# Three Books of Poetry

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Horace Holley, Three Books of Poetry, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> 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.
>
> — *Three Books of Poetry (Used by permission of the curator)*