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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4549.txt b/4549.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..747cec1 --- /dev/null +++ b/4549.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2352 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds, by Edith Wharton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds + +Author: Edith Wharton + +Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4549] +Release Date: October, 2003 +First Posted: February 7, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo. + + + + + + + + + +ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON + +AND OTHER VERSE + + +BY EDITH WHARTON + + + +NEW YORK + +1909 + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Part I-- + + ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON + LIFE + VESALIUS IN ZANTE + MARGARET OF CORTONA + A TORCHBEARER + +Part II-- + + THE MORTAL LEASE + EXPERIENCE + GRIEF + CHARTRES + TWO BACKGROUNDS + THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI + THE ONE GRIEF + THE EUMENIDES + +Part III-- + + ORPHEUS + AN AUTUMN SUNSET + MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM + ALL SOULS + ALL SAINTS + THE OLD POLE STAR + A GRAVE + NON DOLET! + A HUNTING-SONG + SURVIVAL + USES + A MEETING + + + + + + I + + ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON + + + THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs + The mortal legend--thou that couldst not live + Nor look on me (so the divine decree)! + That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, + The clod commoved with April, and the shapes + Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark. + Mocked I thee not in every guise of life, + Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well, + Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled, + Luring thee down the primal silences + Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb? + Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out + Relentlessly from the detaining shore, + Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices, + Forth from the last faint headland's failing line, + Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge + And hid thee in the hollow of my being? + And still, because between us hung the veil, + The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet + Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, + Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face + Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul + Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought. + And mine? + + The gods, they say, have all: not so! + This have they--flocks on every hill, the blue + Spirals of incense and the amber drip + Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines, + First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate, + Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage, + And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: + Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself! + And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane, + Freeze to the marble of their images, + And, pinnacled on man's subserviency, + Through the thick sacrificial haze discern + Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak + Through icy mists may enviously descry + Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun. + So they along an immortality + Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze, + If haply some rash votary, empty-urned, + But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand, + Break rank, fling past the people and the priest, + Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine, + And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch, + Drop dead of seeing--while the others prayed! + Yes, this we wait for, this renews us, this + Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams, + Who are but what you make us, wood or stone, + Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems, + Or else the beating purpose of your life, + Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues, + The face that haunts your pillow, or the light + Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea! + _O thus through use to reign again, to drink_ + _The cup of peradventure to the lees,_ + _For one dear instant disimmortalised_ + _In giving immortality!_ + So dream the gods upon their listless thrones. + Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, + With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, + _Too young_, they rather muse, _too frail thou art,_ + _And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil_ + _And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?_ + And so to their incurious loves return. + + Not so with thee; for some indeed there are + Who would behold the truth and then return + To pine among the semblances--but I + Divined in thee the questing foot that never + Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday + Or calls achievement home. I from afar + Beheld thee fashioned for one hour's high use, + Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop. + Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams, + Surprising me as harts surprise a pool, + Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined + Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie + Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms. + And said: _Because I love thee thou shalt die!_ + + For immortality is not to range + Unlimited through vast Olympian days, + Or sit in dull dominion over time; + But this--to drink fate's utmost at a draught, + Nor feel the wine grow stale upon the lip, + To scale the summit of some soaring moment, + Nor know the dulness of the long descent, + To snatch the crown of life and seal it up + Secure forever in the vaults of death! + + And this was thine: to lose thyself in me, + Relive in my renewal, and become + The light of other lives, a quenchless torch + Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust + And the last garland withers from my shrine. + + + + + LIFE + + + NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more + Pour the wild music through me-- + + I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, + Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn + There came a groping shape of mystery + Moving among us, that with random stroke + Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, + Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, + Laughing on Lethe-bank--and in my throat + I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes, + The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat. + + Such little songs she sang, + Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, + They trickled from me like a slender spring + That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, + Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. + She sang, and bore me through the April world + Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum + In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, + And breathings of the scarce-articulate air + When it makes mouths of grasses--but when the sky + Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, + She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath + Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart, + I shook, and heard the battle. + + But more oft, + Those early days, we moved in charmed woods, + Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun, + And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph + Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed. + And once we came to a great stream that bore + The stars upon its bosom like a sea, + And ships like stars; so to the sea we came. + And there she raised me to her lips, and sent + One swift pang through me; then refrained her hand, + And whispered: "Hear--" and into my frail flanks, + Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured + Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared. + + We came to cities, and Life piped on me + Low calls to dreaming girls, + In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold, + Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, + And made the heavy merchant at his desk + Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life + Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed. + + We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there + Life met a god, who challenged her and said: + "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, + And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, + And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain! + + We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind. + We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, + With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, + And a silence that was louder than the deep; + But on the utmost pinnacle Life again + Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair. + + Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang, + And clamoured "Play me against a god again!" + "Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet," + She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need. + But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank + With yearnings for new music and new pain. + "Another note against another god!" + I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time. + Of every heart-wound I will make a stop, + And drink thy life in music, pang by pang, + But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee + At dawn beside the river. Take my lips." + + She kissed me like a lover, but I wept, + Remembering that high song against the god, + And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb. + + We came to cavernous foul places, blind + With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare + Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled, + And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, + And death fed delicately on young bones. + + "Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me. + "Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?" + My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar, + Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods + Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell. + + "Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars; + And wrung a new note from my wounded side. + + So came we to clear spaces, and the sea. + And now I felt its volume in my heart, + And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me + The song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said. + + Then from the utmost pinnacle again + She poured me on the wild sidereal stream, + And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept + The interstellar spaces like new worlds + Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star. + + Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again, + Under black skies, under a groping wind; + And Life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast, + Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly + A blade of silver severed the black peaks + From the black sky, and earth was born again, + Breathing and various, under a god's feet. + A god! A god! I felt the heart of Life + Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again. + He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out, + But Life warmed to him, warming me with her, + And as he neared I felt beneath her hands + The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul + Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat. + + "His name--his name?" I whispered, but she shed + The music faster, and I grew with it, + Became a part of it, while Life and I + Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song + As she from me, one song, one ecstasy, + In indistinguishable union blent, + Till she became the flute and I the player. + And lo! the song I played on her was more + Than any she had drawn from me; it held + The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea, + The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart + Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk, + Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope, + And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell-- + All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds, + When Life first came, a shape of mystery, + Moving among us, and with random stroke + Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe. + All this I wrung from her in that deep hour, + While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor grass!" + + Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee + Forever, Life, however spent and clogged, + And tossed back useless to my native mud! + Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion thee + New instruments of anguish and delight, + Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, + Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill + With the old subjection, then when Love and I + Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance + Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet + Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys + Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more + Pour the wild music through me-- + + + + + VESALIUS IN ZANTE (See note at end) + + (1564) + + + SET wide the window. Let me drink the day. + I loved light ever, light in eye and brain-- + No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, + Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, + But just the common dusty wind-blown day + That roofs earth's millions. + + O, too long I walked + In that thrice-sifted air that princes breathe, + Nor felt the heaven-wide jostling of the winds + And all the ancient outlawry of earth! + Now let me breathe and see. + + This pilgrimage + They call a penance--let them call it that! + I set my face to the East to shrive my soul + Of mortal sin? So be it. If my blade + Once questioned living flesh, if once I tore + The pages of the Book in opening it, + See what the torn page yielded ere the light + Had paled its buried characters--and judge! + + The girl they brought me, pinioned hand and foot + In catalepsy--say I should have known + That trance had not yet darkened into death, + And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I _knew?_ + Sum up the facts--her life against her death. + Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure + Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance + The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, + And waft her into immortality. + Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter + That whispered its deep secret to my blade! + For, just because her bosom fluttered still, + It told me more than many rifled graves; + Because I spoke too soon, she answered me, + Her vain life ripened to this bud of death + As the whole plant is forced into one flower, + All her blank past a scroll on which God wrote + His word of healing--so that the poor flesh, + Which spread death living, died to purchase life! + + Ah, no! The sin I sinned was mine, not theirs. + Not _that_ they sent me forth to wash away-- + None of their tariffed frailties, but a deed + So far beyond their grasp of good or ill + That, set to weigh it in the Church's balance, + Scarce would they know which scale to cast it in. + But I, I know. I sinned against my will, + Myself, my soul--the God within the breast: + Can any penance wash such sacrilege? + + When I was young in Venice, years ago, + I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk, + A solitary cloistered in high thoughts, + The great Loyola, whom I reckoned then + A mere refurbisher of faded creeds, + Expert to edge anew the arms of faith, + As who should say, a Galenist, resolved + To hold the walls of dogma against fact, + Experience, insight, his own self, if need be! + Ah, how I pitied him, mine own eyes set + Straight in the level beams of Truth, who groped + In error's old deserted catacombs + And lit his tapers upon empty graves! + Ay, but he held his own, the monk--more man + Than any laurelled cripple of the wars, + Charles's spent shafts; for what he willed he willed, + As those do that forerun the wheels of fate, + Not take their dust--that force the virgin hours, + Hew life into the likeness of themselves + And wrest the stars from their concurrences. + So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul + That wears the livery of circumstance + And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye. + For who rules now? The twilight-flitting monk, + Or I, that took the morning like an Alp? + He held his own, I let mine slip from me, + The birthright that no sovereign can restore; + And so ironic Time beholds us now + Master and slave--he lord of half the earth, + I ousted from my narrow heritage. + + For there's the sting! My kingdom knows me not. + Reach me that folio--my usurper's title! + Fallopius reigning, _vice_--nay, not so: + Successor, not usurper. I am dead. + My throne stood empty; he was heir to it. + Ay, but who hewed his kingdom from the waste, + Cleared, inch by inch, the acres for his sowing, + Won back for man that ancient fief o' the Church, + His body? Who flung Galen from his seat, + And founded the great dynasty of truth + In error's central kingdom? + + Ask men that, + And see their answer: just a wondering stare + To learn things were not always as they are-- + The very fight forgotten with the fighter; + Already grows the moss upon my grave! + Ay, and so meet--hold fast to that, Vesalius. + They only, who re-conquer day by day + The inch of ground they camped on over-night, + Have right of foothold on this crowded earth. + I left mine own; he seized it; with it went + My name, my fame, my very self, it seems, + Till I am but the symbol of a man, + The sign-board creaking o'er an empty inn. + He names me--true! _Oh, give the door its due_ + _I entered by. Only, I pray you, note,_ + _Had door been none, a shoulder-thrust of mine_ + _Had breached the crazy wall"_--he seems to say. + So meet--and yet a word of thanks, of praise, + Of recognition that the clue was found, + Seized, followed, clung to, by some hand now dust-- + Had this obscured his quartering of my shield? + + How the one weakness stirs again! I thought + I had done with that old thirst for gratitude + That lured me to the desert years ago. + I did my work--and was not that enough? + No; but because the idlers sneered and shrugged, + The envious whispered, the traducers lied, + And friendship doubted where it should have cheered + I flung aside the unfinished task, sought praise + Outside my soul's esteem, and learned too late + That victory, like God's kingdom, is within. + (Nay, let the folio rest upon my knee. + I do not feel its weight.) Ingratitude? + The hurrying traveller does not ask the name + Of him who points him on his way; and this + Fallopius sits in the mid-heart of me, + Because he keeps his eye upon the goal, + Cuts a straight furrow to the end in view, + Cares not who oped the fountain by the way, + But drinks to draw fresh courage for his journey. + That was the lesson that Ignatius taught-- + The one I might have learned from him, but would not-- + That we are but stray atoms on the wind, + A dancing transiency of summer eves, + Till we become one with our purpose, merged + In that vast effort of the race which makes + Mortality immortal. + + _"He that loseth_ + _His life shall find it":_ so the Scripture runs. + But I so hugged the fleeting self in me, + So loved the lovely perishable hours, + So kissed myself to death upon their lips, + That on one pyre we perished in the end-- + A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit! + Yet all was well--or seemed so--till I heard + That younger voice, an echo of my own, + And, like a wanderer turning to his home, + Who finds another on the hearth, and learns, + Half-dazed, that other is his actual self + In name and claim, as the whole parish swears, + So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed + Of that same self I had sold all to keep, + A baffled ghost that none would see or hear! + _"Vesalius? Who's Vesalius? This Fallopius_ + _It is who dragged the Galen-idol down,_ + _Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way_ + _Into the secret fortalice of life"_-- + Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it! + + Well, better so! Better awake and live + My last brief moment as the man I was, + Than lapse from life's long lethargy to death + Without one conscious interval. At least + I repossess my past, am once again + No courtier med'cining the whims of kings + In muffled palace-chambers, but the free + Friendless Vesalius, with his back to the wall + And all the world against him. O, for that + Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks-- + That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote: + "Master, Fallopius dead, resume again + The chair even he could not completely fill, + And see what usury age shall take of youth + In honours forfeited"--why, just at first, + I was quite simply credulously glad + To think the old life stood ajar for me, + Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart. + But now that death waylays me--now I know + This isle is the circumference of my days, + And I shall die here in a little while-- + So also best, Fallopius! + + For I see + The gods may give anew, but not restore; + And though I think that, in my chair again, + I might have argued my supplanters wrong + In this or that--this Cesalpinus, say, + With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark, + Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch + On Galen (systole and diastole + Of Truth's mysterious heart!)--yet, other ways, + It may be that this dying serves the cause. + For Truth stays not to build her monument + For this or that co-operating hand, + But props it with her servants' failures--nay, + Cements its courses with their blood and brains, + A living substance that shall clinch her walls + Against the assaults of time. Already, see, + Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil, + I but the accepted premiss whence must spring + The airy structure of her argument; + Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build + The crowning finials. I abide her law: + A different substance for a different end-- + Content to know I hold the building up; + Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles, + Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream + But for that buried labour underneath. + Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say! + _Let others say it!_--Ah, but will they guess + Just the one word--? Nay, Truth is many-tongued. + What one man failed to speak, another finds + Another word for. May not all converge + In some vast utterance, of which you and I, + Fallopius, were but halting syllables? + So knowledge come, no matter how it comes! + No matter whence the light falls, so it fall! + Truth's way, not mine--that I, whose service failed + In action, yet may make amends in praise. + Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word, + Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it! + You miss a point I saw? See others, then! + Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own! + Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide, + And you may yet uncover other stars. + For thus I read the meaning of this end: + There are two ways of spreading light: to be + The candle or the mirror that reflects it. + I let my wick burn out--there yet remains + To spread an answering surface to the flame + That others kindle. + + Turn me in my bed. + The window darkens as the hours swing round; + But yonder, look, the other casement glows! + Let me face westward as my sun goes down. + + + + + MARGARET OF CORTONA + + + FRA PAOLO, since they say the end is near, + And you of all men have the gentlest eyes, + Most like our father Francis; since you know + How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven, + Mothered the orphan, waked beside the sick, + Gone empty that mine enemy might eat, + Given bread for stones in famine years, and channelled + With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell, + Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall + To bend His thorn-crowned Head in mute forgiveness . . . + Three times He bowed it . . . (but the whole stands writ, + Sealed with the Bishop's signet, as you know), + Once for each person of the Blessed Three-- + A miracle that the whole town attests, + The very babes thrust forward for my blessing, + And either parish plotting for my bones-- + Since this you know: sit near and bear with me. + + I have lain here, these many empty days + I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys + So close that not a fear should force the door-- + But still, between the blessed syllables + That taper up like blazing angel heads, + Praise over praise, to the Unutterable, + Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, + As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, + My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes + Alive in their obliterated faces! . . . + I have tried the saints' names and our blessed Mother's + Fra Paolo, I have tried them o'er and o'er, + And like a blade bent backward at first thrust + They yield and fail me--and the questions stay. + And so I thought, into some human heart, + Pure, and yet foot-worn with the tread of sin, + If only I might creep for sanctuary, + It might be that those eyes would let me rest. . . + + Fra Paolo, listen. How should I forget + The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) + I had been laughing in the market-place + With others like me, I the youngest there, + Jostling about a pack of mountebanks + Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), + Till darkness fell; and while the other girls + Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, + I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: + _If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret,_ + _At least enough to buy that two-pronged coral_ + _The others covet 'gainst the evil eye,_ + _Since, after all, one sees that I'm the youngest_-- + So, muttering my litany to hell + (The only prayer I knew that was not Latin), + Felt on my arm a touch as kind as yours, + And heard a voice as kind as yours say "Come." + I turned and went; and from that day I never + Looked on the face of any other man. + So much is known; so much effaced; the sin + Cast like a plague-struck body to the sea, + Deep, deep into the unfathomable pardon-- + (The Head bowed thrice, as the whole town attests). + What more, then? To what purpose? Bear with me!-- + + It seems that he, a stranger in the place, + First noted me that afternoon and wondered: + _How grew so white a bud in such black slime,_ + _And why not mine the hand to pluck it out?_ + Why, so Christ deals with souls, you cry--what then? + Not so! Not so! When Christ, the heavenly gardener, + Plucks flowers for Paradise (do I not know?), + He snaps the stem above the root, and presses + The ransomed soul between two convent walls, + A lifeless blossom in the Book of Life. + But when my lover gathered me, he lifted + Stem, root and all--ay, and the clinging mud-- + And set me on his sill to spread and bloom + After the common way, take sun and rain, + And make a patch of brightness for the street, + Though raised above rough fingers--so you make + A weed a flower, and others, passing, think: + "Next ditch I cross, I'll lift a root from it, + And dress my window" . . . and the blessing spreads. + Well, so I grew, with every root and tendril + Grappling the secret anchorage of his love, + And so we loved each other till he died. . . . + + Ah, that black night he left me, that dead dawn + I found him lying in the woods, alive + To gasp my name out and his life-blood with it, + As though the murderer's knife had probed for me + In his hacked breast and found me in each wound. . . + Well, it was there Christ came to me, you know, + And led me home--just as that other led me. + _(Just as that other?_ Father, bear with me!) + My lover's death, they tell me, saved my soul, + And I have lived to be a light to men. + And gather sinners to the knees of grace. + All this, you say, the Bishop's signet covers. + But stay! Suppose my lover had not died? + (At last my question! Father, help me face it.) + I say: Suppose my lover had not died-- + Think you I ever would have left him living, + Even to be Christ's blessed Margaret? + --We lived in sin? Why, to the sin I died to + That other was as Paradise, when God + Walks there at eventide, the air pure gold, + And angels treading all the grass to flowers! + He was my Christ--he led me out of hell-- + He died to save me (so your casuists say!)-- + Could Christ do more? Your Christ out-pity mine? + Why, _yours_ but let the sinner bathe His feet; + Mine raised her to the level of his heart. . . + And then Christ's way is saving, as man's way + Is squandering--and the devil take the shards! + But this man kept for sacramental use + The cup that once had slaked a passing thirst; + This man declared: "The same clay serves to model + A devil or a saint; the scribe may stain + The same fair parchment with obscenities, + Or gild with benedictions; nay," he cried, + "Because a satyr feasted in this wood, + And fouled the grasses with carousing foot, + Shall not a hermit build his chapel here + And cleanse the echoes with his litanies? + The sodden grasses spring again--why not + The trampled soul? Is man less merciful + Than nature, good more fugitive than grass?" + And so--if, after all, he had not died, + And suddenly that door should know his hand, + And with that voice as kind as yours he said: + "Come, Margaret, forth into the sun again, + Back to the life we fashioned with our hands + Out of old sins and follies, fragments scorned + Of more ambitious builders, yet by Love, + The patient architect, so shaped and fitted + That not a crevice let the winter in--" + Think you my bones would not arise and walk, + This bruised body (as once the bruised soul) + Turn from the wonders of the seventh heaven + As from the antics of the market-place? + If this could be (as I so oft have dreamed), + I, who have known both loves, divine and human, + Think you I would not leave this Christ for that? + + --I rave, you say? You start from me, Fra Paolo? + Go, then; your going leaves me not alone. + I marvel, rather, that I feared the question, + Since, now I name it, it draws near to me + With such dear reassurance in its eyes, + And takes your place beside me. . . + + Nay, I tell you, + Fra Paolo, I have cried on all the saints-- + If this be devil's prompting, let them drown it + In Alleluias! Yet not one replies. + And, for the Christ there--is He silent too? + _Your_ Christ? Poor father; you that have but one, + And that one silent--how I pity you! + He will not answer? Will not help you cast + The devil out? But hangs there on the wall, + Blind wood and bone--? + + How if _I_ call on Him-- + I, whom He talks with, as the town attests? + If ever prayer hath ravished me so high + That its wings failed and dropped me in Thy breast, + Christ, I adjure Thee! By that naked hour + Of innermost commixture, when my soul + Contained Thee as the paten holds the host, + Judge Thou alone between this priest and me; + Nay, rather, Lord, between my past and present, + Thy Margaret and that other's--whose she is + By right of salvage--and whose call should follow! + Thine? Silent still.--Or his, who stooped to her, + And drew her to Thee by the bands of love? + Not Thine? Then his? + + Ah, Christ--the thorn-crowned Head + Bends . . . bends again . . . down on your knees, + + Fra Paolo! + If his, then Thine! + + Kneel, priest, for this is heaven. . . + + + + + A TORCHBEARER + + + GREAT cities rise and have their fall; the brass + That held their glories moulders in its turn. + Hard granite rots like an uprooted weed, + And ever on the palimpsest of earth + Impatient Time rubs out the word he writ. + But one thing makes the years its pedestal, + Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps + A skyward wing above its epitaph-- + The will of man willing immortal things. + + The ages are but baubles hung upon + The thread of some strong lives--and one slight wrist + May lift a century above the dust; + For Time, + The Sisyphean load of little lives, + Becomes the globe and sceptre of the great. + But who are these that, linking hand in hand, + Transmit across the twilight waste of years + The flying brightness of a kindled hour? + Not always, nor alone, the lives that search + How they may snatch a glory out of heaven + Or add a height to Babel; oftener they + That in the still fulfilment of each day's + Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, + That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks + Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, + And leap like lightning to the clap of fate. + + So greatly gave he, nurturing 'gainst the call + Of one rare moment all the daily store + Of joy distilled from the acquitted task, + And that deliberate rashness which bespeaks + The pondered action passed into the blood; + So swift to harden purpose into deed + That, with the wind of ruin in his hair, + Soul sprang full-statured from the broken flesh, + And at one stroke he lived the whole of life, + Poured all in one libation to the truth, + A brimming flood whose drops shall overflow + On deserts of the soul long beaten down + By the brute hoof of habit, till they spring + In manifold upheaval to the sun. + + Call here no high artificer to raise + His wordy monument--such lives as these + Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp + An empty vesture. Let resounding lives + Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults + And make the grave their spokesman--such as he + Are as the hidden streams that, underground, + Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine, + Or as spring airs that bring through prison bars + The scent of freedom; or a light that burns + Immutably across the shaken seas, + Forevermore by nameless hands renewed, + Where else were darkness and a glutted shore. + + + + + + + II + + + + THE MORTAL LEASE + + + I + + BECAUSE the currents of our love are poured + Through the slow welter of the primal flood + From some blind source of monster-haunted mud, + And flung together by random forces stored + Ere the vast void with rushing worlds was scored-- + Because we know ourselves but the dim scud + Tossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown bud + That wastes and scatters ere the wave has roared-- + + Because we have this knowledge in our veins, + Shall we deny the journey's gathered lore-- + The great refusals and the long disdains, + The stubborn questing for a phantom shore, + The sleepless hopes and memorable pains, + And all mortality's immortal gains? + + + II + + Because our kiss is as the moon to draw + The mounting waters of that red-lit sea + That circles brain with sense, and bids us be + The playthings of an elemental law, + Shall we forego the deeper touch of awe + On love's extremest pinnacle, where we, + Winging the vistas of infinity, + Gigantic on the mist our shadows saw? + + Shall kinship with the dim first-moving clod + Not draw the folded pinion from the soul, + And shall we not, by spirals vision-trod, + Reach upward to some still-retreating goal, + As earth, escaping from the night's control, + Drinks at the founts of morning like a god? + + + III + + All, all is sweet in that commingled draught + Mysterious, that life pours for lovers' thirst, + And I would meet your passion as the first + Wild woodland woman met her captor's craft, + Or as the Greek whose fearless beauty laughed + And doffed her raiment by the Attic flood; + But in the streams of my belated blood + Flow all the warring potions love has quaffed. + + How can I be to you the nymph who danced + Smooth by Ilissus as the plane-tree's bole, + Or how the Nereid whose drenched lashes glanced + Like sea-flowers through the summer sea's long roll-- + I that have also been the nun entranced + Who night-long held her Bridegroom in her soul? + + + IV + + "Sad Immortality is dead," you say, + "And all her grey brood banished from the soul; + Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole, + The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day." + And every sense in me leapt to obey, + Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll; + But from their waning throng a whisper stole, + And touched the morning splendour with decay. + + "Sad Immortality is dead; and we + The funeral train that bear her to her grave. + Yet hath she left a two-faced progeny + In hearts of men, and some will always see + The skull beneath the wreath, yet always crave + In every kiss the folded kiss to be." + + + V + + Yet for one rounded moment I will be + No more to you than what my lips may give, + And in the circle of your kisses live + As in some island of a storm-blown sea, + Where the cold surges of infinity + Upon the outward reefs unheeded grieve, + And the loud murmur of our blood shall weave + Primeval silences round you and me. + + If in that moment we are all we are + We live enough. Let this for all requite. + Do I not know, some winged things from far + Are borne along illimitable night + To dance their lives out in a single flight + Between the moonrise and the setting star? + + + VI + + The Moment came, with sacramental cup + Lifted--and all the vault of life grew bright + With tides of incommensurable light-- + But tremblingly I turned and covered up + My face before the wonder. Down the slope + I heard her feet in irretrievable flight, + And when I looked again, my stricken sight + Saw night and rain in a dead world agrope. + + Now walks her ghost beside me, whispering + With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego-- + What god assured thee that the cup I bring + Globes not in every drop the cosmic show, + All that the insatiate heart of man can wring + From life's long vintage?--Now thou shalt not know." + + + VII + + Shall I not know? I, that could always catch + The sunrise in one beam along the wall, + The nests of June in April's mating call, + And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatch + At summer's green impenetrable thatch-- + That always knew far off the secret fall + Of a god's feet across the city's brawl, + The touch of silent fingers on my latch? + + Not thou, vain Moment! Something more than thou + Shall write the score of what mine eyes have wept, + The touch of kisses that have missed my brow, + The murmur of wings that brushed me while I slept, + And some mute angel in the breast even now + Measures my loss by all that I have kept. + + + VIII + + Strive we no more. Some hearts are like the bright + Tree-chequered spaces, flecked with sun and shade, + Where gathered in old days the youth and maid + To woo, and weave their dances: with the night + They cease their flutings, and the next day's light + Finds the smooth green unconscious of their tread, + And ready its velvet pliancies to spread + Under fresh feet, till these in turn take flight. + + But other hearts a long long road doth span, + From some far region of old works and wars, + And the weary armies of the thoughts of man + Have trampled it, and furrowed it with scars, + And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravan + Moves over it alone, beneath the stars. + + + + + EXPERIENCE + + + I + + LIKE Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand + Upon the desert verge of death, and say: + "What shall avail the woes of yesterday + To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land + Whose currency is strange unto our hand? + In life's small market they had served to pay + Some late-found rapture, could we but delay + Till Time hath matched our means to our demand." + + But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold, + Our gathered strength of individual pain, + When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold, + Dies with us--hoarded all these years in vain, + Since those that might be heir to it the mould + Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again. + + + II + + O Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, + Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, + Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, + And love's oblivion, and remembering hate. + Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight + Upon our souls--and shall our hopes and fears + Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, + And sell us the one joy for which we wait. + Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, + With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, + But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, + And all our longings lie within thy keep-- + Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? + + "Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep." + + + + + GRIEF + + + I + + ON immemorial altitudes august + Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet + That climb unblenching to that stern retreat + Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust. + There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust + Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet + Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet, + With many an abdicated "shall" and "must." + + For there she rules omnipotent, whose will + Compels a mute acceptance of her chart; + Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill + Her mighty hand; who will be served apart + With uncommunicable rites, and still + Surrender of the undivided heart. + + + II + + She holds the world within her mighty hand, + And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, + And all its shining imagery but dross, + To those that in her awful presence stand; + As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land + That lies below, they send their gaze across + The common intervals of gain and loss, + And hope's infinitude without a strand. + + But he who, on that lonely eminence, + Watches too long the whirling of the spheres + Through dim eternities, descending thence + The voices of his kind no longer hears, + And, blinded by the spectacle immense, + Journeys alone through all the after years. + + + + + CHARTRES + + + I + + IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom, + The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, + Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, + Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, + And stamened with keen flamelets that illume + The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, + By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, + A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, + The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea-- + For these alone the finials fret the skies, + The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, + While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, + Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, + The cloud of witnesses still testifies. + + + II + + The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise + The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. + A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, + The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, + Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, + Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. + The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, + Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. + Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows + To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn + From hot humanity's impatient woes; + The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, + And in the east one giant window shows + The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn. + + + + + TWO BACKGROUNDS + + + I + + LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR + + HERE by the ample river's argent sweep, + Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, + A tower-crowned Cybele in armoured sleep + The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, + With calm parochial spires that hold in fee + The friendly gables clustered at their base, + And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place, + The Gothic minister's winged immensity; + And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, + Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned, + Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find + Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude. + + + + + II + + MONA LISA + + Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep + No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed: + Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep. + But at the gate an Angel bares his blade; + And tales are told of those who thought to gain + At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell + Far off they saw each fading pinnacle + Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain; + Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities + Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, + Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, + And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees. + + + + + THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI + + + ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear + That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise + With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes, + And bade him call the master's art to rear + Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, + With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise + Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, + And lips that at love's call should answer "Here!" + + First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul + Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside, + Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole, + Regenerate in art's sunrise clear and wide, + As saints who, having kept faith's raiment whole, + Change it above for garments glorified. + + + + + THE ONE GRIEF + + + ONE grief there is, the helpmeet of my heart, + That shall not from me till my days be sped, + That walks beside me in sunshine and in shade, + And hath in all my fortunes equal part. + At first I feared it, and would often start + Aghast to find it bending o'er my bed, + Till usage slowly dulled the edge of dread, + And one cold night I cried: _How warm thou art!_ + + Since then we two have travelled hand in hand, + And, lo, my grief has been interpreter + For me in many a fierce and alien land + Whose speech young Joy had failed to understand, + Plucking me tribute of red gold and myrrh + From desolate whirlings of the desert sand. + + + + + THE EUMENIDES + + + THINK you we slept within the Delphic bower, + What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? + Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place + Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. + For not inexorable is our power. + And we are hunted of the prey we chase, + Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, + And draw temerity from hearts that cower. + + Shuddering we gather in the house of ruth, + And on the fearful turn a face of fear, + But they to whom the ways of doom are clear + Not vainly named us the Eumenides. + Our feet are faithful in the paths of truth, + And in the constant heart we house at peace. + + + + + III + + + ORPHEUS + +_Love will make men dare to die for their beloved. . . Of this +Alcestis is a monument . . . for she was willing to lay down her +life for her husband . . . and so noble did this appear to the gods +that they granted her the privilege of returning to earth . . . but +Orpheus, the son of OEagrus, they sent empty away. . ._ + +--PLATO: _The Symposium._ + + + + ORPHEUS the Harper, coming to the gate + Where the implacable dim warder sate, + Besought for parley with a shade within, + Dearer to him than life itself had been, + Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, + Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, + Whom lately from his unconsenting breast + The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, + Intolerably had reft--Eurydice, + Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, + Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom-- + And uncompanioned led her to the tomb. + + There, solitary by the Stygian tide, + Strayed her dear feet, the shadow of his own, + Since, 'mid the desolate millions who have died, + Each phantom walks its crowded path alone; + And there her head, that slept upon his breast, + No more had such sweet harbour for its rest, + Nor her swift ear from those disvoiced throats + Could catch one echo of his living notes, + And, dreaming nightly of her pallid doom, + No solace had he of his own young bloom, + But yearned to pour his blood into her veins + And buy her back with unimagined pains. + + To whom the Shepherd of the Shadows said: + "Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead; + But when they hear my fatal gateway clang + Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang. + They see the smoke of home above the trees, + The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze; + The beaten path that wanders to the shore + Grows dear because they shall not tread it more, + The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies + Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes, + And in the sunset's melancholy fall + They read a sunrise that shall give them all." + + "Not thus am I," the Harper smiled his scorn. + "I see no path but those her feet have worn; + My roof-tree is the shadow of her hair, + And the light breaking through her long despair + The only sunrise that mine eyelids crave; + For doubly dead without me in the grave + Is she who, if my feet had gone before, + Had found life dark as death's abhorred shore." + + The gate clanged on him, and he went his way + Amid the alien millions, mute and grey, + Swept like a cold mist down an unlit strand, + Where nameless wreckage gluts the stealthy sand, + Drift of the cockle-shells of hope and faith + Wherein they foundered on the rock of death. + + So came he to the image that he sought + (Less living than her semblance in his thought), + Who, at the summons of his thrilling notes, + Drew back to life as a drowned creature floats + Back to the surface; yet no less is dead. + And cold fear smote him till she spoke and said: + "Art thou then come to lay thy lips on mine, + And pour thy life's libation out like wine? + Shall I, through thee, revisit earth again, + Traverse the shining sea, the fruitful plain, + Behold the house we dwelt in, lay my head + Upon the happy pillows of our bed, + And feel in dreams the pressure of thine arms + Kindle these pulses that no memory warms? + Nay: give me for a space upon thy breast + Death's shadowy substitute for rapture--rest; + Then join again the joyous living throng, + And give me life, but give it in thy song; + For only they that die themselves may give + Life to the dead: and I would have thee live." + + Fear seized him closer than her arms; but he + Answered: "Not so--for thou shalt come with me! + I sought thee not that we should part again, + But that fresh joy should bud from the old pain; + And the gods, if grudgingly their gifts they make, + Yield all to them that without asking take." + + "The gods," she said, "(so runs life's ancient lore) + Yield all man takes, but always claim their score. + The iron wings of the Eumenides + When heard far off seem but a summer breeze; + But me thou'lt have alive on earth again + Only by paying here my meed of pain. + Then lay on my cold lips the tender ghost + Of the dear kiss that used to warm them most, + Take from my frozen hands thy hands of fire, + And of my heart-strings make thee a new lyre, + That in thy music men may find my voice, + And something of me still on earth rejoice." + + Shuddering he heard her, but with close-flung arm + Swept her resisting through the ghostly swarm. + "Swift, hide thee 'neath my cloak, that we may glide + Past the dim warder as the gate swings wide." + He whirled her with him, lighter than a leaf + Unwittingly whirled onward by a brief + Autumnal eddy; but when the fatal door + Suddenly yielded him to life once more, + And issuing to the all-consoling skies + He turned to seek the sunlight in her eyes, + He clutched at emptiness--she was not there; + And the dim warder answered to his prayer: + "Only once have I seen the wonder wrought. + But when Alcestis thus her master sought, + Living she sought him not, nor dreamed that fate + For any subterfuge would swing my gate. + Loving, she gave herself to livid death, + Joyous she bought his respite with her breath, + Came, not embodied, but a tenuous shade, + In whom her rapture a great radiance made. + For never saw I ghost upon this shore + Shine with such living ecstasy before, + Nor heard an exile from the light above + Hail me with smiles: _Thou art not Death but Love!_ + + "But when the gods, frustrated, this beheld, + How, living still, among the dead she dwelled, + Because she lived in him whose life she won, + And her blood beat in his beneath the sun, + They reasoned: 'When the bitter Stygian wave + The sweetness of love's kisses cannot lave, + When the pale flood of Lethe washes not + From mortal mind one high immortal thought, + Akin to us the earthly creature grows, + Since nature suffers only what it knows. + If she whom we to this grey desert banned + Still dreams she treads with him the sunlit land + That for his sake she left without a tear, + Set wide the gates--her being is not here.' + + "So ruled the gods; but thou, that sought'st to give + Thy life for love, yet for thyself wouldst live. + They know not for their kin; but back to earth + Give, pitying, one that is of mortal birth." + + Humbled the Harper heard, and turned away, + Mounting alone to the empoverished day; + Yet, as he left the Stygian shades behind, + He heard the cordage on the harbour wind, + Saw the blue smoke above the homestead trees, + And in his hidden heart was glad of these. + + + + + AN AUTUMN SUNSET + + + I + + LEAGUERED in fire + The wild black promontories of the coast extend + Their savage silhouettes; + The sun in universal carnage sets, + And, halting higher, + The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, + Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, + That, balked, yet stands at bay. + Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day + In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, + A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine + Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, + And in her hand swings high o'erhead, + Above the waste of war, + The silver torch-light of the evening star + Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. + + + II + + Lagooned in gold, + Seem not those jetty promontories rather + The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, + Uncomforted of morn, + Where old oblivions gather, + The melancholy unconsoling fold + Of all things that go utterly to death + And mix no more, no more + With life's perpetually awakening breath? + Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, + Over such sailless seas, + To walk with hope's slain importunities + In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not + All things be there forgot, + Save the sea's golden barrier and the black + Close-crouching promontories? + Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, + Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade, + A spectre self-destroyed, + So purged of all remembrance and sucked back + Into the primal void, + That should we on that shore phantasmal meet + I should not know the coming of your feet? + + + + + MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM + + + NOW the high holocaust of hours is done, + And all the west empurpled with their death, + How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun, + How little while the dusk remembereth! + + Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail, + And took the morning on auspicious crest, + Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"-- + Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest; + + And some that stole so soft on destiny + Methought they had surprised her to a smile; + But these fled frozen when she turned to see, + And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile. + + But now the day is emptied of them all, + And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught; + And so my life lies, as the gods let fall + An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed. + + Yet see--night is not . . . by translucent ways, + Up the grey void of autumn afternoon + Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze, + And all the air is merciful as June. + + The lake is a forgotten streak of day + That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars, + And still, my heart, still some divine delay + Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars. + + O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet + Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind, + Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat + Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind? + + Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race, + Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here? + Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face, + Lest I should look on it and call it dear. + + For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die; + Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head, + Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky + And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead. + + Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight, + Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave, + So shalt thou sink through mitigated night + And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave. + + But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare + Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light, + Dilating on a tide of crystal air + That floods the dark hills to their utmost height. + + Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans + Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass? + What victory is imaged there? What means + Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass. + + Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see, + O with what flooding ecstasy of light, + Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me, + Thou'rt not day's latest, but the first of night! + + And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick, + From hand to hand they toss the flying fire, + Till all the zenith with their dance is quick + About the wheeling music of the Lyre. + + Dread hour that lead'st the immemorial round, + With lifted torch revealing one by one + The thronging splendours that the day held bound, + And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun-- + + Be thou the image of a thought that fares + Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead, + Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares, + To where our lives are but the ages' tread, + + And let this year be, not the last of youth, + But first--like thee!--of some new train of hours, + If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth, + And kin to the unpetitionable powers. + + + + + ALL SOULS + + + I + + A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead, + And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead. + Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways, + Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays, + But forth of the gate and down the road, + Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode. + For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, + When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. + + + II + + Fear not that sound like wind in the trees: + It is only their call that comes on the breeze; + Fear not the shudder that seems to pass: + It is only the tread of their feet on the grass; + Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop: + It is only the touch of their hands that grope-- + For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night, + When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite. + + + III + + And where should a man bring his sweet to woo + But here, where such hundreds were lovers too? + Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss, + The empty hands that their fellows miss, + Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green, + Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between? + For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, + When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. + + + IV + + And now they rise and walk in the cold, + Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old. + Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus + In the prime of the year it went with us!" + Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist, + Forget they are mist that mingles with mist! + For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, + When the dead can burn and the dead can smite. + + + V + + Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!-- + "Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed-- + Just a thrill of the old remembered pains + To kindle a flame in our frozen veins, + A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart, + As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart-- + For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, + When the dead can hear and the dead have sight." + + + VI + + And where should the living feel alive + But here in this wan white humming hive, + As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold, + And one by one they creep back to the fold? + And where should a man hold his mate and say: + "One more, one more, ere we go their way"? + For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, + When the living can learn by the churchyard light. + + + VII + + And how should we break faith who have seen + Those dead lips plight with the mist between, + And how forget, who have seen how soon + They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon? + How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too, + Who must do so soon as those others do? + For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day, + And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . + + + + + ALL SAINTS + + + _ALL so grave and shining see they come_ + _From the blissful ranks of the forgiven,_ + _Though so distant wheels the nearest crystal dome,_ + _And the spheres are seven._ + + Are you in such haste to come to earth, + Shining ones, the Wonder on your brow, + To the low poor places of your birth, + And the day that must be darkness now? + + Does the heart still crave the spot it yearned on + In the grey and mortal years, + The pure flame the smoky hearth it burned on, + The clear eye its tears? + + Was there, in the narrow range of living, + After all the wider scope? + In the old old rapture of forgiving, + In the long long flight of hope? + + Come you, from free sweep across the spaces, + To the irksome bounds of mortal law, + From the all-embracing Vision, to some face's + Look that never saw? + + Never we, imprisoned here, had sought you, + Lured you with the ancient bait of pain, + Down the silver current of the light-years brought you + To the beaten round again-- + + Is it you, perchance, who ache to strain us + Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast, + Or with tragic gesture would detain us + From the age-long search for rest? + + Is the labour then more glorious than the laurel, + The learning than the conquered thought? + Is the meed of men the righteous quarrel, + Not the justice wrought? + + Long ago we guessed it, faithful ghosts, + Proudly chose the present for our scene, + And sent out indomitable hosts + Day by day to widen our demesne. + + Sit you by our hearth-stone, lone immortals, + Share again the bitter wine of life! + Well we know, beyond the peaceful portals + There is nothing better than our strife, + + Nought more thrilling than the cry that calls us, + Spent and stumbling, to the conflict vain, + After each disaster that befalls us + Nerves us for a sterner strain. + + And, when flood or foeman shakes the sleeper + In his moment's lapse from pain, + Bids us fold our tents, and flee our kin, and deeper + Drive into the wilderness again. + + + + + THE OLD POLE STAR + + + BEFORE the clepsydra had bound the days + Man tethered Change to his fixed star, and said: + "The elder races, that long since are dead, + Marched by that light; it swerves not from its base + Though all the worlds about it wax and fade." + + When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres, + Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its ray + She reared and said: "Long as this star holds sway + In uninvaded ether, shall the years + Revere my monuments--" and went her way. + + The Pyramids abide; but through the shaft + That held the polar pivot, eye to eye, + Look now--blank nothingness! As though Change laughed + At man's presumption and his puny craft, + The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky. + + Yet could the immemorial piles be swung + A skyey hair's-breadth from their rooted base, + Back to the central anchorage of space, + Ah, then again, as when the race was young, + Should they behold the beacon of the race! + + Of old, men said: "The Truth is there: we rear + Our faith full-centred on it. It was known + Thus of the elders who foreran us here, + Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere, + And found it, 'mid mutation, fixed alone." + + Change laughs again, again the sky is cold, + And down that fissure now no star-beam glides. + Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old + Still at the central point of space behold + Another pole-star: for the Truth abides. + + + + + A GRAVE + + + THOUGH life should come + With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum, + To proffer you the captaincy of some + Resounding exploit, that shall fill + Man's pulses with commemorative thrill, + And be a banner to far battle days + For truths unrisen upon untrod ways, + What would your answer be, + O heart once brave? + _Seek otherwhere; for me,_ + _I watch beside a grave._ + + Though to some shining festival of thought + The sages call you from steep citadel + Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained + Yields the pure vision passionately sought, + In dreams known well, + But never yet in wakefulness attained, + How should you answer to their summons, save: + _I watch beside a grave?_ + + Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul + Of fire-tongued seers descending, + Or from the dream-lit temples of the past + With feet immortal wending, + Illuminate grief's antre swart and vast + With half-veiled face that promises the whole + To him who holds her fast, + What answer could you give? + _Sight of one face I crave,_ + _One only while I live;_ + _Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave._ + + Though love of the one heart that loves you best, + A storm-tossed messenger, + Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast, + Where clung its last year's nest, + The nest you built together and made fast + Lest envious winds should stir, + And winged each delicate thought to minister + With sweetness far-amassed + To the young dreams within-- + What answer could it win? + _The nest was whelmed in sorrow's rising wave,_ + _Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;_ + _I watch beside a grave._ + + + + + NON DOLET! + + + AGE after age the fruit of knowledge falls + To ashes on men's lips; + Love fails, faith sickens, like a dying tree + Life sheds its dreams that no new spring recalls; + The longed-for ships + Come empty home or founder on the deep, + And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep. + + So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day, + And yet not wholly dark, + Since evermore some soul that missed the mark + Calls back to those agrope + In the mad maze of hope, + "Courage, my brothers--I have found the way!" + + The day is lost? What then? + What though the straggling rear-guard of the fight + Be whelmed in fear and night, + And the flying scouts proclaim + That death has gripped the van-- + Ever the heart of man + Cheers on the hearts of men! + + _"It hurts not!"_ dying cried the Roman wife; + And one by one + The leaders in the strife + Fall on the blade of failure and exclaim: + "The day is won!" + + + + + A HUNTING-SONG + + + _HUNTERS, where does Hope nest?_ + Not in the half-oped breast, + Nor the young rose, + Nor April sunrise--those + With a quick wing she brushes, + The wide world through, + Greets with the throat of thrushes, + Fades from as fast as dew. + + But, would you spy her sleeping, + Cradled warm, + Look in the breast of weeping, + The tree stript by storm; + But, would you bind her fast, + Yours at last, + Bed-mate and lover, + Gain the last headland bare + That the cold tides cover, + There may you capture her, there, + Where the sea gives to the ground + Only the drift of the drowned. + Yet, if she slips you, once found, + Push to her uttermost lair + In the low house of despair. + There will she watch by your head, + Sing to you till you be dead, + Then, with your child in her breast, + In another heart build a new nest. + + + + + SURVIVAL + + + WHEN you and I, like all things kind or cruel, + The garnered days and light evasive hours, + Are gone again to be a part of flowers + And tears and tides, in life's divine renewal, + + If some grey eve to certain eyes should wear + A deeper radiance than mere light can give, + Some silent page abruptly flush and live, + May it not be that you and I are there? + + + + + USES + + + AH, from the niggard tree of Time + How quickly fall the hours! + It needs no touch of wind or rime + To loose such facile flowers. + + Drift of the dead year's harvesting, + They clog to-morrow's way, + Yet serve to shelter growths of spring + Beneath their warm decay, + + Or, blent by pious hands with rare + Sweet savours of content, + Surprise the soul's December air + With June's forgotten scent. + + + + + A MEETING + + + ON a sheer peak of joy we meet; + Below us hums the abyss; + Death either way allures our feet + If we take one step amiss. + + One moment let us drink the blue + Transcendent air together-- + Then down where the same old work's to do + In the same dull daily weather. + + We may not wait . . . yet look below! + How part? On this keen ridge + But one may pass. They call you--go! + My life shall be your bridge. + + + + +Note.--Vesalius, the great anatomist, studied at Louvain and Paris, +and was called by Venice to the chair of surgery in the University +of Padua. He was one of the first physiologists to dissect the human +body, and his great work "The Structure of the Human Body" was an +open attack on the physiology of Galen. The book excited such +violent opposition, not only in the Church but in the University, +that in a fit of discouragement he burned his remaining manuscripts +and accepted the post of physician at the Court of Charles V., and +afterward of his son, Philip II, of Spain. This closed his life of +free enquiry, for the Inquisition forbade all scientific research, +and the dissection of corpses was prohibited in Spain. Vesalius led +for many years the life of the rich and successful court physician, +but regrets for his past were never wholly extinguished, and in 1561 +they were roused afresh by the reading of an anatomical treatise by +Gabriel Fallopius, his successor in the chair at Padua. From that +moment life in Spain became intolerable to Vesalius, and in 1563 he +set out for the East. Tradition reports that this journey was a +penance to which the Church condemned him for having opened the body +of a woman before she was actually dead; but more probably Vesalius, +sick of his long servitude, made the pilgrimage a pretext to escape +from Spain. + +Fallopius had meanwhile died, and the Venetian Senate is said to +have offered Vesalius his old chair; but on the way home from +Jerusalem he was seized with illness, and died at Zante in 1564. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds, by +Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON *** + +***** This file should be named 4549.txt or 4549.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/4/4549/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + +This etext was created by Charles Aldarondo (Aldarondo@yahoo.com) + +ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON + +AND OTHER VERSE + +BY EDITH WHARTON + +NEW YORK + +1909 + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + + + + +Part I-- + +ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON +LIFE +VESALIUS IN ZANTE +MARGARET OF CORTONA +A TORCHBEARER + +Part II-- + +THE MORTAL LEASE +EXPERIENCE +GRIEF +CHARTRES +TWO BACKGROUNDS +THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI +THE ONE GRIEF +THE EUMENIDES + +Part III-- + +ORPHEUS +AN AUTUMN SUNSET +MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM +ALL SOULS +ALL SAINTS +THE OLD POLE STAR +A GRAVE +NON DOLET! +A HUNTING-SONG +SURVIVAL +USES +A MEETING + + + + + + +I + + + + + + +ARTEMIS TO ACTAEON + + + + + +THOU couldst not look on me and live: so runs +The mortal legend--thou that couldst not live +Nor look on me (so the divine decree)! +That saw'st me in the cloud, the wave, the bough, +The clod commoved with April, and the shapes +Lurking 'twixt lid and eye-ball in the dark. +Mocked I thee not in every guise of life, +Hid in girls' eyes, a naiad in her well, +Wooed through their laughter, and like echo fled, +Luring thee down the primal silences +Where the heart hushes and the flesh is dumb? +Nay, was not I the tide that drew thee out +Relentlessly from the detaining shore, +Forth from the home-lights and the hailing voices, +Forth from the last faint headland's failing line, +Till I enveloped thee from verge to verge +And hid thee in the hollow of my being? +And still, because between us hung the veil, +The myriad-tinted veil of sense, thy feet +Refused their rest, thy hands the gifts of life, +Thy heart its losses, lest some lesser face +Should blur mine image in thine upturned soul +Ere death had stamped it there. This was thy thought. +And mine? + +The gods, they say, have all: not so! +This have they--flocks on every hill, the blue +Spirals of incense and the amber drip +Of lucid honey-comb on sylvan shrines, +First-chosen weanlings, doves immaculate, +Twin-cooing in the osier-plaited cage, +And ivy-garlands glaucous with the dew: +Man's wealth, man's servitude, but not himself! +And so they pale, for lack of warmth they wane, +Freeze to the marble of their images, +And, pinnacled on man's subserviency, +Through the thick sacrificial haze discern +Unheeding lives and loves, as some cold peak +Through icy mists may enviously descry +Warm vales unzoned to the all-fruitful sun. +So they along an immortality +Of endless-envistaed homage strain their gaze, +If haply some rash votary, empty-urned, +But light of foot, with all-adventuring hand, +Break rank, fling past the people and the priest, +Up the last step, on to the inmost shrine, +And there, the sacred curtain in his clutch, +Drop dead of seeing--while the others prayed! +Yes, this we wait for, this renews us, this +Incarnates us, pale people of your dreams, +Who are but what you make us, wood or stone, +Or cold chryselephantine hung with gems, +Or else the beating purpose of your life, +Your sword, your clay, the note your pipe pursues, +The face that haunts your pillow, or the light +Scarce visible over leagues of labouring sea! +_O thus through use to reign again, to drink_ +_The cup of peradventure to the lees,_ +_For one dear instant disimmortalised_ +_In giving immortality!_ +So dream the gods upon their listless thrones. +Yet sometimes, when the votary appears, +With death-affronting forehead and glad eyes, +_Too young_, they rather muse, _too frail thou art,_ +_And shall we rob some girl of saffron veil_ +_And nuptial garland for so slight a thing?_ +And so to their incurious loves return. + +Not so with thee; for some indeed there are +Who would behold the truth and then return +To pine among the semblances--but I +Divined in thee the questing foot that never +Revisits the cold hearth of yesterday +Or calls achievement home. I from afar +Beheld thee fashioned for one hour's high use, +Nor meant to slake oblivion drop by drop. +Long, long hadst thou inhabited my dreams, +Surprising me as harts surprise a pool, +Stealing to drink at midnight; I divined +Thee rash to reach the heart of life, and lie +Bosom to bosom in occasion's arms. +And said: _Because I love thee thou shalt die!_ + +For immortality is not to range +Unlimited through vast Olympian days, +Or sit in dull dominion over time; +But this--to drink fate's utmost at a draught, +Nor feel the wine grow stale upon the lip, +To scale the summit of some soaring moment, +Nor know the dulness of the long descent, +To snatch the crown of life and seal it up +Secure forever in the vaults of death! + +And this was thine: to lose thyself in me, +Relive in my renewal, and become +The light of other lives, a quenchless torch +Passed on from hand to hand, till men are dust +And the last garland withers from my shrine. + + + + + + +LIFE + + + + + +NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more +Pour the wild music through me-- + +I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind, +Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn +There came a groping shape of mystery +Moving among us, that with random stroke +Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe, +Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice, +Laughing on Lethe-bank--and in my throat +I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes, +The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat. + +Such little songs she sang, +Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, +They trickled from me like a slender spring +That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, +Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. +She sang, and bore me through the April world +Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum +In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, +And breathings of the scarce-articulate air +When it makes mouths of grasses--but when the sky +Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes, +She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath +Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart, +I shook, and heard the battle. + +But more oft, +Those early days, we moved in charmed woods, +Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun, +And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph +Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed. +And once we came to a great stream that bore +The stars upon its bosom like a sea, +And ships like stars; so to the sea we came. +And there she raised me to her lips, and sent +One swift pang through me; then refrained her hand, +And whispered: "Hear--" and into my frail flanks, +Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured +Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared. + +We came to cities, and Life piped on me +Low calls to dreaming girls, +In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold, +Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth, +And made the heavy merchant at his desk +Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life +Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed. + +We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there +Life met a god, who challenged her and said: +"Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed, +And in my live flank dug a finger-hole, +And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain! + +We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind. +We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, +With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, +And a silence that was louder than the deep; +But on the utmost pinnacle Life again +Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair. + +Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang, +And clamoured "Play me against a god again!" +"Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet," +She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need. +But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank +With yearnings for new music and new pain. +"Another note against another god!" +I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time. +Of every heart-wound I will make a stop, +And drink thy life in music, pang by pang, +But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee +At dawn beside the river. Take my lips." + +She kissed me like a lover, but I wept, +Remembering that high song against the god, +And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb. + +We came to cavernous foul places, blind +With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare +Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled, +And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey, +And death fed delicately on young bones. + +"Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me. +"Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?" +My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar, +Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods +Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell. + +"Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars; +And wrung a new note from my wounded side. + +So came we to clear spaces, and the sea. +And now I felt its volume in my heart, +And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me +The song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said. + +Then from the utmost pinnacle again +She poured me on the wild sidereal stream, +And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept +The interstellar spaces like new worlds +Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star. + +Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again, +Under black skies, under a groping wind; +And Life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast, +Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly +A blade of silver severed the black peaks +From the black sky, and earth was born again, +Breathing and various, under a god's feet. +A god! A god! I felt the heart of Life +Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again. +He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out, +But Life warmed to him, warming me with her, +And as he neared I felt beneath her hands +The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul +Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat. + +"His name--his name?" I whispered, but she shed +The music faster, and I grew with it, +Became a part of it, while Life and I +Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song +As she from me, one song, one ecstasy, +In indistinguishable union blent, +Till she became the flute and I the player. +And lo! the song I played on her was more +Than any she had drawn from me; it held +The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea, +The faun's catch, the nymph's tremor, and the heart +Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk, +Apollo's challenge on the sunrise slope, +And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell-- +All, to the dawn-wind's whisper in the reeds, +When Life first came, a shape of mystery, +Moving among us, and with random stroke +Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe. +All this I wrung from her in that deep hour, +While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor grass!" + +Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee +Forever, Life, however spent and clogged, +And tossed back useless to my native mud! +Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion thee +New instruments of anguish and delight, +Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed, +Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill +With the old subjection, then when Love and I +Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance +Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet +Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys +Thou'lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more +Pour the wild music through me-- + + + + + + +VESALIUS IN ZANTE (See note at end) + +(1564) + + + + + +SET wide the window. Let me drink the day. +I loved light ever, light in eye and brain-- +No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, +Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, +But just the common dusty wind-blown day +That roofs earth's millions. + +O, too long I walked +In that thrice-sifted air that princes breathe, +Nor felt the heaven-wide jostling of the winds +And all the ancient outlawry of earth! +Now let me breathe and see. + +This pilgrimage +They call a penance--let them call it that! +I set my face to the East to shrive my soul +Of mortal sin? So be it. If my blade +Once questioned living flesh, if once I tore +The pages of the Book in opening it, +See what the torn page yielded ere the light +Had paled its buried characters--and judge! + +The girl they brought me, pinioned hand and foot +In catalepsy--say I should have known +That trance had not yet darkened into death, +And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I _knew?_ +Sum up the facts--her life against her death. +Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure +Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance +The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, +And waft her into immortality. +Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter +That whispered its deep secret to my blade! +For, just because her bosom fluttered still, +It told me more than many rifled graves; +Because I spoke too soon, she answered me, +Her vain life ripened to this bud of death +As the whole plant is forced into one flower, +All her blank past a scroll on which God wrote +His word of healing--so that the poor flesh, +Which spread death living, died to purchase life! + +Ah, no! The sin I sinned was mine, not theirs. +Not _that_ they sent me forth to wash away-- +None of their tariffed frailties, but a deed +So far beyond their grasp of good or ill +That, set to weigh it in the Church's balance, +Scarce would they know which scale to cast it in. +But I, I know. I sinned against my will, +Myself, my soul--the God within the breast: +Can any penance wash such sacrilege? + +When I was young in Venice, years ago, +I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk, +A solitary cloistered in high thoughts, +The great Loyola, whom I reckoned then +A mere refurbisher of faded creeds, +Expert to edge anew the arms of faith, +As who should say, a Galenist, resolved +To hold the walls of dogma against fact, +Experience, insight, his own self, if need be! +Ah, how I pitied him, mine own eyes set +Straight in the level beams of Truth, who groped +In error's old deserted catacombs +And lit his tapers upon empty graves! +Ay, but he held his own, the monk--more man +Than any laurelled cripple of the wars, +Charles's spent shafts; for what he willed he willed, +As those do that forerun the wheels of fate, +Not take their dust--that force the virgin hours, +Hew life into the likeness of themselves +And wrest the stars from their concurrences. +So firm his mould; but mine the ductile soul +That wears the livery of circumstance +And hangs obsequious on its suzerain's eye. +For who rules now? The twilight-flitting monk, +Or I, that took the morning like an Alp? +He held his own, I let mine slip from me, +The birthright that no sovereign can restore; +And so ironic Time beholds us now +Master and slave--he lord of half the earth, +I ousted from my narrow heritage. + +For there's the sting! My kingdom knows me not. +Reach me that folio--my usurper's title! +Fallopius reigning, _vice_--nay, not so: +Successor, not usurper. I am dead. +My throne stood empty; he was heir to it. +Ay, but who hewed his kingdom from the waste, +Cleared, inch by inch, the acres for his sowing, +Won back for man that ancient fief o' the Church, +His body? Who flung Galen from his seat, +And founded the great dynasty of truth +In error's central kingdom? + +Ask men that, +And see their answer: just a wondering stare +To learn things were not always as they are-- +The very fight forgotten with the fighter; +Already grows the moss upon my grave! +Ay, and so meet--hold fast to that, Vesalius. +They only, who re-conquer day by day +The inch of ground they camped on over-night, +Have right of foothold on this crowded earth. +I left mine own; he seized it; with it went +My name, my fame, my very self, it seems, +Till I am but the symbol of a man, +The sign-board creaking o'er an empty inn. +He names me--true! _Oh, give the door its due_ +_I entered by. Only, I pray you, note,_ +_Had door been none, a shoulder-thrust of mine_ +_Had breached the crazy wall"_--he seems to say. +So meet--and yet a word of thanks, of praise, +Of recognition that the clue was found, +Seized, followed, clung to, by some hand now dust-- +Had this obscured his quartering of my shield? + +How the one weakness stirs again! I thought +I had done with that old thirst for gratitude +That lured me to the desert years ago. +I did my work--and was not that enough? +No; but because the idlers sneered and shrugged, +The envious whispered, the traducers lied, +And friendship doubted where it should have cheered +I flung aside the unfinished task, sought praise +Outside my soul's esteem, and learned too late +That victory, like God's kingdom, is within. +(Nay, let the folio rest upon my knee. +I do not feel its weight.) Ingratitude? +The hurrying traveller does not ask the name +Of him who points him on his way; and this +Fallopius sits in the mid-heart of me, +Because he keeps his eye upon the goal, +Cuts a straight furrow to the end in view, +Cares not who oped the fountain by the way, +But drinks to draw fresh courage for his journey. +That was the lesson that Ignatius taught-- +The one I might have learned from him, but would not-- +That we are but stray atoms on the wind, +A dancing transiency of summer eves, +Till we become one with our purpose, merged +In that vast effort of the race which makes +Mortality immortal. + +_"He that loseth_ +_His life shall find it":_ so the Scripture runs. +But I so hugged the fleeting self in me, +So loved the lovely perishable hours, +So kissed myself to death upon their lips, +That on one pyre we perished in the end-- +A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit! +Yet all was well--or seemed so--till I heard +That younger voice, an echo of my own, +And, like a wanderer turning to his home, +Who finds another on the hearth, and learns, +Half-dazed, that other is his actual self +In name and claim, as the whole parish swears, +So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed +Of that same self I had sold all to keep, +A baffled ghost that none would see or hear! +_"Vesalius? Who's Vesalius? This Fallopius_ +_It is who dragged the Galen-idol down,_ +_Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way_ +_Into the secret fortalice of life"_-- +Yet it was I that bore the brunt of it! + +Well, better so! Better awake and live +My last brief moment as the man I was, +Than lapse from life's long lethargy to death +Without one conscious interval. At least +I repossess my past, am once again +No courtier med'cining the whims of kings +In muffled palace-chambers, but the free +Friendless Vesalius, with his back to the wall +And all the world against him. O, for that +Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks-- +That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote: +"Master, Fallopius dead, resume again +The chair even he could not completely fill, +And see what usury age shall take of youth +In honours forfeited"--why, just at first, +I was quite simply credulously glad +To think the old life stood ajar for me, +Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart. +But now that death waylays me--now I know +This isle is the circumference of my days, +And I shall die here in a little while-- +So also best, Fallopius! + +For I see +The gods may give anew, but not restore; +And though I think that, in my chair again, +I might have argued my supplanters wrong +In this or that--this Cesalpinus, say, +With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark, +Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch +On Galen (systole and diastole +Of Truth's mysterious heart!)--yet, other ways, +It may be that this dying serves the cause. +For Truth stays not to build her monument +For this or that co-operating hand, +But props it with her servants' failures--nay, +Cements its courses with their blood and brains, +A living substance that shall clinch her walls +Against the assaults of time. Already, see, +Her scaffold rises on my hidden toil, +I but the accepted premiss whence must spring +The airy structure of her argument; +Nor could the bricks it rests on serve to build +The crowning finials. I abide her law: +A different substance for a different end-- +Content to know I hold the building up; +Though men, agape at dome and pinnacles, +Guess not, the whole must crumble like a dream +But for that buried labour underneath. +Yet, Padua, I had still my word to say! +_Let others say it!_--Ah, but will they guess +Just the one word--? Nay, Truth is many-tongued. +What one man failed to speak, another finds +Another word for. May not all converge +In some vast utterance, of which you and I, +Fallopius, were but halting syllables? +So knowledge come, no matter how it comes! +No matter whence the light falls, so it fall! +Truth's way, not mine--that I, whose service failed +In action, yet may make amends in praise. +Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word, +Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it! +You miss a point I saw? See others, then! +Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own! +Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide, +And you may yet uncover other stars. +For thus I read the meaning of this end: +There are two ways of spreading light: to be +The candle or the mirror that reflects it. +I let my wick burn out--there yet remains +To spread an answering surface to the flame +That others kindle. + +Turn me in my bed. +The window darkens as the hours swing round; +But yonder, look, the other casement glows! +Let me face westward as my sun goes down. + + + + + + +MARGARET OF CORTONA + + + + + +FRA PAOLO, since they say the end is near, +And you of all men have the gentlest eyes, +Most like our father Francis; since you know +How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven, +Mothered the orphan, waked beside the sick, +Gone empty that mine enemy might eat, +Given bread for stones in famine years, and channelled +With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell, +Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall +To bend His thorn-crowned Head in mute forgiveness . . . +Three times He bowed it . . . (but the whole stands writ, +Sealed with the Bishop's signet, as you know), +Once for each person of the Blessed Three-- +A miracle that the whole town attests, +The very babes thrust forward for my blessing, +And either parish plotting for my bones-- +Since this you know: sit near and bear with me. + +I have lain here, these many empty days +I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys +So close that not a fear should force the door-- +But still, between the blessed syllables +That taper up like blazing angel heads, +Praise over praise, to the Unutterable, +Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, +As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, +My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes +Alive in their obliterated faces! . . . +I have tried the saints' names and our blessed Mother's +Fra Paolo, I have tried them o'er and o'er, +And like a blade bent backward at first thrust +They yield and fail me--and the questions stay. +And so I thought, into some human heart, +Pure, and yet foot-worn with the tread of sin, +If only I might creep for sanctuary, +It might be that those eyes would let me rest. . . + +Fra Paolo, listen. How should I forget +The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) +I had been laughing in the market-place +With others like me, I the youngest there, +Jostling about a pack of mountebanks +Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), +Till darkness fell; and while the other girls +Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, +I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: +_If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret,_ +_At least enough to buy that two-pronged coral_ +_The others covet 'gainst the evil eye,_ +_Since, after all, one sees that I'm the youngest_-- +So, muttering my litany to hell +(The only prayer I knew that was not Latin), +Felt on my arm a touch as kind as yours, +And heard a voice as kind as yours say "Come." +I turned and went; and from that day I never +Looked on the face of any other man. +So much is known; so much effaced; the sin +Cast like a plague-struck body to the sea, +Deep, deep into the unfathomable pardon-- +(The Head bowed thrice, as the whole town attests). +What more, then? To what purpose? Bear with me!-- + +It seems that he, a stranger in the place, +First noted me that afternoon and wondered: +_How grew so white a bud in such black slime,_ +_And why not mine the hand to pluck it out?_ +Why, so Christ deals with souls, you cry--what then? +Not so! Not so! When Christ, the heavenly gardener, +Plucks flowers for Paradise (do I not know?), +He snaps the stem above the root, and presses +The ransomed soul between two convent walls, +A lifeless blossom in the Book of Life. +But when my lover gathered me, he lifted +Stem, root and all--ay, and the clinging mud-- +And set me on his sill to spread and bloom +After the common way, take sun and rain, +And make a patch of brightness for the street, +Though raised above rough fingers--so you make +A weed a flower, and others, passing, think: +"Next ditch I cross, I'll lift a root from it, +And dress my window" . . . and the blessing spreads. +Well, so I grew, with every root and tendril +Grappling the secret anchorage of his love, +And so we loved each other till he died. . . . + +Ah, that black night he left me, that dead dawn +I found him lying in the woods, alive +To gasp my name out and his life-blood with it, +As though the murderer's knife had probed for me +In his hacked breast and found me in each wound. . . +Well, it was there Christ came to me, you know, +And led me home--just as that other led me. +_(Just as that other?_ Father, bear with me!) +My lover's death, they tell me, saved my soul, +And I have lived to be a light to men. +And gather sinners to the knees of grace. +All this, you say, the Bishop's signet covers. +But stay! Suppose my lover had not died? +(At last my question! Father, help me face it.) +I say: Suppose my lover had not died-- +Think you I ever would have left him living, +Even to be Christ's blessed Margaret? +--We lived in sin? Why, to the sin I died to +That other was as Paradise, when God +Walks there at eventide, the air pure gold, +And angels treading all the grass to flowers! +He was my Christ--he led me out of hell-- +He died to save me (so your casuists say!)-- +Could Christ do more? Your Christ out-pity mine? +Why, _yours_ but let the sinner bathe His feet; +Mine raised her to the level of his heart. . . +And then Christ's way is saving, as man's way +Is squandering--and the devil take the shards! +But this man kept for sacramental use +The cup that once had slaked a passing thirst; +This man declared: "The same clay serves to model +A devil or a saint; the scribe may stain +The same fair parchment with obscenities, +Or gild with benedictions; nay," he cried, +"Because a satyr feasted in this wood, +And fouled the grasses with carousing foot, +Shall not a hermit build his chapel here +And cleanse the echoes with his litanies? +The sodden grasses spring again--why not +The trampled soul? Is man less merciful +Than nature, good more fugitive than grass?" +And so--if, after all, he had not died, +And suddenly that door should know his hand, +And with that voice as kind as yours he said: +"Come, Margaret, forth into the sun again, +Back to the life we fashioned with our hands +Out of old sins and follies, fragments scorned +Of more ambitious builders, yet by Love, +The patient architect, so shaped and fitted +That not a crevice let the winter in--" +Think you my bones would not arise and walk, +This bruised body (as once the bruised soul) +Turn from the wonders of the seventh heaven +As from the antics of the market-place? +If this could be (as I so oft have dreamed), +I, who have known both loves, divine and human, +Think you I would not leave this Christ for that? + +--I rave, you say? You start from me, Fra Paolo? +Go, then; your going leaves me not alone. +I marvel, rather, that I feared the question, +Since, now I name it, it draws near to me +With such dear reassurance in its eyes, +And takes your place beside me. . . + +Nay, I tell you, +Fra Paolo, I have cried on all the saints-- +If this be devil's prompting, let them drown it +In Alleluias! Yet not one replies. +And, for the Christ there--is He silent too? +_Your_ Christ? Poor father; you that have but one, +And that one silent--how I pity you! +He will not answer? Will not help you cast +The devil out? But hangs there on the wall, +Blind wood and bone--? + +How if _I_ call on Him-- +I, whom He talks with, as the town attests? +If ever prayer hath ravished me so high +That its wings failed and dropped me in Thy breast, +Christ, I adjure Thee! By that naked hour +Of innermost commixture, when my soul +Contained Thee as the paten holds the host, +Judge Thou alone between this priest and me; +Nay, rather, Lord, between my past and present, +Thy Margaret and that other's--whose she is +By right of salvage--and whose call should follow! +Thine? Silent still.--Or his, who stooped to her, +And drew her to Thee by the bands of love? +Not Thine? Then his? + +Ah, Christ--the thorn-crowned Head +Bends . . . bends again . . . down on your knees, + +Fra Paolo! +If his, then Thine! + +Kneel, priest, for this is heaven. . . + + + + + + +A TORCHBEARER + + + + + +GREAT cities rise and have their fall; the brass +That held their glories moulders in its turn. +Hard granite rots like an uprooted weed, +And ever on the palimpsest of earth +Impatient Time rubs out the word he writ. +But one thing makes the years its pedestal, +Springs from the ashes of its pyre, and claps +A skyward wing above its epitaph-- +The will of man willing immortal things. + +The ages are but baubles hung upon +The thread of some strong lives--and one slight wrist +May lift a century above the dust; +For Time, +The Sisyphean load of little lives, +Becomes the globe and sceptre of the great. +But who are these that, linking hand in hand, +Transmit across the twilight waste of years +The flying brightness of a kindled hour? +Not always, nor alone, the lives that search +How they may snatch a glory out of heaven +Or add a height to Babel; oftener they +That in the still fulfilment of each day's +Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, +That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks +Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, +And leap like lightning to the clap of fate. + +So greatly gave he, nurturing 'gainst the call +Of one rare moment all the daily store +Of joy distilled from the acquitted task, +And that deliberate rashness which bespeaks +The pondered action passed into the blood; +So swift to harden purpose into deed +That, with the wind of ruin in his hair, +Soul sprang full-statured from the broken flesh, +And at one stroke he lived the whole of life, +Poured all in one libation to the truth, +A brimming flood whose drops shall overflow +On deserts of the soul long beaten down +By the brute hoof of habit, till they spring +In manifold upheaval to the sun. + +Call here no high artificer to raise +His wordy monument--such lives as these +Make death a dull misnomer and its pomp +An empty vesture. Let resounding lives +Re-echo splendidly through high-piled vaults +And make the grave their spokesman--such as he +Are as the hidden streams that, underground, +Sweeten the pastures for the grazing kine, +Or as spring airs that bring through prison bars +The scent of freedom; or a light that burns +Immutably across the shaken seas, +Forevermore by nameless hands renewed, +Where else were darkness and a glutted shore. + + + + + + +II + + + + + + +THE MORTAL LEASE + +I + + + + + +BECAUSE the currents of our love are poured +Through the slow welter of the primal flood +From some blind source of monster-haunted mud, +And flung together by random forces stored +Ere the vast void with rushing worlds was scored-- +Because we know ourselves but the dim scud +Tossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown bud +That wastes and scatters ere the wave has roared-- + +Because we have this knowledge in our veins, +Shall we deny the journey's gathered lore-- +The great refusals and the long disdains, +The stubborn questing for a phantom shore, +The sleepless hopes and memorable pains, +And all mortality's immortal gains? + + + + + +II + + + + +Because our kiss is as the moon to draw +The mounting waters of that red-lit sea +That circles brain with sense, and bids us be +The playthings of an elemental law, +Shall we forego the deeper touch of awe +On love's extremest pinnacle, where we, +Winging the vistas of infinity, +Gigantic on the mist our shadows saw? + +Shall kinship with the dim first-moving clod +Not draw the folded pinion from the soul, +And shall we not, by spirals vision-trod, +Reach upward to some still-retreating goal, +As earth, escaping from the night's control, +Drinks at the founts of morning like a god? + + + + + +III + + + + +All, all is sweet in that commingled draught +Mysterious, that life pours for lovers' thirst, +And I would meet your passion as the first +Wild woodland woman met her captor's craft, +Or as the Greek whose fearless beauty laughed +And doffed her raiment by the Attic flood; +But in the streams of my belated blood +Flow all the warring potions love has quaffed. + +How can I be to you the nymph who danced +Smooth by Ilissus as the plane-tree's bole, +Or how the Nereid whose drenched lashes glanced +Like sea-flowers through the summer sea's long roll-- +I that have also been the nun entranced +Who night-long held her Bridegroom in her soul? + + + + + +IV + + + + +"Sad Immortality is dead," you say, +"And all her grey brood banished from the soul; +Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole, +The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day." +And every sense in me leapt to obey, +Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll; +But from their waning throng a whisper stole, +And touched the morning splendour with decay. + +"Sad Immortality is dead; and we +The funeral train that bear her to her grave. +Yet hath she left a two-faced progeny +In hearts of men, and some will always see +The skull beneath the wreath, yet always crave +In every kiss the folded kiss to be." + + + + + +V + + + + +Yet for one rounded moment I will be +No more to you than what my lips may give, +And in the circle of your kisses live +As in some island of a storm-blown sea, +Where the cold surges of infinity +Upon the outward reefs unheeded grieve, +And the loud murmur of our blood shall weave +Primeval silences round you and me. + +If in that moment we are all we are +We live enough. Let this for all requite. +Do I not know, some winged things from far +Are borne along illimitable night +To dance their lives out in a single flight +Between the moonrise and the setting star? + + + + + +VI + + + + +The Moment came, with sacramental cup +Lifted--and all the vault of life grew bright +With tides of incommensurable light-- +But tremblingly I turned and covered up +My face before the wonder. Down the slope +I heard her feet in irretrievable flight, +And when I looked again, my stricken sight +Saw night and rain in a dead world agrope. + +Now walks her ghost beside me, whispering +With lips derisive: "Thou that wouldst forego-- +What god assured thee that the cup I bring +Globes not in every drop the cosmic show, +All that the insatiate heart of man can wring +From life's long vintage?--Now thou shalt not know." + + + + + +VII + + + + +Shall I not know? I, that could always catch +The sunrise in one beam along the wall, +The nests of June in April's mating call, +And ruinous autumn in the wind's first snatch +At summer's green impenetrable thatch-- +That always knew far off the secret fall +Of a god's feet across the city's brawl, +The touch of silent fingers on my latch? + +Not thou, vain Moment! Something more than thou +Shall write the score of what mine eyes have wept, +The touch of kisses that have missed my brow, +The murmur of wings that brushed me while I slept, +And some mute angel in the breast even now +Measures my loss by all that I have kept. + + + + + +VIII + + + + +Strive we no more. Some hearts are like the bright +Tree-chequered spaces, flecked with sun and shade, +Where gathered in old days the youth and maid +To woo, and weave their dances: with the night +They cease their flutings, and the next day's light +Finds the smooth green unconscious of their tread, +And ready its velvet pliancies to spread +Under fresh feet, till these in turn take flight. + +But other hearts a long long road doth span, +From some far region of old works and wars, +And the weary armies of the thoughts of man +Have trampled it, and furrowed it with scars, +And sometimes, husht, a sacred caravan +Moves over it alone, beneath the stars. + + + + + + +EXPERIENCE + +I + + + + + +LIKE Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand +Upon the desert verge of death, and say: +"What shall avail the woes of yesterday +To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land +Whose currency is strange unto our hand? +In life's small market they had served to pay +Some late-found rapture, could we but delay +Till Time hath matched our means to our demand." + +But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold, +Our gathered strength of individual pain, +When Time's long alchemy hath made it gold, +Dies with us--hoarded all these years in vain, +Since those that might be heir to it the mould +Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again. + + + + + +II + + + + +O Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, +Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, +Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, +And love's oblivion, and remembering hate. +Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight +Upon our souls--and shall our hopes and fears +Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, +And sell us the one joy for which we wait. +Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, +With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, +But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, +And all our longings lie within thy keep-- +Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? + +"Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep." + + + + + + +GRIEF + +I + + + + + +ON immemorial altitudes august +Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet +That climb unblenching to that stern retreat +Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust. +There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust +Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet +Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet, +With many an abdicated "shall" and "must." + +For there she rules omnipotent, whose will +Compels a mute acceptance of her chart; +Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill +Her mighty hand; who will be served apart +With uncommunicable rites, and still +Surrender of the undivided heart. + + + + + +II + + + + +She holds the world within her mighty hand, +And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, +And all its shining imagery but dross, +To those that in her awful presence stand; +As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land +That lies below, they send their gaze across +The common intervals of gain and loss, +And hope's infinitude without a strand. + +But he who, on that lonely eminence, +Watches too long the whirling of the spheres +Through dim eternities, descending thence +The voices of his kind no longer hears, +And, blinded by the spectacle immense, +Journeys alone through all the after years. + + + + + + +CHARTRES + +I + + + + + +IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom, +The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, +Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, +Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, +And stamened with keen flamelets that illume +The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, +By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, +A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, +The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea-- +For these alone the finials fret the skies, +The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, +While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, +Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, +The cloud of witnesses still testifies. + + + + +II + + + + +The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise +The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. +A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, +The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, +Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, +Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. +The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, +Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. +Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows +To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn +From hot humanity's impatient woes; +The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, +And in the east one giant window shows +The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn. + + + + + + + +TWO BACKGROUNDS + +I + +LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR + + + + + +HERE by the ample river's argent sweep, +Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, +A tower-crowned Cybele in armoured sleep +The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, +With calm parochial spires that hold in fee +The friendly gables clustered at their base, +And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place, +The Gothic minister's winged immensity; +And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, +Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned, +Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find +Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude. + + + + + +II + +MONA LISA + + + + +Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep +No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed: +Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep. +But at the gate an Angel bares his blade; +And tales are told of those who thought to gain +At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell +Far off they saw each fading pinnacle +Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain; +Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities +Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, +Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, +And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees. + + + + + + +THE TOMB OF ILARIA GIUNIGI + + + + + +ILARIA, thou that wert so fair and dear +That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise +With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes, +And bade him call the master's art to rear +Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, +With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise +Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, +And lips that at love's call should answer "Here!" + +First-born of the Renascence, when thy soul +Cast the sweet robing of the flesh aside, +Into these lovelier marble limbs it stole, +Regenerate in art's sunrise clear and wide, +As saints who, having kept faith's raiment whole, +Change it above for garments glorified. + + + + + + +THE ONE GRIEF + + + + + +ONE grief there is, the helpmeet of my heart, +That shall not from me till my days be sped, +That walks beside me in sunshine and in shade, +And hath in all my fortunes equal part. +At first I feared it, and would often start +Aghast to find it bending o'er my bed, +Till usage slowly dulled the edge of dread, +And one cold night I cried: _How warm thou art!_ + +Since then we two have travelled hand in hand, +And, lo, my grief has been interpreter +For me in many a fierce and alien land +Whose speech young Joy had failed to understand, +Plucking me tribute of red gold and myrrh +From desolate whirlings of the desert sand. + + + + + + +THE EUMENIDES + + + + + +THINK you we slept within the Delphic bower, +What time our victim sought Apollo's grace? +Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place +Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. +For not inexorable is our power. +And we are hunted of the prey we chase, +Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, +And draw temerity from hearts that cower. + +Shuddering we gather in the house of ruth, +And on the fearful turn a face of fear, +But they to whom the ways of doom are clear +Not vainly named us the Eumenides. +Our feet are faithful in the paths of truth, +And in the constant heart we house at peace. + + + + + + +III + + + + + + +ORPHEUS + +_Love will make men dare to die for their beloved. . . Of this +Alcestis is a monument . . . for she was willing to lay down her +life for her husband . . . and so noble did this appear to the gods +that they granted her the privilege of returning to earth . . . but +Orpheus, the son of OEagrus, they sent empty away. . ._ + +--PLATO: _The Symposium._ + + + + + +ORPHEUS the Harper, coming to the gate +Where the implacable dim warder sate, +Besought for parley with a shade within, +Dearer to him than life itself had been, +Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea, +Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee, +Whom lately from his unconsenting breast +The Fates, at some capricious blind behest, +Intolerably had reft--Eurydice, +Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea, +Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom-- +And uncompanioned led her to the tomb. + +There, solitary by the Stygian tide, +Strayed her dear feet, the shadow of his own, +Since, 'mid the desolate millions who have died, +Each phantom walks its crowded path alone; +And there her head, that slept upon his breast, +No more had such sweet harbour for its rest, +Nor her swift ear from those disvoiced throats +Could catch one echo of his living notes, +And, dreaming nightly of her pallid doom, +No solace had he of his own young bloom, +But yearned to pour his blood into her veins +And buy her back with unimagined pains. + +To whom the Shepherd of the Shadows said: +"Yea, many thus would bargain for their dead; +But when they hear my fatal gateway clang +Life quivers in them with a last sweet pang. +They see the smoke of home above the trees, +The cordage whistles on the harbour breeze; +The beaten path that wanders to the shore +Grows dear because they shall not tread it more, +The dog that drowsing on their threshold lies +Looks at them with their childhood in his eyes, +And in the sunset's melancholy fall +They read a sunrise that shall give them all." + +"Not thus am I," the Harper smiled his scorn. +"I see no path but those her feet have worn; +My roof-tree is the shadow of her hair, +And the light breaking through her long despair +The only sunrise that mine eyelids crave; +For doubly dead without me in the grave +Is she who, if my feet had gone before, +Had found life dark as death's abhorred shore." + +The gate clanged on him, and he went his way +Amid the alien millions, mute and grey, +Swept like a cold mist down an unlit strand, +Where nameless wreckage gluts the stealthy sand, +Drift of the cockle-shells of hope and faith +Wherein they foundered on the rock of death. + +So came he to the image that he sought +(Less living than her semblance in his thought), +Who, at the summons of his thrilling notes, +Drew back to life as a drowned creature floats +Back to the surface; yet no less is dead. +And cold fear smote him till she spoke and said: +"Art thou then come to lay thy lips on mine, +And pour thy life's libation out like wine? +Shall I, through thee, revisit earth again, +Traverse the shining sea, the fruitful plain, +Behold the house we dwelt in, lay my head +Upon the happy pillows of our bed, +And feel in dreams the pressure of thine arms +Kindle these pulses that no memory warms? +Nay: give me for a space upon thy breast +Death's shadowy substitute for rapture--rest; +Then join again the joyous living throng, +And give me life, but give it in thy song; +For only they that die themselves may give +Life to the dead: and I would have thee live." + +Fear seized him closer than her arms; but he +Answered: "Not so--for thou shalt come with me! +I sought thee not that we should part again, +But that fresh joy should bud from the old pain; +And the gods, if grudgingly their gifts they make, +Yield all to them that without asking take." + +"The gods," she said, "(so runs life's ancient lore) +Yield all man takes, but always claim their score. +The iron wings of the Eumenides +When heard far off seem but a summer breeze; +But me thou'lt have alive on earth again +Only by paying here my meed of pain. +Then lay on my cold lips the tender ghost +Of the dear kiss that used to warm them most, +Take from my frozen hands thy hands of fire, +And of my heart-strings make thee a new lyre, +That in thy music men may find my voice, +And something of me still on earth rejoice." + +Shuddering he heard her, but with close-flung arm +Swept her resisting through the ghostly swarm. +"Swift, hide thee 'neath my cloak, that we may glide +Past the dim warder as the gate swings wide." +He whirled her with him, lighter than a leaf +Unwittingly whirled onward by a brief +Autumnal eddy; but when the fatal door +Suddenly yielded him to life once more, +And issuing to the all-consoling skies +He turned to seek the sunlight in her eyes, +He clutched at emptiness--she was not there; +And the dim warder answered to his prayer: +"Only once have I seen the wonder wrought. +But when Alcestis thus her master sought, +Living she sought him not, nor dreamed that fate +For any subterfuge would swing my gate. +Loving, she gave herself to livid death, +Joyous she bought his respite with her breath, +Came, not embodied, but a tenuous shade, +In whom her rapture a great radiance made. +For never saw I ghost upon this shore +Shine with such living ecstasy before, +Nor heard an exile from the light above +Hail me with smiles: _Thou art not Death but Love!_ + +"But when the gods, frustrated, this beheld, +How, living still, among the dead she dwelled, +Because she lived in him whose life she won, +And her blood beat in his beneath the sun, +They reasoned: 'When the bitter Stygian wave +The sweetness of love's kisses cannot lave, +When the pale flood of Lethe washes not +From mortal mind one high immortal thought, +Akin to us the earthly creature grows, +Since nature suffers only what it knows. +If she whom we to this grey desert banned +Still dreams she treads with him the sunlit land +That for his sake she left without a tear, +Set wide the gates--her being is not here.' + +"So ruled the gods; but thou, that sought'st to give +Thy life for love, yet for thyself wouldst live. +They know not for their kin; but back to earth +Give, pitying, one that is of mortal birth." + +Humbled the Harper heard, and turned away, +Mounting alone to the empoverished day; +Yet, as he left the Stygian shades behind, +He heard the cordage on the harbour wind, +Saw the blue smoke above the homestead trees, +And in his hidden heart was glad of these. + + + + + + +AN AUTUMN SUNSET + +I + + + + + +LEAGUERED in fire +The wild black promontories of the coast extend +Their savage silhouettes; +The sun in universal carnage sets, +And, halting higher, +The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, +Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, +That, balked, yet stands at bay. +Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day +In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, +A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine +Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, +And in her hand swings high o'erhead, +Above the waste of war, +The silver torch-light of the evening star +Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. + + + + + +II + + + + +Lagooned in gold, +Seem not those jetty promontories rather +The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, +Uncomforted of morn, +Where old oblivions gather, +The melancholy unconsoling fold +Of all things that go utterly to death +And mix no more, no more +With life's perpetually awakening breath? +Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, +Over such sailless seas, +To walk with hope's slain importunities +In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not +All things be there forgot, +Save the sea's golden barrier and the black +Close-crouching promontories? +Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, +Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade, +A spectre self-destroyed, +So purged of all remembrance and sucked back +Into the primal void, +That should we on that shore phantasmal meet +I should not know the coming of your feet? + + + + + + +MOONRISE OVER TYRINGHAM + + + + + +NOW the high holocaust of hours is done, +And all the west empurpled with their death, +How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun, +How little while the dusk remembereth! + +Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail, +And took the morning on auspicious crest, +Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"-- +Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest; + +And some that stole so soft on destiny +Methought they had surprised her to a smile; +But these fled frozen when she turned to see, +And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile. + +But now the day is emptied of them all, +And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught; +And so my life lies, as the gods let fall +An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed. + +Yet see--night is not . . . by translucent ways, +Up the grey void of autumn afternoon +Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze, +And all the air is merciful as June. + +The lake is a forgotten streak of day +That trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars, +And still, my heart, still some divine delay +Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars. + +O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet +Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind, +Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat +Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind? + +Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race, +Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here? +Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face, +Lest I should look on it and call it dear. + +For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die; +Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head, +Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky +And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead. + +Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight, +Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave, +So shalt thou sink through mitigated night +And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave. + +But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare +Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light, +Dilating on a tide of crystal air +That floods the dark hills to their utmost height. + +Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans +Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass? +What victory is imaged there? What means +Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass. + +Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see, +O with what flooding ecstasy of light, +Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me, +Thou'rt not day's latest, but the first of night! + +And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick, +From hand to hand they toss the flying fire, +Till all the zenith with their dance is quick +About the wheeling music of the Lyre. + +Dread hour that lead'st the immemorial round, +With lifted torch revealing one by one +The thronging splendours that the day held bound, +And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun-- + +Be thou the image of a thought that fares +Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead, +Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares, +To where our lives are but the ages' tread, + +And let this year be, not the last of youth, +But first--like thee!--of some new train of hours, +If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth, +And kin to the unpetitionable powers. + + + + + + +ALL SOULS + +I + + + + + +A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead, +And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead. +Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways, +Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays, +But forth of the gate and down the road, +Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode. +For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, +When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. + + + + + +II + + + + +Fear not that sound like wind in the trees: +It is only their call that comes on the breeze; +Fear not the shudder that seems to pass: +It is only the tread of their feet on the grass; +Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop: +It is only the touch of their hands that grope-- +For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night, +When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite. + + + + + +III + + + + +And where should a man bring his sweet to woo +But here, where such hundreds were lovers too? +Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss, +The empty hands that their fellows miss, +Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green, +Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between? +For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, +When the dead can hear and the dead have sight. + + + + + +IV + + + + +And now they rise and walk in the cold, +Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old. +Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus +In the prime of the year it went with us!" +Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist, +Forget they are mist that mingles with mist! +For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, +When the dead can burn and the dead can smite. + + + + + +V + + + + +Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!-- +"Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed-- +Just a thrill of the old remembered pains +To kindle a flame in our frozen veins, +A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart, +As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart-- +For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night, +When the dead can hear and the dead have sight." + + + + + +VI + + + + +And where should the living feel alive +But here in this wan white humming hive, +As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold, +And one by one they creep back to the fold? +And where should a man hold his mate and say: +"One more, one more, ere we go their way"? +For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night, +When the living can learn by the churchyard light. + + + + + +VII + + + + +And how should we break faith who have seen +Those dead lips plight with the mist between, +And how forget, who have seen how soon +They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon? +How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too, +Who must do so soon as those others do? +For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day, +And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . + + + + + + +ALL SAINTS + + + + + +_ALL so grave and shining see they come_ +_From the blissful ranks of the forgiven,_ +_Though so distant wheels the nearest crystal dome,_ +_And the spheres are seven._ + +Are you in such haste to come to earth, +Shining ones, the Wonder on your brow, +To the low poor places of your birth, +And the day that must be darkness now? + +Does the heart still crave the spot it yearned on +In the grey and mortal years, +The pure flame the smoky hearth it burned on, +The clear eye its tears? + +Was there, in the narrow range of living, +After all the wider scope? +In the old old rapture of forgiving, +In the long long flight of hope? + +Come you, from free sweep across the spaces, +To the irksome bounds of mortal law, +From the all-embracing Vision, to some face's +Look that never saw? + +Never we, imprisoned here, had sought you, +Lured you with the ancient bait of pain, +Down the silver current of the light-years brought you +To the beaten round again-- + +Is it you, perchance, who ache to strain us +Dumbly to the dim transfigured breast, +Or with tragic gesture would detain us +From the age-long search for rest? + +Is the labour then more glorious than the laurel, +The learning than the conquered thought? +Is the meed of men the righteous quarrel, +Not the justice wrought? + +Long ago we guessed it, faithful ghosts, +Proudly chose the present for our scene, +And sent out indomitable hosts +Day by day to widen our demesne. + +Sit you by our hearth-stone, lone immortals, +Share again the bitter wine of life! +Well we know, beyond the peaceful portals +There is nothing better than our strife, + +Nought more thrilling than the cry that calls us, +Spent and stumbling, to the conflict vain, +After each disaster that befalls us +Nerves us for a sterner strain. + +And, when flood or foeman shakes the sleeper +In his moment's lapse from pain, +Bids us fold our tents, and flee our kin, and deeper +Drive into the wilderness again. + + + + + + +THE OLD POLE STAR + + + + + +BEFORE the clepsydra had bound the days +Man tethered Change to his fixed star, and said: +"The elder races, that long since are dead, +Marched by that light; it swerves not from its base +Though all the worlds about it wax and fade." + +When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres, +Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its ray +She reared and said: "Long as this star holds sway +In uninvaded ether, shall the years +Revere my monuments--" and went her way. + +The Pyramids abide; but through the shaft +That held the polar pivot, eye to eye, +Look now--blank nothingness! As though Change laughed +At man's presumption and his puny craft, +The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky. + +Yet could the immemorial piles be swung +A skyey hair's-breadth from their rooted base, +Back to the central anchorage of space, +Ah, then again, as when the race was young, +Should they behold the beacon of the race! + +Of old, men said: "The Truth is there: we rear +Our faith full-centred on it. It was known +Thus of the elders who foreran us here, +Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere, +And found it, 'mid mutation, fixed alone." + +Change laughs again, again the sky is cold, +And down that fissure now no star-beam glides. +Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old +Still at the central point of space behold +Another pole-star: for the Truth abides. + + + + + + +A GRAVE + + + + + +THOUGH life should come +With all its marshalled honours, trump and drum, +To proffer you the captaincy of some +Resounding exploit, that shall fill +Man's pulses with commemorative thrill, +And be a banner to far battle days +For truths unrisen upon untrod ways, +What would your answer be, +O heart once brave? +_Seek otherwhere; for me,_ +_I watch beside a grave._ + +Though to some shining festival of thought +The sages call you from steep citadel +Of bastioned argument, whose rampart gained +Yields the pure vision passionately sought, +In dreams known well, +But never yet in wakefulness attained, +How should you answer to their summons, save: +_I watch beside a grave?_ + +Though Beauty, from her fane within the soul +Of fire-tongued seers descending, +Or from the dream-lit temples of the past +With feet immortal wending, +Illuminate grief's antre swart and vast +With half-veiled face that promises the whole +To him who holds her fast, +What answer could you give? +_Sight of one face I crave,_ +_One only while I live;_ +_Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave._ + +Though love of the one heart that loves you best, +A storm-tossed messenger, +Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast, +Where clung its last year's nest, +The nest you built together and made fast +Lest envious winds should stir, +And winged each delicate thought to minister +With sweetness far-amassed +To the young dreams within-- +What answer could it win? +_The nest was whelmed in sorrow's rising wave,_ +_Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;_ +_I watch beside a grave._ + + + + + + +NON DOLET! + + + + + +AGE after age the fruit of knowledge falls +To ashes on men's lips; +Love fails, faith sickens, like a dying tree +Life sheds its dreams that no new spring recalls; +The longed-for ships +Come empty home or founder on the deep, +And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep. + +So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day, +And yet not wholly dark, +Since evermore some soul that missed the mark +Calls back to those agrope +In the mad maze of hope, +"Courage, my brothers--I have found the way!" + +The day is lost? What then? +What though the straggling rear-guard of the fight +Be whelmed in fear and night, +And the flying scouts proclaim +That death has gripped the van-- +Ever the heart of man +Cheers on the hearts of men! + +_"It hurts not!"_ dying cried the Roman wife; +And one by one +The leaders in the strife +Fall on the blade of failure and exclaim: +"The day is won!" + + + + + + +A HUNTING-SONG + + + + + +_HUNTERS, where does Hope nest?_ +Not in the half-oped breast, +Nor the young rose, +Nor April sunrise--those +With a quick wing she brushes, +The wide world through, +Greets with the throat of thrushes, +Fades from as fast as dew. + +But, would you spy her sleeping, +Cradled warm, +Look in the breast of weeping, +The tree stript by storm; +But, would you bind her fast, +Yours at last, +Bed-mate and lover, +Gain the last headland bare +That the cold tides cover, +There may you capture her, there, +Where the sea gives to the ground +Only the drift of the drowned. +Yet, if she slips you, once found, +Push to her uttermost lair +In the low house of despair. +There will she watch by your head, +Sing to you till you be dead, +Then, with your child in her breast, +In another heart build a new nest. + + + + + + +SURVIVAL + + + + + +WHEN you and I, like all things kind or cruel, +The garnered days and light evasive hours, +Are gone again to be a part of flowers +And tears and tides, in life's divine renewal, + +If some grey eve to certain eyes should wear +A deeper radiance than mere light can give, +Some silent page abruptly flush and live, +May it not be that you and I are there? + + + + + + +USES + + + + + +AH, from the niggard tree of Time +How quickly fall the hours! +It needs no touch of wind or rime +To loose such facile flowers. + +Drift of the dead year's harvesting, +They clog to-morrow's way, +Yet serve to shelter growths of spring +Beneath their warm decay, + +Or, blent by pious hands with rare +Sweet savours of content, +Surprise the soul's December air +With June's forgotten scent. + + + + + + +A MEETING + + + + + +ON a sheer peak of joy we meet; +Below us hums the abyss; +Death either way allures our feet +If we take one step amiss. + +One moment let us drink the blue +Transcendent air together-- +Then down where the same old work's to do +In the same dull daily weather. + +We may not wait . . . yet look below! +How part? On this keen ridge +But one may pass. They call you--go! +My life shall be your bridge. + + + + + + +Note.--Vesalius, the great anatomist, studied at Louvain and Paris, +and was called by Venice to the chair of surgery in the University +of Padua. He was one of the first physiologists to dissect the human +body, and his great work "The Structure of the Human Body" was an +open attack on the physiology of Galen. The book excited such +violent opposition, not only in the Church but in the University, +that in a fit of discouragement he burned his remaining manuscripts +and accepted the post of physician at the Court of Charles V., and +afterward of his son, Philip II, of Spain. This closed his life of +free enquiry, for the Inquisition forbade all scientific research, +and the dissection of corpses was prohibited in Spain. Vesalius led +for many years the life of the rich and successful court physician, +but regrets for his past were never wholly extinguished, and in 1561 +they were roused afresh by the reading of an anatomical treatise by +Gabriel Fallopius, his successor in the chair at Padua. From that +moment life in Spain became intolerable to Vesalius, and in 1563 he +set out for the East. Tradition reports that this journey was a +penance to which the Church condemned him for having opened the body +of a woman before she was actually dead; but more probably Vesalius, +sick of his long servitude, made the pilgrimage a pretext to escape +from Spain. + +Fallopius had meanwhile died, and the Venetian Senate is said to +have offered Vesalius his old chair; but on the way home from +Jerusalem he was seized with illness, and died at Zante in 1564. + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses +by Edith Wharton diff --git a/old/rtmst10.zip b/old/rtmst10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..96dd406 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rtmst10.zip |