class="c2">Lacking thy smile, all life's brooklets congeal
Into one image emotional, fearful which daunts me—
Life's frozen image without an ideal.
Ceaselessly, ceaselessly, ceaselessly, mocking, life taunts me;
Gone all my former purpose and zeal.
Thou wert the pattern that ordered my hopes, my existence;
All that life meant to me, thou didst reveal—
And now thou art gone, all my nature is lacking subsistence—
Oh, let this soul from the body steal!
Then to the spectres, Plutonian, silent, ethereal,
Will my sad spirit for thine appeal,
Wandering onward, and onward through realms immaterial
Till at thy feet shall it joyously kneel—
Then must my weariness, weariness, weariness, cease;
Mended the heart, life could not heal—
Bitterness, bitterness, ended all bitterness, peace—
When on the shore grates my barge's keel.
January 25, 1911.
TO SHELLEY
Shelley, thy spirit is set among the stars;
Exalted from the earth, thy soul sprang high
From these drab pavements to the star-lit sky;
In one grand ecstasy, frail mortal bars
Gave 'way; thy soul purged pure of earthly scars—
No more to languish here with lingering sigh—
Rose from the foaming gulf where thou didst lie,
Rose from the ragged sail and splintered spars,
Rose to Elysium's fairest bowers serene;
There thine Ideal is ever at thy side;
And soft Apollo's hand doth strike the strings;
And Philomel, behind a bowery screen,
Pours forth Anacreon's blessings on thy bride
Who to thine ear unceasing rapture sings.
July 29, 1911. |
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
Through life he strove to reach his longed-for goal,
Living secluded in a forest dell;
It was his wish to learn himself so well
As to command the secrets of the soul;
He studied, wrote, and fashioned out life's scroll
Until the spirit's instincts could he spell;
And then at last diapason swell,
Burst forth his writings, 'round the world to roll!
As organ music sighs through cloistered aisle,
As mighty calms upon the waters steal,
As raging, shrieking tempest-blasts assail;
So doth his magic word our minds beguile
Until, swept onward by each peal on peal,
Our souls are lured beyond this mortal veil.
February 4, 1912. |
THE VISION OF DANTE
Upon my breast there weighed ten thousand waves
Of black, unthinkable despair; I floated
In atmosphere of leaden density,
In atmosphere that burned with heat, yet glowed not—
Then scintillating stars with vivid flashes,
Like sparks from steel struck in a mine's thick blackness,
Tortured my eyes with dazzling glare; and then
Arose a rumbling as of crashing tombs
When the dead waken. Gone my will, my power.
I could nor feel, nor move, nor cry. Creation
Seemed rending downward through eternal space.
The thundering ceased, there shot a wail of pain,
A wail more anguished than arose from Troy
When Hector fell. Fainter, it grew, receding
Through the spheres. The meteors flashed no more.
I floated upward on invisible wings;
The distance purpled in the glow of dawn;
Funereal clouds melted to shimmering gray;
And far away the notes of music sounded,
Echoing onward to Infinity—
Music celestial of that choir of Heaven
Which sings unendingly about His throne.
Distant, it floated, yet how pure, and clearer
Than clear, rebounding Alpine notes. A present
Foretaste of the sublime beatitudes;
And o'er my visual sky moved forms of beings,
Dark forms in solemn, slow-ascending flight
Toward that rich, purple glow. The vision changed:
So pure the light that darkness sealed my eyelids!
So grand the symphony, I could not hear!
The whole cathedral-vault of Heaven rang
In awful majesty of perfect tone;
And 'past my mortal vision, in endless tide,
Flowing, and flowing upward toward the Light,
Angels innumerable, many-hued,
Winged on, majestic, to the music's time,
Winged on and sang a ceaseless Hallelujah—
February 16, 1912. |
THE SPIRIT OF SCHOPENHAUER
Rush on, rush on, humanity, and fill
Your hours with toil-wrought pain. Rush on, rush on
Upon your prizeless race. Where is your gain
In luxury, or seas of swimming gold,
Or starry ether chained to conquerdom?
You do but add new wheels, new chains to man's
Machine to govern man. You build a tower
More high than Babel's, hoping for earthly heaven
Upon this structure formed of luxuries,
And squander here stored-up celestial bliss
Which your poor Wills would mortgage before gained.
Your little lives were never made for racks
And fettered strainings of this new-wrought world
That quivers your nerves with life-intensity.
Death marks your race upon his hour-glass;
And Madness moves upon your city streets.
Your fevered minds reel downward to the gulf
Where knowledge fails, and luxuries lose charm,
Where passion flickers out, and haste seems slow.
Rush on, rush on, destruction marks your goal.
Rush on, rush on, till Death has breathless felled
The last of all your human progeny;
And leaves him lying there alone—alone,
Like him who first had shape of man—unburied,
Lost in a race with no competitor,
And nothing as the goal—unburied, staring
At the passing clouds, his only winding-sheet.
And then the Great Intelligence—if such
There be—will see his moment's pastime o'er,
And turn his arts to other constellations,
Until in rolling æons e'en his mind
May lose the memory of Man which was—
Rush on, rush on, humanity, and fill
Your hours with toil-wrought pain, rush on, rush on!
Death is your hope, your pilot, and your goal,
And Nothingness your only consolation—
April 26, 1911. |
ARTHUR TO GUENEVER
O Guenever, O Guenever once mine,
God may assoil thy failing, but can I
Whose quivering soul is blasted, and whose sky
Is tempest-rent in agony?—Ah, thine,
Thine might have been the fire that should refine
My table round to silver chastity,
Lofty ensample to mine Hall. Oh, why
Should thy soft light no longer purely shine
For my parched soul to
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