FAR ^C/ESTS CALE rOUNG RICE FAR QUESTS FAR QUESTS BY CALE YOUNG RICE •I AUTHOR OF THE IMMORTAL LURE, A NIGHT IN AVIGNON, YOLANDA OF CYPRUS, CHARLES DI TOCCA, DAVID, MANY GODS, NIRVANA DAYS, ETc! Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMXII T'b3S3S .L 3^2 f ■3, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCHTOING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, igi2, BY CALE YOUNG RICE THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. V .< £.C1.A309738 To ANNE CRAWFORD FLEXNER whose unfailing appreciation and friendship are here gratefully acknov/ledged. CONTENTS PAGE The Mystic 3 The Wife of Judas Iscariot 7 Star of Achievement 11 Cloister Lays 1. Brother Gian 20 2. Sister Paula 23 Limitations 27 Highland Joy 29 To the Spirit of Nature 30 The Pilgrims of Thibet 33 HiERANTIS 37 La Morgue Litteraire 41 Philosophies 44 Love by Traeth-y-Daran 46 A Lydian Bacchanal 47 iESCHYLUS 54 COSMISM 56 The Excommunicant 59 Andre Revine 62 CONTENTS PAGE The Cry of the Disillusioned 65 The Deserter of Nirvana. 67 What More, O Sea 69 Oriental Memories 1. Rain in Ise 71 2. A Chinese City 72 3. A Burmese Idol 73 4. In Ceylon 74 5. North India 74 6. The Khamsin, at Cairo 75 7. The Jordan — and Jericho 75 A Requiem for a Magdalen 77 Snowdonian Hills 78 Gulls at Land's End 81 To Shelley 82 The Apostate 85 Spes Mystica 87 Moods of the Moor 89 Sea-Lure 91 BiDDEFORD Bay 93 The Fishing of 0-Sushi 95 A Woman's Reply 97 Waters Withheld 98 Fog 99 The Lost Bedouin loi CONTENTS PAGE The Song of a Neophyte 102 Sappho's Death Song 104 The Master 106 Civil War 108 Messages no What Part 112 The Unknown Shore 113 Man 114 Haunted Seas 115 Com^cTS 116 Who Rests Not 118 The Unhonoured 119 At Lincoln, England 120 The Song of a Drunken Pirate 122 Buoys 123 To a Boasting Bluet 1 24 Voices at the Veil 125 To Sea! 127 On Iroquois Hill 129 SuFFiciNGS 13 1 Recompense 132 Vanishings 134 Galileo 135 At the End 139 FAR QUESTS THE MYSTIC There is a quest that calls me, In nights when I am lone, The need to ride where the ways divide The Known from the Unknown. I mount what thought is near me And soon I reach the place, The tenuous rim where the Seen grown dim And the Sightless hides its face. I have ridden the wind, I have ridden the sea, I have ridden the moon and stars. I have set my feet in the stirrup seat Of a comet coursing Mars. 3 4 FAR QUESTS And everywJtere Thro the earth and air My thought speeds, lightning-shod , It comes to a place where checking pace It cries y ^^ Beyond lies Godr' It calls me out of the darkness, It calls me out of sleep, *'Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!'' It bids — and on I sweep To the wide outposts of Being, Where there is Gulf alone — And thro a Vast that was never passed I listen for Life's tone. / have ridden the wind, I have ridden the night, I have ridden the ghosts that flee From the vaults oj death like a chilling breath Over eternity. FAR QUESTS And everywhere Is the world laid bare — Ether and star and clod — Until I wind to its brink and find But the cry, ''Beyond lies God!'' It calls me and ever calls me! And vainly I reply, "Fools only ride where the ways divide What Is from the Whence and Why!" I'm lifted into the saddle Of thoughts too strong to tame And down the deeps and over the steeps I find . . . ever the Same. / have ridden the wind, I have ridden the stars, I have ridden the force that flies With far intent thro the firmament And each to each allies. 6 FAR QUESTS And everywhere That a thought may dare To gallop, mine has trod — Only to stand at last on the strand Where just beyond lies God. THE WIFE OF JUDAS ISCARIOT The wife of Judas Iscariot Went out into the night, She thought she heard a voice crying: Was it to left or right? She went forth to the Joppa Gate, Three crosses hung on high, The one was a thief's, the other a thief's, The third she went not nigh. For still she heard the voice crying: Was it to right or left? Or was it but a wind of fear That blew her on bereft? 7 FAR QUESTS She went down from the Joppa Gate Into the black ravine. She climbed up by the rocky path To where a tree was seen. And "What, sooth, do I follow here? Is it my own mad mind? Judas! Judas Iscariot!" She called upon the wind. "Judas! Judas Iscariot!" She crept beneath the tree. What thing was it that swung there, Hung so dolorously? * Judas! Judas Iscariot!'' She touched it with her hand. The leaves shivered above her head, To make her understand. FAR QUESTS ''Judas! Judas! my love! my lord!" Her hands went o'er it fast, From foot to thigh, from thigh to throat, And stopped — there — at last. ''Judas! Judas! what has He done, The Christ you followed so!" More than the silver left on him Made answer to her woe. "Judasl Judas! what has He done! O has it come to this! The Kingdom promised has but proved For you a soul-abyss! "Was He the Christ and let it be?" She cut him from the limb. And held him in her arms there And wept over him, lo FAR QUESTS "None in the world shall ever know Your doubts of Him but I! * Traitor! traitor! and only traitor!' Will ever be their cry! "None in the world shall ever know - But I who am your wife!" She flung the silver from his purse: It made a bitter strife. It rattled on the ringing rocks And fell to the ravine. "Was He the Christ and let it be?" She moaned, still, between. She held him in her arms there, And kissed his lips aright, The lips of Judas Iscariot, Who hanged himself that night. STAR OF ACHIEVEMENT Star of Achievement! Star that arose when man first rose on the earth And felt within him the Upward Urge of Being; Star of the ultimate heaven, Greater than that of Vega — the heaven of the soul; Wondrous is thy ascension, Wondrous thy lifting up of him, thy chosen — Of man, above all creatures! II The earth was green wnen he came, The earth with its myriad-teeming mountains and valleys, II 12 FAR QUESTS The earth with its veiling shading clouds and breezes, The earth that brought to birth all seas and continents. The elder slime had conceived, preparing his way. Its womb impregnate with the command of the Infinite Strove to give birth to a form In whose high-spacious spirit thou shouldst appear. But the travails of it were vain. For not in the winged thing, nor the saurian, Nor leviathan lashing the sea, Nor the mastodon shaking the land, O Star, thy light awoke — But mystically in man! m And dim was thy beam, dim, primevally! By it man hoped no more at first than to seize FAR QUESTS 13 And hold a rude cave in the forest, To shape with a stone a stone for his protection, To clothe him with a wild skin and watch with wonder The magic of river and tree and melting mist, Of springing storms that died in dens of thunder, Of dreaded lightning tongues that spat destruction. Dim was thy light, a will-o'-the-wisp that flitted On dreams and vague desires. Yet in his need he sought to see thee clearer. Savage he was, but, in the sky of his soul, Wast thou, a whisperer of aspirations, From age to age leading him, With a little gain upward: From the cave to the hut, his first home upon earth. From enmity with all beasts to toil with some. Savage he was, yet in his vast soul-dark He was not all forsaken. Not left alone in the wilderness of Nature 14 FAR QUESTS With naught of hope to lead his look above it, With naught to bid him master it. For Star, O Star, it was thy light he found In all, as in the hard flint imprisoned fire, His fervid friend thro all the cycles since. IV For time sped on — Unmeasured but by thee, beauteous Star, But by thy inspiration to his soul. Thy seeds of light quickened in him to knowledge. And knowledge grew to dream and dream to power. Speech did he learn from thy bright whisperings, And with it moulded winds And the rhythm of wild waters into Song, That grew too precious to trust utterly To lips that perished. So thou, O Star, put in his hand the stylus, And lo, ravisht, he wrote! FAR QUESTS 15 But death was ever with him! O . . . ! death! . . . A little while he counted suns and moons, A little while he slipped amid the seasons, A Httle while he gazed upon thy glow — ■ And then was gone! Whither, Star? Thy answer was, Into the invisible, Into the land of spirits. And not since thy first beam, O Soul-uplifter, Had any fallen on him like to this. For from it was born worship, from it the gods. In the Unseen they rose, In the place where flesh is not, nor dust that dieth. But only the powers that make all things to be. Only the might that heaved the breasts of the mountains — i6 FAR QUESTS To the lips of the clouds heaved them; Only the breath that breathed the continents, Out of the sea breathed them; Only the pulse that turns the tide forever. Yea, yea, the gods were bom! And temples towering, O Star, and cities. That sprung out of man's vision at thy voice. A word of light from thee touching the desert Brought the rose, Babylon, to sudden bloom. Or Memphian fanes that floated in the Nile. Nor could war, famine, and sin, and pestilence. And cataclysmic fate's miasma quench thee. Thro them thou wast, Shiner on the spirit! Thro them thou wast — Drawing men's eyes toward thee As the needle is drawn to the changeless Light of the North. By thee he sailed the centuries. Forgetful oft and breaking oft upon shoals, FAR QUESTS 17 On granite laws and tyrannies, On many a reef of folly, On many a seeming harbour set with ruin — But making many a haven safe at last! VI Yea, as the nations know! The nations who send up their praise to thee, Hymning a hundred chartings he has made! India cries, "To Meditation's Port, O Star, he came by thee and found the Infinite." And Egypt older yet upon the seas, **I launched him first on the known tide of time."' Greece chants, "I gave him beauty for the world! " And the Christ-land, "To Beauty I brought Love!" While Rome whose voyage led from Port to Port Gathered all praise of thee, And echoed it from Albion to the Elbe, And southward by Hispania to the Straits, Thro which at length it leapt the loth Atlantic, i8 FAR QUESTS The Vast, the Unsailed, Like luring music, Before the bows of mightiest mariners, And lo, and lo, the rounded earth was one I VII And men, O fair Effulgence, Men too were one! Bound consciously at last by the deep rays, By thy divine deep rays of brotherhood! With hands locked fast around their little planet Which they had learned was not alone God's care Locked fast by fear and awe, Or by the gentler bonds of hope and pity, They saw, thro thy revealings. That earth fares in an infinitesimal round Mid infinite sun-spaces. And that upon their littleness and briefness And universal fate hangs fraternity. FAR QUESTS 19 So close they throng together, closer, Star, With every shedding of thy radiance Thro new soul-firmaments of vaster range. For tho they are finite sparks For ever and ever blown, toward infinite Dark, By the breath of Life — And lonely save for hope of a Rekindling, Or for each other's light along the way, They trust in thee, O Star, Star of Achievement, Trust thy ascension — Shining sure ascension, Thro nebulous realms that seem unknowable — Toward constellated Love and Truth and Freedom! Toward zenithed Joy! Toward life's Intent, in the central heaven of all! CLOISTER LAYS I BROTHER GIAN (0/ the Benedictines at Monte Cassino) Circa 1080 Dear Jesus Christ, I'm Brother Gian. Within my cell I sit and scratch From pagan parchments words writ on Such vellum as not kings can match. Words, Greek and Latin — all profane. Three Homers I have quite erased And look to see their lies replaced By lives of Saints without a stain. 20 FAR QUESTS ai This Virgil now: I'll do it next. Last night it tempted me to peep A moment at its wicked text, Telling of nymphs ... I could not sleep. Dear Jesus Christ, I dreamt I was A faun within a Bacchic rout, And one white creature chose me out: I broke with kisses all Thy laws. Here is the place ... I danced as wild As any bacchant of them all. With ivy-woven tresses whiled Mad hours that maddened at her call. She led me far into the wood Where not a Pan or Satyr leapt. Dear Jesus Christ, 'twas Satan swept Me on — I scarcely understood. Here is the place. . . . For in my dream Each letter trembled and became 22 FAR QUESTS A nymph: the parchment was a stream Of shapes that glimmered without shame. I danced and followed where she fled With lips wine-glad bent back to shout. Dear Jesus Christ, beyond a doubt She rose where ''Venus" here I read. So first of all I raze its shame! And pray that in its place may stand Some letter of the Virgin's name Writ by a pure and holy hand, And set about with red and gold And lilies — where my eyes still see But glimmering limbs that tempt and flee, But shimmering arms that would enfold. Dear Jesus Christ, this I confess, And fasting will I toil until The vellum, white as holiness. Shall be fit for an angel's quill! FAR QUESTS 23 An angel like the nymph with eyes And body that . . . Dear Jesus Christ, To woman was man sacrificed! From Eve his sins forever rise! II SISTER PAULA {Of the Benedictine Nuns) I will not shun to touch the poor, Tho loathsome be their bruises. Nor fail to toil, O Virgin Pure, On garments for their uses. The sacramental bell I'll tend Unceasing, soon or late, But O, upon thy image there, That clasps the Babe unto it, fair, I pray, bid me not wait! The holy water I will fetch From Rome, afaint and fasting; 24 FAR QUESTS On the cold chapel-stones I'll stretch Long nights without repasting. Sackcloth I'll bind about my waist, Nor ever will I rest, But, Virgin Mother, let it be That I need not look up and see The child there on thy breast! For seeing it I can but sin, I, ne'er to be a mother. And think of love that might have been, And of one, now Christ's brother, Who tosses in his convent cell On billows of desire, While toiling hours strike on his dreams Stern blows of penitence that seems To shatter them with fire! I can but sin — and cast away All love that is not human, FAR QUESTS 25 That has not mystic joy to sway True-mated man and woman! That does not spring and fill the world With children and with song; With passion, in the summer night, Upon young lips bHss hallows quite, Heart-bliss that is so strong! I can but sin — the while this veil I wear seems but to strangle; The while all vows I follow fail, Vows made but to entangle! The while laud, vesper and compline Sound to my childlessness Like chants the hapless heathen pour On altars of false gods — no more! Such is my wickedness! Therefore, O Virgin, set my hands To tasks however lowly, 26 FAR QUESTS To penance only cloister-bands Of Magdalens pay slowly! Let me be less within thy sight Than Heaven's lowest heir, But place me not where I must brood On the lost bliss of motherhood — Before thy image there! LIMITATIONS (Art and the Man) I am savage for life and the lusts Of beckoning quests I have banished, I am glutted with Beauty's face And the brush that I paint her with, I am sick of the dreams and dusts Of the soul of me — of the vanished Years that I spent in chase Of the luring lips of Myth. I was suckled for more than to fling The blood of my heart on a palette. I was given the eye of a god For more than a picture's worth. 27 28 FAR QUESTS I have felt the ineffable sting Of Life — tho I be Art's valet. I have painted the cloud — or the clod, Who should have possessed the earth. The Caesar in me, and the Christ Cry out to be given power. The Antony in my veins Would waste a world's throne for his queen. And what to Ulysses sufficed — The infinite far foam-flower! — That only would quench the quest Of my soul for worlds unseen. The law of it, God, do I hate, That a man with the might of many Must hold to the task of one — In the groove of an ancient awe; Or find, if his will, o'er great. Denies to be bound by any, The body of him shall break, undone, And Fate appear in the flaw. HIGHLAND JOY (Wales) The blue-bells ring in the bracken, The heather bells on the hili, The gorse is yellow The sunlight mellow With music of wind and rill! Afar the mountains are rising High Snowdon and all his knights, For some fair tourney With clouds that journey Up from the sea's blue bights! O winds, O waters, O mountains, O earth with your singing sod, I'm glad of the weather That brings together My heart and the heart of God I 29 TO THE SPIRIT OF NATURE A myriad years you have led us In adoration on To worship of wind and water, Wood, star and winged down. A myriad years you have held us In an ecstasy of trust, But never a thing have told us Of the meaning of life's lust. Your suns and your moons and seasons We "have hallowed with our praise. With a passion like a lover's We have clasped your nights and days. In solitudes we have trysted And in silence, yearning long. And singing, in sooth, it taught us, But not the meaning of song. 30 FAR QUESTS 31 Your flowers we know and name them With breaths of beauty o'er, Your leaves and their million lispings We have treasured more and more. Your clouds we have followed farther Than fancy follows thought, And many a gleam have gathered, But not the gleam we sought. The sea and its soul of power Has had of our hearts full awe And love; tho we know what tribute Has fed its mystic maw. Brave litanies we have lipped it, Brave prayers have we paid, But infinite is its answer — And of that we are afraid! And yet with joy for the jungle, With wonder for the wild. Your lure and delight have led us As the rainbow leads the child. 32 FAR QUESTS Your deserts burning and dewless Have given our spirits drink, But whence it has come we know not, From what Elysian brink. Nor why, on heights of the mountain, In chasms of earth's crust, We feel forever the Presence That is not framed of dust; That is not born of the atoms, Nor by the ether bound; That seeks forever to find us, Yet never can be found. So come but a little nearer — Or farther breathe away. Be more to us than a Presence That says nor yea nor nay. Between the seen and the shadowed Stand not so strangely dumb, Yet if you must, still let us trust The Word at last shall come. THE PILGRIMS OF TfflBET Down the road to Llasa, Himalayan and strange, I thought I saw them winding From range to lower range, The seekers after Buddha, Across the ice and cold, And from their lips the mystic phrase Of merit ever tolled: ' Om mane padme, hum!' Life is but a way of lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum, Till we to Nirvana come. Clothed in rags and turquoise And necklaces of skulls, And shoes of yak worn furless, And fleece the shepherd culls, 33 34 FAR QUESTS With faces like to parchments Whereon alone was writ The repetition of those words Of wonder infinite: *0m mane padme, hum!* Life is but a robe of lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum, Till we to Nirvana come. Down the road ascetic And desert, bleak and drear, I thought I saw them winding To Llasa walls more near; Strong man and maid and mother, Shorn youth and sexless age. That ever to the wind intoned Their one acquitting page: *0m mane padme, hum!' Grief is but the goal of lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum, Till we to Nirvana come. FAR QUESTS 35 Past the hermit's cavern — Where he alone drew breath! — Past nunneries where silence Waits, acolyte of death; Past shrines of lesser power, Where smiling idols wear The bliss upon their gilded lips Of the all-granting prayer. *0m mane padme, hum!' Leave the life of flesh and lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum, Till we to Nirvana come. Down the road — and down it, I saw them, lama-led. Mid holy lakes and mountains, And monasteries fed With endless alms — and measured By slow prostrations round. And by the chanted syllables That sprung as from the ground. 36 FAR QUESTS *0m mane padme, hum!* Life is but the lair of lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum, Till we to Nirvana come. Then at last to Llasa They reach — I see them yet! — And touch the gods on altars Above all others set. Monk, man and maid and mother, Upon the Wheel of Things, From which escape shall come alone To him who ceaseless sings: 'Om mane padme, hum!' End the hfe of greed and lust. Turn the wheel and beat the drum. Till we to Nirvana come. HIERANTIS {The First to see the One God) B. C— I went out and lay down on the earth. Dawn was not, but the sea and the sky Held an auspice, as dimly my soul Held a vision I strained to descry. Held a vision that hung below birth In my brain, as the sun in his stole Of imagined and infinite light Was yet hung in the deeps of the night. I went out and lay down on the breast Of the mountain; I clasped it and cried, "Let me see what is from me withheld! For the gods I am fain to deride! 37 38 FAR QUESTS All the temples and groves that are drest In the dream of the Spring have enspelled Me to reverence, but to no trust: Is all lifting of prayers but a lust?" For I knew that men worshipped the sun And the moon and the might of the stars; That on earth were peoples who made Of all things, quick or dead, avatars; Of the tree, of the rivers that run From a source beyond sight; seeking aid Of the wind, or beseeching the seas That no sacrifice e'er can appease. O I knew, and was so at despair Of all altars, all incense and praise! "There is fortune," I said, ''there is fate, But they fall in a myriad ways. To no god of one way will I bare And abase me — his rending await: FAR QUESTS 39 Little gods are no gods; give me one In whose hands are all things that are done!" Then I saw! on the soul of me burst Light unbreathable, for I beheld How a thought, that to man was before Never sent, could all Mystery weld! "There is One, there is One God! the First And the Last," did I triumph, "No more! And his throne is the Atom, the Star, Is all tilings that have been and that are! " He is god of the East and the West, He is God of the Night and the Known, He is Sun, he is Storm, he is Shade, He is Strife, he is Dust that is strewn! He is Star, he is Foam on the Crest Of the Wave, he is Wind that is stayed; He is what shall live Ever, or Die, He is Pity and Hope — he is I!" 40 FAR QUESTS Like delirium thro me it ran, Like divinity, for in a flash Was the universe mine, I had torn The last veil — O immortally rash ! It was mine! all the vast Caravan Of its Being from bourne unto bourne: For the vision that swept me, a clod, Was His vision, was He — the One God! I arose: the sun stood like a priest In ineffable gladness of gold To embrace me, a proselyte, who Had heard all that to heart can be told. I outreached him my arms, I the least Yet the greatest that dawn ever knew. Then went down, with what rapturous ken. To tell all to the children of men. LA MORGUE LITTERAIRE A house for all dead books Beside Oblivion's River I saw the lone ghosts build With hands Plutonian. Its walls were wan and cliilled, And only Time's faint shiver Ran thro it, not the blessed breath of Pan. They built it at the foot Of hoary Charon's ferry. Its gate upon the tide Stood like a mouth of fate. And often to its side, Mid souls death could not bury, He brought within his boat the futile freight. 41 42 FAR QUESTS Grave History; or Song That had no mighty pinions, So dropped again to earth, And under earth, to him. Tales that no Muse gave birt Within her fair dominions He wafted o'er and ranged within it dim. And soon unto its gate From out the fines Lethean Came many a phantom form On foot that hung with dread — Came lips that once were warm And eyes despair made peon When they beheld amid dead tomes their dead. And some their hands would wring — A usage of old sorrow They had forgotten long In that Tartarean vale. FAR QUESTS 43 And some amid the throng In vain would strive to borrow From memory a might to voice their wail. But many merely gazed And went away forgetting To watch with listless tread Old Charon flit and fare. For these found not their dead And knew that life was letting Them still a little bide — but did not care. A house for all dead books Beside Oblivion's River, Built by the barren shades: Alas who shall not find, Brought to him by the raids Of Time, all breath's outliver. What he had held immortal for men's mind. PHILOSOPHIES Dead old Earth, still wrapt in russet, Not a sprig of Spring? Not a bird yet to discuss it, From the South a-wing? What if buds should never burgeon On your breast again? Would it mean God, like a surgeon, Cuts you from his ken? Cuts you from his cosmic Being, Sets you free of life? Free of His deep overseeing, Of His upward strife? Are there in the great space yonder Millions so set free? Dead worlds that o'er dead ways wander. With no destiny? 44 FAR QUESTS 45 Fie on fancies so unfruitful I Hear that robin fling Laughter at me with his fluteful Messages of Spring. Laughter which is Earth's and Heaven's Best philosophy! Which, divinely ever, leavens Life with sanity I LOVE BY TRAETH-Y-DARAN (Wales) At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows, So take thy creel, O Madlen mine, We'll gather it full ere the moon's a-shine And bear it home from the dripping brine. At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows: We'll cook it over the red culm-fire. And I will tell thee my heart's desire, And thou shalt tell me thine. At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows. Thy creel, my lass! to the cliff we'll hie And seek in the clefts where the gulls go by Like dreams of love in a blue, blue eye. At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows — And there each wind that above it blows Shall teach me to keep in thy cheek the rose Till the last sun o'er me die. a6 A LYDIAN BACCHANAL The stag was gone And the hounds that follow; The glade was still, Not a stir around. Not a doe or fawn That had failed to follow, With keenest fear Could have sensed a sound. And yet on the hill There was something hid; In the coppice near Was a presence felt, Of eyes and feet 47 48 FAR QUESTS That were full of thrill, Of limbs a-quiver To leap and bound. Then sudden the leaves Of a laurel stirred, The branches parted And eyes peered out, With bacchic stealth Of glance that started, Then vanisht as if Pan-hoofs were heard. But not a hoof From the bushes broke; Not a wild-hearted Pipe poured health And happy lust Thro the deep vine- woof. Hung from the trees By the dryad folk. FAR QUESTS 49 None: till, again, The eyes! between Leafy fillets Of parted green. And then, with lips Of fear unpursed. Out with a cry The bacchante burst! Out with a cry To the hills about: Out with a cry To the bacchant hid! Out with her cry For the reel and rout — The amorous pipe And the thyrsus-thrid! And swiftly he came, On foot as light As ever the vine-god Wove in dance! so FAR QUESTS Swiftly lie came With eyes as bright As ever the wine-god Taught to glance! Swiftly he came With fawn-skin tossed Over his shoulder, Ivy-crowned! Myrtle and thyme And reed he crossed, Seized her and whirled her Glorying round! O the dance! Thro the heart of Spring! Bacchus! Bacchus! God of the grape! — The reeling trance And the rapture-fling Of naked limbs — The ravishing! FAR QUESTS 51 O the dance! In the deeps of May! Bacchus, behold What here is loosed! What mystery, What passion- sway, What deity By thee induced! But hist! the call Of their comrade-band! They pause, panting, And parted listen. The flame of love In their hearts is fanned To mad desire. Their eyes glisten. They whisper a tryst In the deeper wood At night — night — When the stars cover! 52 FAR QUESTS For what is good — What is divine — But the clasp of lover Unto lover! A tryst: then lo, Lo, they have kissed. Then she is gone, And he, fleetly. Behind is left In the limpid glade A stir of bliss That has been completely. The silence sings Of the dance but hushed; The trodden thyme And the crocus, bleeding, Seem not to care, But, torn and crushed. Remember only The wild pipe's pleading! FAR QUESTS 53 Bacchus! Bacchus! This was your way! Close to the seasons, Close to the sod! Close to the welling Of all reasons For our delight, O god I AESCHYLUS Ha! and did you, people of Greece, Praise the warrior, not the poet? "Bravely at Marathon he fought" — That alone on his tomb ye wrought? Courage? why it is common stuff, Fire of the flesh — a million know it I And did he With the eye to see Prometheus master destiny — Did he count it enough? Raze the tablet and write again, You by the Styx, who one time heard Orestes rave with immortal word. And (Edipus rock your hearts with pain. 54 FAR QUESTS 55 Write: The fire of his flesh burnt true, But out of Olympian skies he drew A flame to kindle The mighty fame Of Greece wherever a tongue shall name High Tragedy — that first he came Immortally to wool COSMISM The sea asleep like a dreamer sighs; The salt rock-pools lie still in the sun, Except for the sidling crab that creeps Thro the moveless mosses green and dun. The small gray snail clings everywhere, For the tide is out; and the sea- weed dries Its tangled tresses in the warm air, That seems to ooze from the far blue skies, Where not a white gull on white wing flies. The mollusc gleams like a gem amid The scurf and the clustered green sea-grapes, Whose trellis is but the rock's bare side. Whose husbandman but the tide that drapes. 56 FAR QUESTS 57 The little sandpiper tilts and picks His food, on the wet sea-marges hid, Till sudden a wave comes in and flicks Him off, then flashes away to bid Another frighten him — as it did. sweet is the world of living things, And sweet are the mingled sea and shore! It seems as if I never again Shall find life ill — as oft before. As if my days should come as the clouds Come yonder — and vanish without wings; As if all sorrow that ever shrouds ]My soul and darkly about it clings Had lost forever its ravenings. As if I knew with a deeper sense That good alone is ultimate; That never an evil wrought of God Or man came truly out of hate. 58 FAR QUESTS That Better springs from the heart of Worse, As calm from the heaving elements; That all things born to the Universe May suffer and perish utterly hence, But never refute its Innocence. THE EXCOMMUNICANT {In the time of Pope Sixtus V) Praise be, praise be, to printers all! Old Sixtus on his throne Would damn my soul to Hell with a Bull And now he has damned his own I ''I'll have the Vulgate set," said he, *'In type beyond reproof; Without a wicked error — made Tho it be by the Devil's hoof! 'It shall surpass in dot and jot All ink has ever etched, For every holy sheet of it Shall 'fore my eye be fetched. 59 6o FAR QUESTS "And, in a preface black and clear, I'll excommunicate All who shall dare to change the text But a tittle, by God's hate!" So straight he put his toads to it, His Gregoty, Pius, Paul, And not with a pint of Asti let Them wet their wits withal! Each new white sheet he conned himself With care "infallible," Then bound them up — to find them foul With errors, frowsy full! And all the world of heretics Is tittering now — from Thun To Tiber, from the Thames to where The Turk swears by Haroun! FAR QUESTS 6i ''Papal Infallibility has damned The Pope himself, " they gloat, "For he must paste the errors o'er And be his own scapegoat!" Old Sixtus Fifth, who from his throne Would damn my soul to Hell, Shall lick the Devil's presses there And print blasphemies well! ANDRE REVINE "So let it be," You say, and cease. And sit there with seraphic mien, Knowing the rage You rouse in me Is fraught with fate, Andr6 Ravine I Yet as the gulf Between us grows, Perfection lives upon your lips. While mine are flames That burn and tear The ties that wedded us to strips. 62 FAR QUESTS 63 And, did we part, The world would say, *'We know which of the twain was true To tortured Love. " The world would say, Andre Revine, that it was you. For am I not Unhappy bom, A magnet to all floating fates? And is it not Unhappiness The world ever suspects and hates? And are not you A thing so bright That shadow cannot o'er you fall? A thing so glad That guilt, if flung, Would but upon me fix its pall? 64 FAR QUESTS You answer not, Andre Revine, But all-enduring sit and sigh. And yet I see That triumph springs In you at my defeated cry. *'So let it be," Then say I too; But this I hold the better part: To let flame break From anguished lips. Than kindle it in any heart I THE CRY OF THE DISILLUSIONED Come back to our hearts, fairies, fairies, Wild Uttle folk Of youth and delight! For time that has driven you from us carries After you ever Our aching sight. Come back and dance in the Place of our Dreams, Empty it lies of your glimmering feet; Come back, for Hope at its portal tarries, Tuning her harp to their beat. Come back and tell us immortally The way of the wind And the way of waters. The way of the gull on the shining sea, And of the sky's cloud-daughters. 6s 66 FAR QUESTS Come back and toil shall again be sweet — And faith shall follow, The fairer, after! toss to heaven enchantedly Your song and your singing laughter. Come back, O come, and the years shall flow Again — and quicken our hearts to see Beauty and love, as once, a-glow Under Spring's witchery! THE DESERTER OF NIRVANA I went into Pagoda-land, Far far it is away, And built me a low hut along the shore. The opiate sea came up the sand And murmured at my door And a wind-bell tinkled on my shrine all day. Between three palms I built the hut. Three bent above the shrine: Gautama in it sat imparting all. I drank the milk of the cocoanut The wonted wind let fall, And watched the lotos-moon bloom o'er the brine. 67 68 FAR QUESTS And there I lived, and looked to die — And there to live again, And write upon a palm-leaf all day long The sutras that should teach me why- Desire of life is wrong Within a world born of Illusion's pain. Aye there I lived, and looked to die — And there to live again, Beside the sea, the shrine, the bending palms That never cease in me to sigh, Now, of eternal calms That I forsook and nevermore shall gain. WHAT MORE, SEA What more, sea, what more from your mad lips Of mystic and immitigable foam, That hiss and writhe the hungrier, tho brave ships Last night were swallowed in eternal gloam? What more now w^ould you. Atheist, whom the wind Wakens to wild anathemas that rise To the universal temple of the skies And in the very ears of God are dinned? Have you a blasphemy more bitter still, A curse to hurl yet o'er infinity, A scorn of men who frame with feeble will A phantom which they name Divinity? And with it would you shake apart the stars That light His presence with encircling flame? 69 70 FAR QUESTS O sea, would you wash out His very Name From space's sempiternal calendars? Enough! your surging infidelity And stormy mockery reach but as high As do the thoughts of men who strain to see Into time's unimaginable Why. Earth's but a cockle bearing you across A Wider Sea, which is God or is not. Know then, your little lips can ne'er allot Disproof of Him, if needs must come that loss. ORIENTAL MEMORIES RAIN m ISE {Japan) The rain is falling upon the fields Of green-tipt rice that grows in Is^. Under the thatch in a cloak of straw The clouted peasant sits. The sea is hidden by mist, that yields And parts and closes again, in fleecy Saddening silence, like a dream That over sorrow flits. The rain is falling upon the fields Of flooded rice: the rain is falling. 71 72 FAR QUESTS Crossing the dimness like a wraith A lonely 'rickshaw creeps. The rain is falling and strangely wields A power to hush the sea that's calling — Hush the sea and the peasant's heart, Till sorrowless he sleeps. n A CHINESE CITY (At Nigkt) Thro the great wall, and down into the street. Where light and darkness narrowly contend, And teeming yellow faces start or blend In opiate strangeness, sinister or sweet. A joss-house suddenly, and incense vain Against the stench of the strong god of dirt, Whose priest is pestilence that waits inert Till for a million victims death is fain. FAR QUESTS 73 ni A BURMESE IDOL The Shwe Dagon, with all its shrines Of twilight-saddened gold and glass. Among the thousand idols one I gaze upon but cannot pass. It sits within a dark retreat — Sits stony white, with painted brows And eyes and smiling lips and hands Laid as Nirvana's law allows. And faded flowers by it lie, Between the flickering candle-flames, That, like to moving lips without. Seem murmuring Siddhartha's names. I gaze and lo a hemisphere Of space and thought slips from me, till . . . The book I dream o'er falls; I wake — The West within and round me still. 74 FAR QUESTS IV IN CEYLON Tall palms against the tropic sky, The Indian Ocean's karma-beat; A far faint ship that passes by, And Time sick-hearted with the heat. V NORTH INDIA An arid waste, rent by the creak Of wells that toiling oxen drain. Where not the gods themselves can wreak More poverty or draw more pain. Where cities to the jackal wide. And cities Caste is ruling still, Seem equally by Fate allied To Superstition's sterile will. FAR QUESTS 75 VI THE KEIAMSIN, AT CAIRO A tawny terror in the light That beats against each minaret. Sands that entombed Osiris fight With Allah, and shall vanquish yet. The Sphinx awaits it; and the wind, Born of the desert, sends a cry Across her lips, lest she rescind Her smile — that says all gods shall die. vn THE JORDAN — AND JERICHO A muddy Serpent sliding thro the sand To the Dead Sea its hole; A Dirt-heap where the German's scholar-hand Sifts from the past some dole. 76 FAR QUESTS A heat-sere hospice set between them, bare But for a garden-side, Where God still walks, upon the scented air, At eventide. A REQUIEM FOR A MAGDALEN (Venice) In a grave beneath the cypress tree, Brushed by the wing of the sea-gull lay her, Sin can now no more betray her, Death has shrived and set her free. In a grave beneath the cypress tree, Where the lone tides can ever say her Vespers low and orisons Until Eternity. 77 SNOWDONIAN HILLS O wild hills of Wales, Hills of whirling rain, Hills of flying mist and haunted moor, You tell your tales Of Arthur and his train To every rivered coombe your crags immure. Grey Merlin moods And meanings o'er you sweep, Enchantments of your spirit sad or glad. And far-famed feuds, A thousand years asleep. Wake in the wind that moans about you mad. 78 FAR QUESTS 79 In cloud-swept mail Old Snowdon, who's your king, The lightning, his Excalibur, whirls white. And that great grail, The sun, a mystic thing, Breaks sudden forth — to vanish into night. From Caerleon's shrine To Mona in the sea, From the Great Orme to Milford of renown. You lift your line: No other hills there be To win from you in Britain's list the crown. But more, oh, more Than old Romance you tell, Than Druid legend hushed in Knighthood's lay. Your wild vales pour From Nature's deeper well The poetry to heal all hearts that pray. 8o FAR QUESTS Yea, health-born joy You give to all that come, And chivalry for this — to charge the host Of ills that cloy And bodings that benumb The soul of man, earth cherishes the most! GULLS AT LAND'S END Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, hunters of the foam, Leave not the shore for the ship that sets to sea! Harsh the night is falling and the hoarse waves roam, Rest you in the cloven cliff's lee! Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, toilers o'er the tide. Trust to the bay and the beacon's reach for food ! They who seek the farthest are not best supplied, For the sea is strange — strange of mood. Hungry gulls, hungry gulls, nearer to your nest! Be you content with the ancient offing-fare! Never in the needless shall the heart find rest, Greed has ever brought the bosom care. 8i TO SHELLEY (Jn Italy) Shelley, the winds of your song are blowing Over the fields of my heart to-day, Where the wild flowers of Grief are growing Up from the deep World-Soul astray; The winds you gathered from earth to Uranus, From atom to far Arcturus' light. From visible vastitudes that pain us. And vasts invisible to sight. n The winds that ever, with incantation, Evoke you verily for my eyes, 82 FAR QUESTS 83 Your swift sad form of divine elation Under lone Lerici's blue skies. Your spirit that, like a new Antasus, Touched earth for strength, but to find it pain; That like a pale pitying corypheus Saw tyrant Fate tear Life in twain. Ill And all the longings that led Alastor, All the long sorrows that Laon bore, The almighty tortures that could not master Prometheus whom Jove's vulture tore, Around you rise as a mist immortal. The mast of a mind no fear e'er reined, Whose steed-like thoughts to the very portal Of Being's boundless abysses gained. IV Till, lo, the sea, that is ever avid, That swept you to death tempestuous, 84 FAR QUESTS Seems now to remember, and with gravid Billowing grieve, as I stand here thus, Feeling your song's wild spirit essence About me still in the earth and sky, As a spaceless and elemental presence That, till the world does, cannot die! THE APOSTATE Julian the Emperor enthroned Apostate o'er the East, Swore every Christian of his realm Should die — man, child, or priest. Arming was he for Parthia: Returned, it should be done. Libanus, his rhetorician cried, "Where now's the Carpenter's son?*' "Making a coffin," bold replied A voice in the throng astir, "Making a coffin, for your lord Of boasts, the Emperor!" 86 FAR QUESTS Julian heard, and Julian went ... And Julian came not back. What shall we say? Christ won the day? Or — does the moral lack? SPES MYSTICA I heard a voice from out the Future crying, Afar: "Fear not, fear not, ye children of the earth! There is in your desire a dream undying — The Star It steals from ever shines: wage still your war. For Time shall clear at last his whither and whence And when! And all that is dark shall vanish from your Dream. And all that is wide shall narrow to your ken, And then All that is strong, too strong no more shall seem. 87 88 FAR QUESTS For the great Mystery is only Mist — Not Night! And the great space, a spaceless Spell at last. And the great Power is but your being's Right And Goal: You shall attain triumphant to its Whole. Then will your love be lit with a new flame, Not shame. Then will your trust spring only up from Truth. Then will your courage free of Fear be born, Some Morn! Then will age be indeed the aim of youth! MOODS OF THE MOOR Heather moor! heather moor! The wind is full of joy to-day, He shouts with all his might to say The sun is sweet upon you. He smngs the clouds, he sweeps the hills, He shakes the wood with shadow-thrills, He dances thro the mountain hay Till routed scents o'errun you I n Heather moor! heather moor! The wind has gone, the sun has gone, The rain a Druid veil has drawn Across the coombe and river. 89 90 FAR QUESTS He calls the mists that hover white And in their henge performs a rite To heathen Nature gazing on The shapes she makes to shiver. Ill Heather moor! heather moor! The night has come, and dread has come, And Loneliness stalks o'er you, dumb And blind — a thing primeval. And Terror's disembodied tread Comes trembling with it from the dead. O heather moor, again become Less like a tomb of Evil. < ■^^..tt.iH.i. SEA LURE {The Maine Coast) It is so, O sea! wild roses Bloom here in the scent of thy brine. And the juniper round them closes, And the bays amid them twine, To guard and to praise their beauty; And the gulls above them cry. And the stem rocks stand on duty. Where the surf beats white and high. It is so, O sea! wild roses. With the day-long fog bedrenched, Have come from their inland closes With a thirst for thee unquenched. 91 92 FAR QUESTS And over thy cliffs they clamber, And over thy vast they gaze; For the tides of thee can enamour Even them with their woodland ways. Yea, the passion of thee and the power And the largeness are a lure To even the heart of a flower, O sea, with a heart unsure! For love is a thing unsated, Nor ever in any breast Has it dwelt, all want abated, At rest. BIDDEFORD BAY {Saco Bay) Eiddeford Bay is gold to-night, With the sun going down. The gulls have fled to their island home, Past Eiddeford Port and Town. All day they have clamored and swung and cried Like restless spirits born of the tide, That now comes restful in, and wide, Over rocks so wont to drown. Eiddeford Bay is gold to-night, With the sun setting low. The gulls have fled but the pines send yet A proudly solemn crow. 93 94 FAR QUESTS A warden is he who has waited long The last lone cry of the sea-born throng Ere homeward, too, over marshes strong With the tide, he straggles slow. Biddeford Bay is gold to-night, Till the coast-light flashes red; Then ashen and gray is Biddeford Bay, For the sun's last dream is dead. Yet star over star in the evening sky Comes telling that day but not love may die, Nor beauty nor hope that the soul may fly To its rest when life is sped. THE FISHING OF 0-SUSHI 0-Sushi-San in the moonlight fishes, On the Inland Sea. He poles his boat where the soft weed swishes Under its bow and the ebb-tide wishes, Wishes with low lone lips again In the Great Deep to be. He poles his boat and desire comes to him Like the tide to go. The moonlight wistfully sad steals thro him. Waking ancestral years that woo him, Woo him back to the Timeless Deep From whence he sprung to woe. 95 96 FAR QUESTS But on he fishes — the moon e'er waning — Past the templed gate Of his near isle, whose shadow staining All the still sea around seems straining, Straining as is his soul to slip From its imceasing fate. And tide and shadow and soul together Seem at last to blend Within his trance, till he knows not whether Time has not slipped at last its tether, Tether of loneliness and pain — And lives without an end. A WOMAN'S REPLY If he dies whom I love, let me be — Tell me not to believe. If he leaves me, I only shall see I am human, and grieve. In the grave do not bid me behold But a God-open door; For to Love it is earth, it is mould — Is the grave and no more! Let me be for a little and then It may chance that the sod Shall become to my vision again As the garment of God. 97 WATERS WITHHELD I hear it again — The falling leaf; The wind that has ailed Overlong with grief; The river run dry, Like a heart I know; But I do not sigh, I arise — and go — And to death I say. And Decay, ''Not yet!" To the Wind, ''I sway. But my soul is set." To the Waters, ''Cease, But unstarven still I will wait, in peace, Till your floods refill." 98 FOG Wan ship-deceiving ghost of the gray sea, Huge wraith, walking the waters without sound, And casting e'er thy peril shroud around Our barque, as if to bring her destiny. Shade, whom the mariner dreads more to meet Than tempest razing sun and moon and star, Than winds that sweep away rudder and spar. And leave him to the wave's relentless war: Shade, phantom, ghost, be laid ever to sleep Within the grave of the engulphing Deep! For we who sail the sea can face its foam, O spectre of impalpable intent. But not a shrouded way should we be sent With thee to haunt us when afar from home. 99 loo FAR QUESTS Pain, struggle and desire and loneliness, Days in the wind and calm, we can endure, But we would be at least a little sure We are not lunging toward an unseen Lure. So, wraith — of Ignorance the avatar — Be laid, then we indeed shall venture far. THE LOST BEDOUIN Slowly across the sea of the desert Does he strain, To reach the palmy oasis waving Thro his pain. Is it again mirage that lures him? Will it fade? And leave once more but the sand, and craving For the green shade? ^'Allah-hu-akbarl" — God is greatest — Seems to blow To him from minarets that tremble: Will they go? "AUah-hu-akbar!" does he answer, Falling prone. By palms that in truth at last resemble Heaven's own. lOI THE SONG OF A NEOPHYTE {Alexandria, A. D. 500) The body of Christ, where is it now? (Winds of the world, tell me!) They took it down from the black Hill's brow, Gave it a tomb, as all allow, It rose, as the twelve, and more, avow. (Kyxie eleison!) For forty days, and then to the skies — (Winds of the world, hear ye?) 'Tis said that it swept, before men's eyes. Up to a bUss called Paradise. But of the gods there are many lies. (Kyrie eleison!) 102 FAR QUESTS 103 Up to the stars they saw it wend. (Winds of the world, did they?) Never, I fear, but without end 'Tis blown with all other dust to blend. Let me not tread on it, his friend! (Kyrie eleison!) SAPPHO'S DEATH SONG {On her clijf in Leucady) What have I gathered the years did not take from me? (Swallows, hear, as you fly from the cold!) Whom have I bound to me never to break from me? (Whom, O wind of the wold!) Whom, O wind! O hunter of spirits! (Pierce his spirit whose spear is in mine!) Then let Oblivion loose this ache from me, Proserpine! Lyre and the laurel the Muses gave to me, (Why comes summer when winter is nigh!) 104 FAR QUESTS 105 Spent am I now and pain- voices rave to me. (O the sea and its cry!) O the sea that has suffered all sorrow! (Sea of the Delphian tongue ever shrill!) Nought from the wreck of love can now save to me Any thrill! Life that we live passes pale or amorous. (Tread, O vintagers, grapes in the press!) Mine's but a prey to Erinnyes clamorous. (0 for wine that will bless!) Wine that foams, but is free of all madness (Free, O Cypris, of fury's breath!) Free as I now shall be, O glamorous Queen of Death! THE MASTER The hounds of the sea are baying On the trail, o'er the new moon's tide. Their lips are afoam and swaying, And the winds behind them ride. The quarry is up before them, A ship with her brood of men, And a frenzy rushes o'er them, They bite her again and again. The winter has left them riven. And the winds have sped them hard, But away from her bows they are driven. She scatters them undebarred. For her beams are not wrought of cedar That crushed in their teeth of yore, io6 FAR QUESTS 107 But of steel; and strong fires feed her And drive her in to the shore. Yea, man is becoming master O sea; and in vain thy pack Shall hunt one day for disaster And ruin, upon his track: The master of thee and thy hunters — For the sky too does he dare — Supreme o'er all he encounters In the earth, the sea, and the air. CIVIL WAR I loaded my weapon, Aimed it well; I shot and a foe Before me fell. I passed the place When the fight was done, And there lay dead — My mother's son! I buried him deep, But deeper far Was buried in me Belief in war. zo8 FAR QUESTS 109 Yet, such is blood! I still fought fast, Till victory came To my cause at last. But now that honours Upon me throng, I know he was right — And I was wrong! MESSAGES We have sped them over the land, inimitably along. We have breathed them under the sea, By our cables dark and strong. We have hurled them into the air, From shore unto farthest shore, And soon we shall find, from mind to mind, A way to wing them o'er! We have loosed them out of the plains, To tell of the cyclone's path; We have spurred them carrying peace Thro the tempest's warring wrath. From ship unto sinking ship They have fied, and succor has come; no FAR QUESTS in So hail to the goal when heart and soul No more are distance-dumb! For then shall a thousand miles Indeed be shorn of its strength, And God not seem denied By the breadth of space and the length. For if our spirits may fling Their power and thought afar, His Soul, it must be, may spring, space-free, From star unto utmost star. WHAT PART In the great drama of the universe What part plays this our world? — Of dark impassioned Guilt, to Love a curse? Of broken-hearted Fool, beliefless whirled? Is it some Hamlet melancholy cast Between the planet powers of right and wrong? Some proud pale Prospero who shall at last Regain his empire with an Ariel's song? Or is it but a humble Vassal borne Upon the infinite Stage To battle all unhonoured when the horn Sounds the last tourney Life and Death shall wage? 112 THE UNKNOWN SHORE Storm on an unknown shore, A light that warns in vain. Nearer we drive and nearer roar The reefs: what port's to gain? Dire is the dark, then, lo, Swept on across the foam We lift our eyes at dawn, to know The port we've made — is home. X13 MAN I woke in the night, silent, troubled, Pained with a sense of near appal. A shot rang out in the darkness — doubled: Swift steps ceased in a groan, a fall. Voices, then, of the Law that serves us. (O what man must do to man!) Night again, and the Power that swerves us On thro Space: O by what plan! 114 HAUNTED SEAS A gleaming glassy ocean, Under a sky of gray; A tide that dreams of motion, Or moves, as the dead may; A bird that dips and wavers O'er the lone waters round, Then with a cry that quavers Is gone — a spectral sound. The brown sad sea-weed drifting Far from the land, and lost. The faint warm fog unlifting, The derelict long-tossed. But now at rest — tho haunted By the death-scenting shark. Whose prey no more undaunted Slips from it, spent and stark. IIS CONVICTS {In a mine disaster) Down a black hole in the earth they toil Men like you and me; Prisoners sullen and fierce with soil — Serfs, to keep us free. Down a black hole they dig: for what? Sun stored there in an aeon forgot. Sudden a flash — and they are not. Now what grief shall be? Out they are drawn to the living light — Grimy, cold and dead. Out of their hell to the heaven's white, Head by numbered head. ii6 FAR QUESTS 117 Fathers of them, and friends, and wives! Mothers that bore them — a hundred lives I — Hither and weep — for the time arrives! . . • Not a tear is shed! Never a tear, they are convicts, these, Strangled in their stripes. Never a tear for their destinies From an eye love wipes. Never a sob — do you hear, O God? — As they are tumbled under the sod! Prisoners are they now of the clod — That forever gripes! WHO RESTS NOT Peace, hot heart, Lie in your nest! Life's wing breaks if it fails of rest. Work is good, And achievement better — But they too may the soul enfetter. And free, free it should ever be, Free tho its aim be skies immortal. Peace then, heart, And be done with doing: Who rests not but arrives at rueing. ii8 THE UNHONOURED {In Westminster Abbey) Mothering fane of the great English dead Who lie immortal in thy transept tomb, Where falls upon their fame the gloried gloom Of windows that rain radiance overhead, I would there were no missing presences To grieve me in thy mighty organ's peal — No poets exiled by the tyrant heel Of cursed Custom's blind obduracies. For all too great for littleness thou art, And they who shut from thee a rightful s