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 PS 3537.T55 1905 
 
 The poems of Trumbull Sticknev. 
 
 3 1924 021 704 485 
 
 
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THE 
 
 POEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 TRUMBULL STICKNEY 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 

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 I THE POEMS B 
 
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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
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 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY L, M. STICKNEY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published November zgos 
 
 Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 STICKNEY said to us, just before he died, " Here are 
 my manuscripts, you will do as you please vnth them." 
 We were, he explained, with no further word of advice 
 or guidance, to use only our own judgment : free to pub- 
 lish or suppress, in whole or in part, exactly as seemed 
 best to us. Therefore it happens that, in all particu- 
 lars of selection and editing, we are responsible for this 
 present volums, which, in our inteniion, offers to the 
 public, in definitive form, all of STICKNEY'S work 
 that is for any reason valuable. 
 
 George Cabot Lodge 
 William Vaughn Moody 
 John Ellebton Lodge 
 
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A TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 siii 
 
 I. DRAMATIC VERSES 
 
 
 KALTPSO 
 
 3 
 
 ONCE 
 
 8 
 
 IN THE PAST 
 
 9 
 
 ONEIEOPOLOS 
 
 11 
 
 LUCKKTIUS 
 
 17 
 
 AGE IN TODTH 
 
 19 
 
 IN SUMMEK 
 
 22 
 
 IN AMPEZZO 
 
 25 
 
 MNEMOSYNE 
 
 29 
 
 LODOVICO MAETETJJ 
 
 31 
 
 DOLOROSA 
 
 38 
 
 PITT 
 
 39 
 
 SONG 
 
 40 
 
 KALSTON 
 
 41 
 
 DRUTWOOD 
 
 44 
 
 REQtnESCAM 
 
 46 
 
 ERIDE 
 
 49 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 
 *TOTJ SAT, COLUMBUS WITH HIS ARGOSIES ' 
 
 79 
 
 'THET SAT THAT CLEOPATRA WHO OF 
 
 
 tore' 
 
 80 
 
 'THEY LIVE ENAMOURED OF THE LOVELT 
 
 
 MOON' 
 
 81 
 
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84 
 
 85 
 
 87 
 
 88 
 
 [ viii] 
 
 ON RODIN's "l'ILLUSION, SCETJB d'iCAEE" 82 
 'MY FRIEND, WHO IN THIS MARCH TTN- 
 
 KIND, uncouth' 83 
 
 'TOUR IMAGE WALKS NOT IN MY COM- 
 MON way' 
 
 'were you called HOME AND I WERE 
 
 LEFT TO GRIEF' 
 IN A CHURCHYARD 
 'when I HEREAFTER SHALL RECOVER 
 
 THEE ' 
 'THO' INLAND FAB WITH MOUNTAINS 
 
 PRISONED round' 
 ON SOME SHELLS FOUND INLAND 89 
 
 ' THO' LACK OF LAURELS AND OF WREATHS 
 
 NOT one' 90 
 
 ' LIVE BLINDLY AND UPON THE HOUR. THE 
 
 LORD ' 91 
 
 . * BE STILL. THE HANGING GARDENS WERE 
 
 A DREAM' 92 
 
 ON THE CONCERT 93 
 
 ' THE MELANCHOLY TEAR IS DEAD WITH 
 
 RAIN ' 94 
 
 ' AS A SAD MAN, WHEN EVENINGS GRAYER 
 
 GROW ' 95 
 
 * HE SAID : " IF IN HIS IMAGE I WAS MADE " ' 96 
 
 LAKEWARD 97 
 
 PROMETHEUS PYRPHOROS 103 
 
 II. FRAGMENTS OF A DRAMA ON THE 
 
 LIFE OF THE EMPEROR JULIAN .133 
 
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[ix] 
 
 III. LATER LYRICS 
 
 • listen! as though from otheb times and 
 
 DATS ' 165 
 
 • I SAW HOW THAT A PAINTER, GIVEN o'eR ' 166 
 ' WITH LONG BLACK WINGS AN ANGEL STAND- 
 ING by' 167 
 
 ' TOU ABE TO ME THE FULL VERMILION ROSE ' 168 
 
 'the TREES AND SHRUBBERY GLIMMER ' 169 
 
 'a glad little riet, so shy' 170 
 
 ' i love thee longer and i love thee most ' 171 
 
 'dear and rich as a dawn op summer' 173 
 ' and, the last day being come, man stood 
 
 ALONE ' 176 
 DEDICATION 176 
 A FLOWER 177 
 A STONE 178 
 PARDON 179 
 SERVICE 180 
 CHESTNUTS IN NOVEMBER 181 
 FIDELITY ' 183 
 ' WITH THY TWO EYES LOOK ON ME ONCE AGAIN ' 184 
 ' WHEN BYE AND BYE RELENTING YOU RE- 
 GRET ' 185 
 LONELINESS 186 
 ' AS PILGRIMS, WHEN THE WATS OF WINTER 
 
 OPE ' 187 
 
 'QUIET AFTER THE RAIN OF MORNING' 188 
 
 'IF THO' ALONE I SCARCE DO SIGH' 189 
 
 'grudge NOT THAT I SO LONG FOR THEE' 190 
 
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[x] 
 
 192 
 193 
 
 201 
 202 
 203 
 204 
 205 
 208 
 
 "SPIRITS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 
 
 SEPARATION 
 
 AT SAINTE-MAEGUEEITE 1^* 
 
 'I DREAMED. ATE, IT WAS VERT DARK* 197 
 
 'leave him NOW QtriET BT THE WAT' 198 
 
 AN ATHENIAN GARDEN 1^^ 
 
 SONNETS FROM GREECE 
 
 SUNIUM 
 
 MT. LTKAION 
 
 NEAR HELIKON 
 
 ELEUSIS 
 
 MT. IDA 
 
 SIX o'clock 
 
 IN A CITT GARDEN 209 
 
 IV. A DRAMATIC SCENE 213 
 
 V. JUVENILIA 
 
 ART IN MAN 239 
 
 Mtrsic 240 
 
 NIGHT 241 
 
 EVENING 242 
 
 AGE AND TOUTH 245 
 •this is the nursling op AN HUNDRED 
 
 tears' 247 
 'THO', MOORED ALONG THE QUIET QUAT 
 
 ON SOME' 248 
 
 THE DEATH OF AISCHTL03 249 
 
 'MT NOTE IS HIGHEST OF THEM ALL* 256 
 'when TOU'vE averaged emotion, FOUND 
 
 WHERE NATURE GOES TO SCHOOL' 256 
 
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[xi] 
 
 ODE 258 
 
 ' 't was tet an houb to dawn, revenge- 
 ful STOHM' 262 
 COLOGNE CATHEDRAL 263 
 'WHEN BY YOU LIES MY BROKEN HEART, 
 
 AND l' 264 
 
 'now THE LOVELY MOON IS WILTED' 265 
 
 'l KNOW WHERE ALL THE SINGERS HIDE' 267 
 
 ' HOLD STILL, MY BRAIN ! MY TEMPLES BURST ! 
 
 SHALL e'er' 268 
 
 '-NIMIUM PASSUS 270 
 
 • SPRING IS COME. FROM THE WIND LIGHTLY 
 DISSIPATE FEATHERS OF MIST THAT AN 
 UTLAND exhales' 271 
 
 IN AMPEZZO 272 
 
 'IF IN THE NIGHT AND MADNESS OF THY 
 
 MIND ' 275 
 
 'HENCEFORWARD I NO LONGER SHALL BE 
 
 KNOWN ' 276 
 
 A LETTER 277 
 
 'MY LIFE SHALL COUNT BY THE SMILE AND 
 
 TEAR ' 279 
 
 'you'll say WHEN HERE AGAIN AFTER IT 
 
 all' 280 
 
 * THIS IS THE VIOLIN. IF YOU REMEMBER ' 281 
 
 VI. FRAGMENTS 
 
 'the autumn's done; they have the 
 
 GOLDEN CORN IN' 287 
 
 'she sat under the naked bough' 289 
 
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FRAGMENT OF AN ODE FOB GBEEK LIBERTY 291 
 
 'MY LUDOVICO, IT IS SAd!' 294 
 
 ■ THE WEAKENED EYES BEGAIN THEIB SIGHT ' 295 
 'and I STOOD EINGED ABOUT WITH MABBLE 
 
 DBEAMS ' 295 
 "tiS SAID THAT HEAETS ABE WON, AT 
 
 length!' 296 
 
 'we LEABN BY SUFFEBING AND WE TEACH 
 
 BY pity' 296 
 
 "I heab a bivbr thro' the valley wan- 
 der' 296 
 ' nay, take it all in all, the human sort ' 297 
 
 ' THE PASSIONS THAT WE FOUGHT WITH AND 
 
 SUBDUED ' 297 
 ' AS ONE WHO LOVING BEYOND WORDS WILL 
 
 bring' -297 
 ' TEASED BY THE BURDEN OF THIS LITTLE SKY ' 298 
 ' IF WITH MY LIFE I LIFTED FROM THY HEAD ' 298 
 'the IMMORTAL MIXES WITH MORTALITY' 298 
 FRAGMENT OF A DRAMA CALLED " THE CAR- 
 DINAL play" SOO 
 " DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS " 
 
 'I USED TO think' 309 
 
 BLINDNESS AND DEAFNESS 310 
 
 THE SOUL OF TIME 310 
 'be PATIENT, VEEY PATIENT; FOB THE 
 
 SKIES ' 311 
 
 'sir, say no more' 312 
 
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
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Joseph Trumbull Sticknet was bom on the twen- 
 tieth day of June, 1874, at Geneva, Switzerland. His 
 parents were both of long-established New England 
 family. He was the third of four children, two older 
 sisters and a younger brother. For the first five years 
 of Sticknet's life the family passed their winters in 
 Florence, their autumns on the ItaUan lakes, and their 
 summers in Switzerland; and even though in 1879 they 
 returned to New York, bought a house there, and 
 there, for a matter of fifteen years or more, were 
 pretty regularly established, nevertheless during this 
 time many of their summers and winters were spent 
 in Europe. In the autumn of 1891, at the age of 
 seventeen, Sttcknet entered Harvard University. 
 He was graduated with high classical honours in the 
 early summer of 1895 and immediately departed to 
 join his family in Europe, where, as it turned out, he 
 was to remain continuously until the autumn of 1903. 
 Throughout these eight years STiCBavEY passed his 
 winters, without exception, and most of his summers, 
 save for occasional vacations to the sea, to the country, 
 to Italy, steadily in Paris, there pursuing the imme- 
 diate oflB.cial object of his Ufe, the Doctorat es Lettres, 
 — the highest degree in the gift of the great French 
 University. In the autumn of 1902, his volume of 
 
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[xvi] 
 
 poems, " Dramatic Verses," was published ; and, in 
 the winter of 1903, the University of Paris gave him 
 its great degree — never before conferred on an Ameri- 
 can — in exchange for his two theses, printed the 
 same year, "Les Sentences dans la Poesie Grecque 
 d'Homere a Euripide," and "De Hermolai Barbari 
 vita atque ingenio dissertationem." In April, 1903, 
 he left Paris to spend three months in Greece. On 
 his return from Greece, he broke up his estabUshment 
 in Paris, and, in the autumn of 1903, came to America, 
 where a place as instructor of Greek at Harvard already 
 awaited himi 
 
 He performed the duties of this position uninter- 
 ruptedly until his death, caused by tumour on the 
 brain. He died in Boston on October 11, 1904, hardly 
 more than thirty years of age. 
 
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POEMS 
 
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NOTE 
 
 In order to proTide a clear and compreliensive view of 
 Sticknet's poetic work, taken in its connection with his 
 Ufe, this volume has been divided into several sections. 
 Sticknet's poems, indeed, seem to fall so naturally together 
 into certain well-defined groups, that the present arrange- 
 ment appears almost to have imposed itself upon the 
 editors. 
 
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I 
 
 DRAMATIC VERSES 
 
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[This first section comprises, in its entirety, the volume 
 of poems entitled " Dramatic Verses " (Charles E. Good- 
 speed, Boston, October, 1902), which was published under 
 Sticknet's supervision during his lifetime. It is here re- 
 printed in exactly the order of its first publication, as it has 
 been thought best to preserve, in this section, the grouping 
 and arrangement which were Sticknet's own. 
 
 It is not possible accurately to date all the poems in this 
 section. None, however, were written earlier than 1894, in 
 which year Sticknet was nineteen and twenty years of age. 
 Throughout the section a date has been ascribed, when 
 possible, to each poem.] 
 
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My dear Bay ; 
 
 This is for Bessie and you, if you will find roam for ■ 
 among better things. 
 
 Paris, 1902. 
 
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[3] 
 
 KALYPSO 
 
 Then sang Kalypso yet another song. 
 
 And it was waxen late. Beyond her isle. 
 
 Beyond the sea and world hung drearily 
 
 A full moon. Quiet was, except the wind 
 
 Lifting the water's murmur as a girl 
 
 May lift the fold of some sad Eastern silk. 
 
 One cloud, a presage, loitered. All the air 
 
 Was marvellous and sorrowful, as of 
 
 Jasmine sea-touched and roses pale with spray. 
 
 Of fading oleander, clematis 
 
 Grown weary on the garden wall. Anon 
 
 The cold salt wind did rise and scatter all 
 
 Odours: a little chill, then quietude. 
 
 So here did mix the land's breath and the sea's. 
 
 And still she paused. Her solemn lips, possessed 
 By that shy thought that comes before a song. 
 Were silent. And he raised his languid arm. 
 Clasping it all she turned on him then 
 The earnest heaven of her desirous eyes; 
 Drew him about her feet, against her knees. 
 Closer; and rested in his hair one hand. 
 The other alone, moving so musical 
 That her low notes were not more song than it. 
 Described the region of the sinking moon. 
 While soft and even a most unhappy strain. 
 
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[4] 
 
 The modulation of an endless grief. 
 Flowed from her lips. And tiredly she sang: 
 
 "She says: 'Follow my steps and take my hand 
 To where the shoreward sea falls colourless 
 And light is growing less, grows ever less 
 Yet quencheth never; where the seas expand 
 And shrink, where nothing altereth. I stand 
 Upon that melancholy marge of sand. 
 
 '"The Earth was inade; yet then was I alone. 
 Walking this skyey meadow's nodding gold. 
 I've seen her freshest garden turned old 
 And men grow mortal in her beds of stone. 
 But I am still alone, and near the sun 
 Sometimes I think my heart is waxen cold 
 For having been so very long alone.' " 
 
 Her voice was richer with the widening song. 
 Light came and went, colour reposed and fled 
 About her face. There in the swarty night 
 She shone like opal, flickering weird flame 
 And crossed with splendour. On his neck her hand 
 Quivered; he felt her blood throb; languidly 
 Thro' closing eyelids of the soul he saw 
 The world dissolve in rosiness. She sang: 
 
 "'Come! so long have I looked on thee, so long 
 That my gold Kds are heavy with desire; 
 
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[5] 
 
 My arms for waiting here in heaven tire; 
 My thcoat is tuneless with unceased song. 
 Where nothing is and day and night prolong 
 Each other in the sober twilight fire. 
 Give me thy soul for having looked so long. 
 
 " ' I go below. Follow thou in my trace 
 And taste my sohtude. There all the air 
 Becomes a lover feeUng love so rare. 
 The chilly wave walks nearer yet to share 
 The rhythm and ecstasy of our embrace. 
 And evening jealous of our flushed face 
 Goes out in sad retire and pale despair. 
 
 " ' And while upon that sohtary sand 
 The ripples bum away their fringe of light 
 And after me drawn down the heavenly night 
 Unnumbered stars fall throbbing to the land. 
 Let all the glamour of my courses waned 
 Possess thy soul in Kngering delight, — 
 Let me in darkness feel thy faihng hand.' " 
 
 Over his head she stooped. Her odorous hair 
 
 Fell thickly o'er his face. She kissed him 
 
 With aU the sleepy honeys of her soul. 
 
 Her arms did sKp along his neck, his breast; 
 
 She kissed him lazily upon the lids 
 
 And languorously on the brow, she kissed him 
 
 Trembling and fiery on the opened mouth. 
 
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[6] 
 
 And slowly — 
 
 Wind rose. Rustles crept to 's ear. 
 Thro' meshes of her hair he saw gray-blown 
 The thick tumultuous cloud blotted and streaked 
 With witchery of dead moon. The midnight whirred. 
 Sparsely the windy stars and feebly hung. 
 A Kttle withered leaf blew by; it scratched 
 Him with its frittered edge. For it was autumn. 
 Autumn it was. "Then did he know. No more 
 That year would he return, that year no more; 
 Rather, locked by the vastly circular 
 Walls o' the sea, the quashing roof of heaven. 
 Still suffocated in the changeless air. 
 Still vexed by incessant memory and recall. 
 Would stand in pain desirous of that dear 
 Fireside and her more dear and beautiful — 
 O curse to exile! Horrid ire shook him. 
 He started from her embrace, muttered, struggled, — 
 Then sudden came into dominion 
 Of his great self. He stood and said to her, 
 " Thou art more masterful than death. The life 
 That spurred me thro' the waters of the world 
 Was spent indeed, — and claimed again, O love. 
 Upon thy soul's warm shore." And amorously, she 
 
 thought. 
 He neared her, lifted her. They drew toward 
 Her dwelling. To herself she seemed queen 
 Over his love, and on the forward heaven 
 Of her retreating hope she lit the stars 
 
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[7] 
 
 Of happy hours, of happy days, — the crown 
 Of long desire; and drank of his embrace 
 A dear obUvion of sad doubt: the while 
 He plotted to beguile this woman here. 
 Gaoler of Fate, to drug her love asleep. 
 That ere his death tho' waxen old he 'd see 
 Were 't but the smoke of tree-clad Ithaca. 
 [1896] 
 
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[8] 
 ONCE 
 
 That day her eyes were deep as night. 
 
 She had the motion of the rose. 
 
 The bird that veers across the light. 
 
 The waterfall that leaps and throws 
 
 Its irised spindrift to the sun. 
 
 She seemed a wind of music passing on. 
 
 Alone I saw her that one day 
 
 Stand in the window of my hfe. 
 
 Her sudden hand melted away 
 
 Under my Kps, and without strife 
 
 I held her in my arms awhile 
 
 And drew into my hps her Hving smile, — 
 
 Now many a day ago and year! 
 
 Since when I dream and he awake 
 
 In summer nights to feel her near, 
 
 And from the heavy darkness break 
 
 Ghtters, till all my spirit swims 
 
 And her hand hovers on my shaking limbs. 
 
 If once again before I die 
 
 I drank the laughter of her mouth 
 
 And quenched my fever utterly, 
 
 I say, and should it cost my youth, 
 
 'T were well ! for I no more should wait 
 
 Hammering midnight on the doors of fate. 
 
 [1902] 
 
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[9] 
 
 IN THE PAST 
 
 There liea a somnolent lake 
 Under a noiseless sky, 
 Where never the mornings break 
 Nor the evenings die. 
 
 Mad flakes of colour 
 
 Whirl on its even face 
 
 Iridescent and streaked with pallour; 
 
 And, warding the silent place, 
 
 The rocks rise sheer and gray 
 From the sedgeless brink to the sky 
 Dull-lit with the light of pale half-day 
 Thro' a void space and dry. 
 
 And the hours lag dead in the air 
 With a sense of coming eternity 
 To the heart of the lonely boatman there: 
 That boatman am I, 
 
 I, in my lonely boat, 
 A waif on the somnolent lake. 
 Watching the colours creep and float 
 With the sinuous track of a snake. 
 
 Now I lean o'er the side 
 And lazy shades in the water see. 
 Lapped in the sweep of a sluggish tide 
 Crawled in from the living sea; 
 
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[101 
 
 And next I fix mine eyes. 
 
 So long that the heart decUnes, 
 
 On the changeless face of the open skies 
 
 Where no star shines; 
 
 And now to the rocks I turn. 
 To the rocks, around 
 That lie Uke walls of a circling um 
 Wherein lie bound 
 
 The waters that feel my powerless strength 
 And meet my homeless oar 
 Labouring over their ashen length 
 Never to find a shore. 
 
 But the gleam still skims 
 At times on the somnolent lake. 
 And a light there is that swims 
 With the whirl of a snake; 
 
 And tho' dead be the hours i' the air, 
 And dayless the sky. 
 The heart is aUve of the boatman there: 
 That boatman am I. 
 
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[11] 
 
 ONEIROPOLOS 
 
 Come, Sakhi. Here within this edge of shade 
 We'll stand against the house-wall shadow-cooled. 
 There's no one left at noon in the Agora 
 To quib their fortune of my dozen birds. 
 The town — the world, these poor Athenians think ■ 
 Goes home and half asleep. Their prattling stops. 
 And burned by sunlight thro' the stifling hours. 
 Temple and house, statue and wall and road 
 Glow as hot copper. 
 
 But here shadow dwells; 
 And here by the sun-stricken afternoon 
 I stand leaning my head, and close my eyes. 
 A red light swims my brain awhile, then goes; 
 And unto memory I surrender me 
 Of aU my master Brihadashua said, 
 My blessed master pure and charitable 
 Who dwelt in Kashi by the holy stream. 
 Happy indeed was I, happy to count 
 A wizard in my kindred such as he. 
 Whose lips were wholly dedicate to truth. 
 Whose hand dispensed serene and wonderful 
 Peace to the spirit as a tree his shade. 
 To him, as one who rushes head aflame. 
 Kindled and dry with fever, toward shore, 
 I went; and most divinely pitiful 
 He taught me wisdom. To his voice I turned 
 As turns a lotus to the rosy dawn. 
 
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[12] 
 
 Filling with light, gathering treasure thence 
 
 To keep within its heart all the day long. 
 
 Sometime he spake, and all were blest; sometime 
 
 Silent we sat within the pale and help 
 
 Of all his thought. Continually did fall 
 
 The pleasant dew of patience from his eye. 
 
 Which looking ever beyond world and star 
 
 Was large as upper heaven. They were the days 
 
 When I had laid the world to rest within me 
 
 And, tho' with childish hps, did after him 
 
 Say as in dream the holy syllables. 
 
 He died, — rather, I heard him never more. 
 
 His final earthly errand, whilst his mind. 
 
 Quitting our vain and pitiable scene, 
 
 Dissolved, he gave me in trust. I quit the shore 
 
 Of holy Ganga's heaUng water-wave. 
 
 Long travelled, breathed of many airs, reviewed 
 
 Forests of sandal, where the Spring wind blew. 
 
 And tender-petalled Kly-beds, whereo'er 
 
 The gray crane spanned his gracious, level flight. 
 
 Westward I followed, following every day 
 
 In quest of that he bade me. At the last 
 
 I beheld Sindhus, and my errand 's done. 
 
 Hear, Sakhi, yet awhile my destiny. 
 The burning season shone. I stayed — too late. 
 The people's rumour told of a great host, 
 Yavanas named, from the utter unknown lands, 
 Generalled by a god and more innumerable 
 
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[13] 
 
 Than drops in rainy season; giants all. 
 That tramped about the edges of the world 
 And rose Uke a Uve night of crying birds 
 Across and thro' high heaven, then fell to earth — 
 What needs the many words ? The Greeks were on. 
 One midday hour the world did leap apart, 
 And thence a thirsty multitude in riot. 
 With women, gold, flocks, armour, camels, coins; 
 Maddened with hunger for another world; 
 Each vagabond upon his empty heart 
 An empire's jewel scattering the hght. 
 They sacked the land, then weary sat them down. 
 And with a milKon mouths and voices cried 
 They'd walk the wide and feeble earth no more. 
 So spake the children and the world obeyed. 
 Oceanward, between patient Sindhus' shores. 
 The locusts moved, leaving a piteous land. 
 With goods and gold and men, whereof was I. 
 Over a milky ocean torn with flame 
 And faced with greenish current, 'long a shore 
 Crusted with yellow sand, beneath a sky 
 Of endless sun, they lived and sailed and died. 
 Then for a little year the millions tramped 
 Thro' deserts flat as sea and gray as cloud. 
 Till they saw finally a shore. And ships 
 Bore them 'twixt isle and isle, after the sun. 
 Into the port yonder, Peiraios called, 
 To rest. 'Twas home, they said; and all men 
 wept. 
 
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[14] 
 
 I found their painted fanes and naked gods 
 
 And all these children babbling in the sun. 
 
 First did I hunger, knowing no trick or trade. 
 
 Knowing nothing that sold brings money in. 
 
 I talked not, nor could understand at all 
 
 This Grecian race of laughter, pleasure, song. 
 
 Pity, nor giving alms, nor anything 
 
 That makes the spirit pure, is here. They live. 
 
 And suffer the forgetfulness of life. 
 
 This is my tale: One night I walked abroad 
 
 Ere dawn a dreary hour, the market-place 
 
 More dark than any jungle. Cold it was. 
 
 I walked, when five cold fingers touched my arm, — 
 
 Beside, a Phrygian slave. Often I'd seen 
 
 Him and his fortune-table's dozen birds, — 
 
 " Oneiropolos " called, "seller of dreams." 
 
 He looked me in the eyes and took my arm 
 
 And led me here; awhile rehearsed his tricks: 
 
 Teased with his forefinger a bird's soft throat, — 
 
 Which leapt on't, pecked and picked one single card. 
 
 So did the Phrygian seven times, and went. 
 
 Over Akropolis was golden dawn. 
 
 Their naked gods all bloomed with light. The dark 
 
 In violet veils dissolved down the steep heaven. 
 
 And I stood here, selling to Athens dreams. 
 
 A dying town filled of a feeble race. 
 Small gossips of their all-expressing tongue. 
 Dancers and frolickers, philosophers 
 
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[15] 
 
 Drunken and sense-tied to the trembling world. 
 
 Hither from fifty climes men come and come. 
 
 Women and children come to see — 't is strange! - 
 
 This city of the old and marble things. 
 
 'T was miracle, say they, what sights were seen 
 
 Here, Sakhi, one great hundred years agone — 
 
 For they count Time upon their nervous hand. 
 
 Galleys and chariots, beauty, victory, gold, 
 
 And gods they had, whose fair procession walked 
 
 With maidens, caitle, priests and horse; whereof 
 
 Up in the shadows of the fane, yonder. 
 
 Is marble picture by a studied hand. 
 
 So at their pretty game the children played 
 
 Building and singing on. — But all is gone. 
 
 'T is vision, tale of poets, memory, nothing; 
 
 Now there is void shadow, blown by wind. 
 
 And the unstoried year is rolled away. 
 
 Here in the dying town I sell them dreams. 
 Here where the Phrygian stood. At evening 
 I knock at yonder gate in the High Wall, 
 And enter. Courteously a gentle man 
 Leads me within, to shade. Upon his lips 
 Their chattering Greek is low and lovelier. 
 I sit me down. My supper bowl of rice 
 He gives, saying, " My friend, rejoice in peace." 
 Down thro' his oUve orchard, shadowy 
 And still and secret as the things of Ind, 
 The Uly-Uke soft evening gathers dark. 
 
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[16] 
 
 Blest is his pious deed; for many hear 
 The spoken solace of his quietude. 
 To him what Uttle coin I gather here, 
 Not in exchange or manner of the West, 
 I bring. For Epicurus aids the poor. 
 
 Peace! My words are many. Now peace to thee! 
 
 For yonder comes as ever at this time 
 
 Phryne, the rose and glory of their world. 
 
 Her veil is wove of sunrise, and her face 
 
 The white moon set between two clouds of black. 
 
 Her eye's a firefly and her voice a viol. 
 
 She walks as when a bird follows the sea. 
 
 Here daily falls her piece of gold, — she 's rich 
 
 And timid as the shining meteor. 
 
 And hovers mothHke round her destiny; 
 
 For all her wings and beauty are for sale. 
 
 [1897] 
 
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[17] 
 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Sperata Volwptas Suavis Arnieitiae 
 
 Slow Spring that, slipping thro' the silver light. 
 Like some young wanderer now retumest home 
 After strange years. 
 
 How like to me! to mine thy timorous plight! 
 Who quietly near my friendship's altar come 
 Where yet no God appears. 
 
 By many a deed I sought to win his love. 
 
 Made him a wreath of all my songs and hours, — 
 
 Most vain, most fair! 
 
 Now falls about the shroud my years have wove; 
 
 My evening drops her large, slow purple flowers 
 
 Thro' gardens of gold air. 
 
 To him this verse, to him this crown of leaves. 
 
 My supreme piety shall I commend: 
 
 This is my last. 
 
 Wreathed of what Youth endows and Age bereaves. 
 
 Bound by the fingers of a lover and friend. 
 
 Green with the vital past. 
 
 We sunder, he my Truth, I the desire. 
 I spread my wooing fingers, I would earn 
 His least address: 
 But parcels of the heaven-dispersed fire. 
 
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[18] 
 
 Sky-severed exiles, we divinely learn 
 To suffer loneliness. 
 
 My life was little in joy, little in pain; 
 
 Mine were the wise denials, with none I coped 
 
 To win the sky; 
 
 And when I surely saw my love was vain — 
 
 The joy of his sweet friendship I had hoped — 
 
 I stilled. Now let me die, — 
 
 Now that the endless wind is growing warm. 
 
 Richer the star, and flowers on many a slope 
 
 Undo their sheath; 
 
 O let us yield to life's divinest charm 
 
 That lured us thro' the blasted field of hope. 
 
 Let us return to death. 
 
 [1895] 
 
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[19] 
 
 AGE IN YOUTH 
 
 Fhom far she 's come, and very old. 
 And very soiled with wandering. 
 The dust of seasons she has brought 
 Unbidden to this field of Spring. 
 
 She's halted at the log-barred gate. 
 The May-day waits, a tangled spill 
 Of light that weaves and moves along 
 The daisied margin of the hill. 
 
 Where Nature bares her bridal heart. 
 And on her snowy soul the sun 
 Languors desirously and dull. 
 An amorous pale vermiKon. 
 
 She's halted, propped her rigid arms, 
 With dead big eyes she drinks the west; 
 The brown rags hang like clotted dust 
 About her, save her withered breast. 
 
 A very soilure of a dream 
 Runs in the furrows of her brow. 
 And with a crazy voice she croons 
 An ugly catch of long ago. 
 
 Its broken rhythm is hard and hoarse, 
 Its sunken soul of music toils 
 In precious ashes, dust of youth 
 And lovely faces sorrow soils. 
 
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[20] 
 
 But look! Along the molten sky 
 There runs strange havoc of the sun. 
 "What a strange sight this is," she says, 
 "I'll cross the field, I'll follow on." 
 
 The bars are falling from the gate. 
 The meshes of the meadow yield; 
 And trudging sunsetward she draws 
 A journey thro' the daisy field. 
 
 The daisies shudder at her hem. 
 Her dry face laughs with flowery light; 
 An aureole lifts her soiled gray hair: 
 "I'll on," she says, "to see this sight." 
 
 In the rude math her torn shoe mows 
 Juices of trod grass and crushed stalk 
 Mix with a soiled and earthy dew. 
 With smear of petals gray as chalk. 
 
 The Spring grows sour along her track; 
 The winy airs of amethyst 
 Turn acid. " Just beyond the ledge," 
 She says, "I'll see the sun at rest." 
 
 And to the tremor of her croon. 
 Her old, old catch of long ago. 
 The newest daisies of the grass 
 She shreds and passes on below. . . . 
 
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[21] 
 
 The sun is gone where nothing is 
 And the black-bladed shadows war. 
 She came and passed, she passed along 
 That wet, black curve of scimitar. 
 
 In vain the flower-lifting morn 
 
 With golden fingers to uprear 
 
 The weak Spring here shall pause awhile: 
 
 This is a scar upon the year. 
 
 [1895] 
 
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[22] 
 
 IN SUMMER 
 
 It's growing evening in my soul, 
 
 It darkens in. 
 
 At the gray window now and then 
 
 I hear them toll 
 
 The hour-and-day-long chimes of St. Etienne. 
 
 Indeed I'd not have lived elsewhere 
 
 Nor otherwise. 
 
 Nor as the dreary saying is 
 
 Been happier. 
 
 To wear the love of life within my eyes. 
 
 My heart's desolate meadow ways. 
 
 All wet and green. 
 
 Opened for her to wander in 
 
 A little space. 
 
 I'd have it even so as it has been. 
 
 I 've Uved the days that fly away, 
 
 I have a tale 
 
 To tell when age has made me pale 
 
 And hair of gray 
 
 Excuse the fancy shaking out her sail. 
 
 No one shall know what I intend. 
 
 Even as I feel 
 
 The aching voices make appeal 
 
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[23] 
 
 And swell and blend, 
 
 It seems to me I might stoop down to kneel 
 
 In memory of that day in June 
 
 When, all the land 
 
 Lying out in lazy summer fanned 
 
 Now and anon 
 
 By dying breezes from the Channel strand. 
 
 With nothing in our hves behind. 
 
 Nothing before. 
 
 In sunlight rich as melting ore 
 
 And wide as wind 
 
 We clomb Ijjhe donjon tower of old Gisors 
 
 Thro' the portcullis botched in wood 
 
 And up, in fear, 
 
 A laddered darkness of a stair. 
 
 Up to the good 
 
 Sun-stricken prospect and the dazzUng air. — 
 
 Even now I shade my breaking eyes. — 
 
 And by her side 
 
 Surely she saw my heart divide 
 
 Like paradise 
 
 For her to walk abroad in at noon-tide. 
 
 It swims about my memory. 
 I feel around 
 
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[24] 
 
 The country steeped in summer swound; 
 
 I feel the sigh 
 
 That all these years within her breast was bound. 
 
 Her fingers in my hand are laid. 
 
 I seem to gaze 
 
 Into the colours of her face. 
 
 And there is made 
 
 A quiver in my knees like meadow-grass'. 
 
 That time I lived the Kfe I have: 
 
 A certain flower 
 
 Blooms in a hundred years one hour. 
 
 And what it gave 
 
 Is richer, no, nor more, but all its power. 
 
 The chimes have ended for to-day. 
 
 After midnight 
 
 SoUtude blows her candle out; 
 
 Dreams go away. 
 
 And memory falls from the mast of thought. 
 
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[25] 
 
 IN AMPEZZO 
 
 OnliT once more and not again — the larches 
 Shake to the wind their echo, " Not again," — 
 We see, below the sky that over-arches 
 Heavy and blue, the plain 
 
 Between Tofana lying and Cristallo 
 In meadowy earths above the ringing stream: 
 Whence interchangeably desire may follow. 
 Hesitant as in dream. 
 
 At sunset, south, by Klac promontories 
 Under green skies to Italy, or forth 
 By calms of morning beyond Lavinores 
 Tyrolward and to north: 
 
 As now, this last of latter days, when over 
 The brownish field by peasants are undone 
 Some widths of grass, some plots of mountain clover 
 Under the autumn sun. 
 
 With honey-warm perfume that risen Hngers 
 In mazes of low heat, or takes the air. 
 Passing delicious as a woman's fingers 
 Passing amid the hair; 
 
 When scythes are swishing and the mower's muscle 
 Spans a repeated crescent to and fro. 
 Or in dry stalks of com the sickles rustle, 
 Tangle, detach and go. 
 
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[26] 
 
 Far thro' the wide blue day and greening meadow 
 Whose blots of amber beaded are with sheaves, 
 Whereover pallidly a cloud-shadow 
 Deadens the earth and leaves: 
 
 Whilst high around and near, their heads of iron 
 Sunken in sky whose a,zure overhghts 
 Ravine and edges, stand the gray and maron 
 Desolate Dolomites, — 
 
 And older than decay from the small summit 
 Unfolds a stream of pebbly wreckage down 
 Under the suns of midday, like some comet 
 Struck into gravel stone. 
 
 Faintly across this gold and amethystine 
 September, images of summer fade; 
 And gentle dreams now freshen on the pristine 
 Viols, awhile unplayed. 
 
 Of many a place where lovingly we wander. 
 More dearly held that quickly we forsake, — 
 A pine by sullen coasts, an oleander 
 Reddening on the lake. 
 
 And there, each year with more familiar motion, 
 From many a bird and windy forestries. 
 Or along shaking fringes of the ocean. 
 Vapours of music rise. 
 
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[27] 
 
 From many easts the morning gives her splendour; 
 The shadows fill with colours we forget; 
 Remembered tints at evening grow tender. 
 Tarnished with violet. 
 
 Let us away! soon sheets of winter metal 
 On this discoloured mountain-land will close. 
 While elsewhere Spring-time weaves a crimson petal. 
 Builds and perfumes a rose. 
 
 Away! for here the mountain sinks in gravel. 
 Let us forget the unhappy site with change. 
 And go, if only happiness be travel 
 After the new and strange: — 
 
 Unless 't were better to be very single. 
 
 To follow some diviner monotone. 
 
 And in all beauties, where ourselves commingle. 
 
 Love but a love, but one. 
 
 Across this shadowy minute of our living. 
 What time our hearts so magically sing. 
 To meditate our fever, simply giving 
 All in a little thing ? 
 
 Just as here, past yon dumb and melancholy 
 Sameness of ruin, while the mountains ail. 
 Summer and sunset-coloured autumn slowly 
 Dissipate down the vale; 
 
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[28] 
 
 And all these lines along the sky that measure 
 Sorapis and the rocks of Mezzodi 
 Crumble by foamy miles into the azure 
 Mediterranean sea: 
 
 Whereas to-day at sunrise, under brambles, 
 A league above the moss and dying pines 
 I picked this little — in my hand that trembles ■ 
 Parcel of columbines. 
 [1898] 
 
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[29] 
 
 MNEMOSYNE 
 It's autumn in the country I remember. 
 
 How warm a wind blew here about the ways! 
 And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber 
 During the long sun-sweetened summer-days. 
 
 It's cold abroad the country I remember. 
 
 The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain 
 At midday with a wing aslant and limber; 
 And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain. 
 
 It 's empty down the country I remember. 
 
 I had a sister lovely in my sight: 
 
 Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre; 
 
 We sang together in the woods at night. 
 
 It's lonely in the country I remember. 
 
 The babble of our children fills my ears. 
 And on our hearth I stare the perished ember 
 To flames that show all starry thro' my tears. 
 
 It's dark about the country I remember. 
 
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[30] 
 
 There are the mountains where I Kved. The path 
 Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber. 
 The stumps are twisted by the tempests' wrath. 
 
 But that I knew these places are my own, 
 
 I 'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber 
 
 The earth, and I to people it alone. 
 
 It rains across the country I remember. 
 
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[31] 
 
 LODOVICO MARTELLI 
 
 O Gaddi, ope the casement, open wide 
 
 And prop my pillow. But the window square 
 
 Of light, of sky! tho' skies of Sicily 
 
 Are not Firenze's. Ah, Firenze mine! 
 
 Darkly I feel how's wasting all my Ufe 
 
 And dulls my brain; Death's guessing at my name. 
 
 But utter strange it is to die. The word 
 
 "Life" to my ear rings mournful-rich and stings 
 
 The sleepy nerve of longing. This is pain — 
 
 To stifle far from home, the heart suppressed 
 
 By a handful of such years as other men 
 
 Make nought of. Mercy of God, what mother e'er 
 
 Fashioned a heart so brittle, a head and brain 
 
 Whereof the tissues crack with fever ? Why 
 
 Live ? to have tasted life ? — and die of 't! aye, 
 
 'T was Uttle more. 
 
 The silly, silly tears. 
 But Gaddi, look, my head, my arm! Indeed 
 Think you that I revive ? Meseemeth now 
 The Spring should soften Fiesole to flower 
 And ColU meadows show to every wind 
 New petals of anemony. How often 
 By the divine immemorable days. 
 By sober afterhght when marvel is 
 And all Firenze turns a smouldering gold — 
 How oft upon the hillside have we heard 
 The melancholy ritomello! Ah 
 
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[32] 
 
 What Springs were they! Tell me if ever, since. 
 The night was moonful, or a woman's eye 
 Tearfully asked a softer question ? 
 How waved the paKng heaven's embroidery. 
 What wonder woke the odoured bloom of earth, 
 What music had the tongue of Tuscany, 
 What rhymes! How large a burial is the Past! 
 
 And thence away to Rome, to sovran Rome. 
 What were the sickly earth without its Rome, 
 Its gorgeous city where the revels are. 
 Dice and cards and the old ecstatic wine 
 That gUnts dark ruby, and superbly eyed 
 The rich and unimpassioned courtesans, 
 And Leo, Pope — 
 
 Yes, listen. One great once 
 I saw the heavenly Householder, but far 
 From's home. Come nearer, Gaddi, hist! Ye know 
 The Morosina who has Itaha's hair. 
 Whose eye is somewhat strangely more than blue. 
 Who laughs Kke beech-leaves ringing in the Kght; 
 Her kisses indolent as a warm rain. . . . 
 I dream. The Pope said I ? 'T was winter night. 
 The wind fell edged and pointed down the lane 
 Beneath the casement many have looked to, where 
 Stood I, whisthng a feverish tune. And straight 
 'T was oped. I entered. All about mine ear 
 I heard " My Lodovico," — such a sound 
 Became the long and melancholy name! 
 
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[33] 
 
 I drew my mask, and darkly there I saw — 
 Nothing, but felt and breathed veriest Heaven. 
 About our kiss did move her tender hair. 
 Her breast to mine, her Kving arms, her brow — 
 The memory aches me that it is so dead. 
 She led me with a touch like melody 
 That being fore'er more forward in the air 
 Still guides. The cold and arched corridor 
 We traversed, I a dreamer sunsetwards 
 And she the moving beauty of the day. 
 We cUmbed the stair, a sick moon-gazer I 
 Beneath her white and spirit-winged moon: 
 TiU in her chamber with our eyes we ht 
 The owUsh gloom about her tapestry. 
 Upon his horse the hunter moved asleep 
 And every falcon turned owl. Alone < 
 The cresset flickered on the fragrant oil. 
 Shedding an old small hght. And she and I 
 We sung the night with kisses low adream. 
 She said the wonder things in olden words; 
 She made a music languorous as Time 
 And rich as Summer, whilst her endless hair 
 Seemed Aphrodite's o'er the shallow wave 
 Thin-spread at midday. Odour never rose 
 Sweet as her breasts', and musically she 
 Did often turn her golden head away 
 That gazing I might weave and weave my soul 
 Into a necklace stringed of sleepy pearl 
 Without a clasp. — 
 
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[34] 
 
 But then befell the thing. 
 Methought I heard, I heard indeed a door 
 Noising — and near. I threw 'r aside. " By Christ, 
 A snare ! now bless me — where 's my sword ? my mask ? " 
 " I love thy soul," she sang. " Is 't Bembo ? " " No." 
 " The whorish trade ! " Her shaking hand she put 
 In mine. The step grew living near. I drew. 
 Then most superbly on the threshold poised 
 An all-black cavalier, save in the mask 
 Two fires. " By Venus," quoth, " a lady 's here 
 That loves too widely to love well. Good sir, 
 Suppose — " "A sword's enough for courtesy." 
 He drew a wonder of Toledo blade 
 That rang like music. Masterly we fenced 
 And plied our gallant art Italian, 
 Till on a sudden her most dehrious form 
 Rushed vdth a cry betwixt us. But she fell 
 Half-sensed. We moved. Then with an elfish pass 
 I pierced his hand. The weapon fell to ground, — 
 And he was flying, — but next about his waist 
 Her tender arms imploring pardon clung. 
 He struggled, stumbled, fell; the mask removed; 
 By Jesu God in Heaven, verily I 
 Then saw great Leo's face, the Pope's of Rome. 
 I shuddered as a reed, my brain rocked, all 
 Withered together crumbling in my soul: 
 I fled, yet with a backward look to see 
 The mistress of the gods make of her hair, 
 Her golden hair, a Pontiff's chasuble. — 
 
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[35] 
 
 Dost thou believe I'm dying of darkish things. 
 Of poison — ? 
 
 Ah, my heart's a crust of ash. 
 And glowing chains are piled about my head. 
 Raving ? Not I. Give me no drugs. The world 
 I charioted have left in dust behind. 
 For I was Poet. — They said, they said "A soft 
 Poet, who stole Petrarca's melodies 
 And spoiled his robbery." Soft in verse I was, 
 A master had I like, forsooth, the rest. . . , 
 But nothing timeless said! Full well I know't. 
 The shaft is on my heart's bow, poised,' unloosed! 
 While Raphael delves a ceiKng into skies 
 Peopling his coloured thought, and Agnolo 
 Makes the fresh-quarried adamant to sweat 
 Ferocious agony, or in peace recUned 
 To look long looks abroad the shifting world. 
 I ? why, I 'd sing for them, I Lodovico 
 Martelli. I would send my songs full-sailed 
 Over the waves and waters of the years. 
 Let them be painter, sculptor: poet, I. 
 For your unquiet thoughts, the horrid strong, 
 I have them, — writ? not yet! but here's my heart. 
 Feel it! so tramped the innumerable host 
 When Rome was burned. And very vast a tale 
 Were half its history. Often have I stood 
 On hills high up, by sorry coasts, alone 
 Passing my vision angrily. I thought 
 To have plucked the yellow comets by their hair. 
 
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[36] 
 
 To have braided meteors, and from 'hind the, moon 
 Robbed her society of chanting tides. 
 I'd stand, my back to the seaward cliffs, at bay 
 And fight the wave. Completed earth's a leaf 
 Turning in space along with the other dust 
 That blinds the eye of God. 
 
 Away, away! 
 Canst see the waters from the window ? Help, 
 Help, sir. I've clomb Vesuvius of old. 
 Tasting its breath — 't was haK so steep. Behold, 
 Yon rolls in wide and worldly rhythm the sea, 
 Greatest and eldest poet. Yonder chants 
 The epic wave in rich monotony. 
 Mine eye seems big as heaven. And far abroad 
 From Even's distaff floats the purple wool. 
 Wet-eyed she sits; the Kght for love of her 
 Becomes a moon but to behold her die — 
 The moon — Firenze ! Is Firenze near ? 
 Methinks 't were half a journey. 
 
 Ah, but were we there! 
 How fresh her Kp is graven on my heart. 
 I see her, palely. But — tell me, who knows — 
 Is she not waxen, like me, somewhat old ? 
 For something long has happened. All 's ago. 
 I was ages ago, and in the world 
 We were together young. Say, am I dead 
 That I 'm so far ? Perhaps shall I return. 
 Bid Laura wait for April; I return, 
 I that so endless loved her, love her. Say: 
 
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[37] 
 
 " Within the colour-cupped anemonies 
 Lieth his heart, and all the leaves are he. 
 The gentle ecstasy of earth, the wind 
 That lifts so happily thy hair is he. 
 And he the Spring that holds thee all about." 
 O Gaddi, I shall not return. My mood 
 Is his who sits upon a farther shore. 
 Waiting and sick. 
 
 It 's night and strangely cold. 
 To bed! 't is bitter cold. My very breast 
 Quivers. Hold me, good Gaddi, — or I shake 
 To death. My body's dry. Christ, what a world! 
 Water, good soul, water! Hold thou the cup. 
 
 [1898] 
 
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[38] 
 
 DOLOROSA 
 
 Thotj hadst thy will. 
 
 How weary sounds the rain! 
 
 The fireUght wanders in the window-pane. 
 
 Thou art stiU. 
 
 Let me a space, 
 
 Now that the daylight dies. 
 
 Lie back against thee and with upward eyes 
 
 Love thy face. 
 
 Forgive my fear. 
 
 But — darKng — hold me fast! 
 
 A Uttle while the heartache will be past. 
 
 Patience, dear. 
 
 Give me thy hands 
 
 And bending closely o'er 
 
 Lay thy two lips to mine for evermore. 
 
 Death commands. 
 
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[39] 
 
 PITY 
 
 An old light smoulders in her eye. 
 There! she looks up. They grow and glow 
 Like mad laughs of a rhapsody 
 That flickers out in woe. 
 
 An old charm sUps into her sighs. 
 An old grace sings about her hand. 
 She bends: it's musically wise. 
 I cannot understand. 
 
 Her voice is strident; but a spell 
 Of fluted whisper silkens in — 
 The lost heart in a moss-grown bell. 
 Faded — but sweet — but thin. 
 
 She bows Uke waves — waves near the shore. 
 Her hair is in a vulgar knot — 
 Lovely, dark hair, whose curves deplore 
 Something she's well forgot. 
 
 She must have known the sun, the moon. 
 On heaven's warm throat star- jewels strung - 
 It's late. The gas-hghts flicker on. 
 Young, only in years, but young! 
 
 One might remind her, say the street 
 Is dark and vile now day is done. 
 But would she care, she fear to meet — 
 But there she goes — is gone. 
 
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[40] 
 
 SONG 
 
 A BTTD has burst on the upper bough 
 
 (The linnet sang in my heart to-day) ; 
 
 I know where the pale green grasses show 
 
 By a tiny runnel, off the way, 
 
 And the earth is wet. 
 
 (A cuckoo said in my brain: "Not yet.") 
 
 I nabbed the fly in a briar rose 
 
 (The linnet to-day in my heart did sing) ; 
 
 Last night, my head tucked under my wing, 
 
 I dreamed of a green moon-moth that glows 
 
 Thro' ferns of June. 
 
 (A cuckoo said in my brain: "So soon?") 
 
 Good-bye, for the pretty leaves are down 
 (The Unnet sang in my heart to-day); 
 The last gold bit of upland 's mown, 
 And most of summer has blown away 
 Thro' the garden gate. 
 (A cuckoo said in my brain: "Too late.") 
 
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[41] 
 
 RALSTON 
 
 To thee, that all this wretchedness be ended 
 And I become in my disaster free, 
 I bring my broken life to be amended. 
 Take me, O sea, 
 
 sea of California, thou Pacific, 
 
 For which the multitude of mortals bound 
 Go trembling headlong down and with terrific 
 Outcry are drowned. 
 
 Take me out of the earth that I remain not 
 To teU to gossips in a hovel tales 
 Of what I was. I who have squandered cannot 
 Play with the scales. 
 
 1 who with power and riches stood surrounded 
 And gave as princes, and without a throne 
 Was King the greater that for name I sounded 
 Only my own: 
 
 I must have gone away, not die nor wither 
 
 But vanish like a rolling sound of brass, 
 
 A comet burst which — without whence or whither 
 
 Or wherefore — was. 
 
 For men bom out of yesterday are yestem. 
 For men to-day are of to-day. And we. 
 We need only ourselves, we men of Western 
 Democracy. 
 
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[42] 
 
 By my own sinews and own brain, unweakened 
 By lineage and generations, I 
 Did what I did, and with the wide world reckoned 
 To live and die. 
 
 I gave and had no memory of measure. 
 Others can tell who roUicked at my feast; 
 And in my palace there was greater pleasure 
 Than in the East. 
 
 I did enjoy and drank the beaker frothing; 
 I have kindled the splendours every one. 
 Tho' my magnificence to-day be nothing, 
 I say, I won, — 
 
 I won. And fortune cast me her dismissal! 
 
 Of traps and treasures whereof I could say 
 
 'T is mine! there's not so much as rubbish. This all 
 
 Was yesterday. 
 
 Squalid and sad where I before did conquer. 
 Doubtless again I could have victory. 
 Again lie in the golden gates at anchor — 
 Receive me, sea! 
 
 There sinks the sun in dusts of sulphur glowing 
 Gibbous and red; and flaking toward the shore 
 Like hosts of scarlet willow-leaves bestrewing 
 The sapphire floor. 
 
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[43] 
 
 And from the country evening scarce arisen 
 Out of the flowering oranges the breeze, — 
 The breeze will carry me to the horizon, 
 To silences 
 
 Of sky and wave, the dark, the swirling eddy. 
 The s inki ng down out of the vital air. 
 And down out of myself, down from the giddy 
 Glories that were. 
 
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[44] 
 DRIFTWOOD 
 
 Heaven is loveKer than the stars. 
 The sea is fairer than the shore; 
 I've seen beyond the sunset bars 
 A colour more. 
 
 A thought is floating round my mind. 
 And there are words that will not come. 
 Do you beUeve, as I, the wind 
 Somewhere goes home ? 
 
 n 
 
 In grassy paths my spirit walks. 
 The earth I travel speaks me fair 
 And still thro' many voices talks 
 Of that deep oneness which we are. 
 
 I love to see the rolling sod 
 Mixing and changing ever grow 
 To other forms, — and this is God 
 And all of God and all we know. 
 
 I love to feel the dead dust whirled 
 About my face, to touch the dust; 
 And this large muteness of the world 
 Gives me vitality of trust. 
 
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[45] 
 
 Here on the earth I lie a space, 
 The quiet earth that knows no strife. 
 I mix with her and take my place 
 In the dark matter that is life. 
 [1896] 
 
 in 
 I saw the moon and heard her sing, 
 I saw her sing and heard the moon. 
 For light and song went wing and wing. 
 
 So many a ship and many a star 
 Abroad the sky and sea are two. 
 We know it not for being far. 
 
 So two fair flowers make a whole 
 In comer meadows of the spring. 
 It takes two hearts to make a soul; 
 
 And down the cloudy days they fare 
 Married in Beauty, as of old 
 The lovers thro' the infernal air. 
 
 IV 
 
 Between the sun and moon 
 A voice now vague now clear — 
 Do you hear ? — 
 Says "Wander on." 
 
 And on the hearthstone black 
 The embers poignantly — 
 Dq you see ? — 
 Spell " Come back." 
 
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[46] 
 
 REQUIESCAM 
 
 Come to the window! You're the painter used 
 
 To shadow-in pools of light far out to sea. 
 
 Or fix it where the solitary wave 
 
 Rears with a shimmering scoop before the shore, — 
 
 A glorious wave! But now look out awhile 
 
 And love my view, from our suburban height 
 
 The squaUd champaign zigzagged by the Seine. 
 
 I 'm old, most of my labour done. My chisel 
 
 One of these days among the pellets of dry clay 
 
 Will lie and rust. I have immensely worked, 
 
 And hitherto seen nothing but the Form 
 
 Staring upon my eyeballs. Years and years. 
 
 Whether alone along the shining streets 
 
 O' the city or in companionship, I've looked 
 
 So long and seen away so fixedly 
 
 That space scrolled up, I seeing none the less: 
 
 Except some shape, some woman lightning-blenched. 
 
 Pinned to the ground, lay dreadful in my road. 
 
 O Labour, everlasting vanity. 
 
 That fills her cracking pitcher and falls down 
 
 Face to the earth, the water in her hair! 
 
 Into a bole of clay all my life long 
 
 I've stared my visions in, and, thumbing, seen 
 
 Materialize obscurely to a hne 
 
 The long desire of Nature turning home. 
 
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[47] 
 
 So strains itself out of the sea a shape 
 With loads of weedy tide up to the land, 
 Sti:aining to touch and taste, to lose and die. 
 Straining fore'er miserably unsatisfied. 
 Between the toad and lyre-bird, 'twixt the snail 
 And greyhound all is struggle: the which is vain. 
 For by our bases we're firm sunken-down 
 In the element: and whenever a Httle while 
 Yearning Illusion flutters up the sky. 
 She presently swings to the gasping pitch. 
 To faU bolt-hke. 
 
 I say, all my life long close to I 've stared 
 Into the clay, have with my chisel rasped 
 The marble off and stroked the lovely limbs. 
 The breasts of women and the lips of boys 
 In stone. Again, into the mould I've poured 
 The wretched desolation of my dreams 
 And bruised here and there the bronze. All this 
 I have done my life long, and not so much 
 As lifted up my eyes. 
 
 But now at last 
 I pleasurably look to either side. 
 For I would paint some landscapes ere I die. 
 One or two landscapes of the view you see. 
 The squalid plain meandered by the Seine. 
 There, when there 's moon, thro' fumes of gray and black 
 The silver river curls away; beyond 
 
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\ 
 
 [48] 
 
 It's night and vapid darkness infinite. 
 
 And sitting at this window, I suppose 
 
 A pallet on my thumb, and brushes and 
 
 The colours gently mixing with their oil: — 
 
 Leaving my marbles in imagination 
 
 For final solace in a softer art. 
 
 You, painter, have enjoyed with all your self; 
 
 You've little looked into the dark. But I 
 
 Forged in the night. It 's resting-time, I 'm old. 
 
 Landscape will ease me somewhat toward the end. 
 
 [1900] 
 
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ERIDE 
 
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[50] 
 
 Dull words that swim upon the page 
 Thro' fihny tears of joy and pain! 
 Poor silly words, my only gage! 
 Mere words, recurrent as refrain! 
 
 Ye prove me language less than nought 
 And all the loss of utterance. 
 Ye give me scraps of withered thought 
 And sounds that meet as by a chance. 
 
 If I should find ye once again. 
 If you should come again to me. 
 Dull words about my joy and pain. 
 Mere words, what would ye signify ? 
 
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[51] 
 
 ERIDE 
 
 I 
 Love, I marvel what you are! 
 Heaven in a pearl of dew. 
 Lilies hearted with a star — 
 All are you. 
 
 Spring along your forehead shines 
 And the summer blooms your breast. 
 Graces of autumnal vines 
 Round you rest. 
 
 Birds about a limpid rose 
 Making song and light of wing 
 While the warm wind sunny blows, - 
 So you sing. 
 
 Darling, if the little dust, 
 That I know is merely I, 
 Have availed to win your trust, 
 Let me die. 
 
 Brown eyes I say, yet say I blue. 
 I think her mouth is a melody, 
 Her bosom a petal sunned and new; 
 Her hand is a passing sigh. 
 
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[52 1 
 
 Blue eyes I say, yet somehow brown. 
 Her mouth is the verge of all repose; 
 Her breast a smoothed-out viol tone; 
 Her hand is an early rose. 
 
 Be her eyes of blue or brown indeed. 
 Be colour or music what she is, 
 I nothing know. But my Ufe's own need 
 Is the fancy of her kiss. 
 
 Clouds thro' the heaven flit 
 
 Aprilward. 
 
 There's the bud of a violet 
 
 On the sward. 
 
 Branch and breeze sympathize 
 
 Ere they play, — 
 
 I know that it 's Spring to-day 
 
 By your eyes. 
 
 How shall I hold you fast 
 
 Now you are here ? 
 
 A tremor, and you have passed. 
 
 And this year 
 
 Only of all is ours 
 
 Only is mine! — 
 
 I see in your blue eyes shine 
 
 All the year's flowers. 
 
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[53] 
 
 Hereafter I'll call you Spring, 
 
 Little girl! 
 
 And christen each clustering 
 
 Delicate curi 
 
 Some lovely meadow's name 
 
 In the South, 
 
 Where they say that music and youth 
 
 Stay the same. 
 
 I held these tulips first, before 
 
 Bringing you them. 
 
 I passed the love I bear you o'er 
 
 Flower and stem. 
 
 And I would leave them at your door, — 
 
 If at your heart's door they might stand! 
 
 Keeping awhile 
 
 The world behind their petals and 
 
 Crimson smile, — 
 
 Like seas hid by a meadow-land. 
 
 A trill of leaves is in the wold; 
 I feel the wings of summer pass. 
 And sunlight in big drops of gold 
 Falls on the seedy feathered grass. 
 
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[54] 
 
 Some tiny cuckoo never seen 
 Blows Ms own echo mild as mist. 
 A deer there, stirring in the green! 
 A squirrel, where the branches kissed. 
 
 Far through, a sweep of aspen-boughs 
 And birches whitening tow'rd the crest 
 Reclines, Uke river-grass, and flows 
 Along the summer to the West, 
 
 Farther away, till last of all 
 
 In milky hazes lying furled 
 
 Is — nothing more. 'T is we recall 
 
 Infinity back to the world. 
 
 In the bow-window that looks out 
 
 Over the sunset-coloured bay 
 
 We sat one evening, wondering and in doubt. 
 
 The water plashing on the quay 
 
 Roused the warm air, and half-awake 
 
 One hill we knew was changing golden-gray. 
 
 We strained our sight upon the lake; 
 
 We dared not anything to say, 
 
 For fear your heart and mine might haply break. 
 
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[55] 
 
 Our tired eyes soon filled with tears. 
 
 And we said nothing. But your hand 
 
 Was like a heart that understands and hears. 
 
 [1896] 
 
 We missed the sunset, love, to-night — 
 The sunset on the sea that sings. 
 Folding about its heart of light 
 The large and melancholy wings. 
 
 A snowy guU may've moved along 
 The rose and gray and violet bands. 
 Serene as thought and pure as song. 
 Beyond our Une of open sands; 
 
 A moonbeam on the fisher net, 
 A sail that lay upon the sea, 
 A rim of pebbles darkly wet: 
 It all was not for you and me. 
 
 A sunset lost, a life foregone! 
 Beauty that asked our heart and died! 
 What said we ? did we match the Sun 
 With aught of Heart, my love ? — My bride, 
 
 One look you gave was twice a sky. 
 I kissed your hand, you said a word 
 
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[56] 
 
 That greater is for melody 
 
 Than all the tides a coast-land heard. 
 
 One sunset lost, one look the more! — 
 The night is quieting the foam. 
 Hear you ? " Come," says the endless shore. 
 And all the waves in murmur, " Come." 
 
 He rests upon her knee his tired head; 
 His eye, long worried, sleeps; 
 And she, whose perfect love has nothing said. 
 Her hand upon his forehead keeps. 
 
 Thro' darkening windows blows the ancient spring; 
 
 A planet trembles, kind. 
 
 Her large wet eyes are vastly wondering. 
 
 Her happy love resembles wind. 
 
 The breeze about her finger stirs his hair. 
 And her breath rises, falls. 
 So their unfolding presence thro' the air 
 In soft and low surprises calls. 
 
 He touches her in dream and follows her. 
 For nearness of her fails. 
 And the spring night of green and gossamer 
 Around beloved and lover pales. 
 
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[57] 
 
 II 
 I hear you singing in my breast, 
 I hear you chanting in my mind. 
 Is it the wind ? 
 
 I feel your form upon my eyes, 
 I feel your fingers press my sight. 
 Is it the night ? 
 
 I hear the little noise of feet 
 
 And footsteps come and come again. 
 
 Is it the rain? 
 
 And all alone with memory 
 
 My brain grows anxious for the day. 
 
 You're long away. 
 
 "Will you look down once more, just once? 
 Down to the ground and keep your veil 
 Drawn o'er your half-guessed countenance 
 And smile — so frail ? 
 
 "Thank you! For I have had a friend 
 Whose image came most vividly 
 Upon my soul, when with that bend 
 You looked from me. 
 
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[58] 
 
 "Gone? Yes! you cannot think how far. 
 Beyond the uttermost of thought. 
 She 's grown, as far things do, a star 
 In heaven's hand caught. 
 
 " But stars, you know, are very cold 
 And always white. They never bless 
 Just you, and in the night's great fold 
 Grow vague and less. 
 
 "And so it's sweet to feel sometimes 
 
 A colour, gesture, sound — a turn 
 
 That makes the heart grow dull with rhymes 
 
 And the soul's lips bum. 
 
 "Yes! sometimes fast about my heart 
 Something troubles me that I knew; 
 I find a stranger made me start, 
 As now did you. 
 
 " So pray don't think me rude. That face — 
 For the mere memory I would die. 
 You Ve warmed my life with your — her grace. 
 Good-night, good-bye." 
 
 [1896] 
 
 If you should lightly, as I've known you, come 
 And find me of an evening crying here 
 
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[59] 
 
 At open windows of a changing home, 
 While beyond garden, houses, tree, and dome 
 Fades out the day and year; 
 
 If you should gently touch my shoulder, and 
 Turning I'd see as with a sweet surprise 
 You there, above me and about me, stand. 
 While the warm sunset passed a lucid hand 
 Over your face and eyes; 
 
 If then you softly, as I Ve heard you, said 
 That all was well, I know not what or why. 
 But just for words' sake told me; while your head 
 Moved round, you passed away; and in your stead 
 An autumn night came by: 
 
 Still would the happiness of having stood 
 With one so nearly you tho' gone so soon. 
 Bring to my solitude a little good, — 
 As one who's gladdened in a midnight wood 
 For having seen the moon. 
 
 Sometimes you seem so far away. 
 The very noise of thinking lulls. 
 And, on my vision, colour dulls 
 To vapour with sick wings of gray. 
 
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[60] 
 
 I wander out of Time and Mind. 
 The sense of my own life is lost. 
 One thought goes touching like a ghost 
 That found yet knows not where to find. 
 
 And all I know is just the jar 
 Of chime that trembles in my ear; 
 And all I ask is if the year 
 Is never tired as others are. 
 
 You charm a window in the South, 
 Your brow seen by the golden star; 
 And through warm dreams the gentle war 
 Of thought lures laughter to your mouth. 
 
 The wind lulls in the ohve grove 
 And all becomes a vaporous sigh — 
 Low preludes to your ecstasy 
 Who love too much to think of love. — 
 
 October is in midnight swound 
 With just a vague gray blot for moon, 
 And hke a scum the rotting brown 
 Of dead leaves drifts along the ground; 
 
 While I sit waiting for a time 
 
 I know not how, and marvel forth 
 
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[61] 
 
 Upon the vastness of the North, 
 Till marvel mellows into rhyme. 
 
 I heard a dead leaf run. It crossed 
 
 My way. For dark I could not see. 
 
 It rattled crisp and thin with frost 
 
 Out to the lea. 
 
 My steps I hast'ned, I was lost 
 
 For aU the grief that came to me. 
 
 For now and ever thro' the host 
 
 Of sounds that blow from shrub and tree, - 
 
 A little echo sharply tossed, — 
 
 The footstep chills me of her ghost; 
 
 And knowing naught I weep most drearily. 
 
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[62] 
 
 III 
 There *s just a bit of twilight yet, 
 A glossy gray that iSoats the sea 
 From yonder, where the daylight set. 
 To me. 
 
 All else is violet growing dark. 
 Southward, a sorrow breaks the sky. 
 The tide in languor of its mark 
 Is high. 
 
 And old night thickens on the strand. 
 There is no motion but the wave's. 
 Along the leagues of listening sand 
 That raves. 
 
 And nothing now. The lighthouse Ut. 
 If ships there be, they 're far from coast. 
 All's safe. But something infinite 
 Is lost. 
 
 One spot where every day declines 
 
 In a last red ray 
 
 From the circle poised on a hill of pines; 
 
 One knoll, where an elm's twist-branches play 
 
 With the air, elate; 
 
 And below, our bench of a battered gray: 
 
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[63] 
 
 In summer, 't was bright — when the sun sets late. 
 
 Too late for regret! 
 
 And the winds lie down somewhere to wait 
 
 While dayhght goes and gray streaks fret 
 
 The heaven's blues 
 
 And round the mid-sky night's arms are met. 
 
 But we went to-day and the long sinews 
 
 Of our elm were lame 
 
 With wind that ran in the day's lost clues. 
 
 Early the sun set, vague and tame. 
 
 Thro' gathering mists 
 
 The rain fell chiding us why we came. 
 
 A drizzle fills the autumn day. 
 The sun will never here come back. 
 And weeds and foliage in decay 
 Lie draggled in the cart-wheel's track. 
 
 From blackened woods along the plain 
 A vapour passes out, a sound 
 Of boughs grown weak thro' nights of rain. 
 That sink and shatter on the ground. 
 
 • 
 The meadow turf is all a swamp. 
 There 's nothing left of summer. Come. 
 
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[64] 
 
 The air turns dark and deadly damp. 
 Come, for it 's very far to home. 
 
 The year for you and. me 
 
 Is nearly done. 
 
 The leaves there, two or three. 
 
 Are brown. 
 
 Not a bird sings. 
 
 It is time to think of other things. 
 
 Your secret was my hope. 
 
 Your deeper name; 
 
 And you perhaps did ope 
 
 The same. — 
 
 Only the word 
 
 For being spoke yet was not heard. 
 
 And as a leaf that knows 
 
 It cannot meet 
 
 Another leaf that grows 
 
 So sweet, 
 
 Hearing it call, 
 
 Springs in the autumn wind, to fall: 
 
 So did I hoping doubt, 
 Till thro' the dark 
 Falling away, went out 
 The spark, — 
 
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[65] 
 
 Ever to be 
 
 A star gone down below the sea. 
 
 Not that, if you had known at all, 
 You would have done what now you do. 
 God knows, no blame shall ever fall 
 Of mine on you. 
 I only marvel that it all be true. 
 
 They say that love's a mustard seed 
 
 Upon the acres of the heart; 
 
 It spreads from one part fike a weed 
 
 To another part. 
 
 Yet Spring is single and the days depart. 
 
 I know not why, but so it is! 
 That pain is such a simple thing. 
 Here to your hand I bring my kiss. 
 And yet nothing 
 Can tell you neariy what it is I bring. 
 
 And why ? — It 's hard to cipher Fates 
 
 And Distances, as yours from me. 
 
 Not science even separates 
 
 So fixedly; — 
 
 And then we tantalize our destiny! 
 
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[66] 
 
 Yes, marvel how the chances cross 
 And weave these spider-webs of wire. 
 Men Kve who say there's gain in loss! 
 And yet Desire 
 Revives like ferns on a November fire. 
 
 It comes to only a memory. 
 
 We have too many memories. 
 
 And somehow I believe we die 
 
 Of things like these. 
 
 Loving what was not, might not be, nor is. 
 
 [1896] 
 
 Like a pearl dropped in red dark wine, 
 Your pale face sank within my heart. 
 Not to be mine, yet always mine. 
 
 Your eyes, like flowers from apart 
 Their frail and shaded gates of dream. 
 Looked all a meadow's Ught astart 
 
 With sunrise, and your smile did seem 
 
 As when below a letting rain 
 
 The water-drops with sunset gleam. 
 
 I thought my vision was not vain; 
 
 I felt my cramped heart stir and move 
 
 Which now is pressed with little pain. 
 
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[67] 
 
 I dreamed the dream one wonders of, — 
 Your face of pearl, so pale and wise. 
 I saw, and murmured " Life is Love." 
 
 The dust of folly filled my eyes. 
 I sang, and opened in your name 
 Crocuses yellow with moonrise. 
 
 I played with shadows at their game; 
 The meadow thought my song was wind. 
 I called the sunrise up: it came. 
 
 Sweet sun-warmed grasses did I bind 
 In fancies of your hair. My song 
 Was you, and you were all my mind. — 
 
 The charm, the splendour, and the wrong 
 Will drive you thro' the earth, to try 
 Of you and pleasure which is strong, — 
 
 While I remember. Cry on cry 
 My autumn 's gone. A horrid blast 
 Blows out my sunset from the sky. 
 
 Nothing is left and all is past; 
 Rain settles like a quiet air. 
 And as a pearl in red wine cast 
 Glows like a drop of moonhght there, 
 Your face possesses my despair. 
 
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[68] 
 
 Receive my love; I ask no more. 
 Receive, I have no more to give. 
 The heart and spirit of me bore 
 All of this Uttle gift. Receive! 
 
 I fancied as in dream I passed 
 My arms afraid with care and strove 
 About you, to have gleaned at last 
 Some late and stilly wished-for love, — 
 
 No more the wild wide flames that leap 
 Out of a moment down our years, 
 To smoulder in endangering sleep. 
 To glitter under tender tears, — 
 
 But something dear and gradual 
 
 Within your slowly opening soul: 
 
 Your nearly love, your nearly all 
 
 Which comes with years to be the very whole. 
 
 You would give otherwise and more. 
 Give much more and forget you gave, — 
 As over-seas in summer pour 
 The wide blue swinging breadths of wave. 
 
 Yes, and your vision of desire 
 Is richer than the sunrise and 
 Profounder than the sea and higher 
 Than the last Kght these heavens command. 
 
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[69] 
 
 You suffer thirst, and waiting brood 
 Impatiently one day to strain 
 From out this Ufe of mood and food 
 The stuffs of ecstasy and pain: — 
 
 Till squandering in royal waste 
 The passion of your youth upon 
 Some pitiable heart, you taste 
 The wines and fever of obUvion! 
 
 I know. — Your dieam is mine, that was. 
 And quickly far within your eyes 
 All of my life began to pass 
 And wander out in seas and skies. 
 
 But you, whom all my life adored. 
 While I go following in your way. 
 Can not so much as speak the word; — 
 For there be Kes no tongue can say. 
 
 How strange it is, the point we lack 
 Just to possess the spirit's own. 
 And failing this, to tremble back 
 Among unfinished things alone! 
 
 Pass by, dear heart, — and take from me 
 
 This charm for which a diver dove 
 
 Of old down the unruined sea, — 
 
 And taking mine, give to another thy love. 
 
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[70] 
 
 IV 
 
 No, no, 't is very much too late. 
 I thought it mockery that you said 
 You loved me; but a certain fate 
 Lowers your voice and bows your head. 
 I tell you, you desire to wake the dead. 
 
 'T is pitiful so to drag out 
 
 The sorry quarrel in our souls. 
 
 Till even the blood suspends in doubt 
 
 And each full impulse backward rolls. 
 
 Meantime the hour regardless passing tolls. 
 
 Yes! think how year on year is gone. 
 
 You went your way and hummed your dreams 
 
 Of passion and oblivion 
 
 In lands where terrible sunbeams 
 
 Shiver upon the leaping arch of streams. 
 
 Your heart was violent and you stretched 
 Tiptoe after the stars your hand ! — 
 'T was but a willow-bough you fetched. 
 The argosies of your command 
 Returned, saying beyond there was no land. 
 
 You cursed the woman's life for lame. 
 To do! you cried, and labouring 
 Like men bring in the distant aim! — 
 
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[71] 
 
 What was this aim you needs must bring. 
 Your one, your altogether desired thing ? 
 
 You knew not, doubting day by day. 
 
 Like yours how many Uves are Kved! 
 
 How seldom all is given away. 
 
 How Uttle of every gift received! 
 
 How the heart most of all is least believed! 
 
 When at your going my grief was new 
 
 And the long future all to waste, 
 
 I said farewell to more than you: 
 
 I wandered up into the Past 
 
 And wandering have imagined peace at last. 
 
 Still, perhaps, under leaves that Ke 
 
 You'd feel the roots of sorrow end 
 
 Here in my bosom dyingly: 
 
 Mere threads they are, too frail to tend! 
 
 I've done with my own living, O my friend! 
 
 For what were gained if I were yours ? 
 Fever and frenzy of the blood. 
 The pleasure which no surfeit cures. 
 Endless desire, hunger, feud — 
 And, at the end of passion, sohtude. — 
 
 You know how, bom by a small hearth. 
 While out in the sad dark it snows 
 
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[72] 
 
 And 't is for months an unseen earth, 
 
 The soul as by remembrance goes 
 
 After the warm vineyard and burning rose. 
 
 To Uve long years by stream and hill 
 Within the southern hght, with men 
 Who speak deUcious language: — till 
 The pain of being alien 
 Urges one elsewhere yet not home again. 
 
 So are our lives. I love you more. 
 
 But other hearts by destiny 
 
 Must needs possess what they adore 
 
 And have it, to live with and to die. 
 
 To strangle or soothe with kisses. Not so I. 
 
 By silences within a dream 
 
 And bird-songs of a spring sunrise. 
 
 To the onward measure of a stream 
 
 Nearer the sea where quiet is, 
 
 I love you more, much more, but otherwise. 
 
 If I have wronged you in the days 
 Bygone but unforgotten now, 
 I make no pleading for your grace. 
 My tongue is bitter. Leave me, go. 
 
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[73] 
 
 You have no pity, none. You live 
 Impatient and unreconciled. 
 Nay, were you a mother, I believe 
 You never could well love your child. 
 
 You 've cracked the sense of Ufe and death 
 With passions in you that despise 
 The thing you love and choke its breath. 
 Till unrecriminate it dies, — 
 
 It dies to you; and nothing then. 
 Nor art nor hope nor force nor spell 
 Can worry back the lost again, — 
 Lost, lost, and irrecoverable. 
 
 And then, God knows, some things there be 
 Where never pardon yet was known: 
 What words have leapt from you to me! 
 Enough, henceforward I'm my own. 
 
 Yes, men are selfish — Tell me, you 
 Who pluck my thoughts for flying fast. 
 Ask all the years to be, and rue 
 The unalterably separate past. 
 
 What is this that is generous? 
 Can just a word we used to know 
 
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[74] 
 
 In childhood, commonly, to us 
 Have grown a vulgar riddle so ? 
 
 Sometimes I think we never met. 
 Such immense walls of iron and ice 
 Between us infinitely set 
 Spring blind into the spirit's skies. 
 
 Sometimes I think we never met, — 
 'T had surely better been, to spare 
 This nervous wringing of regret. 
 This hope that tightens to despair. 
 
 We have not understood, for all 
 We deeply lived and clearly said. 
 And without knowledge love must fall,- 
 Like this of ours, that lying dead 
 
 Clamours for burial. It is time. 
 It was time in much earlier days, 
 Before we soiled our lips with crime, 
 That you and I went our two ways. 
 
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[75] 
 
 Now in the palace gardens warm with age. 
 On lawn and flower-bed this afternoon 
 The thin November-coloured foUage 
 Just as last year unfastens hlting down. 
 
 And round the terrace in gray attitude 
 The very statues are becoming sere 
 With long presentiment of solitude. 
 Most of the Ufe that I have hved is here. 
 
 Here by the path and autumn's earthy grass 
 And chestnuts standing down the breadths of sky: 
 Indeed I know not how it came to pass. 
 The life I Hved here so unhappily. 
 
 Yet blessing over all! I do not care 
 What wormwood I have ate to cups of gall; 
 I care not what despairs are buried there 
 Under the ground, no, I care not at all. 
 
 Nay, if the heart have beaten, let it break! 
 I have not loved and hved but only this 
 Betwixt my birth and grave. Dear Spirit, take 
 The gratitude that pains, so deep it is. 
 
 When Spring shall be again, and at your door 
 You stand to feel the mellower evening wind. 
 
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[76] 
 
 Remember if you will my heart is pure, 
 Perfectly pure and altogether kind; 
 
 That not an aftercry of all our strife 
 Troubles the love I give you and the faith: 
 Say to yourself that at the ends of life 
 My arms are open to you, life and death. — 
 
 How much it aches to linger in these things! 
 I thought the perfect end of love was peace 
 Over the long-forgiven sufferings. 
 But something else, I know not what it is. 
 
 The words that came so nearly and then not. 
 The vanity, the error of the whole. 
 The strong cross-purpose, oh, I know not what 
 Cries dreadfully in the distracted soul. 
 
 The evening fills the garden, hardly red; 
 
 And autumn goes away, like one alone. 
 
 Would I were with the leaves that thread by thread 
 
 Soften to soil, I would that I were one. 
 
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SONNETS 
 
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[79] 
 
 SONNETS 
 
 You say, Columbus with his argosies 
 
 Who rash and greedy took the screaming main 
 
 And vanished out before the hurricane 
 
 Into the sunset after merchandise. 
 
 Then under western palms with simple eyes 
 
 Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again: 
 
 You say this is the glory of the brain 
 
 And human life no other use than this ? 
 
 I then do answering say to you: The hue 
 
 Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust 
 
 In that which made them pensive and divine. 
 
 Passes before us like a cloud of dust. 
 
 What were they ? Actors, ill and mad with wine, 
 
 And all their language babble and disgust. 
 
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[80] 
 
 They say that Cleopatra who of yore 
 
 Received the moon on her dishevelled hair. 
 
 Looking into his eyes, and breathed the fair 
 
 Low wind along Mediterranean's shore 
 
 When Summer swelled the stars, — Now at her door 
 
 The wanderer sees her like a jewel flare. 
 
 And drawn by passion thro' the beating air 
 
 To her, he falls, her dagger at the core. 
 
 Through rifts of scudding shadow, while his trance 
 
 Blackens in death, he feels about him lean 
 
 Her olive breasts and arms, and in her glance 
 
 Great wings of fire and midnight closing in: 
 
 His wasting arms do make a vain advance. 
 
 So I unto the life I would have been. 
 
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^[81] 
 
 They lived enamoured of the lovely moon. 
 The dawn and twilight on their gentle lake. 
 Then Passion marvellously bom did shake 
 Their breasts and drave them into the mid-noon. 
 Their lives did shrink to one desire, and soon 
 They rose fire-eyed to follow in the wake 
 Of one eternal thought, — when sudden brake 
 Their hearts. They died, in miserable swoon. 
 Of all their agony not a sound was heard. 
 The glory of the Earth is more than they. 
 She asks her lovely image of the day: 
 A flower grows, a milUon boughs are green. 
 And over moving ocean-waves the bird 
 Chases his shadow and is no more seen 
 [1898] 
 
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[82] 
 
 ON bodin's "l'illusion, s(eub d'icake" 
 
 She started up from where the hzard lies 
 Among the grasses' dewy hair, and flew 
 Thro' leagues of lower air until the blue 
 Was thin and pale and fair as Echo is. 
 Crying she made her upward flight. Her cries 
 Were naught, and naught made answer to her view. 
 The air lay in the Ught and slowly grew 
 A marvel of white void in her eyes. 
 She cried: her throat was dead. DeKriously 
 She looked, and lo! the Sun in master mirth 
 Glowed sharp, huge, cruel. Then brake her noble eye. 
 She fell, her white wings rocking down the abyss, 
 A ghost of ecstasy, backward to earth, 
 And shattered all her beauty in a kiss. ' 
 
 [1898] 
 
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[83] 
 
 My friend, who in this March unkind, uncouth. 
 Biding the full-blown Summer and the skies 
 That change not, stayest unmoved and true and wise 
 That in thy love thou lovest not me but Truth, 
 What should we fear that Age corrode with ruth 
 Our loves, who love the thing that never dies. 
 Building us archways unto Paradise 
 Of all that greets the soul's all-flowering youth ? 
 So is it, that often parted, rarely met. 
 And never blessed vnth. gifts of genial Time 
 Wherein might grow the seed we have but sown, 
 Our hearts remember tho' our minds forget 
 How on from year to year and cUme to cKme 
 Stretches the love that makes of all but one. 
 
 [1894] 
 
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[84] 
 
 II 
 
 YoTJH image walks not in my common way. 
 Rarely I conjure up your face, recall 
 Your language, think to hear your footstep fall 
 In my lost home or see your eyes' sweet play. 
 Rather you share the life that sees not day, 
 Immured within the spirit's deep control. 
 Where thro' the tideless quiets of the soul 
 Your kingdom stretches far and far away. 
 For these our joys and griefs are less than we. 
 The deeper truths ask not our daily thought — 
 Their strength is peace, they know that we beHeve. 
 And whatsoever of sublime there be 
 Reaches and deepens and at last is wrought 
 Into that life we are but do not live. 
 
 [1894] 
 
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[85] 
 
 III 
 
 Were you called home and I were left to grief, 
 I'd not go down disconsolate to the shore 
 And brooding mix my language in the roar 
 Of waves in spasm upon the tortured reef; 
 Nor cUmb the lonely mountain where the leaf 
 Sings its wide whisper and the ravens soar 
 From shadows of unholy ellebore 
 Loved by the owlets, blind and duU and deaf. 
 I should not loudly mourn and vex the earth 
 With strewings of my ashes; none would find 
 My reft soul's sorrow in the gushing eye. 
 But my dull world would be a world of dearth. 
 Cheerless the sunrise, the sweet sky unkind 
 And life grayer, my heart not asking why. 
 [1894] 
 
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[86] 
 
 IN A CHURCHYAED 
 
 How strange, beneath the blue and happy sky 
 
 And the reviving greenery of the trees 
 
 So pale their shadow blows along the breeze. 
 
 To read on polished graves the little cry 
 
 Of this deUrious immortality! 
 
 Well was it said for all, for each of these 
 
 " The poor in heart," who still in death displease 
 
 The flowers and wind and youth that passes by. 
 
 How but for them the children of the earth 
 
 Here, where the grass is fresh and glittering. 
 
 Would share with herb and beast the common birth ! 
 
 And when they'd played away this day of Spring 
 
 How sweetly would they fold at evening 
 
 Their petals, hands, and wings at nature's hearth. 
 
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[87] 
 
 When I hereafter shall recover thee 
 
 And, on the further margin fugitive 
 
 Silently bringing up, if aught survive 
 
 The raging wind and old disastrous sea, 
 
 I disembark, O darling, verily 
 
 To hold thee to my heart, to feel ahve 
 
 The tremor of thy hps, thy bosom, — it will drive 
 
 The dark in shreds out of eternity. 
 
 Sometimes I ask me why the morning sun 
 
 Returns, or later, when the day is done, 
 
 I let the dreams about my pillow strain; 
 
 But then it sounds across my dying brain 
 
 Like torrents in the moonUght foaming on 
 
 Between enormous mountains to the plain. 
 
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[88] 
 
 Tho' inland far with mountains prisoned round. 
 Oppressed beneath a space of heavy skies. 
 Yet hear I oft the far-oflF water-cries 
 And vague vast voices which the winds confound. 
 While as a harp I sing, touched with the sound 
 Most secret to its soul, the visions rise 
 In stately dream, and lifting up my eyes 
 I see the naked mountains beacon-crowned.- 
 Far in the heaven the golden moon illumes. 
 The crowded stars toil in the webs of night 
 And the sharp meteors seam the higher glooms. 
 Then shifts my dream: the mellow evening falls; 
 Alone upon the shore in the wet light 
 I stand, and hear the infinite sea that calls. 
 [1894] 
 
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[89] 
 
 ON SOME SHELLS FOUND INLAND 
 
 These are my munnur-laden shells that keep 
 A fresh voice tho' the years be very gray. 
 The wave that washed their Ups and tuned their lay 
 Is gone, gone with the feided ocean sweep, 
 The royal tide,- gray ebb and sunken neap 
 And purple midday, — gone! To this hot clay 
 Must sing my shells, where yet the primal day, 
 Its roar and rhythm and splendour will not sleep. 
 "What hand shall join them to their proper sea 
 If all be gone ? Shall they forever feel 
 Glories undone and worlds that cannot be ? — 
 'T were mercy to stamp out this aged wrong, 
 Dash them to earth and crunch them with the heel 
 And make a dust of their seraphic song. 
 [1895] 
 
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[90] 
 
 Tho' lack of laurels and of wreaths not one 
 Prove you our lives abortive, shall we yet 
 Vaunt us our single aim, our hearts full set 
 To win the guerdon which is never won. 
 Witness, a purpose never is undone. 
 And tho' fate drain our seas of violet 
 To gather round our lives her wide-hung net. 
 Memories of hopes that are not shall atone. 
 Not wholly starless is the ill-starred life. 
 Not all is night in failure, and the shield 
 Sometimes well grasped, tho' shattered in the strife. 
 And here while all the lowering heaven is ringed 
 With our loud death-shouts echoed, on the field 
 Stands forth our Nike, proud, tho' broken-winged. 
 [1895] 
 
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[91] 
 
 Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord, 
 Who was the Future, died full long ago. 
 Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go, 
 Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred. 
 Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow 
 And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword; 
 The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord 
 And the long strips of river-silver flow: 
 Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours. 
 Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight 
 About their fragile hairs' aerial gold. 
 Thou art divine, thou livest, — as of old 
 Apollo springing naked to the light. 
 And all his island shivered into flowers. 
 
 [1898] 
 
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[92] 
 
 Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream 
 
 That over Persian roses flew to kiss 
 
 The curled lashes of Semiramis. 
 
 Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream. 
 
 Provence and Troubadour are merest hes 
 
 The glorious hair of Venice was a beam 
 
 Made within Titian's eye. The sunsets seem. 
 
 The world is very old and nothing is. 
 
 Be still. Thou foolish thing, thou canst not wake, 
 
 Nor thy tears wedge thy soldered Kds apart. 
 
 But patter in the darkness of thy heart. 
 
 Thy brain is plagued. Thou art a frighted owl 
 
 BUnd with the light of life thou 'Idst not forsake. 
 
 And Error loves and nourishes thy soul. 
 
 [1898J 
 
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[93] 
 
 ON THE CONCERT 
 
 When first this canvas felt Giorgione's hand, 
 
 From out his soul's intensity he drew 
 
 In lines most acrid yet superbly few 
 
 A man, — a soul, whose water at command 
 
 Of pain had stiffened to ice, whom grief had banned, 
 
 TUl music even and harmony's rich dew 
 
 Fell fruitless. Poised, defiant and calm he threw 
 
 To the earth that wronged him his Kfe's reprimand. 
 
 Yet, as he drew, a wind mellow with dole 
 
 Of past life as of sea-coast pine did rise 
 
 And warm the rigour of the painter's soul. 
 
 For his tear-moistened fingers warmed the frore 
 
 Hard colours of the cheek, and in the eyes 
 
 Set the large stare of Sorrow's Nevermore. 
 
 [1895] 
 
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[94] 
 
 The melancholy year is dead with rain. 
 
 Drop after drop on every branch pursues. 
 
 From far away beyond the drizzled flues 
 
 A twilight saddens to the window pane. 
 
 And dimly thro' the chambers of the brain. 
 
 From place to place and gently touching, moves 
 
 My one and irrecoverable love's 
 
 Dear and lost shape one other time again. 
 
 So in the last of autumn for a day 
 
 Summer or summer's memory returns. 
 
 So in a mountain desolation bums 
 
 Some rich belated flower, and with the gray 
 
 Sick weather, in the world of rotting ferns 
 
 From out the dreadful stones it dies away. 
 
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[95] 
 
 As a sad man, when evenings grayer grow. 
 Desires his vioKn, and call to call 
 Tunes with unhappy heart the interval; 
 Then after prelude, suffering his bow. 
 Along the crying strings his fingers fall 
 To some persuasion bom of long ago. 
 While mixed in higher melodies the low 
 Dull song of his life 's heard no more at all: 
 So with thy picture I alone devise. 
 Passing on thy uncoloured face the tone 
 Of memory's autumnal paradise; 
 And all myself for yearning weary hes 
 Fallen to but thy shadow, near upon 
 The void motion of eternities. 
 [1898] 
 
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[96] 
 
 He said: "If in his image I was made, 
 
 I am his equal and across the land 
 
 We two should make our journey hand in hand 
 
 Like brothers dignified and unafraid." 
 
 And God that day was walking in the shade. 
 
 To whom he said: "The world is idly planned. 
 
 We cross each other, let us understand 
 
 Thou who thou art, I who I am," he said. 
 
 Darkness came down. And all that night was" heard 
 
 Tremendous clamour and the broken roar 
 
 Of things in turmoil driven down before. 
 
 Then silence. Morning broke, and sang a bird. 
 
 He lay upon the earth, his bosom stirred; 
 
 But God was seen no longer any more. 
 
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LAKEWARD 
 
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[99] 
 
 LAKEWARD 
 
 'T WILL soon be sunrise. Down the valley waiting 
 Far over slope and mountain-height the firs 
 Undulate dull and furiy under the beating 
 Heaven of autumn stars. 
 
 To westward yet the summits hang in slumber 
 Like frozen smoke; there, growing wheel on wheel, 
 As 't were an upward wind of rose and amber 
 Goes up the sky of steel; 
 
 And indistinguishable thro' the valley 
 An endless murmur freshens as of bees, — 
 The stream that gathering torrents frantically 
 ■ Chums away thro' the trees. — 
 
 Mountains, farewell! Into your crystal winter 
 To linger on unworlded and alone 
 And feel the glaciers of your bosom enter 
 One and another my own. 
 
 And on the snow that faUing edges nearer 
 To lose my very shade, — 't were well, 't were done 
 Had I not in me the soul of a wayfarer! 
 No, let me wander down 
 
 The road that, as the boulders higher and higher 
 Go narrower each to each and hold the gloom. 
 Follows like me the waters' loud desire 
 Of a sun-sweetened home. 
 
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[100] 
 
 And as I pass, methinks once more the Titan 
 From in the bosom of the humid rocks. 
 Where yet his aged eyes grow vague and whiten 
 Weary and wet his locks. 
 
 Gazes away upon this brightened weather 
 As asking it in reason and in rhyme 
 How long shall mountain iron and ice together 
 Hold against summer-time. 
 
 Long, surely! long, perhaps! but not for ever. 
 Now here across the buried road and field, 
 Tom from the dizzy flanks up there that quiver, 
 Down to the plain and spilled 
 
 In sand and wreckage lies the avalanche's 
 Dead mass under the sun, and not a sound! — 
 The morning grows and from the rich pine-branches 
 Shadows make blue the ground. 
 
 To wander south! Already here the grasses 
 Feather and glint across the sunny air. 
 It 's warmer. Up the road a peasant passes 
 Brown-skinned and dark of hair. 
 
 Some of an autumn glamour on the highway 
 Softens the dust, and yonder I have seen 
 Catching the sunlight something in the byway 
 Else than an evergreen. 
 
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[101] 
 
 And weeds along the ditch are parching. — Sudden 
 Once more from either side the ranges draw 
 Near each to each; beneath struggle and madden 
 Down in the foamy flaw 
 
 The waters, and, a span across, the boulders 
 Stand to the burning heaven upright and cold. 
 Then drawing lengthily along their shoulders 
 Vapours of white and gold 
 
 Blow from the lowland upward; all the gloaming 
 Quivers with violet; here in the wedge 
 The tunnelled road goes narrow and outcoming 
 Stealthily on the edge 
 
 Lies free. The outhnes have a gentle meaning. 
 Willows and clematis, fohage and grain! 
 And the last mountain falls in terraces to the greening 
 Infinite autumn plain. 
 
 O further southward, down the brooks and valley, on 
 And past the lazy farms and orchards, on! 
 It smells of hay, and thro' the long Italian 
 Flowerful afternoon. 
 
 Sodden with sunlight, green and gold, the country 
 Suspends her fruit and stretches ripe and still 
 Between the clumsy fig and silver plane-tree 
 Circled, from hill to hill 
 
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[ 102 ] 
 
 And down the vale along the running river: 
 
 The vale, the river and the hills, that take 
 
 The perfect south and here at last for ever 
 
 Merge into thee, O Lake! — 
 
 Sunset-enamoured in the autumnal hours! 
 When large and westering his heavy rays 
 Fall from the vineyards and the garden-flowers 
 Hazily o'er thy face. 
 
 And colouring thy bosom with a lover's 
 Warm and quick lips and hesitating hand. 
 He murmurs to thee while the twilight hovers 
 Lilac about the strand. 
 
 Thou, mid the grape-hung terraces low-levelled, 
 Lookest into the green and crimson sky 
 With swimming eyes and auburn hair dishevelled, 
 Hadiant in ecstasy. — 
 
 'T is evening. In the open blueness stretches 
 A feathery lawn of light from moon to shore. 
 And a boat-load of labourers homeward plashes. 
 Singing "Amor, Amor." 
 [1900] 
 
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PROMETHEUS PYRPHOROS 
 
 [1900] 
 
 TO B. F. 
 
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At the risk of obtruding alien matter upon the reader's 
 attention, I wish to point out that the following poem ante- 
 dates by several years my own treatment of the same sub- 
 ject, entitled The Fire Bringer, the Prometheus Pyrphoros 
 having first appeared in the Harvard Monthly for November, 
 1900. Before the publication of my poem I asked Stickney's 
 permission to preface it with an acknowledgment of his 
 priority in the use of the material and of my deep obligation 
 to his work. At his urgent request such acknowledgment 
 was omitted at that time, but is now made in order that 
 no misconception may arise, in the mind of any reader to 
 whom both poems may be known, regarding their relation 
 to each other in point of pioneership. Those who are curi- 
 ous to examine the sources of the Prometheus Pyrphoros 
 will find them in the account given by Hesiod, supplemented 
 in some details by that of the mythographer ApoUodorus. 
 
 W. V. M. 
 
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DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 PANDORA PTRRHA 
 
 PROMETHEUS EPIMETHEUS 
 
 DEtTKALION THE VOICES OF ZEUS 
 
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[107] 
 
 PROMETHEUS PYRPHOROS 
 
 Scene. The 'plain of Haimonia. In the centre, a rude 
 stone dwelling, in the door of which stands peometheus. 
 The voice of pandoha always as from within. Total 
 obscurity, nothing on the scene being distinguishable. 
 
 DEtTKAUON \crawling in\. 
 How dark it is, how dark and miserable! 
 
 PYEEHA. Is 't thou, DeukaUon ? 
 
 DEU. Ah, thy voice! It's I. 
 
 My moment's journey seems a dreadful year. 
 I see nothing — Where ? where ? is home here ? 
 
 PYE. Yes. 
 
 Thou soundest surely nearer. How — 
 
 DEU. At last. 
 
 O woman, what is this that makes us be. 
 Threading like worms the cavern where before — 
 
 PTE. Shows there as yet no dayUght ? 
 
 DETJ. No, nowhere. 
 
 This dark can never lift, this heavy night 
 Which hes and stagnates infinitely. No, 
 It cannot lift, I know not when it fell; 
 Scarce I remember how seemed the white sunUght, 
 So debile is my memory and the brain 
 Clean hollowed out. 
 
 PYE. All round me and within 
 
 It is like pools of cold. But firewood — say, 
 Bring'st thou any ? 
 
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[108] 
 
 DEtr. Aye, but prithee to what end ? 
 
 I crawled abroad the fields there picking up 
 Some herbs to eat, and fuel; but this I know. 
 The tinder holds no longer any spark 
 And fire is vanished irrecoverably. 
 
 PTK. Nay, try once more. 
 
 DEtr. Try once again forsooth! 
 
 I care not, for the trial's vain. Once more! 
 I'll rub the sticks again together. No, 
 They breed no heat. 
 
 PYK. I '11 pile the firestuff — wait — 
 
 Lest the one spark be lost. 
 
 DEU. The spark is dead, 
 
 I say, the light has ended, and henceforth 
 Misery and blackness unendurable 
 Stand in the eyes that saw, the hearth that burned. — 
 I draw no fire. 
 
 PTB. Where art thou ? Flints, here — strike again. 
 
 DEU. So did I a thousand times and nothing leapt. 
 Alas! 
 
 PTR. Ah me, how daj-k it is and cold. 
 
 PROMETHEUS [aside]. 
 It bursts the heart to see them suffer thus. 
 
 DEU. Strange, strange how since the fatal even- 
 ing all 
 This mound of darkness fell. leather Prometheus 
 Then cheated God and offered him in guile 
 Wind-eggs and unsubstantial things: wherefor 
 We people pay the wrath that never ends. 
 
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[109] 
 
 Life in the dark and obscure loneliness, — 
 Knowing nor when to sleep nor when to wake. 
 Eating what herbs we gather here, abroad 
 The plain grazed by the kine we cannot find. 
 I hear them in the dark: they toss their heads. 
 Having slept much too long, and wander on 
 And trample, or halting with outstretched neck 
 Low stubborn none knows where, far thro' the night. 
 
 [The cattle low.] 
 Hear them! 
 
 PANDORA [singing]. 
 
 As a foplar feels the sun's enfolding kiss. 
 And softly alone on the quiet 'plain 
 Yields to him all her silver trellises, 
 A ghost of green in the golden rain. 
 And trembles lightly thro' the shining air 
 Nearly unseen and melting in sky 
 Save for a shadow on the grasses there : 
 So over the earth and world am I. 
 The lips of Oods and mortals in a dream 
 Have lain on my lips of a summer night : 
 They fade like images down-stream, 
 But I have remained behind the light. 
 I give the giver more than that he sought. 
 And mare than I give am I, mu^h more : 
 As words are to an everlasting thought. 
 So less than the mother the child she bore. 
 
 PTH. What says she? 
 
 DEtr. A time ago, the God of Gods 
 
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[110] 
 
 Zeus came to adore her, and the immortal arms 
 Closing about her gave her travailing. 
 
 PTE. Did he so ? 
 
 DEu. Aye, Kke a master so he did. 
 
 PTE. She knows perchance then something, knows 
 perhaps 
 If we 're thus brutishly to suffer always and 
 Forever gaze upon this frozen void. — 
 Know'st thou our fate. Pandora ? Tell me, mother! — 
 She has not heard. 
 
 DEtr. Or sorrow blocks her ears. 
 
 For ever since God approached her, on the ground. 
 Her silence threaded by dull murmurs, lone 
 She sits up stonelike 'gainst the rude house-waU. 
 On hand and knee some while ago I crawled 
 Up to her, and, saying our heavy troubles, passed 
 Over her cool immobile face my hand; 
 I kissed her eyes, I touched and held her chin: 
 But all that while she said nothing to me. 
 Remaining passive, silent, pitiless. 
 Albeit her eyes were very wide awake. 
 
 PTH. The pensive cannot sleep. 
 
 DEU. O misery. 
 
 Would that I were asleep a long long time. 
 Beyond to-morrow and the summer's end! 
 Nay, sometimes down my dark bewildered brain 
 Stumble fantastic hopes that — like the birds 
 I've found afield dismembered and undone, 
 Like beasts that shut their swimming eyes, and leaves 
 
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[Ill] 
 
 That eddy dizzily down the nervous wind — 
 So we may fail and fall, be swept away 
 From what we are. 
 
 PYR. I too, Deukalion. 
 
 Labour at last is shame within the soul. 
 Have I not faithfully day after day 
 Uptom the crusty earth and smashed the clots. 
 Scattering with thee the everiasting seeds ? 
 Have I not homeward carried every day 
 Upon my head pitchers of spring-water 
 And packs of straw for bedding; and arranged 
 This place we hve in cleanly and cheeringly? 
 Yes, here have I within thy warm embrace 
 Season on season, long with agony. 
 My brain sunstricken and my body sick 
 With travelling the dreadful acres, borne 
 Daughters and sons and sons and daughters ; whom 
 At midnight then, against their crying, alone 
 I rocked in my exhausted arms, I suckled 
 And bending watched, till, as between my brows 
 It hanmiered thuds of slumber, very late 
 A httle thin gray morning thro' the chinks 
 Told the disaster of another day. 
 And I have reared them and pitifully taught them. 
 My hand upon their hair, my broken truths, — 
 So laboured in their welfare! and in pain 
 So scourged their weakness! Woe is me, alas! 
 They never gave me thanks, no, nor so much 
 As looked a little in my hungry eyes. 
 
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[112] 
 
 Rather, against the time of strength, rebellious 
 They fret their freedom out, and last of all 
 Abandoning me for another world 
 Go down the sunset, being seen no more. 
 
 DEU. Yes, over fields we sowed they went away. 
 Trampling our harvest down. And here we lie 
 All hedged in with hoar and darkness, old 
 For staring on the sodden vacancy. 
 I would I knew what thing is in my heart 
 To stamp away so hardly! but for it, 
 I'm that much tired and aching-desolate 
 I'd pass away in earth. 
 
 PBO. [aside]. How horrible 
 
 Is now become their life! 
 
 PYK. It wearies me 
 
 To think of further being, against the time 
 Not yet bygone. For then it needs must be 
 My breasts will shrivel up, my faded flesh 
 Starve on the joints, and all the bloom I was. 
 The rose and perfume of their pleasure, shrink 
 Into a thing of shame. 
 
 DEU. Beyond recall 
 
 The labour of our lives now desiccates. 
 Our sweat was poured for nothing; we have bled 
 Wounded with ignorance in such a task 
 As irks one in the very memory of 't. 
 
 iPBO. [coming forward]. 
 Then let us now remember nothing more. 
 But blindly hope in spite of all. And I 
 
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[113] 
 
 Who once defied the Gods, again to-day 
 Stand and demand our dignities of them. 
 We will not suffer thus, we will not go 
 Daridy and despicably tumbling down 
 The road of Ufe. For we be something more; 
 Nor quite in vain infinite earth obeys 
 The plough we fashioned. All indeed is ours! 
 We are the crown of nature and her lord. 
 
 DEU. O hold thy peace, desperate man! The Gods, 
 Thy littleness to show, have now been pleased 
 To take, for matter of their anger, us 
 Who serviceably did our common task. 
 Thou pil'st our suffering up. What is thy heart 
 To bring curse after curse upon thy children, all 
 For idle show in the face of destiny ? 
 
 PRO. 'T is time we stood up as before, and looked. 
 Brushing the meshes from our forehead, forth 
 Upon the sunshine and the rolling com. 
 
 BETT. To bring upon this woman and me, upon 
 All generations, vanity and a life 
 Fatal and stupid as the stones. 
 
 PRO. Enough, 
 
 Thou art mine enemy! For a Uttle pain 
 Thou givest justice to the dogs. Aside! 
 Hinder my thoughts no more. Alone to-day 
 I shall restore the light. 
 
 PTR. O father mine, 
 
 I nothing say who love thee evermore. 
 Give us the light and life, give us the hope. 
 
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[114] 
 
 That we may never question but abide 
 Unthinkingly by what is set before. 
 Lay thy two hands upon my brow, and smile 
 Tho' the night hide thy sweetness. Say the word. 
 Give us the promise. We beheve thy strength. 
 For see, we suffer and so scarcely endure 
 That nothingness were better far, and ev'n 
 The being unborn a wholly happy thing. 
 
 PRO. Yes, woman, word and promise hold: I 
 swear 't 
 By me and thee who bearest in the world 
 The sweeter burden and the sharper pain. 
 This night is not fore'er nor long, and soon 
 Between the chffs of darkness issuing shall 
 The day its thousand arrows pour abroad 
 Here where we Hved — and shall in other years 
 Live and increase, our children's children, on 
 To generations jealous as the Gods. 
 This will I do, and if they stood in rank. 
 Yet will I storm them, winning back the fire 
 And scattering the hope that cannot die. 
 
 DEU. What misery will be ours! 
 
 PYB. Speak to the end. 
 
 'T is sweet to dream on what not yet has been. 
 
 PRO. 'T were sure a shame to grovel at the doors 
 And ask a pittance, when the Lord is I. 
 
 DEU. Necessity! 
 
 PRO. We change and pass away, 
 
 But so in changing have some mastery, we 
 
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[ 115 ] 
 
 Revolving make progression, we endure 
 In virtue of desire and hope dissatisfied. 
 And, thro' disaster struggling, at the last 
 Fetch in salvation and the human end. 
 This for now! nay, only a little space 
 Of twilight is before, a dubious interval 
 After the night, this side of day, as tho' 
 We stood upon the threshold momently 
 Where morning meets with evening passing by. 
 Therefore in tears no longer dreaming, now 
 Turn, tho' your hearts be broken, turn your eyes 
 Dayward, and quelling all lament vrith hope 
 Wait for my coming homeward. I declare 
 I wiU go bring the sunlight in my hands 
 Back from God's citadel and home to us. 
 
 [He goes away.] 
 PAN. [singing]. 
 
 Before my eyes they come and go ; 
 
 The shadows on my dreaming face 
 
 Move to and fro. 
 
 Yet I look further over larger ways. 
 
 For jyity is not of that nor this. 
 
 And kindness stretches out her arm 
 
 On all that is. 
 
 To keep the grass-blade and the star from harm. 
 
 She kisses every dying wave 
 
 Into the sweetness of her trust. 
 
 And stoops to save 
 
 The bird that sank from heaven into dust. — 
 
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[116] 
 
 The battle hurtles long and loud 
 
 Between the mountains and the sea ; 
 
 The yellow cloud 
 
 Crashes the woods in sunder tree hy tree. 
 
 And struggling over land and main 
 
 The generations masterful 
 
 With greed and -pain 
 
 Scatter upon the turf a brother's sktdl : 
 
 I walk the places where they drove 
 
 And sing my song where all is cursed. 
 
 Then, for my love. 
 
 The child will play again, the flower burst. 
 
 DETi. Wliat a strange mournful voice is hers! 
 
 PTK. No, no ! I feel a happiness bringing 
 leaves 
 Upon the branches, and the night is less 
 Between now and to-morrow! Oh, to-morrow — 
 
 DETT. Thine, woman, is a silly heart, and trust 
 Is in thy being like a malady. 
 Father Prometheus, greatest of us all, 
 Avails not with his majestic arrogance 
 To wrench from^ God the blessing he denies. 
 And we be cursed! I know not wherefore, no, 
 I cannot say what mischief, thine or mine. 
 Merited punishment: but we be cursed 
 Beyond our father's valour to revoke, — 
 And I believe, to pay his awful deed. 
 He will hang out in anguish crucified 
 Upon the giddy ramparts of the world 
 
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[117] 
 
 While we mysteriously damned shall hide 
 Here at night's bottom to the last of time. 
 
 EPiMETHEUS. Deukalion! 
 
 DEU. Here, father, this way home. 
 
 EPi. Deukalion! 
 
 DEU. Here, here! Thou seekest us ? 
 
 What is 't? 
 
 EPI. I've journeyed hopeless and too long. 
 
 Nothing before but darkness and behind 
 This endless shadow of my memory. 
 
 PTH. Poor heart! thou lovest overmuch the past. 
 But happiness is toward, the night will end. 
 
 DETT. Heed her not, Epimetheus! Thy brother 
 Has spoiled her brain with promises and words. 
 
 EPI. Where is he ?■ 
 
 DEU. Come to fetch the fire again. 
 
 To kindle back the world to what it was. 
 
 EPI. The fool! He struggles forward evermore. 
 Like one who stumbles; but the sadder thought 
 Never constrains him, that futurity 
 Is dead with phantoms of the things bygone, — 
 
 DEU. Aye, and alive with sufferings that are. 
 He 's wild and rolls like whirlwind up a steep. 
 Leaving but ruin. 
 
 EPI. When I consider time, 
 
 Remembering all my pastimes and the haunts 
 Where clustered flowers erewhile that one by one 
 Shone either Side the path of what I was. 
 My bosom fills more than to hold with pain. 
 
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 And yearning, like a swallow in the void. 
 Strains aching, dropping down, down endlessly. 
 PTB. Come nearer that I rest thee in my arms. 
 PAN. [singing]. 
 
 Many who have only dreamed of me 
 Have grown unhappy and lost their years. 
 They gather the daisies thoughtfully. 
 Then throw them away and burst in tears. 
 Their eyes are filled — far they looked so long — 
 With the sunset-light of my aureole ; 
 Their lips will quiver to utter song. 
 And the spring lies swelling under their soul. 
 For their hand in a woman's hand is laid 
 And between a woman's breasts their brow. 
 For a while they feel no longer afraid 
 With the sky above and the earth below : 
 But never the whole and the fulness come. 
 Their eyes are blind vrUh another light. 
 They walk through echoes and have no home, 
 I/ike shadows waving upon the night. 
 
 EPi. Pandora's voice. 
 
 PTR. Obscure and pitiful. 
 
 DEXT. What sawest thou on thy travel ? 
 
 EPI. No daylight. 
 
 Nor anything on before; but at my back 
 Remembrance made a weary song, chanting 
 The mellow seasons that have gone away. 
 
 DEtr. And bringest nothing ? * 
 
 EPI. No. 
 
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 DEU. How profitless, 
 
 Thou and thy brother, elders tho' ye be, 
 Worry the time out and defeat yourselves. 
 One storms gigantic up the heavens; thou 
 Triest to die with thine own memory. 
 
 PTK. Leave him, DeukaHon, for he is so sad. 
 
 DETJ. Aye, 't is we suffer their temerities. 
 And back and forth, to ends we know not of. 
 Madden between to-morrow and yesterday. 
 
 PYK. Father, be comforted! And if it please thee. 
 According to thy fancy, nothing forced, 
 Sing us meanwhile a rune here in the night. 
 For song is very like a summer fern 
 Sweeter for dark; and we sad winter birds 
 Will dream a little while more pleasantly. 
 
 EPi. [chanting]. 
 
 The noise in the eternal heart abates. 
 The valley of the world is blotted (rut, 
 And either end the boulders on the gates 
 
 Are 'pushed across and shut. 
 The mountains in the dark are growing small. 
 No wind is any mare upon the lea. 
 The stone has frittered from the waterfall 
 
 Down rivers to the sea. 
 The uttermost is swelling out in void. 
 In total night, more cold and emptier 
 Around the ghost of that which is destroyed. 
 
 The breath of things that were. 
 
 [A long silence.] 
 
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 PYH. Hush, for I hear him. 
 
 DEU. Say! 
 
 PTB. Prometheus 
 
 Is coming. All thro' my blood the pulses knock, 
 I see the flames — they crackle. 
 
 DEU. Her brain is wild. 
 
 EPi. I feel like echoes of the lost dayUght — 
 
 PYH. He comes, he comes. Nay, look how fast the 
 Ught 
 Rolls gaining on the dark and urges back 
 Like windy boulders of obscurity. 
 His step! I hear him, I see him — Prometheus! 
 
 PRO. [shouting from far]. 
 This torch will light our Kves. Rejoice! up, up! 
 I say we have the sunlight back again. 
 
 DEU. How sharp a dazzle races the empty air! 
 I see nothing. 
 
 EPI. It reddens in my two eyes. 
 
 My brain is needled thro' with pain. 
 
 PRO. [rushing in vnth a torch, lights the pyre]. 
 
 Rejoice, 
 The lost is won! Our dignities once more 
 Resume their proper thrones, and we are men. 
 
 PYR. Thy forehead shines like morning! on thy neck 
 I lay my arms — but the Hght kills — 
 
 PRO. No, come 
 
 And gladden! Logs here and pitch and all that bums, 
 That kindles, flames. Bring, pile it high as heaven. 
 Along like rivers and across like fields! 
 
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[121] 
 
 'T has dawned at last, such dawn as ne'er before 
 Tore the wide sky. From out bottomless chasms 
 Fountains jet gUttering up into the sky 
 And hailstone sparks descend, tumbling like sand 
 Over the mountains swollen in conflagration. 
 
 DETJ. Stay, father, hear me! 
 
 PRO. I have it from the Gods. 
 
 Aye, from the hearthstone of the Gods I caught 
 This fire and hope and knowledge won to us — 
 My torch be brandished in the face of Zeus! 
 
 EPi. Brother, be softer in triumph or we die. 
 
 PEO. Still was it night, thick night, when I at the 
 base 
 Of their enormous mountain stood, around me 
 A blacker gloom, foliage and bearded firs, 
 All of a forest's heaviness: thro' which 
 Down from the summit wanderingly quired 
 Amazing echoes of a festival. 
 Of instruments and choral song. Belo\y 
 Sounded, like vast itinerant herds afield 
 Under the night, the torrents rumbUng on. 
 There I began. Sheer up the night, alone 
 And without fear, catching ahold of pines 
 To swing me higher or stay me from recoil, 
 I climbed. Beneath my trample brushwood crashed 
 In the spongy soil, and snapped the twigs short-oflE. 
 Behind, dislodged, stone after stone bounded 
 Down thumping to the depths. But straightaway 
 I groped thro' snarls of ragged boughs that scratched 
 
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 My visage blind, and tore the weedy shrubs 
 
 Which hke fine cordage knotted my feet back: 
 
 So floundered up the dumb dead humid night. 
 
 Soon thinned the forestry. From tree to tree 
 
 Espaced, the ground lay tamer, — moss and herbs, 
 
 A softness underfoot. Then, not a pine. 
 
 But blind and weary slopes of shale that passed 
 
 Upward in the deserted gloom. I gasped — 
 
 'T was icy still and thin, and very sweet 
 
 With unseen flowers, the last of earthly things 
 
 Carelessly blooming in immensity. 
 
 Where still I mounted like an arrow shot 
 
 Up with revenge and scorn to the midnight clouds. 
 
 Sudden the windier air froze and my feet 
 
 Crunched snow which even in such a dark as was 
 
 Shone bluely with a smothered Hght away 
 
 To the summit. At my throat I felt the void; 
 
 It stung my sweated face. I stamped the crust, 
 
 And step by step ascending wilfully 
 
 Laddered the cold up skyward to the end. 
 
 Just then that music, which half heard before 
 
 And undistinguished down the steeps unfurled. 
 
 Struck quicker rhythm; and looking up I saw 
 
 Mid draperies of darkness hanging vague 
 
 A halo shining downwards, in the ice 
 
 Mirrored hke vapour mazed with meteors. 
 
 In a last hurry I climbed. The freezing dark 
 
 Wias all a tremor of song, and finally 
 
 A dim design of snowy mansion grew 
 
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[123] 
 
 Ghostly and lucid, carved of summer cloud, 
 
 A white flame tapering at the core of space. 
 
 And then methought the appalling night and gloom 
 
 Drew like an ocean's ebb sinkingly down, 
 
 I swimming out. The floor lay luminous. 
 
 As when by pale gray weather and no wind 
 
 A glossy lake at morning falls asleep: 
 
 Whence grading to the citadel for steps 
 
 An hundred pUnths of crystal led. They cut 
 
 The mild hght slant along their silver edge. 
 
 Describing circles and diminishing 
 
 Toward certain columns roundly poised atop. 
 
 Up to that place of supreme glory, I 
 
 Man of the niggard earth and god at heart 
 
 Mounted out of disaster to my place. 
 
 It seemed daylight growing and diffused. 
 
 Splendid, melodious, and of such perfume 
 
 As warms upon a meadow at afternoon 
 
 Of cloudless summer; and another light. 
 
 Neither of sun nor moon, awaked the air 
 
 To radiance wreathing on the point of all. 
 
 This was his palace, vastly and circular, 
 
 Builded of lucent marble, with a film 
 
 Hung in its height, erratic, shadowing-in 
 
 Unlikely plants and wondrous ocean-flowers. 
 
 And placed about stood pillars very firm. 
 
 Where top to bottom slender flutings ran; 
 
 And around every piUar drew a belt 
 
 Mid-high, that brake the rods of light in twain; 
 
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 And there, clamped in a sconce of gold each one 
 And cinct with silver snakes, the torches burned 
 Upholding flames of the everlasting fire. 
 The sacred fire that having once been ours 
 He stole again who names his own self God. 
 
 EPi. Alas ! thy scorn will drag his vengeance down. 
 
 PHO. Peace, man! He wronged me, and the day is 
 mine. 
 One of those torches is this in my hand. 
 It flamed to right where the entrance is, two bright 
 Iron-swung sheets of brass, firm-barred across 
 And bolted 'gainst the fearful universe : 
 While inside cried aloud perennial choirs 
 To a single note so puissant and superb 
 It seemed an ocean singing to the sun. 
 I heard, and seized the torch. In challenge too 
 Wrenching the clasp, I hurled it formless down 
 Before their gates and turned my feet away. 
 
 [It thunders.] 
 
 PTB. Father, be cahn. 
 
 DETj. O desolation and despair! 
 
 Thou, wretched man, shalt be our ruin. 
 
 PTB. Hush! 
 
 The winds are up — 
 
 EPI. It had to be — 
 
 PTB. Like streams 
 
 SwirUng before they burst. 
 
 DEtr. A thunder-cloud 
 
 Unravels down out of the burning sky. 
 
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[125] 
 
 PEO. I say, whate'er's achieved, once and for all 
 Stands in defiance, and we at Nature's heart 
 Register signs of our nobility. ^t>_- -^ 
 This is the symbol I have had my will, 
 Which down the cryitar"starrs mto the depth 
 I bore, a Uttle flame thro' darkness, won 
 From summits which henceforth are counted ours. 
 With it I 've lit the world. — Look forth, my chil- 
 dren! 
 All the unfolded earth, mountain and vale 
 Holding their fruits aloft, the knotty crags 
 Scattering colour, and the prairies green 
 With tuft and billow of infinite grass: 
 Of all their life your life is nourished. 
 Follow the rivers further to the sea 
 And launch your enterprise! The wilful soul 
 Goes forward to possess, and vindicates 
 From strength to strength the majesty of life. 
 
 EPi. Alas! 
 
 Nothing will teach thee infelicity. 
 The sunrise is not all: who shall forget 
 For stubbornness or greed the yesterdays 
 Which rivet us to the soil we come of ? See, 
 The woman weeps. 
 
 PTE. [to PROMETHEUS]. I '11 f olloW OU — hccd nOt 
 
 him — 
 Despite exhaustion for the hope — 
 
 EPI. The hope ? 
 
 What says she ? 
 
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[126] 
 
 PRO. More of truth than e'er thou knew'st. 
 
 DEtr. Oh, this it is that whets the rusty scythe! 
 And notwithstanding certainly we beheve 
 It nothing profits so throughout the year 
 To strain, yet strain all the year thro' we must. 
 And forajiope! Thou mad'st it so! The worm 
 WEI^bores the parched glebe is happier. 
 The goaded oxen plodding for a bread 
 Not theirs, more calm — thou mad'st it so! A curse 
 Upon thee! May thy tortures pay our own. 
 Our stupid agonies that in the dayhght now 
 Begin afresh! — I will not struggle more. 
 
 PBo. He whines. A pity 't is the world consists 
 Of such: who using nature and themselves. 
 Suffer their task and clog with lamentation 
 I The rush and furtherance of human things. 
 iFor hope, being had, suffices; in so much 
 We prosper, and the Gods are idle dreams 
 Strung in the void of our uncertain "BMnights. 
 - " ~ ""~" [It thunders.] 
 
 EPi. Another day has been. 
 
 DEU. Thunder again! 
 
 The eternal reason will be justified. 
 And truth descends against the haughty brain. 
 
 PTE. How't darkens! 
 
 PRO. [soliloquising]. She too loses heart. At last. 
 Whatever be done of large and generous, 
 Howe'er one's life be given, and freely all 
 Delight, affection, quiet sacrificed 
 
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[127] 
 
 For something bolder to the good of man, — 
 Yet at the last he will prefer disgrace 
 And hug his slavery, leaving him that strove 
 To fight damnation and despair alone. 
 
 PYK. Ah me, the dayUght vanishes in death. 
 
 [A clcmd gradually falls through the scene, and 
 all fades in gray obscurity.\ 
 PAN. [singing]. 
 
 As an immortal nightingale 
 I sing behind the summer sky 
 Thro' leaves of starlight gold and pale 
 That shiver with my melody. 
 Along the wake of the full-moon 
 Far on to oceans, and beyond 
 Where the horizons vanish down 
 In darkness clear as diamond. 
 
 EPI. On wings of memory the night returns. 
 The great bird gires before he drop again. — 
 SunUght and country that I knew! O sky! 
 Ye furl yourselves and wander shadowily 
 Into the endless backward of the heart. 
 
 PYB. It blows and darkens in. Where is he ? 
 ■^ [It thunders.] 
 
 THE VOICES OF ZEUS. Man, come with us, come 
 with us, come away! 
 
 PRO. [aside]. 
 His voice! 
 
 THE VOICES. Come to receive thy certain pain. 
 
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[128] 
 
 PRO. Justice of God, malignant destiny. 
 Delirious curse! how it confounds the brain 
 To see thee blast our strength, and day by day 
 With all thy crooked fingers here rip up 
 The patient fabric of our energy. 
 Over the endless harvest, o'er the home 
 We builded with great pain, for pastime thou 
 Spill'st putrefaction, and upon thy palm 
 The world shakes like an egg, to shut and crush. 
 THE VOICES. Be ready, for the time is Now! We've 
 come 
 To lead thee to the edge of wilderness. 
 PHO. We'll die in battle. Come near. 
 THE VOICES. Thou caust not die. 
 
 'T is thine to struggle everlastingly. 
 Look o'er the world, unhappy wretch, and come! 
 PAN. [singing]. 
 
 My dew is evert/where 
 Where things are ; 
 I fall and flutter and fare. 
 
 Leaving a star 
 By the roads of earth, in the far 
 Paths of the air. 
 
 Mine is the milk to charm 
 
 In a mother's breast. 
 Sweet with her pain and warm 
 
 With her rest, 
 The life that asks for a nest 
 
 In her arm ; 
 
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[129] 
 
 And mine is the violet 
 
 That so lies 
 In the evening of her wet 
 
 Sorrowful eyes. 
 For another thing may rise. 
 
 Bid her youth has set. 
 
 Nothing is less with me. 
 
 Nothing is lost. 
 For I smile on the earth and sea. 
 
 On the infinite host 
 Of the dead and the living, and m^st 
 
 On the yet-to-be. 
 
 PRO. Pandora, how thou singest o'er my pain 
 Yet of my humiliation nothing! Ah, 
 Farewell, and let thy voice for evermore 
 Sweeten the dreary acres of mankind. 
 
 THE VOICES. The day is at an end. 
 
 PKO. But not my deed! 
 
 The hght is theirs and I the giver thereof. 
 Long as blood beats within the human heart. — 
 Unhand me! Ah! 
 
 THE VOICES. Wear now thy chains. 
 
 PTH. Who is 't that chains ? Where is he now ? 
 
 PRO. Alone, 
 
 Beyond thy arms, in other hands than thine. 
 
 THE VOICES. Drag him on! for he balks the will of 
 God. 
 
 PRO. Yet does my work outstrip the penalty. 
 
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[130] 
 
 Nothing may die or live infructuous. 
 
 And I'm immortal: for I join with Being, 
 
 And nothing in the universal sphere 
 
 But is. 
 
 'T was with me for a while as with the sun 
 
 Upon the ocean: writing out in gold 
 
 The moving characters of highest day. 
 
 Which to dull creatures of the depth appeared 
 
 Fantastic and divine and possible. 
 
 THE VOICES. Drag him away! The stubborn mind 
 has burst. 
 
 PHO. Many times I have died and yet shall die. 
 For Nature rolls on, while across the chasms 
 From hill to hill and round from east to west 
 Voices pass on the echo to the stars. 
 So forms are laid aside, and if I lived, 
 I was the cresting of the tide wherein 
 An endless motion rose exemplified. 
 
 THE VOICES. Bear him away, for evening falleth in. 
 [The cloud lifts, prometheus has disappeared. 
 A great sunset fills the scene.] 
 
 PAN. [singing]. 
 
 My soul of sunset every hv/man day 
 In long sad colours on the evening dwells 
 And gives her solemn violet away 
 Over the quiet endlessness of hills. 
 
 Mild and gold hums from cloud to cloud, above 
 The obscurer fields, my -pity for an hour ; 
 
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 And then life goes to sleep within my love. 
 The world is drawn together as a flower. 
 
 Labour at last within the sold is peace, 
 And faithful pain after a certain while 
 Like other things will strengthen and increase 
 And colour at the last into a smile. — 
 
 Rest in my bosom till thy day be due. 
 Until my day be finished at sunrise. 
 And I behold thee glittering thro' the blue 
 And playing in the sunset of my eyes. 
 
 EPi. The sunset comes to die now as of yore, — 
 The sad recurrence of remembered things. 
 
 PYK. He's gone to suffer, gone whitjier? Alas! 
 Would I knew where his bleeding head will He 
 To give my breast for pillow and avert 
 The dreadful vengeance feeding on his soul! — 
 How crimsonly the day decKnes! Come sleep, 
 Deukalion, for to-morrow brings again 
 The sun he gave us, and the hope — the life. 
 
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II 
 
 FRAGMENTS OF A DRAMA ON THE 
 LIFE OF THE EMPEROR JULIAN 
 
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[This splendid fragment was begun in the first half of the 
 year 1901. Sticknet was then unable, however, to give it 
 the time and attention required for its completion, and 
 though he subsequently returned to it with unabated interest, 
 it was, unhappily, never finished. Sticknet had planned 
 to treat the life of Julian in two dramas, a shorter one, of 
 which the following pages axe a part, dealing with the 
 period before his election to the throne, and one on a much 
 larger scale, beginning with his coronation at Paris and 
 ending with his death at Maronga. Of this drama nothing 
 remains but an extremely brief synopsis.] 
 
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DRAMATIS PEESON^ 
 
 CONSTANCE: THE KING 
 
 EUSEBIA: THE QUEEN 
 
 HELENA: HIS SISTEB 
 
 JULIAN: HIS COUSIN 
 
 EUSEBIUS: LORD CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 ARBETIO 
 
 BEMIGIUS 
 
 MERCimiUS 
 
 APODEMIUS 
 
 Scene: Milan, Como, Milan. 
 
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[137] 
 
 ACT I 
 
 The Privy Council hall in the Palace at Milan 
 
 EUSEBIUS EEMIGItrS 
 
 ABBETIO MEECUEIUS 
 
 ETjsEBiTJS. Have you the news of 't ? 
 
 ABBETIO. Rumours, nothing more. 
 
 Eus. And yet by this the Fury should be dead. 
 They had him. 
 
 MEKCURiTJS. Oh, had him! perhaps! but well we 
 know. 
 While yet th' imperial prisoner, hither bound. 
 At Adrianople tarried, now and again 
 A soldier, privy officer, detached 
 From garrisons then wintered thereabouts, 
 Down the palatial corridors or plain 
 At the high gate with pleas of business still 
 Admittance to the Caesar asked. They say 
 None saw him, but — 
 
 ARB. . None. I have 't too certainly 
 
 That we should vex our comfort and belief 
 With your amused suspicions. 
 
 MEB. Often, Sir, 
 
 You're well informed, and oft again too weU. 
 
 ETTS. I judge Arbetio right. A costly risk 
 To slip a criminal so superb! Let be. 
 For newer things press for attention. 
 
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[ 138] 
 
 This monster dead, as out of doubt I say 
 
 He will be or is, one, only one remains 
 
 Of the imperial race, this man's half-brother 
 
 And cousin to King Constance, Julian. 
 
 I make no question (as having darkly, yet 
 
 In words sufficient, touched upon this theme 
 
 Amongst us all and certain other few 
 
 You know of) hereupon the agreement stands: 
 
 That he we speak of, newly here arrived 
 
 By order, Julian — 
 
 MEB. Tush! Some one comes. 
 
 [Enter servant.] 
 
 SERVANT. One Apodemius in the Courtyard waits 
 His Majesty's good pleasure. 
 
 ETJS. Looks he glad ? 
 
 SEB. Dead with his haste and journey, yet withal 
 A bearer of good news, your Lordship. 
 
 Eus. Let Apodemius appear — or no! 
 You '11 wait an order. [Exit servant.] 
 
 Caesar 's dead. If then 
 Occasion come to push our scheme, the road 
 In general direction cleared, it needs 
 No further counsel to begin, excepting 
 What special case the future bring to note. 
 We have our cues. 
 
 [Preceded by guards, the king and queen enter and 
 take their seats.] 
 
 KING. We give you all good morrow. 
 
 Has news arrived from Pola ? 
 
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[139] 
 
 Eus. Please you, one 
 
 Waits your good order, Apodemius. 
 KING. Waits ? How is this ? 
 
 Eus. This minute just announced. 
 
 KING. Order him 'fore us. Quick! 
 
 [eusebius calls in servant, who goes to fetch 
 
 APODEMIUS.] 
 
 You counsellors. 
 In such a matter, when the Roman realm 
 Shudders in earthquake, play a peevish role. 
 Where is this man ? It seems we wait ! It seems — 
 [apodemius enters. The guards meanwhile are dis- 
 missed.] 
 Tell him, Eusebius, he may speak to us. 
 
 APODEMIUS. His Majesty 's obeyed, the tyrant dead: 
 Yet in the extreme of haste so to outstrip 
 All speed of rumour and uncertain noise. 
 That first the fact this Royal Highness first 
 Might fully hold, I not an instant hung 
 With pen or style my duties to detail. 
 But straight on the issue, seen participant. 
 Springing to horse and spurring, here I am 
 Without a brief and only fit to speak. 
 Will 't please his Majesty — 
 
 KING. He has our ear. 
 
 APO. I pass how, to our order prompt, we rode, 
 Barbatio and I, hence from Milan 
 The long and wintry way hot-speed across 
 Venetia's windy plane-land by Trieste 
 
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[ 140] 
 
 And, rounding Caraganca, east and north. 
 
 On the ninth day, sunset, we did dismount 
 
 At the inn appointed at Petovio 
 
 And straight were ushered 'fore his Majesty's 
 
 High cousin Gallus, Caesar of th' Orient. 
 
 Whom first we reassured, then hand to hand — 
 
 He tame but twitching, and with sloven eyes 
 
 But soft, suspicious, timid, dangerous — 
 
 We stripped his regal robes and changing clapped 
 
 A soldier's shirt and cloak upon him. " Quick up! " 
 
 Barbatio said to the man, and in his eyes 
 
 Two sparks grew big and died. Then all of us 
 
 With Leontius, Lucillian, Scudilo 
 
 (The last at the whip), in public waggon drove. 
 
 'T was bitter dark. That night and all the day. 
 
 Served by relays and weather, rattUng past 
 
 Celeja and Emona, late we made 
 
 Nauportus; and a carcass to the floor 
 
 Could have no duU-or-deader slumped than I. 
 
 I slept the matter of a night-watch, then 
 
 Sat upright, cold awake, a crazy scream 
 
 Fresh in my ear. I crept to Caesar's door: 
 
 Which drawn ajar, I heard about his chamber 
 
 The man astir and shuffling, short of breath. 
 
 Who in deUrium poorly blurted out 
 
 Pieces of names and words, 
 
 Awful entreaties to a swarm of ghosts 
 
 That steeply wading up the dark, said he. 
 
 Uncoiled their arms at him. A moment then 
 
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[141] 
 
 Cut by a gasp — their fingers had his throat — 
 And suddenly over down he fell to ground. 
 From embers twinkling on the foreroom hearth 
 I lit a lamp — 
 
 KING. O finish. Sir! be quick. 
 
 He was a — Briefer much! I say, be much. 
 Much briefer. Ho, proceed. 
 
 APO. The morrow come — 
 
 KING [stamping on the ground]. 
 Proceed, I said. You hear me. Eusebius, 
 Tell this impossible man to say his tale. 
 
 MER. [aside]. 
 He's very troubled. 
 
 APO. Crossed the chamber where 
 
 Snoring upon their straw my fellows lay, 
 The door then pushing aside which forward sucked 
 My wretched flame, I entered. On the floor 
 He sprawled and opened up to mine 
 Unspeakable bad eyes, his flaxen beard 
 Red with a gash in falling, and his breath 
 From hollow nostrils hanging white and full 
 In the black cold. He staggered on my arm 
 Back fainting to the truckle-bed. Next day 
 Close on sunrise we rounded by Trieste 
 For Pola, slackening to the common pace. 
 For he was sick. There on the second mom 
 Arraigned before ourselves 't was asked of him. 
 In th' Emperor's name and ceremonious, why 
 All thro' the Roman East and Antioch, why 
 
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[ 142] 
 
 With such a thrifty hand he countersigned 
 That world of deaths. Whereat his visage grew 
 Gray- white and glazen; dizzy to a chair 
 He sank and, near distorted with dry sobs. 
 Blubbered the name of Constantina, his wife. 
 Who'd pricked him on. Barbatio then pronounced 
 Death on him. That moment in our council-hall 
 Especially despatched Serenian came 
 To urge the royal haste. We seized the caitiff. 
 Strapping his hands behind him; flung him down 
 Dead-faint with terror, an unfeeling mass 
 Lying outstretched, and 'headed him. — I saw. 
 And mounting spurred away: in proof whereof 
 Down at the kingly feet I cast his shoes 
 Of which the purple heels a thousand Hves 
 Ground into anguish. 
 KING [after a pause and slowly]. 
 
 Dead! Gallus is dead; 
 Our subjects and our kingdom and ourselves 
 Are rid — [eyeing apodemius and aside] he 's surely 
 
 speaking truth — are rid 
 Of one we nurtured, loved, and lifted up 
 Beside us: but th' imperial mind and blood 
 In him grew cancerous, and inch by inch. 
 Even as I feared of him, of others, of — [A pause.] 
 [To APODEMIUS.] We thank our servants well; a re- 
 compense 
 Remigius from our private fund will pay. 
 An hundred aurei. [apodemius and hemigius exeunt] 
 
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[143] 
 ARB. [aside]. H'm! Conscience-money! 
 
 MEE. [to ARBETIO]. 
 
 You say? 
 
 ARB. [to MERCURius carefuUy]. 
 
 It might, I say. Sir, have been less. 
 
 Eus. If one so private as a servant speak. 
 This riddance falls a miracle, done to all 
 By your own Majesty's most reverent self. 
 More shrewdly planned, more wise in every point 
 No measure e'er was took, and managed so 
 Direct from the Imperial Throne, amid 
 What trouble, care, anxiety! 
 
 MER. Indeed 
 
 A friend in office, who like none other knows 
 That Syrian region where this hydra raged. 
 Writes how the gladness Ughting every face 
 Blazons you forth in hymns. 
 
 EUS. And nearly now 
 
 Your sacred throne in undisturbed repose — 
 
 [A pause.] 
 
 KING. Ah, nearly! 
 
 Exrs. Nearly! Would the truth were quite. 
 
 QUEEN. Your drift, your meaning, my Lord Cham- 
 berlain ? 
 
 EUS. Not without counsel 'fore your Majesties 
 I broach a thing yourselves and (God knows) we 
 Distressed consider. Nothing now were said 
 And iny mistaken thought forgot and gone, 
 But that a question haply put, a word 
 
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[ 144] 
 
 Here dropped and there, a gesture, showed, 
 Alas! not only I, but others, nay 
 Many the same in secret had revolved. 
 I mean the dead man's brother, Julian. 
 
 KING. And — what of him ? 
 
 BUS. What say you, Arbetio ? 
 
 ABB. A studious man. 
 
 MER. If only studious! 
 
 For study then he left Macellum ? 
 
 KING. Left ? 
 
 Eus. This I 'd not heard. 
 
 MEE. Your Majesties remember 
 
 By their good pleasure certain years ago 
 These cousins, then but youths, both were removed 
 To Cappadocia. There with retinue. 
 Tutors and priests and whatsoever goes 
 For princely education, they abode 
 In the imperial palace at Macellum, 
 Free surely, but too young, no doubt too young 
 To roam at pleasure and — enough! — 
 
 QTTEEN. My Lord, 
 
 Think you in private here this matter needs 
 A language so obscure ? 
 
 MEB. BeKeve me, I mean — 
 
 [To the KING.] Well, in religion did your Majesty's 
 Blest father Constantine, and, following him. 
 Did not your sacred self edict and write 
 Yourselves and all the imperial realm of Rome 
 Christians, followers of the crucified .'' 
 
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[145] 
 
 In the which spirit these cousins of your blood 
 
 With care were tutored. Certain still it is 
 
 Incognito this very Julian, 
 
 Seen in Nicomedeia, heard and loved 
 
 The pagan Greeks; nor only churches there, 
 
 But elsewhere temples oft he visited 
 
 With friends, with many friends. 
 
 Eus. A viri;ue this 
 
 That nature richly gave him. A mere boy. 
 He wore misfortune prettily, as tho' 
 Knowing the popular heart; and walked abroad 
 With modest ways. But mine is harder news. 
 When the man Gallus, treasonable and 
 A prisoner by the common judgment damned. 
 Still unsuspecting here from Syria 
 Journeyed upon these summons, and awhile 
 Within Constantinople played the King, 
 This brother of his there met, conferred with him — 
 
 KING. Where had you this ? 
 
 EUS. Your Majesty — 
 
 KING. Where had you this ? 
 
 Around my throne I feel a sea of snakes 
 Rocking their heads, and struck I each new day 
 A score of them, the tide still hisses in 
 Snapping its poisoned whips. To keep alive 
 And steer this kingdom forward into time. 
 It needs a thousand eyes, and in the skull 
 Brains hke an ant-hill. So then JuUan 
 Talked with this madman and, you say, conspired — 
 
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[146] 
 
 Eus. Conferred — 
 
 KING. And Gallus came — he surely knew 't — 
 
 To answer justice. 
 
 EUS. Oh, very like, altho' 
 
 It appears he knew not. 
 
 KING. I know a thousand things: 
 
 Rancorous memories, present ills and fears. 
 And wicked calculations yet to be. 
 They talked of, whispering, this tricky pair. 
 
 MEB. They're now no more a pair, your Majesty. 
 
 QUEEN [to EUSEBIUS]. 
 
 'T was in Constantinople — how long ago 
 Say you, my Lord, this happened ? 
 
 BUS. Of the day, 
 
 Tho' my report in nothing specifies, 
 'T were easy reckoning — if 't be true or false. 
 
 QUEEN. I 'd somehow thought the prince about those 
 days 
 Half way to Milan here. 
 
 AEB. Indeed. 
 
 QUEEN. My Liege, 
 
 Rather than hang in this uneasy thought 
 And catch suspicion, say, we heard the man 
 Here now himself — 
 
 KING. Not now. 
 
 QUEEN. For ne'er as yet 
 
 Yourself have seen him; scarcely at court have we 
 Noticed his figure, consecrate it seems 
 To dusty books and dead philosophies. 
 
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[147] 
 
 From his apartments, neighbour tho' he be. 
 He goes abroad affrighted, gloomy, shy. 
 And blinking in the royal light. A word 
 Might lure him to us, or at least disclose 
 His deeper thought. 
 
 KING. Not now, not here. 
 
 QUEEN. Methinks 
 
 It ill befits our Selves and ministers 
 To make gossip of justice; and yourself 
 Are in this thing distinguished that you dealt 
 Only the large inevitable Fate. 
 
 KING. As far as in us lies. 
 
 QiTEEN. In whom lies all. 
 
 Whom all regards, of whom does all depend. 
 
 KING. And so, alas, we were eternity. 
 
 QUEEN. Now worthily yourself — as one who sees 
 The heart of things — a moment here admit 
 This man before you. Maybe he's a thing 
 Unfit your use: well, then away with him. 
 Your purpose Hes across the world too swift 
 For mean distinction: so, away with him. 
 But if he 've stuff to serve, obey you and 
 Receive your orders, here a moment lost 
 Is wisdom, justice, prudence and yourself. 
 
 KING. Arbetio, here, approach us. 
 
 Eus. [to MERCUEius aside]. The — the Queen 
 
 About this thing behaves a shade — what say you ? 
 
 MER. 'T is said she pities him ; and then, and then 
 A woman, childless, young — but not in youth. 
 
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[148] 
 
 Eus. You knew her fancy ? 
 
 MEB. I ? And you ? 
 
 KING [to ARBETIO]. And Say 
 
 We ask our cousin here before us, on 
 A matter of high concern. [Exit akbetio.] 
 
 ETJS. Your Majesty 
 
 No doubt in this is well-advised; we pray 
 That somehow rumour wrongs him, and somehow 
 He wUl assure us, being a different man 
 Than was his fearful brother. 
 
 QUEEN. Step-brothers 
 
 Are oft alike in name, nay, brothers even! 
 Yet in our cousin 't is not himself, the man. 
 Concerns us, but thj manner of his use. 
 For were he, as 't appears, a student merely. 
 To us he goes for nothing; and therefor 
 We see him, to choose amongst his quaUties. 
 
 MEB. Your Highnesses alone 
 Can judge their servants, or if any such 
 They wish. Nay, for the matter of his faith 
 He might indeed be pagan, might as 't were 
 Repudiate th' imperial creed — 
 
 KING. Is this 
 
 So certain ? 
 
 MEE. Your Majesty mistakes; I say: 
 
 He might so be, yet none the less subserve 
 The pubKc interest. Further, if 't be true 
 As 't is reported, he in private held 
 With the dead criminal his brother, why. 
 
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[149] 
 
 It matters less, much less it matters than 
 [Enter arbetio and julian.] 
 When Gallus was alive. 
 
 JTTLiAN [aside]. Was — said he was ? 
 
 To sting me. Four, five vultures! Many behind 
 Fly croaking up. Beware! It's full of eyes. 
 [Tothe KING.] Your Majesty has been pleased — your — 
 [As he bows at the throne he sees the Caesar's 
 shoes.] 
 
 Pardon me — 
 Is — is he dead ? 
 
 [Looks at AEBETio, who gives a sign of assent; 
 guards are fust visible at the door.] 
 KING. My cousin Julian, 
 
 We have summoned you to learn — 
 
 Jui/. [aside]. My hour is come! 
 
 KING. First how the Caesar Gallus, time ago 
 Complained of and accused day after day 
 In Syria, Palestine, in Egypt; cursed 
 Here at my throne so oft, so bitterly. 
 By soldier and civilian, multitudes. 
 It seemed it rained his crimes; and finally 
 Howled out of Asia by the hungry mobs 
 He had harried into frenzy: him, say I, 
 Our court sitting in judgment heard, and damned 
 By his own sentence. 
 
 JUL. [aside]. They're in ambush here 
 
 To choke me with his blood. 
 
 QUEEN. My cousin, come! 
 
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[150] 
 
 You're dizzy, sit you down. The dreadful news 
 Has left you sick. 
 
 JUL. [aside]. A woman to sweeten it! 
 
 QUEEN. Recover, recollect: your better mind. 
 Your truer mind will be, like us, severe. 
 It is the parent's pain, it is the ruler's 
 That mercy fails and in the larger end 
 Justice alone is good. Bethink you now. 
 This man your brother and our cousin, raised 
 To sit beside us on the Roman throne: 
 How can your love in him obKterate 
 The thing he was, or rescue even his grave 
 From all those visitors — 
 
 JUL. [starting up]. Yes, Madam, yes! 
 
 Out of the dark a wiry pair of hands 
 Upon their victim fastened either side 
 Shake the breath out of him, and hoisting high 
 His pitiable skeleton in the wind 
 Drop it away on some black shore where Ocean 
 Shouts a damnation on 't for evermore. 
 
 KING [muttering]. 
 Take him away, he is a spy of Night, 
 Take him away. 
 
 Eus. Your Majesty desires ? 
 
 [Motions to the guards.] 
 
 JUL. [oside]. 
 Their grips contract. O God, tear out my soul! 
 
 QUEEN. My Liege, we lose our purpose. Had we not 
 Some questions here to clear? 
 
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[151] 
 
 JUL. [aside]. Questions, oho! 
 
 KING. 'T was in Constantinople you last beheld 
 This man of wrath? 
 
 JXJL. Even as you say. 
 
 [The KING starts, eusebius smiles, jxilian ccm- 
 tinues aside.] 
 
 He smiles. 
 They 've trapped me — a deadly point — what was 't 
 I said ? 
 KING. Often alone you saw him ? Around him you 
 had 
 Friends or a party ? What ! Th' appointed guard 
 Approved your intercourse ? Answer me, Sir, 
 Your money oiled the locks, and you with GaUus 
 Compared your secrecies ? 
 
 JUL. Money — and guards ? 
 
 FooUsh or mad — I nothing understand. 
 'T was in Constantinople — so much I know — 
 Three years ago, as many a man may tell — 
 
 [The KING is satisfied.] 
 Arbetio, you were there. 
 
 AHB. My Lord, I was. 
 
 ETJS. In days more recent nor so long ago 
 As three years since, no doubt your Lordship knows 
 Csesar lay in the city ? 
 
 JUL. Perhaps. I know 
 
 It seems a thousandfold more years than three 
 Since last I saw his face. 
 BUS. Not, then, two months ? 
 
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[152] 
 
 JUL. Gods of Heaven! The patience of the sea and 
 wind 
 Would crack Kke glass and starting up the air 
 Draw blood from heaven. Can I go diving down 
 The muddy fathoms of your thought ? What is 't ? 
 My eyes are here : why, then, look into them. — 
 I'm lost: 
 
 The sun there sputters on the verge and goes 
 Whirled off in ashes; the earth swells after it; 
 It 's night, and cruel things, talons and beaks. 
 Dash criss-cross in the dark. 
 
 BUS. He's wandering. 
 
 QUEEN. Open the window. Spring and morning 
 soon 
 Will charm the frightened brain. It 's o'er. — My 
 
 cousin. 
 We wish you nothing ill. A rumour told 
 You and the Caesar in Constantinople, 
 Where marked for punishment he there abode, 
 Two months ago conferred. 
 
 JUL. Then rumour lies. 
 
 And for all petty mention and regard 
 Of time and place and thought and day and hour 
 I speak the rough, short truth: I was not there. 
 No one but knows, or might if know they would, 
 The places of my dwelling, — the better know. 
 That not my fancy chooses, but the will 
 Of mine imperial cousin and master: whom , 
 Never at all in aught I disobeyed. 
 
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[153] 
 
 KING. So we believe, approve, and do expect 
 As from a Christian subject. 
 
 JUL. [aside]. Christian! 
 
 MEB. [to EUSEBIUS]. 
 
 He sticks at Christian. 
 
 KING. It had on us devolved. 
 
 Child that you were, to rear you and to instruct; 
 And at Macellum where those your boyish years 
 In good seclusion passed, well you remember 
 We appointed to you prelates and divines 
 Of that True Faith whereof blest Constantine, 
 My august father, champion first arose. 
 For he, we after him, and with us you. 
 Abjure the foolish gods: our throne adores 
 Christ Jesus: Rome and Christendom. 
 
 MER. [to ETJSBBIUS]. 
 
 He frowns. 
 
 EUS. [to MEECUBItrs]. 
 
 This man we called a bookworm hides 
 r the scabbard of his mind a fearful thought. 
 I'll not believe it stands for him in earnest 
 With baubles of rehgion. 
 
 MER. [to EtrsEBius]. So Say I. 
 
 EUS. [aside]. 
 'T is passing strange. 
 
 KING. You 're silent, answer us. 
 
 JUL. Of me was nothing asked. 
 
 KING. You're trifling. Sir. 
 
 Of old it seems you knew Nicomedeia 
 
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[ 154] 
 
 And from Macellum wandered oft, a boy, 
 In her downfalling temples. 
 
 JUL. [aside]. Desperation! 
 
 The Christians on the scent: I stand at bay. 
 
 KING. Is 't true ? 
 
 JUL. Macellum ne'er I left at all 
 
 But by your order. It grates me to repeat 
 I speak the truth; and, good or bad, my witness 
 I cannot better, not I. Am I a skulk, 
 A beast that steals at evening slyly abroad ? 
 All they can see who will, [aside] and many watch. 
 
 KING. You visit oft and travel far to see 
 The ruined shrines. 
 
 JUL. [quickly, then dreaming]. 
 
 In this was no restriction 
 Upon me made. My study long has lain 
 In things forgot, or nearly; and of them 
 The shadows lengthening at later day 
 And spiritual out of the sun's great heart 
 In violet, in crimson, and in gold » 
 Walk the forlorn campanias, to the sound 
 Of Homer's hymns in order filing on 
 Between Ionian columns — [mebcubius smiles.] Mer- 
 
 curius. 
 Did ever you see an ape ? 
 
 MEB. My Lord, I did. 
 
 JUL. Theygrin, they chuckle: think you they under- 
 stand ? 
 
 MEB. No doubt your Lordship speaks 
 
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[155] 
 
 Of the philosophers and pagan priests 
 That in the gardens of Nicomedeia — 
 Edesius, Chrysanthius, Maximus — 
 
 JUL. Poor courtier, you blaspheme. 
 
 KING. What are these men ? 
 
 JUL. They 're — woe to them ! — this gentleman has 
 said it: 
 Merely philosophers and pagan priests. 
 Who in the brain's high nonsense are embarked 
 On seas of error, wastes of speculation. 
 After the quest and mirage of the truth. 
 Pity for them, my Lords! Had they been able. 
 They'd vowed their vulgar Uves to better ends. 
 To court and office, manners, money, and 
 The briUiant business of ambition; 
 Also, they'd long abandoned the ancient creed. 
 Abandoned long ago beUef s that — they 'd 
 Been converts to the new, but that their souls. 
 Saturate and all kneaded up in one 
 With dull ideals of an extinguished world. 
 Live in them and go Uke drunken mariners 
 Bows-on for foUy and th' enormous night. 
 Nevertheless in them I keep some interest — 
 Pardon me, all! — I stand not much ashamed 
 Of talking idly, now a little and then. 
 With these poor people. Alas, your Majesty! 
 Let me go back! I beg: let me go back! 
 I nothing ask of life, nothing at all 
 But what in the divine disposal lies 
 
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[ 156 ] 
 
 Obscurely measured to the simple man. 
 
 I do not look to climb the dizzy rungs 
 
 Of power and victory; suspicion 
 
 Loses her time about my lonely life; 
 
 I have no skill with men; the worldly art 
 
 Crazes and irritates me, and the sight 
 
 Of all this comphcation and design 
 
 Rubs an acid into my brain that makes me — 
 
 A pantomime. 
 
 KING. We '11 further talk of this 
 
 Another time. The charges laid against you — 
 As kindly we foresaw — are things to warn 
 Your farther life. You leave us. 
 
 [Exit JULIAN slowly.] 
 
 Eirs. [to MERCuKius]. Of two things 
 
 This man is one: a viper that belief 
 Gasps to conceive of, or else a simpleton 
 Fast going mad. 
 
 MEK. [to EUSEBIUS]. 
 
 He may be what he seems. 
 
 KING. Your presences we later shall require. 
 From our infinite realm at various points 
 Bad news of war and insurrection crowds 
 So thick I doubt myself. A single man. 
 Whoe'er he be and at his own self's best. 
 Recoils, and weakening pitiably cries 
 He's but a man. 
 
 Eus. This cannot here be said. 
 
 And Fortune bows to Genius on a throne. 
 
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[157] 
 
 KING. You'll find our counsellors assembled: they 
 With you await our pleasure. 
 
 [Exeunt eusebius, merctjhius, and abbetio.] 
 
 Eusebius 
 Alone deserves our sum of royal trust. 
 
 queen. As for this Julian — 
 
 KING. Of him — 
 
 QtTEEN. His brain 
 
 With study and solitude is all o'erwrought. 
 He's a mad child; only a Kttle rest 
 And looking leisurely in human eyes 
 Would quite restore him. The stuff and fibre is 
 
 there 
 That you should use, and in your thoughts alone 
 Of all the cunning men 't was plain to see 
 You guessed him out. 
 
 KING. I did, no doubt I did. 
 
 QUEEN. The Spring 's far gone and Summer comes 
 apace: 
 We leave for Como. What say you, my Liege ? 
 Your sister Helena and myself can take 
 This madcap with us; we'll have Mercurius 
 To advise our action. Near us he'll betray 
 His way of Kfe, his nature and his hope. 
 We '11 make him ours or — What character had his 
 father ? 
 
 KING. I knew him little; speak not of him. 
 
 QUEEN. Or else 
 
 What is to 'come of him ? 
 
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[158] 
 
 KING. Accursed thought. 
 
 QUEEN. Then trust us with him. 
 
 KING. Take him away. 
 
 But hold, but — understand me — day and night 
 Held fast. I think he should not ever escape. 
 
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[159] 
 ACT II 
 
 FRAGMENTS 
 I 
 
 JULIAN. . . . there singing mends 
 
 His tackles on the shore — 
 
 KEMiGius. I '11 bid him stop 
 
 To trouble you with his noise. 
 
 QUEEN. . . . but that it's youth. 
 
 We all had youth, but not all sang it thro'. 
 
 II 
 QUEEN The rarer gift 
 
 Is in the uses of imagination. 
 Many a poet or philosopher 
 Above his private ecstasy has seen 
 Venus and Truth, but from the sacred mount 
 With inward glory silently descended 
 Too selfish or too poor to speak a word. 
 Some veiy few have spoken, and by them 
 Humanity reminded to herself 
 More truly lives. But fewer, oh, how much fewer 
 Are they who crowning inspiration gave 
 The proof and grace of a majestic Ufe, 
 And in the sordid world, the press of men. 
 Greed, pleasure, crime, abandon, passion, death. 
 Still armoured in their visionary gold 
 Did human deeds. 
 
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[160] 
 
 Rather in this they fail; and by how much 
 The flame rolls whiter thro' their mortal heart. 
 Their brain more terrible, their open eyes 
 Quicker and more fantastic, and thei^ souls 
 Strung for a brighter flight among the stars. 
 So their relapse outdoes disaster — as if 
 Genius were a debt of Man to Nature 
 Paid alive on itself. 
 
 JUL. You know not what it is to be alone; 
 You know it not. 
 
 Eus. Oh, God forgive you this. 
 
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Ill 
 
 LATER LYRICS 
 
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[It is impossible accurately to date many of the thirty-two 
 poems in this section. It is, however, extremely probable 
 that none were written before the publication of " Dramatic 
 Verses" (October, 1902). The first nine poems are prob- 
 ably earlier than the remaining twenty-three. These last, 
 some of which can be correctly dated, had been collected 
 by the author before his death for inclusion in a volume 
 which he intended soon to publish. They must be taken, 
 therefore, as representing the last lyrical expression of Stick- 
 net's genius.] 
 
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[165] 
 
 Listen! As though from other tunes and days. 
 
 Continuous and one and hard to know. 
 
 An hymn of human angels very low 
 
 Drifts o'er the ground and by the seashore stays 
 
 Ebbed in the lonely ripple. Hush, it strays 
 
 More near the time and being that are now. 
 
 And, as together with them soon to go. 
 
 Sings itself further on and on always. 
 
 And it will come to pass we also then. 
 
 In some more crimson twilight of our lives. 
 
 Suddenly in the choir nor knowing why. 
 
 Will have a voice within us: all we men 
 
 Between the time that gives and that deprives 
 
 Take up the theme and pass it, as we die. 
 
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[166] 
 
 II 
 
 I SAW how that a painter, given o'er 
 
 To love's persuasion, heeded less and less 
 
 The voice that crying in the wilderness 
 
 Had made him strong and lonely and obscure; 
 
 Then as he wandered in the world once more. 
 
 Upon his canvas coloured a distress 
 
 Of dreams and fancy dirtied in the press. 
 
 And gray descended where was light before. 
 
 Wherefore my soul in suffering addressed 
 
 Her questioti, asking if these lovers e'et 
 
 Had laid the burden of themselves to rest. 
 
 I know that either, smothering despair. 
 
 Had turned away and shed a dreadful tear, — 
 
 And notwithstanding sought each other's breast. 
 
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[167] 
 
 III 
 
 With long black wings an angel standing by 
 Opened his anns, as had he a lover been. 
 His lips were very cold and lingered thin 
 Along my lips half-broken with a cry. 
 From all his body I most dreadfully 
 Did draw the cruel cold and slowly win 
 Heart-ache on heart-ache; yet I gathered in 
 The great black wings that stiffened as to fly. 
 In that embrace it seemed that years of pain 
 Passed very slow, and yet my body tight 
 I held to his till darkness took my brain. 
 Somehow I woke, and up the dying night 
 I saw him spread great glittering wings of white. 
 I knew your brow was cooled, you well again. 
 
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[168] 
 
 IV 
 
 You are to me the full vermilion rose 
 
 That Love with trembling arms uplifted crowned. 
 
 Yet moist from April's irised diamond. 
 
 Queen of the summer over all that grows. 
 
 And while the rings of petal still disclose. 
 
 My spirit likewise tenderly unbound 
 
 Falls out in webs of shadow, and around 
 
 The mercy of your beauty finds repose. 
 
 And often when the airs of midnight fail, 
 
 I dream I lift you skyward all for me 
 
 Into the moonlight of futurity, 
 
 A darkling star, a quiet nightingale 
 
 That wakens in my arms beyond the pale 
 
 Of what I was or am or thought to be. 
 
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[169] 
 
 The trees and shrubbery glimmer. 
 
 Lilacs are over. 
 
 A little more sun, and summer 
 
 Will glow in the clover. 
 
 DarUng, why tarry so? Come to your lover! 
 
 I have played alone in the Spring, 
 
 Laughed at the flowers 
 
 And the birds that nibbling their wing 
 
 Perched on the old gray towers. 
 
 But, darling, the leaves cannot stay on the bowers. 
 
 I've tripped it away with your shadow 
 
 Over the grasses. 
 
 And stayed where a breath of meadow 
 
 Happily passes 
 
 Into the city and under the chestnut masses. 
 
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[170] 
 
 VI 
 
 A GLAD little rift, so shy 
 Back of the boughs' black net. 
 Shows in the hurrying sky 
 Blue as a violet. 
 There! — but it's all blown by. 
 
 O what a wind to-day 
 
 Playing at hide and seek 
 
 After the pale sun-ray 
 
 That sUps from the cloud, — ■ and quick 
 
 It 's raining over the way. 
 
 But I know the winter is done. 
 No one but me! I know. 
 Listen, Lovely, my own. 
 Where under the melted snow 
 Softly we lie alone. 
 
 Open the darling eyes. 
 Breathe of the early air! 
 My heart, if the weather surprise. 
 Will shelter thy bud from care. 
 Trust me, darUng, arise. 
 
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[171] 
 
 VII 
 
 I LOVE thee longer and I love thee most — 
 Altho' I love thee always to the end — 
 To-day among the blossoms lightly tossed 
 That with the sunshine blend. 
 
 Below the bright new leaves and wandering 
 Within the warm and lilac-laden breeze, 
 I love thee most this only day of spring 
 Under the open trees. 
 
 This thick curied hyacinth is all for thee. 
 The tulips yonder wave to get a smile. 
 Make them as happy, love! Ah happy me! 
 Love them a little while. 
 
 I am so happy, happy, being thine! 
 
 There draws throughout my breast from backward far 
 
 A lonely highroad up to the sky line. 
 
 To thee, my sunset-star. 
 
 And tip-toe on the height my soul looked up 
 With asking eyes, and softly flew away. 
 I love thee in the ways of Paradise, 
 I love thee most to-day. 
 
 The sun is westering in thy dark red hair; 
 Let me throw down my armful here of bloom, 
 And leaned on this acacia let us share 
 The daylight going home. 
 
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[ 172] 
 
 And suffer once that from thy lips I drink 
 The livelong happiness of our to-day, 
 Till at thy feet in songs and prayer I sink 
 That thou shouldst call me thine. 
 
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[173] 
 
 VIII 
 
 Dear and rich as a dawn of summer 
 Over the sea and the irised foam. 
 Out of the past a bright newcomer 
 Into my arms thou wingest home. 
 
 Here on the shore with wild lips parted 
 I lift my hands in quivering prayer. 
 Sunlight is thou, and thou sunhearted 
 Draw'st bright-eyed thro' the golden air. 
 
 All the days that have tarried sterile 
 Burst into flower and Uft their crown. 
 Walk, my sweet, from the past and peril 
 Into my heart and lay thee down. 
 
 For nothing of life or the days I wander. 
 Myself, hereafter, before or now. 
 Or the hour I save or the year I squander 
 Is anything any more but thou. 
 
 I've pressed thee a perfume of all my spirit 
 And jewelled the twilight of my soul: 
 O my darhng, anoint thee! wear it! 
 The days blow by and the seasons roll. 
 
 Come! 'bove us here in the russet heather 
 Hold thou away to the westering sun 
 This bunch of grapes, till they grow together 
 And glow and globe like a harvest moon! 
 
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[174] 
 
 Then we '11 ravish them for a greeting. 
 And look so near in each other's eyes 
 I'll feel thy blood thro' my bosom beating 
 And sigh for my all of Hfe thy sighs. 
 
 Nay, and here are my lips that kiss thee. 
 Here my cheek on thy bosom rests; 
 And filled with light, in my eyes grown misty. 
 The lilies in evening of thy breasts; 
 
 Here is the cup of my hfe's full measure: 
 Put thy lips to it. Heaven of mine! 
 Thine so long as it be thy pleasure, — 
 Were't so no longer, yet always thine. 
 
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[1751 
 
 IX 
 
 And, the last day being come, Man stood alone 
 Ere sunrise on the world's dismantled verge, 
 Awaiting how from everywhere should urge 
 The Coming of the Lord. And, behold, none 
 
 Did come, — but indistinct from every realm 
 Of earth and air and water, growing more 
 And louder, shriller, heavier, a roar 
 Up the dun atmosphere did overwhelm 
 
 His ears; and as he looked affrighted round 
 Every manner of beast innumerable 
 All thro' the shadows crying grew, until 
 The wailing was like grass upon the ground. 
 
 Asudden then within his human side 
 Their anguish, since the goad he wielded first. 
 And, since he gave them not to drink, their thirst. 
 Darted compressed and vital. — As he died. 
 
 Low in the East now lighting gorgeously 
 He saw the last sea-serpent iris-mailed 
 Which, with a spear transfixed, yet availed 
 To pluck the sun down into the dead sea. 
 
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[176] 
 
 X 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 Soft be your journey as a bird's 
 Who, feeling winter whet the air. 
 Gyres and from the zenith there 
 Slants infinitely down southwards 
 On outspread wings 
 And sings. 
 
 Within my bosom blew this rose 
 That on the moonlit autumn wind 
 I toss to you — and may you find 
 Upon your pillow of repose 
 The flower of 
 My love. 
 
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[177] 
 
 XI 
 
 A FLOWER 
 
 As kneeling at a water's edge 
 Into my heart when I look down. 
 Thy face uprising from the sedge 
 Lies on the surface water-blown; 
 
 And while the current pushes rings 
 About thy cheek, thy chin and brow, 
 I muse and ponder many things: 
 For who am I ? am I not thou ? 
 
 'T is therefore all these idle hours 
 I spend alone and none knows why: 
 I see thee in the water-flowers 
 Upon the current doubtfully. 
 
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[178] 
 
 XII 
 
 A STONE 
 
 With burning hands and eyes all dull 
 I bring to you this drop of fire. 
 This topaz where the summerful 
 Of August afternoons expire. 
 
 The stone you gave me long ago: 
 A meteor from your life, it sought 
 My lonely bosom and below 
 Lay glowing in the gloom of thought. 
 
 From thence I took it pure and whole 
 To comfort me to-day, and found 
 That from the waters of my soul 
 These bands of gold have drawn around. 
 
 This little setting's nervous art. 
 Slow-formed but mighty, made to hold 
 The sunshine visiting the dark — 
 You, darling, that my arms enfold. 
 
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[179] 
 
 XIII 
 
 PARDON 
 
 I DREAMED that I was blind and you were mine; 
 
 And for that I had spoiled your better part, 
 
 Did iron shame and frenzy pace my heart 
 
 Like wolves. Yet sweeter ne'er the sun did shine. 
 
 The swaying flowers, the colours vespertine 
 
 And the strange quietude of human art. 
 
 In my dead eyes I felt the water start 
 
 And f alUng down I prayed : " If I am thine, 
 
 That here within thy shadow I am well 
 
 And Kve so in the nearness of thy soul. 
 
 Forgive me that I linger in thy sight ! 
 
 Forgive that up the diffs of heaven I stole 
 
 And at the brink seized thee and with thee fell 
 
 Backward and down the oceans of the night." 
 
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[180] 
 
 XIV 
 
 SERVICE 
 
 Chide me not, darling, that I sing 
 FamiKar thoughts and metres old : 
 Nay, do not scold 
 My spirit's childish uttering. 
 
 I know not why 't is that or this 
 I munnur to you thus or so: 
 Only I know 
 It throbs across my silences. 
 
 It blows over my heart, — a long 
 Infinite wind, again, again! 
 Again! and then 
 My life kneels down into a song. 
 
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[181] 
 
 XV 
 CHESTNUTS IN NOVEMBER 
 
 Not all the trees are done, the branches mean, 
 
 The trunks begrimed and sodden, no, not all. 
 
 How fresh and, tho' a few, how prodigal 
 
 On yonder chestnut here and there are seen 
 
 White wisps, and, frilled about them, bits of green! 
 
 They colour on the deadness of the Fall, 
 
 They spring and with the 'lated swallows call 
 
 Happy next year into the year that 's been. 
 
 O call not Nature spendthrift, and of these 
 
 Say not they bloom in error for the frost ! 
 
 The sweetness of all things are promises 
 
 That sing our souls a Uttle further on 
 
 Toward that which may be found in what is lost. 
 
 Which may come back again of what is gone. 
 
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[182] 
 
 II 
 
 I ALSO, where I stand within thy soul 
 A plant of thine and growing in thy year. 
 Must, if the season tumeth to the sere. 
 If so it< please thee, lose my aureole. 
 Yet tho' my leaves to the last one should roll 
 Away down on the wind and disappear. 
 And I should nothing question but the drear 
 Great darkness should impenetrate me whole. 
 The midnight in my eyes would ne'ertheless 
 Not firmly hang, but sway, and breaking shine 
 With thoughts of gold and stars of happiness. 
 That at the end thou mightest repossess, 
 Mightest possess again and further bless 
 My sad and human acres, that are thine. 
 
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[ 183 ] 
 
 XVI 
 
 FIDELITY 
 
 Not lost or won but above all endeavour 
 Thy life like heaven circles around mine; 
 Thy eyes it seems upon my eyes did shine 
 Since forever. 
 
 For aught he sumcmon up his earliest hour 
 No man remembers the surprise of day. 
 For where he saw with virgin wonder play 
 The first flower. 
 
 And o'er the imagination's last horizon 
 No brain has leaning descried nothing more: 
 Still there are stars and in the night before 
 More have arisen. 
 
 Not won or lost is unto thee my being; 
 Our eyes were always so together met. 
 If mine should close, if ever thine foi^et. 
 Time is dying. 
 
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[184] 
 
 XVII 
 
 With thy two eyes look on me once again. 
 Since certain days, I know not how it is, 
 I feel the swell of tidal darknesses 
 Climb in my soul and overwhelm my brain. 
 
 To-day is Spring, I know that it is Spring. 
 The new-mown hay about the lilac bush 
 Sweetens the morning wind, and there a flush 
 Of roses leads the garden's offering. 
 
 From leafy heights of chestnut hang and play 
 Long webs of sun and shadow, and the bloom 
 Is leaning up its head above the gloom — 
 White in the happy blue and yellow May. 
 
 And all the air sparkles with minstrelsy — 
 Fresh, early love-songs twittered wing to wing 
 Over the dew. O loved one, it is Spring! 
 With thy two eyes look on me ere I die. 
 
 It must be thus, I knew it thus would be; 
 And it embalms my soul now to behold 
 The eternal year disclose its heart of gold 
 And whirl in petalled clouds about the sky. 
 
 I do beseech thee here, as falling down 
 Before thy feet I render thee my love. 
 Look on me now, look on me from above 
 As tho' in heavenly truth thou wert my own. 
 
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[185] 
 
 XVIII 
 
 When bye and bye relenting you regret 
 All of these possible and vanished hours, 
 And, rolling up, the certain tempest scours 
 Your sky where not another star will set; 
 When all before your eyes, no longer wet. 
 By hfe's memorial paths and fading bowers 
 Shrivels the remnant of a thousand flowers. 
 Do not forget, I say, do not forget 
 The long and lonely hours I burned away. 
 The lonely days; in pity do recall 
 What miles of soUtude I suffered o'er. 
 It need not so have been, but you did say 
 It should be so, and I repUed, It shall, 
 And lo, it is, it is for evermore 
 
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[ 186 ] 
 
 XIX 
 
 LONELINESS 
 
 These autumn gardens, russet, gray and brown. 
 
 The sward with shrivelled foliage strewn. 
 
 The shrubs and trees 
 
 By weary wings of sunshine overflown 
 
 And timid silences, — 
 
 Since first you, darling, called my spirit yours. 
 
 Seem happy, and the gladness pours 
 
 From day to day. 
 
 And yester-year across this year endures 
 
 Unto next year away. 
 
 Now in these places where I used to rove 
 And give the dropping leaves my love 
 And weep to them. 
 
 They seem to fall divinely from above. 
 Like to a diadem 
 
 Closing in one with the disheartened flowers. 
 High up the migrant birds in showers 
 Shine in the sky. 
 
 And all the movement of the natural hours 
 Turns into melody. 
 
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tl87] 
 
 XX 
 
 As pilgrims, when the ways of winter ope. 
 Would fain behold the places where they prayed 
 Alive with violets and new with shade. 
 And, where they knelt, a golden buttercup: 
 So strains within my soul a wandering hope 
 To see how brightly now are rearrayed 
 The stations where I saw her, and, afraid. 
 My kneeling Ufe was lost and carried up — 
 A thing that in the praise of vanishing 
 Did hke an incense for a moment's space. 
 Burning itself away from what it was, 
 Outsoar the elevation and outsing 
 The choirs of glory, while with fragrant wing 
 It veiUng passed before Madonna's face. 
 
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[188] 
 
 XXI 
 
 QtriET after the rain of morning 
 Midday covers the dampened trees; 
 Sweet and fresh in the languid breeze 
 Still returning 
 Birds are twittering at ease. 
 
 And to me in the far and foreign 
 Land as further I go and come. 
 Sweetly over the wearisome 
 Endless barren 
 Flutter whisperings of home. 
 
 There between the two hillocks Ughtens 
 Straight and little a bluish bar: 
 I feel the strain of the mariner 
 Grows and tightens 
 After home and after her. 
 
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[189] 
 
 XXII 
 
 If tho' alone I scarce do sigh 
 Because thy spirit stayeth by, 
 Think what it were if thou wert near, 
 If thou wert here. 
 
 Within the sweet-aired mountain town 
 So far, so strange, so all our own, — 
 Why makest thou so long delay 
 So far away ? 
 
 The waters tumbUng make a sound 
 Of all our joys that fall to ground; 
 The stars shine to the uttermost 
 Of what we lost. 
 
 If some one only happy be 
 For this our narrowed destiny ! 
 If some one draw a gladder breath 
 Out of our death. 
 
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[190] 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Getidge not that I so long for thee. 
 These foreign hours within the land 
 Where every day brings song for thee 
 And 'fore my sight 
 In every light 
 Thou dost stand. 
 
 I ask thee not to follow me 
 
 And leave the treasure of thy soul, 
 
 Nor e'er again to hallow me 
 
 With the surprise 
 
 Of thy sweet eyes 
 
 Opened whole. 
 
 My dream shall not lie heavy on 
 The tender region of thy hope, — 
 The sunrise of oblivion 
 Across the sky's 
 Noctumities 
 Flutters up! 
 
 But when across the greenery 
 Of forest tree and meadow grass 
 And o'er the summer scenery 
 Sunlit and kind 
 The twiKght wind 
 Comes to pass, 
 
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[191] 
 
 The tears arise so fortunate. 
 
 The heart's delight so fair and free ■ 
 
 Alas that I'm importunate. 
 
 If yet I grieve 
 
 Not then to give 
 
 Half to thee. 
 
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[ 192] 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Spibits that might have been. 
 
 Ye birds and butterflies 
 
 Under the showers ! 
 
 Why will ye ever lean 
 
 Your weft of music and of irises 
 
 On my plain flowers ? 
 
 Come here, I pray, no more. 
 
 Or for a little while 
 
 Let me alone. 
 
 More honey's at the core 
 
 Of the blue thyme and Kttle camomile 
 
 There further on. 
 
 The sky is still and blue. 
 
 But changing in your flight 
 
 Flushes and sings. 
 
 Then do I crimson too 
 
 And humming gladly, suffer all the night 
 
 Your absent wings. 
 
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[193] 
 
 XXV 
 
 SEPARATION 
 
 Good-night, my sweetheart. Spring has come again 
 And the May moonlight strokes the rainy trees. 
 The sky is fresh and happy; fireflies 
 Rise in its azure edge and wane. 
 
 Alone I go and lay me down alone. 
 Yet on my Ups the sweetness of thy breast, — 
 Yet on thy bosom lay my cheek to rest 
 And fold my soul forever in thy own. 
 
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[194] 
 
 XXVI 
 
 AT SAINTE-MARGUERITE 
 
 The gray tide flows and flounders in the rocks 
 Along the crannies up the swollen sand. 
 Far out the reefs lie naked — dunes and blocks 
 Low in the watery wind. A shaft of land 
 Going to sea thins out the western strand. 
 
 It rains, and all along and always gulls 
 Career sea-screaming in and weather-glossed. 
 It blows here, pushing round the chff; in lulls 
 Within the humid stone a motion lost 
 Ekes out the flurried heart-beat of the coast. 
 
 It blows and rains a pale and whirling mist 
 This summer morning. I that hither came — 
 Was it to pluck this savage from the schist, 
 This crazy yeUoAvish bloom without a name. 
 With leathern blade and tortured wiry frame ? 
 
 Why here alone, away, the forehead pricked 
 With dripping salt and fingers damp with brine. 
 Before the offal and the dereUct 
 And where the hungry sea-wolves howl and 
 
 whine 
 Live human hours? now that the columbine 
 
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[195] 
 
 Stands somewhere shaded near the fields that fall 
 Great starry sheaves of the dehghted year. 
 And globing rosy on the garden wall 
 The peach and apricot and soon the pear 
 Drip in the teasing hand their sugared tear. 
 
 Inland a little way the summer hes. 
 
 Inland a Uttle and but yesterday 
 
 I saw the weary teams, I heard the cries 
 
 Of sicklemen across the fallen hay, 
 
 And buried in the sunburned stacks I lay 
 
 Tasting the straws and tossing, laughing soft 
 
 Into the sky's great eyes of gold and blue 
 
 And nodding to the breezy leaves aloft 
 
 Over the harvest's mellow residue. 
 
 But sudden then — then strangely dark it grew. 
 
 How good it is, before the dreary flow 
 Of cloud and water, here to lie alone 
 And in this desolation to let go 
 Down the ravine one with another, down 
 Across the surf to Knger or to drown 
 
 The loves that none can give and none receive. 
 The fearful asking and the small retort. 
 The life to dream of and the dream to live! 
 Very much more is nothing than a part, 
 Nothing at all and darkness in the heart. 
 
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[196] 
 
 I would my manhood now were like the sea. — 
 Thou at high-tide, when compassing the land 
 Thou find'st the issue short, questioningly 
 A moment poised, thy floods then down the strand 
 Sink without rancour, sink without command. 
 
 Sink of themselves in peace without despair. 
 And turn as still the calm horizon turns. 
 Till they repose Kttle by little nowhere 
 And the long light unfathomable bums 
 Clear from the zenith stars to the sea-ferns. 
 
 Thou art thy Priest, thy Victim and thy God. 
 Thy life is bulwarked with a thread of foam. 
 And of the sky, the mountains and the sod 
 Thou askest nothing, evermore at home 
 In thy own self's perennial masterdom. 
 
 [1902?] 
 
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[197] 
 
 XXVII 
 
 I DREAMED. Aye, it was very dark 
 
 And yet the cliffs were red. 
 
 I sat me down hard by a watershed 
 
 And watched as in the current sped 
 
 Spark after spark 
 
 Down the dark. 
 
 The pine-trees with their branches hummed 
 
 A warm, mid-suimner air. 
 
 That night none of the nightingales were there. 
 
 A cricket, in the grasses rare. 
 
 Close by, benumbed. 
 
 Sometimes thrummed. 
 
 I leaned over the water's flight. 
 And where the foam threads whirred. 
 Out of the cataract I freshly heard 
 The voice of an alighting bird; 
 " Come down the night 
 To the hght." 
 
 [1903] 
 
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[198] 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 Leave him now quiet by the way 
 
 To rest apart. 
 
 I know what draws him to the dust alway 
 
 And chums him in the builder's Ume: 
 
 He has the fright of time. 
 
 I heard it knocking in his breast 
 
 A minute since; 
 
 His human eyes did wince, 
 
 He stubbomed Kke the massive slaughter beast 
 
 And as a thing o'erwhelmed with sound 
 
 Stood bolted to the ground. 
 
 Leave him, for rest alone can cure — 
 
 If cure there be — 
 
 This waif upon the sea. 
 
 He is of those who slanted the great door 
 
 And Ustened — wretched Httle lad — 
 
 To what they said. 
 
 [1903] 
 
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[199] 
 
 XXIX 
 
 AN ATHENIAN GARDEN 
 
 The burned and dusty garden said: 
 " My leaves are echoes, and thy earth ' 
 Is packed with footsteps of the dead. 
 
 " The strength of spring-time brought to birth 
 Some needles on the crooked fir, — 
 A rose, a laurel — little worth. 
 
 " Come here, ye dreaming souls that err 
 Among the immortals of the grave: 
 My summer is your sepulchre. 
 
 " On earth what darker voices rave 
 Than now this sea-breeze, driving dust 
 And whirling radiance wave on wave, 
 
 " With lulls so fearful thro' the gust 
 That on the shapeless flower-bed 
 Like timber splits the yellow crust. 
 
 " O thirsty, thirsty are the dead. 
 
 Still thirsty, ever unallayed. 
 
 Where is no water, bring no bread." 
 
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[ 200 ] 
 
 I then had almost answer made. 
 When round the path in pleasure drew 
 Three golden children to the shade. 
 
 They stirred the dust with pail and hoe. 
 Then did the httlest from his fears 
 Come up and with his eyes of blue 
 
 Give me some berries seriously. 
 And as he turned to his brother, I 
 Looked after him thro' happy tears. 
 [1903] 
 
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[201 ] 
 
 XXX 
 SONNETS FROM GREECE 
 
 [1903] 
 
 STTNItTM 
 
 These are the strings of the iEgean lyre 
 
 Across the sky and sea in glory hung: 
 
 Columns of white thro' which the wind has flung 
 
 The clouds and stars, and drawn the rain and fire. 
 
 Their flutings now to fill the notes' desire 
 
 Are strained and dubious, yet in music young 
 
 They cast their full-blown answer far along 
 
 To where in sea the island hills expire. 
 
 How bravejy from the quarry's earthen gloom 
 
 In snow they rose amid the blue to stand 
 
 Melodious and alone on Sunium! 
 
 They shall not wither back into the land. 
 
 The sun that harps them with his golden hand 
 
 Doth slowly with his hand of gold consume. 
 
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[202] 
 
 MT. LTKAION 
 
 Alone on Lykaion since man hath been 
 
 Stand on the height two columns, where at rest 
 
 Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East 
 
 Forever; and the sun goes up between. 
 
 Far down around the mountain's oval green 
 
 An order keeps the falHng stones abreast. 
 
 Below within the chaos last and least 
 
 A river Uke a curl of Ught is seen. 
 
 Beyond the river Hes the even sea. 
 
 Beyond the sea another ghost of sky, — 
 
 O God, support the sickness of my eye 
 
 Lest the far space and long antiquity 
 
 Suck out my heart, and on this awful ground 
 
 The great wind kill my little shell with sound. 
 
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[203] 
 
 NEAB HELIKON 
 
 By such an all-embalming summer day 
 As sweetens now among the mountain pines 
 Down to the comland yonder and the vines. 
 To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray. 
 How do all things together take their way 
 Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines 
 And bread and light and whatsoe'er combines 
 In the large wreath to make it round and gay. 
 To me my troubled Kfe doth now appear 
 Like scarce distinguishable summits hung 
 Around the blue horizon: places where 
 Not even a traveller purposeth to steer, — 
 Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung. 
 And the girl closed her window not to hear. 
 
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[204] 
 
 EliE TJSIB 
 
 Heee for a thousand years processional 
 
 Winding around the Eleusinian bay. 
 
 The world with drooping eyes has made her way 
 
 By stair and portal to the sombre Hall. 
 
 As then the litanies antiphonal 
 
 Obscurely through the pillars sang away. 
 
 It dawned, and in the shaft of sudden day 
 
 Demeter smiling gave her bread to all. 
 
 They drew as waves out of a twilight main. 
 
 Long genuflecting multitudes, to feed 
 
 With God upon the sacramental grain. 
 
 And lo, the temple veil was rent in twain; 
 
 But thro' the lift their choirs in silver train 
 
 Still passing out rehearsed the human creed. 
 
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[205] 
 
 MT . IDA 
 
 I LONG desired to see, I now have seen. 
 Yonder the heavenly everlasting bride 
 Draws the white shadows to her virgin side, 
 Ida, whom long ago God made his Queen. 
 The daylight weakens to a fearful sheen; 
 The mountains slumber seaward sanctified. 
 And cloudy shafts of bluish vapour hide 
 The places where a sky and world have been. 
 O Ida, snowy bride that God espoused 
 Unto that day that never wholly is. 
 Whiten thou the horizon of my eyes. 
 That when the momentary sea aroused 
 Flows up in earthquake, still thou mayest rise 
 Sacred above the quivering Cyclades. 
 
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[206] 
 
 II 
 
 Aet thou still veiled, and ne'er before my sight 
 
 At sunset, as I yearn to see thee most. 
 
 Wilt thou appear in crimson robes and lost. 
 
 Aloft the crystal vapours of the night? 
 
 Is it the rule of all things infinite 
 
 To trail across remoteness and in clouds 
 
 The glory of their sacerdotal shrouds. 
 
 And shade with evening their eternal light? 
 
 O travellers abroad the mortal plain 
 
 On weary beasts of burden overta'en 
 
 By the unspeakable hours, I say: Press on. 
 
 For tho' a little part be hardly seen, 
 
 Hope spangles out the rest, and while ye strain 
 
 Another cloud already, look, is gone. 
 
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[207] 
 
 III 
 
 As now my ship at midday passes out 
 
 Into the lonely circles of the sea. 
 
 Thou o'er thy southern island loftily 
 
 Vague in the light appearest like a thought. 
 
 Over the blazing waves my vessel caught 
 
 Continues more into infinity: 
 
 And, as adoring I look after thee. 
 
 My eyes see white and in thy place is nought. 
 
 In the decline and speed of human things 
 
 When time drags on the dreamer by the hand 
 
 Like an unwilhng child and reprobate. 
 
 It is enough if on the parting sings 
 
 The certain voice he could not understand — 
 
 It is enough, it is not yet too late. 
 
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[208] 
 
 XXXI 
 
 SIX O'CLOCK 
 
 Now burst above the city's cold twilight 
 The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks: 
 For day is done. Along the frozen docks 
 The workmen set their ragged shirts aright. 
 Thro' factory doors a stream of dingy light 
 Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks 
 To hut and home among the snow's gray blocks. - 
 I love you, human labourers. Good-night! 
 Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache! 
 Good-night to every sick and sweated brow. 
 To the poor girl that strength and love forsake. 
 To the poor boy who can no more ! I vow 
 The victim soon shall shudder at the stake 
 And fall in blood: we bring him even now. 
 [1903] / 
 
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[209] 
 
 XXXII 
 
 IN A CITY GARDEN 
 
 How strange that here is nothing as it was! 
 
 The sward is young and new. 
 
 The sod there shapes a different mass. 
 
 The random trees stand other than I knew. 
 
 No, here the Past has left no residue. 
 
 No aftermath! 
 
 By a new path 
 
 The workmen homeward in the city twilight pass. 
 
 Yet was this willow here. 
 
 It hung as now its olivg skeins aloft 
 
 Into the sky, then blue and clear, — 
 
 And yonder pair of poplar trees 
 
 Rose also, soft 
 
 And sibilant in the glory of the breeze. 
 
 It's early dark. One scarce distinguishes 
 
 Their sullen feathering in the autumn sky. 
 
 'Tis warm and still. 
 
 Dull o'er the town the vapours lie. 
 
 Innumerable 
 
 And dodging the uncertain stare. 
 
 The small, shrewd lampions dot the air. 
 
 Many like me 
 
 Loiter perhaps as I in after years. 
 
 As looking here to see 
 
 Some vestige of the living that was theirs, 
 
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[ 210] 
 
 Some trace of yesterday. 
 
 Some hint or remnant, echo, clue — some thing. 
 
 Some very Kttle thing of what was they. 
 
 Sure such are near! Else were it not so stiU 
 
 This evening. 
 
 So human-still and warm and kind. 
 
 'T is as of many moved 
 
 In unison of wiU and mind to sing 
 
 Low Ktanies to that which they had wholly loved. 
 
 How sweet it is 
 
 Under the perishable trees 
 
 To hear the wings of the one human soul 
 
 Fluttering up 
 
 In Time's dark branches to the lucid stars. 
 
 More than Despair is Hope, 
 
 And more than Hope is the Hope that despairs. 
 
 And more than all 
 
 Is Love that disbelieves the real years. 
 
 Here in this place 
 
 One August morning — when the earlier crowd. 
 
 Showmen or populace. 
 
 From many a region and of curious face. 
 
 Abroad the holiday 
 
 Quaint in the sun with garb and gesture glowed. 
 
 And, speaking grave or gay 
 
 The various accent of their lonely race, 
 
 Between the shadowy gold bazars idled away — 
 
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[211] 
 
 She, as a cloud 
 
 All sunrise-coloured and alone, 
 
 Thro' the blue summer trembling came to me. 
 
 I dried her tears and here we sat us down. 
 
 Little by little, as tripping oversea 
 
 On flame-tipped waves the daylight's long surprise 
 
 Sweeps worid and heaven in one. 
 
 So love across our eyes 
 
 Broke with the sun. 
 
 Happy we walked away. The fairy sight 
 
 UntangUng shook a thousand chequered fires. 
 
 Low under scarlet awnings rung on rung. 
 
 Copper and bronze and azurite. 
 
 Ranged on the sagging wires 
 
 The trifles chnked in the red light . 
 
 From beam and niche vendors in strange attires. 
 
 Slipping dark hands along. 
 
 Unhooked the quiet wool, the gaudy chintz. 
 
 Or, precious where it hung, 
 
 Long fluid jewels of auroral silk: 
 
 And dryly to the sense 
 
 Their attars old and dusty powders clung. 
 
 Still passed the weavers and the dyers 
 
 Many a jar, a bowl 
 
 Turned as of water or of milk — 
 
 Glazen and jade and porcelain — 
 
 Far down the shadows colouring stole. 
 
 As one had shook a jungle after rain 
 
 And basketing the drops at random spilled 
 
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[212] 
 
 Their red and green, their topaz and sapphires. 
 
 All were here piled. — 
 
 And wandering out we smiled 
 
 To see across the glowing noon so high. 
 
 So high and far. 
 
 The incandescent minarets and domes and spires 
 
 Lifting the fusion of their coloured choirs 
 
 To the sky 
 
 Softly — save only where 
 
 A flag or pennant fallen slack 
 
 Shotted the dazzUng air. 
 
 I came to-day to find her, I came back 
 
 Humble with sweet desires 
 
 Across this dun September atmosphere 
 
 To her. 
 
 I came, I knew she was not here: 
 
 Now let me go. 
 
 I came, I come because I love her so. 
 
 Not in the acres of the Soul 
 Does Nature drive the ploughshare of her change. 
 It is not strange 
 That here in part and whole 
 The faithful eye sees all things as before. 
 For past the newer flowers. 
 Above the recent trees and clouds come o'er. 
 Love finds the other hours 
 Once more. 
 [1904] 
 
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IV 
 
 A DRAMATIC SCENE 
 
 [19 4] 
 
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Digitized by Microsoft® 
 
[At the time of his death Sticknet was contemplating 
 the publication of a volume to be called " Dramatic Scenes," 
 in which the following drama was to have been included. 
 The title has therefore been retained. 
 
 This piece was begun in the autimin of 1903, after 
 Sticknet's return to America, and finished on January 
 28, 1904. It is, therefore, his last completed attempt in the 
 dramatic form of poetry.] 
 
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[217] 
 
 Scene: The living room of the Cellini house in Via 
 
 C , Florence. A crachling fire of oak-sticks in the 
 
 hearth, giovanni celmni seated, and his daughter 
 cosA spinning; later his son benventjto. 
 
 GIOVANNI. Has he come ? 
 
 COSA. Not yet. 
 
 Giov. The Campanile 
 
 Told seven awhile ago. 
 
 cosA. He'll soon return. 
 
 No doubt Marchone is hurried, works him hard. 
 Or a late client rich and particular 
 Puts them to trouble. 
 
 Giov. No, Cosa, 't is not that. 
 
 Or if maybe to-day, not every day; 
 For every day he lingers and retards. 
 He shuns our fireside, he no more clings to 
 Our tedious home that loves him all too well, — 
 Headstrong and hard and haughty! Why even me. 
 Me that begot him, poor old father, me 
 He hates. 
 
 COSA. Father! 
 
 GIOV. Deny 't ! 
 
 COSA. I do, I do. 
 
 GIOV. Why then can't he at evening, since he knows — 
 I taught him — so deliciously to run 
 The flute's heart-breaking scale, so tenderly 
 To use the grief of yonder clarinet — 
 Why does he grudge me ? Oft in after time 
 
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[218] 
 
 These rough refusals and discourtesy 
 Cry down the winds of thought, and one by one 
 In sobs before our parents' grave, we rue 
 Our sordid sweetness. 
 
 cosA. No, Sir, no! forgive him. 
 
 He's rough, is Benvenuto, and in nothing 
 Would pain you. 
 
 Giov. Why then refuse me so to play ? 
 
 I 'm old and cannot — " aged and unfit," 
 So reads the act. O Oosa, 't was a stroke 
 When first I read it — I carry 't always — here. 
 Here 't is! we'll read it over again once more: 
 " Whereas 
 
 " Giovanni of the Cellini, one 
 " O' the tibiccus or fifes to said republic, 
 " Is aged and xmfit for playing, and 
 " On his age's account can hardly come 
 " And every day appear to play and do 
 " Service to said repubKc as required, 
 " Therefore 
 " They have deliberated" — 
 
 Here, Cosa, read! 
 The words become too long for my old eyes. 
 
 COSA. Sir, you forget: I cannot read. 
 
 GIOV. ' Well then! 
 
 " DeUberated and in deliberation 
 " Have carried and have all in all removed 
 " The aforesaid Giovanni of the Cellini " — 
 Why do they say, I wonder, all in all ? 
 
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[219] 
 
 " From his said office of tibiccu or fife 
 
 " To said most high and honourable Lords. 
 
 " And because said Giovanni is poor and old, 
 
 " And has in their said palace service done 
 
 " Years six and thirty well and faithfully, 
 
 " Wishing therefor him somewhat to repay 
 
 " And tend his age and some support provide, 
 
 " Therefore have they decreed to same Giovanni 
 
 " The pension alms 't is usual to give 
 
 " Players of their said palace: pounds, to wit, 
 
 " Eight, of the little florins, every month 
 
 " During the said Giovanni's life." 
 
 I'm old. 
 And like mine unrequired melody. 
 My part is over. 
 
 cosA. A step — he 's coming — now — 
 
 It dies away. 
 
 Giov. Yet he detests the flute! 
 
 Old as I am and poor, 't were a good Hfe, 
 Tho' hard the wages, if at ending day 
 Good music by the candle sat — and his 
 Outsings by far Italy's loveliest. 
 I taught him: down upon the stops myself 
 I held his baby fingers. I'd divined 
 The perfect flutist in him, the lip and hands. 
 And stars of music in his big blue eyes. 
 This drawing he potters o'er at weary night, 
 Of groups and visionary postures framed 
 In scroll-work, while his feverish brain upreared 
 
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[220] 
 
 Hammer and tongs descends upon the ore; 
 This love of metals and design of forms — 
 You think him sculptor ? 
 
 cosA. Why, father, they say — 
 
 Giov. They say and push his obstination. 
 It happens oft our children misconceive 
 Their proper genius, and how much soe'er 
 We pull their error back to the good road, 
 They clench the bit and bolt. He 's a musician. 
 
 COSA. Yet in his fever — scarce he 's now recovered - 
 Whene'er you spoke of music, how the pulse 
 Grew flurried! You remember! spare him. 
 
 GIOV. Sure 
 
 I urge him to himself. He 's a musician. 
 And proved it well, when in the Palace Hall, 
 We fifemen playing before the Signoria, 
 My Uttle man was hoisted to the book. 
 And straddle upon the velvet shoulders of 
 The page-at-arms, his treble played away. 
 
 COSA. He was eleven. 
 
 GIOV. Ten, Cosa, ten — or nine. 
 
 But ten I swear to. 
 
 COSA. All Florence rang of him. 
 
 GIOV. O what a day when the organ pipes I made - 
 So full of angels that in recompense 
 Placed at Magnificent Lorenzo's word 
 On rushing wings they came tremendous down 
 Santa Maria Novella — how there they sang 
 On Benvenuto's baptism like a choir! 
 
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[221 ] 
 
 cosA. Sir, played they at miue ? 
 Giov. Come, daughter, in my arms. 
 
 In you they play forever. 
 
 I love to hear 
 An organ's fluttering base, a languid lute; 
 To hear the watered silver of a harp 
 Pass off in shower throughout the melody; 
 To hear a viol weeping — Cosa, I brought 
 Some old sticks homeward yesterday from work: 
 Go fetch them, from my closet, bundled in 
 My blouse. [Exit cosa.] 
 
 The master-mason said to-day 
 I was too old, clumsy my work. Alas, 
 And Benvenuto of the goldsmith earns 
 Half what he might at music. 
 
 [Enter cosa.] 
 COSA. I cannot find them. 
 
 And in the closet is nothing. Sir, but clothes. 
 
 GIOV. Lost then perhaps — but no ! Still gainst my 
 side 
 I feel them pinch; for weary 't is, the way 
 Thro' fallow fields from San Domenico. 
 I got them home ! among them a certain piece 
 Of grain and fibre, and, by my knuckle rapped, so true ! 
 Lost, no ! impossible, for I hid them safe — 
 Good Jesus, by the chimney, Cosa, there — 
 
 [He gets up from his chair and they both kneel 
 down, sorting the rubbish.^ 
 Some of them in the firewood ! Where 's my piece ? 
 
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[222] 
 
 cosA. Let me do't, father. 
 
 Giov. Ai, my old back and knees! 
 
 Where is my piece ? the candle ! O Virgin Maiy, 
 It's lost. 
 COSA. Here 's more of them. 
 GIOV. * Yet not the one. 
 
 COSA. Another. 
 GIOV. Show me. 
 
 COSA. Look, Sir. 
 
 GIOV. Love, 't is found. 
 
 It is my piece, for sure, it is my piece. 
 Your mother, Cosa, is thrifty and virtuous. 
 Good housewife, clean and good, so very good, — 
 But for the arts her talent and regard 
 Were ever small. — Up, help me, daughter ! up ! 
 
 [He gets back to his chair and sits whittling 
 and singing snatches, while cosa resumes 
 her spinning.] 
 My chair, and from the table drawer find me 
 My jackknife. Look, betimes this wretched board 
 In growing modulations will become 
 Half a viola, and well Luigi said 
 That such are music's silkworms. 
 
 cosa [aside]. Benvenuto 's 
 
 Uncommon late. He '11 not come back to-night. 
 GIOV. She lingered by the river-bed. 
 
 Dropped on a knee to levy 
 The swimming pitcher to her head. 
 Oh it was heavy ! 
 
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[ 223 ] 
 
 The eyes of love are soon to fill 
 And quick is the breast to quiver. 
 A star hung over the olive-hill. 
 She said to me : "Never." 
 In Campo Santo lives a grave 
 I and the moon together — 
 I and the moon together — 
 I and the — 
 
 'T is always so: the memory of a song 
 First weakens at the end and the poor singer 
 Rushing the climax like a stormy bird 
 Feels for his voice and hears it die away. 
 As, Cosa, you were saying — 
 
 cosA. I ? Nothing, Sir. 
 
 Giov. Purple anemone. 
 
 Why should the sunrise April mx)m 
 Gild and bedew thy petal torn f 
 
 My voice has much gone off, and by degrees 
 The mellow sureness of its register 
 Is shaken nearly all. I'll sing no more; 
 And then the viol throughout my merry life 
 I used and cannot play — the absent viol 
 Quite leaves the singer homesick and destroys 
 The foUage by the river of his theme. 
 
 I waited — 
 [To himself.] This timber lost — 't was pity pitiful. 
 
 I waited for her near her farm 
 Close up beside a cypress tree. 
 
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[224] 
 
 The road lay white as linen by. 
 
 And moonlight made the meadow warm. 
 
 She came, and as she came the air 
 Against her laid her veil and dress. 
 I held my brow for giddiness. 
 My hands for fever. She was there. 
 
 She put her finger to her mmcth 
 And down thro' olives led the way. 
 I followed while the bird of May 
 Sang down the branches on her yovth. 
 
 Along the glade of dewy dark 
 
 I breathed her, she had gone before. 
 
 I ran, I heard a shutting door ; 
 
 And soon the farm-dogs ceased to bark. — 
 
 Go, siUy heart, and let me be. 
 The wind will show you round the hill ; 
 Far down, the river turns a miU, 
 They say beyond it is all sea. 
 
 Go where you will, go where you please. 
 What should I care ? My heart is burned. — 
 Ah, God, if only she returned I 
 I 'd cry for pardon on my knees. 
 
 [A noise is heard on the stair.] 
 cosA. It 's he. — 
 
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[225] 
 
 [Enter benventjto.] 
 God, brother, how you 're ruffled, torn ! 
 Across your forehead — 
 
 BENVENTJTO. Hush ! givc me a dish — 
 
 Beans, mush — What have you ? I 'm hungry. 
 
 Giov. But, my son. 
 
 Your forehead 's — 
 
 BEN. Scratched, Sir: nothing. Let me be. 
 
 GIOV. Cosa, give him a soup. You 're bleeding, boy. 
 Cosa, a sponge. What was 't ? 
 
 BEN. I said. Sir, nothing. 
 
 GIOV. A scuffle ? 
 
 BEN. No. 
 
 GIOV. Come tell me. 
 
 BEN. What ? 
 
 GIOV. You fought — 
 
 BEN. Why, yes, I fought. What of 't ? 
 
 GIOV. With whom, I say? 
 
 BEN. With Piero Torregiani. 
 
 GIOV. Him ? What for ? 
 
 BEN. For nothing. 
 
 GIOV. Come — 
 
 BEN. Why — 
 
 GIOV. Come, you quarrelled: why? 
 
 BEN. He scoffed — 
 
 GIOV. At you. 
 
 BEN. No, not at me. 
 
 GIOV. Not you ? 
 
 Who then ? 
 
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[226] 
 
 BEN. He jeered at Michael Angelo. 
 
 Giov. God help us ! fight for Michael Angelo ! 
 He's mad. 
 
 BEN. Give me my soup. 
 
 GIOV. How happened it ? 
 
 A son who in the lanes of Florence walks 
 With boiling fist for Angelo, who, gorged 
 With Papal florins, grandly lives in Rome ! 
 What was 't that Piero said ? What was 't ? 
 
 BEN. He said — ■ 
 
 No, no, enough, I'm sick oft. Let me be. 
 I'm mad, you say. Sir: let me grind alone 
 And turn my knuckles in the granite. Yes, 
 He scoffed at Michael Angelo, and I 
 Nailed him a crash between his yellow eyes. 
 
 Giov. But why ? why, Benvenuto ? 
 
 cosA. Brother, here's 
 
 Your pot of soup; and now the water 's warm 
 I '11 sponge your bloody forehead. Sit you down — 
 Come quietly, now come and tell us. 
 
 BEN. Well, 
 
 We walked, Piero and I — I hate the man 
 And smell him Uke a pestilence — I walked 
 Down Via Larga, where from the Palace I 
 With certain drawings came. — No, I 've enough. 
 
 COSA. And then — 
 
 BEN. And there the splendid man, 
 
 Tall, beautiful, and under shaggy brows 
 A flash he cUps with bUnking — you 'd have said 
 
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[227] 
 
 A soldier, not a sculptor, but he carves 
 For them in England, and is now returned 
 To catch some poor Italian prentices 
 For export — me he baited, for a time. 
 But he'll return without, if he return. 
 
 Giov. He 's dead ? 
 
 BEN. I wish so — only a little more — 
 
 cosA. On Via Larga — come — 
 
 BEN. He met me, and 
 
 " That scroll there," asked the glory of his voice, 
 "Are drawings?" "So," said I; and he, "What of?" 
 I pulled him to the Duomo steps. — You know 
 'T was given out a fresco be designed 
 For the Palazzo Vecchio, picturing 
 How Ksa was besieged by Florentines. 
 And master Leonardo worked to purpose: 
 Before the walls and puflSng sky of cloud 
 A skirmish thrills the plain — hot work and high; 
 The horses rear, the riders shining up 
 To lunge with sword or battleaxe; one down. 
 Another falling, all constrained and each 
 Alive, — with certain seizure and defence 
 Of gonfalons afloat on tufted plumes 
 As ravishes the sight. 
 
 Giov. I saw the thing, 
 
 I was a draughtsman once. It is an art — 
 
 COSA. Was there another ? 
 
 BEN. Michael Angelo's. 
 
 A human hand can cast no further. 
 
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[ 228 ] 
 
 It is a summer's day, and Amo lies 
 Languid throughout the picture. In it bathe 
 A pack of f ootsoldiers which on the instant 
 Hear an alarm: the swimming strain for shore. 
 Some with uneasy arms are wading, others fall 
 Or splashing catch pieces of jutting turf. 
 While clear upon the bank the nimble ones 
 Run swift and naked to repairs of armour 
 And weapons stacked in file over the plain. 
 Such grouped and quick variety! So full. 
 Muscular and harmonious! Such reKef 
 Of flesh and surface ! It enlarged my eyes 
 With wonder and my brain with ecstasy. — 
 Bread, Cosa, and another flask of wine. 
 
 Giov. Was this your brawl with. Piero ? 
 
 BEN. Good father, 
 
 I'd copied this design of Buonarroti's, 
 And to Piero unrolled my drawing. He 
 With puckered nose said, looking: "Michael was 
 "My schoolmate: we together learned to draw 
 " Of Fra Filippo in the Carmine. 
 " He has a nose remembers me ! He used 
 "To hawk and whistle at our scrawls, to say: 
 " ' Your hero 'd best keep seated or his thighs 
 " ' Would, one jostle his heart, the other pull 
 " ' His hip-bone to the knee;' or 'Cupid there 
 " ' High up weighs fifty tons : if he should fall 
 " ' O woe unto the dwellers of the plain ! ' 
 " ' One day I stomached him no more. He peered 
 
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[229 ] 
 
 " Over me at my board: 'That spider-web' — 
 "I'd drawn a woman running. At the word, 
 " Sprung up I shot my knuckles at his nose. 
 " Consult it for my aim." He snickered, but 
 Inside my brain it swam Hke fumes of hell. 
 I leaned into his face and shouted: "Cur, 
 "You broke it?" "Little boy," he said. We fought. 
 'T was ugly doing. I caught him full, tho', when 
 He fumbled for his knife; but from the crowd 
 That screamed and thickened round us, certain friends 
 O'erpowering shouldered him deUrious home. 
 He fought me well. 
 
 cosA. You 're wounded, brother ? 
 
 BEN. No. 
 
 The scurvy fool! the braggart! I'd as lief 
 See adders rear out of my folded arms 
 As that man's face again. 
 
 Giov. This for my son ! 
 
 BEN. But I was hungry! There, I've eat enough! 
 Cosa, give me my board and pencils. 'T should be late 
 And father's bed-time. 
 
 [cosa gets him his drawing tools, benvendto 
 then works at the table while giovanni goes 
 on whittling and humming.] 
 
 Giov. At the jeweller 
 
 Marchoni's, any work in prospect ? 
 
 BEN. Much. 
 
 And of myself a buckle in good gold 
 Is ordered. I've a posture in my eyes 
 
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[230] 
 
 Of Sirens interlaced with golden scales 
 Roughing a silver ground. Leave me alone. 
 This candle gutters. « 
 
 Giov. Son, do you reinember 
 
 The ending of the song — for I forget : 
 In Campo Santo is a grave 
 I and the moon together — 
 I hear the rest, but hke an echo, gone — 
 Or going from the gateways of my voice. 
 BEN. [sings]. 
 
 In Campo Santo is a grave 
 Where I and the moon together 
 Go linger oft and cannot leave 
 
 Tho' dawn be in the weather. 
 Oh, let me hold her in my arms. 
 Cold tho' she be, there let her languish. 
 Only her kiss of death can warm 
 The snow-fields of my anguish. 
 GIOV. [aside]. 
 That voice and singing! 
 
 BEN. How supple is the strength 
 
 That coils the rondure of a Siren's tail ! 
 It Ues within the fine imagination 
 Of them of old to shape their legend so 
 That monsters have position in the realm 
 Of strict anatomy and reasoned things. — 
 The frame is square. 
 
 GIOV. [looks at him for a while in silence and then 
 :] , O my beloved son ! 
 
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[231 ] 
 
 I was a hand at draughting, I have worked 
 At stone and trowel all these many years — 
 Hard work, to give my little children bread. 
 Then, in repayment of my weariness. 
 To freshen the fatigue, that day hy day 
 Added at last now makes me an old man — 
 For see, my tenor quavers and my hand 
 Can't steer the knife to purpose on this wood - 
 The master-mason said to-day my work 
 Was bad and he 'd employ my age no more — 
 I laboured most for you: then promise me 
 You'll not forget and still practise sometimes 
 The flute I played at evening for repose 
 And taught you with my love in weariness. 
 I loved you, taught you, gave you all myself. 
 Music and singing were my joy, and you 
 Were to be my musician; but you turned 
 To another art — rightly, I say not no. 
 But yet remember music — let me hear 
 The crying of thy mellow flute once more. 
 Or sing to me as always thou hast sung 
 Since when I showed thee how upon my knee. 
 
 COSA [to BENVENUTO]. 
 
 Love, humour him. 
 
 BEN. I will not. 
 
 Giov. Benvenuto, 
 
 It is not much to give thy father back 
 A fluteful of his breath, to tender him 
 Across the early morning of thy voice 
 
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[232] 
 
 A song's worth of delicious gaiety. 
 You know not — you cannot know — 
 You know not what it is to hear aloud 
 Within the walls of age and poverty 
 Your singing child, aUve, alert, and full 
 Of small perfections in the art you love. 
 We artisans are jealous, and to give 
 The secret of our art is to give all. 
 I gave you all my music — play to me 
 As only you can play — a Uttle now. 
 For you and music are my evening-stars. 
 
 cosA. Brother! 
 
 BEN. Take off your arms. 
 
 Giov. Then let it be. 
 
 COSA. He's crying. 
 
 BEN. Let him. 
 
 COSA. Madonna, pardon him! 
 
 GIOV. Well then, to bed. Good-night. 
 
 BEN. [to cosa]. Give me my flute. 
 
 Give me the cursed thing; you know the words. 
 
 COSA [aside]. 
 He might have asked some other song of me ! 
 
 When first my eyes there, in the shadow of the meadow, saw 
 
 my God, 
 Like the lightning, thin and narrow, ran the arrow thro' my 
 
 hlood. 
 Tho' I struggled, yet I covld not, yet I wovM not look 
 
 away. 
 Asked his mercy to accept me or reject m^, as he say. 
 
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[233] 
 
 / gave him nothing, tho' what could I of my duty give him 
 
 more ? 
 Gave him little tho' I suffered all I offered at his door; 
 I gave him nothing freely, fvlly, for 't was aU I was or had. 
 Gave him every thought and breath and life and death and 
 
 wine and bread. 
 
 O Virgin Mary, in the awaking of the breaking Day of pain. 
 If he 's tired, let him rest and me he questioned for tis twain. 
 
 let me save him, earn his blessing, me redress him in the 
 
 sod. 
 Love can smother hell and hover with her lover up to God. 
 
 BEN. There! 
 
 Giov. O bless you, dear musician ! That 's my son. 
 What sound — you noticed, Cosa — tempered with 
 Sweet doubts and sweeter hurries. As I fall 
 From aged weariness away to sleep. 
 Your smooth arid sad cadenzas, Benvenuto, 
 Will star my dreams. 
 
 BEN. Good-night, Sir; Cosa, good-night. 
 
 [Exeunt Giovanni and cosa.] 
 This fluid music clouds me with a slag. 
 
 1 cannot see. My fluttering head and hand 
 No more are with the metals, and the Unes 
 Go one into the other hke threads of wool. 
 Among the many arts the lowest much 
 
 Is music: which with pitiable means 
 Is scraped and blown and twanged and — no one 
 knows 
 
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[234 ] 
 
 How or what for. O curse on't. To work. 
 I can't — must — will. 
 Giov. [looks in at the door in his nightgovm]. 
 
 That song, another time. 
 Not quite so fast, and your beginning notes 
 Less sudden and attacked with subtler breath. 
 
 [Exit GIOVANNI.] 
 
 BEN. If e'er I play again! 
 
 He pushes me 
 So every evening to the rack. Great God, 
 The very rhythm of my design is snapped 
 At the root short-off, just at the noble moment 
 When dream and comprehension fuse in one. 
 I'll wreck my greatness here, only to please 
 My father's whim. It stings patience. I — yes — 
 And here over my ruined vision, I 
 Writhe Kke a scorpion in a ring of fire. 
 Florence is not for me. I will abroad 
 And slake my rankling thirst for the great world, 
 For hberty, myself and what I am: 
 Enough! At dawn to-morrow off for Rome. 
 
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V 
 JUVENILIA 
 
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[The following section consists exclusively of poems written 
 before the publication of "Dramatic Verses" (October, 
 1902). Fortunately it has been possible accurately to date 
 most of these poems, which illustrate, in a veiy brief and 
 summary fashion, the early stages of Sticknbt's poetic 
 growth.] 
 
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[239 ] 
 
 ART IN MAN 
 
 I HEABD a strange pHlosophy, which taught 
 
 The Art is Man, the Artist is his Art; 
 
 That Poetry lives fleshly in the heart 
 
 Of poets, and mechanic in their thought. 
 
 And then, as oft before some ruined shrine 
 
 I have seen the pious man stand awed and pale. 
 
 So I, to see my heart's ideal trail 
 
 In dust and grey in ashes, once divine. 
 
 Yet came the Spring, and o'er the fleetness ran 
 
 A breath of song, a subtle fire, a life, 
 
 A voice: Say not the sum of things is man; 
 
 For like the wave-rolled spiral shell is he. 
 
 Wherein a vaster voice rings rich and rife — 
 
 A shadowy murmur of the parent sea. 
 
 [1892] 
 
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[240] 
 
 II 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 The air breaks into flutters low and sweet, 
 Smooth as the Kquid passage of the bird; 
 And as the ocean-murmur, faintly heard 
 Before the storm, its rippKng echoes beat 
 The ear. But then with swifter, bolder feet 
 The message comes; the music stirs the heart 
 To wild pulsations, until every part 
 Is glowing, fervid with a throbbing heat. 
 Slowly the memories of the past then rise 
 In pallid glory; richer streams of sound. 
 Wild with mysterious truth, all cloudUke, roll 
 About the heart and flood with tears the eyes: 
 But then a silence, stem, abrupt, profound: 
 A vaster echo trembles in the soul! 
 
 [1892] 
 
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[241j 
 
 III 
 
 NIGHT 
 
 Great night! no soothing friend to pain thou art. 
 
 Whereto a stricken soul may pour its grief. 
 
 To thee these human sorrows be too brief 
 
 To wake the pulse of thine eternal heart. 
 
 Thy powers are dead; and sterner peace impart 
 
 The silences of thy vast eloquence. 
 
 Our reason fails ; our minds succumb, too tense 
 
 To act; ourselves grow fragile, part by part. 
 
 So when thy pale infinitudes unfold 
 
 Their vastness, and th' eternal harmonies. 
 
 Threading their labyrinthine paths of gold. 
 
 Break on the vision with a sudden sting. 
 
 The soul is loosed, and in the boundless skies 
 
 A dazzhng Ught uprises on her wing. 
 
 [1892] 
 
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[242] 
 
 IV 
 EVENING 
 
 A STTTDT IN METRE 
 
 Summer is sweet. 
 In the air of the tepid night. 
 
 In the drowsy breeze. 
 
 In the blossoming trees; — 
 
 Summer is sweet 
 
 With its scented heat 
 And the lazy hours that ease 
 
 Every heart 
 From the toil of the day's hot light 
 
 And ceaseless throes. 
 
 With their pale repose. 
 
 Every heart 
 
 Sips of its part 
 Of the love that summer bestows. 
 
 Laggard and sweet. 
 The evening glides on its way; 
 
 And the glistening star 
 
 From the eastern bar. 
 
 Laggard and sweet. 
 
 With golden feet. 
 Climbs stilly the skies from afar. 
 
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[243 ] 
 
 Liquid and light, 
 A tremulous harmony sings 
 
 O'er the sleepy guitar 
 
 Its reverberate bar, 
 
 Liquid and Ught, 
 
 To the moon-paled night. 
 And the love of the glistening star. 
 
 Heavy perfumes 
 Prom the vine that grows, clambering still, 
 
 Wondrous and fair 
 
 On the trelKs' tall stair, — 
 
 Heavy perfumes. 
 
 Through the moonlit glooms. 
 Drift away from her purple hair. 
 
 Night rustles late 
 Through the trees with a measured tread; 
 
 And the late, late word 
 
 Have the gold stars heard; 
 
 Night rustles late 
 
 To the eastern gate. 
 By the goad of the east-hght spurred. 
 
 Swift are the hours 
 Now sped on their dusk-feathered wing 
 To the land of the west. 
 To the land of their rest ; 
 Swift are the hours 
 
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[ 244 J 
 
 O'er the dew-sprent flowers 
 Away, by the grey dawn pressed! 
 
 Slower and slower 
 Dies the song of the low- voiced guitar; 
 
 Like the bend of a stream. 
 
 The whole to a dream. 
 
 Slower and slow. 
 
 With a silvery flow 
 Ebbs away. . . . 
 
 Away, while slow 
 To the fields of the poppies of sleep 
 
 I wander, I tread 
 
 In the maze of their bed 
 
 Away, while slow 
 
 And deep and low 
 In their peace I lay my head. 
 
 [1892] 
 
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[245] 
 
 V 
 
 AGE AND YOUTH 
 
 Spare whitened hair, a withered cheek, 
 A trembling voice, a fireless eye, — 
 Do these show Age's victory ? 
 
 I deem it truer that the man. 
 
 Whose frame is now more fragile grown. 
 
 Is younger than the child new-bom. 
 
 For he who enters Kfe's long road 
 Is old with duties yet to be 
 And white with long expectancy; 
 
 Yet as the years roll slowly by. 
 
 As dross that leaves the vessel bright. 
 
 His duties fall away. The light 
 
 Of freer manhood makes him young 
 And younger, till, those duties past. 
 He stands in perfect youth at last. 
 
 Thus grow we- younger toward the grave. 
 That finds us in our fulness free, 
 And on the brink of which we see 
 
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[246 I' 
 
 Close 'round us some such light as shone 
 On Man and Nature's virgin dawn. 
 Grey years ago, ere Sin was born. 
 [1892] 
 
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[247] 
 
 VI 
 
 This is the nursling of an hundred years. 
 
 Save this the homy cactus cannot bloom, 
 
 That heeds not if the violets shed perfume. 
 
 The roses blow, the August swell the ears 
 
 Of com, or the dull wintry silence nears. 
 
 But ah! how shorn is all the garden-room 
 
 Of beauty! Flowers and shrubbery dropped in gloom. 
 
 The fountain lost in everlasting tears. 
 
 Thou, stranger, art too late — too late for home, 
 
 Tho' Time and Hope conspired to give thee life. 
 
 And shalt thou live, where thro' the sultry air 
 
 Death reigns and all malignant harms are rife ? 
 
 Or shall thy trust not rather be a snare 
 
 To lure thy tardy beauty to its doom ? 
 
 [1893] 
 
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[248] 
 
 VII 
 
 Tho', moored along the quiet quay on some 
 Errand of commerce bent, she rides at rest. 
 Her title, half-obUterate at the crest. 
 Speaks the soft language of a distant home. 
 Her time shall be, and she invite the foam 
 About her prow, the winds to blow the West 
 Open, — and all her hopes move forward, blest 
 And favoured 'neath the Heaven's unclouded dome 
 So whilst this Ufe of duties we discharge. 
 Chained to the moorings of a mortal thought. 
 The inspiring evening calls us from the marge. 
 Hail, star and wind and current ! Sunset, hail ! 
 Away, for firmly here the helm is caught. 
 And the new moon hangs in the homeward sail. 
 [1893] 
 
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[249] 
 
 VIII 
 THE DEATH OF AISCHYLOS 
 
 (a headland near stbacttse. wild 
 
 S T O K m) 
 
 The wind walks wildly in the trees to-night. 
 
 I feel mine age. Like this Sikelian day 
 
 From gold faded to Erebos, so I; 
 
 My triumphs like clouds I gather, round me, and 
 
 Sink now. The travail of the storm-scourged sea. 
 
 The windy rack, the thunder's vivid leap 
 
 Where the sHt-Ughtnings ope their ghastly lips, — 
 
 It merges all, and from ten thousand worlds. 
 
 Sucked in the caves by slimy shores, I hear 
 
 Only the windy sough of Acheron ! 
 
 There 's storm in heaven, the wroth gods threaten war. 
 
 And Zeus in agony hurls on the impotent world 
 
 His foamy spleen. Our 'lated end has come, 
 
 Tho' the Earth start up Promethean to rebel; 
 
 She shudders, and her bowels, gouged and rent 
 
 By the fell tempest's horns, shall lie like dust 
 
 Distracted thro' the oblivious universe. 
 
 The Erinys range abroad: of old they worked 
 
 On men — thieves, Uars, adulterers, parricides. 
 
 The horde of crime; on nations — Lydian wealth 
 
 And Persia's loud-mouthed greed; to-day, the world! 
 
 For there are world's Erinys even as men's. 
 
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[250] 
 
 And on her bloody track they follow. Now the worlds, 
 Hellas and all that is not Hellas, pay. . . . 
 
 Hellas — Athenai ! By the immortal gods, 
 Athenai, thou shalt die. Like some light girl 
 She shook her tresses to the ^gean wind. 
 Where on the listless shore playing she dipped 
 Her pink foot in the foam-hemmed sea and smiled. 
 Wet were her asking eyes; and fresh her arms. 
 Rhythmic with dull repose; her naked side 
 Quivered, touched by the feathery wind, — O Zeus! 
 Lustful and fickle! From the unvenged dead 
 Helen is come, and fronting Salamis 
 Takes up her fatal dwelling! 
 
 Thou 'dst not hear 
 My sober voice. The rigid days are gone. 
 Virtue, austere and pale, is gone. Thou list'st 
 The wanton poet; thou lov'st the unmanly plays. 
 The gilded talkers; lapp'st thy youth in vice. 
 Musics lascivious, vile philosophies; 
 Hugg'st in thy warm embrace the ignobly bom. 
 Slaves, and slaves' children come from barbarous loins; 
 Fooled by a trinket, lazy, irreverent 
 Of all the gods; and scom'st with ribald lips 
 The eternal prophesies. Athenai! aye. 
 Heinous indeed is thine unending crime. 
 And in thy fresh girl's side the serpent sword 
 Chums thy red life blood into black, stark death ! 
 
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[251] 
 
 Zeus, bear me hence! Forefend my scanty hair. 
 Blessed with the endless kisses of the Muse, 
 Should clot with dust of earth. Forefend my lips. 
 Withered with singing too subKme a song. 
 Should eat vileness; these eyes, now pale with age. 
 Scorched with long searching of thy Heavens and shot 
 That on the irradiate spasms of morning light 
 Round thine Olympos fixed, should from their holes. 
 Where stretched I he, downward my livid face. 
 Stare stark into the worm-begrovelled earth! 
 Oh, bear me hence! Great Zeus, I cannot die, 
 I cannot live. Oh, rend the impassioned storm. 
 Pierce my huge breast with lightnings, strew my corpse 
 Like ashes on the world-encircling stream! 
 Shred me like fleeces, and dismembered lay 
 Upon thine altar that is all the world. [A pause.] 
 
 Athenai ! How thou shamed'st me ! me, ye gods ! 
 Who sweat and bled for liberty, threw my life 
 Before thy feet and went to Marathon, 
 By lordly Salamis' acanthine dawn 
 Ploughed up the sea and in the furrows sowed 
 Persians, a sterile crop! And if in song 
 I picked His leavings, yet the Nine vouchsafed 
 Some glory, by the gods, that yet shall wind 
 Its clarion down the building aisles of time. 
 Yet oh! the shame when to beKttled singers 
 Thou gav'st thy prize! Within mine ear yet crawls 
 His voice, puny and weak, who grimed our Muse 
 
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[252] 
 
 With the pale passions of the common day; 
 
 Who danced by Victory's torchlight, glistening-limbed. 
 
 His body wet with music, the ivies black 
 
 Plaited in honey-hair, and his Hthe skin 
 
 Laughing with subtle fires of blood — a shame ! 
 
 And he rose up from the uninspired throng 
 
 To win, to snatch thy prize, Melpomene. 
 
 I had sung with all the voices of the world; 
 
 Thunders I knew; the primal gods revealed 
 
 Their forces, secrets; and I made them rise 
 
 Out of the chaos of legend, stand and speak. 
 
 Moving their shadow past our little life. 
 
 Yet him, who figments of the ignoble day 
 
 Made over into rhythms, him they preferred 
 
 And crowned, the beardless Sophokles! And I 
 
 Slunk homeward, soiled my brow, my better art 
 
 Defaced. — O Zeus ! too many, many days 
 
 I have lived, beyond my setting striven to hold 
 
 The sky, outhved myself. Fulfil thy vow! 
 
 Remember! when I stood white-robed, black-locked, 
 
 Beneath thine oaks, thy wind ran on the leaves 
 
 And like a hurricane's song, thou swor'st : "Thy 
 
 death 
 Comes by my tortoise from my dog." Then come! 
 No fitter storm shall yelling hound this earth. 
 Strike my thin breast — I bare it, suppHcate 
 A rending of my being; lo! here my head! 
 Rack my dry skull and let me, let me die! 
 
 [A long pause. He descries an eagle.] 
 
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[253] 
 
 Ride, child of storm, ride master on thy gale. 
 Feathers unshrivelled by the lightning, skim 
 The wrathful breaker on SikeUa's shore. 
 Like a black dream, thy frown slips thro' the night ! 
 Thy sprayed wings fan the windy black. He seeks 
 The march. For prey ? What miserable torn Ufe 
 Shall his clawed beak pierce? — Gone! Folded to- 
 night ! 
 Fly on to Zeus, black bird, fly on, remote. 
 And house thee in the abode of hurricanes — 
 
 Stay, gods! great gods! Hither and hither stiU 
 He flies. His stinging eye flames thro' the dusk. 
 Away ! His hooked mouth holds — away ! How grim 
 His stiff, iron feathers near me ! Lightnings, blast 
 His flight! ye gods, avert! How close he skims! 
 O, shrivelling terror of the cloudy god. 
 Be gone, black — 
 
 [The tortoise falls on his head. He sinks to the 
 ground.] 
 
 Death. Alas! Alas! Alas! 
 My prayer was heard ! My brow clotted with wet — 
 How comes it ? Shattered by a fall of stone — 
 Or — agonies ! wild pain ! horrible night ! 
 Mother, what wretchedness thy youth brought forth. 
 My lot of crazed suffering, exile, death! 
 Stupours enshroud — gray morning, wilt thou ne'er 
 Shudder into the East; gray dawn, of gray. 
 
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[254] 
 
 Here is thy wonted throne Athenai, here; 
 Quit thy bed, tangled in the Cyclades, — 
 Gray dawn — dream — dubiess — gray, gray, gray, 
 
 how gray. 
 Alas, what sick, slow pain — my brain! my brain! 
 
 [He dies.] 
 [1894] 
 
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[255] 
 
 IX 
 
 My note is highest of them all, 
 
 And uppermost along the choir 
 
 With tremors of my treble I call 
 
 The mist of stars to point their fire. 
 
 While nevermore my echoes fall 
 
 Tho' silence hath an interval 
 
 For love of order on the lyre. 
 
 I am the Lady of the Scale; 
 
 For all that moveth music is . . . 
 
 The reasons of my note prevail 
 
 Thro' pause and change of melodies; 
 And singing down the endless gale 
 I do command the fiery trail. 
 
 Howe'er, my song is not of me. 
 
 The sphere and circuit of each star 
 Flashes that . . . their degree. 
 
 And storm their light with swell of war. 
 The dragons of the auroral sea 
 Taking their pleasure to be free 
 
 Are yet divine and regular. 
 
 [1894?] 
 
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[256] 
 
 When you 've averaged emotion, found where Nature 
 
 goes to school, 
 " After many years discovered " who God be and how 
 
 he rule; 
 Reckoned that Castalia's fountain tan a gallon to the 
 
 hour, — 
 Doubtless it and you shall dry. Another race will claim 
 
 a dower. 
 
 Lightly you have sold your meadow and the freedom of 
 
 the lea, 
 SunUght-rippIe and sea-burst, the winy air, the spumy 
 
 sea. 
 And the wreaths of land whose edge it lifting kisses; 
 
 and the soul 
 Of the stars in violet air that wrapt gold circles round 
 
 the pole: 
 
 Lightly sold your heart; forgotten passion, courage, 
 pang and throe. 
 
 Love the love and hate the hatred, keenly feel and 
 largely do, — 
 
 You that daub with gorgeous colours, hum the strenu- 
 ous key that pearled 
 
 With a nightingale's and Shakespeare's song the seon- 
 withered world. 
 
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[257] 
 
 Life is his that lives. By living, not by learning, may 
 
 we learn; 
 And a hand that grasps not life, is gathering ashes for 
 
 its urn. — 
 But a breathless race comes flooding from the portals 
 
 of the sun. 
 Bicher dawns and larger days and wider evenings are 
 
 begun. 
 
 [1893] 
 
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[258] 
 
 XI 
 
 ODE 
 
 Hills, mountains, lakes, farewell! 
 
 Summits and snows; 
 
 And thou, thou sunful air of Engadin; 
 
 Gentian and daisy and bell. 
 
 Where the wind blows; 
 
 Yea, all thou Nature that mine eyes have seen: 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 Never again 
 
 Shall we behold your arched skies. 
 
 Save when estranged by pain. 
 
 With pale and old and other eyes. 
 
 Here, to these sights. 
 
 Enlaced about with human thought 
 
 We came. 
 
 A terror spelled us at the windy lights; 
 
 Our breath grew lame 
 
 And on this world our vision fell distraught. 
 
 Too stinging near the sun ! 
 
 The space too utter large ! the air 
 
 Acrid so fine it was! 
 
 Our beaten spirit, impotent to share, 
 
 Became as glass 
 
 Brittle and dead before the vision : 
 
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[259 ] 
 
 We could our face but hide, 
 Our arms about us for a pall; 
 " Heaven has shattered us," we cried and cried. 
 Our ear dissolved; our voice quavered; and we 
 were small. 
 
 Yet the rich passage of the natural days 
 
 Dragging their carmine webs and violet hems 
 
 Over the flowered world; 
 
 And all about unfurled 
 
 The languid nets of evening dripping gems 
 
 Thro' the low rays; 
 
 With aftertrain of stars. 
 
 Sober divinities and simple diadems! 
 
 Where on your cars 
 
 You move in circle to the tracks of day! 
 
 Ye enfolded us and we did lose 
 
 The little habit of the hour and way. 
 
 We have seen — 
 
 Above the fluid air. 
 
 The eflFaced languor of ravine 
 
 And this long valley peopled as a lair 
 
 With smoky forms — 
 
 The mom's gray-lidded star 
 
 Alone; 
 
 We've felt the storm's 
 
 iPpproach, the rocks with echo jar; 
 
 We've heard as war 
 
 Of world on world the moving glacier moan: 
 
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[ 260 ] 
 
 Till to the brain 
 
 The healing knowledge of eternal things. 
 
 The suflFerance of limit and the lore 
 
 O' the world's serene adjustment quiet gave; 
 
 Till we felt sorrow for the obedient star. 
 
 Pity and patience for the taxed moon 
 
 And all this broil of universe that serves 
 
 Its taskmaster; O, till it seemed then 
 
 Time was a noisy bellman, tiredly 
 
 That rung in stellar deserts his dull bell 
 
 Calling the planets home. A finished day! 
 
 The orbed meadow-land of solar gold 
 
 Was waxen sterile and embrowned; a spell 
 
 Had soon distilled the system to a drop. 
 
 And of the whole destroyed 
 
 One fiery globule wavered in the endless void. 
 
 So runs the dream about your height! 
 
 So man may stand with open eye, 
 
 A dying acolyte 
 
 Amid your ceremonies that do not die; 
 
 And hear. 
 
 In sober and subdued soul. 
 
 Without fear 
 
 The roll 
 
 And tidal motion of the sacramental air. 
 
 Farewell! again farewell! 
 
 From where ye dwell 
 
 We shall descend within the gentle plain, — 
 
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[261-] 
 
 There life is speakable: 
 The while your train. 
 In light of days that set not but still fare 
 Upon the spirit's skies. 
 More sober, more serene 
 Shall rise. 
 
 From all the things that were 
 Apart, 
 
 To that high backward of the heart 
 Whereto the thought that travels ne'er hath 
 wholly been. 
 
 [1895] 
 
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[262] 
 
 XII 
 
 'T WAS yet an hour to dawn. Revengeful storm 
 Tortured the ^gean air. The sea was high, 
 
 And things of mist and water without form 
 
 Rose, ran, were lost. The darkness swelled with 
 cry. 
 
 Then greatly heard, 'mid all that night's alarms 
 Most hideous, was a sound of cities torn. 
 
 Of glory strangled in an ocean's arms. 
 
 Of death. The tempest sped; — and it was morn. 
 
 From high Oliaros looking forth alone. 
 
 The sculptor saw a sea with isles impearled, — 
 But not yon island of the golden stone: 
 
 Paros was sunk. A calm lay on the world. 
 
 His frighted lip grew calm. He looked around. 
 
 Never shone day more marvellous. — But he 
 Swore to his heart an oath that had no sound. 
 
 Darkly, and cast his chisel to the sea. 
 [1895] 
 
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[263] 
 
 XIII 
 
 COLOGNE CATHEDRAL 
 
 O EAHTH, this is not earthly, nor of stone; 
 
 Nor did thy bowels yield the stuff that made 
 
 The pale gray roof whereunder light and shade 
 
 Move undiumal to the greater sun. 
 
 Prayer carved the sable flowers; a choral spun 
 
 Rose-windows in the aisle; and music stayed 
 
 So silken-long by arch and colonnade 
 
 That the lines trembled out and followed on. 
 
 'T is here philosopher and peasant sings 
 
 In pauses .of the mind, when thought and faith. 
 
 The I and Thou, are bubbles of the breath; ^^ 
 
 From on the citadel of human things 
 
 Sheer to God's sky, in hfe rather than death. 
 
 The serfs with quiet eyes watch with the kings. 
 
 [1895] 
 
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[264] 
 
 XIV 
 
 When by you lies my broken heart, and I, 
 Up on the hill where of this world is heard 
 At most the love note of a vernal bird 
 And breaking leaves that flutter in the sky; 
 When nothing more of all this agony 
 And strange disease that in our body stirred. 
 Is left, and with mine ashes are interred 
 My hope and name and all that I might be; 
 If then one said it differed not, to live 
 Or not to live, since living all is death. 
 And seeing then, beyond the yews and grove. 
 The fading fragments that our years' did give. 
 Should say 't were better never to feel breath, 
 I answer. No. For life is less than love. 
 
 [1895-96] 
 
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[265] 
 
 XV 
 
 Now the lovely moon is wilted. 
 Lost her petals down the sky. 
 Sorrily the wind goes by; 
 
 Rosebuds where the branches tilted 
 Yield their flowers with a sigh. 
 
 June, the wonderment of blossom. 
 With her necklace' thirsty pearls. 
 With her tearful eyes and girl's 
 
 Changing, ever changing bosom. 
 
 With the hot sun in her curls — 
 
 This is last of all the June-nights. — 
 Let us softly speak of living. 
 Thou whose life was but forgiving, 
 
 I that in the passed moonlight's 
 
 Shadow, moved thee with my grieving. 
 
 Memory saddens our caresses. 
 Feel, thy tired heart is cold, 
 All the rich and devious gold 
 
 Warm with shadow-waves, thy tresses, 
 Surfeits with my kisses old. 
 
 Long ago our love was broken. 
 Habit poisons the embrace. — 
 Yet, O changeless in thy grace, 
 
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[266] 
 
 Speak the word thou oft hast spoken 
 And the moon was on thy face. 
 
 Kisses, loved one! All is ashen 
 Thro' the life that lies before; 
 Drink my glowing wine that p'er 
 
 Hearts grown cold with vanished passion 
 Kindles what was wild of yore. 
 
 [189&-96] 
 
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[267] 
 
 XVI 
 
 I KNOW where all the singers hide 
 
 And music wanders far along, — 
 Down the steep rock and country side 
 
 A mile of song; 
 And sighs that the hazel sighed 
 
 Mix and grow strong. 
 
 There tired winds come home to say 
 
 Their tale of acres bowed in flight, 
 And streamless hollows where they lay. 
 
 There shade and light 
 All the delicious day 
 
 Linger and light. 
 
 Down sudden slips in turns and turns 
 
 Aglitter, sings the rivulet; 
 White bubbles float the little biams, 
 
 And round are set 
 Fringes of lucid ferns 
 
 Fragile and wet. 
 [1895-96] 
 
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[ 268 ] • 
 
 XVII 
 
 Hold still, my brain! My temples burst! Shall e'er 
 
 This marble burgeon with her? I can see 
 
 An Aphrodite, poised; a falling fold 
 
 About her loins, — and nothing more but sky. 
 
 Sky, sun, Hght, air, and rolling spheres, and men. 
 
 Where is my chisel ? — Paros is an isle 
 
 Does make earth more magnificent than aught 
 
 Of conquest. I beHeve it 's the old heart 
 
 Of world and universe; were the quarry-slave 
 
 Ambitious, he should find below, far, far 
 
 Below, motion, hfe — and a regency 
 
 So splendid as would shrivel him to ash. 
 
 The spKnters shine Kke gold ! Away ! Away, — 
 
 Somewhere within here she, — Apollo, help ! 
 
 That I may bid her rise, and mix with stone 
 
 My Phryne with the never-opened eye. 
 
 The holy oval face, the rich long neck 
 
 And serious body and — Oh the arms ! the arms ! 
 
 My lips grow dull with kissing of her arms. 
 
 Dull, yes! and sad! 
 
 She shall be here eternally while I 
 
 Make her eternal. I shall bid her come. 
 
 Sit near, and say things in her golden Greek, 
 
 And singing freshen some old mythos with 
 
 Warm melody. I '11 call her. — No ! not yet ! 
 
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[269] 
 
 Not yet! Despair's enough without herself 
 
 To make my heart at such comparison 
 
 Break. Memory first shall guide my hand, — 
 
 Memory made fresher by herself. Some eve 
 
 We'll mix our water and wine; we'll chaplets weave 
 
 Of ivy, sail for Athens, and in spring 
 
 Hear the great plays and drink at festivals 
 
 And run to some wild cry, some terrible 
 
 Sharp song, away, away; the spotted skin 
 
 Slips thro' the starlight ; thyrsus at her throat 
 
 Lengthened, and head thrown wildly back to see 
 
 More rich the winy heaven dissolve and run ! 
 
 "Where is she ? Phryne ! Phryne ! Look, my love. 
 
 Upon me and my marble. A snow more white 
 
 Ne'er fell; with the influence and love of years 
 
 We'll build an outUne, thou and I, or thou 
 
 Rather, that verily my lips and breast 
 
 Will shudder but believe. Ah come away! , 
 
 We'll go and hear the music of the sea 
 
 And pity the old singer; watch the moon. 
 
 Sad harmonist on the unresponsive earth; 
 
 Feel the far stars, — yet hear and watch and feel 
 
 Nothing but thee, thou jewel of my soul ! 
 
 [1895-96] 
 
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[270] 
 
 " XVIII 
 NIMIUM PASSUS 
 
 If I could find three words to say 
 
 My fill of hatred, I believe 
 The affrighted earth would roll away 
 
 And leave me here alone to live. 
 
 They had some httle gift to give. 
 Some rank or ribbon to bestow. 
 
 God knows, I asked not to receive, — 
 They teased me, held me up for show. 
 
 But, as I think, it 's blow for blow 
 Before the throne of righteous Time. 
 
 I have them yet, tho' right be slow 
 And wrath needs age to grow sublime. 
 
 Then, when the testament of earth 
 Names one or other of us heir, 
 
 I shall grow hideous with mirth, 
 
 Curse them, and pluck them by the hair. 
 
 [1896] 
 
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[271] 
 
 XIX 
 
 Sphing is come. From the wind lightly dissipate 
 feathers of mist that an upland exhales 
 
 Whence in a gUtter the soluble snows' tightened gray is 
 in silver dissolved to the vales. 
 
 Juices of sun-sweetened clay, that the broken seed 
 cupped, press higher; and now shall unfold 
 
 Milk-white curls whose secret of crimson the sun shall 
 divide with his arrow of gold. 
 
 Far over tremulous shrubbery glistens an ointment of 
 
 morning and April and sky. 
 Bluer 's the gloom of the cypress, silverer the olives, and 
 
 sweeter the poplar's cry. 
 
 Till from a thousand hills that surround her, marvellous 
 
 murmurs gathering sing 
 As from round foam-chapleted oceans in circles of song 
 
 growing single: Spring. 
 
 [1897] 
 
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[272] 
 
 XX 
 
 IN AMPEZZO 
 
 In days of summer let mie go 
 
 Up over fields, at afternoon. 
 
 And, lying low against my stone 
 
 On slopes the scythe has pain to mow. 
 
 Look southward a long hour alone. 
 
 For evening there is lovelier 
 Than vision or enchanted tale: 
 When wefts of yellow vapour pale. 
 And green goes down to lavender 
 On rosy cliffs, shutting the vale 
 
 Whose smoke of violet forest seeks 
 The steep and rock, where crimson crawls, 
 And drenched with carmine fire their walls 
 Go thinly smouldering to the peaks. 
 High, while the sun now somewhere falls; 
 
 Except a cloud-caught ochre spark 
 In one last summit, — and away 
 On lazy wings of mauve and gray. 
 Away and near, Uke memory, dark 
 Is bluish with the filmy day. 
 
 What time the swallows flying few 
 Over uncoloured fields become 
 
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[273 ] 
 
 Small music thro' the shining dome; 
 And sleepy leaves are feeling dew 
 Above the crickets' under-hum. 
 
 In bye-tone to a savage sound 
 Of waters that with discord smite 
 The frigid wind and lurking light, 
 And swarm behind the gloom, and bound 
 Down sleepy valleys to the night: 
 
 And thoughts deUcious of the whole, 
 
 Gathering over all degrees, 
 
 Yet sad for something more than these. 
 
 Across low meadow-lands of soul 
 
 Grow large, Kke north-lights no one sees. 
 
 I care not if the painter wrought 
 The tinted dream his spirit hid. 
 When rich with sight he saw, amid 
 A jarring world, one tone, and caught 
 The colour passing to his Ud. 
 
 Be still, musician and thy choir! 
 
 Where trumpets blare and the bow stings 
 
 In symphony a thousand strings 
 
 To cry of wood-wind and desire 
 
 Of one impassioned voice that sings. 
 
 Nay, silence have the poet's mode 
 And southern vowels all! let die. 
 
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[274] 
 
 So ghostly-vague, the northern cry! — 
 This world is better than an ode 
 And evening more than elegy. — 
 
 Yet what shall singing do for me ? 
 How shall a verse be crimsoned o'er? 
 I ever dream one art the more; 
 I who did never paint would see 
 The colour painters languish for. 
 
 And wisely use the instruments 
 That earlier harmony affords ; 
 I dream a poesy of chords 
 Embroidered very rich in tints: 
 'T is not enough, this work of words. 
 
 A wilder thing inflames our hearts. 
 We do refuse to sift and share. 
 For we would musically bear 
 The burden of the gathered arts 
 Together which divided were. 
 
 And, passing Knowledge, highly rear 
 Upon her iron architrave 
 These airy img,ges we rave, — 
 Lest wholly vain and fallen sheer 
 Our vision dress us for the grave. 
 [1898] 
 
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[275] 
 
 XXI 
 
 If, in the night and madness of thy mind, 
 The tearing storm appear to thee a thing 
 Lit sharply with thy hate and suffering, — 
 A cause, a God, above the screaming wind; 
 Or, when the sunlight infinitely kind 
 Moves the meadow and mountain land to sing. 
 Thou seem to see the gKster of a wing — 
 Know it is nothing, and thy eyeballs blind. 
 Remember all this little humour of despair 
 Wrongs the rich summer-time when summer is. 
 And even so thy subtle ecstasies 
 The winter hurricane and awful air. 
 Fall down upon thy knees and Uft thy eyes. 
 That all things are forever as they were. 
 [1899?] 
 
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[276] 
 
 XXII 
 
 Hencefobwahd I no longer shall be known 
 
 Among you all, with whom I strove to dwell. 
 
 For all our loves were wholly pitiable: 
 
 I was a stranger, you were not my own. 
 
 And over all I was I ring a knell, 
 
 As a broad blasted landscape at sundown. 
 
 I would not have the flames break from my frown 
 
 Against you. I will go away, — Farewell! — 
 
 Not as the Spaniard and his argosies 
 
 Who ran greedily thro' the screaming sea 
 
 Into the sunset after enterprise. 
 
 But with dispassionate and quiet eyes 
 
 Watching my destiny depart from me 
 
 Like flushes in lotus after sunrise. 
 
 [1900] 
 
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[277] 
 
 XXIII 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 YouH own sweet flowers are here to see: 
 Crisp leaves, a sudden warm perfume 
 And cxumbKng little blossoms, from 
 Italy. — 
 
 Pallanza in the bay I know, 
 And Intra, and the point between. 
 They scent the Ulac, golden, green 
 Afterglow 
 
 r the garden lying half-asleep. 
 Where curious aloes feel the star 
 Thro' webs of Indian deodar 
 
 Tremble and weep. 
 
 And so even now, tho' autumn's wet 
 And leaves about me falling fast. 
 With you some plants and this at last 
 Flower yet ! 
 
 They've come to sadden here by me. 
 Already every leaf is numb. 
 'T was yesterday they reached me from 
 Italy! 
 
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[278] 
 
 We 're like your flowers, you and I. 
 Tho' years since I was — alien there, 
 I feel I in this northern air 
 Nearly die. 
 
 Yet would you venture that the home. 
 The peace that heals, the love that cures. 
 Is mine in old Val d'Amo, yours. 
 Say, in Rome ? 
 
 I ask. My novel has it so: 
 I treat a travelling patriot 
 In a sharp style. But — I'd forgot — 
 You don't know! 
 
 I was a singer then of scenes 
 Where roses played a role. Enough! 
 To-day I trade in prose and stuff 
 Magazines. 
 
 Sometimes I muster, to be sure, 
 A rhyme, a manner, a technique; 
 But all of me is, so to speak, 
 Literature. . . . 
 
 For your sweet flowers — alas how vain ! 
 
 You see they made the echoes rise! 
 
 "Only a moment" Age replies. 
 
 Thanks again. 
 [1901] 
 
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[279] 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Mt life shall count by the smile and tear. 
 By the flash of blue in an eye I know. 
 
 It's a world of time since June last year 
 And a timeless world I am Uving now. 
 
 One year ago ! That we should have walked 
 The very path we are walking now! 
 
 And — tell me, do you remember ? — talked 
 Likewise one little year ago ? 
 
 Dear love, what a trick Time plays on us ! — 
 As tho' the hour and day could give 
 
 A rule for passage! or all this fuss 
 
 Of the sun be measure how long we live ! 
 
 Life is older than all the aeons; 
 
 And younger than any moment, youth. 
 For aught that the earth go gathering seasons 
 
 The fact o' the Spring is the world's best truth. 
 
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[280] 
 
 XXV 
 
 YoTT 'll say when here again after it all 
 I recollect these things^ that I devise. 
 
 Like a poof devot in confessional. 
 By saying aloud to make them otherwisCj 
 
 And with the thrust of that terrific guilt 
 
 Grown soft and coward, to talk away the stain. - 
 
 Not so — ^ The wrong is done, the blood is spilt, 
 I know it — if sense at all be in my brain. 
 
 'T is sorry homage, yes, and pitiful. 
 After so long to bring before your eyes 
 
 The frayed and dusty flowers of my soul 
 With such belated show of sacrifice. 
 
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[281 ] 
 
 XXVI 
 
 This is the vioKn. If you remember — 
 One afternoon late, in the early days. 
 One of those inconsolable December 
 Twilights of city haze, 
 
 You came to teach me how the hardened fingers 
 Must drop and nail the music down, and how 
 The sound then drags and nettled cries, then lingers 
 After the dying bow. — 
 
 For so all that could never be is given 
 And flutters oflF these piteously thin 
 Strings, till the night of a midsummer heaven 
 Quivers ... a violin. 
 
 I struggled, and alongside of a duty, 
 A nagging everyday-long commonplace! 
 I loved this hopeless exercise of beauty 
 Like an allotted grace, — 
 
 The changing scales and broken chords, the trying 
 From sombre notes below to catch the mark, 
 I have it all thro' my heart, I tell you, crying 
 Childishly in the dark. 
 
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VI 
 FRAGMENTS 
 
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[The following pieces cannot, for the most part, be correctly 
 dated. The important fragments of " The Cardinal Play " 
 may, however, be safely ascribed to the year 1897, and the 
 last five pieces in the section belong altogether to the year 
 1904. They are, therefore, in all probabihty, the last lines 
 which Sticknbt ever wrote and have consequently been 
 put together under the heading " Dramatic Fragments. "] 
 
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[287] 
 
 The Autumn 's done; they have the golden com in. 
 Clover and fern from either slope are gone, 
 The peaks high up in the crystaUine morning 
 GKster of gray and roan. 
 
 These pitiless two hours of midday hotter 
 
 Than from the of a furnace, flare ^ 
 
 The very shadows like a sunken water. 
 Leaving but sunlight there. 
 
 Till eve: and in the valley that expires 
 A quick chill wind seizes the duskiness. 
 While, on the summits lighting, sunset fires 
 Kindle in Sorapis. 
 
 One of these days I know, just as they sadden 
 Spangling awhile the rose and yellow sky. 
 You '11 go away and watch the country gladden 
 Softly to Italy. 
 
 There, take this ring of gold — and when your fancy 
 GKdes by to songs under the autumn moon 
 Where hke unfurKng silks of necromancy 
 Lies out the white lagoon. 
 
 Throw it away, that it be mine no longer. 
 Italian, give it back to Italy, 
 
 1 [ Fourth word illegible.] 
 
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[?88] 
 
 I will not have thy Past about me stronger 
 Than what is yet to be. 
 
 Nay, hurry home to sleep. The ferns are rigid 
 With hoar, and dark and denser hangs the mist; 
 It freezes and the stars quaver in frigid 
 Heaven of amethyst. 
 
 Down thro' San Vito and the land Cadore, 
 To which — when closed the pestered city gate — 
 The dying Titian strained, homeward from glory. 
 Home from eternal fate; 
 
 Down where the outlines have a softer meaning — 
 Willow and clematis, the fruit and grain; 
 And the last mountain height sinks greening 
 Into the golden plain, — 
 
 To Venice. There the October days purpurea! 
 Fall down to earth from Heaven wearily, — 
 And wounded at the last, insatiate Uriel 
 Dies on the flaming sea. — 
 
 One of these days you '11 leave me in the mountains. 
 For I go Northward, not to see this year 
 Gold Italy and her wind-silvered plantains. 
 But there the sad and sere — 
 
 I go elsewhere. . . . 
 
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[289] 
 
 II 
 
 She sat under the naked bough 
 
 In an autumn moon's sharp shade, 
 Her two hands clasped about her knee. 
 
 And not a move she made. 
 On crisp, dead leaves I walked to her 
 
 And said, "Thou art the Morrow's Nom," 
 And "Verily" she answered me, 
 
 Lifting her eyes foriom. 
 Then with a slow and solemn sign 
 
 I said "Be mine." 
 
 She shook her head, but her rimey hair 
 
 Spread not upon the wind. 
 And it froze me so to see her there. 
 
 Till my own chilled heart grew kind ; 
 I touched her shoulder hard as stone, 
 
 I pressed my hot lips to her eye. 
 And wrapt my cloak about her, soft 
 
 With a heart-warm sigh. 
 Saying again with many a sign 
 
 "Be ever mine." 
 
 She looked as when the spark goes out 
 
 In ashes that all are dead. 
 I left her, over the crisp dead leaves 
 
 And quicklier too I sped. 
 
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[290] 
 
 For I heard as out of a fold of wind 
 
 While the white moon stood above the line 
 
 'Mid shadows moved like creeping coils 
 Of a poisoned ivy vine, 
 
 I heard . . . 
 [1895-96] 
 
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[291 ] 
 III 
 
 FRAGMENT OF AN ODE FOR GREEK 
 LIBERTY 
 
 Your enemy like startled fowl flies forth. 
 
 Not by nice reckoning 
 
 Of chance and odd. 
 
 Nor martyrdom of meek repose 
 
 Is reft from God 
 
 The Laurel and the Rose. 
 
 Nor matters it to bring 
 
 Trophies home and a victor rod 
 
 With blare of trumpets and caparison : 
 
 It needs not to have won 
 
 To be great. 
 
 But the exulting soul 
 
 Which strides alone against the sun. 
 
 By his own passion hurled 
 
 And slave to his desire's supreme control 
 
 Is master of the world. 
 
 Go out! To horse! Once more 
 
 As ye were first — 
 
 For they have sold 
 
 All, bartered all, better and best. 
 
 And to their richest guest. 
 
 When the bargain's o'er 
 
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[292] 
 
 And they the counted utmost hold. 
 They let out Liberty like any whore. — 
 
 Brahma or Assur, Allah, Christ or Zeus, 
 
 Or what strange name beside, 
 
 Who is this God our sacrifice pursues ? 
 
 A shadow unrevealed 
 
 Behind the circled sun he stands. 
 
 Muffled in everlasting pride, — 
 
 While with uplifted hands, 
 
 Tho' harvests, hills and strands 
 
 Frittered with use. 
 
 The endless earth in ecstasy has kneeled. 
 
 Who is this God our prayer pursues ? 
 
 Down the big night of time. 
 
 On wings of ancient wind 
 
 The gray smoke from a thousand altars rolls. 
 
 And anthems cried by choired souls 
 
 Immeasurably combined 
 
 Crowd in the sky sublime. — 
 
 Who is he ? where ? and may he be divined ? 
 
 And shall this senigmatic Justice wake 
 
 Upon their dreary end. 
 
 Reckoning retribution for their pangs ? 
 
 Shall he beat heaven till it bend. 
 
 And in this nation's fangs 
 
 His barbed spear of yellow lightning break ? — 
 
 Or must their piteous wrong 
 
 Of slaughtered men, women befouled 
 
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[293] 
 
 And nurslings trampled in the mire. 
 
 Hurl its terrific song. 
 
 The crying measure of a last desire ? — 
 
 And get no more than when the dying lion growled ! 
 
 Aye, should he rise, 
 
 The master shroirded in our prayer, 
 
 Girdiog his sacred loins 
 
 About the vengeance that this world denies. 
 
 He would change our air 
 
 To golden sulphur solid as the sun. 
 
 And rend the planet's groins 
 
 With his curse. 
 
 Till down the universe 
 
 Made vagabond. 
 
 Shattered and fragmentary and undone. 
 
 The frail flame-winged embers should rehearse 
 
 Our cataclysm to the great stars beyond. 
 
 He shall not rise. Let hope in veils of pall 
 
 This widely crimson morning close; 
 
 The supreme warriors fall 
 
 Where virtue first arose. 
 
 Let no one weep the happy to repose 
 
 [1897] 
 
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[294] 
 
 IV 
 
 My Ludovico, it is sad! 
 
 You 've caused your artist's soul to die. 
 
 You 've starved the very heart. And why ? 
 It was no common heart you had. 
 
 I don't say you were bom above 
 
 A world of worlds; to sit and scan 
 In majesty Shakespearian 
 
 The man of generations move. 
 
 I don't say you were genius. No! 
 
 But from your tender lips would fall 
 
 DeKcious things, and I recall 
 One song that set my cheeks aglow. 
 
 "Why starve it ? — What, pray, have you won ? 
 You, quick and subtle analyst. 
 Would take the dearest flower and twist 
 
 Its stem, and watch the juices run. 
 
 I know we all are such, of course. 
 
 It took some thousand thousand years 
 To make a race that Uked its tears 
 
 And whetted the edges of remorse. 
 
 But you, with such a soul to sing, 
 A large and blue and quiet eye! 
 
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[295] 
 
 I love you very little — I 
 Who thought you prophet, priest and king. 
 
 I wonder. Will the old world wake ? 
 Are we the people of the end ? 
 And shall the coming pOets tend 
 
 The weakened eyes regain their sight. 
 
 The fevered pulse grows slow and sure. 
 Oh night, on thy sweet breast secure. 
 
 My head is laid, is laid, oh night ! 
 
 VI 
 
 And I stood ringed about with marble dreams. 
 Motionless, white, but fashioned of thin shift. 
 Silvery and lovely. Many a man was there. 
 In feature perfect, and in posture calm. 
 And all touched by the wand of harmony. 
 Speaking from still lips memorable things. 
 The light was dusk spun by the wizard hand 
 Of evening from her distafiF; and the air attuned 
 With notes that lute-string never bare, nor viol 
 Rendered to ease its heart. And thro' the land 
 Swept the slow measure of a solemn wind. 
 
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[296] 
 
 Laden with infinite murmurs, where the sea 
 In voice distant and rhythmic told of powers 
 Coiled in eternal slumber; far away 
 Mounted and fell beneath the stooping heaven 
 The hills, cadenced, subdued or sweetly plane. 
 Yet most majestic, tempered with the soul 
 Of age, nature, infinitude and sleep. 
 And set alone in azure, like a tear 
 Fallen in the veil of evening, silver pure. 
 One star! 
 
 VII 
 
 'T IS said that hearts are won, at length! 
 The glory is when hearts are lost. 
 One loves once with a single strength. 
 Or idly, cunningly almost. 
 
 VIII 
 
 We learn by suffering and we teach by pity. 
 
 IX 
 
 I HEAK a river thro' the valley wander 
 Whose water runs, the song alone remaining. 
 A rainbow stands and summer passes under. 
 
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[297] 
 
 Nay, take it all in all, the human sort 
 As well were sleeping as awake; they use 
 Their small facility of common things. 
 Assume the habit of their errors, and 
 Believe their eyes and ears, like animals. 
 
 XI 
 
 The passions that we fought with and subdued 
 Never quite die. In some maimed serpent's coil 
 They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate 
 That power was once our torture and our lord. 
 
 XII 
 
 As one who loving beyond words will bring 
 The hue and perfumes of a common rose 
 And trust a meadow's language to disclose 
 The true simplicity of offering; 
 Then, as he mutely gives his little, spring 
 Obscure slow tears that she who studies knows, 
 Till in some deeper knowledge both repose 
 And the old flower is now a useless thing. 
 So . . . 
 
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[298] 
 XIII 
 
 Teased by the burden of this little sky. 
 Struggled and breaking thro' the azure dome 
 Emerged, and looked upon the world of God. 
 
 XIV 
 
 If with my life I lifted from thy head 
 Ever so Uttle a while thy crown of thorn. 
 And thou not sadly in thy hair hast worn 
 These daisies of my trembling spirit bred; 
 If, while I huddled back thy dreadful dead. 
 Thou 'st happier listened to the birds at mom, 
 I render sacred thanks to have been bom, 
 O my Madonna, dear and hallowed. 
 'T is in my soul Uke midnight and high tide . 
 
 XV 
 
 The immortal mixes with mortality. 
 
 The stars are drossed with sod, and yonder moon 
 
 Which loved too long the dead Endymion, 
 
 As any tiger-lily's petal, now 
 
 Drops away, down the purple airs of night. — 
 
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[299] 
 
 I do remember greater worlds than these. 
 
 An earth less arrogant, and higher hills. 
 
 Then rattled thunders from a thousand points; 
 
 Night, suns, morning and wind; the criss-cross wings 
 
 Of eagles in deUrious passage cast 
 
 Small shadows on the tempest-hunted cloud. 
 
 And there were noises from untravelled shores. 
 
 Now nature fills with waning. One by one 
 
 Monster and centaur die, and weakening 
 
 The lungs of Typhon lift a feeble smoke 
 
 From homy-mantled craters by the sea. 
 
 Alas! and we! indeed we somehow pass 
 
 Within a fatal evening of ourselves. 
 
 I feel a time-like tremor in my limbs. 
 
 I know my beauty, and I understand 
 
 Pleasure, to-morrow, yesterday, and love. — 
 
 had I one like him to gladden me. 
 Yet would I be alone, for in my breasts 
 
 1 do believe the milk is not again. 
 
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[300] 
 XVI 
 
 FRAGMENT OF A DHAMA CALLED 
 "THE CARDINAL PLAy" 
 
 ANGELO. You 're paler than your wont, my Lord. I 
 pray 
 Your sorrows for the church — 
 
 CARDINAL. I 've Other thoughts 
 
 To-day, my son. You 11 listen. Are we heard ? 
 
 ANG. Alone. 
 
 CARD. The jeweller Veri had in 's care — 
 
 Pray listen, for I 'm tired — a pretty girl. 
 Clean of our dirty age and marvellous 
 In beauty, body, soul and maidenhood. 
 To-day's a week, he quit his workshop, came 
 To bring me an ordered figure silver-carved 
 I'd need of. 'T was some hour, I'd say two hours 
 After the sunset. And, waiting to hear 
 My approval of the long-belaboured work. 
 He stayed awhile. But wandering home he found 
 A window burst, and apprehending some 
 Great loss of metals and I know not what. 
 He rushed within — all safe — except — except 
 Calling Lucia — that 's the girl's name — she 
 Made not a sound of answer. Breaking in 
 He finds her — gone — robbed — O my son — I say 
 She 'd flown — and lay the bitter question — where ? 
 
 ANG. I fear, my Lord — 
 
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[SOI] 
 
 CABD. I 've more to say. He came. 
 
 Two long days passed, to acquaint me. Me he sought 
 For being professed protector of his work 
 And knowing the noblemen who play such tricks 
 Upon the — on peasant women — or I'd say 
 On those below them. You, my son, are young 
 And pass your youth among them. Here's my word: 
 You '11 find what villain — casually you '11 search 
 And ask, as speaking of indifferent things — 
 You'll find me out this man, avenge me — 
 
 ANG. Venge you, my Lord ? 
 
 CAKD. Me, yes, as shielding Veri. 
 
 ANG. My wits are dull, your pardon. Truth to say, 
 I had not thought to pay a jeweller's bills. 
 And hold all Roman maidenheads in trust. 
 Upon my word. 
 
 CAKD. My son, it suits you ill 
 
 To refuse me. 
 
 ANG. Your Grace be kind! Howe'er 
 
 You'll grant it's odd for Roman gentlemen 
 To fight a tradesman's duels. 
 
 CARD. I've said my wish. 
 
 Be pleased, consider all your life is mine. 
 Your state and rank, your fortune — 
 
 ANG. Sir, enough! 
 
 The story 's this : one happy day you found 
 A woman — noble, fair, we '11 say, who liked — 
 I speak with reverence — you and all you were. 
 So things begin. The season comes, the day, — 
 
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[302] 
 
 Your youth is happy and she divinely dower'd 
 
 With all one loves one great rich single time. 
 
 I'm brief: the lady was my mother, you 
 
 My father, and God's obscured will was done. 
 
 We grow, we beings of your happiness. 
 
 Goaded to life, and clothed and dressed and wrapped 
 
 In the disease of long mortality. 
 
 We breathe and grow: the cruel frequency 
 
 Of year and hour is on us, and we learn 
 
 Our birth was precious — but, well, casual. 
 
 Yet we Uve on, and on necessity's 
 
 Stem heart lay our ununderstanding heads. 
 
 And we Kve on. Then comes a day, you've thought 
 
 At such time such a thing should so be done, — 
 
 If not, you hound us out. Now, hear me God, 
 
 It's passing strange. A slave is fairly bought 
 
 And cudgelled if the bargain 's bad, — so far 
 
 So good. But I, not bought, but wholly made 
 
 Out of your pleasure, fact and monument 
 
 Of your caprice, a thing you hazarded 
 
 On the big gaming table of the world. 
 
 And now, — why after all, say you, it 's mine. 
 
 And let it work to please me. — My respect, 
 
 Your Enainence, dies poisoned by the truth. 
 
 For this, despoil me as you will, my sword 
 
 Is mine, my honour's mine, and mine my life. 
 
 I'll fight no jeweller's fight, that's flat, nor earn 
 
 A busy quarrel-monger's name. I've said. 
 
 CARD. You press me hard, for one who long was kind. 
 
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[303] 
 
 And made your livelihood as best 
 Fortune and fame would warrant — yet of that 
 Enough. 
 
 [Coldly.] I came to order and I sue: 
 Your sword is my defence. Hear me again, 
 My son, for I had interest in — 
 ANG. Interest? 
 
 CARD. I say, the girl — 
 
 ANG. You loved the girl ? 
 
 CARD. She was my — 
 ANG. What? 
 
 CARD. My — ward. 
 
 ANG. Ward, loved your ward! 
 
 Christ and the Saints, how hideous! 
 
 [He laughs fiercely and long and sinks into a 
 chair.] 
 
 I had thought 
 A scarlet Cardinal with silver hair 
 Had made his peace with lust — 
 
 CARD. Villain, be still 
 
 Or I '11 tear out thy tongue. She was — Ah God — 
 She was my daughter. 
 
 [A long pause, angelo passes his ha/nd over 
 his forehead and seems stupefied and shakes 
 his head.] 
 ANG. Wait — no — I cannot — what you said — 
 You spoke — 
 CARD. Well, sir, — 
 
 ANG. [jrantic]. No, no. 111 not believe 't. 
 
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[ 304 J 
 
 No, God Alnaighty's curse, no, no. I swear it 's false. 
 I say, no. It 's to spur me finely on, 
 To move my stubborn temper. But the lie 's 
 Too thick, too simple. 
 
 CABD. [calling]. Luigi! 
 
 ANG. Why, it's plain 
 
 The thing could never be, — the beasts abhor — 
 Oh, loathsome ghost, away! 
 
 [ltjigi and frascati enter, angelo still mumbles 
 away.] 
 
 CABD. [trembling with suppressed anger]. 
 
 The tender fool 
 Will not beKeve she is my daughter — 
 
 [fhascati shudders.] 
 
 LUIGI. Good sir, be calm; as I am old and sad 
 She is your sister. 
 
 ANG. [cries vnldly]. Ah! Ah! Aches of the damned, 
 Flames of the ugly place, tremendous pain 
 And everlasting anguish, take my soul. 
 Old man, thou art a fool — she is my heart. 
 My life. I robbed her, kissed her, loved her, 1 — 
 And planned eternal peace upon her breast. 
 And wove her garments of mine ecstasies 
 And made her girdle of mine arms. I say 
 We drank one only cup, and eat together, — 
 We made a world — and — and — Ah, both you lie. 
 And came to cheat my single happiness, 
 
 [lucia conies in.] 
 My only years in all this dreary light — 
 
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[ 305 ] 
 
 Where youth was not youth, life not life — till now 
 
 When like a broken bird within her hand 
 
 I lay, she giving me back melody, 
 
 And turning nightingale she too with me 
 
 Rose thro' the violet night singing, singing. 
 
 Over the moon-beloved and perfumed fields. 
 
 [He turns to luigi, vnth a broken voice.] 
 You are too old to stab me with a lie — 
 [With terrible anxiety.] Tell me, kind old Luigi — tell 
 
 me, now; 
 You see, I 'm wretched as a worm half crushed — 
 Be true — For God's sake, speak the truth . . . 
 
 [iiUiGi turns away in tears.] 
 Well then, it is ! 
 
 Angel of Destiny, I felt thy feathers pass 
 Upon my brow and heard thy clapping wing 
 Longer ago than memory or life. 
 Take me away; [He stabs himself.] 
 
 Luda, where art thou ? [He dies.] 
 
 [1897] 
 
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[306] 
 
 8HOHTEB FRAGMENTS PROM "THE 
 CARDINAL play" 
 
 I 
 ANGELO 
 
 I WOULD I had thee Kke a drop of dew 
 That falls from heaven without history. 
 
 II 
 
 FBASC ATI 
 
 Oh, mine Angelo, 
 These things creep out by every finger tip; 
 A footprint tells the tale. And women's love 
 Is noisy with perpetual echo; for they cry 
 In upper chambers whence the filtering sound 
 Grows tell-tale to the worid; and next they write 
 Love-letters that go most directly wrong. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ANGELO 
 
 We spend a playful youth to find at last 
 A woman saviour of ourselves. I've found. 
 And in my iron arms the surge can beat 
 Importunate and long. I shall not yield. 
 I loved her as in play: I love her now 
 With the great steady need of all a soul. 
 
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[307] 
 
 IV 
 LUCIA 
 
 [Singing at her window] 
 Ask me my all with a look of thine eyes. 
 A blush replies. 
 Yes. 
 
 Heart and whatever soever be mine, 
 Not less 
 Is thine. 
 
 Thou art sunflooded and infinite sky 
 And I 
 
 A little star lost far away 
 Down the day. 
 
 [Singing as she descends] 
 Thou art the branches unwindily stirred, 
 I, a bird 
 
 Who tire from seas of the west 
 To thy breast. 
 
 V 
 
 LUCIA 
 
 A parting, now! 
 To part! why, yes. But what's in parting? what 
 In such small separation as we plan 
 To fit our chances ? what 's in leaving ? Time. 
 
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[ 308 ] 
 
 And Time is long, and longer Time is Fain, 
 And Pain is death. O let us wholly die 
 Who lived too wildly — 
 
 AN6ELO 
 
 So said I, Luda, 
 Were't not that one may roundly crawl about 
 The moving camps of Destiny, and build 
 Behind her passage fortresses of peace 
 To harbour life in. 
 
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[309] 
 
 XVII 
 DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS" 
 
 [1904] 
 
 I USED to think 
 
 The mind essential in the body, even 
 
 As stood the body essential in the mind: 
 
 Two inseparable things, by nature equal 
 
 And similar, and in creation's song 
 
 Halving the total scale : it is not so. 
 
 Unlike and cross hke driftwood sticks they come 
 
 Churned in the giddy trough: a chunk of pine, 
 
 A slab of rosewood: mangled each on each 
 
 With knocks and friction, or in deadly pain 
 
 Sheathing each other's splinters: till at last 
 
 Without all stuff or shape they're jetted up 
 
 Where in the bluish moisture rot whate'er 
 
 Was vomited in horror from the sea. 
 
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[310] 
 II 
 
 BLINDNESS AND DEAFNESS 
 
 [Enter x, who learns the dispute and says] 
 
 You waste good time. 
 More philosophic much it were to ask 
 By speculation or experiment 
 What midget skims the void of that man 
 Who being all these together: deaf, dumb, blind. 
 Yet must within himself, as, sepulchred 
 'Mid rings of brazen crenellation down 
 Under tremendous towers, the heart of Cain, 
 Be alive. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE BOTIL OP TIME 
 
 Time's a circumference 
 Whereof the segment of our station seems 
 A long straight line from nothing into naught. 
 Therefore we say "progress," "infinity" — 
 Dull words whose object 
 Hangs in the air of error and delights 
 Our boyish minds ahunt for butterflies. 
 For aspiration studies not the sky 
 But looks for stars; the victories of faith 
 
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[311] 
 
 Are soldiered none the less with certainties. 
 And all the multitudinous armies decked 
 With banners blown ahead and flute before 
 March not to the desert or th' Elysian fields. 
 But in the track of some discovery, 
 The grip and cognizance of something true, 
 Which won resolves a better distribution 
 Between the dreaming mind and real truth. 
 
 I cannot understand you. 
 
 'T is because 
 You lean over my meaning's edge and feel 
 A dizziness of the things I have not said. 
 
 IV 
 
 Be patient, very patient; for the skies 
 Within my human soul now sunset-flushed 
 Break desperate magic on the world I knew. 
 And in the crimson evening flying down 
 Bell-sounds and birds of ancient ecstasy 
 Most wonderfully carol one time more. 
 
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[312] 
 
 Sir, say no more. 
 
 Within me 't is as if 
 
 The green and cKmbing eyesight of a cat 
 
 Crawled near my mind's poor birds. 
 
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EUciniyfedandprinUd by H. O. Houghton &' Co. 
 Camiridge, Maa., U.S.A. 
 
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