■IE DESTINY 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
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THE DESTINY 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 VAGARIES . . . . ^i .00 
 
 Small Maynard & Company, Boston 
 
THE 
 DESTINY 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 BY FLORENCE BROOKS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL MAYNARD 
 
 & COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE DESTINY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Wanderer 3 
 
 II Sonnet 6 
 
 III The Story 7 
 
 IV Song 18 
 
 V Song 19 
 
 VI Song 20 
 
 VII Song 21 
 
 VIII Ode 22 
 
 IX Sonnet 26 
 
 X Song 27 
 
 XI Song 28 
 
 XII Farewell 29 
 
 II 
 
 The Room ... 33 
 
 The Pool 35 
 
 The Bed 38 
 
 Prelude 40 
 
 Birth 44 
 
 III 
 
 The Passion 47 
 
 Sapphics 48 
 
 C. B 49 
 
 Kalamazoo 50 
 
 Ghazels 51 
 
 VII 
 
IV 
 
 Flos Florum 
 
 Songs ^^ 
 
 Autumn Heart ... ^l 
 
 „ 58 
 
 Oblivion z. 
 
 Venit Rex . 5^ 
 
 The Poet , 
 
 Love of the Night . 66 
 
 At Last • - • 
 
 Eleanor ' ,^ 
 
 Resurrection • • • . 
 
 Abjuration • • . . 9 
 
 The Two Ways .... . .' ' .**.'"" ^° 
 
 Second Winter 
 
 The North ^^ 
 
 In Church ! It 
 
 Ode to the Mountains ! 
 
 Diabolus Advocatus 82 
 
 Prayer .... 
 °4 
 
 The Lost Continent g_ 
 
 Bondage .... 7 
 
 Postponement n 
 
 Assurance 
 
 Missed Affinity .'."."'" i 
 
 Sonnet . 
 
 92 
 
THE DESTINY 
 
 I 
 
 Unbounded though he wander, memory 
 Hath bound the immortal sinew of the man 
 To mortal past of granite wall and moat; 
 To the stern warring heart of ancestors ; 
 To feudal centuries and to the law. 
 
 Sailing from out the miasmatic mist 
 
 Of sad, strange shores his memory gropes ahead 
 
 Beyond the prow. . . . O twilight luminous. 
 
 Reach thou for him thy whisper through the dark! . . 
 
 The lilac waters wash the twilight land 
 
 Lying across the prow; the wanderer views 
 
 The soft dove-coloured sky, the brooding trees. 
 
 The isolate spires that guard the cozy roofs 
 
 Of a low candle-lighted town. His heart 
 
 Lingers and shrinks. ... O he has tasted wine 
 
 And blood! Between fierce gulps and gasps he lived 
 
 In hot exotic lands until his soul 
 
 Was fire and burned the fabric of his life. 
 
 So sad, so heavy hangs the lusting heart 
 For life within him watching on the deck 
 In half dream at the mooring in the dusk. 
 To feel the peaceful night enfold him there 
 Without a promise for the after days 
 His tireless fancy reaches toward! These days 
 Of ordered trifles! God! How he shall long 
 For the erratic ardours of the past ! 
 3 
 
Free, free, free, free to roam the seas and streams. 
 To cleave the giant forests, to descend 
 From hostile heights, an eagle in the wilds. 
 Into the treacherous plain where savages 
 Shall spring to spear or knife or assagai! . . . 
 God ! To be knife to knife and hand to hand 
 In the fierce sensual intimacy of the fight. 
 To brave the warring brotherhood of man, 
 Immingling sinews in a long embrace 
 Where death is passion ! Eye to eye he strave 
 In ardent hatred in the mortal game 
 Where life blood was the currency! The man 
 Thrills to remembered touch of flesh to flesh. 
 The push of arm against the panting side. 
 The intimate slow strain of strength to strength 
 Satiate in blood and sweat. 
 
 Against the mast. 
 With all his mind adream of stirring days. 
 Of swift or slow frill days, he meditates 
 On wonder and on wisdom. He has learned 
 Out of the subtle mouths of many priests 
 And many women. . . . What forbidding doors 
 Are open to his fancy! Treasurings 
 Of music and of dream he would not grasp 
 Are his to breathe and brush! What barricades 
 That blind the peering eyes of smaller men 
 Are hurled chaotic in his thought! The flash. 
 Lurid and livid, of wide undreamed wastes. 
 Blotted with ancient gloom, his spirit sees. 
 He sees the maddened eyes, the frenzied look 
 Of warriors, and he knows the crouching thing 
 4 
 
That slaves or bends or begs, or is ignored. 
 The knavish female or the bright-eyed child 
 With small bare breasts, before she sets her fate 
 Beneath her master's. . . . His the mastery 
 Above them all! . . . 
 
II 
 
 Weave me a lovely story, O my love. 
 
 Of still soft villas by the Ultramar, 
 
 Of blue-green seas where you have voyaged far 
 
 To reach the alluring land of lemon grove 
 
 And flashing love-birds, where the coo of dove 
 
 Throbs through the South of glowing sun and star. 
 
 Where among glittering palms the dark men war, 
 
 O whisper breathless tales of how you strove. 
 
 Of mighty river forces sing the story. 
 
 Of slow, swift floods and far shores many-hued. 
 
 Or on the heights where scarlet orchids gleam 
 
 To match your quenchless fire, in my sweet dream 
 
 Let me behold the vision of your glory 
 
 And share the soul of your great solitude! 
 
Ill 
 
 The wanderer sees in vision. 
 Lying upon a strange distorted shore 
 By a great rushing river, his own shape. . . . 
 For steakhy nights had robbed him of his health 
 While savage suns consumed him all the day. 
 He was deserted, wrecked with weariness ! . . . 
 What impotent dumb weakness stupefied 
 His daring brain? What languor made his arm 
 Forget the weapon? Why must he relinquish 
 All he had clasped in passion, or had crushed 
 In rage consummate? 
 
 Thus the wanderer 
 Among the reedy grasses, overhung 
 By the scant sadness of an isolate palm. 
 Heard with unhearing ears the steady song 
 Of an indifferent flood, upon whose face 
 He saw, unseeing, a tremendous force 
 Defy him in his dying. Deep the hum 
 Of that dark mottled current moaned despair 
 To whomsoever dared desire to soothe 
 Discords stupendous, or to curb the strain 
 Superb, that nature shouts with all her spheres 
 In universal hymnal grandiose. 
 
 But he, sublime in human hope, his soul 
 Unsapped by vaporous visions, dragged him on 
 Along the ledges. How with his straight blade 
 He shaped from the stubborn trunk a laboured skiff 
 He scarce recalls — the intermittent wish 
 7 
 
To live had grown so weak — nor how he launched 
 The primitive craft, nor how he held his bow 
 One with the savage current till the end. . . . 
 
 One night the waters flung him on a shore 
 
 Of primal wildness, not unknown to him. 
 
 Whereon he staggered swooning, but the sun 
 
 Of morning roused him ; he was not to die. 
 
 For he must yet tempt other lives and deaths. 
 
 Half starved and wasted, many a death he missed 
 
 From hidden cliffs or treacherous swamps, and once 
 
 A poisoned arrow found him by a chance 
 
 Another man was saved from. Then at evening. 
 
 Turning aside from a rank mountain trail 
 
 By which he rode a long, long month before 
 
 Leading his men in desperate hazard, now 
 
 He thought to lie again in the deep grass 
 
 And sleep away his fever till the chill 
 
 Should seize him. Half in swoon he staggered on. 
 
 But suddenly about him rustled, waving. 
 
 The ragged shreds of lush banana trees 
 
 Shaking their banners in an unknown cleft 
 
 Upon the high hillside, and he emerged 
 
 Through a draped opening to a hidden hut 
 
 Shapeless and squat and thatched, among the bush 
 
 Of spiked palmettos; here he crawled and fell 
 
 Shivering upon the sill, and then he swooned. . . , 
 
 As when a diver pierces through the warm 
 And sunsteeped waters to a silent depth 
 Icy and virgin for his sharp delight. 
 So, out of alternate trances in the heat. 
 
Uncertain with half wakenings, weary yet 
 
 At the dull door of death where he had wandered. 
 
 The chill of sunset flowed about his head 
 
 And brought him back to what he knew as life. 
 
 A crooning scarcely audible he heard 
 
 From the deep violet shadows round the place 
 
 Whereon he lay : what unharmonious 
 
 Strange sound it was that curled the waiting air 
 
 The while it writhed about him duskier growing. 
 
 To lure him back to that miasmic dream 
 
 Where he was all but lost? . . . 'O mad . . . O 
 
 wild . . .' 
 What words, as of some age-old mother-song. 
 Trailed through his stupor, what lost passionate voice. 
 Thus scarce articulate ? . . . * O mad . . . O wild . . . 
 
 'O mad . . . O wild . . . 
 The dream . . . the dream . . . 
 I seem, I seem 
 To feel the child ... 
 
 •His eyes ... his eyes . . . 
 
 They open slow 
 
 Upon the glow 
 
 Of saffron skies . . . 
 
 'He died ... he died . . . 
 And went to God . . . 
 And came from God . . . 
 Back to my side . . . 
 
'The hut is sad . . . 
 
 The hill is wild ... 
 
 Cold is the child . . . 
 
 And I am mad . . . mad . . . mad!' 
 
 He swooned and yet he knew he was alive. 
 
 For after the thick night had lain upon him 
 
 Hour-long, the voice would cease in mutterings. 
 
 The lonely nightmare of those broken words 
 
 Haunting him in his fever. At the dawn 
 
 Wild creatures seemed to tend him where he lay 
 
 On skins he thought he had gathered from the hunt 
 
 And spread upon a heaped palmetto bed. 
 
 Herbs that he knew were pressed upon his brow 
 
 Or bound upon the poison ot his side ; 
 
 He drank the barbarous juices of the land 
 
 Unseeing in his stupor . . . But at last 
 
 His eyes were open to the yellow light 
 
 Piercing like golden knives across the black 
 
 Of silent spiked date-palms that never shook 
 
 In the still heat of a beginning day. 
 
 Out of the gloom of death he seemed to wake 
 
 To a new birth, and heavy purple warmth 
 
 Glowed close and yet so far through a strange square 
 
 That might have been the door 'twixt death and life. 
 
 But as he grew to see he knew at last 
 
 That he was in a hut and lay alive 
 
 Upon a pile of puma skins whose sheen 
 
 Of tawny silver teased his wondering sense 
 
 To know when he had piled them there. At length 
 
 He wearied and he slept again. At noon 
 
 He woke. Beside him crouching from the heat 
 
 lO 
 
And mumbling inarticulate was a thing 
 
 So old and doubled that the wanderer scarce 
 
 Believed he saw it. Whether it was real 
 
 Or human or a beast he wondered long 
 
 Without a fear, for he was like a child. 
 
 So passive. He recalled the fantasies 
 
 But vaguely, of the shuddering year-long night 
 
 When he was newly born. So, slowly, then 
 
 He knew the creature was a woman-thing ; 
 
 He caught the muttering of her skinny throat; 
 
 Felt on his side the scratchings of her claws 
 
 Touch him the while he granted wonderingly 
 
 The sharp caresses ot her savage care. 
 
 And trusted like the child he felt he was 
 
 Her wolf-like motherhood. . . . 
 
 In the days that passed. 
 Days when the doorway showed a golden flame 
 Swallowing the earth, he fevered and he sweat 
 In weakness, and the wolf-crone tended him. 
 Hour-long she hunted while he watched her slide 
 Across the corner fumbling with her herbs 
 Or tearing at her meat. Her eyes were hid 
 In rugged furrows, and her hairy brows 
 Were drawn together squinting at the sun ; 
 Her stalwart back was bent by many a load 
 In long decades of hunting, like a man's; 
 Likewise her bony shambling limbs no trace 
 Of aught but want or strife could show; — no sign 
 Of tiger graces or of woman beauty 
 Illumed the brutish bulk so overhung 
 With ragged skins and tatters ; horny feet 
 II 
 
Scratched at the ground she ambled on ; the touch 
 Of her grey hands was all the wanderer knew 
 Of her humanity, while she clutched his side 
 With nursing. Queer the image unto him. 
 For he remembered luxury and love 
 In palaces where he had laid his head 
 On lovely laps, a wounded royal charge. 
 Though still through that sweet dream relinquishing 
 Never the bitter struggle unredeemed. . . . 
 
 Fearless the man grew slowly from the child 
 He had been when he woke as from the womb. 
 Withered and centuries old, of the wolf- wife. 
 Who mothered him with savage thrusts and grips. 
 Huddled at night on the cold earthern floor. 
 Forgetting with the light all but a joy 
 Long-starving at her entrails, grovelling 
 With the old fire that fed the loosened seed 
 Of a man-child. . . . Her very soul had gone 
 With all her womanhood, the female dower. 
 Into the dissolute progeny of her loins . . . 
 But in the night with savage growlings, she 
 Lay licking at the hand that was so weak 
 And biting with her gums the finger tips 
 Of the faint prince of warriors. God, O God! 
 At last how did the pain of passion shred 
 The tendons of the brutish woman's heart 
 For this supreme bestowal to her want! . . . 
 
 O, all the wasted beauty of him gleamed 
 And god-like grew through many tropic dawns 
 For her senility, and pierced the blindness 
 
Of ancient eyes, and when the moonlight rifted 
 Under the thatch upon his pearl and ebony — 
 The dear wan flesh of all his body wasted — 
 The creature gulped a snarl that grew a sob 
 And snatched the fors to cover that sweet beauty 
 From the cold jealous moon ! The wonderful 
 Laxity of his wan sure feet she saw, 
 As rare as the white violet and as fair. 
 Rising in nervous twining suppleness 
 To the tense knee whence sprang the undulations 
 Winding the thigh, and in their woven beauty 
 The twisting muscles, strong as cypress fibre. 
 Pale as the pearl translucence of an orchid 
 In tender fleshly texture, felt the woman 
 Through her worn eyes; and the luxuriance 
 From where the throat began in bluish shadows 
 Beneath the beard, the flare of widening whiteness 
 Of the cleft breast, the mobile turn of shoulder. 
 The straight smooth side as of a veined marble, 
 Carven above the loin in a short tunic — 
 That loin magnificent! — At its beginning 
 Like a slim snow-clad ridge, the apotheosis 
 Of the victorious charm of his dear manhood! — 
 His wasted force, with not too tender touch 
 She gripped and gave to him in brutal tending; 
 By sturdy clutch she brought the life blood coursing 
 Through his heroic frame. Humble, she gathered 
 The primal force thus garnered from the years 
 Mounting to five-score of the woman-brute. 
 
 Within her motherhood bloomed as day by day 
 He grew to live again in her lean grasp, 
 13 
 
In the remembrance of his former strength 
 He waxed, impatient for the renewing deed 
 Of the warrior, of the hero, of the man. 
 Words of a formless thought came to his mind 
 Gleaned from harsh murmurings of her monologue. 
 Sung from the eternal woman-song for him 
 In his dejection : 
 
 'Though thou shouldest lose 
 
 The tone of thy steel spirit, 
 
 King before me, O my child! 
 
 Though thou shouldest grow 
 
 Ever more wan — 
 
 Though thou shouldest waste 
 
 From hunger and from wounds. 
 
 From fever in the wilds — 
 
 Still in thy beauteous ruin 
 
 Thou shouldest be 
 
 My child again, king among wanderers. 
 
 Thou man of destiny ! 
 
 Go thou to fight again 
 
 soul of my lost heaven! 
 
 1 bore you in my loins once, but you died. 
 When you had parted from my jealous flesh. 
 Had torn me with your savage ecstasy 
 
 To breathe the dumb air of the speechless world. 
 You died because your spirit gasped and fled . . . 
 And I could never find it on these hills . . . 
 And so I let it go, the free-born soul! . . .' 
 
 It was as if he heard the responsive air 
 Sound and resound around his heavy head 
 H 
 
A dream distorted grown from out he past 
 Of a wild motherhood and full of lope 
 For the great freedom, first, of all her sons. 
 Her fellows, her sad country and her race. 
 Burning eternally in her, last to die 
 The first great instinct, freedom, fed her life. 
 Muttering at evening when she crouched alone 
 In the dark shadow farthest fi-om the bed. 
 Her inarticulate words let free a spark 
 From the ashes of her speech, and < liberty' 
 'Liberty' was the word he heard, and 'child' 
 And 'God' and 'child' again, and 'mad! . . . mad 
 
 mad! . . .' 
 Crouching beneath his level in the dawn. 
 Breathing above the night and passing out 
 To the eternal silence of the stars. 
 Until the raving suddenly was still 
 Submerged in violent pan tings as her breath 
 Yielded to harsh control, or wearmess. 
 
 Some splendid impulse thrilled him to the life 
 He once had clothed with splendour, valorous 
 Or subtle; rapturous or rich with love. 
 He roused from out the toxic swoon his sense 
 Had sunk in and he dreamed of all the deeds 
 That the world needed mighty men to do. 
 Thus, slowly, as a traveller in a desert 
 Surviving all the stages of his strife 
 With torrid heat and thirst and beasts of prey. 
 The wanderer came again unto his own. 
 His inner paradise of splendid ardour. 
 Great wondering had led him where he was 
 
 15 
 
To make the wild men wrangle, stab and die; 
 To know the real crude impulse; to subdue 
 Such creatures for his own wise masculine ends 
 That he might bend to order all the race. . . , 
 Fragments of his large hope came in swift moods 
 Flashing like fire with exquisite sharp pain 
 Into a languid day of wakening. 
 Roused by his hope in the keen hours of dawn 
 He saw nor that which nursed him, nor the hut 
 That housed them both as fellow brutes; he saw. 
 Isolate, at war in soul against 
 The later sordid days, oppression, laws. 
 His own ghost rise and ride the wastes alone. 
 Gathering one by one the shadow-shapes 
 From a disordered country. There a germ 
 Of fortune surely sown by him would grow 
 Into a regal triumph in the years 
 Of his new knighthood; so he was himself 
 But glorified by the sharp certainty 
 Of new self knowledge. She, the stark thing, crouched 
 With gleamless eyes within the shade, like dead. 
 And as he grew to be a man again 
 The flame of motherhood within the hag. 
 Dwindling thus, was hidden more and more. 
 Until she crawled about among the shadows 
 Absenting her the more from day to day 
 And sleeping at the threshold in the night. 
 So fled the life from her to him, so grew 
 The spark from her fierce seasons through his hours 
 Of convalescence. Woe unto the woman 
 When he, the warrior, woke to his desire! 
 Could the free flowing tears but solace her 
 i6 
 
She were to envy! But the hardening 
 
 Of her rich-fibred years had closed upon 
 
 A heart of pain, scarce pulsing in a prison 
 
 More cruel than the mad-house ! Mouthing, mumbling 
 
 He heard her bid him go, and 'liberty' — 
 
 'Liberty' was his warrant. 
 
 Thus he rose 
 And took new strength against the new oppression. 
 He fought for liberty against the old 
 Blind feebleness ; he fought for chivalry 
 And peace ; for truth and for simplicity ; 
 For reason, equal justice, and for right 
 In law and love. . . . 
 
 But when a hunger 
 To mingle with his kin obscured his triumph. 
 As if some soft mist overspread the scene 
 Of summer glory; and he yearned to see 
 The home ancestral he was born to, then 
 On the far voyage over Ultramar 
 The wanderer departs. He will not live 
 A slave to any race! Unlimited 
 His wandering, for his brothers are the world! 
 
 17 
 
IV 
 
 Where is our kingdom, love ? 
 That old sweet realm 
 Ot faded airs, above 
 Whose florid wreaths the elm 
 Waves flowery branches. 
 And the garnished god 
 Smiles amid garlands? 
 
 Or come you from the sea 
 That laps a town 
 Softly, incessantly. 
 Where palaces look down 
 Upon the turnings. 
 And tidal ways 
 Surge in the twilight ? 
 
 Where would you take me, love? 
 
 Into the South 
 
 Of the orange grove 
 
 Where a tropic drouth 
 
 Drenches in purple 
 
 The royal land. 
 
 Languorous, alluring? 
 
 O let our empire rise 
 Out of the dark 
 Of myriad midnight skies 
 Starred with the mark 
 Of an eternal, 
 A world-long love. 
 White in the ages! 
 i8 
 
V 
 
 Thou hast taken the light from my eyes 
 
 And it gleams on thy sword; 
 Thou hast taken the rose from my cheek 
 
 And it lies on thy breast; 
 Thou hast taken my word and the rest. 
 
 Thou wilt thrust at thy intimate foe 
 
 The arm that embraced; 
 Thou wilt drink with the mouth I have kissed 
 
 The blood with the dust 
 In thy taste for the fray and thy lust. 
 
 My breast thou hast bared for thy head 
 
 Lies pale in the field ; 
 My mouth thou hast sought in the dark 
 
 Is the wound of thy side ; 
 My joy is the yield of thy pride. 
 
 I have sent out my soul in the fire 
 
 Of the night of the fray ; 
 I have opened the deeps of my heart 
 
 To thy hot thirsting breath, 
 I would stay in thy spirit in death. 
 
 19 
 
VI 
 
 Lord of the life that welters through the ways 
 Paling my sides and purpling all my veins; 
 Sweet lord of all my passions and my pains. 
 
 My precious tears, my praise. 
 
 My nights, my lonely days. 
 
 Within me flows thy fire 
 Through the fine channels trembling to thy thrill. 
 Answering thy wild delight to wilder sob 
 So all the earth and all the heavens throb 
 
 Through my desire to still 
 
 The ardour of thy will. 
 
 Thy sovereign desire. 
 
 Lord of the little life that heareth not. 
 Bound in the crimson bud, what restless seas 
 Or evening tempests sing, or the slight breeze 
 
 Sighs to the new begot 
 
 Of a mysterious lot. 
 
 Within me flows thy fire; 
 Thine is the life that lights the violet gloom 
 Hidden in me for my consuming dole. 
 Flushing my cheek, devouring my white soul. 
 
 For thee my myrtles bloom. 
 
 Flowers of the tragic womb. 
 
 Sweet lord of my desire! 
 
VII 
 
 The body is not, love, save for the soul; 
 
 Dumb is the flesh and dead. 
 My essence is elusive as the scroll 
 
 Woven and formed and fled 
 When the blue waves of forest smoke unroll 
 
 Their tendrils overhead. 
 
 I have grown sacred, love, because of you. 
 
 Because of these blest hours 5 
 And wine is as my mouth, and honey-dew 
 
 My tears, and many flowers 
 My flesh, and all my veins the heaven's blue,- 
 
 The chrism of love is ours. 
 
VIII 
 
 Take my wan feet within your liands 
 
 And let them feel 
 
 The tears of one who goes not to return. 
 
 The heavy tears of loneliness in lonely lands. 
 
 Would you conceal 
 
 The winds ? Hamper the floods ? 
 
 Forbid the fires that burn? 
 
 Deny great moods 
 
 Within the grandeur of those heights 
 
 Where you will stand alone? 
 
 The isolate hills where you will rove ? 
 
 The strange still nights 
 
 When the seas moan 
 
 With the eternal voice ot our long woe? 
 
 My love, my love! 
 
 Listen, I bid you go 
 
 Into the royal richness of those wilds 
 
 Wilder than our wild love. 
 
 More royal than my soul. 
 
 Richer than me! 
 
 My love is free! 
 
 The reaches of the future are yours and mine, 
 
 Great love that seemest to hold my soul! 
 
 Palely the flowers 
 
 Of my cool flesh are lying 
 
 Under your hand. 
 
 The strange, passionate orchid, the rose-golden wine 
 
 Of our rare love 
 
 Have changed; — 
 
The dying 
 
 And the immortal life are ours 
 
 Out of the essence of their mingled whole. 
 
 My love, my love! 
 
 Mine were you, mine, before 
 
 The thunder and the thrill 
 
 From the far, shaken shore 
 
 Thrust us together in one life, until 
 
 The hision was one soul. 
 
 Ours the wide earth 
 
 Although you be estranged 
 
 From my unconsecrate flesh, 
 
 O earthly one! 
 
 My soul sleeps in your fibre, love! 
 
 The double beauty of us in the mesh 
 
 Of fate has led us on 
 
 To one supremest birth. 
 
 Your soul in me. 
 
 Henceforth, my love, my love. 
 
 Free are you, free! 
 
 O Solitudes, 
 
 Ye shall He long upon his soul. 
 In poignant nights of rapture. 
 In strange spaces 
 Of wonder where his goal 
 May lead him unaware 
 Through the vastness of the spheres. 
 Through uncomprehending places. 
 Through ambushed days and nights of capture ! 
 He shall roam, he shall dare 
 Without the whims, the fears 
 23 
 
Of a small fate 
 
 To bind him. 
 
 What tragic kisses tremble through the dark! 
 
 What hushed enthralling 
 
 Of soul by soul! 
 
 O some pristine, imperial state 
 
 Shall find him! 
 
 The planet's reel, the orbed roll 
 
 Of suns shall crown him! 
 
 The vacuum of space is calling 
 
 My king from me! So late. 
 
 So near the dawn. 
 
 So far from me. 
 
 His spirit broods. 
 
 Shivers, awakes, is gone 
 
 To the vast kingdom of his moods. 
 
 Yet in the glory of those other years. 
 The stern strong years of power. 
 Out of the past 
 
 Of our two mingled souls shall flame the flower. 
 The white illimitable treasure 
 Of the sweet tears. 
 Of the old hungering pleasure. 
 And the immortal peace 
 Of our relinquished love. 
 At last, at last, 
 O, this of me shall cease. 
 My hands that love you and my timid feet 
 You help and hold! 
 My eyes you love. 
 My fruitfulness you enfold! 
 24 
 
Yet sweet, O sweet 
 Shall sing the fire. 
 The flower caress. 
 The soul of us aspire 
 And bless 
 All that has been. 
 All that shall be 
 Of us until eternity 
 Is sphered within 
 Our everlasting love! 
 
 25 
 
IX 
 
 O WHEN the time shall come that you depart 
 Let not our world of love be dyed in fears. 
 Nor yield that any bitter forecast sears 
 Our passionate yearnings ; let us play no part 
 Before the impassive heaven with childish art ; 
 Let us not limit love to little years 
 Of lawless laughter, nor with lover's tears 
 Deny the future, lover of my heart ! 
 But leave me as a sovereign, O my king. 
 The crowned queen of our supreme domain. 
 That you may ride in splendour to your goal 
 While all the mighty centuries stand and sing 
 Of war and love, of triumph and of pain. 
 And our great joy, O lover of my soul ! 
 
 26 
 
Come to me, little one, are you afraid? 
 See how the storm blows keen on the sea. 
 Straining and streaming, unfearing, unreckoning. 
 See the white sailing ships tossing and beckoning. 
 Hear the seas shouting and calling to me ; 
 Come to me, little one, warrior maid! 
 
 Little one, child heart, have you not said. 
 Soft in the soul of the long summer night. 
 Words of the warrior whispering the best in me? 
 Ah, now your lover must follow his destiny. 
 Have you not fired all his soul to the fight? 
 Little one, always my warrior maid! 
 
 Child of my heyday, soul of my blade. 
 
 Slim as my sword and as fiery and free. 
 
 See how the storm skies are thundering, darkening. 
 
 Loud is the song of the wind we are harkening. 
 
 Child, O my little one, whisper to me, 
 
 Wish me good wandering, warrior maid! 
 
 27 
 
XI 
 
 The old sad destiny I share with her 
 
 Whose simple soul 
 Is weeping unaware within its sleep ; 
 
 For me no splendid goal 
 Conceals the tomb that all the ages keep 
 
 For fame's great freeholder. 
 
 I to forever love and you to do 
 
 The glorious deed. 
 You to forever live and I to die, — 
 
 I, with the woman's need 
 To go on loving all a lifetime through 
 
 While you can pass love by! 
 
 28 
 
XII 
 
 O LEAVE the shore 
 Without a tear — 
 The wide seas roar. 
 The heavens cry — 
 Without a fear. 
 Without a sigh. 
 For evermore, 
 O evermore 
 Your love am I! 
 
 29 
 
II 
 
THE ROOM 
 
 Ghost of the shelter of a wandering soul. 
 Sweet room — O shadowed room! 
 
 Substance of life is pushing through the gloom. 
 Unending, never whole. 
 
 To one the room has been an ambushed lair ; 
 
 To one a primal cave 
 Fierce with the face of death ; to one a grave 
 
 After life-long despair. 
 
 For him who blasphemes love no heaven glows 
 
 Inside the holy shade. 
 Out shall he hurry when the test is made. 
 
 Bereft of wine and rose ! 
 
 Large influences hover in those walls. 
 
 Uninjured by the mean; 
 Free of the sordid, clear of the unclean 
 
 A subtle blessing falls. 
 
 What persons met me, loved me, held me there? 
 
 How should the past invite 
 That I, a stranger, for a day or night 
 
 Enjoyed the royal fare? 
 
 A thousand lovers in the shadows lure; 
 
 A thousand breathing lips 
 Brush mine ; the long day unimagined slips. 
 
 Rounded by the obscure. 
 
 33 
 
The pain that has been here is passion now. 
 
 Crushed in the silent bond 
 Between us, heritants of the dim beyond. 
 
 Last lovers, I and thou! 
 
 34 
 
THE POOL 
 
 I AM a still pool in the shadow. 
 Deep hidden in twilight. 
 Dark as night in the day. 
 Strong as sunshine in the shadow. 
 
 The still pool knows no dawn. 
 Thou hast seen but the summer 
 When efflorescent, fringed, covered. 
 The marges hide the dawn. 
 
 Marges of the soul, — beauty! 
 But all below — mvstery! 
 Wait, no straggler is certain, 
 O casual loiterer, of this beauty. 
 
 He that sings sadly. 
 
 Making melancholy love to the moonrise. 
 May not see me under the marges 
 Shadowed silently, sadly. 
 
 He that loveth the world. 
 Wide weave his footsteps! 
 The still pool echoes never, never 
 The clang of the peaceless world. 
 
 The summer hideth the marge 
 In garish glory of gold. 
 In green and ruddy leafage. 
 With yellow of bracken, hideth, 
 35 
 
Burning to blood-red in autumn. 
 Piling with fawn-color. 
 Tawny-leaved, rusty, rustling. 
 Ragged, — the marge in autumn. 
 
 Bare me to winter! Ah, Love, 
 Thou shiverest. Whom love knows not 
 Lieth silent before him. 
 Thus I forever. Love. 
 
 I, unknown, unaware, unwanted. 
 Still, still, the frozen pool. 
 Icy-pierced, passive. 
 Bound in the season, unwanted. 
 
 Wait ! Shall there be springtime. Love ? 
 
 A thousand mirrored glints 
 
 Wake in my surface 
 
 All of beauty and first love. 
 
 Green, like the garment of earth. 
 Dark, like the deep of eyes. 
 White, like remembered snow. 
 Fantastic, fascinating, under the earth 
 
 The pool glimmers. Purple, 
 Bronze ; royal, eternal ; 
 Rose as the dawn, and yet 
 Gleam from it pearl and pale purple. 
 
 Silvered tints drift on the pool. 
 O mystery, — mysteries 
 36 
 
Thou love shalt hunger toward, 
 Shalt long for, in the pool. 
 
 Long as a life, longer. 
 
 The low waters. 
 
 Under the ledges, silent, still. 
 
 Sleep, a lifetime of seasons, longer. 
 
 Give up thy secrets, winter! 
 Whispering or crooning, 
 Breathless or sobbing. 
 Wild winds in the hush of winter. 
 
 The wellsprings wander. 
 Weltering, welling, alive; 
 All earth is theirs and life. 
 Thou loiterer, thou wanderer! 
 
 37 
 
THE BED 
 
 The permanent repose of centuries 
 
 Broods in the purple folds. 
 There birth, seeming to mock the obsequies 
 
 Of yesterday, unfolds. 
 Sobbing, another future to its woe; 
 
 Or the sweet young await. 
 Sleeping, a destiny; or later, lo. 
 
 Longing, an undreamed fate. 
 
 The splendours of the bed deluge the earth. 
 
 He who is loved or dead. 
 And she who loves or dies; despair or birth. 
 
 All there are bred; 
 All given, taken ; grief and peace there keep 
 
 The panther and the dove; 
 All found or fled ; and evanescent sleep 
 
 Purple with night; and love. 
 
 Persistent with theatrals throngs the host 
 
 In crimson pomp and gold; 
 The dim blue phantoms there; the misty ghost 
 
 When the new mocks the old; 
 When the rose-melting wraiths arise, adorn 
 
 The common human bower; 
 When flesh turns unto flesh ; when love is born 
 
 At the supernal hour. 
 
 Wild as the winds of heaven the wild heart 
 Doth tremble to resolve 
 
 38 
 
The rtpnire lurkinff ihwe; to phick tptn 
 
 ve 
 The jch 
 
 Th" , ' to the touch 
 
 Thou prcaage ot the tocnt)' 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 I 
 
 This night of sighing winds and shaking boughs 
 I come to you, my heart's wild mate, I come! 
 Feel you the tempting of the leafy house. 
 
 Our forest home ? 
 Feel you the secret silence as we rove. 
 Closing around us ever where we stray ? 
 Now at the edges of a curtained grove. 
 
 And now away 
 Into the gleaming fields, by shadowy copse. 
 Wherever lead your lingering, languid feet 
 In promise to my long-enbosomed hopes 
 
 I follow, sweet. 
 The half moon scarce gives light to show how still 
 Lies now the sunken valley sleeping dim 
 Below our pathway on the silvery hill. 
 
 Beyond whose rim 
 Our odorous forest reaches forth his arms 
 To help his wildlings wander on their way. 
 The mountain winds give ever new alarms 
 
 In gusty play. 
 But lending to the loneness of the spot 
 Where sway the sheltering branches now above 
 Your lifted face that kisses frighten not — 
 
 You are my love! 
 Sink we into the fragrant wild-wood deeps! 
 Here hang the boughs above the wooing bed 
 Where dusk invites and languorous stillness sleeps 
 
 About your head. 
 40 
 
O, yield unto the urging of the gloom! 
 
 I feel your breast give way beneath my breast! 
 
 Let this be death! This be our lasting doom. 
 
 This is love's best! 
 Is it a swoon, delirious with dream 
 Of eyes that hold the darkness of the night, 
 Upreaching arms wherein my senses seem 
 
 Faint with delight? 
 
 41 
 
II 
 
 see! The gusts have blown the crumpled cloud 
 Away from where the moon is moving slow 
 
 Across the troubled sky — 
 See! All the trees bend low before the loud 
 Unstable rage of the rude blasts that blow. 
 
 Shunning us where we lie! 
 
 Hold me more close within those quiet hands; 
 
 1 hear the night-birds moan, I fear the dark; 
 
 Yes, even love I fear. 
 What omen is this that my sense withstands ? 
 What haunts me with a dread of heaven's mark 
 
 Set on me in the year? 
 
 At last night blots out all our earth, O love! 
 Thickly the hollow where we lie is darkened; 
 
 Through trances come your words 
 Murmuring faintly, mingled from above 
 With voice of winds whose presage I have harkened. 
 
 Warned by the wise night-birds. 
 
 42 
 
Ill 
 
 Far in the eastern sky, above 
 The level of the mist across the vale. 
 Our last night's moon doth wane and pale. 
 
 But vou sleep on, my love. 
 
 Open, dear one, those love-sealed eyes. 
 And watch with me the growing of the day. 
 Until our night shall pass away. 
 
 Until the sun shall rise. 
 
 Strange was this twofold joy, wherein 
 We held the hurrying night between our hearts! 
 Now morning into heaven starts. 
 
 And daylight doth begin. 
 
 43 
 
BIRTH 
 
 And thou wast born! 
 Thou grewest in breathless gloom 
 Within the enfolding tenure of the womb; 
 
 Thou wast enclosed, embraced 
 Within the jealous sheath where thou wast placed 
 By love; but love hath called thee forth from me. 
 
 That thou at last breathe free. 
 And open thy sweet eyes unto the morn. 
 
 I dream of thee! 
 With first weak steps I come to lean above 
 And fold my weakling to my heart of love. 
 
 Wherever doth increase 
 A joy in throbs like unto pain. 
 
 I yearn for thee to ease 
 The rapture, as when thy soft mouth has pressed 
 The very life of nurture, pearl-drops without stain 
 
 From my breast! 
 Thou art the glorious fruitage of my love. 
 The air of myriad springtimes stirred thy soul. 
 Bred life in thee ; 
 Nourished wast thou from above. 
 By the warm sky wast perfect made and whole. 
 
 Fostered in nature's liberality. 
 I loved thee for my love's sake when thou wast not thou, 
 Hadst naught, nor form, nor sense. 
 But from the inmost seed 
 Of a close-mingled rapture wast to grow 
 Through nameless shapes of life to evidence 
 A slow perfection's need. 
 
 44 
 
Ill 
 
THE PASSION 
 
 I WAS at the heaven of all the heavens. 
 Thrills of star-old radiance poured to meet me, 
 Let me reach the sight of supernal glory 
 Near the eternal. 
 
 Smote my eyes the calm of the blinding heaven. 
 Awful rapture searing my soul to whiteness 
 Sang above the doom of the silent pathway 
 Glooming below me. 
 
 Sullen arms of darkness have crept around me. 
 Mingling voices mutter and rise and hinder : 
 'Would ye blot the heaven with mortal longing? 
 Sob at this portal? 
 
 'Sit by some slow infinite sea of yearning. 
 Human heart, for never desire shall enter 
 Clothed with pain, unsated, unloved, unhoping,- 
 You of the shadows ! ' 
 
 I have seen the heaven of all the heavens 
 Flaming high, forbidden to me astounded. 
 While I mourn reserved and immortal spaces, 
 I, undeserving. 
 
 Blessed pain! O blessed be thou forever! 
 Never mine without thee the grief of loving. 
 Never throbbing heart impassioned with sorrow. 
 Never the Passion! 
 47 
 
SAPPHICS 
 
 Bold the heart that burns with the acrid essence 
 Out of hearts distraught from the simple loving 
 Felt in sad lone wilds by the simple-hearted 
 Folk of the fen-side, 
 
 Wouldst thou cherish love ever more forever. 
 Clinging, sighing, singing and crying mutely? 
 Feel the change, the tremor, the swerve, the triumph. 
 All for a rapture? 
 
 Wouldst thou bring to birth from the core of blooming ? 
 Dead shall be the child of thy arid passion. 
 Cold the subtle bud shall await the embalming 
 Of thy forgetting! 
 
 Wouldst thou conquer aught of the strange, sweet future ? 
 Thou shalt wake and wander alone in sorrow. 
 Know the olden joy and the olden wonder 
 Under the tempest! 
 
 48 
 
C. B. 
 
 All the sweet long day I am mad with fever. 
 Burns mv heart in silence for day to leave her. 
 Dusk to bring her, night to bestow her ever 
 Close in my keeping. 
 
 Through the warm blue, thinly a moonlet creepeth 
 Toward the star ot evening where pale she sleepeth ; 
 Weep not, sweet! Ah, sweet, doth she dream she 
 weepeth ? 
 
 Cometh she never! 
 
 49 
 
KALAMAZOO 
 
 Sprung from streams the Indian knew before us, 
 I have seen the Kalamazoo's beginning 
 In the deeps of Michigan's towering forests. 
 Starred with his pathways. 
 
 Through the moving on of your flood, O river. 
 Glows submerged the emerald of your gardens; 
 From the wilds your sources shall swell enchanted. 
 Cold and untainted. 
 
 Wave the fat green arms of your water witches. 
 Palely silvered ; stirring the bronze of grasses 
 Seem to writhe a myriad of mingling serpents. 
 Bloodless and nerveless. 
 
 Brushed and tied and drenched the metallic tresses 
 Swaying as from the foreheads of dead mermaidens 
 Pillowed sombre in plushes of mossy weaving, 
 Willessly waving. 
 
 O, the creeping song of your shores at nightfall! 
 Unforgot though moveth your heavy current 
 Mighty through the twilight and into the darkness. 
 Sounding of mystery. 
 
 50 
 
GHAZELS 
 
 I 
 
 There is a country where the cactus grows 
 In tough persistence, but the sweetest rose 
 
 Is not so rich as that fringed crimson bloom. 
 Unharmed though sunheat burns, though stormwind 
 blows. 
 
 There barren hills swell upward to the sun 
 Above lagunes whose shallow waters run 
 
 Down from slow-rising, unmarked summits, where 
 The dry grass turns from green to dullest dun. 
 
 But at the edges of the pool, unseen. 
 
 The grass roots touch the moisture, reach the green. 
 
 And drink in purest color, neither grey. 
 Nor silver-green, nor blue, but half between. 
 
 Beyond there lies a luxury of leaves, 
 Lucent or ashen grev, — one flower receives 
 
 Gold from the sun, or there are rosy flowers 
 Or copper-red or white ; this bloom retrieves 
 
 The sterile hill from bleakness, and the sky. 
 Sleeping and blue, from loneliness ; there fly, 
 
 Singing, the birds, sweet as in other climes; 
 Or after sunset, there the swamp-hens cry. 
 
 51 
 
II 
 
 Those four pale petals point to north and south 
 
 And east and west, whence sweeps the wind ; the 
 
 growth 
 Of curling prairie grass clings to the ground. 
 As thickly, softly woven as a cloth 
 Of tender green, within whose woof that pink. 
 Four-leaved flower like a rare threadknot doth 
 Shine out and show the great earth's guiding points. 
 Its crimson-branching veins and stem are both 
 Rich with the blood of Nature, and its breath 
 Sends out her very sweetness to the drouth. 
 
 52 
 
IV 
 
FLOS FLORUM 
 
 The morning sleepeth pure 
 
 And pale, intact, entire, 
 
 Unwakened to the lure 
 
 Of a long-hushed desire. 
 
 (O hush, thou smouldering heart of fire!) 
 
 The cold, closed joy of bloom 
 
 Yet unborn of the mire, 
 
 Mouldeth within the gloom 
 
 A floweret of desire. 
 
 (Grow to thy fulness, flower of fire !) 
 
 Burn, ether, to the heart 
 Of rose and of sapphire. 
 For flame shall form a part 
 Of my bright flower of fire. 
 (For thus ariseth thy desire.) 
 
 Thy flame shall be as seven 
 
 When thou at last aspire 
 
 Into the fire of heaven 
 
 To follow my desire. 
 
 (Thou folded flame, thou flower of fire.) 
 
 Thou shalt be mine, thou flower. 
 
 For thou wert my desire 
 
 Before thy opening hour. 
 
 Thou flower, thou flower of fire! 
 
 (Bloom thou for me, for my desire!) 
 
 55 
 
This thou shalt surely do 
 
 When thou shalt raise thy spire 
 
 From the sweet earth unto 
 
 The heaven of my desire! 
 
 (Mine art thou always, flower of fire!) 
 
 O let the hour be long 
 Of thy fire-souled empire. 
 Mine is the hour and thine. 
 Thou flower, thou flower of fire! 
 (Thou flower, my flower of fire!) 
 
 56 
 
SONGS 
 
 Fly awav, wind of the desert sands ; 
 
 ' T is barren there ; 
 Carrv the breath 1 give unto your care 
 
 To other lands. 
 
 Find him, dear wind, wherever he may be. 
 
 The while you blow ; 
 His dwelling-places you may never know. 
 
 Touch him for me. 
 
 I WILL go with you over seas where the sun rises. 
 Or lingers your spirit near, so shall we turn 
 Into strange swarms of men, O love! 
 Hasten and find me! 
 
 Where all things are human, I will go with you. 
 Or wanders your spirit far, so shall we flee 
 Forever to lonely plains, O love. 
 Hasten and find me! 
 
 57 
 
AUTUMN HEART 
 
 Likening my love to a reluctant flame — 
 Thus flickers slow the life in Autumn's heart. 
 Thus pallid look the leaves in purple frame 
 Of Autumn's near, cool heaven. Pale is the part 
 Love plays in dreams of all the frail old bliss. 
 Through days it seems life glowed but as the fire 
 Behind the ruddy leaves that bright rays kiss. 
 Or as the sun in amber holds empire. 
 
 Stiller than sleep left languorous by love. 
 Lies, in the grove, like a mosaic floor, 
 A marbled pool, rich-inlaid from above 
 By the bright leaves, lost out of Autumn's store. 
 And set across the darkling water's brim. 
 How they were borne by winds in fierce disport, 
 A sweep of crimson clouds, from forest rim. 
 Or sped as bright-dyed sailboats into port. 
 No mortal knows; or whether, pale and slow. 
 They settled, drifting, as the first soft flakes 
 Of snow, blown in a sunset's yellow glow, 
 I cannot tell. Where yonder woodland makes 
 A clustering, gorgeous crown above the hill 
 The trees seem like huge blossoms, so they blush. 
 Yet know I that their bloom shall not fulfil 
 The springtime sign of summer's flaunt and flush. 
 
 Come, Soul of my Beloved, walk with me! 
 The land is strange and wild in Autumn's sway; 
 Down through the pensive valley lies the way. 
 By yellowing, whispering willows overhung, 
 58 
 
And on the ledge stands many a rugged tree, 
 In rusty-red leaves clad, or russet, flung 
 Sombre on crimson, carmine, scarlet hues. 
 Yet tainted sad with Autumn's dying breath. 
 Rising in purple mist, a veil of death 
 To garb the glory of the passing hour. 
 To sanctitv all lost to Nature's use 
 As it were shrouded pale by beauty's power. 
 
 Ascend with me, thou Soul, the gentle hill 
 Leading aside past hedge and garden-close. 
 To the grey misty orchard, silvery-sweet. 
 Where love seems flitting through the branches still. 
 And ever seems to wander with light feet 
 On the pale grass and through the orchard rows. 
 
 linger near the ghostly grove awhile. 
 Spirit of my far love! Or let us stray 
 Again, and catch the glimpse of sinuous slopes 
 Lying about the marsh beyond the stile 
 
 Where swam the lilies when the year was warm. 
 In days of love and light and summer hopes. 
 
 By fields of winter wheat, green 'neath the grey 
 Of solemn sky, and past the homely farm, 
 
 1 lead thee, love, in spirit. Look ! the way 
 Turns and is lost, over the sharp hillside. 
 But far we wander up, and on the verge 
 Of the blunt cliiF resounds a lonely roar — 
 The hollow tones of pines swell and subside. 
 O still and sad, my heart, harken the dirge 
 Low wailing now and with a rising blast, 
 
 59 
 
The organ-note of sorrow, evermore 
 Aloof and lofty, solitary, vast. 
 
 Alas, it seems I hear woe's voice afar 
 Like the slow pines ; and grief doth so oppress 
 As the close heaven, leaning overhead; 
 But if I know love's touch and love's caress. 
 What love hath given, sorrow may not mar! — 
 I am alone! — Where is thy spirit fled? 
 
 60 
 
OBLIVION 
 
 Bathed in the dusk depths of thine eyes. 
 My bare soul shivers in the stream 
 Of an insatiable surprise 
 Wherein I wonder, waken, dream. 
 
 Drenched in the shadow of thy gaze 
 Mysterious broodiixg on the deep 
 Splendour of thy inner days. 
 My hidden longings stir from sleep. 
 
 Drowned in the dark pool of thy look 
 Where wondrous twilights gleam and cease 
 As on the heart of some slow brook, 
 Would that I lay in timeless peace! 
 
 6i 
 
VENIT REX 
 
 Through thy rich cloak of fleshly calm. 
 From thine eyes' soul, in the darkness thereof. 
 Germ of all joy, I feel thee! 
 
 White as the antique fields of space 
 Thy wondrous breast ; fine as red gold 
 From the ageless sun, thy living crown! 
 In the endless spring of everlasting dreams. 
 Fair frame of manhood, I wait thee! 
 
 Ages strove to give thee strength. 
 Fickle seasons merged for thee 
 Into the marvel of thy heart. 
 Slow months laboured toward thy life. 
 Wonder of love, I hail thee! 
 
 Tenderness rules the timeless soul 
 Caught in the heaven of thy depths. 
 Charm as of first mute loving clothes 
 Thy ripened days, O fiiture man of men! 
 A woman worships thee! 
 
 62 
 
THE POET 
 
 (j4t Eighteen J 
 
 Sweet as a saintly psalm 
 He sings, and unaware. 
 The spirit ponders calm 
 Through song and prayer. 
 
 (At Tiventy-fourJ 
 
 Playeth the young sultan, arrogant. 
 Humoured bv easy girls he calls his slaves. 
 Turbans and scimitars and scarves and glaives. 
 Treasured and gemmed, sleep 'mong his carpets. 
 
 (Ai Thirty) 
 
 Hath lived in word and war and love. 
 He is a man all men above. 
 He is a friend, a comrade, peer 
 Of poet, soldier, king, or seer. 
 
 (And ivhen his dark mane shakes in the sloiv sea air, she, from a 
 
 groove of strange, stunted cedars, sings, silently 
 
 in her heart to the poet :) 
 
 The prisoned thought mv soul would free 
 
 He knoweth not ; 
 He heareth nothing but the sea. 
 
 And hath forgot 
 The shore ; ignoreth what the deeps have said to me. 
 63 
 
O poet, died unheard the note 
 
 Of my dumb song? 
 Through fruitless air my kisses smote 
 
 (Alas, how long!) 
 Across the gleam of sea-light 'round your mellow throat. 
 
 The turquoise girdle binds a flame, 
 
 lion of men! 
 
 A queen in pride, a slave in shame, 
 
 1 tremble when 
 
 You crouch in vision near me, powerful, untame. 
 
 Pillows are heaped here by the sand; 
 
 sultan, kneel! 
 Suing before me as I stand; 
 
 1 fain would feel 
 
 My heavy girdle loosen 'neath your languid hand. 
 
 Under the cedars' heavy shade 
 
 Our empty tent 
 Holds the sweet air that day-long played. 
 
 Before you went. 
 About us, and I love and I am not afraid. 
 
 This shore will never be the old 
 
 Indifferent sand ; 
 Though he were sad, though he were cold. 
 
 The autumn land 
 Were ours, — the cedars and the laurel's rusty gold. 
 
 My gems lie blue as tropic seas 
 Amid the grass 
 64 
 
A-tremhle tor the Southwest breeze 
 
 To breathe and pass. 
 And turn his white prow landward to our cedar trees. 
 
 The tired tides wash the sandy floor 
 
 Beneath my feet. 
 I would be here forever more. 
 
 For it is sweet 
 To watch the lingering wave and dream upon the shore. 
 
 The afterglow is mine alone. 
 
 I felt a vow 
 In the pale light that shone 
 
 About your brow; 
 The kingly dream was mine and is, — I dream it now. 
 
 Take me in memory as then, 
 
 O my slow king! 
 For you are more than other men 
 
 To love and sing, — 
 More than the lover's love or than the poet's ken. 
 
 65 
 
LOVE OF THE NIGHT 
 
 The little saint is in his niche. 
 The children of the earth asleep. 
 I love the wide free night time, which 
 My human hovering god doth keep. 
 
 The fountain is gone dry, the park 
 Is bare of its autumnal bloom. 
 The brown leaves whisper in the dark 
 Above the brief, bright summer's tomb. 
 
 I roam and linger in the free. 
 
 The friendly gusts of autumn night, 
 
 I call my lover-god, and he 
 
 Doth answer from a wind-swept height. 
 
 I wander wingless over space 
 
 Where sons watch and wild winds roll. 
 
 He veils the ardour of his face. 
 
 He penetrates my sacred soul. 
 
 66 
 
AT LAST 
 
 After the strange time we know as life. 
 Those long hours that were numb. 
 Those rushing days of strife, 
 Those years when we were dumb, — 
 
 After those binding seasons of our frost. 
 The wasted decades spent 
 In labour blind and lost 
 When grief did not relent, — 
 
 After the time when hope took shadowy form 
 Under that earthly cloud 
 That covereth as a storm — 
 Fearing to pray aloud, — 
 
 Mv soul! At last the wonderment is gone. 
 Open your eyes and see! 
 At last, the barriers down. 
 Fare forth, for you are free! 
 
 67 
 
ELEANOR 
 
 So late I came unto thy tomb. 
 The gates were barred, the night was soft. 
 And through the dark and in the gloom 
 I saw the cypresses aloft. 
 
 I knew thy lovely little head 
 Lay quietly within at rest. 
 Forever free, forever dead — 
 But, ah! the heart within my breast! 
 
 68 
 
RESURRECTION 
 
 Set up the god again with crown and wreath. 
 The pedestal, camelia-hung, restore. 
 Let the love have its olden way beneath 
 Him that I did adore. 
 
 O he was fair and luminous of old! 
 For pearl and sunrise gleamed about his form. 
 But long he lay sunk in the stolid mould 
 After the fiery storm. 
 
 No pageantry shall wind about his base 
 With blossomed fruit and spiral of perfume. 
 Altars oi awesome sacrifice no place 
 In this love shall assume. 
 
 He glows more softly from the endless years 
 When he was tombed away from slavish rite. 
 His cheeks are mellowed by a lover's tears. 
 His eyes have lost their light. 
 
 Set up the fallen god I had fain feared, 
 For in him rises life from out the clod. 
 And earthy gold his high soul has endeared, — 
 I love the fallen god! 
 
 69 
 
ABJURATION 
 
 My heart has been asleep ; 
 I live for you. 
 For you I think and weep. 
 If you but knew. 
 
 For you I have been strong. 
 And I am weak ; 
 The day and night are long, 
 I may not speak. 
 
 My unripe virgin days 
 Would bloom at last. 
 If I but knew the ways 
 Your love has passed. 
 
 The child is yours that lies 
 Within his bed. 
 But I, if I were wise, 
 I should be dead. 
 
 And what have I to give 
 That you have not? 
 For what, then, shall I live. 
 By you forgot? 
 
 Who loved you to the full 
 That my love lay 
 By you, unmercifiil! 
 Thus cast away? 
 70 
 
Forgive me if I cease 
 To love you now ; 
 Forgive my lonely peace, 
 My broken vow. 
 
 If others love you, dear, 
 I shall not pine. 
 Yours he all love and cheer. 
 You are not mine! 
 
 71 
 
THE TWO WAYS 
 
 What matter be it rain or shining weather? 
 An ardent day flows cooled by small refusings — 
 The silence folding lonely little musings — 
 The music that we might have heard together — 
 A track of thought from heart to heart mistaken — 
 These are a love-dream shaken. 
 
 Our paths apart; one dull, and one is lonely. 
 Now high, now striking low into abysses. 
 Leading its downward way past what sad kisses. 
 What union for a passing instant only! — 
 One wanders on its way in peace and mildness. 
 One through a pristine wildness. 
 
 O for the music we shall hear together 
 When two ways merge in one! When unrefusing 
 The silence throbs to song! What then of choosing 
 Whether it shall be rain or shining weather! 
 In that strange day the hurricane shall hold us. 
 The blast of love enfold us ! 
 
 72 
 
SECOND WINTER 
 
 The soft snow lies above the green of spring, 
 It dings to every shrub and budding thing ; 
 Among the blossoms on the apple-tree. 
 Hang whiter blooms of winter's garlanding. 
 
 Along the avenue the elm boughs sway 
 In gracious whitened spravs above the way; 
 Afar through balmy moisture-weighted air. 
 Upon the mountain-side the pines are grey. 
 
 Pale winter's dying hand reached forth to fling 
 Among the sun-wooed grass a lingering 
 Handful of death-like flowerets, soft and white 
 And cold, upon the glowing life of spring. 
 
 And winter's hand has laid a gleaming bed 
 
 Ot filmy white, where love-sweet spring has spread 
 
 The feathery fern for me and for my love 
 
 To lie upon, and there my love lies dead. 
 
 And heavy overlying all the gloom 
 
 Of evergreen, a burden white as foam 
 
 Swings like the sea's slow billows, snowy-crowned. 
 
 Changeful and fitting emblem for his tomb. 
 
 73 
 
THE NORTH 
 
 O Shadows from the South! 
 One time ye bade me sing; 
 Love's promise did ye bring 
 In summer's drouth. 
 
 Still the South changeth not ; 
 Roses her poets hold 
 Where the world doth enfold 
 A garden spot. 
 
 Yet far I see, and through 
 The darkling Northern sky 
 Great shades arise and fly 
 
 Where storm clouds brew. 
 
 There is the spirit's goal! 
 
 melt not into dream 
 Where lower joy doth seem 
 
 To bind the soul! 
 
 Away with puny rhyme. 
 With madrigal and round! 
 
 1 hear no more the sound 
 
 Of cymbal's chime. 
 
 Soar far where the keen blast 
 Of Northern longing smites, 
 Leave off thy earthly rites. 
 Forget thy past! 
 74 
 
O thence large spirits come! 
 My soul! They call not 'love'! 
 They love not, for they rove ; 
 High is their home! 
 
 Praise the great Northern ghosts! 
 Myriads have come and gone ; 
 Like giants move they on 
 In mighty hosts! 
 
 75 
 
IN CHURCH 
 
 He was a god as he stood there 
 
 In the violet light of the house of the Lord. 
 
 He was a god with plenty to spare 
 
 Of life and sweetness and beauty stored 
 
 With food for the senses, abundant, rare. 
 
 The faintest chant of the faint, sweet choir 
 
 Was but a tale of his beauty told 
 
 In tender words; the trembling fire 
 
 Of the organ note, and the deep notes rolled 
 
 From the organ's bass, were as his lyre 
 
 Singing his soul and its wondrous power. 
 Chanting his heart in accents dim ; 
 From the rich-stained glory of saint and flower 
 Fell a light that seemed to shine for him 
 With the royal worship of the hour. 
 
 But I was a mortal inspired by the god 
 With immortal love, unwinged, unsonged; 
 A woman of earth, a mere earth-clod, 
 I looked with worship, and looking, longed 
 In the church whose aisles he trod. 
 
 76 
 
ODE TO THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 I 
 
 The dreaming mountains lie athwart the plain 
 In plenitude of pride and distant calm ; 
 
 Their grandeur is a psalm 
 Ot vaster harmonies than human tongue 
 Creates to voice its pain — 
 A lonely anthem from their inmost caverns sprung. 
 
 II 
 
 Yet far within that lofty wooded height 
 
 Are sweet and sacred haunts my soul may see. 
 
 Unknown, forever free 
 From profanation of the blinded crowd 
 That struggles in the night 
 Below the towering summit's earthward drooping cloud. 
 
 Ill 
 
 O solitary caves, O secret ways! 
 
 I yearn toward your passionate repose ; 
 
 You know not of our woes. 
 Unfriend our discord, stand aloof from strife 
 Wherein the pent soul stays 
 In mute endurance of this troubled earthlv life. 
 
 IV 
 
 I love the silvery stir of your high groves; 
 The sighing of your pines unto my ear 
 11 
 
Is like the near 
 Fond whisper of a friend, dear gift of earth. 
 And rarest of the loves 
 That from the spirit's throes have had a glorious birth. 
 
 V 
 
 I see the pale still moonlight over all; 
 
 The group of thickening trees about your steeps 
 
 Mysteriously sleeps 
 In shadow fit for love's secure retreat; 
 Dark as a funeral pall 
 It lies in heavy silence, beckoning and sweet. 
 
 VI 
 
 O let me dream within the holy shade 
 
 Of those unquestioning hills, O let my voice 
 
 Triumphally rejoice 
 In that great hymn pervading your still air; 
 O may my song be made 
 A paean of the thrall that love holds everywhere! 
 
 VII 
 
 And let me dream the love of friend to friend! 
 Your rocks do not more steadfast strength bespeak ; 
 
 The pale and silvery peak 
 Does not more pure and free from earth arise 
 Ever to meet and blend 
 And cleave with calm outline the changeful evening 
 skies. 
 
 78 
 
VIII 
 
 The day is wan when friendship is not there, 
 When void of living idols is the heart ; 
 
 Then stand ye not apart. 
 But in vour beauteous majesty impose 
 The heights that are so fair 
 In the eternal consolation nature knows. 
 
 IX 
 
 Cold as the crusted snow upon vour slopes 
 That throws afar its radiant prism lights 
 
 To live lone days and nights 
 When the heart dreams of long awaited love ; 
 To foster fading hopes. 
 And watch the everlasting mountains gleam above. 
 
 X 
 
 I have not always looked on those cold hills 
 And in their majesty found hope of peace. 
 
 With promise of surcease 
 To pain of longing and to love of grief ; 
 Ah, now their presence chills 
 The warmth of memory's life, of rapture past belief. 
 
 XI 
 
 Now do I touch the strmgs with fearful hand 
 Calling their timid tones to fluttering life 
 
 79 
 
In faint harmonious strife ; 
 In dying joy the frail and failing note 
 Trembles beyond command 
 When into empty silence myriads slowly float. 
 
 XII 
 
 sweet with wordless ecstasy to hear 
 
 The vibrant tone beneath the master's bow. 
 
 In pulsing fall and flow ; 
 To feel the rhythmic pauses throb untold 
 
 Upon the spirit's ear. 
 In music, most like love, love's ardor to behold. 
 
 XIII 
 
 1 have heard music wilder than the sound 
 
 Of summer winds that rush through laden boughs ; 
 
 A gay and sad carouse 
 Of lawless strains inspiring sweetest dole. 
 And pleasure without bound 
 Where sighed and sang a voice from out love's very 
 soul. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Ye, too, have struck the memory-laden lute 
 Resounding in melodious song for song 
 
 Within a heart Hfelong, 
 Wondrously throbbing through the veins like fire; 
 O, on your slopes a fruit 
 Ye bear to satisfy a thirsting soul's desire. 
 80 
 
XV 
 
 Harmonious hear the roll of torrent! Hark 
 Unto the songful swelling of the breeze 
 
 Among the hemlock trees! 
 'Tis music! There hath rapture an abode 
 High in the lonely dark 
 Wherever on the sense repose hath been bestowed. 
 
 XVI 
 
 O heavenly hills ! great joys knew I before 
 Your godly groves my spirit's worship felt 
 
 Through their high ether melt ; 
 My tired soul toward your cloistered heights doth 
 turn ; 
 Endue me evermore. 
 So thy white flames of peace perpetual bless and burn. 
 
 8i 
 
DIABOLUS ADVOCATUS 
 
 Am I the Devil who laid me down 
 In full fatigue of sport to sleep. 
 And slept as in a spell so deep 
 As I had drunk my soul to drown? 
 
 Meseems I stirred and tried to wake. 
 But strangest silence drugged the air. 
 There was no footstep anywhere 
 To lure me where a Heart might ache 
 
 And dumbly hail distraction's drink 
 That my strong hand alone can pour. 
 Skilful to fill yet more and more 
 The cup, when nectar seems to sink. 
 
 By night, when simple peace hath laid 
 Her few to sleep, then I depart 
 To find and rescue some sad Heart 
 From dream of death, by love unmade. 
 
 I make the Heart laugh down its grief, 
 I personate a very fool. 
 Whose inner spirit hides a ghoul 
 Hoarding its hunger past relief. 
 
 I play the mandolin and blow 
 The luring flute ; upriseth then 
 One of your heavy Hearts, O men. 
 To tread in tuneful to and fro. 
 82 
 
I am the spirit that laughs and sings, 
 The soul of music, the lite of the dance, 
 I am the odour of flowers, perchance 
 The essence of manifold lovely things. 
 
 I bring a vision from the dark. 
 
 Smiling in promise of love's glow, 
 
 I lull the Heart, I still the woe, 
 
 I save you, men, from Hell's own mark. 
 
 I am the Devil who lay me down 
 In full fatigue of sport to sleep. 
 And dream I have a world to keep 
 From woe, and all men's care to drown. 
 
 83 
 
PRAYER 
 
 Clear off the clod of earthly cerement. 
 Open the coffin where my soul is shrouded 
 Under the sky of living immanent. 
 Or be it bright or clouded. 
 Open to me the sky! 
 
 I give you browning roses from the wreath 
 These heavy hands within were numbly clutching. 
 Lips that were warm again beneath your breath. 
 Throat to your tardy touching, — 
 Open, I would not die! 
 
 84 
 
THE LOST CONTINENT 
 
 O GREAT Atlantis! Faint and vast you gleam 
 Far in a shadowy past ; above your shore 
 The mists of mighty ages dimly lower 
 And hide your wonders as within a dream. 
 Softly your pearly mountain summits seem 
 To settle toward the ocean's shifting floor. 
 For man shall view your beauty nevermore. 
 Save in a Hindoo prophet's mystic scheme. 
 Would I could know the past! O would my soul 
 Could see, as in a silvery mirrored space. 
 All that the world has done; discern the goal 
 At which pale myriads of mankind efface 
 The remnant of their spirit's filmy grace 
 And fade into the universal whole! 
 
 87 
 
BONDAGE 
 
 Let the man live in quiet where he be / 
 
 If he but think contentment doth abide 
 Within the cottage where his loves reside, ' 
 
 For he hath never struggled to be free. 
 There may no promise serve nor any plea. 
 To change his calm and draw his steps aside 
 From that sweet path whose by-ways he hath tried 
 Until he know them as his own country. 
 So roam again, thou idle, dreaming soul! 
 Regretful wander toward the misty shore 
 Whither wild spirits troop as to a goal. 
 To watch the later light glow in the west: 
 Roam ever, shouldst thou still know joy no more! 
 Perchance thou findest thus the future rest. 
 
 L.eFC. 
 
 88 
 
POSTPONEMENT 
 
 Ye great hours that are few and full of love, 
 I see you as vou rise supremely fraught, 
 Out of the darkened pool that is my thought. 
 Into the silver heaven spread above. 
 Rise and be glorified as ye remove. 
 From human bondage ye should not be sought. 
 Nor ever more by my volition brought 
 From regions where your perfect periods move. 
 O lesser moments, smooth your petty way 
 As 't were a blessed prairie for my feet. 
 So that my steps shall linger not nor stay 
 Until the day when time shall show the road 
 Leading sublime where blisses lost and sweet 
 Hold the high heaven in their divine abode! 
 
ASSURANCE 
 
 The strong red blooms tower high, enshrined beneath 
 
 By myriads of green leafy shadows pressing 
 
 Jealously upward : clasping and caressing, 
 
 Fold amorously they to screen and sheathe. 
 
 Yet do they hinder not that others breathe 
 
 Love's air, and breathing, seek that love's expressing. 
 
 Richly they grant the lover all their blessing 
 
 When the great tumults of his passion seethe. 
 
 O roses, taunt the still heart with its coldness. 
 
 And in his longing let the lover borrow 
 
 Out of your crimson mouths a rapturous message! 
 
 Well may ye fret a shy heart with your boldness. 
 
 For, emblems of love's joy and of love's sorrow. 
 
 Desire beholds you rise in glorious presage! 
 
 90 
 
MISSED AFFINITY 
 
 With intermittent words and measured walk. 
 Two bounden souls, we paced the quiet street 
 At darkest hour, and in my heart a sweet 
 And hidden well was leaping toward our talk. 
 But tell as if a barrier should balk 
 The impulse of the inner flood to meet 
 The air, hinder dumb waters to entreat 
 Their freedom from an earthy catafalque. 
 The ocean of the soul is deep and dark, 
 O, shoreless is the ocean of my soul! — 
 Earth-choked, rock-bound, chaotic, cold and stark. 
 I hear the waters washing in the gloom, 
 Mav outlet loose them from the earth's control. 
 
 91 
 
SONNET 
 
 Love, give to me the life of all the life! 
 Make flippant joys to merge, make self to fuse 
 With soul of fire! Give me new youth to use. 
 New summer of sweet air and flower unfurled! 
 Love, strike on me the heaven's terror whirled 
 From space, that my dull heart may know the bruise 
 Of love's supremest lightning! O infuse 
 Our souls with swift fire in thy orbit swirled 
 Forever! Love, shed over me the flush 
 From planetary purple, pour the glows 
 Of dawn and dusk, of sunlit midnight rose 
 Through all my spreading soul, an airless breath! 
 Bring on the night, let vanish in the hush 
 My singleness, and after, love, bring death! 
 
 92 
 
% i r\9. NuV W lyUli 
 
 1 COPY DEL. TO CAT. DiV. 
 NOV. 19 1901 
 
 I06i ZZ 'AOM 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 018 602 288 9 #