whence comes the unheard symphony too deep for strings,
Hail, infinite Light,
Darkness to eyes of flesh—
All hail!
*****
What are we, the living, beside you the dead?
We of daily hunger, daily food, daily ablutions,
The daily rising and lying down,
Waking and sleep;
The daily care of the body's needs;
And daily desire to pass the gift of life;
And daily fears of the morrow to come;
And daily pains for things that are gone;
And daily longing for things that fly us;
And sorrow that follows wherever we go;
And love that mocks us, and peace that breaks,
And shame that tracks us, and want that gnaws.
But O ye Dead! Ye great ones,
Triumphant over these, released
From the duties of dust, all chains of desire,
And made inhabitants of breathless spaces,
Immanent in a realm of calm,
Rulers of a sphere of tideless air,
Victors returned from the war of death in life,
Victors over death in death!
*****
For the growing soul turns in
Even as the seed turns in on itself,
And becomes hard, transparent,
An encased life, condensed
In the process of saving itself
From rains that beat in the fall,
And frosts that descend from skies grown cold.
And we who shed away old thoughts and hopes,
Days and dreams of life
Turn in, grow clear like grains of rice,
Until the realm of death
Is as snow delivered land
Luring the seed—
And it becomes our home, our country,
Our native land that calls us back
From this sojourn of adventure,
And place of profit;
For O ye majestic Dead, your absence draws us,
If it be naught but absence still you summon,
Your absence has become a very Presence,
A Power, a hierarchy of Life!
*****
Even as leaves enrich the earth
Layer on layer,
Even as bodies of men enrich the soil
Generation on generation,
So do the spirits of those departed
Enrich our soil of life
With delights, wisdoms, purest hopes,
And shapes of beauty.
But oh beyond all these, is our life enriched
With exalted contemplations
Of you, O glorious Dead,
Who have eaten of the tree of life and become gods,
Friendly divinities to us who remain,
Dear familiars, as you were with us
Fathers, children, lovers, friends.
Ye who sense with the inner eye,
Since nothing in our days of living
Moves uncolored of your splendors,
Presences to which all things relate!
*****
O realm of the Dead,
Black Mountain, if you be,
Which darkens heaven,
And shadows earth,
Round which our spirits flutter
Like startled moths.
Black mountain with whose blackness
The light of life is mixed,
Whereof all hues are made:
All thoughts, all lofty wanderings of the soul,
All meanings, divinations
Of briefest hours, and frailest joys,
All wonders of the spectrum of the soul
Out of life and death!
*****
Realm of the Dead! Supreme Reality
All Hail!
CREATION
Passion flower unfolding in darkness!
Glow-worm under a spray of lilac!
Flame on the altar of love!
Beloved in your chamber!
The phoenix moon rising from the ashes of day
Spreads her wings of saffron fire
Above the enchanted garden.
And I brush away the leaves of night
To find the star of my love.
I part the curtains about the altar,
I enter your chamber, beloved.
*****
I have entered your chamber, beloved,
I have found my star.
Between kisses and whispers
And the silken touch of flesh
Breast to breast, lips to lips,
Our souls are seeking and drifting!
As an albatross hovers and flies
With the running sea ...
Powers of body, powers of spirit,
Divinities
Awakened never before,
Hidden in nerves asleep, in veins without a tide
Flow through us.
I give you my life, beloved,
For life of you, given to me—
O bride of love!
*****
O hair of fire! O breasts of light,
Like double stars!
O voice like a lute that whispers
At midnight, in a bower of roses!
O body luminous as the nebulous waste
Across the midnight,
Pour on my breast, my hands, my brow
The sacred fire,
As our flesh becomes one
Upborne by your breasts,
White as bridal blossoms
Where there is yet no milk,
But only eddying blood
Circling in whirlpools of delirious ecstasy
In time with the blood of me.
Our lips together, our bodies together
While the yearning urn of porphyry
Waits to drink the silver stream,
And thirsts to drink,
And poises like a gold fish waiting
For the stream of silver fire....
*****
But oh, hands of me that clasp your sunny head,
Drawing it close to my breast,
In rapture of its beauty!
O temple of your spirit!
Spirit of you which I woo and would win,
In rapture without will,
In rapture blind, save for the inspired urge,
In rapture seeking further rapture,
In rapture to wed your spirit fully,
And all your spirit, which my spirit
Through the unity of flesh would reach
And win, and keep—
Bride of lightning!
Bride of Life!
*****
As when the butterfly slowly moves his wings
Drawing from the virgin core of honeysuckles
The sweetest drop of dew:—
So pause his wings spread wide
When all is gained.
*****
Goddess of the white dawn,
Let my beloved sleep—
Robins that sing at dawn,
Wake not my beloved!
I sleep with my beloved,
And she sleeps with me,
And a life sleeps now
That will wake!
THE WORLD'S DESIRE
At Philae, in the temple of Isis,
The fruitful and terrible goddess,
Under a running panel of the sacred ibis,
Is pictured the dead body of Osiris
Waiting the resurrection morn.
And a priest is pouring water blue as iris
Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn
That from the body of the god is growing,
Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing.
And over the pictured body is this inscription
In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian:
This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees
Not to be named, the god of life and yearning,
Osiris of the mysteries,
Who springs from the waters ever returning.
At the gate of the Lord's house,
Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon:
Women with sorrow on their brows
In lamentation, weeping
For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping,
And for the summer gone.
Tammuz has passed below
To the house of darkness and woe,
Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor
Behind the winter's iron door;
And Ishtar has followed him,
Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim
With driving rain and mist,
And winds that mourn.
Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased;
No flower blossoms and no child is born.
But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb,
The women in the gardens of Adonis,
Crying, "The winter sun is yet upon us,"
Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom,
Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down
For the baskets' shallow soil.
Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil,
For leaves that withered, yellow and brown,
From the gardens of Adonis into the sea,
They cast the baskets of their hope away:
A ritual of the things that cease to be,
Brief loveliness and swift decay.
And O ye holy women, who at Delphi
Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius,
Who with an April eye
Looked up at them,
Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus,
Was found at Bethlehem!
For at Bethlehem the groaning world's desire
For spring, that burned from Egypt up to Tyre,
And from Tyre to Athens beheld an epiphany of fire:
The flesh fade flower-like while the soul kept breath
Beyond the body's death,
Even as nature which revives;
In consummation of the faith
That Tammuz, the Soul, survives,
And is not sacrificed
In the darkness where the dust
Lies on the bolt and on the floor,
And passes not behind the iron door
Save it be followed by the lover Christ,
The Ishtar of the faithful trust,
Who knocks and says: "This soul, which winter knew
In life, in death at last,
Finds spring through me, and waters fresh and blue.
For lo, the winter is past;
The rain is over and gone.
I open! It is dawn!"
TYRANNOSAURUS: OR BURNING LETTERS
Trees of the forest ground to pulp,
Rolled into sheets and rabbit tracked
With nut-gall or with nigrosine—
Then look at spirits thrill, or gulp
A lost delight, a rising spleen
For love that grew intense or slacked ...
Here are the letters, torn in bits,
Crammed in the basket, look how full!
Our little fireplace scarce admits
So much that once was beautiful.
Here where we sat and dreamed together
In March, and now when we should be
Friends in the glory of June weather,
We tear our letters up—oh, me!
Call Jane to take the basket down,
And throw these on the furnace fire.
Let ashes drift about the town
Of what was our desire!
What are we to the gods, I wonder?
Perhaps two crickets in the grass,
Who meet and drop their stomachs' plunder
To touch antennæ as they pass.
So kissing in such soul communion
The gardener's step is heard, and quick
The crickets break their spirits' union,
Hide under logs or bits of brick.
Does guilty conscience stir the crickets?
What does he care? Why not a snap.
He's trimming out the hazel thickets
For a tennis court and shooting trap....
You are afraid of God! Not that?
Some step has frightened you, I know.
Well, then it's gossip the alley-cat.
At least our hands grow cold as snow,
Relax their touch, and then we come,
Tear up the letters, sit and stare
Some moments, wholly dumb!
If we are crickets, still our breasts
Contain for us things real enough.
The gods may laugh, their interests
Are what? I wonder—not the love
Such as we knew. To be a god
Through love is what I hoped, and rise
Above the level of the clod.
They said it can't be, who are wise,
That's not the way to win the prize:
Or if it be, I don't know how;
Or you are not the one with whom
I might have won it. Well, my brow
Is turned into a whitened tomb
With all uncleanness in it; dreams
Rotting away with hopes as fair ...
To me, the liver, nothing seems
Won that is lost. I can't invert,
Sophisticate the facts, or swear
My evil good. A hurt's a hurt,
A loss a loss, a scar a scar,
A spirit frustrate is inert.
To stretch your hands toward a star
And lose the star, or have it die
To ashes like a rocket, alters
The aspect of your being's sky.
You've learned no praise from earthly psalters
Can win the star, or else you've learned
The star you touched was quickly turned
To ashes while it burned.
Hell! Let us face it. Here it is
We had some walks, some precious talks,
Some hours of paradise and bliss.
Our blossom opened, we inhaled
All of its fragrance, now I scowl
Because our wonder blossom paled
For lack of water in the bowl
Tipped over by the alley-cat,
Or what not, change, distrust or fear;
Your pride, your will, a hovering gnat
I struck at striking you, a blear
Of eyes a moment, making blind
My vision, yours.... Or there's the age,
The age is frightful to my mind,
Nothing to do but stand it—well
I sit here and say "hell."
For it's really hell to have a will,
It's hell to hope and to believe,
That good can swallow up the ill,
That gods are working, will achieve.
They may be, yet they disregard
Our cricket feelings, so we shrill
Sonnets and elegies round the yard...
Let's talk a bit of chlorophyll:
The sun was useless for our life,
No wine, no beef, no watercress
Until this chlorophyll grew rife
Millions of years since, more or less.
And if no wine or beef, no love,
No pulp, no paper, nigrosine,
No letters which are made thereof.
Think! All we found and lost has been
Through chlorophyll.
And just suppose
Nature should lose the secret power
For making chlorophyll, the rose
We cherished would not come to flower.
No other man and woman more
Would burn their letters grieving—yet
We may be rising, for who knows
There may be something vastly better
Than love to flame and flay and fret,
And hate this letter and that letter,
Once rid of chlorophyll, in case
A subtler substance could be given
To this poor globe out of heaven—
We are a weak, if growing race!
Here, then, I think is a moral for us,
Another is tyrannosaurus—
Tyrannosaurus, what of him,
The monarch of this world one time,
Back in the æons wet and dim?
He faded like a pantomime.
And he could, well, step over trees,
Crunch up bowlders like cracking nuts,
Flip horses away like bumble-bees,
Stretch out in valleys as if they were ruts;
And hide a man in his nostril's hole,
And crush young forestry just like weeds.
He came and went, and what's your soul,
And what is mine with their crying needs?
And love that seemed eternal once,
Given of God to lift, inspire,
Well—now do we see? Was I dunce
Drunk with the wine of soul's desire?
Who made that wine, why did I drink it?
Why did I want it? What's the game?
Are spirits chaos? I scarce can think it.
Why fly for the light and get the flame?
Is love for souls of us chlorophyll
That makes us eatable, sweet and crisp
For Gods that raise us to feed their fill?
Who lives, the dreamer, the will o' the wisp?
Do Gods live, vanish, return again?
Who in the devil has love or luck?
One thing is true, there's rapture and pain.
As for the rest, I pass the buck.
Something occurs, and God knows what,
Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost.
That throws a light on our little lot,
Love that is won, love that is lost.
Even a hundred years from now,
If this poor earth is rolling still,
Hearts will quiver, break or bow—
Provided the plants have chlorophyll.
Oh well! Oh hell! We must be heroic,
And it helps to scan a million of years.
And to think of monstrous beasts mesoic,
Brightens, though it dries no tears.
I'll dream for life of our walks by the river—
That was March and it's now July.
And this remains: I'll love you forever—
Burn up the letters now—Good by!