Three Books of Poetry

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE INNER GARDEN. VERSE THE STRICKEN KING. VERSE THE MODERN SOCIAL RELIGION THE DYNAMICS OF ART (/ p> eparation, ) Creation Post-Impressionist Poems

Horace Holley f

(Paris, January-October, 1913)

London A, C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C, 1914 WILLIAM BKKNDON AND SON, LIU.. HMMtMv PLVXIOUIll Contents Dedication The Vision The Well Beloved In a Factory In a Cafe, i .

In a Cafe, n .

A Gauguin A Pastel Les Morts Myth .

Vale .

England The Plain Woman Everyman The Lonely Cup Skyscrapers Homeward The Dance The Crowd The Egoist They .

Hertha . 6 Contents FACE The Girl . . /. . The Encounter . . . The Blue Girl . . *. . Eve's Lament . . . Eve . . . . . Ghosts . . . Eve's Daughter . . . Love . . . . Souls . . . . . The Dreamer . . . . O Brutes and Dreamers ! . . Reveille . . . Before a Gauguin . . . The Hill . . . . An Old Prayer Resaid . , . In the Mirror . . . . Pilgrim . . . Paradox . . . Fragment . . . Janus . . . . Creator . . . . Creation . . . 61 Ecstasy . . . Goal . . . . DEDICATION C\ GOD, Thou knowest I ^~^ With what few and things slight, Form, music, colour and my power of words, Created heaven in this deathly place. Aye, as I struggled for the air I breathe And seized my bread and water from the earth By toil and pain, Thou knowest, God, I built a little heaven, An atmosphere, a dream More fixed than hills beside the ocean, Where I have lived content. God, if Thou hast not to struggle, If Thou art free in fact as I in dream, In will as I in hope, What larger heaven Thou hast built thyself! Sometimes within this cloudy mirror I glimpse it steadfast, and my passion hurts Like wounded birds in storm. O there shall I enter, no, not enter, But I shall make its equal, stone on stone, Thy watching architect, and dwell therein Godlike, in our good time. Creation

The Vision T CLIMB. The old spirit of the race, like hidden music, Tugs at my toiling feet and hands, Beats on my thought. I pause;

The whole world dances to a strange sad measured tune. Baffled to reach sheer heights of silence I closemy ears. The world shall dance, But dance from my own spirit's rhythm !

Deafened, I climb. The old spirit of the race, dawn-mist, Taking a thousand lights and gleams, A sheen perceptible on peak and plain, Tangles the flow of river, the stillness of tree, The action of men in labour. Beauty The spirit of the race proclaims. ! But I No longer perplexed, seeking the sun's pure blaze Life's colour shall be the hues of my own dream !

I close my sight, and blinded, climb.

Suddenly, gaining the utmost peak, Opening my eyes, I see beneath the sun United in an unguessed radiant glory io Creation The whole world changed, created, re-created Mine, mine to love and know And, !

Giving my ears and senses their desire, Silence at first, then slowly arising, The flux of musical rhythm swift and deep Binding all things in one tremendous march, The glad progression of my conscious spirit !

Now, kneeling in speechless wondering gratitude, Pierced through by free, creative wills and moods, I give myself to this, the common earth Redeemed, dissolved in my long-prayed-for vision !

Men, rivers, trees to you I turn again, :

Too strong for hate, too humble for doubt and fear, Descending from this peak of ecstasy To change your drugging music for this paean, To drive away your pestilent dangerous beauty For this renewing, soul-seen living sun ! The Well Beloved 1 1

The Well Beloved f\ THE well beloved, fortunate men and women Fortunate, !

They show the only authentic virtue Desirable in every race and clime :

To be at home in one's own soul And comfortably fit, like a student's gown, The folds and wrinkles of one's nature. I love to fall upon one of them suddenly Just out the window, or round the corner, When I am vacant or grieving or hateful ; Iknow them by a secret sympathy, And I go straightway healed, as by a spell, Strutting a little, hearty, bold, superb, Spilling over, in short, as a man's life often should. I remember each of them I've seen : Such days are mirrors hung against my hope. There's one, now, leaned beside a mossy well, Dipping his fingers, lingering. Within his eyes I saw Continual amazement, the revelation Of sheer meanings in things blinked at, passed over, since, Well, Wordsworth, we'll say ; And one that followed a rebel mob all night To feel the human pulse at point of bursting. (And when he came again among us So strangely catholic, titan he, we stared in awe.) And one that stood before an antique desk Pondering old difficult words in a parchment book, 1 2 Creation Seldom turning a page, so deep he peered Into the lost childhood and mystery of time Glimmering through the philosophic Greek ; And then another (he too, an old, old man) Whose sweeping beard fell down and almost hid The tawny violin he pressed Rapturously to him, like a new mother; and I waited Impatient for a fierce music to stab me ecstatic, (But he deeply, deeply listening To some old master or some grave inward tune Forgot me, though I coughed.) O, O the well beloved !

Who taught them the true secret of being Over our heads who wait but hear it not ? They never hurry, never disintegrate their souls, Fill the moment and the life-time richly up ;

Grow to the time and place they find themselves Inevitably, like the weather, And seem to a casual passer-by The very spirit of the brook or forest, Its human symbol, its reality ; Become the lordly genius of all knowledge That holds the piecemeal generations Fixed to a conscious, unifying will. They are not many, But where you meet but one or two There's the rare odour in the world's garden, The poignant taste in the soul's wine, The essence that memory feeds upon, Sick of the common waste of life, TO write a noble record or a joyous dream. In a Factory 13

In a Factory

GMOKY, monotonous rows Of half-unconscious men Serving, with lustreless glance and dreamless mind, The masterful machines ; These are the sons of herdsmen, hunters, Lords of the sunlit meadow, The lonely peak, The stirring, shadow-haunted wood, Of mariners who swung from sea to sea In carven ships And named the unknown world :

Hunters, herdsmen, sailors, all By trade or chase or harvest Winning their substance Rudely, passionately like a worthy game With a boy's great zest of playing. O labour, Whoso makes thee an adventure Thrilling to the nervous core of life, He is the true Messiah, The world's Saviour, long-waited, long-wept-for. 14 Creation

In a Cafe

H''OW the grape leaps upward to Thirsty for the sun ! life,

Only a crushed handful, yet Laughing for its freedom from the dark It bubbles and spills itself, A little sparkling universe new-born. Well, higher within my blood and ecstasy You'll sunward rise, O grape, Than ever on the slow, laborious vine. In a Cafe 1

In a Cafe ii

T DRAIN it, then, Wine o' the sun, sun-bright, And give it fuller life within my blood, A conscious life of richer thought and joy. And yet, That too will perish soon like withered leaves Athirst for an ultimate sun Upon the soul's horizon. Come down, O God, even to me, And drain my being as I drank the grape, That I, this moment's perfect thing, Live so for ever. 1 6 Creation

A Gauguin ' 'O see, know, passionately take to heart I

The terrible beauty, in feature and in soul, Of one I heartily, heartily hate ; Then, possessed by her magnificence, Wholly become it, lover-like for the time, Create her perfect likeness, line and form, Conspicuous for the world's astartled wonder :

This is the last mystery of art, Moulding, with a strong, slow, hate-masterful hand, The delicate mask of some tormenting beauty.

A Pastel Vf ONDER the towered city, yonder the world . .

A heart-beat more, and surely from the East Another land will show Its delicate promise native to our joy Over the mauve and silver twilight :

The soul of some remote, unguessed Japan. Les Morts 17

Les Morts CTRANGELY between the darkness and my heart The lost eyes shine, And hands, fonder than all desire, Pass slowly on my hair and face. Whispers, arising from old depths of dream, Hover within my thought, awaking tears. How soft, How soft and tenderly clinging Pass the hands of the dead Over our hair in darkness. These are they that living we could not hold, That slipped like lustral water Out of our hands, away ; And all our passion, all our desperate prayer Held them, O held them not. 1 8 Creation

Myth /~^ ^^ OD bless me ! how that rascal time Keeps on his poet's tricks !

I'the full daylight stare of trained historians and doctors, Under the very hands of modern bridge-builders, aeroplane-inventors and what-not, He's imperceptibly filled my heart with a new romantic myth Rich-flavoured as any tale Greek schoolboys heard On Attic slopes of a shepherd's holiday !

Those boys grown up and changed, those boys grown men ? Freckles a City Mayor, three children, frock-coat and public title ? (He swam our swimming pond three times across); Champion a judge, his car outside the court, Whom surely God designed a prime first baseman ? And Hornet a clothes-importer, prominent, etc. ? No, no !

They are not men, like all these common lives, I'll not believe it, though across the ocean Newspapers and letters mark their late success. No. If they are not still young, eternal boys, Their age has steeped itself in richer essence And turned them into joyous demigods. Their true life takes my memory like a myth Vale 1 9

Witnessed each day by the bright holiday sun, The glad, splashing river, the haunting odour of cherry blossoms, And my own faithful heart, that yearns That yearnsyw demigods, not men.

Vale O ER eyes turn mutely, patiently Like a hurt fawn's away, moist with a sense Of some great passionate faith or promise Broken, denied to the living-out of life. And in the muter stillness where they stand He sees as through an opened window The last petal from a well-loved bough Tremble and flutter down ;

Hears, as from a neighbour orchard, A friendly throstle flute his parting tune, And suddenly, suddenly knows from her, from him, That spring itself, fleeing a stricken land, Has passed for ever. 2O Creation

England T GAZE upon the golden, steaming hills, England and yield a grateful heart to thee. !

What !this cottage thatched against the sun, This April morning steeped in fallow glebe, And not an English heart broken in rapture To keep thee England ? The Vandal poets wait against the coast To conquer thee and give the land a soul.

The Plain Woman \X7HAT is the beauty of women ? Listen ! a song that makes the whole world sob Its aching heart away. But I ? I am the silence closed about the song That keeps it beautiful. The Lonely Cup 21

Everyman T CURSED, she wept ; And from her tears and broken heart Eden arose about me, and I stood Perfect within her beauty. God how has that spirit hid unseen !

Behind the clods and hates of daily life ?

The Lonely Cup vy ITHIN dusky room the Betweenwhiles of the fire's insistent flap

My silver spoon taps out Like startled sentinel's musket, The steaming tea Hisses against the cup like far-off rapids, Whirlpools of dim alarm . . .

Impelled, I deeply gaze within the amethyst liquid Somehow become a globed, translucent fate. Shapes, colours, figures, dreams and deeds Create, conjoin, dissolve ; Ideas, evolutions, histories, moods and souls Steam richly up and fill the empty room. No broken heart, no desolation, But life's vast wonder, changing, quick, intense, A whole fellowship of things imminent and real, Portentous times to come, sweetens for me The lonely cup. 22 Creation

Skyscrapers A FOREST of strange palms "^^ That stir not, nor sway in the wind, Nor nod sleepy at evening, nor reach to nestling birds A warm and comfortable mossy bough ;

Strange giant palms Rigid and sternly fixed in the purple sunset. One day the loud vexed ocean Will drive a furious tempest from the East To lash your stony trunks, To tear your earth-devouring roots And shake upon a shore deserted This terrible fruit of flame long petrified.

Homeward ' I 'HERE is no other bosom for a grown man To sob his whole heart-bursting grief upon Than the sweet motherhood of his own native race ;

No voice to call him back from loneliness Than his own language, uttered from the first

comfortings of love By the hushed lips of poets and faithful women Speaking into the great darkness That he, in his dark time, may turn homeward again and find The world's heart warmly near. The Dance 23

The Dance moonlight steeps the jungle-glade, * And all the movement, all the pulse of night, Gathers within the hollow-sounding ocean. Long, melancholy waves Beat nature's avid life within my blood ; An essence slips from the still trees Freeing my thought from dream. I rise,

Feeling the air like womanhood about me, Arise and grope through silence to the moon, Then turn, sway, bow and pause again, Waiting the rhythm. Find me, sea-loud night !

Find me, for you are spent and old. I bring fresh heart and joyous consciousness Will give you speech, soul, freedom, thought, Will tell the old, heroic lie of life So gaily none will doubt for another age. The rhythm falls like women's passion Upon my lips, my hands ; The world is sudden music and I dance, I dance, the soul of the lonely, moon-steeped glade, The thought, the freedom of the laboured sea, Swayed by a grace not mine In worship to a long-forgotten god. The womanhood of things closely and warm Presses my thrilling senses, 24 Creation Creating at my fingers and my eyes A vision, Eve, all palpable and warm, That beats upon my sobs And mates my life with passion. Eve! I come . .O Eve . !

Then, like a setting moon, a storm subdued, The rhythm closes round about itself, Passing to secret consummation Beyond nature, farther out than thought, Lost even to heart-beats. And I, tossed by, forgotten, wingless to follow, Sink back into the apathetic darkness With earth's ten million years, Into the prison-house of tree and ocean. Eix. . The Crowd 25

The Crowd TC*ED from the gloom of night-strewn barren streets And gorged from the gloomier night of barren homes, The heavy, corpulent crowd Enormously sprawls the house of carnival, Mute as a foeless, mateless sea-deep monster Heaving through livid, phosphorescent caves Its bulk of terrible hunger seeking prey. As one great staring Thing the brutal crowd, Passion-distended, Rolls ponderously out its whole slow length, The avid, pitiless will of huddled men Absorbing into one vapid, bottomless soul Its long-craved prey of pleasure. The dancers flutter, dazzling Its vacant eye ;

These girls with shining trays of heaped fruit And wines from the world's mad reckless south Steep drowsily Its wandering senses ; Deafened by changing music, It grows partly glad. How did I come a part of this huge Thing, Myself so harmless ? Yet I too fled from my own hateful gloom, From many a biting sorrow, Gladly forgetting myself and others To surge with these the warm sleek blazing house, The house of carnival. 26 Creation So the monster dies, Its bloated power Dissolves in tears. I look and deeply know The secret parts, like me, of the corpulent Thing, The avid men and women of the crowd. And O these dancing girls, this glittering fruit The Thing glutted Its empty heart upon, 'Twas all the broken pieces of old joy, The fragments of our man and woman dream Which, blindly coming together, We sought amid these changing lights and sounds To take, to gather up, fragment by fragment, And shape into one conscious soul again. I, when the rear gate of my life opens, From all such tragic hypocritic days Shall turn to the far mountain of my secret will, That stark, still place, to build a small cottage there Beside a whispering brook, To sit alone and think of many things. The Egoist 27

The Egoist CHE has no soul. Her almond eyes diminish to a spark And change the sun to amber. When she looks at me I draw without myself and pass, unwilled, The strange lids of her eyes, and enter A garden that knows no law, Sowed with imaginations like a god's. Ienter and become Another self, drunken By new thoughts and hot-pulsed danger. I long to sing, to prove my madness, Dancing away from habit, Responsibility and the grave laws of soul. A woman has no right to perilous thoughts. She has no soul, and O, I lose my own, and all my satisfied past,

Desiring her." 28 Creation

They CHE, with smile of wrinkled stone, Watched Lola dance.

Like naked flames Blown dazzling by a masterful wind Frantic with conflagration, leaping on To seize intolerable smokeless heights j

Like branches, laurel and bay, Gently, soberly borne by virgin girls In white procession To lay upon some holy monument ;

Like stars that light through storm Astonishing the soul Two stars above the rushing tempest poised Her hair, her limbs, her eyes :

O God ! how Lola danced !

He Wearied a little, gray before his time, Polite, attentive . . . apathetic . . .

Quickened, knew within his blood Suddenly the old adventure ; Within his thought The tense, creative pull and tingle of life Hertha 29 The vision Knew himself in Loia, and leaned With eyes and heart and will To seize this marvel And make its essence eternally his own.

She, with smile of wrinkled stone, Watched Lola dance.

Hertha tfXQUISITE to her slow silk's rustle Nay its echo Who save one hate-tortured might say how perfect This woman's silken and perfumed exquisite Feminine beauty ? 3O Creation

The Girl C HE plagues me with the rapture of my sex ;

bring her flowers and kisses, I

I breathe her hair

And dream against her breasts ; I splash her limbs with water from a pool. Then, inspired to something of my manhood, I sing to her, and to myself, a song, The song of Eve :

But frightened she laughs aloud And runs and hides within the sleepy wood. I follow, sobbing. The Encounter 31

The Encounter DOOR shivering girl, All eyes That swim in timid wonder, Hungry, forlorn ; street-corner girl, How the stupid world has starved her !

Stay, I will give her riches, Not bread and wine and pearls, (Those eyes were never starved for bread alone !)- But love, soft kisses, ardent words And fellow-admiration ; these Will lid her lidless eyes, restore her soul To vacant lip and bosom. She Will lie as summer dawn within my heart, And moonlight on my imagination. 32 Creation

The Blue Girl CHE does not walk, like me j

She swims, an undulation, a perfumed water, changing, changing. When she is gone I try to think of her, But dream and all desire turn inward, empty, Her passing burns no steadfast line upon my vision To recreate her beauty from, Beauty, like life itself, lost in its own rhythm. Perfume and water. Others I could dream of, and loved my dream far more than woman. She alone I must have, the beautiful, Like perfumed water, flowing, flowing. Eve's Lament 33

Eve's Lament

"\X7HEN I first stopped, dismayed, and wept, Caught in the tangled vines, at the world's wildness, You swiftly came, O Adam, Heartily bade me wait, and singing gaily Hewed through the crowded jungle growth a way. Lonely I waited by the cave, afraid You never should return ; but you returned, And standing upright in the dim home-twilight, Kissed me, and loved me safe.

Then, when I wept once more For rivers to be crossed and hills laid low And the great ocean to be governed, You heartily bade me wait, and while I waited, Lonely and desolate at home, You, Adam, pushed your might against the hills And laid them low ; Pondered a moment by the swollen streams And bridged them ; Flung ships across the white, rebellious seas, And governed to your will the tide and storm. But, each adventure done, you hastened Searching for Eve, and ever as you came 34 Creation Brought the glad bold heart that stirred my heart, Strong manhood to my womanhood so warm, Adventure to my adventure, That, united in our twilit chamber, We laughed for contentment, lapped in vision. Never the task too hard, Never the way too long, But you returned, O Adam, Joyous to me.

Now, in a moody night I looked upon the stars, wept forlorn, Lost within their infinite mocking spaces, Their soulless tangle, wept, and cried aloud To save my spirit slipping, slipping away. The boy-heart swelled within you, You bade me wait a little, then sped Out to the solitary hills, Down in the dripping pits Pondering, and groping and dreaming, To measure them, to master them, for me. So long, so long I waited, Grown cold with barren terror ;

Yet, turned thus upon myself My womanhood awoke more fiercely, Steeped richer passion in my heart, Made me more lovely than a dream, Desirable and warm. And I danced, dreaming of your return, Adventure to match adventure, Vision to mate your vision ; Eve's Lament 35 Then You homeward crept, O Adam, Dragged by unconscious habit, like a worm, And stumbled upon the threshold empty-eyed. Dumbly you sit apart Amazed by the cold frame of things As one stricken by a mortal inward fear ; And all my passion spilled upon your lips, And all my trembling silence Has not restored your boyish mirth, Has not reflamed your eyes, melted your heart, Given your cosmic space a human feature Nor saved me from this modern widowhood. 36 Creation

Eve have you hid yourself, O Eve, Among these laughing girls, And why are you divided, Womanhood, Among these anxious women ? There is no world for me, But only silent hills and empty woods, And restless seas and rivers, And lights of sun and star That bear their barren torches up and down, And only seasons, storms and holidays ; No soul, but only thoughts and moods And self-tormenting dreams, Until we mate, O Eve, And gather all these fragment-worlds and lives Into our large and procreant passion. Ghosts 37

Ghosts TF you have never lain Against the passion of a poet's heart In his great hour, Created by his triumph to a queen And known the world beneath you ; Girl, Go straightway to a far, deserted hill And cry, with arms outflung, That you are dead, not living, Aye, mock the sun And call the world a dream ; Pray fiercely for birth With words and gestures such as ghosts employ Beneath the grave (For you are one with them !), Do so And I, whose hour passed on Without the mating heart, the comrade arms, The poet loneliest in his vision, I Will follow you, Ogirl, And mingle with your bitterest sob Silence less sweet. 38 Creation

Eve's Daughter have tamed me, O Eve's daughter !

The promise of veiled eyes, The passion of newly opened arms, Breasts' opulence at twilight, All the vision I sought to mould of life (The man-dream, womanhood), You tenderly seize, you change, Eve's daughter. All womanhood is you, Eve's daughter, And touched by you with something still and far, An awe, remote as stars. Eyes shine with new promise, Arms' passion creates a new desire, a longing To enter life's unravishable heart You, only you can still. O, you have tamed me, child, Eve's daughter . . . and mine. Love 39

Love '"THIS is the way, O girl, of love divine That men and women, rooted in earth's soil With trees and dogs, ignore :

My conscious and abundant passion For life in God, Directed by your unawakened beauty, Pours out in ardent words and warm embraces, And stirs the soul within you :

Aye, I give you soul, new life and being From my abundance, Wake you in stainless, masterful ecstasy From your long earthly sleep ; And you arise, conscious, grateful, devoted (/ love as blind hearts say).

Then, the steep wave spent, My head upon your lap, my hands relaxed, A great emptiness where I had hailed my soul, You, O conscious girl, Will know to render me a soul again With ardent hands and voice, with joyous will, And I shall rise Your mate, restored against your need. Ah, amid the ruin of all worlds and lives, Our being shall not fail. Nay, We two shall live for ever. 4-O Creation

Souls

vyOMEN Brightness of many limbs and wondering eyes A calm still garden : dawn : leaves that slowly Yield to sleepy breezes glimmering fountains :

Painting barbaric colours black and gold On peering faces Odours that steep the essence of magic Dream of infinite passion to be Women Women unwearily keeping their beauty perfect Sheltered in shady gardens Limbs and breasts and eyes Suddenly Crashing forgotten gates in thunderous war-song Men, thrust by desire hands outstretching enter : :

Naked as they. The Dreamer 41

The Dreamer the Father in His easy chair pondering the great book of Vision Lets fall a casual hand the while He broods tremen dously the word ; And on his little stool beside the human child, restless for play, Takes the slack ringers in his busy grasp, Fondles them, tracing the great grave philosophic lines and wrinkles And rubs his cheek against the palm, kissing it all over with a sudden fondness ; But fallen from his little stool, and crying aloud, Pulls at the casual Hand and whimpers for a word, a glance, All in vain, now and for ever ; For God the Father is quite lost in the terrible endless Vision, And from the height whereon He broods sunk in His easy chair, Only the casual Hand falls down, the slack, forget ful fingers, Tear- wet or kissed, gently relax, nor close the Book, nor lift the child. 42 Creation

O Brutes and Dreamers !

f OULD That God, it not be turning His essence outward Upon our world to search the things we know and live among For some creation corresponding to His being, Might see, when ranging these stars and worlds, These ponderous, slow, impenetrable shapes, Nothing, nothing ? In all these forms that stop and prison us Only a void wherethrough His glances pass Without resulting image ? Could it not be That all our universe to Him is unsubstantial, Unreal, inane ? And, passing from thence (which is nowhere) to us, These active, self-impressing souls, their moods and states, Their terrible energy of good and evil, These also make no image on His thought, Not even echo, shadow, memory ? But, wherever a vision-caught spirit of man In self-oblivious loyalty labours on This outer world, endows it with his vision, Changes its substance, pierces it with moods Humanized, aspiring, there O Brutes and Dreamers ! God pauses, closelier turns and knows (Not in the shaping soul or shapen world But in their perfect union), An actual thing at last, a correspondence, Essence materialized, Himself attained, The one reality in space and time ? Could that not be, O brutes and dreamers, Say! 44 Creation

Reveille

T1THETHER the conscious world, Girt round by hate and wrong and terror, Desperately defend itself As a few brave guards and watchful captains Maintain about some lone remote fortress A small circle of troubled peace ; Or whether, ourselves a blind anarchy, We vainly pit our selfishness and fear Against a whole outer universe of law, Admitting across the frontier from time to time Enough of God's terrible order and justice To burn a small torch amid our inward gloom Ah, when shall we raise our battle-blinded eyes Above this endless conflict we wage Life by life, for a mere breathing-space and foot hold, Heart-knit, soul-united once both East and West Thrilled by the energy of a mutual dream, Take heed and know if brute or Prophet hold True mirror of the attributes of man. Before a Gauguin 45

Before a Gauguin

ESCAPE from all them that hold me ; J The prisons and the strong stockades of love, The deep pits of hatred, let me go. I pass on perforce from name to name, Assume new qualities and titles Sewed and patched on for the day's need From old definitions proudly fitting once But soiled, rent and tawdry long since Like the heaped regalia of long unfashionable kings. I pass on, escape even from myself. The swiftest mood and widest embracing thought Reel from my eager tortuous progression. Nay, the whole world grins Knowingly from its mask of good and evil ; Murderers, in utmost pity, droop before their judge, And for the sake of the world's masquerade Dive willingly into the black mud of stigma. Otherwise . . .

But we are all anarchists Stumbling brave and blind through a strange lost

region Bordering the stupendous ecstasy of life. Creation

The Hill DE not too certain, life,

(Or is that power of death, that tedious power Which with insistent sneer Shatters continually and steeps in slime The difficult house I raise, The house of consciousness ?) Be not too certain of me ;

Deem me not wholly tamed, Content with labour ineffectual Upon this ruined house of thought ; Or, turning to things outside, Content to hurry a life-time through these streets Darkened with vaster ineffectiveness Even this sea-flung, sea-swift fog Makes so pathetic romance of! Count not too long upon my slavehood !

For as I have often dreamed, There is a hill Sloping against the dizzy, mystic sky Whither, in a moment, I can go. There is a hill And, pausing for courageous breath Pace after pace I'll climb Fleeing from thee, O insufficient life, A weak yet conscious Christ The Hill 47 Bearing his cross of aspiration. O, bleeding and gasping on that hill To me the vision of things Already perfect, consummated, present Sudden will rise, and I shall thrill With powers you know not of, Old tedious world of streets, Inevitable failure, self-deception, Death-in-life ; For, writhing as I might be In supreme pain, and broken Upon the wheel of dissolution, Never was so great aspiration void ; And I shall wholly triumph Convinced at last of my own perfect soul, And God, the soul's desire. 48 Creation

An Old Prayer Resaid TS it too much to seek Among the living, one friend, one man or woman To stand ever between me and the blinding glory of God, Mirroring the pure flame to my weak eyes And visibly to every humble sense Showing the glory ? Too much to seek ? Is there not one among the breathing Who like the demigods of old Mythed to a people's heart the manner and the way, Will draw my thought and passion from itself, Make me forget the dangerous mystery, Soul, Wholly admiring, wholly intent upon a great nature Heroic, tender and calm ? I drive my prayer along the crowded street But meet only a passionate, wilful race Or here and there a wistful fellow pilgrim ;

And all the while the immanent, pitiless glory of God Burdens and breaks my heart. In the Mirror 49

In the Mirror T HAVE not dared to be alone These many months, but passed with all the world, A driven ghost, through the black magic That we call life; till now My mirror suddenly bids me halt. Before its dimly lighted depths I pause Seeking the image I have known, serene, heroic, Dwelling for me within the mysterious glass, The I ... Lost, lost these fearful, hurried, wasted days. Now islanded about by silence, Poised safe upon the twilight Alone, intent, thrice-conscious, I dare again, I will and . . .

Convinced, convincingly Out of the glooms of my disparted self It starts, it gathers, Shines from the mirror, throbs within my heart ; And gladder than any warrior-ravished bride My song of triumph flows . . .

Loving the world and by all things adored. 50 Creation

Pilgrim LJOW often, paused before some brilliant name Shining by thought or will j Or glimpsing a modern chief Serenely intent Upon his purpose undefinable, How often the shadow of ourselves Projects far forward Even to touch the titan we admire, When, heart-leaping, soul-conscious, Thither, we say, the distance to traverse, Thither the summit we must still attain. Our consciousness is never to itself Sufficient and content, But ever seems A pilgrim thrust upon an endless way, Toiling to reach Some ultimate shrine of self contained in self. The road of life winds upward, upward, Gathering all types and natures Into one fate, Linking the brute to God. Never a day Opens our eyes and minds to a new sun But, thrilled by fear or joy Excessively intense Pilgrim 51 And startled from ourselves, We recognize a way that winds in our own soul, Bidding us follow. And, looking beyond, We find nor end, nor pause, nor quiet, Only the road that winds Upward and upward, And the great compulsion of time and change Goads us along the dizzy, myriad days. Even death, we feel, but plants new pilgrim feet Upon the ancient upward pilgrim way. O, disheartened we lean Upon our staff of the soul's self-recognition, Pondering the interminable road And our own worldly burden. The road of life winds upward, upward, Strewn with disheartened pilgrims Even as you and I.

Yet, when we will to yield, Dismayed by the cold, bleak summits of time, And toil no more, Leaving perfection to a tougher soul, Content to pause midway With broken staff, closed eyes, and folded hands, (A little slumber, O narcotic sleep !), Then, opening eyes After the moment's frantic oblivion, Then has the landscape changed Unwilled, untoiled-for :

By no labour, no conscious pilgrimage of self Our soul has gained ascent. 52 Creation New vistas arise With pleasurable moods And, for a little, time has lost its dread. Then first do we confess a power Beyond our conscious purpose Filling the universe of men and things ; Changing, replacing, creating, At once here, before us and behind, Planning itself a pilgrimage so vast That our supreme success would make it fail. There is a power Not to be sought, but seeking ;

Holding, not to be held ; Using, not to be employed ; Ignoring, not mocking personality, Shaping the fragments of men and things Into an order and perfection not our own. Life is the climber-up !

Life is the pilgrim !

We but a part of the road he treads upon Mounting the cloud-piled hill !

So, being not the climber but the climbed, Not the eternal pilgrim but the way, I come to find myself Circled by a great confidence and peace. No more shall I attempt, Blindly afraid, to seize His garment or sandal, and stay Life, the creative, unstaying ; No more shall I perplex and madden My sensitive thought Paradox 53 With torment of a sheer, heart-breaking hill ;

Nay, but thankfully aware At last, and not too late, How rightly fits my nature to the world, Learn to live fully, gratefully within The perfect here and now Which life, from full-brimmed pilgrim's wallet, Tosses each soul in passing Upward and upward On his mysterious way. Pass freely along, O life, God's pilgrim, Godspeed ! I speed, I release thee !

Paradox TF I praise death, I feel it by the genius of life :

If I praise life, I speak it within the ears of death. 54 Creation

Fragment 'TTHEIR eyes shine, the rapt boy-gleam that never before Poured out the hearts of strong, world-toughened men, Shine, and eagerly turn The one way, Westward, So many arrows cleaving a single mark ; And like the wheat in windy acres tossing Their limbs reach forth The one way, Westward, all their ardent hands. Their ardent hands and feet, one rapid, impetuous rhythm Tosses them, swaying, advancing.

The tapestries of kings superb in battle Bore never so rich design, Nor rugs that ancient faith made intricate Visioning the fervent soul, As here These dancing feet, the citizenship of earth, Responsive, passionate, trace Unconsciously along the echoing street.

I follow. I join them. Closer, closer I press me, Fragment 55 Body and spirit Urged to the central core Of this new passion warming, transforming men. Like a strong man bearing proudly aloft his burden Our slow, deep-rolling voices Carry to heaven a grave and mighty hymn. We reach to the world's edges Gathering all men and women, Uniting them, creating to one titanic, puissant nature The myriad moods and passions of the race. Not one avoids or declines us, impetuously receiving In deepest heart the mutual rapture Bursting at last the swart frontiers Of nations, races, hatreds of class and clan. No master to lead us, No slave to follow ; We go. Creation

Janus "HTHERE! Look where the blazing star reels down To sudden death in some mean stagnant water That, O friend, is signal to the doom Rushing upon a world, a fair, dear world That dies almost unmourned. But I Die with it in my heart."

"A My silence questioned him. world, how shall I tell it ? So calm, so gracious ? Well, It lay in little villages apart Like secrets in a lover's memory ; In villages where family names and deeds Survived, creating magnanimity ; And there were albums, birthdays, festivals ; And old men grave, old women queenly ;

And night enframed each leisurely day in gold ;

Poets were read and known ;

Slow organs breathed along the shadowy street ; And manners were thought the better part of men j October twilight, God it seemed as though !

History itself, and all the human race, Had come each autumn to its perfect fruitage. Friend, believe me, a fair, dear world lies dead." Moved by his measured sadness I rose to score the dead world's epitaph Janus 57 On starkest rock by distant hills unknown Where some strayed reveller of future times Might chance upon it, and had he a soul, Lament the passing of a kingly race. But even as I rose I felt about me The new world shaping in the ancient wreck ;

That modern vision of life, city-haste But with it city-plenitude ; and souls Created by the tenser rhythm of crowds ; No long-maturing names, but freer men ; And roads hewn out like equatorial belts From race to race ;

And cloud-lost aeroplanes ; colossal ships ; Long inter-racial tasks, to unify A million labourers in a single dream ;

New words, terms, thoughts, the conscious mind Reached out atiptoe, startled by its wealth ;

New dreams, of art and peace, Advanced by stouter hearts than Cesar's ; I felt this world in labour, and I knew Not death, but birth, had agonized my soul. Creation

Creator

looked at me ... a woman's eyes " Piercing through and beyond As there were nothing here, Nothing, where this heart beats, where this mind labours !

Now the whole daylong I stand Lost in this strange nothingness, Seeking . . .

As a shadow might seek the hand that cast it, As an echo might seek its sound, ... A soul. I have been with them who run hither and thither

Before the antique silence of a church, Who kneel at carved dark altars And sniff wantonly the heady incense ;

They are like those who guard a forgotten fortress, Defending a frontier no hostile army ever will attack.

Long ago a vigorous Life passed by Making terrible battle of being against non-being. His memory lingers, and these Proud of their strategy and their courage Creator 59 Take arms and stand before his fading footprints in due array. The sun glitters on their new swords and buttons, And death, their only foe, Steals up and crushes them beneath the burden of their unused armour !

May I cast this lie utterly away, Creep out from this entanglement of memory, Stamp underfoot the secondhand experience men term soul. This is the lie that fetters the world. All men save thieves and artists mix its poison with their daily bread. Soul never existed before, Will never exist until I give it being in and by myself. There is no type, no model ; No path worn sleek by generations of dragging knees Can lead me to its place. It is a chaotic nothingness round about my life, Flesh with my hand and eye, thought with my thought ; It whirls past my finger-tips, Hides beyond my swiftest imagination. Here in its midst I stand Lonely as no mortal ever was before, Confronting it, stern, anguished, half-daunted, Waiting for the great mood gathering power within me. Soon shall I leap forward for the last time, Seize the chaos with all my being, godlike, 60 Creation Creatively shape it into a perfect spirit, self, Or fall back prostrate, knowing myself no better than dogs and trees. The blatant legions of triumphant hell Swing past with reckless booty. What faith, what sureness of the daily life !

God looked at me. , Creation 61

Creation

"^TATURE'S truant and scapegoat. When I was made the earth held back her flame, Mixed no prodigious sulphur with my blood ;

Said : Here's one must beg or steal his life Day by day ; I'll give him nothing mine. How long I crouched apart ;

How long I hated the ample-winged birds, Envied the sturdy oxen, the swift hound, the painless tree. When a man passed I wept, bewildered. How long I begged of water its ease, Of wind its lightness, of fire its passion. I crouched apart from laughter and tears ; Love I knew not, only I knew that hearts with

sulphurous blood Beat grief and rapture through all lives but mine. All else is perfect j nothing am I, I said. Then, like a tiny pufT of wind on the great sea Thickened by obdurate calm, A prayer, a feeble spirit-breath sighed within me. My hand tightened as for a titan task. I gazed at it, bewildered, Said : Nay, another suffering begins ; Now while the burden of storm and season And men and things harries the gable of life, A cunninger spite steals in beside the hearth 62 Creation To pester the feeble flame. But, stirring again my thick obdurate calm, The prayer increased. My breath drew deep, as for the dance of passion. What is this ? I cried.

Stronger, stronger it heaved and whirled and swirled. I could not crouch, I rose, I stood erect, Clenched hand, drew breath. Impelled by some new sense not mine, yet mine, I leaned swiftly to myself, as to heaped inarticu late clay, Moulded the mass to likeness of a dream, Fondled the outline to a wondrous curve, Gave eyes, ears, breath. Hasten, said God : not so in a thousand years Shall man create himself. Swifter I laboured, singing. Then when the shape fairly answered my desire, Answered, contained the vision of things perfect, I in my feeble days painfully descried, I entered in, assumed it as my own. Nature's scapegoat !

While men and beasts drag the burden of nature, Her being, loved for her sake, not their own, Her need their passion, her desire their power, I stand apart with God And brood upon the world behind this dream. Ecstasy 63

Ecstasy /^\ LAST, unassailable perfect triumph of life, The very signal of attained being to avidest men :

When the bound, slow-groping panting soul Abruptly risen to freedom, joyously perceptive In presence of some unexpected beautiful thing, Cries out to perish, To die all through straightway, and nevermore be, Unless, unless it be the universe itself, Container of all space and time, Container of that very moment of sweet anguish, That very death-life cry and the mad, rent spirit ;

Container of itself as the opulent spring contains One clear, articulate bird as the unpartisan year One season of spring whose pomp, whose passing alike

Inspires no pride, no awe returning again. How the life-filled spirit of man, In its great moment, knows and envies God. 64 Creation

Goal f~\VER. my head bowed in the passing of the soul's first rapture The day burns calmly and sloiv pressed in its brazen boivl Like incense peacefully consumed by slrrines where few men "worship; Odours arising drift and catch at my iveary senses, Weakening an inner power my will, tny courage never inspired. IVithout ash the day burns out, without pollution ; calmly and slow The day in its brazen bowl consumes the perfumed ash of yesterday. Mingled in one strange maddening odour the incense of the passing moment Restores the old, forgotten years. All time returns, a strange perfume. To-morrow so shall burn, and its to-morrow. No moment wastes and none Sinks to ashes in the bowl that calmly burns all life away.

My will, my name, my love, my soul consume O God, ;

at last I am.