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WRAITHS 
 
 AND 
 
 REALITIES 
 
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WRAITHS 
 
 AND 
 
 REALITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 V, 
 AUTHOR OF "trails SUNWARD" "COLLECTED 
 PLAYS AND POEMS," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1918 
 

 Copyright, 1918, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published, March, 1918 
 
 MAR -9 1318 
 
 ©CI.A481996 
 
WITH ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION 
 
 TO 
 ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON 
 
 WHO HAS EVER FACED LIFE WITH COURAGE 
 
 AND ART WITH GENEROUS 
 
 APPRECIATION 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The voicing of a preference for classicism, realism 
 or romanticism is nearly always the conscious or un- 
 conscious preoccupation of critics of poetry. The 
 classicist, wanting perfect beauty, stresses restraint 
 — and is ever accused of praising what is academic 
 or lacking in freedom or truth to life. The realist, 
 stressing truth to life and minimizing restraint as to 
 method or material, finds himself blamed for mistak- 
 ing the mere raw material of life for ultimate art, and 
 so for praising the sordid or commonplace. The 
 romanticist, holding neither to restraint and mere 
 beauty, nor to unrestraint and actuality, is prodded 
 by both sides. By the classicist for lenience toward 
 unrestraint; and by the realist who wishes the ma- 
 terial of poetry to be taken only from the " every 
 day life around us," and who therefore condemns all 
 other material, whether of the past, the foreign pres- 
 
 vii 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 ent, or the future, as remote, extraneous or " exotic." 
 Yet the romanticist would seem to have the better 
 theoretical viewpoint. For in not opposing beauty 
 to truth, but in holding that " beauty is truth, truth 
 beauty," and that the two are always varyingly 
 blended in any genuine poetry whatever its subject 
 or treatment, he has a creed that is more compre- 
 hensive, and that if accepted by the poet will make 
 for larger productivity. He does not insist that the 
 poet must ever keep an eye on what is traditionally 
 poetic, like the classicist, or on what is poetic in the 
 immediate present, like the realist, but would let 
 poetry come freely from any source of genuine won- 
 der, beauty or truth. It is therefore not the roman- 
 ticist poet, but the realist and classicist as such who 
 drop out of the poetic race oversoon, and who have 
 given to the world the smaller amount of permanent 
 poetry. And it is often only when the realist turns 
 romantic as did Whitman in " Out of the Cradle 
 
 Endlessly Rocking," " Passage to India," and other 
 poems, that he becomes most indubitably poetic. 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 These opinions are not expressed here without 
 relation to the present volume and to the present 
 position of American poetic criticism. Realism, 
 and particularly the rhythmless, free-verse realism 
 which has recently been given vogue in such verse 
 magazinelets and anthologies as those of Miss 
 Harriet Monroe and Mr. W. S. Braithwaite, seems 
 to be already near to exhaustion. These critics in 
 exploiting it as true poetry have quickly condemned 
 their pages. And now the question is being asked, 
 Were they sincere? And since they have also dis- 
 criminated against or omitted certain distinguished 
 poets who were doing free, independent and beau- 
 tiful work, are they to be critically trusted? If 
 not, to whom can one who loves genuine poetry of 
 any kind go for critical guidance through the 
 jungle of contemporary American poetry? 
 
 I sought to answer the last question some years 
 ago in an article to the North American Review. 
 There I said that America, still literarily democratic, 
 had no authoritative poetry criticism, but that by far 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 the most competent and trustworthy it possessed came 
 from the consensus of opinion of the better newspaper 
 reviewers. That answer, I fear, must still stand. 
 For the petty poetry magazines, such as those men- 
 tioned, have been far too busy trying to discover new 
 " movements," or in exploiting fads and favorites, 
 to remember large-mindedly what poetry is. And 
 of our other critical periodicals too many, at the other 
 extreme, have been academically addicted to the be- 
 lief that America is congenitally unpoetic, and that 
 the highest praise any American may hope for is com- 
 parison with a frequently inferior, if more widely 
 known, foreign contemporary. To a real criticism, 
 therefore, the last two decades of our poetry are still 
 richly open; though it is to the credit of Miss Amy 
 Lowell that she has recently sought to give an ac- 
 count of the realist side of this period; and it is to 
 be hoped some volume is forthcoming unrestricted 
 in creed, and free of the small spites, suppressions 
 and partizanships with which Miss Monroe, the 
 " endowed," and Mr. Braithwaite, the unendowed, 
 have so successfully impugned each other. 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 The volume offered here has been written, as have 
 its predecessors, with the belief expressed above that 
 the poet's attitude toward life should always be ro- 
 mantic however much he may lean toward realism 
 or classicism in particular poems: for the truly ro- 
 mantic is ever the imaginative. Narrative poems 
 have been chosen to begin and end it — poems having 
 the region of the Ohio for a background, and one 
 with the River itself as in some sense a protagonist. 
 This arrangement has been made partly for variety's 
 sake, and partly because it gives me opportunity to 
 express the belief that writers of narrative verse are 
 too unfamiliar with the technique of the modem short 
 story. Their disposition to relate and describe a 
 situation disproportionately, rather than to reveal it 
 directly to a climjax; and their neglect to hold strictly 
 to a definite paint of view; leaves too often such an 
 impression of amateurishness as our better short 
 story writers would not be guilty of. Perhaps no 
 narrative poet can do better than to ask himself if 
 this be true. Cale Young Rice. 
 
 Louisville, January, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Old Garth's Jess 3 
 
 Chanson of the Bells op Oseney 39 
 
 The Avengers ■ 42 
 
 Processional 50 
 
 Revolution 52 
 
 To a Firefly by the Sea .56 
 
 A Wife — to a Husband Disgraced 58 
 
 Questions 61 
 
 Transmutation 63 
 
 Waste . 65 
 
 The Heart of God is I^Iy Demesne 67 
 
 Songs to A. H. R . . . . 70 
 
 King Amenophis 73 
 
 Recruit 961 . 75 
 
 The Song of the Storm-Spirits 76 
 
 The Wreck-Buoy ' .78 
 
 Deliverance? 80 
 
 The Imperial City . . . . 83 
 
 The Price . . . . . .85 
 
 The Unborn 87 
 
 Brother Beasts 94 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Woman Wronged 97 
 
 To A Solitary Sea-Gull 99 
 
 Ineffable Things 100 
 
 Katenka's Lover 102 
 
 A Mother 104 
 
 Give Over, O Sea! 105 
 
 The Nun 108 
 
 A Rhapsodist's Song 110 
 
 Insulation 113 
 
 Iseult of Ireland 114 
 
 To 116 
 
 The Hills I Have Never Reached 118 
 
 The Half-Breed 119 
 
 The Ride 122 
 
 The Faring of Fa-Hien 123 
 
 A Lover, Deceived 127 
 
 At the Dance 130 
 
 Her God 132 
 
 Danse Macabre 133 
 
 A Norse Song 135 
 
 Moon-Flight 136 
 
 The Resurrection According to Thomas . . . .137 
 
 Rose and Lotus 139 
 
 Atavism ". 140 
 
 Strangeness 142 
 
 Forecast 143 
 
 The Closed Gates 144 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 An Austrian Prisoner 146 
 
 Easter Snow 148 
 
 A Wood-Moment 150 
 
 Poets There Are 152 
 
 In Praise of Robert Browning .153 
 
 Over the Sands 154 
 
 evanescencies 156 
 
 My Island 157 
 
 Through Hue and Cry 158 
 
 A Parable 159 
 
 Sense-Sweetness 161 
 
 Mother and Son 163 
 
 Ariel to the Aging Shakespeare . . . . . .164 
 
 Pagan 165 
 
 Providence . . 166 
 
 Wraith.wood Hill 16'8 
 
WRAITHS AND REALITIES 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 I 
 
 Just where the Ohio bends away 
 From Coal-mine Hill and doubles back 
 Between low corn-lands that display 
 Their tasseled ranks in wide array, 
 The city lies in a moon-curve, 
 A crescent smoky at one tip. 
 But at the other's sunny swerve, 
 From mill and factory afar, 
 Green-sheltered homes and churches are. 
 
 The river frontage has a strip 
 Of park-way here, a narrow space 
 Of grass and trees where one may lip 
 The cool west breeze and watch suns dip. 
 3 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 Across, the dam lies; elbowed out 
 Into midstream, to turn its flow 
 To wharf and warehouse built about 
 The levee's cobbled slope — where tug 
 And busy steamer chum and chug. 
 
 And here old Garth was master — coarse 
 In fibre as split hickory ; 
 Shouting command with curse as hoarse 
 As the tug-hoots, and with a force 
 That beat into the ears and brain 
 Of clerk and deckhand, who in fear 
 Hurried about with doubled strain 
 To check invoice, or lift the weight 
 On streaming backs of crowded freight. 
 
 Jess was among them — Jess, his son, 
 A lad of twenty — clear of eye 
 And clean of limb, just such a one 
 As made you ask of earth and sun, 
 Yes, of all baffling Nature, how? 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 How have you charmed from a dull stock 
 Of narrow tyramiy this brow? 
 Can you at will say to the womb 
 Heredity is not man's doom? 
 
 Answer is wanting. But despite 
 A parentage unbeautiful 
 The lad had grown — keen to delight 
 In beauty and in love, its light. 
 Wherefore old Garth, dimly suspecting, 
 And hating what was not himself, 
 Or like himself, did no neglecting, 
 But tore the boy at a young age 
 Away to toil's hard tutelage. 
 
 Away from school — from the new dreams 
 That books had kindled in his eyes; 
 Away from friends, and the first gleams 
 Of freedom with which friendship streams. 
 " Work — if you're son of mine — not spend," 
 To Jess, fifteen, the churl had said. 
 
6 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 And there had been a wordless end; 
 Upon the wharf Jess took his place, 
 Renouncing all things — save one face. 
 
 The face of Ellen Arden — young 
 With all the Aprils of the world, 
 And sweet with all the beauty wrung 
 From flower-bells by the wind swung. 
 A face that Jess had first beheld 
 Coming toward him thro new throes 
 Of manhood that within him swelled : 
 And that was instantly the goal 
 Of his imagination's soul. 
 
 For they had met immortally. 
 
 From the first moment when she saw 
 
 Old Garth with hot authority 
 
 Bum the boy's cheeks, her heart sprang free: 
 
 Free of the difference of wealth 
 
 And rooted rank and social sheen — 
 
 For what are these to young love's health ? — 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 " Your father's cruel," Ellen had said. 
 For him it struck his father dead. 
 
 For tho upon the wharf next day 
 To toil with negroes he was put, 
 To lifting cotton, wheat and hay 
 And cane cut from the brakes of May; 
 And tho he heard his father's voice 
 Swing like a whip across his back, 
 It had no smallest power to rout 
 The bliss of knowing that her face 
 Was in a world where he had place. 
 
 Nor for years then was there a change. 
 He lent his youth, unpaid, to toil. 
 Nor scarcely thought of it as strange, 
 Or dreamed that he might farther range. 
 For Ellen was the Spring's glad green. 
 And Ellen was the Autumn's gold. 
 She was all things of joy between. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Till once he saw her with another, 
 Then a fear took him, with its smother. 
 
 What if he lost her? — she must wed: 
 And could she wed a work-f or-nothing ? 
 It raised old Garth up from the dead, 
 " He owes me more," said Jess, " than bread." 
 It raised old Garth out of the shroud 
 That Ellen — who had called him cruel — 
 Had made the boy's indifference proud 
 To wrap him in. " He's mean," said Jess, 
 " But he shan't steal my happiness." 
 
 Down to the wharf that night he went 
 And hung lonely over the water, 
 Brooding until the eve-star spent 
 Her fire within the West's wide tent. 
 No craft was on the current; all 
 Were tied along the shore for sleep. 
 Only the ripple's idle fall. 
 Or the hull-rats, broke thro his sense 
 Of injury and impotence. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 For the old man was strong, he knew, 
 And a son's rights were as a slave's. 
 " But I will have them — if she's true — 
 More wages now — and those past due." 
 He wandered home, rehearsing words, 
 Those ageless actors, in his heart, 
 Tho all his spirit was in curds 
 Of bitterness before the fight 
 To win what was his human right. 
 
 He rose : old Garth at breakfast looked 
 
 Him over with a scurrile eye. 
 
 And said, " Curse you, what's got you hooked? 
 
 You're late and I've much business booked." 
 
 Jess flung no answer : he would wait 
 
 And in the wharf office have it out. 
 
 " Had I a mother to abate 
 
 The loneliness I feel," he said. 
 
 His mother at his birth was dead. 
 
 He took his hat — looked in the glass: 
 Would he see Ellen ? Chance so fell. 
 
10 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 His heart beat with a riot mass 
 Of struggling raptures. . . . Would she pass, 
 Would she? . . . before he reached the comer? 
 He hurried, and she slowed her step, 
 A kindness that seemed to adorn her 
 In the boy^s eye with deity : 
 He worshipped — then prayed out his plea: 
 
 " Oh, Ellen, I was thinking of you," 
 And swift he saw her face turn roses. 
 " Ellen, may I not dare to love you? 
 I do, more than the skies above you. 
 I do, I do, tho you are rich 
 And beautiful and all that's bright. 
 And I could climb out of this ditch 
 Of drudgery and win the world 
 If you within my heart were furled. 
 
 " My father's a mere riverman, 
 Who gives me bread alone for wages, 
 But that should never be a ban, 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 11 
 
 Love a far wider gulf can span. 
 I have no money, save the store 
 He's stinted from me these three years, 
 But he shall pay me now the more — 
 For I am worth it — or I'll take 
 What's mine, and wharf-dust from me shake." 
 
 She listened — and her heart went white 
 Then red again with the glad blood. 
 She loved him, yet it was not quite 
 The love that conquers all despite. 
 And then her people — and their wrath ; 
 For they would cast her off, she knew, 
 Since there were riches in her path: 
 The other he had seen her with 
 Was one whose wealth transcended myth. 
 
 " O Jess, I am afraid," she cried, 
 " I think I love you, but my life 
 In pride and wealth and place is dyed. 
 And with you I should be untried. 
 
12 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 If you had money — and no father 
 To fetter us in the world's eye! 
 Wait, Jess, a little while, Yd rather." 
 Then with a flutter she was gone — 
 But not the dawn with her — the dawn! 
 
 For love had spoken. So desire 
 For wealth and freedom broke out in 
 The boy — as might a forest fire 
 That sweeps all down and will not tire. 
 He hastened to the ringing wharf. 
 The old man waited at the door. 
 *' By Hell, do you expect to dwarf 
 My business with delays like this? " 
 He swore, and struck Jess with a hiss. 
 
 Jess quivered, then said, " Come with me 
 
 Into the office: you must hear. 
 
 I've wormed it to your t>Tanny 
 
 Enough: now something else must be." 
 
 " What? '' said the old man. " Come? — I will, 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 13 
 
 And smash your liver into sense. 
 You'll learn this is no kid-glove mill. 
 I know well how your lily throat 
 Is strangled in a petticoat." 
 
 They went : the door was closed behind. 
 
 Without, the deckhands grinned and waited. 
 
 " Ole boss, he shore eats to the rind," 
 
 One said. " Young boss don't know his kind." 
 
 Within, the boy, trembling as sons 
 
 Will tremble before fathers only, 
 
 Strained for the breath of self-control 
 
 To say with dignity his soul. 
 
 " I've worked three years and you have had 
 Less words from me than I've had wages. 
 I've toiled: for what? To see you pad 
 Your purse — and add to it and add. 
 And I cared not: the days were good, 
 Rich with the golden hair of Ellen. 
 But now I want a livelihood — 
 
14 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Pay for the past — and for the wife 
 I hope to win a decent life. 
 
 " I know the trade: give me but these 
 
 And I will double soon your gains. 
 
 But give them not — and I will squeeze 
 
 What's mine." . . . Old Garth smote on his knees. 
 
 " What's yours ! " he cried. " Know this, you whelp, 
 
 Who lift this whine that I am thieving. 
 
 I'll give you what will be more help." 
 
 He struck Jess and the boy went down . . . 
 
 In long unconsciousness to drown. 
 
 II 
 
 When he came to it was just noon. 
 
 He lay upon the floor and stared. 
 
 He heard mill-whistles thro his swoon 
 
 Of pain — like drills into him hewn. 
 
 " Where am I? " asked he. Then came back 
 
 The blow — and still an unseen fist 
 
 Like a great hammer, whack on whack, 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS IS 
 
 Seemed beating with a demon din 
 Upon his wounded brain — far in. 
 
 It maddened him; till he arose 
 
 And saw the river slipping by. 
 
 He watched it as one does who knows 
 
 Its beauty no more for him flows. 
 
 He was ten million years from it : 
 
 The artery of time was severed. 
 
 In vain his senses strove to knit 
 
 The world that was on yesterday 
 
 With this earth-corpse that round him lay. 
 
 He loathed his face — and then went out, 
 Past sweaty, dinner-pailed deckhands, 
 To strive and call his thoughts from rout. 
 With his will's bitter broken knout. 
 He leant against a cotton-bale 
 And saw the muddy current pass. . . * 
 And when it bore a body, stale. 
 
16 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Swollen and foul with drowTimg, by, 
 No difference came into his eye. 
 
 Save that he wished he too were drowned - 
 Or the old man — yes, the old man. 
 And what had been so hard — to round 
 His thoughts up — hate now easy found. 
 It herded all wild animal 
 Desires within his bleeding heart ; 
 Hereditary fiercenesses 
 He did not know were in his blood 
 Stamped the clear stream of it to mud. 
 
 " 111 have my money — and I'll go," 
 
 He said, " I'll get it if Idle!" 
 
 He left the w^harf , stem with the woe 
 
 Of one Content no more will know. 
 
 He stemmed the heavy cobblestones; 
 
 The shanty-boats sent out a whiff 
 
 Of fish fr}ung and com bread pones. 
 
 But the sole hunger that he felt 
 
 Was — for the stroke that must be dealt. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 17 
 
 He took a path thro tall ragweed 
 That grew along the river edge, 
 Where as a child he used to lead 
 In games and many a danger deed. 
 The sun-cracked clay beneath his feet 
 Gaped like his broken world within, 
 On which hot shame still seemed to beat. 
 Even the face of Ellen now 
 Was seared from sight within his brow. 
 
 Beyond the Waterworks he stopped, 
 Beside the sycamored Bayou. 
 A dove in branches leafy-topped 
 Her low love-note upon him dropped. 
 Its softness only hardened more 
 His hate and hard determination. 
 How could he get what was his due — 
 And then get Ellen — get her too? 
 
 He thought until dark drew the sun 
 Into its net — the day was caught. 
 
J8 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 And God the Fisher, having done, 
 Loosed minnow stars to swim and run. 
 But Jess, too, Jess had caught his fish — 
 A way to get his rights. He rose. 
 " She will not have another wish, 
 When I have told her I must leave, 
 Than to come with me, to believe." 
 
 The blue arc-lights were sifting out 
 Their carbon-sparks and settling down 
 To the night's duty, as a doubt 
 How to see Ellen brought Jess rout. 
 He slowed his step from street to street, 
 Scanning the face of each home-comer, 
 And hoping one that he might meet 
 Would be hers. And it was. She came — 
 Twilit — but in her eyes love's flame. 
 
 " Jess! " — " Ellen! " — " Jess! " — " Oh, is it 
 
 you?" 
 He felt in his her little hand, 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 19 
 
 As if around his heart it grew; 
 Yet his words shook her, like death-dew. 
 " What is it, Jess? " With low alarm 
 And love her young girl's voice trembled. 
 " I have been done a dreadful harm, 
 And I must go away — or kill. 
 Go with me, Ellen ! say you will." 
 
 " Oh Jess, what is it? " — " Do not ask. 
 To tell you now would strangle me. 
 And I have still a bitter task 
 To do, and there's no time to bask. 
 But you shall hear, upon the train, 
 All, when forever we are wedded. 
 For that alone will keep me sane. 
 Oh Ellen, if you do not come. 
 Then life has added my last sum." 
 
 " I will," she said, " I will, dear Jess, 
 Forgetting and forsaking all. 
 At your great misery I but guess : 
 
20 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 God let me drain it of distress. 
 For now I know father and mother 
 And home and swathing luxury 
 Can never from this moment smother 
 My heart from saying with each beat 
 That you alone can make life sweet." 
 
 He seized her to him, then said, " Go: 
 At twelve be ready: I will come." 
 Then as an arrow from the bow 
 Of destiny he sped — to woe. 
 He reached the levee; saw the moon 
 Like the thin rind of a new world; 
 A silvery promise of the boon 
 Of finding in some new-won place 
 Relief from his hot harsh disgrace. 
 
 But first the money must be netted, 
 " All that is mine " — he said, and slipped 
 Down to the wharf that waves wetted 
 A little, by the sharp wind fretted. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 21 
 
 The door gave to his key : the smell 
 Of dark-stowed freight struck on his sense. 
 But in the darkness he could tell 
 His way; and soon the office latch 
 Clicked — and he scraped sight from a match. 
 
 The safe stood in the corner — by 
 The desk old Garth was wont to use. 
 The name upon it met his eye 
 As might a ghost he must defy. 
 But he remembered the foul blow 
 Which had been flung against his brow 
 A few hours since, and saw the flow 
 Of dry blood on the floor. Dark hate 
 Rose in him like a flood of fate. 
 
 Quickly he lit a candle — knelt .... 
 But what was that? .... Nothing .... He lis- 
 tened. 
 The moon fleeced with a silvery pelt 
 The river's flow — or seemed to melt, 
 
22 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Then came again, so hauntingly 
 That life was much too beautiful 
 For money thus to bow his knee .... 
 But ere he knew the tumblers fell : 
 The combination answered well. 
 
 Then his hands found the money — bill 
 
 On bill he thrust into his coat ; 
 
 His wages — yet upon his will 
 
 They weighed with fear he could not kill. 
 
 A sound once more — he started .... Was 
 
 It but the scuttle of a rat? 
 
 A breathing of God's broken laws ? 
 
 He knew not as he took one more — 
 
 Then saw old Garth stand in the door. 
 
 in 
 
 He did not rise, till he had led 
 The safe-lock into place, slowly. 
 Then something told him he was dead 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 23 
 
 He or that other — whose blear head, 
 With blood-shot raging shaggy eyes 
 Now held him in a brutal grip: 
 For death before itself oft flies 
 In premonition .... When he rose 
 He felt his hand on something close. 
 
 It was a leaden paper-weight 
 
 Upon the desk. — Old Garth now rasped, 
 
 " A thief, by God: and I this late 
 
 In knowing it." The words were fate. 
 
 " If you say that I'll kill you." Jess 
 
 Was strangled, with the lying truth. 
 
 " I take what's mine — no more, no less." — 
 
 " You'll take the road to jail, you bastard, 
 
 And learn how such as you are mastered." 
 
 The words went thro the boy. He thought, 
 " Am I a bastard? "... Then, " I'm lost! 
 He'll see me sentenced ! I am caught. 
 O mother !".... then his senses fought. 
 
24 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 The moon died as a moment passed, 
 The river rippled, a black blot. 
 Old Garth within the door was massed. 
 " Stand back," cried Jess, " and let me go." 
 He saw the shape move toward him slow. 
 
 And then he felt within his hand 
 
 The weight — how cold it was — like death. 
 
 But terror gave him the command : 
 
 He seized and flung it as a brand. 
 
 For all things suddenly were flame 
 
 Before his eyes .... Above the heart 
 
 Of the old man with awful aim 
 
 It struck — and down his victim sank . . . . 
 
 A gust of wind the candle drank. 
 
 Yet in the horror of the dark 
 Jess stood there, waiting for a blow, 
 A curse — death even, cold and stark, 
 To make of him a sudden mark. 
 It fell not, but the creeping night 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 25 
 
 Became an infinite accusal 
 That pressed upon him — till in fright 
 He stumbled toward* the door — and felt 
 A lump there at his feet. He knelt. 
 
 There was no beat of heart or pulse. 
 
 Clairvoyantly Jess saw the face, 
 
 As one sees under waters dulse. 
 
 Why did it not rage out insults? 
 
 " He can't be dead," Jess cried, " he can't! " 
 
 But who intentless ever slew 
 
 And did not that same anguish pant? 
 
 We kill and then would die to see 
 
 Breath where breath never more can be. 
 
 A moan wrung Jess. He shook and rose, 
 Sought for the candle, gave it flame. 
 The room came out of the night's throes — 
 But as a witness, now, that knows. 
 What should he do? He saw gleaming 
 Along the floor the deadly weight. 
 
26 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 And then .... "Heart failure! " came streaming 
 
 Into his thought. "I'll leave him so, 
 
 And none .... no one can ever know." 
 
 But first the weight. It must be placed 
 
 Back on the desk; and yet he shrank: 
 
 It was as if his fingers faced 
 
 Lifting the dead man's heart .... Yet haste, 
 
 Hasten he must. So from the floor 
 
 He seized it up. Then with his hand 
 
 Crushed out the light, and to the door, 
 
 Across the unabusive dead. 
 
 Hurried with trembling haunted tread. 
 
 The river dreamed, the stars shone, 
 The cool wind with the night trysted. 
 But in the world Jess was alone 
 As all who kill are : God seemed stone. 
 Or was there any God in Heaven? 
 The gulfs above him and within 
 Seemed destitute of kindly Leaven : 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 27 
 
 Only for misery and doom 
 Did the wide universe have room. 
 
 He would have run, he would have fled, 
 But knew he must not. He must go 
 Quietly home and to his bed. 
 And there lie in the arms of Dread. 
 But word to Ellen must be sent 
 That he was ill. For well he knew 
 That fever with its parching breath 
 Would dry in him for long the dew 
 Of health — nor scarcely give him time 
 To shape concealment of his crime. 
 
 IV 
 
 The sun rose with a heat that meant 
 A thirsty day for straining labor. 
 Yet, ere the hour, and singing went 
 The deckhands, children of Content. 
 They waited at the blind wharf-door. 
 " Ole boss late? No-sir-ree! Ole sun 
 
28 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Hisself's got up too early, shore." 
 They said, and watched the river foam. 
 The foreman sought old Garth at home. 
 
 He found Jess — in delirium. 
 
 The servant and a doctor near. 
 
 " Old Garth? " He was not in his room. 
 
 The bed untouched: that was the sum. 
 
 Back to the wharf the foreman hurried, 
 
 Scattered the idlers, tried the door. 
 
 It gave . . . past him the cat scurried. 
 
 Mewing with fear. . . . The wharfman lay 
 
 As tranquil as all dead men may. 
 
 The inquest came; — the long slow tread 
 Of hearse and carriage to the place 
 Where dead men do not rail, being dead; 
 Where for the worst a prayer is read. 
 " His violence was apoplectic 
 And the heart failed," the verdict ran. 
 Jess, fevered, incoherent, hectic. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 29 
 
 Picked flowers in delirium 
 For Ellen — adding sum to sum. 
 
 And Ellen, thro forbiddance breaking, 
 Trampling entreaty and command, 
 Into her hands her young life taking, 
 Sat by him in his sleep or waking. 
 " Yes, Jess," she said to the poor brain 
 That blindly, blindly added blossoms, — 
 Each to her heart a joy, a pain, — 
 " Yes, dear, but sleep a little now — 
 For it is Ellen wipes your brow." 
 
 Oh, would he live? For weeks the wing 
 Of death hung shadowy at his heart, 
 Ready with silent winnowing 
 To beat — and leave there but a thing. 
 But Ellen held it back with hope 
 And tender courage and desire: 
 Not while one feeble ray could grope 
 Thro the dark pinion would she yield : 
 So nurse and doctor, too, were steeled. 
 
.30 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Then one day, when an Autumn leaf, 
 The first, fell drifting to the street, 
 And Ellen like a shade of grief 
 Stood at the window, came relief. 
 Jess woke. The window glimmered there, 
 Ellen within it like a dream 
 That soon would vanish — leaving air 
 Tortured again, he knew, with all 
 The fever things that creep and crawl. 
 
 And so he did not dare to speak. 
 
 But waited, while the sunset flared 
 
 And lit her with a golden streak 
 
 Of glory — then he murmured, weak, 
 
 " Ellen! "... She turned and saw his eyes 
 
 Clear of the turbid wandering. 
 
 Then thro her tears and tearful cries 
 
 Of swift thanksgiving, on her knees 
 
 Beside him poured her ecstasies. 
 
 " You have come back! you have come back! 
 Oh Jess, I thought you never would ! " 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 31 
 
 Then she remembered his long lack 
 Of rest — and calmed her blissful rack. 
 He was content to gaze at her 
 And wonder if he were not dead 
 And she a radiant minister. 
 He slept the night thro and at dawn 
 Awoke — and still she was not gone. 
 
 " But what has happened? " was his thought 
 Always, in the blest hours that followed. 
 He had been ill, he knew, distraught: 
 But that forgetfulness had caught 
 Away, to some dark oubliette 
 Of memory, his piteous crime. 
 He did not know : nor question yet 
 Wherefore his father did not come: 
 About his father all was numb. 
 
 But he must ask. And so one day: 
 " Where is my father? " And his eyes 
 Wandered to Ellen's — where they lay 
 
32 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 In a deep trust, as but love's may. 
 Ready was she with answer, " Jess, 
 We may be married now — there's none 
 Who will forbid it, no, not one. 
 Your father, dear, — your father's dead. 
 And mine of shame must let us wed." 
 
 His father dead ? Why did the thought 
 Seem to him like a thing exhumed 
 From his own brain — not gently caught 
 From Ellen's lips with low love fraught ? 
 And why could he not tear away 
 The shroud of strange forgetfulness 
 That darkly round the hours lay 
 Ere he was ill? — " I'm glad," he said, 
 " I'm glad, Ellen, that we may wed." 
 
 She laughed at his weak joylessness. 
 " But hear," she cried, " how rapturous 
 My lover is ! I must be less 
 Securely his — or sip distress! 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 33 
 
 He'll wed me out of gratitude 
 To pay ray nursing of him next! " 
 But when she saw a tragic brood 
 Of troubles haunting still his eye, 
 She said, " Nay, sleep, dear " — and sat by. 
 
 His strength grew — and one day he rose. 
 Then came the wedding, quietly. 
 But still within him there were foes 
 He hid from Ellen . . . shadowy woes. 
 " Do not ! do not ! " they seemed to moan, 
 Tho why they should forbid his bliss 
 He could not tell. Yet thrice alone 
 He seemed when Ellen was his wife — 
 And there before him lay all life. 
 
 About the honeymoon they hung. 
 Those shadowy woes; and anxiously 
 Ellen had watched him — sometimes stung 
 With fear lest love was from him wrung. 
 " All will be well,'' he said, " let us 
 
34 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 Go home, and work will make me whole." 
 Then he would kiss her tremulous, 
 And think, *' What is it calling me? 
 Will nothing ease this mystery? " 
 
 They went — and their first night was glad 
 
 With hope — for she was in his house : 
 
 His now, with all old Garth had had : 
 
 His . . . yet a thought came to him, mad. 
 
 He longed to flee it secretly, 
 
 To let all go — rise from her side 
 
 And run as from some destiny. 
 
 But could he from a horror run 
 
 That had no name, no shape — was none? 
 
 He rose — and tried to sing. With work 
 Untroubled veins would come again. 
 " Goodbye, dear." In the words no lurk 
 Of presage pierced him with its dirk. 
 Soon was the wharf in sight; the river 
 Rippled around it silvery. 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 35 
 
 Was it the cold wind made him shiver? 
 He forced his feet; and soon the greeting 
 Of many rugged hands was meeting. 
 
 Then with the foreman's orders given, 
 He turned to mount toward the office 
 Whither he had been driven, driven, 
 By the thing hid in him, unshriven. 
 Passing the window he beheld 
 A child upon the deck below. 
 A wish to speak to it upwelled. 
 But he went on — on, thro the door, 
 Across the bloodstain on the floor. 
 
 Then on the desk he saw the weight. 
 It stopped his feet — and shuddering 
 As in a strained hypnotic state 
 He was drawn backward by his fate. 
 He gazed as one who in a beryl 
 Calls up the ghosts of dead events 
 Despite the prescience of their peril 
 
36 OLD G.\RTH'S JESS 
 
 Compelled — by something in his brain. 
 Then memory swept thro him plain. 
 
 The weight again was in his hand . . . 
 He saw his father's blood-lit eyes . . . 
 He flung it, at his fear's demand . . . 
 The night was lit as by a brand. 
 Then came the darkness and the stumbling 
 Toward the dead thing upon the floor. 
 Anguish then, and the fever's rumbling, 
 Telling him ever thro its blur 
 He was his father's murderer. 
 
 " O God," he moaned, " what shall I do! " 
 And gazed unseeing on the river — 
 Which was not with him yet quite thro — 
 " What have I brought love's beauty to? " 
 He moaned again, then to his feet 
 Sprang with his hands locked on his breast, 
 And, as one who transcends defeat, 
 Tho he must die, said tearful, " Yes . . . 
 I must confess. I — will confess." 
 
OLD GARTH'S JESS 37 
 
 He started to the door, aware, 
 Or half aware, of stir below. 
 He staggered blindly down the stair. 
 Who called his name — what happened there? 
 The deckhands huddled on the edge 
 Of the chill wharf were in commotion. 
 "He's sunk . . . run! . . . ketch him! ... git 
 
 the dredge! " 
 They cried — and in the water Jess 
 Saw a child's face in drowning stress. 
 
 Jess knew no more than that he slipped, 
 
 As down into the icy flood 
 
 He plunged, and that his limbs were gripped 
 
 By cramps that from him all strength stripped. 
 
 The child beside him sank, then he 
 
 Sank too, once, twice — how cold, how cold 
 
 Was the brown water's mastery. 
 
 He thought of Ellen — saw her face, 
 
 And then was nowhere, in no place. 
 
38 OLD GARTH'S JESS 
 
 V 
 
 They drew him — and the child — found near 
 
 Together — out upon the shore. 
 
 Ellen, whose heart would be his bier 
 
 Forever, came without a tear. 
 
 He for another died ? Then grief 
 
 Unworthy of him should not rend 
 
 Cries from her — but sublime belief 
 
 In the great glory of her God 
 
 She wrung from each slow- falling clod. 
 
 So, the years pass. And crescentwise 
 The city grows; while sire and son 
 Still by the river's fall and rise 
 Fight the old fight that never dies. 
 For between young and old the hill 
 Of life rises and neither sees 
 More than the way, unmastered still, 
 
 That must be gone And so the woes 
 
 Of wanton time still round them close. 
 
CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 
 
 {ISth Century) 
 
 The bells of Oseney 
 (Hautclere, Doucement, Austyn) 
 Chant sweetly every day, 
 And sadly, for our sin. 
 The bells of Oseney 
 (John, Gabriel, Marie) 
 Chant lowly, 
 
 Chant slowly, 
 Chant wistfully and holy 
 Of Christ, our Paladin. 
 
 Hautclere chants to the East 
 (His tongue is silvery high). 
 And Austyn like a priest 
 39 
 
40 CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 
 Sends west a weighty cry. 
 But Doucement set between 
 (Like an appeasive nun) 
 Chants cheerly, 
 
 Chants clearly, 
 As if Christ heard her nearly, 
 A plea to every sky. 
 
 A plea that John takes up 
 (He is the evangelist) 
 Till Gabriel's angel cup 
 Pours sound to sun or mist. 
 And last of all Marie 
 (The \argin-voice of God) 
 Peals purely. 
 
 Demurely, 
 And with a tone so surely 
 Divine, that all must hear. 
 
 The bells of Oseney 
 (Doucement, Austyn, Hautclere) 
 
CHANSON OF THE BELLS OF OSENEY 41 
 Pour ever day by day 
 Their peals on the rapt air; 
 And with their mellow mates 
 (John, Gabriel, Marie) 
 Tell slowly, 
 
 Tell lowly. 
 Of Christ the High and Holy, 
 Who makes the whole world fair. 
 
THE AVENGERS 
 (An Interlude) 
 
 [A road in Belgium, desolate as only night, destruc- 
 tion and the cruelty of men can make it Three 
 unearthly forms seem gathered together on it — 
 the ghosts of a Belgian child who has starved, of 
 a French woman who was raped, and of a slain 
 German soldier. They are hand in hand and 
 have paused helplessly, as if so recently dead as 
 to be uncertain of their state. Beyond them are 
 impalpahly felt the ruins of a church, a windmill, 
 and a house or two. Farther down the road an 
 unreal light seems to shine from some door or 
 window. 
 
 The child is whimpering. The woman peers anx- 
 iously. The soldier looks hopelessly on the 
 
 42 
 
THE AVENGERS 43 
 
 ground. All are like shapes in a dream. 
 The Child. My mother — did my mother starve 
 too? 
 I want her! ... Is this Heaven? 
 The Soldier. No, little one. 
 
 I do not think so; for it seems so dark. 
 And yet I do not know : perhaps it is. 
 
 The Woman. It is not. We are lost. Or it may be 
 There are so many dead the gates that lead 
 To the other world are thronged and we must wait. 
 Or it may be that God — if still He cares — 
 Has yet some earth-aim for us. 
 
 The Soldier. It may be . . . 
 
 So many things may be. And yet it seems 
 That the aims of God are too like those of men. 
 My Emperor avowed it was God's will 
 That I should leave my wife and little children 
 To take up arms and kill. 
 
 The Woman. Yes, kill and ravish, 
 
 Until we kill ourselves — as I have done. 
 
44 THE AVENGERS 
 
 The Soldier. No, no: not that. I had a wife I 
 
 loved. 
 The Child [again whimpering]. My mother loved 
 me. Is it far to Heaven? 
 Why did God let me starve? 
 The Soldier [shudders]. Hush, little one. 
 The Child. But why? 
 
 The Woman. For this: to feed the German 
 Emperor. 
 Who might have starved for glory, had you eaten. 
 The Soldier. Ah that is terrible. Do not say 
 that. 
 We are dead now, and truth alone is left. 
 The Child. I did not want to starve. Why did 
 
 God let me ? 
 The Soldier. We must go on. Perhaps we shall 
 find out. 
 That light may lead us to the gate we seek 
 Out of the world : for surely one is near. 
 The Woman. I think we are kept here for some 
 avenging. 
 
THE AVENGERS 45 
 
 The Soldier. Must even the dead avenge? God 
 should not ask me 
 To kill again ! I can not ! 
 The Woman. Come: let's on. 
 
 [Leads] . 
 The Cheld. I could walk better if I did not hun- 
 ger. 
 Will there be bread in Heaven? plenty of bread? 
 [A Shape in the gloom before them stays the 
 answer. It is that of a German Sentinel. 
 They halt helplessly.] 
 The Soldier [who shrinks]. We cannot pass. 
 
 We have no countersign. 
 The Woman. The dead need none. See, he is 
 unaware. 
 To him we are invisible and soundless. 
 We can be known, I think, only by those 
 For whom we are kept here. Come. 
 The Child [as they pass]. I am afraid. 
 
 Will any take our bread from us in Heaven ? 
 The Soldier. No, little one. Ah! . . . [stops 
 
46 THE AVENGERS 
 
 by sentinel]. It is my brother, Gustav. 
 He is with the Emperor — in the Emperor's guard. 
 The Woman. That light, then, is within the 
 Emperor's quarters. 
 And now — at last ! — I seem to understand. 
 [The scene darkens, as she speaks, and then is 
 slowly transformed. It becomes a dim-lit room 
 in which is the Emperor. He sits at a table, 
 but, starting, cries out as the Three appear spec- 
 tral before him: cries, and his sword falls clang- 
 ing.] 
 [An officer enters.] 
 The Officer. You called me, sire. 
 The Emperor [still staring]. No, no. I did 
 
 not call. 
 
 [The Three have faded.] 
 The Officer [surprised] . Then, sire, goodnight 
 
 again. 
 The Emperor. Goodnight . . . goodnight. 
 
 [With more terror, however, when the Officer 
 has retired.] 
 
THE AVENGERS 47 
 
 Am I distempered, still? I thought I saw them. 
 Will the Almighty never ease my eyes 
 With angels or archangels? but send ever 
 These dead, with their undying misery? 
 Is He not with me. His divinely chosen, 
 With me to give my armies victory? 
 [Then trembling as the Three again appear.] 
 Once more you come? Begone. What do you 
 seek? 
 
 [They gaze at him.] 
 The Woman. You raped me, sire. 
 The Emperor [hoarsely]. Not you nor any. Away! 
 The Woman. You raped me — and raped France. 
 The Emperor. Lies! it is lies! 
 
 [Half strangles.] 
 The Soldier. No, sire; but truth. For I was 
 made to do it : 
 I and my German comrades. 
 The Emperor. Traitor! Traitor! 
 Your Fatherland was ringed by enemies. 
 
 [Tries to rise.] 
 
48 THE AVENGERS 
 
 The Child [to the Woman] . That is the man who 
 took away my bread, 
 And let me starve. 
 
 The Emperor. No; it was War did it! 
 Take her away! 
 
 The Woman. Yes, sire; but there will come 
 Others and yet others who are dying, 
 And who are dead, on every hour of the night — 
 Starved and ravished, murdered and slaughtered 
 
 others. 
 For you shall never again look on the living 
 But there shall be about you, ever escapeless, 
 The pale, piteous and accusing presence 
 Of the unnumbered dead. . . . 
 
 The Emperor. Help! . . . Help! 
 
 [He has swooned — his head falling forward 
 upon the table.] 
 
 The Woman. Now we can find the gate out of 
 the world. 
 [They pass slowly thro the walls again hand in 
 
THE AVENGERS 49 
 
 hand. The scene darkens and once more 
 becomes the desolate road — with only the wind 
 now sighing along the waste.'\ 
 
PROCESSIONAL 
 (April 6, 1917) 
 
 Not for a flaunted flag, O God, 
 
 Not for affronted power, 
 Not for a scurrile hope of gain, 
 
 Not for the pride of an hour, 
 Not for vengeance, hot in the heart. 
 
 Now do we swing to war! 
 Not for a weak mistrust lest peace 
 
 Is a shame strong men abhor. 
 Not for glory — for oh, to kill 
 
 Should be a sacred wrath : 
 Not for these ! but to war on war 
 
 And sweep it from earth's path 1 
 
 Patient has been our creed, till now, 
 Patient, too, our hope, 
 50 
 
PROCESSIONAL 51 
 
 Patient for long our loathful deed, 
 
 For the just in doubt must grope. 
 But with a foe at last arrayed 
 
 Against the whole world's right, 
 You, O soul of the universe. 
 
 Your very self must fight/ 
 You yourself; so but one prayer 
 
 Need we to lift — but one, 
 That by our battle shall all war 
 
 Be utterly undone. 
 
REVOLUTION 
 
 (Russia risen: Germany bound) 
 
 The spell is broken! 
 
 The evil centuries drop away like sleep ! 
 
 Freedom has spoken! 
 
 And by that token 
 
 The gyves of tyranny that trenched so deep, 
 
 And ate into the flesh and soul of a nation 
 
 Till gangrenous damnation 
 
 Seemed running leprous thro it, 
 
 Are rent, are rent away, in a swift hour. 
 
 With wild power, 
 
 By the millions who so long were made to rue it ! 
 
 The spell is rent! 
 
 From the Arctic to the Caspian, in twain! 
 
 52 
 
REVOLUTION 53 
 
 And from the Prison Plain 
 Of stark Siberia to the Baltic Main ! 
 And now, O Earth, a free host shall be pressed. 
 As in the West, 
 
 Against Autocracy at last shut lean, 
 From all wide Europe else, into one land — 
 Where it shall starve and bleed and starve and die, 
 Unless along its veins too leaps that cry 
 For SELF-RULE — which alone God will let stand ! 
 
 And shall that cry not come? 
 
 Shall Russia rise, 
 
 Russia a serf under her sterile skies, 
 
 And on her starven steppes, 
 
 Yet not Kultur-d,ccla,iming Kaiserdom? 
 
 Shall the untutored peasant seize the dream 
 
 Of liberty, once more thro the world astream, 
 
 While that great Race, — 
 
 Whose reckonings in many a darkest place 
 
 Of the dead Past 
 
 Might well have swept its spirit, first not last, 
 
54 REVOLUTION 
 
 To the Democratic Day, — 
 
 Fails to surge up, at the Future^s trumpet-blast? 
 
 No, people of the Rhine I 
 
 Who have freed Music, brought it from the deeps 
 
 Of the heart's prison chambers; 
 
 Who have freed Thought — that now no more 
 
 remembers 
 Its one time fear to face the Universe; 
 Who have freed God — opened the Church Door, 
 That would have held Him shut within a Creed, 
 Until He now may speak, to any need, 
 Thro Book or star, 
 Or the star-shivering sea — 
 No, no ! Rise up in your humanity. 
 And set yourselves free! 
 And war no more save for an end to War ! 
 
 Rise and say to your Foes, 
 
 " We want no mastery save of the world's woes ! " 
 
 Out of the hurricane tides of blood-madness 
 
REVOLUTION 55 
 
 Lift such a flag 
 
 Of arbitrage that all your cruel brag 
 And frenzied might shall be forgot in praise — 
 And not endow with sadness 
 Your sons' sons, and be their bitter drag ! 
 Rise and say, " Join us. All have sinned. 
 Let us no longer reap the dire whirlwind. 
 For peace is the price neither of bravery 
 Nor cowardice — but of the will to see 
 That the earth is all men's — all. 
 And so, can so be kept 
 
 Only when nations from their shrines have swept, 
 At a world-call, 
 That loud self-worship. Nationality! " 
 
TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA 
 
 Little torch-bearer, alone with me in the night, 
 You cannot light the sea, nor I illumine life. 
 They are too vast for us, they are too deep for us. 
 We glow with all our strength, but back the shadows 
 
 sweep : 
 And after a while will come unshadowed Sleep. 
 
 Here on the rocks that take the turning tide; 
 
 Here by the wide lone waves and lonelier wastes of 
 
 sky, 
 We keep our poet-watch, as patient poets should, 
 Questioning earth's commingled ill and good to us. 
 Yet little of them, or naught, have truly understood. 
 
 Bright are the stars, and constellated thick. 
 To you, so quick to flit along your flickering course, 
 
 56 
 
TO A FIREFLY BY THE SEA 57 
 
 They seem perhaps as glowing mates in other fields. 
 And all the knowledge I have gathered yields to me 
 Scarce more of the great mystery their wonder wields. 
 
 For the moon we are waiting — and behold 
 
 Her ardent gold drifts up, her sail has caught the 
 
 breeze 
 That blows all being thro the Universe always. 
 So now, little light-keeper, you no more need nurse 
 Your gleam, for lo! she mounts, and sullen clouds 
 
 disperse. 
 
 And I with aching thought may cease to burn, 
 And humbly turn to rest — knowing no glow of mine 
 Can ever be so beauteous as have been to me 
 Your soft beams here beside the sea*s elusive din : 
 For grief too oft has kindled me, and pain, and the 
 world's sin. 
 
A WIFE — TO A HUSBAND DISGRACED 
 
 I 
 
 I could see you die, dear, 
 
 Since your shame is such; 
 Die — and let dying clear 
 
 The cloud of it away. 
 Little was it that you did. 
 
 Yet so overmuch 
 That all cruel hands now 
 
 At your heart may clutch, 
 And all tongues of bitterness betray. 
 
 II 
 I could see you die — yes, 
 For so proud you were, 
 You! that no glory less 
 Than self-respect can serve 
 58 
 
A WIFE 59 
 
 Still to keep your head high 
 
 Above the slime and slur, 
 The laughter, the contumely, 
 
 That fallen men incur : 
 And but death can still the broken nerve. 
 
 Ill 
 
 For you cannot win back, 
 
 Hope of that is shut; 
 Falls there are that seem to lack 
 
 The footway up again; 
 Seem to leave the foiled heart 
 
 With every fibre cut: 
 Little was the way down 
 
 But soul-deep the rut: 
 Like infinity its inches pen. 
 
 IV 
 
 So your petty self-fall 
 
 May be measureless. 
 Oft we cannot tell at all 
 
 If the end is wreck. 
 
60 A WIFE 
 
 Foes may drive us down a brink 
 
 And we but address 
 Mind and soul to mount again 
 
 Out of all distress: 
 But self-fallen we are at fate's beck. 
 
 V 
 I could see you die, then, 
 
 Die — for, as of old, 
 Love is not a stay to you 
 
 Now that honor's gone. 
 To a wife the stings of shame 
 
 Are naught if she be told, 
 Still, that she is dearer than 
 
 All dreams the sky can hold : 
 Would, oh would you too could so live on ! 
 
QUESTIONS 
 
 What shall I do when blows blind me? 
 How fare on when counsels cross? 
 Where shall I turn when life behind me 
 Seems but a course run at a loss? 
 Thro what throes shall I beat to windward, 
 Uncontent with a lesser port ? 
 Whom shall I trust when Heaven of me, 
 Heaven itself, seems making sport ? 
 
 How shall I answer a knave's rating, 
 Done in a liar's arithmetic ? 
 What shall I say to a fool's prating, 
 In destructiveness as quick? 
 How shall I meet a friend's treason, 
 When it has scuttled the good ship Faith ? 
 61 
 
62 QUESTIONS 
 
 Whose are the stars if wide disaster 
 As its will can do me scath ? 
 
 Answer there is — a brief order, 
 " Bear all blows and yet be free; 
 Let no bitterness set a border 
 To your will, no treachery. 
 Speak — if you are the bigger for it, 
 Keep the silence if you are less, 
 And if the stars indeed be Godless, 
 Steer still by their godliness." 
 
TRANSMUTATION 
 
 It is Just a common bell, in a dull and dirty cupola, 
 
 But somehow I am off across the seas, 
 To a little town in Italy, a church in sunny Italy, 
 
 Beneath calm silvery olive trees. 
 And a lake is lapping by, lap-lapping at the fisher 
 boats, 
 And mountain peaks are lifting snowy mitres to 
 the breeze. 
 And a mass is being said, and a prayer is in a hun- 
 dred throats — 
 Soft, and asway with mysteries. 
 And I'm one with the murmur of the aves and I 
 cross myself 
 And dip my hand in holy water too; 
 And I kneel, at every station of the Passion; then 
 toss myself 
 
 63 
 
64 TRANSMUTATION 
 
 Down, by the altar, with the True. 
 It is just a coninion bell, in a dirty little cupola — 
 
 But campaniles rise into the sky, 
 And a simple God is mine again, a God all divine 
 again. 
 
 Till ... I remember, with a sighl 
 
WASTE 
 
 I flung a wild rose into the sea, 
 
 I know not why. 
 For swinging there on a rathe rose-tree, 
 By the scented bay and barberry, 
 Its petals gave all their sweet to me. 
 
 As I passed by. 
 
 And yet I flung it into the tide. 
 
 And went my way. 
 I climbed the gray rocks, far and wide, 
 And many a cove of peace I tried, 
 With none of them all to be satisfied. 
 
 The whole long day. 
 
 For I had wasted a beautiful thing, 
 Which might have won 
 65 
 
66 WASTE 
 
 Each passing heart to pause and sing, 
 On the sea-path there, of its blossoming. 
 And who wastes beauty shall feel want's sting, 
 As I had done. 
 
THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 
 
 The heart of God is my demesne, 
 
 I wander there all day, 
 
 With the winds of hope. 
 
 And the winds of joy, 
 
 And the winds of fear at play. 
 
 I feel the sunsets of His worlds, 
 
 And the dawns, come and go there; 
 
 I hear the surging of His seas, 
 
 And all desires that flow there. 
 
 I sense the rhythm of His years 
 
 Like waters ever falling; 
 
 Their music sometimes is as tears 
 
 Or prayer-voices calling; 
 
 I breathe all beauty, and the clouds 
 
 Of sorrow that sweep thro it, 
 
 67 
 
68 THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 
 
 Or horrors that in sickening shrouds 
 
 Drift, dumb, into it. 
 
 The vast pulse of the Universe 
 
 Is there forever beating, 
 
 Time-that's-past and Time-to-come 
 
 Meeting, melting, fleeting. 
 
 The heart of God is my demesne, 
 
 For what is it but Life ? 
 
 But a wonder-place 
 
 Where a child laughs. 
 
 Or a million fall in strife ! 
 
 But a blest place — or a curst place 
 
 I call on death to swallow, 
 
 Nor let another from the womb 
 
 Of wanton Being follow ! 
 
 But a place that once wandered in 
 
 I cannot cease from wanting. 
 
 Or trusting, tho its way has been 
 
 Woe-bestrewn or daunting. 
 
 A place to bide, with earth and star, 
 
THE HEART OF GOD IS MY DEMESNE 69 
 Created yet creating, 
 At peace sometimes or at wild war, 
 Fated — yet ever fating. 
 The heart of God is my demesne. 
 For what is it but Life? 
 The heart of me is God's demesne, 
 I help Him win the strife. 
 
SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 I 
 
 THE HEART'S QUESTION 
 
 Is it such a little thing 
 
 To find a wind-flower 
 Twinkling in the wild-wood 
 
 Hour after hour, 
 Dancing to the wind's pipe 
 
 With a happy nod? 
 Is it such a little thing? 
 
 I think it is God. 
 
 Is it such a little thing 
 To find the young moon 
 
 Flitting thro the tree boughs 
 In her silver shoon, 
 70 
 
SONGS TO A. H. R. 71 
 
 Seeking for the wind-flower 
 
 There along the sod ? 
 Is it such a little thing ? 
 
 I think it is God. 
 
 Is it such a little thing 
 
 To find in your face 
 Something of the wind-flower 
 
 And young moon's grace? 
 Something of the wild-wood, 
 
 Ever faery-trod? 
 Is it such a little thing? 
 
 I think it is God. 
 
 n 
 
 FIRST AND LAST 
 
 Night has uttered a star, 
 
 A first faint word 
 
 Of her epic to follow. 
 Night has uttered a star; 
 
72 SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 It hangs in the dusk's high hollow. 
 Night has uttered a star; 
 As you, immutably dear to me, 
 First uttered the word that brought my heart 
 Starry infinity. 
 
 Night has ended her lay, 
 Her epic lay 
 Of heavenly burning. 
 Night has ended her lay, 
 And the dawn wind is returning. 
 Night has ended her lay ; 
 But starriest murmurs of your love 
 Thro all my being's breadth, I know, 
 Can never cease to move. 
 
KING AMENOPHIS 
 
 (A screed for deported Belgians) 
 
 King Amenophis built him a tomb, 
 Down in the desert's sandy womb, 
 Where he might lie, with a slave or two. 
 To spare him labors the dead must do, 
 King Amenophis! 
 
 Yes; he built it cunningly deep 
 And secret, safe from the Nile's sure seep. 
 But time, sifting, came to rot him, 
 And the tomb-robbers at last got him. 
 King Amenophis! 
 
 So I am sure you pity him, friends; 
 For no slave of his myriad bends 
 73 
 
74 KING AMENOPHIS 
 
 Over him now — but whoso lists 
 Of idlers or archeologists — 
 
 King Amenophis! 
 
 Surely you pity him ! For great kings 
 Who slay and enslave are sacred things. 
 And, ... if any today are left, 
 Surely they should not be bereft 
 
 Like King Amenophis! 
 
RECRUIT 961 
 
 I will go over the sea's anesthetic, 
 To the field of Flanders, 
 And ask a surgeon bullet to slit my heart 
 And let this passion out. 
 For I love two women. 
 Each beautiful as the other. 
 And one, if I live, will cruelly ache and suffer 
 With want of me, even as I of her. 
 While one, if I die, will think of me as faithful, 
 True as the earth is to the moon's turning. 
 I will go over the sea's anesthetic 
 To Surgeon Death, who serves on the field of Flan- 
 ders. 
 
 75 
 
THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS 
 
 Come over the tide, 
 Come over the foam, 
 Dance on the hurricane, leap its waves, 
 Dream not of the calm sea-caves 
 Nor of content in them and home. 
 For that is the reason the hearts of men 
 Are ever v^eary — they would abide 
 Somewhere out of the spumy stride 
 Of the world's spindrift — a want denied. 
 That is the reason : tho they know 
 That the restive years have no true home, 
 But only a Whither, a Whence and When — 
 Then, . . . when the tide has turned again, 
 Whence and Whither, for hearts to roam. 
 And who would stay but a little while. 
 Not dance as we, and sing on the wind, 
 
 76 
 
THE SONG OF THE STORM-SPIRITS 77 
 
 Against the whole flow of the world has sinned, 
 And soon is weary and cannot smile. 
 Dance then, dance, on the fleeting spray ! 
 None can gather eternity 
 Into his heart and bid it stay. 
 Swiftly again it slips away. 
 Dance, and know that the will of Life 
 Is the wind's will and the will of the tide, 
 And who finds not a home in its strife 
 Shall find no home on any side ! 
 
THE WRECK-BUOY 
 
 (A wife speaks) 
 
 They praise my courage and put me here 
 By a ribald wreck and say, " My dear, 
 
 Still guard us from this poor hulk- 
 He's battered, we know, and gone to the bad. 
 His chart is lost and the sails he had, 
 His rudder is gone, his heart is crazed 
 With the wind — and the tide when the wind's 
 raised, 
 
 And horrors thro him skulk." 
 
 They praise me, yes, and bid me bide, 
 Anchored here, on the channel side, 
 
 Where the living ships go by; 
 Anchored here, by a debauchee, 
 
 78 
 
THE WRECK-BUOY 79 
 
 A derelict of the fair free sea; 
 Where never a word of the world I hear, 
 Port news, from afar or near, 
 But only his maundering in my ear, 
 With sotted boast or sigh. 
 
 And I'm weary of it — of listening 
 To the loose log of his voyaging 
 
 In the days of his desire. 
 I'm weary of hearing him strangle and cough 
 And hush when the tide of life draws off : 
 And I do not care what you may think, 
 I'm glad when I see him sink and sink, 
 And gladder I'll be when the sea shall drink 
 
 Him down to utter mire. 
 
DELIVERANCE? 
 
 {At the moment of the Russian Revolution) 
 
 " Give up your dead," the cry came, to prison and 
 
 mine and quarry, 
 " Give up your living dead to life again! " 
 And all Siberia lying under a night numbly starry, 
 Awoke out of her sleep — 
 Awoke as at the Spring-thaw — 
 And quivered, and was delivered of a hundred thou- 
 sand men! 
 
 Out of her wombs of torture, grief, and goaded deg- 
 radation, 
 
 Out of her fields of exile and despair. 
 
 They came — those who had dreamed the dreams of 
 freedom for a nation: 
 80 
 
DELIVERANCE? 81 
 
 Those who had dared to speak, 
 Timid or brave or blood-wild, 
 Of a new birth, a new earth, a Russia risen fair. 
 
 The young came — old with the mar and misery of 
 
 waiting ; 
 The old came, withered and bent and dumb; 
 Broken of mind, broken of heart — broken of all but 
 hating ; 
 
 Back to love of the sun, 
 To hope so long undone, 
 Or hope of hope in the better days of healing years 
 to come. 
 
 The pity of it, the glory! oh the partings and the 
 
 meetings ! 
 Russia again is reached across their woes! 
 Kisses are given, with the pangs of long-forgot 
 heart-beatings : 
 
 Wherein words fail 
 To tell the horror's tale — 
 Or tell it over and over, without peace, to its close. 
 
82 DELIVERANCE? 
 
 Never was such a birth — of the dead back to the 
 
 living. — 
 O Freedom, midwife of the world's desire, 
 Be with all lands that need you, in their hours of 
 birth-giving : 
 
 And lend deliverance, 
 As great against mischance. 
 To every noble issue Pity and Progress seek to sire. 
 
THE IMPERIAL CITY 
 
 (Pekin) 
 
 Water, under white bridges, lilied water, under the 
 marble. Still; with the heavens in it. ... A 
 bird's warble. 
 
 Green limbs drifting A stork out of the shal- 
 lows, under the arches, suddenly lifting. 
 
 Over the roofs blue-tiled, where I am wending, over 
 she soars. ... A mandarin by me talks of 
 Emperors. 
 
 Steps up to a shrine, under a pine. . . . Strange 
 heaven-beasts guarding it, dogs divine. 
 
 I slip a little by one . . . there is a stain. ** The 
 blood of China," I think, "The blood of 
 China! " and sicken with pain. 
 83 
 
84 THE IMPERIAL CITY 
 
 I turn: the beauty is gone: tyranny left. ... I 
 
 have been feeding my senses where starved 
 
 millions were bereft. 
 
 But I remember, a new banner now waves. . . . No 
 more is this a changeless land of Emperors and 
 slaves. 
 
THE PRICE 
 
 Violets under the may-apple, 
 
 Bluets dancing blue, 
 
 And nakedly leaping sun-dapple, 
 
 All the wood thro. 
 
 Feel no blight of the world's blood 
 
 A-flow now in France. 
 
 And I would the piteous drip of it, 
 
 The ache of it and grip of it. 
 
 Might, for only a little while. 
 
 Leave my heart too ! 
 
 For, I am weary of thinking, 
 And knowing thought is vain. 
 Better is any sinking 
 Than under the world's pain. 
 God of the distant star-deeps, 
 85 
 
86 THE PRICE 
 
 The centuries to come 
 May shape, out of our sufferings, 
 A peace that shall no more take wings, 
 But oh the beauty broken now 
 To gather that far gain ! 
 
THE UNBORN 
 
 (A Phantasy) 
 
 [ The place of the unborn, in a part of the earth from 
 which the Immanent God seems for the moment 
 strangely withdrawn. Its impalpable vastness, 
 through which time scarcely flows, is thronged by 
 the shapes of unborn souls who know that at 
 birth they must lose these shapes and tahe on 
 humanity. Apparitions they are, yet not aUff'* 
 gether so. For the prescience of life, which alone 
 gives them being, is upon them : a prescience now 
 mingled with awe and terror. For swaying and 
 clinging to each other they are looking off into an 
 unfathomable Darkness through which thousands 
 of phantom forms of the newly dead are drifting. 
 And this drift of ghosts at times becomes denser 
 
 87 
 
88 THE UNBORN 
 
 as the wounded and shattered and starved from 
 
 earth's battlefields glide pallid by. 
 [The unborn are at last unable to endure the sight 
 
 in silence. A pale shuddering surges over them 
 
 and their leaders begin variously to speak.] 
 The First. Myriads! 
 The Second. Slain and starven! 
 
 The Third. Slain and frozen 1 
 
 And drifting out of life — to which we go ! 
 
 Drifting, there, on the dark winds of death 
 
 Whose void is deeper than the Universe. 
 [The throng crouch from the sight, hiding their 
 
 faces.] 
 
 It should not be. It is too horrible. 
 The Second. Birth into bitterness — then death 
 and drifting! 
 
 This womb, that is before the womb, is better, 
 
 Tho here we know but pallor and premonition. 
 
 Have we sought life that we should suffer it? 
 
 God should not send us to it. 
 The Second [to all]. He should spare us. 
 
THE UNBORN 89 
 
 [They lift a great moan.] 
 Yes, spare us birth — that leads only to death. 
 So shall we, who are humanity-to-be, 
 Shall we, oh souls unborn, not dare to tell Him ? 
 [They look up, gazing at him and at themselves. 
 Then at length groups grasp his words and arise 
 crying : ] 
 Some. Yes, we will tell Him ! 
 Others. He shall pity us ! 
 
 Humanity should vanish — it is inhuman, 
 A deathward stream of cruelty and woe. 
 Yet Others [suddenly aware of His absence, with 
 terror] . 
 We cannot tell Him. He has forsaken us. 
 His Immanence is as a wind that was. 
 [In dismay and confusion they flutter — then turn 
 to First Leader: for he alone has heard all, 
 undistr aught.] 
 Some. Where is He? where? 
 Others. Tell us! Is it forever? 
 
 First Leader [not answering till they are calmer]. 
 
90 THE UNBORN 
 
 He has withdrawn a little while to earth. 
 Second Leader [bitterly]. To drive these drifting 
 millions so to death ? 
 
 [The slain surge by.] 
 The First. You speak so, thinking life is pain 
 alone. 
 Nor see how in these faces swept and swirled 
 Innumerably there is an ecstasy 
 As of immortal dreams; a hushless hope, 
 A beauty of great daring and enduring. 
 Is there not some transcendence then of life, 
 Some anodyne that makes its agony 
 Dearer than our dim void of impotence? 
 [They are moved: but another vast gust of the 
 dead undoes them.] 
 Many. No, no, life is despair. From the begin- 
 ning 
 The unborn have shrunk from birth, and to the 
 
 end 
 They will shrink. 
 Many Others. And that Darkness is forever! 
 
THE UNBORN 91 
 
 The dead but drift the deeper into it. 
 Let us rebel and ask extinction now! 
 Second Leader [wildly]. Yes, let us rebel! let 
 us rebel I 
 
 [They surge around him.] 
 For God's impenetrable aspiration 
 May destine some to happy planes of beauty 
 Above the beat of pain, but we are many 
 Who bear ever the weary mortal weight 
 Of the world's vain and universal woe. 
 Cries [from all sides]. Where is He then? where 
 
 is He? 
 Others. Where! for . . . Oh! . . . 
 
 [A thought has pierced them.] 
 Perhaps He never was! 
 Second Leader [wildlier]. So! It is so! 
 
 [Terror takes them.] 
 He never was! There is no God! There is 
 
 none! 
 From birthlessness we are swept into birth, 
 Where Chance alone invests humanity 
 
92 THE UNBORN 
 
 With duping spirit-tentacles to cling 
 To life with — Chance alone ! There is no God ! 
 [Fear, Hope and Despair play over them.] 
 Some. What shall we do then ? what ? 
 Others [frantically]. Let us be free! 
 
 Let us, eluding life, leap to the dead, 
 Forth thro the suicidal universe 
 Of Darkness! 
 Others. Free! free! Let us leap free! 
 
 [They run in hosts to the brink of the Dark and 
 leap into it — heedlessly upon each other, in 
 wide disarray. But vainly, for a wave of it 
 wafts them hack to their place.] 
 The First Le.\der [when strewn and spent they lie 
 there wailing]. 
 Ignorant is your deed and unavailing. 
 Never shall any reach in coward ways 
 To mastery — or to end — of his existence. 
 And lo, the prescient moment of our birth 
 Is trembling out of eternity — is here. 
 [The Immanent has filled the place again as he 
 
THE UNBORN 93 
 
 speaks — and the invisible winds of birth begin 
 to blow. The unborn are swept to earth, and 
 from there, as they vanish, the weak birth- 
 whimper of a child is wafted back.] 
 
BROTHER BEASTS 
 
 Winter is here 
 And there are no leaves 
 On the naked trees, 
 Save stars twinkling 
 As the v^rind blows. 
 Soft to the branches 
 The little screech-owl 
 Silently comes, 
 Silently goes, 
 With weird tremolos. 
 
 I would go out 
 And gather the stars 
 The wind shakes down. 
 Were they not scattered 
 94 
 
BROTHER BEASTS 95 
 
 So far in the West. 
 I would go ask 
 The little screech-owl 
 If he finds ease 
 There in his nest 
 After his quest. 
 
 I would go learn 
 If the small gray mouse 
 Who sets up house 
 In the frozen meadow 
 Dreams of the stars. 
 Or what he thinks 
 There in the dark, 
 When flake on flake 
 Of white snow bars 
 Him in with its spars. 
 
 I would go out 
 
 And learn these things 
 
 That I may know 
 
96 BROTHER BEASTS 
 
 What dream or desire 
 Troubles my brothers 
 In nest or hole. 
 For even as I 
 The owl and the mouse, 
 Or blinded mole 
 With unborn soul, 
 May have some goal. 
 
A WOMAN WRONGED 
 
 I am dead and in my grave. 
 
 Let me alone. 
 
 The seeping of rains down thro me, 
 
 And the reaching of roots down after me, 
 
 And the skimming of leaves above me, are enough. 
 
 Let me alone. 
 
 You have had your will of me, 
 
 So wherefore, now, 
 
 Should your questions creep here to me, 
 
 And the roots of your doubt reach at me, 
 
 And your thoughts restively skim and shudder above 
 
 me? 
 Let me alone. 
 
 W6uld you rifle the grave, too ? 
 
 97 
 
98 A WOMAN WRONGED 
 
 Go away. 
 
 I have nothing left for your taking. 
 
 My hair is not gold, but dust now. 
 
 My eyes are not stars, but stillness. 
 
 My flesh is not beauty aflame, but very cool. 
 
 Let me alone. 
 
TO A SOLITARY SEA-GULL 
 
 Lone white gull with sickle wings, 
 You reap for the heart inscrutable things: 
 Sorrow of mists and surf of the shore, 
 Winds that sigh of the nevermore; 
 Fret of foam and flurry of rain, 
 Swept far over the troubled tide; 
 Maths of mystery and grey pain 
 The sea's voice ever yields, beside. 
 Lone white gull, you reap for the heart 
 Life's most sad and inscrutable part. 
 
 99 
 
INEFFABLE THINGS 
 
 The little song-sparrow is gone 
 And the summer is nearly ended, 
 The rill of his song was a happy rift 
 In the surging sound of the sea. 
 The swallow is lingering on, 
 And the silvery swift sandpiper, 
 And I — tho I know my saddened heart 
 Has lost an ineffable thing, 
 That summer no more can bring. 
 
 With the first bay-leaves that flung 
 Their scent to me by the billows, 
 I twined some faith, some trust, 
 As glad as the sparrow's song. 
 And the terns that darted among 
 The tides seemed weaving for me 
 
 100 
 
INEFFABLE THINGS 101 
 
 Impalpable wings of peace and hope — 
 That now have taken flight 
 Beyond the day and the night. 
 
 Ah, Life, you have known my plea 
 
 For sun and the tide of fortune, 
 
 For winds to waken my sail and bear 
 
 Me joyously over the world. 
 
 Know too how much of your fog 
 
 And storm and rain I will suffer. 
 
 If only you do not sweep from me 
 The dear ineffable things, 
 To which your fragrance clings. 
 
KATENKA'S LOVER 
 
 (Russia) 
 
 Little Katenka took twelve weeds 
 And wove them into a wreath for her hair; 
 Buttercup, rattray and marguerite, 
 Parsley, clover and nettle were there. 
 *' I want to behold in dreams," she said, 
 " In magic dreams my destined lover! " 
 And . . . she did; for a weed bane-bred 
 Brought dreams to little Katenka! 
 
 Deep dreams ! so now the ikoned priests 
 Have carried her, at the funeral hour, 
 Out to her princely lover. Death, 
 In the ever-blossoming earth, his bower. 
 And she shall never again desire, 
 102 
 
KATENKA'S LOVER 103 
 
 But only lie in his arms dreaming . . . 
 Little Katenka, in a bride-tire 
 Of peace — little Katenka ! 
 
A MOTHER 
 
 (At night) 
 
 Rain on the maples, 
 Out of my window, 
 Beating . . . 
 Rain in my heart. 
 From clouds of grief 
 Within me . . . 
 Because a new grave. 
 My baby^s grave, 
 In the darkness, 
 Seems so little 
 And the cradle of earth 
 So heedless I 
 
 104 
 
GIVE OVER, O SEAl 
 
 Give over, O sea! You never shall reach Nirvana I 
 Vour tides, like the tidal generations, ever shall rise 
 
 and fall, 
 And your infinite waves find birth, rebirth, and bil- 
 lowy dissolution. 
 
 The years of your existence are unending. 
 
 The years of your unresting are forever. 
 
 The sun, who is desire, ever begets in you his pas- 
 sion, 
 
 And the moon is ever drawing you, with silvery soft 
 alluring. 
 
 To surge and sway, to wander and fret, to waste 
 yourself in foam. 
 
 So Buddha-calm shall never descend upon you. 
 
 105 
 
106 GIVE OVER, O SEA 
 
 And tho it may often seem, for a little while, you 
 have found the Way, 
 
 Your tempest-sins return and quicken to wild rein- 
 carnations. 
 
 And again great life, pulsing and perilous. 
 
 Omnipotent life, that ever resurges thro the universe, 
 
 Lashes you back to striving, back to yearning, back 
 to speech, 
 
 To utterance on all shores of the world of things 
 unutterable. 
 
 Give over then, you never shall reach Nirvai\al 
 
 Nor I, who am your acolyte for a moment; 
 
 Who swing a censer of fragrant words before your 
 priestly feet, 
 
 That tread these altar-rocks, bedraped with weeds 
 gently afloat. 
 
 And with the fluttering wings of gulls ever mysteri- 
 ous. 
 
 Give over and call your winds again to join you ! 
 
GIVE OVER, O SEA 107 
 
 O chanter of deep enchantments, of uncharted lit- 
 anies, 
 Call them and bid them say with you that life tran- 
 scends retreat, 
 And that, in the temple of its Immanence, 
 There is no peace that does not spring daily from 
 
 peacelessness) 
 And no Nirvana save in the lee of storm. 
 
THE NUN 
 
 A lone palm leans in the moonlight, 
 
 Over a convent wall. 
 The sea below is waking and breaking 
 
 With a calm heave and fall. 
 A young nun sits at a window; 
 
 For Heaven she is too fair; 
 Yet even the dove of God might nest 
 
 In her bosom beating there. 
 
 A lone ship sails from the harbor: 
 
 Whom does it bear away? 
 Her lover who, sin-hearted, has parted 
 
 And left her but to pray? 
 She has no lover, nor ever 
 
 Has heard afar lovers sigh. 
 108 
 
THE NUN 109 
 
 Only the Convent's vesper vow 
 Has ever dimmed her eye. 
 
 For naught knows she of her beauty, 
 
 More than the palm of its peace : 
 And none shall cross her portal, to mortal 
 
 Desires to bend her knees. 
 The ways of the world have flowers, 
 
 And any who will pluck those; 
 But in His hand, against all harm, 
 
 God still will keep some rose. 
 
A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 
 
 All the birds shall sing to me, 
 
 When I reach Heaven. 
 
 All the leaves shall dance for me, 
 
 Seven times seven. 
 
 All the rills of bliss shall run, 
 
 Cloud-free, from out its sun; 
 
 All the flowers of all bowers. 
 
 Pour me fragrance, hours and hours; 
 
 All the air I breathe shall be 
 
 Joy's sweet leaven. 
 
 Mystic apples shall I pluck 
 For my soul's feeding. 
 On a green palm-bed I'll lie, 
 Man and God reading. 
 I will fan me with the wings 
 110 
 
A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 111 
 
 Of my own imaginings ; 
 And, to dally down each alley 
 Of its dream-enverdured valley, 
 I will follow every breeze 
 Languorously leading. 
 
 When I wish, too, I will scale 
 
 Tops of mountain beauty. 
 
 I will learn how dawns are made, 
 
 How stars do their duty. 
 
 I will hold the high moon's sphere 
 
 Oft to my attentive ear. 
 
 And each comet, trailing from it 
 
 Leagues of light, shall be a plummet 
 
 For my soul thro deeps of space 
 
 Strewn with death's booty. 
 
 Yes, I'll do this every day, 
 In the vales of Heaven. 
 For my need of it will be 
 Seven times seven: 
 
112 A RHAPSODIST'S SONG 
 
 Need of birds and mystic rills, 
 Need of apples for soul-ills; 
 Need of vision, where elysian 
 Dews shall star my heart's decision 
 To delight in love — and in 
 Life Immortal's leaven. 
 
INSULATION 
 
 The telephone lines, 
 Etched by the lightning's needle 
 On the night plate of her window, 
 Seemed but as strands of a dream's phosphorescence 
 Flashed rippling to her out of the drench of the 
 darkness. 
 
 Yet one of them was bearing, 
 Past her, thro the wet shimmer of the shower, 
 The sinuous words — her husband's to his mis- 
 tress — 
 " Tonight, my passion-flower! " 
 
 113 
 
ISEULT OF IRELAND 
 
 (By Tristram dead, in the halls of Iseult of 
 Brittany) 
 
 I will go up to a high tower 
 
 And gaze over the sea, 
 Letting my thoughts as gulls fly, 
 
 Utterly, utterly. 
 
 And if the wind beats them back 
 
 Against cliff and tower, 
 Breaking their wings, blinding them. 
 
 Hour after hour; 
 
 Breaking their wings, blinding them, — 
 
 At least one may reach 
 Across Death, my Tristram, 
 
 And tremblingly beseech, 
 114 
 
ISEULT OF IRELAND 115 
 
 That you will tell me if in truth 
 
 You loved me only thro 
 The potion that we drank — or for 
 
 My own self too ! 
 
 For this Iseult of the White Hand 
 
 Is all, all too fair! 
 I will go up to a high tower 
 
 And ask the winds there. 
 
TO 
 
 A year ago you died, 
 
 And we bore you, palely cof&ned, 
 
 Down to a darkened room. 
 
 And you lay there — still as snow 
 
 On a forgotten tomb. 
 
 Your three-year baby said, 
 " Who's in that box down stairs? " 
 Then, innocent of the dead, 
 While the hot tears choked us, 
 *' I know. It is my mother, 
 I saw my mother's head ! " 
 
 We did not let him kiss you, 
 We did not let him clasp you, 
 116 
 
TO 117 
 
 And the hearse came; the clod; 
 And he laughed — at the flowers. 
 How far it is to God I 
 
THE HILLS I HAVE NEVER REACHED 
 
 The hills I have never reached 
 
 Lie ever before my eyes. 
 Wherever I am, wherever I go, 
 
 They rest on the rim of the skies. 
 And they lead my longing forth, 
 
 The unutterable in me. 
 To seek for all I have ever dreamed 
 
 Beauty or joy could be. 
 
 The hills I have never reached 
 
 Lie always in my sight, 
 Swathed in the tender mystery 
 
 Of unattainable light. 
 And the hue of them is hope, 
 
 The shape of them, despair; 
 Their distance ever unwaning — for 
 
 Heart never reaches there. 
 118 
 
THE HALF-BREED 
 
 Let me go back again, 
 For want of it comes over me, 
 Back to wilds of Pima 
 And wastes of Maricopa. 
 There with desert under me 
 And desert night to cover me, 
 Night, with the cactus stars 
 To prick and spur me on, 
 Let me by my tribe stray, 
 A far-ranging rover be, 
 With no pale-face lodges 
 Between me and the dawn. 
 
 Let me go back again, 
 
 For Yaqui blood awakes in me, 
 Let me, free of tethering. 
 Of toil and creed and cavil, 
 119 
 
120 THE HALF-BREED 
 
 Out with the coyote go, 
 For now his crying aches in me — 
 
 Out across the mesa 
 
 That knows but hunger-law — 
 Out, with the winds to walk. 
 Till every bondage breaks in me, 
 
 Till the Red blood in me 
 
 The White begins to thaw. 
 
 Let me go back again. 
 For soul's of little use to me. 
 Soul and smoky hoping 
 For Hunting-Grounds Immortal. 
 From their blind sting and strife 
 They never grant a truce to me. 
 Never send a pause-hour 
 To string the beads of peace, 
 Never let the trail end, 
 With time and tepee loose to me. 
 Never let tomorrow 
 Unborn and troubling cease. 
 
THE HALF-BREED 121 
 
 Let me go back, then, 
 For cities can but sicken me, 
 
 Soiling and eclipsing 
 
 Sun, moon and all the seasons. 
 Let me go where silences 
 And savage loneness quicken me, 
 
 Even as the void waste 
 
 No foot has ever trod. 
 Let me go where primal thirsts 
 Thew my heart and thicken me 
 
 'Gainst the throes of thinking, 
 
 'Gainst the goads of God. 
 
THE RIDE 
 
 I saw a young spirit wildly astride 
 Of the new moon ride, ride and ride — 
 Into the clouds and over the stars, 
 Down the West and away! 
 
 His hair was streaming, a silver mist. 
 And meteor reins were around his wrist. 
 Whence was he going and where no word 
 Of earth can ever say ! 
 
 And yet I know that the swift white fire 
 Bearing him on was the world's desire : 
 So after him wildly rapt I rode, 
 Almost down to the day! 
 
 122 
 
THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 
 
 Thro Gobiland's sea of sand, 
 Where pilgrim bones are mile-stones, 
 Where no birds sing, no beasts run, 
 Where there is only sun and sun. 
 Went Fa-Hien. 
 
 He was faring, a monk of Han, 
 
 Out thro the desert, past Khotan; 
 
 Thro hot winds and demon sands, 
 
 That haunted the way in swirling bands, 
 
 He was going to Buddha lands. 
 
 Was Fa-Hien. 
 
 His camel was chosen at Changgan, 
 His place was bought in the caravan. 
 " All is maya, a dream of man," 
 123 
 
124 THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 
 
 He said as the desert sea began, 
 And said it again as the hot sea ran, 
 Did Fa-Hien. 
 
 For the air was thirst, the sun desire, 
 And his blood became a passion fire. 
 He saw cool waves and soft-limbed slaves. 
 As only a man can see who craves. 
 " From woman nothing truly saves," 
 Thought Fa-Hien. 
 
 But soon they vanished, one and all, 
 
 When he had reached Khotan's sure wall. 
 
 For stealing from its mystic calm 
 
 He thought he felt Lord Buddha's *' Om " 
 
 Laid on his spirit like a balm, 
 
 Did Fa-Hien. 
 
 So on, thro perilous Hindu Kush, 
 Down to the Indus did he push, 
 Down rock-steeps, wild and hilly. 
 To where the Ganges flows stilly. 
 
THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 125 
 
 For he was fain of the Lotos-lily, — 
 Fa-Hien. 
 
 Yes, fain in the place of Buddha's birth 
 
 To find the Way of Priceless Worth; 
 
 In Kohana to reach Nirvana 
 
 And take back thence some secret mana — 
 
 For it is here, surely here, 
 
 Mused Fa-Hien. 
 
 And so, ten years, of monk and sage 
 
 He questioned, scarming the sutras' page; 
 
 And miracle — and magic too 
 
 He wandered thro and pondered thro, 
 
 Till spent he said, " No Creed will do," 
 
 Did Fa-Hien. 
 
 Then old light thro him sifted back. 
 And life no more was twaya-black. 
 " Nirvana's far from all who preach it; 
 But the world's near and I can reach it; 
 
126 THE FARING OF FA-HIEN 
 
 Give to me then what's good for men," 
 Said Fa-Hien. 
 
 So forth he sailed from Ganges' mouth 
 To that fair emerald in the South, 
 To far Ceylon, and thence fared on, 
 Thro desert seas, past night and dawn, — 
 His camel a ship, by the winds drawn, 
 Did Fa-Hien. 
 
 And back to the tawny Yangszte came. 
 Where life was teeming ever the same. 
 And when his junk, with the tide drunk, 
 Was moored, he said, "I'm still a monk. 
 But I am a man who trust time's plan, 
 I Fa-Hien." 
 
A LOVER, DECEIVED 
 
 I 
 
 One Day 
 
 Is it the sea crying, or the gray gulls? 
 Is it the wind 
 On the wet beach sands? 
 Or is it a phantom desire's unrest that pulls 
 At the heart of me, with lone invisible hands? 
 
 The air is wings, all wings. . . . Would the world 
 were! 
 
 The sea is a tide 
 Ebbing away. 
 But oh how slow the pulses in me stir, 
 How long the wingless stagnant moments stay! 
 
 127 
 
128 A LOVER, DECEIVED 
 
 And now come rain and fog like dirge and cloth 
 
 To enshroud all passion — 
 
 They and the bell — 
 The bleak buoy-bell. ... It does not matter : loath, 
 All loath am I for what the world calls well. 
 
 Oh love that is deceived : that trusted deep 
 
 And now is only 
 
 A craving cry! 
 That could not one dear face from falseness keep, 
 And so finds all life's beauty but a lie. 
 
 II 
 
 Another 
 
 Who has hushed the sea's heart? 
 
 Calm it is and still; 
 
 With no gulls crying, 
 
 And no wind's wine, 
 With islands like gray dreams 
 
 Beyond desire lying. 
 
A LOVER, DECEIVED 129 
 
 Who has hushed the sea's heart? 
 Let Him hush mine! 
 
 Who has hushed the sea's heart ? 
 
 Passion is a surf 
 
 That breaks thro my being 
 
 And beats in my breast. 
 From its lone pain-sway 
 
 Is there no fleeing? 
 Who has hushed the sea's heart? 
 
 I too would rest! 
 
AT THE DANCE 
 
 (A blind husband speaks) 
 There amid the dancers 
 All may see her glide ; 
 I alone with blind eyes 
 Stare into the throng. 
 Thickly comes the music ; 
 Many on its tide 
 Bear her beauty by me 
 Charmed hours long. 
 
 All the lights are rapture, 
 Every breath is joy; 
 That even blind eyes 
 Can feel with sense averse. 
 Oh to strike the dance dead, 
 Suddenly destroy 
 130 
 
AT THE DANCE 131 
 
 Rh}i:hm to its last source 
 In the Universe! 
 
 For with rhythm passion 
 Wakes, in every breast. 
 It is Nature's love-throb 
 Luring all the world. 
 Atoms answer to it, 
 Dance and never rest. 
 May not bliss forbidden 
 Thro her too be swirled ? 
 
 Shame — shame upon me! 
 Deeper rhythms sound 
 In her from my blind eyes 
 Than to earth belong. 
 All may look upon her, 
 Many lead her round; 
 I alone have brought her 
 Love's star-circling song. 
 
HER GOD 
 
 You think I came out to the wood with you 
 
 To take my April fill 
 Of leaves not love ? Then know, my dear, 
 
 A futile and vain ant-hill 
 Of hope was that, dug grain on grain 
 
 Out of your heart's quick sod. 
 And yet . . . tho I have trampled it, 
 
 I still shall be your god. 
 You think I came out to the wood with you 
 
 To murmur in the shade? 
 Only that? Not I, my dear; 
 
 So now . . . you're not a maid. 
 My want has had its veriest will. 
 
 Nor fears remorse's rod; 
 So whether I love, or love you not, 
 
 I still shall be your god. 
 132 
 
DANSE MACABRE 
 
 (Suggested by old pictures) 
 
 I heard a great rattle of bones in the night, 
 And saw the dead rise from the earth — a sight ! 
 They carried them lanterns of will-o'-the-wisps, 
 And their speech cackled and broke with lisps. 
 
 They flung shrouds off and got in a ring, 
 And knuckle to knuckle I saw them spring. 
 Their hair blew off, and skull to skull 
 They gabbled and danced, interminable. 
 
 And thigh-bone rattled with bone of thigh. 
 As tooth and tongue were spat at the sky. 
 And they chaunted a chilly, gibbering chaunt 
 Of how the dead have never a want. 
 
 133 
 
134 DANSE MACABRE 
 
 " For what want we of the Universe, 
 We who have six full feet of clay 
 To be for our cuddling bones a nurse," 
 They clacked in a rasping roundelay. 
 
 " What want we of the Universe? 
 We lie in the dust there snug and still ; 
 And the quick may have their better or worse : 
 We have what 's best — we have our will." 
 
 So with cackle, gabble and dance, 
 
 With rattle of joints and Jig and scream, 
 
 Then back to their graves with skitter and glance 
 
 They dropt. Zounds! what an idiot dream! 
 
A NORSE SONG 
 
 Along the coasts of Nevermore 
 A lone loon cries, 
 The gray loon Despair, 
 With a heart that cannot rest. 
 His wail is the world's wail 
 For youth that never dies; 
 And I have listened to it 
 Till the tears are in my eyes. 
 
 Along the coasts of Nevermore, 
 Past all return, 
 
 Youth's years are gone from me, 
 As all joys go. 
 Thro the lone fiords 
 Of its yesterdays I yearn, 
 But only find Despair's wild woe. 
 135 
 
MOOX-FLIGHT 
 
 That wingless bird, the moon, 
 With silvery phantom breast, 
 Flutters around the earth 
 And cannot find a nest. 
 Her mystic plumes are moulted 
 Each month, and dropt to men. 
 But ever does nest-yearning bring 
 Their beauty back again. 
 
 136 
 
THE RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO 
 THOMAS 
 
 Jesus Christ woke in the tomb 
 
 Of Joseph of Arimathea, 
 From death as he thought, for nigh three days 
 
 Had drawn over Judea: 
 Nigh three days that his soul had counted, 
 
 Somehow, under his trance. 
 Yet he was troubled, for of the dead 
 
 He brought no circumstance. 
 
 Jesus Christ cared for his wounds 
 
 That Nature had set healing, 
 And walked out under the stars of dawn. 
 
 Like a white spirit stealing. 
 He slipped from the sight of three women 
 
 Who sought his tomb to moan, 
 137 
 
138 RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO THOMAS 
 And heard them saying, " Lo, an angel 
 Has rolled away the stone! " 
 
 Jesus Christ went thro the fields 
 
 At twilight to Emmaus. 
 Much changed he was, as he broke bread 
 
 With two — whose hearts were chaos 
 When he had gone and they of a sudden 
 
 Knew that it was he. 
 And he shook as he heard their cry, " O grave, 
 
 Where is thy victory ! " 
 
 Jesus Christ to the twelve appeared. 
 
 The twelve, save one, Judas; 
 Then fully died : for his wounds were wrung 
 
 With doubt lest he delude us; 
 For he knew not whether his lone dying 
 
 That day, on the cross. 
 Was death indeed. And all we know 
 
 Is grief for him and loss! 
 
ROSE AND LOTUS 
 
 Rose, rose, flower of Christ, 
 And lotus, flower of Buddha, 
 Make a new beauty for the world 
 Of your petals intertwined. 
 Give your color, your desire, 
 Rose, that the lotus may aspire. 
 Give your patience and your peace, 
 Lotus, for the rose's ease. 
 Of your petals intertwined 
 Make a new beauty for the world. 
 Rose and lotus, set your mind 
 To this gift for mortal kind. 
 
 139 
 
ATAVISM 
 
 I leant out over a ledging cliff and looked down into 
 the sea, 
 
 Where weed and kelp and dulse swayed, in green 
 translucency; 
 
 Where the abalone clung to the rock and the star- 
 fish lay about, 
 
 Purpling the sands that slid away under the silver 
 trout. 
 
 And the sea-urchin too was there, and the sea- 
 anemone. 
 
 It was a world of watery shapes and hues and wiz- 
 ardry. 
 
 And I felt old stirrings wake in me, under the tides 
 of time, 
 
 140 
 
ATAVISM 141 
 
 Sea-hauntings I had brought with me out of the 
 ancient slime. 
 
 And now, as I muse, I cannot rid my senses of the 
 
 spell 
 That in a tidal trance all things around me drift 
 
 and swell 
 Under the sea of the Universe, down into which 
 
 strange eyes 
 Keep peering at me, as I peered, with wonder and 
 
 surmise. 
 
STRANGENESS 
 
 (In Spring) 
 
 How strange that I should care 
 Whether my heart expresses 
 
 The witching mysteries that lair 
 In the wind's soft caresses. 
 
 How strange that I should long 
 To leash in speech undying 
 
 The wood-wild evanescent throng 
 Of odors round me flying. 
 
 How strange that I should hear 
 A bird-note, then think heaven, 
 
 Or earth itself, could be made clear 
 With six right words — or seven! 
 142 
 
FORECAST 
 
 There will be storm: the rough tides moan, 
 The wild torn kelp is shoreward blown, 
 The foaming sands with rubble are strown. 
 The cormorant cries on the rocks alone. 
 
 There will be storm : the dark wrack blends 
 With winds that never have been man's friends, 
 With missing beats the bell-buoy sends, 
 With ships that pass to unknown ends. 
 
 143 
 
THE CLOSED GATES 
 
 O who has closed the gates of the world ■ 
 
 The sea-gates flowing free, 
 The mountain-gates and the hill-gates 
 
 God made for all that be? 
 There's never a land about the globe 
 
 By Him shut from another; 
 For every Strait and Stream and Pass 
 
 Points each man to his brother. 
 
 O who has closed the gates of the world 
 From coast to farther coast? 
 
 From Caucasus to crested Alps 
 That tower, a snowy host ? 
 
 There's never a one that has not seen 
 Blood stream and armies perish 
 144 
 
THE CLOSED GATES 145 
 
 For freedom; so who will not, now, 
 W orld-f leedom for them cherish? 
 
 Yea, who has closed the gates of the world, 
 
 The gates that now are mined 
 And armed and guarded, day and night. 
 
 Except to sea and wind ? 
 There's never a least but war has shut 
 
 On innocence left dying. 
 Nor will long years of penitence 
 
 Avail to hush that sighing. 
 
 Ay, who has closed the gates of the world. 
 
 Where food to the poor came thro, 
 Where every foot that tread in peace 
 
 Knits men to men anew? 
 Dear God, our human blood is one 
 
 And thro your heart is flowing ; 
 Purge, purge it then, and open again 
 
 The gates to all men's going ! 
 
AN AUSTRIAN PRISONER 
 
 (On trial in the Trentino) 
 
 Reap ? we reap but as we sow ? 
 Lies ! the seed of the past is in us. 
 Springing up in a heart will grow 
 The deeds of a thousand years ago. 
 
 Hang me then, if so you will, 
 For raping her; but first say whether 
 Some wild Hun on a Roman hill 
 Was not in my passion still ? 
 
 Some wild Hun who too was led 
 Over the Alps, starved and frozen, 
 Dearthed, like me, till shame was dead 
 Me in whom this lust was bred ? 
 146 
 
AN AUSTRIAN PRISONER 147 
 
 Dearthed and driven, until unwary, 
 Torn from home and torn from pleasure, 
 He would have seized the Virgin Mary. 
 Desperate men are not more chary. 
 
 Hang me then: but hang the Past! 
 Let curst War die guilty with me. 
 For as long as its day shall last 
 Any man may so break fast. 
 
EASTER SNOW 
 
 Snow on the gold 
 
 Of my jonquils falling, 
 
 In white confusion. 
 
 Was Spring, glad 
 
 In young green, yesterday, 
 
 But a delusion? 
 
 Snow on the Easter bells 
 Wildly ringing 
 Christ the arisen. 
 Can their peal 
 Shake it away? 
 Is death a prison? 
 
 Half the world fears so, 
 Half, hopes; 
 148 
 
EASTER SNOW 149 
 
 All the world wonders. 
 Ah, sad snow! 
 All we can know 
 Is that death sunders! 
 
A WOOD-MOMENT 
 
 In the green hush of the wood 
 
 A bubble of bird-song broke, 
 And at the magic word, 
 
 The wind from trance awoke. 
 A wild-rose leaned to a bluet, 
 
 A blithe brook-ripple spoke; 
 Then came a leafy laughter 
 
 From willow and ash and oak. 
 
 Gaily it ran; then willow 
 And ash and oak forgot. 
 
 They had but overheard 
 
 Some wood sprite's amorous plot. 
 
 The rose went back to her bliss, 
 The wind sighed, and was not. 
 150 
 
A WOOD-MOMENT 151 
 
 Silence again was the bird's 
 And the brook's ecstatic lot. 
 
POETS THERE ARE 
 
 Poets there are a plenty, who catch at a critic-creed 
 And ride the rumor of it to fame, while the world 
 
 waits in need. 
 Ever, ever in need of the singer to whom a song is a 
 
 star 
 Wrought in the nebulous deeps of the heart where the 
 
 great song-passions are. 
 
 Poets there are a plenty, who sell their souls to the 
 
 new, 
 And cry it as if a thousand years of beauty were 
 
 untrue. 
 Yet brief is the vaunt of a singer, whose newness is 
 
 not strong 
 With the deep sources of the divine in all immortal 
 
 song. 
 
 152 
 
" IN PRAISE OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 (On his Centenary) 
 
 Away with trivial bays, 
 
 With wreaths and dithyrambs, 
 
 Upon this day of a myriad days 
 
 When a great heart came to walk earth's ways 
 
 And sing it free of shams. 
 
 To sing it free of the pale complaint 
 
 Of souls that will not climb; 
 
 And free of the petty coward taint 
 
 Of the cavillers at Time. 
 
 To gaze so clearly far 
 
 Into its mystic clod 
 
 As to be sure it is a star 
 
 Tilled by the touch of God ! 
 
 153 
 
OVER THE SANDS 
 
 Over the sands the lightning flashes, 
 Veining the sea with sudden fire, 
 
 Startling the gulls where the tide plashes, 
 Driving them from their food-desire. 
 
 Over the sands the lightning quivers, 
 
 Over the lonely marsh-rivers. 
 
 Over the night that faintly shivers 
 With its ghostly ire. 
 
 Over the sands the moon follows, 
 Like a pale boat that seeks to beach 
 
 Her bows in pines — that chilled swallows 
 After the storm with wet wings reach. 
 
 Over the sands the moon shimmers, 
 
 Mute mid a host of star-swimmers, 
 154 
 
OVER THE SANDS 155 
 
 Making her port where the West glimmers 
 Still, thro the sunset's breach. 
 
EVANESCENCIES 
 
 The wings of a dream striking along the heart, 
 
 The wind of a star falling impalpably, 
 
 The stillness of a night-leaf, the moon's trance, 
 
 The lapse of time into eternity, 
 
 The mutability, despite our love. 
 
 Of the dear memory of those long gone, — 
 
 These things can shake the spirit more sometimes 
 
 With a great terror of the great UnknowTi, 
 
 Than all earth's long immitigable crimes, 
 
 Than all its historied moan. 
 
 156 
 
MY ISLAND 
 
 My sea has an island — whose name I do not know. 
 
 The gulls fringe it with their wings, 
 
 From dawn to sun-setting. 
 I never cross the tide to it, and never shall — for so 
 There's left to me a place where disillusion cannot 
 
 go- 
 
 My sea has an island — whose riches are but rocks, 
 That surf alone silvers. 
 Or sun and moon shimmer. 
 Yet when I'm poor in peace — and at my poverty 
 
 life mocks, 
 These riches far transcend wealth the World to me 
 unlocks. 
 
 157 
 
THROUGH HUE AND CRY 
 
 Two hounds will the whole world follow, 
 When the rest of the pack are slain, 
 
 Keen Hope a-leap from life's hollow, 
 Strong Love that strikes at its pain. 
 
 Two hounds will the world give ear to. 
 In the Hunt toward Heart's Desire, 
 
 Strong Love all courses are clear to, 
 Keen Hope no peril can tire. 
 
 158 
 
A PARABLE 
 
 Last night in a phantasmal trance 
 I heard the flow of blood in France, 
 Slow trickling out of severed veins 
 Down to the roots of thirsting plants. 
 
 " Good nurture," said one, " let us drink! '* 
 " No! " cried another's lips a-shrink. 
 " If God can send it," said a third, 
 " We should not be too proud, I think: 
 
 " For, is the earth in which we bide 
 Other than blood of men who've died, 
 Clotted around the framing bone 
 Of millions long since petrified ? " 
 159 
 
160 A PARABLE 
 
 God answered then, for He had heard 
 Each hungry and despairing word, 
 " Of that blood, children, know this too, 
 Each drop within My heart has stirred." 
 
SENSE-SWEETNESS 
 
 Flowers are dancing, waves playing, pines swaying, 
 
 gulls are a-swarm; 
 Sea and heather, sunning together, glad of the 
 
 weather, with God are warm. 
 
 Flowers are dancing, clouds winging, larks singing, 
 
 summer abrew — 
 Summer the old ecstatic passion of Life to fashion 
 
 the world anew. 
 
 161 
 
MOTHER AND SON 
 
 He was not wanted — to my womb 
 
 He came against my will, 
 And fed, there, upon bitterness, 
 
 Unborn and soulless still; 
 On bitterness, thro nine long moons, 
 
 And on rebellious hate ; 
 So when at length I gave him birth 
 
 I gave as well — fate. 
 
 For mother-rapture followed then, 
 And pampering thro youth; 
 
 The wrong I did him in the womb 
 I doubled by a ruth 
 
 That made me worship him — and all 
 Restrainings prostitute 
 162 
 
MOTHER AND SON 163 
 
 To his least passion or desire, 
 His least imperious suit. 
 
 So now, to that old bitterness 
 
 He adds a bitter care; 
 And, ruined, doubts whether a God 
 
 Has ever heard a prayer; 
 Doubts, yet can never lay in him 
 
 The ghost of pale remorse, 
 That haunts me too, thro the long years. 
 
 With lone and spectral force. 
 
ARIEL TO THE AGING SHAKESPEARE 
 
 If, O master, at your heart 
 
 Caliban claws of age creep, 
 
 Call me to come from the air's blue deep, 
 
 Call! 
 For I know where dew of youth yet lingers 
 On great dreams you hold in thrall. 
 Know how to strew your foes with magic, 
 
 All! 
 Know to undo the years turned tragic. 
 Years that sigh and deathward flow, 
 While grieved musings thro your spirit 
 
 Go! 
 Call to me then, for swift I'll hear it, 
 I, your Ariel, set free. 
 But who still your sprite will be ! 
 
 Call! 
 
 164 
 
PAGAN 
 
 Will the earth-poetry of Greece never die? 
 Sitting in the green wood, lonely, was I, 
 When I heard a voice sing, centuries away 
 From the Vale of Tempe, from the gods' sway : 
 April is a naiad 
 
 Slipping from a pool; 
 May a leafy dryad 
 
 Hiding in the cool; 
 June is a wood-nymph 
 
 Teasing them to play; 
 Till comes, later, 
 
 The hot-hearted satyr, 
 August, their awaiter. 
 To frighten them away! 
 Will the earth-poetry of Greece never die ? 
 Still for its youth must the whole world sigh? 
 
 165 
 
PROVIDENCE 
 
 When I was far from the sea's voice and vast- 
 ness, 
 
 I looked for God in the days and hours and sea- 
 sons. 
 
 But now, by its large and eternal tides surrounded, 
 
 I know I shall only find Him in the greater swing of 
 the years. 
 
 For like the sea's are His mysteries, not to be learned 
 
 from a single surf-beat, 
 No wave suffices Him for a revelation. 
 How like the sea's, that dower all lands with green 
 
 and the breath of blossoms, 
 With dews that never have heard its deathless surges. 
 
 166 
 
PROVIDENCE 167 
 
 Let me be patient, then — sure that stars are not 
 
 jetsam tossing 
 On meaningless waters of waste Omnipotence. 
 Let me be patient, even when man is sunk in the 
 
 storm of His purpose, 
 And swirled, a strangled corpse, under His ages. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 I 
 
 When Maisie came to Wraithwood Hill 
 She looked back from it to the town, 
 Across green tops of pines far down, 
 And wondered how her fate would fall. 
 Straight from the doorway thro the trees, 
 That sighed as only pines can sigh, 
 She saw, swathed in the setting light, 
 The courthouse tower cut the sky. 
 And a pang quivered in her eye. 
 
 She was the bride of Allen Graves, 
 Master of Wraithwood and its Hill, 
 That rose behind, at the weird will 
 Of Nature, into rocky waves. 
 168 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 169 
 
 And crevices between the rocks 
 Ran dark and deep, under pine glooms, 
 Up to the peak, where was a place 
 Of family burial — whose nine tombs, 
 One yet unfilled, told of life's dooms. 
 
 Allen had won her: for about 
 
 Him was a lure of mystery. 
 
 He had lived solitarily 
 
 At Wraith wood — a romantic Doubt, 
 
 A Speculation for the tongues 
 
 Of the drab little town, when thro 
 
 The streets at times he spurred his roan. 
 
 As if he had some deed to do 
 
 That but an evil spirit knew. 
 
 And now, the bodeful wedding done. 
 She looked back with a pang of fear. 
 She had left so much that was dear; 
 Had she for shadows given the sun ? 
 Under that tower, pale, perhaps. 
 
170 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 Now, with the loss of her, she saw 
 The deep eyes of another, whom 
 Love with its unrequiting law 
 Had left for loneliness to gnaw. 
 
 One she had known from childhood days, 
 Quentin Gillespie, a glad boy, 
 With whom her girl's heart, in its joy. 
 Had first learnt Nature's wilding ways. 
 'Twixt the Toll Gate and Crows' Retreat, 
 Or by creek windings east and west. 
 They knew a hundred happy dells — 
 One happier than all the rest, 
 Because love there had been confessed. 
 
 Happier till — with Quentin gro\Mi 
 To manhood and a hope of fame 
 In the Law's corridors — there came 
 Allen across her heart, unknown. 
 And as a willow wand is drawn 
 By darkling water under ground. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 171 
 
 She to the strange mood of his blood 
 Was drawn — and now to him was bound: 
 Tho Quentin's wrong could not be drowned. 
 
 It wrung her. . . . But she started, for 
 Her bridegroom^s gaze was on her. '* Well ? • ' 
 He questioned, with a tone whose spell 
 She almost wished now to abhor. 
 " Well, is that tower Regret's; and Law 
 More tempting than a bridal feast 
 For two who from a stench of flowers 
 And a mellifluous marriage-priest 
 Are for a honeymoon released? " 
 
 She laughed, but somehow shuddered. This 
 Was his well wonted way . . . and yet, 
 Tuned as she was to reach and get 
 His vibrance, there was some Abyss, 
 Some more than tempting mystery 
 In which his words rang resonant. 
 " Allen," she said, " I'm half afraid; 
 
172 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 Tell me what is it that can haunt 
 Me so in you — for oh, I want — " 
 
 She did not finish, for a cloud 
 Sullen as that blotting the sun 
 Out of the west seemed darkly spun 
 Across his mood, a bitter shroud. 
 So to bring brightness back, she said, 
 " Come, we will have some wine," not know- 
 ing 
 That of all words flung lightly forth, 
 None that were meant for April sowing 
 Could bring a more relentless mowing. 
 
 She did not see that as he wheeled 
 
 A duel raged upon his lips, 
 
 A spasm with his soul at grips. 
 
 Or how his eye thirstily reeled. 
 
 They feasted, and the wine went singing 
 
 Into her heart with rilly joy. 
 
 To his, amid her bubbling talk, 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 173 
 
 It crept with madness to destroy, 
 As well he knew, their life's alloy. 
 
 For while she lifted to her lips 
 
 The happy foam that set joy free, 
 
 Each silent glass of devilry 
 
 He drained lashed him with sullen whips. 
 
 She babbled till across the wings 
 
 Of her light words a low oath fell. 
 
 " By God, you little fool," he said, 
 
 " Could you not see what was my spell ? 
 
 This drink for me is fire of Hell. 
 
 " I'm drunk, upon my wedding night, 
 And I'll be drunker ere the day. 
 Not even your soft body's sway 
 Can tempt me now this thirst to slight.'' 
 He rose and left her in the glitter 
 There of the candles and cold glass, 
 That seemed to burn or freeze the horror 
 Of what had darkly come to pass 
 Into her heart's fate-stricken mass. 
 
174 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 II 
 
 So began life for Maisie Graves — 
 Or was it death? The morning came; 
 The moon lost all her silver flame, 
 The crows flew field ward, hunger slaves. 
 The dewy stillness of the pines 
 Grew on her eyes that had not closed. 
 The Court House clock across cool space 
 Rang to her over roofs that dozed. 
 A tense sob shook her : then she rose. 
 
 No sound from Allen thro the night 
 Had come to her, none came with day. 
 Locked fiercely in he drank away 
 His soul and reason — and her right, 
 Her bridal right, her woman right, 
 Her love he swallowed thro those hours : 
 While servants tended silently. 
 As if compelled by occult powers 
 To watch death settle on sweet flowers. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 175 
 
 Once she threw on her hat to go 
 Back to her mother — or to him, 
 Who under that clock tower, dim 
 Now in the dazzling overflow 
 Of the full sun would . . . And yet, no. 
 She could not face her mother's plaint, 
 A widow's pale and privileged whine; 
 And Quentin's hungering restraint 
 Was not that of a selfless saint. 
 
 And so she waited, wandered, walked — 
 At last among the cone-strewn rocks 
 Of Wraithwood Hill ; and by a fox 
 Up to its peak unknown was stalked. 
 Sudden she came upon that place 
 Of burial with its empty tomb 
 Agape — and in it almost stept : 
 Then fled back shuddering thro the gloom 
 Of the pine boles to the sun's room. 
 
 And there, staggering out, he stood 
 Before her, on the columned porch, 
 
176 WHAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 Allen — his eyes a cunning torch, 
 And treachery within his mood. 
 " You did not go to him? " he said. 
 Then ere her lips moved, *' No pale lies. 
 You're mine, and if Gillespie dares 
 To take what has been in your eyes 
 For him today — he's less than wise." 
 
 Which said, back to his drunkenness, 
 Till, soberly, on the third night. 
 He sought her room : There was no flight; 
 Her flesh shone thro a thin night-dress. 
 " I ask no pardon," said he, " none. 
 I drink, for drink is in my blood. 
 The heat of those dead men upon 
 The Hill behind us rules my mood : 
 They rise in me and want's at flood. 
 
 *' But you — what will you do? Accept 
 My love and passion for the whiles 
 I am myself ? By winning wiles 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 177 
 
 Ghosts from the blood might oft be kept. 
 And this might be our bridal hour ! 
 I want you — all your beauty calls 
 To me, in drunkenness or free, 
 Like trumpets from dream-lifted walls, 
 Like music that on yearning falls." 
 
 She heard in terror — heard and shrank 
 Back from him, covering her breast 
 With arms that ruthlessly were pressed 
 Into its beauty — which he drank. 
 " Go from me, go: give me again 
 My freedom! " shuddering she cried. 
 " What in me once was love is now 
 A corpse three days have horrified 
 With crav/ling moments. Love has died." 
 
 " Or never was, perhaps? " he shrugged. 
 And then, " There's time. I'll go tonight. 
 But see to it there is no flight, 
 No fears by your Gillespie drugged. 
 
178 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 For half I think he stands between 
 Us now — or drink breeds jealousy." 
 When he was gone she could not move, 
 Till terror took her suddenly, 
 Lest he return — and worse things be. 
 
 She locked the door. Then in the moon 
 Out of her open window heard 
 The wild hoofs of his filly, spurred 
 Reckless into the night's deep swoon. 
 Asleep at last she fell, to dream 
 That she was mother to a child 
 Which was a drunkard at her breast, 
 And that her sotted husband smiled 
 And said, " Like me." She woke half wild. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Then came her friends to look upon 
 Her honeymoon and guess its glow. 
 They found instead a haunted woe, 
 And silence over pale lips drawn. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 179 
 
 Rumor that panders to all ills 
 Was whispering soon — and Quentin heard. 
 " A drunkard's bride . . . stricken with fear," 
 Was the invariable w^ord 
 That in the stream of tattle stirred. 
 
 So as forlorn, at a day's close, 
 She stood beside the sullen brook, 
 Half-circling Wraithwood with its hook 
 Of rainy waters, Quentin rose. 
 " Maisie, I had to come," he said. 
 " You are unhappy! Oh, my God, 
 Why did you leave me ! Will you come 
 Away with me? " . . . The oozy sod 
 Under her feet held her fear-shod. 
 
 Yet for a moment she reached out 
 
 Her arms to him, and " Quentin! " cried. 
 
 But as he leapt swift to her side. 
 
 Terror became for her too stout. 
 
 And so she fled, stumbling and falling, 
 
180 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 Rising and stumbling once again. 
 Aware, she knew not how, that Allen 
 Had heard, and from that guilty fen, 
 His heart, would some wild deed unpen. 
 
 She knew — and yet, strangling and weeping, 
 
 As the hysteric moment hung. 
 
 She ran, her heart and knees unstrung, 
 
 Across her eyes wet branches sweeping. 
 
 She felt a flower crush beneath 
 
 Her foot into the sobbing soil. 
 
 Then a shot rang, and Quentin's life, 
 
 Under her feet, a bloody moil, 
 
 She seemed to trample in wild toil. 
 
 Fainting she fell at last within 
 Her chamber — all her terror still; 
 It was as if Death had his will. 
 Or as if breath had never been. 
 The minutes passed then, till a step. 
 That fell in stealth upon the stair 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 181 
 
 Without, went thro her frigid frame, 
 A vibrant prescience in the air 
 Of him whose crime had laid her there. 
 
 She moaned. He entered — blood upon 
 His hand and cheek that bore no wound; 
 And horror's desperation runed 
 His haggard look, drunken and drawn. 
 " Get up," he cursed her, " there's no time. 
 Damn you, I must be gone from here. 
 And you must stay " — her eyes unclosed — 
 " Stay and do all you can to clear ..." 
 She saw the blood and screamed with fear. 
 
 " What have you done ! what have you done ! " 
 
 He wiped a finger of its blood; 
 
 Then a cold mockery seemed to flood 
 
 His drunken sense, and thro it run. 
 
 *' Oh, you have killed him! " At the words 
 
 He straightened. In the pines without 
 
 A dark wind went. It seemed like death 
 
182 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 To Maisie, like the moaning shout 
 Of Quentin's soul, gone out, gone out! 
 
 She tried to move — toward the door. 
 Was Quentin killed? oh, was he? oh! 
 Her soul was swimming in blind woe, 
 A sea beneath her was the floor. 
 Then thro her suddenly the stare 
 Of Allen went, searching her eyes. 
 A dark hate and a drunken light 
 Of new suspicion seemed to rise 
 Thro him, and cunning — coldly wise. 
 
 It broke, " You'll go with me, not stay, 
 And treacherously tell! Get ready! " 
 Rage made his tongue a moment steady. 
 Maisie was like a reed asway. 
 And yet she knew that she must go 
 There to the brook and see ! Her hair 
 Fell as she fled him, ere he knew. 
 And found her foot upon the stair. 
 His following with fuddled care. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 183 
 
 He overtook her at the gate. 
 *' Run? you would run away and tell? 
 I'll put you where you will be well 
 Away from words — and power to prate." 
 By her hair-tangled wrist he drew 
 Her then: the pines were moaning, moaning, 
 And the new moon hung in the West, 
 Like a cold blade some hand was honing 
 Against the clouds, for an atoning. 
 
 He forced her feet up the dark path 
 Toward the Hill's summit — and the tombs. 
 Horror was in its rocky glooms; 
 She wept, she pled against his wrath. 
 The night things all seemed listening 
 Around her, hostile, frightened, wild. 
 A startled owl swept past, and with 
 A hoot their stumbling way reviled: 
 Thro Allen's teeth one curse more filed. 
 
 At last they reached it — that death-place, 
 Where the wind wilder went — and where 
 
184 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 The shadows on the nine stones there 
 Danced like dark ghosts, then sank apace. 
 Maisie cried out, trembling and shaking, 
 For now she knew. In that void tomb 
 He meant to put her, in that one 
 Digged for his final resting-room. . . . 
 Her swooning did not stay the doom. 
 
 IV 
 
 Such nights have been — and that night was. 
 The hand that whetted the sharp moon 
 For sacrifice had drawn it soon 
 Down thro the stars : then came a pause. 
 An hour : yet Maisie had not moved. 
 Then a chill pierced her heart and fluttered 
 Her pulseless lids; a troubled sigh 
 Thro her insensate lips was uttered, 
 Such as the pines above her muttered. 
 
 Then her eyes opened. Where was she? 
 Only the darkness and dank stone; 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 185 
 
 And somewhere still that low pine-moan, 
 Familiar, yet . . . where could she be ? 
 A drop fell on her from the slab 
 Over her head — then memory 
 Let in, on her oblivion, 
 A drop which set those terrors free 
 That swept her to insentiency. 
 
 Those terrors of the nine death-stones. 
 
 Where now she knew she was shut in, 
 
 By Allen's wild and drunken sin. 
 
 Under the earth beside dead bones, 
 
 She sought to rise and struck her brow 
 
 Against the slab that covered her. 
 
 The pain and horror as she fell 
 
 Took from her limbs the strength to stir — 
 
 And left wraiths where no true wraiths were. 
 
 For thro the tombs around her those 
 Forebears of Allen seemed to ooze, 
 And their pale shape to interfuse 
 
186 WRAITHWOOD HILL 
 
 With all her body's haunted throes. 
 Their deathly inebriety 
 So wrought upon her that a shriek 
 Broke from her lips, despite all terror, 
 And then another, till fear-weak, 
 Life once more from her seemed to leak. 
 
 But death, the swiftest of all things, 
 
 Can be so lingeringly slow 
 
 That time seems cruelty a-flow 
 
 Out of eternity's dry springs. 
 
 And so for Maisie to and fro 
 
 Came trance and terror — came and went, 
 
 Till the last beat within her veins 
 
 Was frozen, its cold anguish spent. 
 
 And in sure Silence she was pent. 
 
 They found her — after Quentin's death 
 Had set the quest a-cry. Her hair 
 Was dewed with the damp dripping there. 
 Her sweet lips absent of all breath. 
 
WRAITHWOOD HILL 187 
 
 Under the pines they bore her down, 
 Tenderly, by each rocky place 
 Whence wild flowers leaned with swaying sigh 
 To look into her passing face 
 And say above her a still grace. 
 
 And now Wraithwood is tenantless, 
 Save for the fox — and, it is said. 
 For stealthier footsteps of the dead 
 That sometimes sadly round it press. 
 For Murder is a landlord none 
 Will lease from save the neediest. 
 So the town clock a verdict still 
 Strikes thro each unforgetting breast 
 Of that dark night's forlorn inquest. 
 
 THE END 
 
Earth and New Earth 
 
 By CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 America has to-day no poet who so truly answers 
 the multiplex tests of poetry as does Cale Young 
 Rice. . . . He is a robust genius, a voluminous 
 producer. Given quality, sustained and wide rang- 
 ing composition is a fair test of poetic power. — 
 The New York Sun. 
 
 This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. 
 Rice's versatility or power of expression. Its 
 poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and 
 vitally spiritual in thought. — The Continent (Chi- 
 cago). 
 
 Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are more 
 than timely; they represent a large vision of the 
 world events now transpiring . . . and his affirma- 
 tion of the spiritual in such an hour establishes 
 him in the immemorial office of the poet-prophet 
 . . . The volume is a worthy addition to the large 
 amount of his work. — Anna L. Hopper in The 
 Louisville Courier-Journal. 
 
 Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American 
 poet. — D. F. Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester 
 Post Express. 
 
 The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as 
 the most distinguished offering of this country to 
 the combined arts of poetry and the drama. 
 "Earth and New Earth" strikes a ringing new 
 note of the earth which shall be after the war. — 
 The Memphis Commercial- Appeal. 
 
 12mo., IS 8 pages, $1.2S net 
 
 At all bookstores Published by 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 353 Fourth Ave. New York City 
 
The Collected 
 Plays and Poems 
 
 OF 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 The great quality of Cale Young Rice's work is 
 that, amid all the distractions and changes of con- 
 temporary taste, it remains true to the central 
 drift of great poetry. His interests are very wide 
 . . . and his books open up a most varied world 
 of emotion and romance. — Gilbert Murray. 
 
 These volumes are an anthology wrought by a 
 master hand and endowed with perennial vitality. 
 
 . . . This writer is the most distinguished master 
 of lyric utterance in the new world . . . and he 
 has contributed much to the scanty stock of Amer- 
 ican literary fame. Fashions in poetry come and 
 go, and minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass 
 in tumultuous review. But these volumes are of 
 the things that are eternal in poetic expression. 
 
 . . . They embody the hopes and impulses of uni- 
 versal humanity. — The Philadelphia North Amer- 
 ican. 
 
 Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many critics as 
 the poet of his country, if not of his generation, 
 not to create a demand for a full edition of his 
 works. — The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. 
 
 This gathering of his forces stamps Mr, Rice as 
 one of the world's true poets, remarkable alike 
 for strength, versatility and beauty of expression. 
 — The Chicago Herald (Ethel M. Colson). 
 
Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," "The 
 Mystic," etc., does not need to be told that they 
 rank with the very best poetry. And Mr. Rice's 
 dramas are not equaled by any other American 
 author's. . . . The admirable characteristic of his 
 work is the understanding of life. . . . And when 
 those who are loyal to poetic traditions cherished 
 through the whole history of our language con- 
 template the anemia and artificiality of contem- 
 poraries, they can but assert that Mr. Rice has 
 the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, imagery and 
 pulsating sympathy, which in wondering admira- 
 tion are ascribed to genius. — The Los Angeles 
 Times. 
 
 Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him highest 
 praise. But the universality of his genius is no- 
 where more apparent than in his lyrics. . . . For 
 sheer grace and loveliness some of these lyrics are 
 unsurpassed in modern poetry. — The N. E. Home- 
 stead (Springfield, Mass.). 
 
 It is with no undue repetition that we speak of 
 the very great range and very great variety of 
 Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and mode of ex- 
 pression. . . . The passage of his spirit is truly 
 from deep to deep. — Margaret S. Anderson (The 
 Louisville Evening Post). 
 
 In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America has 
 rarely known before. — The Rochester (N. Y.) 
 Post Express. 
 
 It is good to find such sincere and beautiful work 
 as is in these two volumes. . . . Here is a writer 
 with no wish to purchase fame at the price of 
 eccentricity of either form or subject. — The Inde- 
 pendent. 
 
Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. ... He 
 will live with our great poets. — Louisville Herald 
 (J. J. Cole). 
 
 Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he is not 
 merely an American poet. Over existence and the 
 whole world his vision extends. He is a poet of 
 human life and his range is uncircumscribed. — 
 The Baltimore Evening News. 
 
 Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I should say 
 that his prime virtue is fecundity or affluence, the 
 power to conceive and combine events resource- 
 fully, and an abundance of pointed phrases which 
 recalls and half restores the great Elisabethans. 
 His aptitude for structure is great. — The Nation 
 (O. IV. Firkins). 
 
 Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes and has 
 a right to be ranked with the first of living poets. 
 One must read the volumes to get an idea of 
 their cosmopolitan breadth and fresh abiding 
 charm. . . . The dramas, taken as a whole, rep- 
 resent the most important work of the kind that 
 has been done by any living writer; . . . This 
 work belongs to that great world where the 
 mightiest spiritual and intellectual forces are for- 
 ever contending; to that deeper life which calls 
 for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The 
 Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry). 
 
 2 Vol. $3.00 net 
 At all bookstores Published by 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 353 Fourth Ave. New York City 
 
npHE following volumes are now 
 included in the author's ''Collected 
 Plays and Poems," and are not ob- 
 tainable elsewhere : 
 
 At the World's Heart 
 
 Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers 
 wherever English is the native speech. — The Man- 
 chester {England) Guardian. 
 
 Porzia; A Play 
 
 It matters little that we hesitate between ranking 
 Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist ; what mat- 
 ters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any 
 living poet of America ; his inspiration is true, 
 and his poetry is the real thing. — The London 
 Bookman. 
 
 Far Quests 
 
 It shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, 
 and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally 
 it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that 
 suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting 
 fame. — The Daily Telegraph {London). 
 
 The Immortal Lwre; Four Plays 
 
 It is great art — with great vitality. — James Lane 
 Allen. 
 
 Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling 
 it — or any of Stephen Phillips's work — in a vivid 
 presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of 
 the characters. — The New York Times. 
 
Many Gods 
 
 These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the 
 East . . . What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that 
 here we have an American poet whom we may 
 claim as ours. — William Dean Hozvells, in The 
 North American Review. 
 
 Nirrana Days 
 
 Air. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up 
 almost the entire equipment of many poets now- 
 adays, but human nature is more to him alwaj'S 
 . . . and he has the feeling and imaginative sym- 
 pathy without which all poetry is but an empty 
 and vain thing. — The London Bookman. 
 
 A Night in Avignon: A Play 
 
 It is as vivid as a page from Browning, Mr. Rice 
 has the dramatic pulse. — James Hiineker. 
 
 Yolanda of Cyprus; A Play 
 
 It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful 
 words, and so differs from the great mass of 
 poetic plays. — Prof. Gilbert Murray. 
 
 David; A Play 
 
 It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an English- 
 man or a Frenchman, his reputation as his coun- 
 try's most distinguished poetic dramatist would 
 have been assured by a more universal sign of 
 recognition. — The Baltimore News. 
 
 Charles Di Tocca; A Play 
 
 It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical 
 drama written by an American for some years. 
 There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repel- 
 lant passion, great sincerity and penetration, and 
 great elevation and beauty of language. — The 
 Chicago Post. 
 
 Song-Surf 
 
 Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with 
 nature and life, and a welcome originality of sen- 
 timent and metrical harmony. — Sydney Lee. 
 
Trails Sunward 
 
 By 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 Cale Young Rice has written some of the finest 
 poetry of the last decade, and is the author of 
 the very best poetic dramas ever written by an 
 American. . . . He is one of the few supreme 
 lyrists . . . and one of the few remaining lovers 
 of beauty . . . who write it. One of the very few 
 writers of vers libre who know just what they are 
 doing. — The Los Angeles Times. 
 
 Another book by Cale Young Rice . . . one of 
 the few poetic geniuses this country has produced. 
 ... In its sixty or more poems may be found the 
 hall mark of individuality that denotes preemi- 
 nence and signalizes independence. — The Phila- 
 delphia North American. 
 
 Mr. Rice attempts and succeeds in deepening the 
 note of his singing . . . keeping its brilliant tech- 
 nique, its intricate verse formation, but seeking 
 all the while for words to interpret the profound 
 things of life. The music of his lines is more per- 
 fect than ever, his rhythms fresh and varied. — 
 Littell's Living Age. 
 
 Cale Young Rice's work is always simple and sin- 
 cere . . . but that does not prevent him from 
 voicing his song with passion and virility. Nearly 
 all his poems have elevation of thought and feel- 
 ing, with beauty of imagery and music. — The New 
 York Times. 
 
 Readers familiar with Cale Young Rice's previous 
 work realize that he ranks with the very best 
 modern poets. — The New Orleans Times-Pica^ 
 
 yune. 
 
Whether the forms of this book are lyrical, nar- 
 rative, or dramatic, there is an excellence of work- 
 manship that denotes the master hand. . . . And 
 while the range of ideas is broad, the treatment of 
 each is distinguished by a strength and beauty re- 
 markably fine. — The Continent (Chicago). 
 
 Mr. Rice proves the fine argument of his preface 
 . . . for this book has in it form and beauty and 
 a full reflection of the externals as well as the 
 soul of the America he loves. — The Philadelphia 
 Public Ledger. 
 
 The work of this poet always demands and re- 
 ceives unstinted admiration. . . . His is not the 
 poetic fashion of the moment, but of all poetic 
 time. — The Chicago Herald. 
 
 In "Trails Sunward," Mr. Rice demonstrates as 
 heretofore the possibility of attaining poetic 
 growth and originality, even in the Twentieth 
 Century, without extremism. . . . Sanity linked 
 w^ith vitality and breadth in art make for per- 
 manence, and one can but feel that Mr. Rice builds 
 for more than a day. — The Louisville Courier 
 Journal. 
 
 I rarely use the term "sublimity," yet in touches 
 of "The Foreseers," particularly in its cavern-set 
 opening, I should say that Mr. Rice had scaled that 
 eminence. — 0. W. Firkins (The Nation). 
 
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