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ODES: 
 
 By Charles Leonard 
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TO ISAAC R, PEN- 
 NYPACKER, POET, 
 CRITIC, FRIEND, I 
 DEDICATE THESE 
 PAGES 
 
Odes : 
 
 :::By Charts:::: 
 LeonardTVIoore 
 
 (APR 921896/ ^^ 
 
 Published for the Author 
 
 Phlladelphiaj::j:::Eighteen 
 Hundred and Ninety-six 
 

 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Book of Day Dreams 
 
 Banquet of Placios 
 
 Poems, Antique and 
 Modern 
 
 Henry Holt & Co«;:;New York 
 
 Copyright by 
 
 Cbarlei Leonard Moore 
 
 1896 
 
ODES 
 
 Ode of the Vision 
 
 Idola Theatri 
 
 To America 
 
 Elegy on Edward Allan Poe 
 
 Ode on the Impressions of Boyhood 
 
 Hymn to Cybele 
 
 Hymn to Oceanos 
 
 Hymn to Porphyrion 
 
 Ode on the Revival of Color in Architecture 
 
 Dirge for Summer 
 
 The Funeral of the Forests 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 Why, why so envious of the olive crown 
 
 And all soon-fading emblems of renown ? 
 
 The Poet, why should he 
 
 A Memnon of to-morrow strive to be, 
 
 Light turned to music on his trembling wire? 
 
 Why should the Patriot tire 
 
 His heart with labor and repeated loss, 
 
 Rising still huger for some heavier cross? 
 
 The Many do not so, though gay and brave 
 
 Life's motley garb as best they may they wear, 
 
 Breeding new armies for the impatient grave, 
 
 Proud of their vantage of sun-favored air, 
 
 Sensual and safe, if comfort comes 
 
 The wind may blow elsewhere the sound of 
 
 drums, 
 Or gleam of glorious homes. 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 II 
 
 Whence came the warrant Nature never gave 
 
 That sends the sons of song or deed to save 
 
 Time from its own decay 
 
 To wed perfection to our dying day 
 
 Rebels from ruin ? Whence the sacrifice 
 
 Life for the laurel prize? 
 
 Whence the pursuit that gold mirage to find 
 
 Which does before us gleam or dies behind? 
 
 Yon oak its bronzed tubes and organ front 
 
 Lifts for the Muse's use, but does not care 
 
 If leaves do soothe the stops to whispering 
 
 wont, 
 Or if like trumpets peal the pipes left bare. 
 Its course in calmness Nature takes, 
 But Man untimely still the future wakes, 
 Or moan for memory makes. 
 
 in 
 
 Ah see, the moon from yonder hill swings clear, 
 
 With mellow lamp searching her crystal sphere ; 
 
 But in our realm below 
 
 Her ineffectual torches dimly go; 
 
 Landmarks effaced, all things habitual, lose 
 
 Their surety of use; 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 The world grows foreign and all out of doors ; 
 Masked revellers bear abroad the Bacchic laws : 
 Not in this moontide jungle can the Soul 
 Keep its clear purposed paths to ends foreknown, 
 Shadows o'ertake it and upon it roll 
 Reiterate gales from magic gardens blown ; — 
 Tired sentinel, its fires grow dim, 
 White arms are near, frank eyes dissolving swim, 
 And the wine cups o'erbrim. 
 
 IV 
 
 A soundless footing stirs these tufted glades ! 
 
 A sudden Shadow issues from the shades ! 
 
 And lo, before me stands 
 
 A stranger ! Aye, from yet unconquered lands ! 
 
 Upon his brow seems carved the pointed wreath 
 
 Of leaves that ward off death ; 
 
 Kin to the bard who lulled Hell's guardian grim, 
 
 Or Dante's brother, seared with flames like him, 
 
 In the tranced frenzy of the moon he gleams. 
 
 "No oracle or boding outcry, rolls 
 
 From forth thy marble lips, statue of dreams, 
 
 Thou frozen thought, thou nuncio of lost souls ; 
 
 Majestically movest thou on 
 
 With robes that seem to trail oblivion 
 
 Over earth's massy throne." 
 
ODE OE THE VISION 
 
 "I Guesclin am. The sound my spent name 
 
 makes 
 Is as the echo when a bubble breaks, 
 And all I was or did 
 Like unwarmed germs in earth's dark chamber 
 
 hid: 
 No gain here take I for a tragic death; 
 Yet do I wear this wreath ! 
 Me, me, once did the Present too, enfold, 
 The floating moment in its gauze of gold, 
 My Pleasure House kept summer ever in, 
 Rich with the leisures and the pomps of life, 
 Deep alcoves shrined the god of wanton sin, 
 With kisses were the orange allies rife, 
 And art too from the dalliance sprang, 
 Quick jostling rhymes like chimes perpetual 
 
 rang, ^ 
 And godlike voices sang. 
 
 VI 
 
 Then come a season, when that dearest thing, 
 Unknown how dear, my Country, felt the sting 
 Of outrage, tyranny, 
 And something lionlike awoke in me. 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 To new occasion seemed I native born 
 
 And puffed aside with scorn, 
 
 Like summer's idlest guests of thistle-down, 
 
 Youth's follies and the trivial banquet crown. 
 
 Then from Love's fires and Verse's airs I made 
 
 A forge, a forge for all the thunderbolts ; 
 
 War, war, I raised, my Country's youth arrayed, 
 
 Thronging. about me like unbroken colts, 
 
 And led them forth to fight — but O, 
 
 Unpracticed valor sank before the blow 
 
 The tyrant could bestow. 
 
 VII 
 
 Prison ! Hate, Death were my enthroned Powers. 
 
 Garbed in grey went the penitential Hours. 
 
 Knelt I to these? Not so ! 
 
 I rose to dare a second overthrow. 
 
 I snapped my chains. Tools were they for my rage 
 
 To pierce my massy cage. 
 
 Doors broke! Men died! I might escape; might 
 
 fly! 
 For Guesclin no escape but Victory ! 
 A doom I went that does not brook arrest; 
 I reached the palace, past the guards, and there, 
 Like the sun mid the blazon of its West, 
 The courtier circled monarch gilt the air. 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 One step, one stroke! To earth he bowed. 
 I held my imbued hands unto the crowd 
 And ''Freedom" shrieked aloud. 
 
 VIII 
 
 They wavered, wavered as a field of wheat 
 
 Run over by the wind's divided feet, 
 
 Which here and there disclose 
 
 Red poppies mid the pallid pulsing rows; 
 
 So in the crowd rose figures of dark flame, 
 
 Till all upon me came. 
 
 Thou face of Death, thou brightness beyond name, 
 
 What are the visions that thy look does frame? 
 
 One by one risen my phantom days did show, 
 
 Each in the sorry garland of its prime, 
 
 I shut them from my eyes. I shrank to go 
 
 Where the Immortals judge the acts of time. 
 
 I fell. I rose amid the Dead. 
 
 Then first since boyhood's bloom and blushes 
 
 fled 
 Tears, tears, these iron eyes shed. 
 
 IX 
 
 Large levels of enameled meads I saw, 
 With flashing hills about, that, diverse, wore 
 
 IO 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 The wreaths of their rich walls, 
 
 And in the distance woods and waterfalls, 
 
 And cloudy, crowded height uppiled on height 
 
 Of architectures bright, 
 
 And amid all, figures that playing went 
 
 As children would were they omnipotent, 
 
 Turning to flames, trees, waters as they chose, 
 
 Themselves their region's freshness and its light, 
 
 And separate, cloistered, all-together, close, 
 
 Minions of meditation and of might, 
 
 Came they whom Fame unmatched allows, 
 
 Earth's violet-crowned victors and the brows 
 
 That mark Thought's lofty house. 
 
 x 
 
 Then rang a voice there that was ecstacy. 
 "Hail Guesclin, hail thou partner of our sky; — 
 Look not abashed, nor fear. 
 Strength urged by Love, the certain password 
 
 here, 
 The great award and final ransom wins ; 
 Ay, though cast out for sins 
 Strong spirits there be — even them our conclave 
 
 notes 
 When up from Hill their stormy music floats, 
 That time, nor distance, nor disguise of pain, 
 
 1 1 
 
ODE OF THE VISION 
 
 Nor the eternal mandate on their lips, 
 
 Can rob of joy or of its right restrain, 
 
 And Heaven knows its peers though in eclipse; 
 
 Austere regard from foes is won, 
 
 And mutual looks twixt ordered brows do run; — 
 
 They too have dared and done." 
 
 XI 
 
 Brother farewell ! To men I am a shade 
 
 And unremembered even to upbraid ; 
 
 Learn thou in Time's frail days 
 
 The pay is nothing, nothing is the praise ; 
 
 Elsewhere the crowns are woven, the palms are 
 
 knit, 
 Elsewhere the judges sit, 
 
 And the great Masters guard the immortal prize 
 With hope and expectation in their eyes, 
 Who when he comes that has on earth begun 
 Tasks that the vigil of the skies alone 
 Can finish, rise and thundering as one 
 Unto this youngest yield their oldest throne. 
 But him they give who does refrain 
 From trial — from the struggle's glorious pain, 
 The death of their disdain. 
 
 12 
 
IDOLA THEATRI 
 
 Away with those false powers 
 Who boast to draw their lineage far 
 
 From some Saturnian fabled seed, 
 Or those whom Fate's malignant star 
 
 Has armed against man's holiest need, 
 Futile superiors of the incensed Hours. 
 
 Let kings their brows uncrown, 
 
 And let the great step down 
 From chariots rolling o'er the earth with noise ; 
 And let their heralds of prevailing voice 
 
 Wealth and Rumor, vainly strive 
 
 The cry that once on them did live 
 
 With its echoes to revive. 
 In vain ! The tumult makers soon are gone 
 
 To practice tongues unknown — 
 Not envy bids the glorious and the fair 
 
 Fade from the vivid book of life and fame, 
 
 13 
 
ID OLA THEATR1 
 
 Fate tells them they are transient tenants there, 
 
 Only a trick of Nature with a name ; 
 Nay Nature takes the step for them, so yielding 
 
 Her purple mantle and her crimson blood, 
 Star by star losing from her brow, nor shielding 
 
 Her mountain limbs from Time's all-eating 
 flood ; 
 Her best supremacy forgot as soon 
 
 As Summer brags o'er Spring or Night o'er 
 Noon 
 
 Yet something stays, or change itself were sent 
 Unknown, unnoted and unevident, 
 Is it those rivals at the opposed gates 
 
 From mighty bows their moment arrows 
 speeding, 
 So, as by turn each conquers or abates, 
 
 Dusk brings forth dreams or Day its flocks 
 comes leading? 
 The roseate fire that burns the heavens clear, 
 
 Or that masked fellow of far hidden Fate, 
 No past need honor or to-morrow fear ; — 
 
 They are the builders of the temple great. 
 Yet idle workmen they, 
 And all their action but a phantom play, 
 Till the true Immortals, come 
 
 14 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 Motionless and blind and dumb 
 
 Their nothing add to Nature's sum. 
 Who then are they whose haunts remotest are 
 Beyond the foldings of the farthest star? 
 
 As eagles at the sun 
 
 We gaze on shapes that run 
 About us and about in eddying maze, 
 
 Till from these objects seen more deep, 
 Or from our eyes, or mutual born, 
 
 The final forms of Being leap, 
 Certain at last, by Life unworn, 
 
 Nor lost in Time or Space. 
 
 Risen like unsetting suns 
 
 Come the crowned, the conquering Ones 
 
 Singly first, then crowding fond 
 
 Below, above and yet beyond. 
 
 On mere Nature's ground displayed 
 
 Once beheld they may not fade ; 
 
 Or throned far or gliding near, 
 
 Lords of distance and the year : — 
 
 See them on the Muse's glass 
 
 Note and name them as they pass ; 
 
 Love, that first ordained thing ; 
 
 Valor, gayly glittering ; 
 
 Joy, attired like a bride 
 
in oi.a Tin: ati:: 
 
 With Truth bending by her side ; 
 
 Wisdom, silent, gentle, sad; 
 
 Inspiration, lyric-mad; 
 
 Hope, the child, and maiden, Grace ; 
 
 Honor with unblotted face : 
 
 And more — and more immortal yet — 
 
 Forms that only dreams beget : 
 
 One and all they torches bear, 
 
 And they lean across the air, 
 
 Or descend with stately mien 
 
 To mix with men, yet not be seen. 
 
 The poet feels their breath inspire 
 
 And the rapt verse is winged with fire ; 
 
 They light the warrior to his fate 
 
 Foreseen, forlorn, yet fortunate ; 
 
 They touch the maiden's modest cheeks, 
 
 And in that flush the future speaks ; 
 
 Nor this alone. Through them the path 
 
 Of spring a second blossoming hath ; 
 
 They kindle with a sudden thrill 
 
 The sunset fire on yonder hill ; 
 
 They bid the blazoned morning break 
 
 With answer to our human ache ; 
 
 They call the starry choir to rise 
 
 The glad musicians of the skies : 
 
 Earth and the soul of man they fill 
 
 And best are those who work their will. 
 
 16 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 Then why should we bow down, 
 
 Or let the dazzled eyelid droop 
 To such pale shows of seeming fires 
 
 As rule or riches yield their dupe 
 Whose warrant with his breath expires 
 Lost to the authentic sign of right renown. 
 To whom the Genius gives 
 The torch that quenchless lives 
 To flame o'er war, or light some deathless 
 
 page, 
 Or, more apparent, blaze upon the stage ; 
 His is the true, undying day. — 
 And as best things are born of play 
 Springs from the Theatre's array 
 Figures full oft that fade the daylight glare, 
 
 Portents of fierier air. 
 The cue is spoke ; and on the threshold stands 
 
 One living yet untouched by life's alloy, 
 Not born of man, nor decked by human hands, 
 
 Beauty's own being or incarnate Joy; 
 So vital is the instant impulse given, 
 
 With such warm, vivid powers the thing is 
 rife, 
 That the brief vision more reports of heaven 
 Than even the vigil of a good man's life ; 
 Who, meek with honors, by tradition mild 
 Deems it not merit for that fortune smiled. 
 
 17 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 Ah ! from the God, the God, the stage began 
 In that old Grecian home of Muse and Man, 
 From Bacchus rose, who haughtily disdaining 
 The dull delusions of the things that are 
 (Wine cup and Indian flight and revel waning) 
 His actors bade portray the high and far! 
 And as clouds may the moon augment or screen, 
 As leaves may break the winds they yet 
 betray, 
 Those guests of life made great or came between 
 The full heroic passions of that day : — 
 Used to their periods 
 Their miracles and august dooms of gods, 
 
 Pride through the Grecian concourse ran, 
 And none stepped of all that clan 
 Lesser than Olympian. 
 Rome, Rome then saw those pupils of Renown, 
 But the blood-snuffing eagles beat them down, 
 And so for many a day 
 Most gentle suppliants, they 
 Homeless, unhonored o'er the wide earth went, 
 And knocked at many a castle door, 
 
 And spread their scenes in mouldy 
 inns, 
 The burden of the fate they 'bore 
 
 Unnoticed 'mid Time's noisy dins 
 And battle argument. 
 
 18 
 
IDOLA THEATRI 
 
 But now proud heads again they lift 
 And, laurelled, they repay the gift ! 
 Up Memory ! Do thy work ! Recall 
 Thy renowned visions all ! 
 Let the glittering one of France 
 Like an Autumn day advance ; 
 Autumn decked with red ensigns, 
 Berries black and poison vines, 
 Fruited deep and flowering grim 
 Flaming to the sunset's rim. 
 Nor less he — to art most true — 
 Moliere might say ''cousin " to. 
 Then let England's son appear 
 Phantasy to domineer ; 
 Something great, or good or ill, 
 Power self torn, but power still ; 
 Gloomy he, but from his side 
 See the moon of acting glide : 
 Mightiest of the mimic race 
 Comes he of the haunted face, 
 The figure of that lofty line 
 Melancholy made divine. 
 Then the studious one, whom death 
 Brought at last the evied wreath. 
 Move, O, verse, with mournful tread, 
 And music sob for Neilson dead ! 
 Her radiant head, her sunny eyes 
 
 T9 
 
I DO LA THEATRI 
 
 Pay Orcus for our upper skies : 
 
 Long, long upon her grave let live 
 
 The laurels that her lovers give ! 
 
 Then let the star-like form sweep by 
 
 Star as human-touched as high ; 
 
 She whose foreign accents reach 
 
 Like fragments of celestial speech. 
 
 The poet named one ends the train 
 
 The youngest ever called to reign, 
 
 A goddess sprung to sudden view, 
 
 Spring's image, and the Morning too ; 
 
 Whose touch, whose look, whose voice does ope 
 
 The mansions of immortal hope. 
 
 The silver trump of praise 
 
 Or level or uplift is blown, 
 Then falters, lowers and departs 
 
 And leaves these powers to their own, 
 To their proud homes in human hearts, 
 Or blows one note to cheer their emulous race. 
 But now on air be borne 
 The brazen blast of scorn, 
 For art debased and great ambitions furled 
 That make a worser and ignobler world 
 Of the high imperious stage, 
 That should loom above the age 
 
 20 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 Fired with the Muse's noble rage. 
 Ah, woe upon the wreaths and the rewards 
 
 The easy gotten gauds ! 
 Here is the flaw that dwindles to a day 
 
 The art that works with characters of flame, 
 Its votaries of the hour do repay 
 
 Then pass on careless of its farther fame. 
 Only from martyrdoms of thought and feeling, 
 
 From gaping wounds, defeats and gloomy 
 death, 
 Is born at last the lightning flash, revealing 
 
 Strange heights that woo men from the 
 trodden path. 
 The great world gazes on the acted scene 
 But as a brief of what itself has been. 
 
 Then banished be both world and stage deceits : — 
 Broke be the sceptres of those double cheats ; 
 And in some hollow of the forest hills, 
 
 Some amphitheatre where birds are winging, 
 Where earth lets out its music in its rills, 
 
 Where censer boughs their perfumed loads 
 are swinging; 
 There, there to rear a temple and a shrine 
 
 With Druid altars open to the sky, 
 With the great Seasons for each decked design, 
 
 21 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 With natural lights that sweep in order by ; — 
 And to its service great 
 Let maiden, youth and age be dedicate ; 
 Boys with torched triumphant eyes, 
 And maidens breathing of the skies, 
 And old Experience, wistful wise; 
 And let these priests on slopes of afternoon, 
 Or on wide spaces smoothed by the moon. 
 Act and enact again 
 Madness that keeps men sane, 
 The dream that makes reality endure ; — 
 And so the solemn service keep 
 
 Thro' days, thro' years, thro' cycles vast, 
 Till the world own the influence deep, 
 And know perfection and the past, 
 And be less proud, less sure, 
 
 Then shall rich ideal hues 
 
 Blend with the tints of common use, 
 
 Gods and heroes, to and fro, 
 
 From dream to life and back shall go ; 
 
 And as Grecian women saw 
 
 Marble shapes of beauteous awe 
 
 Round their beds, whose glory they 
 
 Gave to forms of mortal clay, 
 
 So shall be earth's newer line 
 
 22 
 
ID OLA THEATRI 
 
 The children of those shows divine ! 
 Shakespeare's rainbow-painted mime, 
 And the Frenchman's mighty rhyme, 
 With whatever older art 
 Or newer genius can impart, 
 Shall upon our platform strive 
 Than the living more alive. 
 Laws and manners shall confess 
 Their rich human waywardness ; 
 Fortune's hardly heaped store 
 Shall be doubled o'er and o'er ; 
 Philosophy in form shall rise, 
 And the pulpit shall have eyes ; 
 Grace and beauty shall translate 
 The unadorned book of Fate, 
 And give to all whose souls aspire 
 Each his several fond desire, 
 Add to the great whose gifts allure 
 The worthier virtues of the poor, 
 And let earth's humbler tenants share 
 The largess of life's freer air ; 
 Till these all with one accord 
 Shout the world invoking word — 
 " Bring on your chorus, Comedy, 
 Teach us that mankind is free, 
 Teach us mirth and song and dance 
 Are our glad inheritance ; 
 
 23 
 
IDOLA THEATRI 
 
 Tragedy assume your mask, 
 Show man equal to his task, 
 Show 'mid all your thunder roll 
 The greatness of the human soul!' 
 
 24 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Barbarian Europe, blood-emblazoned, rich 
 With pageants of imperishable things, 
 Ideals blooming in each ivied niche, 
 
 Clusters its banners at the feet of kings, 
 But thou O Land, O Liege, hast homage double ! 
 Like some young prince thou tryest earth's 
 sovran round, 
 While he who wore it last with anguished trouble 
 Looks on his heir by youth and puissance 
 crowned 
 Angelic-eyed, with adolescent splendor 
 
 Gleam thy limbs, glow thy locks in bronzed 
 wonder; 
 If grace is so august, can grandeur render 
 Thy marvel more? Can music gain by 
 thunder? 
 
 25 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Yet thou who dost enchant 
 Shall basilisk be and Gorgon glances shower, 
 For fools do mock thy prodigy of power 
 
 And awe the witless want ; 
 And hate strikes at thee on thy new throne set 
 Between one old world and an older yet. 
 
 Medea thou, what place 
 Secret hast used? What herbs? What magic 
 
 spoken ? 
 That from the world's list of the maimed and 
 brokeni 
 Thou rearest thy vigorous race? 
 Long have men dreamed thee by wild visions 
 haunted, 
 Hesperidean, Hyperborean fables, 
 Saw hung o'erhead all fruits all mortals wanted, 
 Saw set beneath the gleaming banquet 
 tables. — 
 Hast thou not bettered promise? What 
 remains? 
 O'er pastures deep thy lofty herds are driven, 
 Plenty o'ercrowds the vistas of thy plains, 
 
 And Peace looks on thee from the courts of 
 Heaven ! 
 Thou hast the oceans for thine azure walls, 
 
 Thy unbarred gates scarce hear a sentinel's 
 tread, 
 
 26 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Whatever fury chance, what fate befalls, 
 
 The hour has struck and man uplifts his 
 head! 
 
 Well thou wast, O Land of lands, 
 
 Ruled first by rugged hands, 
 
 By pioneers who nobly struck 
 
 Their manhood out by work, not luck, 
 
 Who, scorning to count up descents, 
 
 Took at first charge free Nature's rents, 
 
 Packed dynasties on dusty shelves 
 
 And trusted men unto themselves. 
 
 Such their heirs, whose temper yet 
 
 The ice-brook plunge can not forget, 
 
 With these thou laughest and livest remote 
 
 From man's mournful, minor note, 
 
 Groans and death cries and that most 
 
 Unpleasing echo earth can boast, 
 
 Servile clamors that acclaim 
 
 Many a merely mortal name. 
 
 Hostess thou to all who need, 
 
 Kind in word and kind in deed ! 
 
 And the guests that with thee troop, 
 
 Like that fair Florentine group 
 
 Who, when Death through cities went, 
 
 Sought a blissful banishment, 
 
 2 ? 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Make trial of the arts that please 
 The imperishable fruits of ease. 
 In thy gaudy, colored air, 
 Rise thy swift-sprung cities fair, 
 Leaning on each other linked, 
 Like girls in bevies indistinct ; 
 And beyond may sight pursue 
 Rich shadows of thy farther view, 
 Landscapes mottled o'er with wealth, 
 Wind-blown hills, the homes of health, 
 Far-drawn pastures, gleaming floods, 
 Zoned by thy elemental woods ; 
 League on league till Fancy fail 
 Spreads thy many-peopled pale ; 
 Where the Twilight sweepeth slow 
 Ruddy thy farmhouses glow, 
 Where the Morn is rising red 
 Smoke wreaths beckon still ahead ; 
 And thy lands no guardians lack, 
 The old gods do wander back ; 
 All those true, eternal kings 
 The earth's foison breeds and brings, 
 Who still find themselves at home 
 Where felicity does come; 
 Golden Ceres there upbraids 
 Her sad errand to the Shades, 
 Bacchus roams with all his crew 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Indias that he never knew, 
 
 And the universal Pan 
 
 Pipes as when the world began. 
 
 So, inviolable Queen, 
 
 Thou mid thy guards and guests art seen, 
 
 Content till Time to birth shall bring 
 
 The new, inevitable Spring, 
 
 When rising up from rest, thy light 
 
 Shall flood the old world nests of night, 
 
 And draw from thence with roses twined, 
 
 The rescued spirit of mankind. 
 
 Keep, Sacred Land, still in thy shining track, 
 Knead thy new life with yeast of thy past 
 
 worth, 
 For past thou hast, though rivals sneer the lack 
 Deeming them witness of thy wonder-birth. 
 Thine are the deeds divine to every mortal, 
 Not done in purlieus or in dungeon graves, 
 But in the world's eye, at earth's eminent portal — 
 Thine is Columbus' pathway o'er the waves; 
 Thine is the flight of Freedom when she vaunted 
 Her iron-bound Bible for her battle banner ; 
 Thine the rich riot of life that flamed and 
 
 flaunted 
 At Raleigh's heels by sea and broad Savannah ; 
 
 29 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Thine Leon's phantom spring 
 (Ah, had he reached its side it had been wholly 
 A marvelous fount of new-found melancholy, 
 
 A memory-troubled thing); 
 Thine the great grave where dark De Soto 
 
 sleeps — 
 A new Columbus of the forest deeps. 
 
 Or, turning from such themes, 
 From single dramas to thy tide of glories, 
 Thou art the peer of Greece in those proud stones 
 
 Where battles bear out dreams ; 
 For twice, idea-urged, hast thou arisen, 
 Not moved by passion or a prince's halter, 
 And burst her bonds who half time sits in prison 
 
 And poured thy best lives out on Freedom's 
 altar : 
 And where Fate called thee thou hast spurned 
 fatigues, 
 
 So ever on thy marches' westward border 
 Ran a thin line of blood four hundred leagues, 
 
 Chaos before — behind a world of order : 
 Dispatched such deeds : And now for what 
 comes next 
 
 Thou waitest in thine invulnerable West, 
 Blazoning more large thy living-lettered text, 
 
 " Chance and the tools to those who use 
 them best." 
 
 30 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Earth is rounded ! Hope no more 
 
 Builds beacons on some beckoning shore 
 
 If man erect may live man's peer 
 
 The last flight for the standard's here. 
 
 Come it may and come it will, 
 
 War's obliterating thrill, 
 
 The ring of fire about our coasts, 
 
 The answering flame in patriot hosts, 
 
 Thy goddess-aided cry that rolls 
 
 Terror on thy foeman's souls : 
 
 Many a hero struck with death 
 
 Shall praise thee with his passing breath 
 
 And lean upon his sword to note 
 
 Far in front thy banners float. 
 
 If thou some trival check mayst meet 
 
 Time with thee again shall treat: 
 
 Of all his children, as he runs, 
 
 He chooses but one heir at once, 
 
 Throws on one face the prescient bloom, 
 
 The dye of glory or of doom ; 
 
 So billows throng, but seldom have 
 
 The tramplings of a tidal wave, 
 
 So do the planets seldom show 
 
 In one propitious hour aglow. 
 
 Thee, auguries and acts concur 
 
 To crown To-morrow's arbiter. 
 
 Yet even thee no power can stay 
 
 3* 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Unaltered to the utmost day; 
 The adorable dawnings of thy Spring 
 Shall change into some fiercer thing, 
 Thy Autumn spread a fiery shade 
 To fill men's vision ere it fade. 
 And the stark sculptures of thy frost 
 Shall show far years what earth has lost. 
 So the world's races rise and wend 
 Through tumult to a tranquil end ; 
 So travel on, 'twixt gate and gate 
 All that is fair and all that's great. 
 Then wake, my country, wake and know 
 The impassioned hour of godlike glow, 
 The life, the flush in every vein, 
 Things easier done than e'er again ; 
 The inspired touch that trebles force, 
 The stars and thee tied to one course ; 
 Accept thy privilege to be great, 
 Wear like a flower thy roseate fate; 
 Disdain the tangled paths of gain, 
 Disperse thy wealth like kindliest rain ; 
 Let Genius guide thee high and far, 
 For arms and arts unselfish are; 
 Who gives himself the world believes 
 And grants the sacred laurel leaves; 
 Make of thy men, as God designed, 
 Rich mansions with fair pictures lined, 
 
 3 2 
 
TO AMERICA 
 
 Mend, not thy women, but their lot, 
 Angels awhile on earth forgot: — 
 Thus mayst thou do, and doing, reach 
 With splendors of the shafts of speech, 
 With burnished arms, with arts of peace 
 The lustre of a greater Greece. 
 
 33 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE. 
 
 Ah ! many, many pipes are blown afield, 
 Old reeds, new notched, of hoar antiquity : 
 And many shepherds woo the muse to yield 
 
 Some magic, matchless cry : 
 Some murmur of the old immortal art, 
 That made divine with ghosts of the dear dead 
 Baiae and the Mediterranean, 
 Till with eternal tears her tragic heart 
 Wells over, and her feet we thought had fled 
 
 Turn back to us again. 
 Then why should he who was as great as they, 
 Graced by her breath with unforgotten strains, 
 The mightiest singer in our minstrelsy, 
 Sleep on unsung beneath his new-world sod? 
 Though pipe nor lute unto my touch obey, 
 Music is in my heart, music that pains, 
 
 34 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Music and pity for a shape passed by, 
 
 Music for music's god, — 
 And for the master of all shadowy fears, 
 Shuddering anguish and more sudden tears. 
 
 For he was not of mortal progeny; 
 Born in the under-world of utter woe, 
 Sad, sombre poet of Persephone, 
 
 His home he did forego, 
 And came among our unacquainted meads, 
 Pale, mid all statues of a mortal birth, 
 Pure, mid all images that knew not death. 
 What cared he for day's gaudy, glowing deeds, 
 The fiery-blowing flowers of the earth, 
 
 Or the wind's lusty breath? 
 Still did he long for the black shades and 
 
 deep, 
 Still for the thickets inextricable, 
 Still for the empty shadows of the gods, 
 Still for the hueless faces of the dead ; 
 Still did he wander backward in his sleep, 
 Down the long slopes and intricate of hell, 
 Still sang he of his echoless abodes, 
 
 His visions vanished ; 
 Still to new instruments of a new art 
 He gave the fiery passion of his heart. 
 
 35 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 In vain for him the constellations rode 
 Tranquil and large on their eternal heights ; 
 In vain each changing day came with its load 
 
 Of unforeseen delights; 
 In vain rose every god, in every hue 
 Of love, of languor, passion, joy or wrath ; 
 In vain all visions of the air did come; 
 He knew the secret of his birth ; he knew 
 The low, the lost, the oft-lamented path, 
 
 That led unto his home. 
 He had not seen stern Aides in a dream, 
 Nor the wan gaze of sad Persephone. 
 Nor the bronzed architecture of hell's gates, 
 The sanguine forest overshading all ; 
 He had not heard the lapping of that stream, 
 Lethe, in fancy only, nor did he 
 Alone, in visions, listen to the Fates' 
 
 Low laughing in that hall. 
 Too wise he was with memories of his youth, 
 To change, for gaudy shows, death's awful truth; 
 
 All secrets were disclosed unto his glance, 
 He saw each ultimate, high tragedy, — 
 Saw Juliet, rising from her second trance, 
 
 Heard waked Ophelia's cry; 
 Doubt not, all sentenced souls before him past, 
 
 36 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 Infant to penance, or one thing with pain, 
 Alike forever new to agonies, 
 That on his heart, their pallid looks aghast 
 Sunk, and forever rose to him again 
 
 With their eternal eyes. 
 Doubt not he sought some figure wandering 
 
 there, 
 Doomed to her lover to be ever strange, 
 Some splendor banished from being as a star, 
 Fallen, alas! by sorrow, — not by sin, — 
 That he sang to her in that sullen air 
 Till their souls grew impatient of all change, 
 Slow pacing as hell's heavy hours are, 
 
 Till their lives seemed to win 
 A happiness beyond the hope of man, 
 Ethereal, effortless, Elysian. 
 
 Methinks I see them, wandering in the glooms 
 Of the great pillared forests of that realm, 
 Roofed by the arches of bright-burnished blooms 
 
 Hung as to overwhelm ; 
 Or allied in a reason more august, 
 The Autumn of that awful foliage, 
 When the blood-painted leaves turn into black, 
 Lingering, while upon their souls are thrust 
 Imaginations, vaster than engage 
 
 37 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Their vision-potent track. 
 I see his fiery eyes divide the night, 
 I see her perfect beauty, faded to 
 Memorial and melancholy grace, 
 Their parted limbs for union eloquent; 
 I see the passion, the desire, the might 
 That is not linked to any earthly hue, 
 That is not set in any mortal face, 
 
 Love ever evident, 
 I see and turn — and on the earth behold 
 Fruition faint and fleeting hours of gold. 
 
 Forget the sunset's gorgeous alchemy, 
 The magic of the frail and faded moon, 
 The pale, perpetual wizards of the sky, 
 
 The dread enchanter, — noon. 
 O, dwellers on the ever-dreaming earth, 
 Throw off the charmed habit of your life, 
 The comfortable glamor of your sleep ; 
 Severe indeed is death and harsh the girth, 
 Naked the valleys of eternal strife, 
 
 Single of hue, the deep ; 
 But real is his great figure that does rear 
 Those livid horizons' illumining. 
 Rapt he, before whose usual act docs fall 
 The excess of all earth's existences ; 
 
 38 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 He sees no pause in the processional fear, 
 Monotony no dumb relief can bring, 
 No license of such dreamy interval, 
 
 As in earth's busy press ; 
 But passion comes, passion that never fades, 
 Unto the tragic singer of the Shades. 
 
 But, ah ! he left, he vanished from that scene, 
 The intense limits of the world of woes, 
 And on earth's theatre of tender green 
 
 A blasted vision rose, 
 Mist-managed pageantry from ocean slips, 
 Built faded from fresh foam, and meteors fall 
 Black, blank upon the earth o'er which they 
 
 shone ; 
 But never darken they in such eclipse 
 As he, so radiant in the under hall, 
 
 When rose he to our own : 
 Faded was his eternal grace of limbs, 
 Thin rang his voice, through the thick-thronged 
 
 hills, 
 Faint were the fiery changes of his face, 
 Burned out the passion of his awful eyes, 
 Starred, supreme shape of night, whom daylight 
 
 dims, 
 Viewless he went amid life's garish ills ; 
 
 39 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 He could not wait 'till twilight owned his race, 
 
 Dusk, his new dynasties; 
 Wan, vacant presence and neglected guest, 
 Earth placed no throne for him, whereon to rest. 
 
 Poppy, therefore, and every poisonous growth 
 Took he, that could transport his soul away 
 From his wide prison ; — for his eyes were loth 
 
 And weary of the day. 
 And every steed he chartered, that did go 
 A little on the journey from the earth; 
 And joined each distance-seeking caravan, 
 Where e'er the waves did roll, or the winds 
 
 blow 
 O'er this world's abrupt and precipitous girth, 
 
 Swiftly his spirit ran. 
 Drunk with imaginations, drunk with wine, 
 Drowsy with dreams or waking with desires, 
 He sat at Pleasure's feet and would not rise, 
 Enamored of oblivion in vain, 
 Pleasure, no more smooth-lipped, no more divine, 
 But burning with unfathomable fires, 
 With melancholy in her mighty eyes, 
 
 With proud lips curbing pain. 
 Long there he sat, while in a cup she gave 
 Most bitter drink for thirst, and the salt wave. 
 
 40 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 Last Death arose. — Then he, the hungry-eyed, 
 Rose to the spectre, with embraces rude, 
 Love's tender violence unto a bride, 
 
 With low-toned words long wooed, 
 There was a little music to be heard, 
 There was a kindling splendor in the air, 
 And he, our king of song, had come and gone. 
 Earth felt no more than if a twig had stirred, 
 With some bird slipping off, onward to fare, 
 
 And men seemed not to mourn. 
 The pageant of the hours passes on, 
 Earth has its harvests, wakes, and works, and 
 
 lives ; 
 Glory and gladness, like twin gods, do sway, 
 And nought is gone of our accustomed joys ; 
 But when the year unto an end has drawn, 
 When Autumn fills the air with fugitives, 
 When sadness rises with the rising day, 
 
 Then do we miss his voice 
 Who knew the sombre heart that nature wears 
 Under her blazonings and gorgeous airs. 
 
 Now may we make our plaint, and bid him peace, 
 And say " farewell" who said not " welcome" too; 
 O mourning mouths, be done your music, cease 
 Praising and pitying, too ! 
 
 4i 
 
ELEGY ON EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 He needs no carved trophies on his tomb, 
 No sober figures for his funeral urn, 
 No requiem of loud song or trumpet blasts, 
 A greater homage yet shall he assume, 
 An altar in each heart for him shall burn 
 
 As long as sorrow lasts. 
 As long as Autumn, or the dim twilight, 
 Usurp the seats of Summer or throned Day, 
 As long as shadows thicken in our minds, — 
 He reigns, who was the very spirit of strife, 
 Who was primeval to the hoary night, 
 Who was the god and image of decay ; 
 And all the tossed waves and storm-stricken 
 winds 
 
 Of distressed, human life 
 Answer to him, who, with the secret stars, 
 Rises o'er chaos to renew its wars. 
 
 42 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF 
 BOYHOOD. 
 
 Tis gone ! Her spirit's gone that so much gave ! 
 On every darkest hour there dawns a worse : 
 The leaf falls and the wind blows o'er her grave, 
 And the stars walk with torches all reverse 
 Before the noble earth which is her funeral 
 hearse. 
 
 Ye Muses with commemorative eyes 
 Give me one night of memory, though I earn 
 Blacker to-morrows for my only prize ; 
 One happy hour, although I must return 
 To that oak-guarded spot where gleams her 
 ruddy urn. 
 
 Incarnate gladness was she and she drew 
 To her all beings of a like address ; 
 Hence then with berries of the deadly yew, 
 
 43 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 Hence with the cypress, dismal to oppress, 
 But roses, roses bring to deck her grave and 
 bless ! 
 
 Earth left she through its gateway most august, 
 Gold Autumns arches, which again o'er-bend, 
 Wherefrom, perfected paintings of the dust, 
 Souls of the moment, the red leaves descend 
 But lack her deathless spark that can evade 
 their end. 
 
 O Muses with commemorative eyes, 
 Leave your heroic games, your pastoral tasks, 
 The iteration of your histories, 
 Your mouthings through innumerable masks, 
 Few, simple, homebred words are all your sup- 
 pliant asks. 
 
 Old as the pyramids are to the race 
 Is his walled birthplace unto every man ; 
 It is his cradle and his starting place, 
 And all antiquity no farther can 
 Outstretch, than those long streets where first 
 his time began — 
 
 44 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 Mountains and fields no heraldries unfold : 
 Only in foam is writ the sea's renown ; 
 Dateless the acorn sinks in earth's soft mould ; 
 The Robin's fortress and the Squirrel's town 
 No monuments upbuild but Winter bare breaks 
 down. 
 
 But in those citied paths where men are pressed 
 The lineaments of all the past are seen, 
 A second architecture and the best; 
 Soft and aeriel splendors come between 
 Our souls and what were else but a brick-builded 
 screen. 
 
 Grey, quiet, simple, in the city's heart 
 My house of birth is. Life's full, rushing throng 
 A little round about it seems to part — 
 An eddy set when all the place was young — 
 And hearts may there grow old unruffled and 
 unwrung. 
 
 Should I but strike those bricks I would draw 
 
 blood ; 
 Those windowed vistas built are from my dreams ; 
 Those trees are decked out in my every mood, 
 
 45 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 And yon gold lamp that down the distance 
 
 streams 
 That is my sun and not the one that over 
 
 Europe gleams. 
 
 There with most timid sweep, like some young 
 
 bird 
 Pattering the paths of air with unsteered wings, 
 In earliest trial circled I. Unblurred 
 Everywhere images of novel things 
 Rose. Much have I forgot but their fresh 
 
 imprint clings. 
 
 Or farther drawn where the green country, 
 
 slipped 
 As a dog thrusts its nose into one's hand — 
 Amid the houses — glittering, dewy dipped — 
 I saw the unsuspected streams unspanned, 
 And woods that thickly stood about the sloping 
 
 land. 
 
 What wonders there ! Treasuries with gold 
 
 afledge 
 Down dropping gifts of chestnut or shellbark! 
 What berries lurking in the hostile hedge ! 
 
 46 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 What honeyed locusts ! What red plumes to 
 
 mark 
 The venturer returned at eve unto the parent 
 
 ark! 
 
 And then the call to games and conflict high 
 With my embattled comrades : the snow fort 
 Upheaped with its crystal armory, 
 Bade to be taken in heroic sort ; 
 The curved sticks wherewith the pavements rang 
 in sport: 
 
 The Kites we launched into the Summer air, 
 Proud control what soared with bird and cloud ; 
 The ghost games in our churchyard corner lair 
 Trancing our blood till none dared speak aloud 
 By winter-withering looks of summoned beldams 
 cowed. 
 
 Or by the fire, whispers of that remote 
 Unlawful, visionary, haunting thing, 
 The drowsy night owl, who in downy coat 
 Spies for the witch feast or the goblins ring, 
 Where on the sward old oaks fantastic shadows 
 fling. 
 
 47 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 Oftenest about the town I went alone 
 
 And watched the toil and traffic : saw how wields 
 
 The smith his tools, or mason squares the stone ; 
 
 Saw in rich colored markets all the fields ; 
 
 Or on the wharves the silver that the ocean yields. 
 
 Or paced the dark, rain-glittering, gas-lit streets 
 And saw through opened door or casement, flare 
 Ruddiest glimpses of unknown retreats, 
 But thin partitioned from the common air, 
 And my heart throbbed to think what warmth 
 and joy were there. 
 
 What banquets and what bridals ! What desire 
 Glowing in gracious faces! Holier yet 
 What feigned marble of some girls white fire, 
 Who all day long half-shrouded, at day set 
 Disrobes — but seen by angels in her chamber met. 
 
 Or when the green intruder Spring let loose 
 His arrows on the Winter's rearguard thin, 
 And burst our buds and filmed our avenues, 
 Almost before the Vallies could begin, 
 With lillies and palm boughs we bore his 
 triumph in. 
 
 48 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 And when in motley Autumn, the street lamps 
 Globed in the yellow trees, saw many a mask 
 Of lanterned children, whose barbaric camps, 
 Rang bells, stole gates — a legendary task — 
 Or ringed stray travellers round till they should 
 ransom ask. 
 
 Then where the streets were rustling like ravines, 
 
 Thick buried in the blazon of the trees, 
 
 That ranged in blackened rows their starved lines, 
 
 Great hecatombs we heaped for sacrifice, 
 
 Till all the smoky air blew like a curtained frieze. 
 
 Then came the indoor, Christmas festival 
 And all the world compacted to one close, 
 And gifts and good cheer filled the fire-lit hall, 
 And visible commerce with the sky arose 
 By flights of angels singing triumph or repose. 
 
 War stormed upon my youth. Its tides laid bare 
 Life's hollow abysms and blood-oozed ways ; 
 Camp, hospital, parade, the trumpet blare, 
 The gleaming cincture of the steel arrays, 
 With rumor rolled on rumor reached even 
 boyhood's plays. 
 
 49 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 What memories of hearts at highest beat ! 
 My father's armed departure: the brief word 
 And silence of the stern, heroic heat ; 
 His home return, half dying. What woes stirred 
 For those who came not back unheard of, 
 uninterred ! 
 
 Well for the nurslings of such periods ! 
 Greatness was in our blood and careless grace ; 
 Gods walked the streets not knowing they were 
 
 gods; 
 The gaunt and weary watcher for his race 
 Rode past our door and I, I looked on Lincoln's 
 
 face. 
 
 Then with the Warrior Soul of Innocence, 
 I played at battles on the carpet laid, 
 Dreamed out with symbol bullets the events 
 Of charge, retreat, death, bivouac, ambuscade, 
 And launched my paper fleets to either armies' aid. 
 
 Then soaring higher from a world of fact 
 
 The strolling player of a single house 
 
 I went; and everywhere did I enact 
 
 The Little Corporal with the moody brows, 
 
 Or Alexander lightening god-like in carouse. 
 
 50 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 What companies I had of noble guests, 
 Book-born, book-bred — The Knight, The Royal 
 
 Dane, 
 More real forms than any Time arrests : 
 Infinite Queens, too, for each hour's reign 
 In harmless, whole seraglio's floated through my 
 
 brain. 
 
 And She, the sole spectator of my mood, 
 Laughed or grew vexed at every antic show, 
 Would bid Napoleon to his simple food, 
 Call Caesar from his bed before cock crow 
 Or turn the closet key on lion Mirabeau. 
 
 Come Muses with commemorative eyes 
 Enter my chamber ! Books are there arow 
 Memorials of the men ye have made wise, 
 But neither they nor ye inspire me so 
 As her bright, pictured face with features all aglow. 
 
 She bore me, nursed me, taught me, was more me 
 Than e'er I was myself. By her my deeds 
 Swelled like the arras forms that living be 
 When the wind stirs — or like sea-moved weeds — 
 But now she has withdrawn what faded death 
 succeeds. 
 
 5i 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 So when I bore our flag to that far South, 
 Where famine, fever waited with worse foes, 
 Light in her eyes, smiles on her sunny mouth 
 And in her heart what prescience who knows 
 Of the black flood of death that round about me 
 rose. 
 
 'Tis well ! She waits no more, and I have left 
 A soul well exercised in love and hate, 
 That in Life's conflict, masterless, bereft 
 Like the proud Roman's will to none abate 
 But bends to her who sits immortal beyond fate. 
 
 Immortal ! No vain guess to solace pain ! 
 Here is the warrant in my heart's new ease; 
 Her earlier lost are now her lasting gain ; 
 Her passionately mourned do bid her peace 
 Till those she lacks shall come and crowd about 
 her knees. 
 
 Well do I know the philosophic lore 
 Stoic, Platonic, or the baser creeds; 
 They serve to pass the time, but more, ah more 
 Of certainty is in our human needs, 
 Our errand is not naught and not for naught our 
 deeds. 
 
 52 
 
ODE ON THE IMPRESSIONS OF BOYHOOD 
 
 Not leagues of desert earth or wastes of air, 
 Not countless crossing stars that errant move, 
 Not my unworthiness can bar me there, 
 Against the faces of the ones I love 
 That blazon me the path and beckon to the 
 heights above. 
 
 Not in vain planted God this longing hope, 
 Not to no harbor did he launch his ships 
 He ringed us not with doors that will not ope, 
 Nor the last smile upon my mother's lips 
 Quenched in immediate night and endless black 
 eclipse. 
 
 Mother ! Thou Mary of my prayers, be thou 
 
 My intercessor in thy native sky ; 
 
 My boyish strife scarce touched thy smiling brow, 
 
 Will not my manhood God as kindly try ? 
 
 For we are children all in that All Judging Eye ! 
 
 53 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Do I dream? Have I found 
 
 The enwreathed pipe, wherein 
 
 The persuasive strain pre-eminent 
 
 Of antique music dwells ? 
 
 Ah no, the mouths are stilled that filled its 
 
 round. 
 Marble the Muses stand 
 In portico or hall 
 With empty eyes. 
 
 No passion can awake or make them warm ; 
 No incantation bend their necks; 
 Or from their pedestals 
 Bring them with music sweeping limbs. 
 Stilled phantoms? No! 
 Ghosts might do something, 
 Might thrill, might trance mankind : 
 
 54 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 But these the Circle of the One's that Knew 
 Are from our noisy day 
 Divided and divorced. 
 
 Yet we know much 
 
 They told not or told false. 
 
 Not from the Gods we came, 
 
 Though in our blood their echo and their flame, 
 
 But, as our wisest say, 
 
 Out of the pulsing ooze ; 
 
 And solely animal 
 
 Need fear no last accompt. 
 
 We know too, that this earth, 
 
 The throne magnificent of man, 
 
 Approached by orient embassies, 
 
 Enringed with constellations marching past, 
 
 Usurps no central place ; 
 
 The outposts of eternity advanced 
 
 Dwindle it into naught. 
 
 Yet hope nor happiness is all of joy ; 
 
 The shocks of terrible surprise 
 
 Left and enlarge the soul ; 
 
 Might lives in melancholy : 
 
 In the miracle of death, 
 
 In the dark background beyond the stars, 
 
 55 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 The strong gods dwell. 
 
 They are all relations, 
 
 They know each other under each disguise, 
 
 These are their marks, 
 
 Strangeness of beauty, 
 
 Greatness of air, 
 
 Frank gazing eyes. 
 
 Worship I pay them all : 
 
 But vital most to me 
 
 The Titan race. 
 
 Their dynasty I hold still crowned, 
 
 Not completed in one age, 
 
 Nor confined to one landscape, 
 
 Ida or Mount Dindymene, 
 
 Or the Sicilian subterranean world. 
 
 Wherever the fire-breathing sun 
 
 Calls earth to crown itself with life, 
 
 And the wide mesh of air 
 
 O'erworks with flashing pictures, 
 
 There the primeval kings 
 
 Wake, work and reign. 
 
 Over yon flame-edged hill 
 By bleak pines sentinelled, 
 An invading echo comes: 
 
 56 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 No music this of unapparent hounds; 
 
 More shrill, more wild, 
 
 Drums, cymbals and the noise 
 
 Of unknown instruments 
 
 With dissonance of barbarous voices joined ! 
 
 Now on the summit stands 
 
 A single herald shape 
 
 Naked, dark gesturing against the sun. 
 
 Then the whole hill top into tumult breaks, 
 
 Fantastic figures grouped, 
 
 Or violently moved 
 
 In dances of no law, 
 
 To music of no tone ! 
 
 And for a moment poised the medley waits, 
 
 Then down the smooth slope pours, 
 
 And the purged eye alone 
 
 The mysterious pageant owns, 
 
 The procession of a resurrected world, 
 
 The priests of Cybele. 
 
 So dread the din of those, 
 
 So dazzling the dyed rout, 
 
 That hardly do I know 
 
 After this tumult what great calm is led ; 
 
 Till sidewise upon mine 
 
 The ominous eyeballs of a lion team 
 
 57 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Trance me to very stone ; 
 
 Their bronze sides brush my limb 
 
 And unregarding by me goes 
 
 The incarnate apparition of the earth 
 
 In woman form 
 
 With turret circled brows 
 
 Clad in all colors, but all colors light. 
 
 Love first was made, Love first 
 
 Then She Love's mightiest child, 
 
 And oracles were set upon her lips, 
 
 And divinations caverned in her eyes, 
 
 Mother of Gods and men. 
 
 With inward look, with weight 
 
 Of passive energy, 
 
 Behind her lions drawn 
 
 She glides and disappears 
 
 Into a thicket mid the folded hills. 
 
 Now the drums again 
 Beat and roll and boom, 
 Cymbals clang, from the flutes 
 Bruit of anger breaks ; 
 All the train of Cybele 
 Ring about that secret wood, 
 Rapid circles weaving there, 
 In the twilight gleam their limbs, 
 
 58 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Or their richly flaming robes 
 Kindle all the deeper dusk : 
 See ! One wrestles with an oak, 
 One a silver flagon holds 
 To a trunk-like twisted vine 
 And the foamed flood gushes out; 
 One apart stands from the rest, 
 Magian of this magic brood, 
 And the twigs he flings about 
 Turn to yellow flickering snakes, 
 Turn to velvet liveried deer : 
 Now the torches lit 
 Toss, and shuttle-like go flying, 
 Figures, shadows multiplying 
 O the world and vision new ! 
 
 But hark ! What cry 
 
 From midmost wood obscure 
 
 The riot silences. 
 
 Again ! and the night grows pale, 
 
 And the earth shudders underneath : 
 
 Though the trees are green and the sap is 
 
 new, 
 The leaves rustle, crisped, sere! 
 With stretched wing the black bat swoops, 
 And all that holy throng 
 
 59 
 
HYMN TO C YBELE 
 
 In wild and vivid act, 
 
 Are palsied and are dumb. 
 
 What agony in the lonesome wood 
 
 Spreads such eclipse, 
 
 Such presage sends? 
 
 Stifled at first 
 
 Comes the inarticulate voice, 
 
 By intermitted pangs of child-birth forced, 
 
 And the roar of the lions answers ; 
 
 Then for a moment comes 
 
 Almost a cry of joy ; 
 
 This soon is hushed and then 
 
 A woman's voice imperious in alarm 
 
 Thrills to the roots of life. 
 
 "Kronos" it calls 
 
 'Tapetus, Oceanos" 
 
 Companions, counsellers, 
 
 I bid you hither ! Come ! 
 
 A peril threatens our race ; 
 
 Danger is sprung from my side. 
 
 In the illumination of my mind 
 
 The future appears, 
 
 I know our fate ! 
 
 Ah, must it be and through me! 
 
 O mighty brothers, help ! 
 
 60 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Without the night is tranquilized by stars ; 
 The writhing circle of that rout is stilled, 
 Is silent, shrunk in shadow of the wood ; 
 Not of the conclave or the counsel they ; 
 But down through levels of the air, I see 
 A deity descending. O superb 
 His face of ancient beauty and his form 
 Lustrous. He enters slowly in the wood 
 And the oaks fold before him as a gate. 
 Rapidly over the enringing hills 
 A figure comes, urged by the fiery light 
 That pulses through his body palpably 
 And follows. Then from out the distant lake 
 Or from the waterfall or from the mist 
 Condensed, another rises, silver wrought, 
 Serene, and the wood closes after him. 
 
 Vanishes now to my eye 
 The outer world and I see 
 That presence chamber alone, 
 The goddess recumbent there 
 On lions pillowed; beside 
 On a leafy couch of the wood 
 The miraculous infant laid, 
 And the seated synod of gods 
 Wonderful, wondering, 
 
 61 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Waiting their summoner's word. 
 
 Roofed from the stars is the glade 
 
 Girdled thick with obscure 
 
 Bulks of absolute gloom, 
 
 But it glows and glimmers and gleams 
 
 With the life of those lords of light, 
 
 And most from the goddess herself 
 
 For as she utters her plaint 
 
 Of remembrance of prophecy, 
 
 Her varying splendor illumes 
 
 All the circle about, 
 
 Her pride stamps a ruddy glow 
 
 On face and foliage and rock, 
 
 Her fear spreads a pallid dream 
 
 Unearthly over the scene 
 
 And the light of the other gods 
 
 With her waxes or wanes. 
 
 Her voice arises 
 
 Dreamily distant 
 
 Throbbing its way almost without speech 
 
 "Kronos, thou keepest the air, 
 
 And knowest the succession of the stars ; 
 
 Thou nursest the eagle in thy lap, 
 
 And loosest the thunder 
 
 Guideless to wander and beget 
 
 62 
 
HYMN TO CYDELE 
 
 Eternal progenies of echoing sound ; 
 
 Behold me here 
 
 Beheld thy child and mine ! 
 
 Kronos dost thou not fear? 
 
 Thou knowest not the word, 
 
 Thou knowest not the thing ; 
 
 Nor thou Oceanos, silver veined 
 
 Nor thou, fire rolling Iapetus; 
 
 Ye forge from yourselves innumerable 
 
 And novel births, 
 
 Ye deem yourselves Creators, 
 
 Origin and orb of all ! 
 
 Masters of changes ye yourselves must change! 
 
 Wisdom is born in me 
 
 With the birth of this child, 
 
 This your dethroner, 
 
 The baby Zeus. 
 
 A fury falls on me 
 
 I know the future, 
 
 I see you, ye gods 
 
 Dim, dowerless, discrowned : 
 
 Nor yet disloyal I 
 
 To our dynasty of mighty equals, 
 
 To our society of freedom ; 
 
 Compact of chaos are we whence we came, 
 
 Impulses, instincts, agitations, 
 
 These are our being : 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 We have made beautiful 
 
 The uncreated void, 
 
 By giving life, not law ; 
 
 But now there arises 
 
 One jealous, invincible, strong ; 
 
 He shall confine the flowing world, 
 
 And set in order the elements ; 
 
 Splendors unknown to us shall reign, 
 
 And gradations of beauty inconceivable 
 
 Bloom in our abandoned house; 
 
 But linked with these shall be 
 
 Inevitable wrongs, 
 
 Destinies of unimagined sin, 
 
 Deaths and a final doom. 
 
 Pity me O, ye gods ! 
 
 Pity the mother who knows 
 
 A despot and a conqueror in her child ! 
 
 Yet am I proud ; 
 
 I have given birth to greatness, 
 
 Daring and supremacy issue from me; 
 
 I fawn on you for forgiveness O ye gods 
 
 But he, he is my King." 
 
 Fell the fiat, ruled the doom ! 
 And that audience of gods 
 Uttered no protesting moan: 
 The symbol and the stamp of Fate 
 
 64 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 On her mighty visage shone : 
 
 But they burned in steady wrath, 
 
 They who on those woodland thrones 
 
 Rulers sat and rebels rose ; 
 
 War, war, war was in their look. 
 
 Risen from primeval strife 
 
 Their being born for battle, leaped 
 
 Truce of many days, and hailed 
 
 A future that should know their might 
 
 Proved against a foeman proud. 
 
 Quick as a vision of lightning, 
 Sudden as a wind that in Summer 
 Rises and ruins and passes, 
 Those actors doomed but immortal 
 Break up their conclave and vanish, 
 And the theatre of the woodland 
 Is lost again in the darkness, 
 It's passion and picture faded. 
 
 The grey designs of dawn 
 Fret and frost the eastern dark, 
 The last star pales and hides, 
 On a noteless landscape known 
 The common day comes in, 
 Slopes the wheat field to the brook, 
 
 65 
 
HYMN TO CYBELE 
 
 Spreads the meadow clover sweet, 
 
 The familiar farm house sends 
 
 Up its wreath of morning smoke : 
 
 And it was — so it is. 
 
 Save my heart that bears a weight 
 
 Save my mind that haunted glows 
 
 With a Vision, with a Wonder, with a Strife 
 
 66 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 The shadow of the ocean in itself 
 
 Grey, hoary, girdles me : 
 
 No flash of breaking foam 
 
 No vivid tint of the green concave crest 
 
 These under-levels know ; 
 
 Shadowy swims each red or silver fish ; 
 
 Colorless, formless, void 
 
 The unfathomable planes 
 
 Are blotted by their own translucent gleam : 
 
 Yet still there grows on me 
 
 A sense of thronging life, 
 
 Eyes multiplied and dim designs of features, 
 
 And myriad essences 
 
 Held in eternal hurry motionless. 
 
 The waters fleet before my face, 
 The clouded circuit clears, and lo ! 
 Certain in the lapsing dream, 
 
 67 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Starts the vision of a vale, 
 Lit by moving, luminous 
 Meteor-monsters, scaly clad. 
 On the floor, in attitudes 
 Of a hundred varying moods, 
 Gleam a cirque of woman forms : 
 Born from the ocean waves they bear 
 The waves' image in their looks. 
 Sombre, massy, tremulous, 
 Wandered o'er with lucid change, 
 Everyone a different stamp 
 Carries of the myriad sea ; 
 Irrisistable in weight, 
 With deep cloven breasts, and limbs 
 Bronzed in their flowing might 
 Shadows one. Another has 
 The swift impetus that leaps 
 Breaks, and makes a line of foam ; 
 Like the current-caught sea grass 
 Waving, wayward, serpentine, 
 Is another; so they toss 
 Tumult tranced upon the floor. 
 About the cirque at intervals 
 Single figures, pillared rise, 
 Guardians of the heaving mass ; 
 Midmost of them all uprears 
 A being of another birth! 
 
 68 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Boyish, but of lofty mien ; 
 Whose unborrowed blazon burns 
 Steady, mid those shifting, wan, 
 Watery veined sea-satellites. 
 Prisoner preeminent, 
 His gesture and his lordly act 
 Breathes command, authority, 
 Godship — smothered from surmise. 
 
 Hark ! his voice outleaps 
 
 Metallic-treble, strident, resonant. 
 
 "O ye ocean nymphs 
 
 Me past all memory have ye overawed ; 
 
 Prisoned me in your arms 
 
 Made me the slave of servitors. 
 
 With processional sameness have ye swept with me 
 
 Through these monotonous realms, 
 
 Nor left me the privilege of solitude, 
 
 To inwardly beget 
 
 Thoughts that shall conquor. 
 
 Yet am I of a different strain from ye ! 
 
 The anger of ambition 
 
 Swells in me, bids me break 
 
 Your soft and flowing chains. 
 
 I know there are other realms than these : 
 
 Splendors that not inhabit here 
 
 69 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Bend and beckon me to dominion : 
 Winged, floating shapes 
 Bear messages to me : 
 A creating fire is in me : 
 I know that ye, ye nymphs, 
 Are but the blanks of nature, 
 Empty faces and forms unequal 
 To my aspiring might. 
 Bow, bow to my supremacy 
 And proclaim me your master!" 
 
 Sweet and tinkling melodies 
 From innumerable nymphs 
 Mixed with rippling laughter comes. 
 " Passion-hearted pupil ours 
 Gilded Zeus! Purple Zeus! 
 What thy woe? What thy plaint? 
 Art thou rebel against Love? 
 Do our kisses bitter seem? 
 Thou wert given to us first 
 When thy ruddy, chubby limbs 
 Strangely blooming in this dimness 
 Strengthless on our bosoms lay. 
 And we quarreled for thy care, 
 Catching thee from breast to breast. 
 Then, when grown a space thou turnedst 
 Looks of grave import on us 
 
 70 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Wise, infantine, innocent, 
 
 Thee a coral throne we made, 
 
 Danced before it, hand in hand ; 
 
 Brought thee shells whose curving valves 
 
 Flushed with colors like thine own, 
 
 Tribute of the ocean caves. 
 
 Older yet and lithely springing, 
 
 Rosier still from heel to head, 
 
 Rounding to thy orb of youth, 
 
 Thee we watched, taught, trained — 
 
 Showing thee with oaring arm 
 
 Easily to cleave the wave, 
 
 Guiding thee to tame and ride 
 
 All those wastes in visitation 
 
 The grey monsters of these depths, 
 
 Exercised thy slender limb 
 
 Racing, wrestling ever with thee : 
 
 Now thou growest strange and great 
 
 Unto us thy playfellows 
 
 Baby Zeus ! 
 
 Look ! our swift infectious laughter, 
 
 Dimples all the ocean deep 
 
 At thy folly! 
 
 As if by the laughter summoned, 
 Suddenly into that circle comes 
 An intruding shape. 
 
 7i 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Unlike those mutable nymphs, 
 
 Fixed architures of fraility, 
 
 But even as Zeus himself 
 
 Original in solid fire; 
 
 Yet of a differing mould 
 
 From the smooth, slender, adolescent god, 
 
 Massy, irregular, with 
 
 Wide shoulders and deep dented curve of back. 
 
 To whom the wrathful Zeus 
 
 Shrills forth a cry of welcome enmity. 
 
 " New born to these sparse realms, 
 
 mighty visitant, 
 
 Thou comest in good time. 
 
 1 love thy war-loomed front, 
 And would with thee hold terms; 
 But now thou seest me scorned : 
 
 Thou hearest the ocean nymphs deride my rule 
 
 With them I not contend, 
 
 Unwrestling women forms, 
 
 But thou art a selected opponent, 
 
 Thou art the rival I have dreamed ; 
 
 Submit and hail me king 
 
 Or try my might in war, 
 
 Life's best embraces feel!" 
 
 In eager expectation, Zeus 
 
 Hangs half suspended and with poising eye 
 
 Pauses in calculation of his blow. 
 
 72 
 
HYMN TO OCEAN OS 
 
 While there with folded arms, 
 
 And level and immovable regard, 
 
 Waits that war-welcomed guest. 
 
 Ah, ah ! they meet, they close, 
 
 And at the shock those nymphs 
 
 Re-enter their old element and emerge. 
 
 Now is the strain of war, 
 
 See, how their limbs are laced and interlocked, 
 
 And, seemingly, they grow 
 
 Huger with heaving muscles momently, 
 
 Until the strength of each, 
 
 Met by an equal and an even strain, 
 
 Holds them in balance and then wreathed bulks. 
 
 In awful action and intensity 
 
 Seem but embraced in easy attitudes. 
 
 But now that wide built one 
 
 In wide intrusion wins a little space 
 
 And slowly back Zeus droops, 
 
 Crushed in the close and unaccustomed grasp. 
 
 Alas, must he be conquered? 
 
 Must fall that Lord of distances and dreams? 
 
 Ah no ! His limbs revive, 
 
 With an imperious cry 
 
 He presses on his foe, 
 
 And slipping from the closure of those arms, 
 
 With sudden shifted grasp, 
 
 And main advantage, momently increased, 
 
 73 
 
HYMN TO OCEAN OS 
 
 Backward he bends the bulk that overbore, 
 
 Till the wide exultation of his eyes 
 
 Climb to the zenith of his foe's regard, 
 
 And with the ending effort of the strife 
 
 He tears the giant loose, 
 
 And, as his limbs relax, 
 
 Dashes him on the shaken ocean floor. 
 
 Listen his lofty cry 
 
 Of lyric victory, 
 
 As glittering he stands 
 
 From such encounter stainless and composed. 
 
 While the ocean nymphs throng round 
 
 Prostrate or in procession paying, 
 
 An adoration to authority. 
 
 The walled waves divide and flow 
 
 To a massy linteled gate, 
 
 Foamed and overwreathed and worked 
 
 With embossed and carved things, 
 
 Garlands, foliage, faces, gems ; 
 
 Mid of which the architrave 
 
 Bursts into a frieze of forms, 
 
 White against an ebon field, 
 
 Endlessly processional. 
 
 Rings a trumpet note, and then 
 
 Comes, majestically comes, 
 
 Presence of that under world 
 
 74 
 
HYMN TO OCEANOS 
 
 Inaccessible, serene, 
 Heart of all the plunging floods, 
 Oceanos. Lo, his car, 
 Where erect and single he 
 Stands in calm benignity, 
 But a mighty sea shell seems, 
 Outward pearl, but glowing rich 
 Inwardly with myriad hues. 
 Bronzed his twin horses are, 
 Silver maned, with nostrils red 
 And eyes mildly humanized. 
 On the struggling multitude 
 Nymphs and warrior gods, there falls 
 Silence. Round those smoothed floors 
 Paces silver footed Peace. 
 Speaks Oceanos. " What this strife ? 
 What alarmed figures rush 
 Rumor-tongued about my realms ? 
 Flushed, defiant Zeus, thou standest, 
 And beneath thy feet Hephaestos 
 Lieth vanquished ! Why thy wrath 
 O thou son of Cybele ? " 
 
 "Hephaestos!" 
 
 Gushes the voice of Zeus in gladness 
 
 "Rival no more, arise! 
 
 Dreams have betokened thee to me. 
 
 75 
 
HYMN TO OCEAN OS 
 
 Now am I all completed to perform 
 
 The conceptions of my soul. 
 
 A vision arises before me ; 
 
 The masonry of a world 
 
 Peremptorily dictated by my will, 
 
 Wrought by thy shaping hands. 
 
 Thou art my mate, Hephaestos! 
 
 Thine to upbuild and mine to animate 
 
 The breathing whole that shall be ! 
 
 I see thee at thy work, 
 
 Where on the beaches of chaos 
 
 Worlds are wrecked singly or in long drifts 
 
 driven. 
 I see thee set the orbed block 
 In circles straightening ever from the eye, 
 Till the aerial flight 
 Of many-bastioned walls, 
 Beats back the chaos on all sides, 
 Gradual at the base but growing up 
 To the all-vaulting, all-revealing dome : 
 Then the interior canopy 
 And all the shafts in endless avenues, 
 Of giant echo hanging far aloof, 
 I see thee build, shaping the elements 
 That make their many aspects. Fiery some 
 Perturbed mid all peace ; of waters more 
 Hollowly hurled cylyndrical, 
 
 76 
 
HYMN TO OCEAN OS 
 
 Diaphanous, crystalline, delicate. 
 
 Wandering these thronged obscurities of light 
 
 I see thee move, and work 
 
 Infinite designs upon the massy blocks; 
 
 Smoothing with verdue some ; 
 
 Embossing others with the minature 
 
 Of chaos — tangled forest — till the shafts 
 
 Climb rich unto the roof ; 
 
 And even the airy interstices 
 
 Thou crowdest with filmy clouds. 
 
 Then is my turn ! 
 
 The gilded lightning from the Titans grave 
 
 Goes wondering through the frame : 
 
 Winds too, I loose, and then 
 
 Within thy circling barrier, 
 
 In the two gateways opposite, 
 
 I set two figures — one 
 
 A giant of sheer gold 
 
 Who from his quivering bow, shaft after shaft, 
 
 Arrow on arrow, through thy building sends 
 
 To take the vast interior with their light, 
 
 To touch the lucid dome and make it live ; 
 
 The while his opponent 
 
 A region bulk imprisoned in decay, 
 
 Like armory lets loose, 
 
 And so continually 
 
 Light and Dark met in various fortuned war, 
 
 77 
 
HYMN TO OCEAN OS 
 
 Create with variable art 
 New architectures ever from the old. 
 Last then of all I give the word 
 For absolute life — and lo ! 
 The fabric springs forever. Its starred shapes 
 Climb to their gorgeous summits and sink down ; 
 From the mid centre to the last 
 Outlying tower by the night licked up 
 It moves, yet with the change 
 The vaulted wonder is not over thrown ! 
 The prodigy ! The glory ! O I live ! 
 Comrade, away! The great work waits us! 
 Come!" 
 
 73 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION. 
 
 Again the spell of phantasy is on me ; 
 
 I climb the woodland path in spirals winding, 
 
 And peer on either hand in dim recesses 
 
 Lit by the torches of the trees flung downward, 
 
 But half above is haze and half is forest : 
 
 Till the bare upland, rock and red earth, reach I 
 
 A platform by the hanging hills encircled. 
 
 Beyond which cloven in the rock a cavern 
 
 Opens — and, halted, wait I on the threshold, 
 
 For on me fall a new, mysterious vision. 
 
 Silver shafts with golden coronals, 
 Rise two birch trees there above my path. 
 Look ! they turn to mist, transform and are 
 Beauteous beings of an ancient race. 
 And the one, a glory masculine, 
 
 79 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 Slender, glowing from his head to heels, 
 With the Autumn pomp and passion dyed, 
 Stands before that caverned vestibule, 
 Stands in noble ease, and him I know 
 Fearless traveller of the future, Zeus. 
 
 But that better phantom there 
 
 By his side is feminine ; 
 
 White or flushed with rainbow hues 
 
 Like the cascade's tinted foam 
 
 Climbs her figure up in curves 
 
 To the rival rounded breasts, 
 
 To the dark crowned, haughty head. 
 
 Scarlet blooming is her mouth, 
 
 Vivid, gorgeous, sensitive, 
 
 And her large eyes swim in light. 
 
 "Hera," so came the word of the king of the 
 
 new Immortals, 
 Here is Porphyrin's home — here is the haunt ot 
 
 existence. 
 Him must I win, for the ultimate secret is in him. 
 Thou must bring to my aid the wit and the 
 
 armor of woman, 
 Lures and wiles and woven song and the dazzle 
 
 of beauty: 
 
 80 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 But at first be thou hid while I adventure him 
 
 singly." 
 Speaks the god and straightway vanishes that 
 
 girlish presence 
 Roseate prints in the air half showing where she 
 
 is hidden, 
 And a wonderful promise of music ready to 
 
 waken. 
 
 Come then out of that cavern, 
 
 Come with dances and singing, 
 
 Beings brightening the daylight, 
 
 Over-wreathed with laughter, 
 
 The Hours innocent of sorrow. 
 
 Sweep they the hearth and the threshold, 
 
 Wood they bear in that upblazes, 
 
 Wine they set out on a table, 
 
 All the while moving in rhythm, 
 
 Spontaneous syllables singing. 
 
 Swift in act as an eagle's rush 
 On the swimming shoals of the silver fish 
 From his higher level the god stoops down, 
 And the startled Hours, dart here — dart 
 
 there, 
 In baffled escaping intricacies, 
 
 81 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 And some in awe of his mien and might, 
 Come forward with timid looks of love, 
 While others scatter and call their king, 
 Till the tinkling echoes of iron crags 
 Ring and re-utter "Porphyrion." 
 
 Then from the chaos-chambered depths of that 
 
 gloom-curtained cavern comes 
 A strange, uncertain bulk of life, half struggling 
 
 into god or man : 
 Gross, animal, indecent, wild, his rugged limbs 
 
 and hoary head 
 Are dyed with lees of wine, or stained with forest 
 
 rust, or reddish earth ; 
 A light-emitting wand he bears of metal strange 
 
 and curious work, 
 And so with yawns and rubbed eyes he rolls into 
 
 the main of light, 
 And sees that god-guest standing there, in purple 
 
 panoplied and gold, 
 But unregarding sits him down and calls his 
 
 frail ministers, — 
 "Ho! bring me wine — pour wine and turn the 
 
 great boar on the roasting spit. 
 And comrade on the threshhold there sit down, 
 
 sit down, and drink, and drink." 
 
 82 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 Ho, Ho, the flagon vessel sent 
 
 In voyage twixt two thirsty shores ! 
 
 Ho, Ho, the jest and merriment, 
 
 The friendships sworn, the secrets told ! 
 
 The stately Zeus unbends and grows 
 
 A happy equal of his host, 
 
 Who mellow, easy in his cups 
 
 Yields to the civilizing wine, 
 
 Till last upon the table snores 
 
 Porphyrion, dead to wile or force. 
 
 Outstretched on the board 
 
 In the Titan's clutch 
 
 Lies his serpentine sceptre, 
 
 Glowing with fire 
 
 Dulled, iridescent, 
 
 Potent of life. 
 
 And Zeus triumphant 
 
 Reaches to seize it, 
 
 But back recoils 
 
 At the shock of its touch. 
 
 But at that touch the vision hoarding darkness 
 Opens its gate and lets the phantoms forth 
 Threatening and grisly — faces figures passions, 
 
 83 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 Tapestried they show on the background of the 
 
 cave. 
 Thin, wannish fires and phosphorescent torches 
 Glide and go out in the hollow of that hill; 
 Golden voices ring there, sing- there the Sirens, 
 All the cavern thrills, fills with a baleful life; 
 Armies bloody-bannered meet in awful struggle ; 
 Death himself, unveiled at last, stares with 
 
 palled eyes. 
 
 Zeus thou has trod so far with a dauntless step, 
 Now wilt thou shudder and turn as the omens 
 
 throng ? 
 Spectres of ruin and doom may blur the sun, 
 Livid decay may convulse the limbs of the 
 
 earth, 
 But on thy path thou must go with fieriest zeal ! 
 Life may draw with it death but thou must 
 
 create, 
 Thought may darken to dreams but thou wilt 
 
 make wise, 
 To the uttermost rings of being thy force shall 
 
 send 
 The whirl of thy worlds, in impetus action, strife, 
 That the maw of Death get a splendid ravin at 
 
 least ! 
 
 84 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 The fire in that cave burns low 
 
 And beside it Porphyrion sprawls ; 
 
 Flickering shadows like dogs, 
 
 Ring him, and watch him, asleep. 
 
 Him, too, intoxicate once 
 
 With hopes, with visions, with wine 
 
 Daring designs lifted up ; 
 
 Now, all wisdom attained, 
 
 Only oblivion he seeks : 
 
 And beside him his snake-waving wand 
 
 Lives and protects his repose. 
 
 Rudely his slumber Zeus dispels and shaking off 
 
 his stupor 
 Porphyrion staggers to his feet. In fiery adjuration 
 Zeus, moved from his steady mood, grows pliant 
 
 and implores him. 
 "Show me the real realities — teach me the final 
 
 wisdom, 
 For in thy mind the outward world mirrors its 
 
 revealation." 
 With grave, unconscious majesty Porphyrion 
 
 gazes on him, 
 Then lifting up that living wand as if in 
 
 incantation 
 
 85 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 He beckons to the inner dusk. It parts and lo! 
 
 before them 
 Rolls to the centre of that cave a mystic, radiant 
 
 vision 
 Wide spreading in the circuit night unutterable 
 
 splendors. 
 
 Tis a crystal ball, like a bubble clear, 
 Yet rainbow-hued as its surface turns, 
 And within it prisoned three forms appear, 
 Girlish figures of carved grace ; 
 They laugh as their sphere-home about them 
 
 spins, 
 But its changing round is their world complete; 
 Their milky arms wreath each other about, 
 They whirl in dance or they stand composed, 
 And their looks go forth with affection sweet, 
 For their hearts at the heart of the secret of all 
 Know nothing but kindness and love and play. 
 
 "Zeus," the Titan cries, "thou seest 
 The free rulers of all measure! 
 While their crystal is unbroken 
 All the world must thrill with childhood. 
 
 86 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 Though obedient to my sceptre 
 Yet I am their servant only. 
 Nothing, nothing seek to know I, 
 Plunged in reverie, inspired 
 By their pure-toned drifting shadow 
 By their motion and their music." 
 
 "Come to a test," cried the king, "I have music 
 more suited 
 
 To your blood than the poor, puling strain of 
 these girls ! 
 
 Be you judge ! If I lose, I will give you this belted 
 
 Bronze sword with whole histories upon it en- 
 graved 
 
 And you ! What gift pledge you ? Your scep- 
 tre ? Deny you ? 
 
 Then give me yon dark gleaming boar spear for 
 mine. 
 
 Ho, my spirit — without there ! Wake, voluptu- 
 ously torture 
 
 With the passion poured notes of thy smooth 
 throbbing throat. 
 
 These rivals — this Titan and win me my wager. 
 
 He ends and the voice comes of Hera unseen 
 
 87 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 "Where the tree ringed hollow is a crystal urn 
 
 The woodland fountain is cool — is cool. 
 
 And the moon's shafts splinter at the oak trees 
 
 root. 
 The breakers plash and the foam flashes 
 
 white 
 And shadows lie thick on height and vale ! 
 But O, not for me — not for me — not for me ! 
 My brain is fevered — my body burns 
 My waving arms turn East, turn West ! 
 I print my kisses on the flowing air, 
 But in vain ! Ah, in vain ! All in vain ! " 
 
 O Beauty's on the hillside bare 
 
 And Glory's in the glade, 
 But now gainst Nature's fairest fair 
 
 A rival is arrayed. 
 Beyond the roseate tinted breath 
 
 That is the mountains boon, 
 Beyond the orchard's blossomed wreath, 
 
 Beyond the wood-bird's tune, 
 Aye better than the Season's march 
 
 Across the forest floor, 
 A being comes — the night's dimmed arch 
 
 Knows her and nothing more. 
 
 SB 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 Upon the threshhold Hera stands, her form 
 Nude to her heels, but like the new-born sun 
 Half veiled in its own revealation. Gold 
 The vision, save the milkier foaming breasts 
 And the night shadowing tresses. O what 
 
 play 
 Of meaning, of enchantment on her mouth ! 
 What undiscovered empires in her eyes! 
 Poised as if flying forward — in each line 
 Implicit surrender — daring, passionate 
 The temptress waits- — waits for the spell to 
 
 work. ^. 
 
 Then the Titan to his feet arises 
 Stands dilated — stands with quivering limbs, 
 Widened nostrils, eyes of rolling fire 
 Stammering tongue, with passion all possessed 
 "Yield me the girl, O give her to me Master 
 All that is mine shall be at thy command — " 
 "Mine then thy sceptre — that alone can buy her, 
 Quick, be quick, or she fades in air again." 
 Then unto that Subtle One, Porphyrion tosses 
 
 his sceptre, 
 And madly throws himself forward to capture and 
 
 clasp his booty. 
 
 89 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 But with one blow of the 
 
 All-ruling wand, 
 Zeus shatters that crystal 
 
 Prisoning sphere, 
 And its inmates step forth 
 
 On the cavern floor, 
 While shrilling in triumph 
 
 Zeus fades in air, 
 And vanishes with him 
 
 Hera away. 
 
 But O, those presences of blooming childhood 
 Whose dewy freshness filled but late the cavern, 
 What grace, what lustre they have lost by 
 
 freedom ! 
 Hags, Queens of Eld, they shuffle bent and 
 
 crooked 
 Toothless, bleared with gaunt and skinny 
 
 bosoms. 
 Up flings the firelight, making more fantastic 
 Those granny-gossips crouching chilled above it 
 Horrible conspirators each the other hating 
 Then one sings and two in choric answer 
 Chaunt out the laws new made for earth and 
 
 heaven 
 
 90 
 
HYMN TO PORPHYRION 
 
 " Sisters, sisters, what is ours to do ? " 
 "The mesh to weave where the Future is 
 
 caught ! " 
 "Sisters, what things shall glitter in our net?" 
 " Gods and stars and golden crowned kings ! " 
 " Sisters, what lure shall draw these wonders in?" 
 " Dreams they are and illusions they chase ! " 
 "Say, O sisters what reward is theirs ?" 
 "The winding sheet, the worm and the dark! " 
 "Sisters, choose we now our symbols true! " 
 "The owl, the toad and the circling snake!" 
 
 *aer- 
 
 On a sudden mountain steep, 
 Where the fledged rocks o'erhang, 
 Is the god Porphyrion flung, 
 And he hears that dolorous song, 
 And he sees the golden years 
 Glitter downward to their death, 
 While in dulled, mechanic round 
 The new rings of Being rise, 
 And the ruin fills his heart — 
 Break, O heart — O mind be dead ! 
 
 91 
 
ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF COLOR 
 IN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Where are the dances of Laconian maids? 
 
 How are their flower garlands fallen without 
 increase? 
 Ah, slowly o'er some widening Lethe fades 
 
 The vales and views of Greece ! 
 Here are clear skies ; here is the glad day-birth 
 Our sunsets matching with the Autumn leaf 
 On purple hills are piled the russet sheaves ; 
 Ringing and lusty is our harvest mirth; 
 Yet something fails us from our unbelief; 
 The exiled Genius grieves, 
 Because our hearths are left without a guard ; 
 Because no altars, garlanded for good, 
 Range by our doors with richest offering; 
 Because no hymns rise neath the forest 
 roof; 
 
 92 
 
REVIVAL OF COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 We are withdrawn from Nature and grown hard ; 
 Thankless we gather in our livelihood, 
 And the mild deities that round us ring 
 Are driven to hold aloof: 
 Then how for us the vivid, gracious hours, 
 Laconian dances or Thersalian flowers. 
 
 II 
 
 O for the hour when Athens, opulent, 
 
 At top of Fortune's sunset colored wave, 
 With pomp and tumult toTRe Piraeus sent 
 
 Her envoy to the grave, 
 The boy-god Alcibrades. He stood 
 
 Naked upon his galley. Gold, O gold, 
 Not marble were his limbs. In the winds 
 flaw 
 His hair moved like a banner stained with blood, 
 And the blue aegis glittered in his hold, 
 And o'er the land he saw 
 The rosy fabric of the Parthenon, 
 
 Like Dawn just opening on a synod, so 
 The gods sat throned, and let through 
 women's eyes 
 Their beauty to the blood of Athens come, 
 
 93 
 
ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF 
 
 And farther on the armored olives shone, 
 
 And vales were shadowed, where he knew the 
 flow 
 Of crystal, touched with dances braided 
 dyes, — 
 And knew this was his home — 
 And gave the word for Sicily, and, sooth, 
 Launched on the sea his armament of youth. 
 
 in 
 
 Our home is glorious too, O friend, if Spring 
 
 Touches its chambers, or full Summer fills, 
 Or Autumn with its belting ring on ring 
 
 About us glows and thrills : 
 Nor tenantry of triumph and of rule 
 
 Are wanting, lofty men, and, passion-pure, 
 Women more roseate than Laconian girls ; — 
 Love gives the edicts of her purple school, 
 And Strife his burnished athletes bids endure, 
 And Fate the distaff twirls : 
 Yet some etherial splendor has not shone, 
 
 Yet some o'er-mastering trumpet has not filled 
 Our groves with epic echoes that make men 
 Heroic and immortal guerdons give; 
 
 94 
 
COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Art, the great heir of all has not his own 
 To wanton with his substance and rebuild, 
 And so renew to Time beyond our ken 
 Our day that does but live: 
 But the inspired angel waits and hopes 
 To forge our deeds as Nature fires our copes. 
 
 IV 
 
 O happy poet, nature thee affords 
 
 Her ornament direct of tree and stone, 
 Thou dos^not need to give reluctant words 
 
 A lustre not their own : 
 The topless oak from its lone forest borne, 
 Rich with its hoard of years, to thee resigns 
 Its strength, and in thy choir its branches 
 sing; 
 And the digged metals from earth's bowels torn, 
 And marbles mantling into rich designs, 
 Into thy fabrics spring : 
 Lo, on thy musings rise the flowered weeds, 
 The temples and the turrets of the hills, 
 The windowed west with all its wreaths of 
 flame, 
 And the blue shadow rolled along our 
 shore, — 
 
 95 
 
ODE ON THE REVIVAL OF 
 
 Yet not the less the harmonious spirit needs, 
 To stay the glory that the moment kills, 
 To place on nature that is ne'er the same 
 A more apparent law, 
 And new its altering elements arrange, 
 To body forth a thing that need not change. 
 
 Of fortunate augury I deem the chance 
 That gave it to thy genius to create 
 A fitting home for flowers and the dance 
 
 (If these be separate:) 
 Soon on our air shall bloom the emblazoned 
 walls, 
 Sprung as if flowers rooted, or a dream 
 Of sunrise into masoned sureness made; 
 And mid the blushing of its coronals 
 Figures of maidens silverly shall gleam 
 Undecked and unarrayed: 
 More than alive thy fabric's front shall breathe, 
 Frank in the daylight; and a mellow core 
 To moonlights mystical beatitudes ; 
 And men shall drink its inspiration in, 
 And women grow in beauty and bequeathe 
 
 96 
 
COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Splendors unto their children. It shall pour 
 A heightened strain above our haunted moods ; 
 And coming years shall win 
 Laconian visionary dances, there 
 Revived, and flowers that knew Thessatian air. 
 
 97 
 
DIRGE FOR SUMMER 
 
 What fervent and funereal pipes are set 
 To shape one ditty from the shifting air? 
 What notes of wild reluctance, what regret 
 
 Sobs through the tree-trunks bare? 
 Alas ! I did not know the earth had lost 
 Its treasury of Autumn in the trees, 
 Its golden sunset's ingot-heaped mine, — 
 Fool of unfathomed moods, I had almost 
 Forgot to challenge the chill-changed breeze, 
 
 Or ask what star did shine : 
 But too loud is the wind, too cold its breath 
 For longer dreaming in the open fields; — 
 Grown fuller have the forests' flutes and ta'en 
 An organ energy for angrier blasts. 
 I wake, and see the Summer struck with death, 
 Spite of her gaudy armor and gold shields, 
 
 98 
 
DIRGE FOR SIMMER 
 
 I see her eyes alter and film with pain, 
 
 And death her limbs recasts, 
 Till on the hills she stretches wan and grey 
 In the divinity of her decay. 
 
 II 
 
 Ay, thou art dead, Summer, and now art borne, 
 In pastoral state, with sylvan retinue, 
 Through the sere stubble, through the woods 
 forlorn, 
 
 Paths leaf-obliterate through ; 
 And hearsed harvests follow in thy track, 
 In heaped wains heavy with yellow sheaves 
 And purple vintage overcolored, 
 And the bronze-builded reapers do not lack, 
 Nor girls with aprons bulging out with leaves 
 
 For burial favors shed ; 
 Askance the kine look from their pastures chill, 
 The trembling sheep bleat from their ridged 
 
 slopes, 
 The barren woods are wider for thy path 
 That fettered thee with foliage in thy prime, — 
 So, with such pomp, with dirges that do fill 
 Earth, thou dost go, until before thee opes 
 
 99 
 
DIRGE FOR SUMMER 
 
 Some fathomless cavern that the forest hath, 
 
 Where all the acts of Time 
 A shadowy empire and existence keep, 
 Divulged only to the eye of sleep. 
 
 ill 
 
 Summer, farewell! Vows for thee I have paid 
 
 By every altar, oak-built or of elm, 
 
 And offered incense to appease thy shade 
 
 Through thy once fragrant realm ; 
 In empty lanes and alleys dispossessed, 
 I breathe thy name with a funeral prayer, 
 Adding all adorations of regret ; 
 I mark the places where I was thy guest, 
 Folded in thine inmost embrace, or where 
 
 On thy throne I was set. 
 Whate'er of glory through thy realm was 
 
 blown, 
 What shapes were vivid in thy vanished 
 
 sway, 
 Rise to me, and my hopes and visions dead ; 
 And the aged, withered grasses do I press, 
 Where, idly under thy oak pillars thrown, 
 Oft have I dreamed an age into a day, 
 
 IOO 
 
DIRGE FOR SIMMER 
 
 
 Or through thy gorgeous halls hung overhead, 
 
 Cloud-portalled palaces, 
 O'er barriers and bridges of the gods, 
 Wandered at will through untold periods. 
 
 IV 
 
 Farewell ! Farewell ! Ah ! not for thee alone 
 
 I echo iterations o'er again ; 
 
 True, thou hast gone, but with thee, too, is 
 
 flown 
 One more supreme for pain ; 
 That heel-winged, happy moulded, divine 
 
 shape, 
 That blown, abandoned image of a god, 
 Glad youth, has faded from my fainting heart ; 
 Following thy footsteps from me did he 'scape, 
 Therefore, I follow wherever thou hast trod, 
 
 In hope he may up-start. 
 Little cared I for seasons when with him 
 Lightly and lyrically passed I on, 
 When unreal shapes and colors of romance 
 Clothed the misclouded, miscreated earth, 
 When never sky grew dull or forest dim, 
 But up we rose as from a horizon, 
 
 IOI 
 
DIRGE FOR SLMMER 
 
 To make Aurora and the hours dance, 
 
 And give the world new birth. 
 But he is gone — and with him all he gave, 
 And fitly lay I him in Summer's grave. 
 
 102 
 
THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 
 
 Forests, renowned forests, forests old, 
 Or on the flanks of mighty summits growing, 
 Or roofing rivers with your overflowing 
 Live labyrinths, slow unravelling, fold by fold, 
 Your touch uplifts me, I attain the stature 
 Of your lost race, the Titan kings of earth ; 
 Let not one leaf fall of your life O Nature 
 But my lips press it, not one kindled birth 
 Be from your bosom loosed of flower or flame, 
 But blush by blush my blood records the same ! 
 And as one knows, ah ! knows so well some face 
 Knows every mantling glow and every dint, 
 That the mere image keeps the loved one's place, 
 So shall I win your secrets, hint by hint. 
 In answering echoes of a lover's mood, 
 Tremulous I stand before each budded thing, 
 
 103 
 
THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 
 
 Or sobered move amid your wedded boughs, 
 Or when the banquet-bidden, Bacchanal 
 
 brood, 
 Your wine-dyed festal populace round you 
 
 fling, 
 Mad I make revel in your ancient house. 
 
 II 
 
 O face of Autumn on the flying hills, 
 Crowned with aerial gold and floating glory, 
 My heart aches that thou too must be a story 
 Like Helen's beauty and the Achaians ills ! 
 Aye, thou must pass! In every copse an altar 
 Burns with a yellow, incense-drifting wreath, 
 In dim illumined glades the red leaves falter, 
 Like beads told over by the bed of death, 
 And look ! the forest frontage flickers now, 
 A fiery summons runs from bough to bough, 
 Like dream in dream arising, mood on mood, 
 The immovable whole fabric does not stir, 
 But with the mystic symbols of its blood 
 All the years passion does enregister. 
 This is the very Presence of the Past, 
 Tis Memory's picture of her deeds decayed, 
 
 104 
 
THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 
 
 But O, the winds rustle to ruin it; 
 
 The tarnished coinage from the trees is cast, 
 
 Space by space blackens, the long beacons 
 
 fade, 
 Fade and go out and leave the land unlit. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Gods of Decadence, all your trumpets blown, 
 All the long triumph of your armies ended, 
 Now to whose keeping is the earth commended? 
 Must the soul fight unaided and alone? 
 The empires of the immortal minded mortals 
 Build to like toppling show for like eclipse, 
 Carthage is vanished, by Balclutha's portals 
 The wind calls loudly to unanswering lips. 
 Yet still the Ideal Image urges on, 
 The way may alter yet the goal be won : 
 Mid fallen columns and arches frail and bare 
 Sits the throned shape of man's eternal Spouse, 
 Safer from ruin, as the frost-cleared air 
 Leaves the stars larger for the unloaded boughs : 
 And when the stars, the stars themselves, our 
 
 Fates 
 Spread in discolored paintings o'er the sky, 
 
 105 
 
THE FUNERAL OF THE FORESTS 
 
 And the last Autumn of All-nature comes, 
 Then where their blazon was, where op'ed their 
 
 gates, 
 The inspired faces of Futurity 
 Shall sweet disclose from new-discovered homes. 
 
 106 
 
ERRATA 
 
 Page 2, line 3. For "Placios" read "Palacios" 
 
 " 3, " 5. For " Edward" read ''Edgar" 
 
 " 19, " 24. For "evied" read " envied" 
 
 " ?)7> " 2 °- For " reason" read ''season" 
 
 " 47, " 9. For "Proud control" read 
 " Proud to control" 
 
 Page 84, line 4. For "Golden" read "Goblin" 
 
 " 84, " 7. For "palled" read "pallid" 
 
 " 84, " 8. For " has " read " hast " 
 
 " 92, " 6. For "Our" read "And" 
 
 " 93, " 6. For "Thersalian" read 
 "Thessalian" 
 
 Page 93, line 11. For "Alcibrades" read "Al- 
 cibiades " 
 
 Page 97, line 5. For "Thessatian" read 
 "Thessalian " 
 
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