*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76846 ***

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. *579* Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

The Three Sphinxes and Other Poems

George Sylvester Viereck

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS




Copyright, 1907, by Moffat, Yard and Company. Copyright, 1912, by
Moffat, Yard and Company. Copyright, 1916, by Mitchell Kennerley.
Copyright, 1924, by George Sylvester Viereck.

[Other selections from Mr. Viereck’s poetry appear in the
Haldeman-Julius Pocket Series under the title “The Haunted House and
Other Poems,” No. 578.]


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




Table of Contents

The Poet Psycho-Analyzes Himself

Poems

  Slaves
  Iron Passion
  The Three Sphinxes
  The Cynic’s Credo
  The Ghost of Oscar Wilde
  The Parrot
  The Candle and the Flame
  A Ballad of King David
  Benediction
  Spring
  A Vision of Man
  Inhibition
  The Protozoan
  The Plaint of Eve
  The Conqueror
  The Winners
  Jesus in New England
  The Ballad of the Golden Boy
  The Magic City
  The Challenge
  The Pilgrim
  Attar of Song
  The Buried City
  Triumphatrix
  At Nightfall
  Finale
  The Love Seal
  Respite
  Dr. Faust’s Descent from Heaven
  Man to His Maker




THE POET PSYCHO-ANALYZES HIMSELF


This volume, like its predecessor, “The Haunted House, and Other
Poems,” No. 578, contains selections from “Nineveh and Other Poems,”
“The Candle and the Flame,” “Songs of Armageddon,” in addition to a
number of poems not previously published in book form. The second
volume embraces a number of lyric ballads, being on the whole less
intensely personal, if no less intensely passionate than volume one.

However, such differences are superficial. Wherever we touch a book, we
touch a man. If we but search an author, we always discover a master
key! Every manifestation of the Life Force is a confession. It is
impossible to write a treatise on radio without revealing one’s self.
The libido, however disguised, will always assert itself.

It was my original intention to divide my poetry into certain well
defined psychological groups. There are clusters of thought and
emotions, “complexes,” to use the vocabulary of psycho-analysis, which
seem to occur again and again in my verse. Eros and Jesus, Lilith and
Eve, constitute my chief lyric “complexes.”

Almost every poem owes its inspiration to one of these four fundamental
types. However, no symbol is entirely adequate. At every step the
complexes grow more complex. Frequently one merges into the other.

“The Three Sphinxes” visualizes the conflict between Jesus and Eros,
between heavenly and earthly love; between Lilith and Eve, love,
sweetly human, and “woman wailing for her demon lover.” The antagonism
between Eros and Jesus appears in “Spring”: an attempt to synthesize
the two conceptions enlivens the finale of “Jesus in New England.”

In “Children of Lilith,” we catch a glimpse of Lilith in the
countenance of Eros. Both Lilith and Eve appear in “A Vision of Woman,”
but no attempt is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. The Eve-Lilith
conflict is the struggle between Helen of Troy and the blonde
Marguerite. The desire to achieve a new synthesis of woman, dissolving
the Eve-Lilith conflict, lends significance to “Dr. Faust’s Descent
from Heaven.”

It would be necessary to play with divers combinations and permutations
in order to make the grouping psychologically correct. This task is too
pedantic for me. I leave it to the psycho-analysts and to the ingenuity
of the reader. Perhaps I may change my mind some day when I publish my
collected poems or my autobiography. Most of my books of verse are out
of print. The two little volumes in the Pocket Series are the only form
in which my verse is, at present, accessible.

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.

New York, June, 1924.




SLAVES


    _No puppet master pulls the strings on high,
      Portioning our parts, the tinsel and the paint:
    A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry,
      Predestinates the sinner and the saint._

    _Each, held more firmly than by hempen band,
      Slave of his entrails, struts across the scene:
    The malnutrition of some obscure gland
      Makes him a Ripper or the Nazarene._




IRON PASSION


  Love’s smiling countenance I know,
    But not the anger of the god,
  For I have wandered where Boccaccio
    And Casanova trod.

  I am aweary of these pleasant things,
    The gallant dalliance and the well-watched fire:
  Give me the magic of a thousand springs
  That shook the blood of young Assyrian kings,
  That stirs the young monk in his cell, and stings
    Crimson and hot!
    Wearing the crown of unassuaged desire,
  Break me or bless me--only love me not!

  Come as a wanton red with rouge and wine
    And I shall weave out of my song for thee
  A purpler cloak than his
    Who, hating, loved that Lesbia. Come to me
  A saint--the halo shall be thine
    Of Beatrice.

  There is no joy in tender loves or wise,
    No sweet in wrong:
  Come unto me with cruel, loveless eyes,
    O iron passion of the lords of song!




THE THREE SPHINXES


  Before the image older than the world,
    Or ill or good,
  By Titan hand into the desert hurled,
  In the Egyptian sunset musing stood--
  Long having travelled by fantastic roads
  Where in deep sands the tremulous footstep sinks--
  The oldest and the youngest of the gods, Saying:
  “Upon my life has fallen thy shadow, O Sphinx!”

  Replied the Sphinx: “O son of Aphrodite,
  Shall wisdom teach thee how the soul is won,
  Or the hot sands be balsam on thy lids?
  Behold approach from Thebes and Babylon,
  Huge birds grotesque against the falling gloom,
  My far-come younger sisters.” And a mighty
  Thunder of pinions shook the pyramids,
  And made the mummies mumble in their tomb.

  The three stern sisters of the mystery
  Enduring and miraculously wrought
  In granite and in porphyry,
  Then, holding concourse in the desert, spake
  With the great sound of billows on the sea
  That rumble as they break:
  “Thou, Eros, art the eternal riddle, we
  Are but in stone the semblance of thy thought.”

  Limbed like the panther, featured like a man,
  The wisest of the Sphinxes thus began,
  That still had waited where the river steams
  And winds the caravan:
  “In my brain’s cavern seven cubits span
  Dwell visions splendorous
  Of the great lords of song and thought and might,
  Who in the large eyes of Antinous
  Behold the Deeper Light,
  Upon my lashes gleams
  Still Shakespeare’s rhythmic tear;
  Here Plato musing dreamed his dreams
  Of spirit-passion; David here
  In the long night-watch sang of Jonathan.”

  Then rose the wingèd Theban, figure dual
  Of maid and lion strangely wed;
  “I am the blood that tingles, and the jewel
  Of all the world’s desire adorns my head--
  The lithe-limbed youths that fell for Helen’s sake
  Have died for me,
  The lads that wake
  To ripeness curse me as they ache
  Beneath my tyranny.
  My mandates sweet and cruel
  Nor prayer nor penance shall revoke:
  I am the flame, men’s bodies are the fuel,
  Men’s souls the smoke.”

  The pinioned Sphinx of Babylon,
  Human in naught, Lord Eros thus addressed:
  “Wherever men have spat thy face upon
  Or sought strange pleasure in unholy quest,
  My breath had made them mad.
  I am the dream that Nero’s mother had
  Ere burned his natal star.
  I am the ghastly vision of de Sade:
  Astarte and Priapus wage
  War for my beauty monstrous, barren, bare;
  The Cretan knew me and from far
  My image fell upon the crimson page
  Of Swinburne and of Baudelaire.”
  The silence shivered as in tearless woe
  When they had done, the Foam-begotten broke
  Across his knee the sceptre and the bow:
  “The empyrean is beyond your reach,
  Your substance earth of earth,
  And even she that called on Plato’s name
  Bears soilure of a mortal birth.
  The triple mirror are you of my shame
  Half-beast are two, one wholly beast, in each
  Is something bestial, and your wings’ winds choke
  Within my heart the unadulterate flame.”

  But the three Sphinxes mighty murmuring
  Thus answer made: “O Love,
  Turn thou thy wrath above,
  Where round God’s throne the cosmic sunsets fling
  The light that shall not fade.
  Beneath his feet the countless æons roll,
  His slow relentless purpose knows the goal
  Of things, and joining flesh and spirit made
  A beast the mansion of the soul.”

  And lo, the spring’s breath faded from Love’s charm,
  The sunshine from his hair,
  And in his arm
  The arrows turned to rods.
  He heeded not the silent years that crawl
  Like uncouth spiders. Weary, cynical,
  Self-conscious, disenchanted stood he there,
  The oldest and the saddest of the gods.




THE CYNIC’S CREDO


  From the cloistered halls of knowledge where fantastic lights are shed
  By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead entomb their dead,
  Let us walk into the city where men’s wounds are raw and red.
  Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for coward and for brave,
  Only three, no more--the belly and the phallus and the grave!

  When the slow disease of time writes on our face its horrid scrawl,
  These be good gifts, these be real, let what will the rest befall,
  Both the first gift and the second--but the last is best of all.
  Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cerecloth’s folds are drawn;
  These remain while life remains and one remains when all are gone.

  Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to damn the thief?
  We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the self-same reef.
  Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with some primal grief,
  Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to our carcass, slave
  To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than God) the grave.

  Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more when we have these?
  Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they may live in ease.
  Not for us God’s angel choir and His cosmic silences!
  Lay not that we, too, are gods, since no god is strong to save
  From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and the grave.

  Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy while a trace
  Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes the race
  Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good man and the base.
  Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats our hearts: we crave
  For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and the grave.

  Let us nurse no vain delusion! Feast on love and wine and meat,
  While girls’ breasts blush into rosebuds and the touch of flesh is sweet,
  For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound of dancing feet!
  Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His consciousness He gave
  Still the belly and the phallus and life’s final thrill--the grave!

  And who knows but the Almighty in His heart may envy us?
  If a little draught of knowledge makes man’s life so dolorous,
  Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of thorns, and thus
  Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic incubus.
  We at least, through evolution climbing upward from the cave,
  Have the belly and the phallus and God’s kindest gift, the grave.




THE GHOST OF OSCAR WILDE


  Within the graveyard of Montmartre
    Where wreath on wreath is piled,
  Where Paris huddles to her breast
    Her genius like a child,
  The ghost of Heinrich Heine met
    The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

  The wind was howling desolate,
    The moon’s dead face shone bright;
  The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed
    The sad wraith with delight:
  “Is it the slow worm’s slimy touch
    That makes you walk the night?

  “Or rankles still the bitter jibe
    Of fool and Pharisee,
  When angels wept that England’s law
    Had nailed you to the Tree,
  When from her brow she tore the rose
    Of golden minstrelsy?”

  Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde
    While shrill the night hawk cried:
  “Sweet singer of the race that bare
    Him of the Wounded Side,
  (I loved them not on earth, but men
    Change somehow, having died).

  “In Pere La Chaise my head is laid,
    My coffin-bed is cool,
  The mound above my grave defies
    The scorn of knave and fool,
  But may God’s mercy save me from
    The Psychopathic School!

  “Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still
    I hear the din thereof
  When with sharp knife and argument
    They pierce my soul above,
  Because I drew from Shakespeare’s heart
    The secret of his love....

  “Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host
    Of lepers in my aid,
  I was sufficient as God’s flowers
    And everything He made;
  Yea, with the harvest of my song
    I face Him unafraid.

  “The fruit of Life and Death is His;
    He shapes both core and rind....”
  Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice,
    (The worm to none is kind),
  While through the graveyard of Montmartre
    Despairing howled the wind.




THE PARROT


  O bird grotesque and garrulous,
    In green and scarlet liveried,
  Thy ceaseless prattle hides from us
    The secret of thy dream indeed.
    But in thine eyeball’s mystic bead
    Are mirrored clear to them that read
    Vague, nameless longings, like the breed
  Of some exotic incubus.

  Where is thy vision? Overseas?
    In some bright tropic far-off land
  Where chiding simians in tall trees
    Swing by luxurious breezes fanned,
  While at fantastic phallic feasts
    Brown women uncouth idols hail,
    And through the forest sounds the wail
  Of the fierce matings of wild beasts?

  Or are thine other memories,
  Of other lives on other trees,
    Encasements in some previous flesh
  In far-off lost existences?
    For, as the tiger leaves his spoor
    Upon the prairie, firm and sure
  Life writes itself upon the brain,
  The soul keeps count of loss and gain,
    And in the vibrant, living cells
    Of the small parrot’s brain there dwells
  A sparkle of the flame benign
  That makes the human mind divine.

  The self-same Life-Force fashions us:
    Its writings are the stars on high,
    Its transient mansions thou as I.
  Through Plato’s mouth it speaks to us,
  Through the earth’s vermin even thus.
    The heaving of a baby’s breast
  And the gyrations of the sun
  To its omnipotence are one
    And make its meaning manifest.

  We both are wanderers through all time
  Who, risen from the primal slime
    When God blew life into the dust,
  Press to some distant goal sublime.
    And often through the thin soul-crust
  Rush memories of an alien clime,
    Of gorgeous revels more robust
    Than any dream of hate or lust
    In the gilt cage upon us thrust,
  And visions strange beyond all rhyme.

  The Life-Force with itself at war
    Moulds and remoulds us, blood and brain,
    Yet cannot quench us out again,
  And after every change we _are_.
    The soul-spark in all sentient things
    Illumes the night of death and brings,
  Remembered, immortality.

  Time cannot take thy soul from thee!
    All living things are one by kind,
    Heritors of the cosmic mind.
  Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee
  The kitten slumbered peacefully,
  And surely good Saint Francis, he
    Who as his sister loved the hind.




THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME


  Thy hands are like cool herbs that bring
    Balm to men’s hearts, upon them laid;
    Thy lovely-petalled lips are made
  As any blossom of the spring.
  But in thine eyes there is a thing,
    O Love, that makes me half afraid.

  For they are old, those eyes.... They gleam
  Between the waking and the dream
    With antique wisdom, like a bright
  Lamp strangled by the temple’s veil,
    That beckons to the acolyte
  Who prays with trembling lips and pale
    In the long watches of the night.

  They are as old as Life. They were
    When proud Gomorrah reared its head
  A new-born city. They were there
    When in the places of the dead
  Men swathed the body of the Lord.
    They visioned Pa-Wak raise the wall
    Of China. They saw Carthage fall
  And marked the grim Hun lead his horde.

  There is no secret anywhere
    Nor any joy or shame that lies
    Not writ somehow in those child-eyes
    Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise.
  Thou art the lad Endymion,
    And that great queen with spice and myrrh
  From Araby, whom Solomon
    Delighted, and the lust of her.

  The legions marching from the sea
  With Cæsar’s cohorts sang of thee,
    How thy fair head was more to him
  Than all the land of Italy.
  Yea, in the old days thou wert she
    Who lured Mark Antony from home
  To death and Egypt, seeing he
    Lost love when he lost Rome.

  Thou saw’st old Tubal strike the lyre,
    Yea, first for thee the poet hurled
  Defiance at God’s starry choir!
  Thou art the romance and the fire,
    Thou art the pageant and the strife,
  The clamour, mounting high and higher,
    From all the lovers in the world
    To all the lords of love and life.

  Through thy slow slumberous long lashes
    Across the languor of thy face
  The gleam of primal passion flashes
    That is as ancient as the race,
    But we that live a little space,
  Which when beholding feel in it
  The horror of the Infinite....

  Perhaps the passions of mankind
    Are but the torches mystical
  Lit by some spirit-hand to find
  The dwelling of the Master-Mind
    That knows the secret of it all,
  In the great darkness and the wind.

  We are the Candle, Love the Flame,
    Each little life-light flickers out,
  Love bides, immortally the same:
  When of life’s fever we shall tire
  He will desert us, and the fire
    Rekindle new in prince or lout.

  Twin-born of knowledge and of lust,
    He was before us, he shall be
    Indifferent still of thee and me,
  When shattered is life’s golden cup.
  When thy young limbs are shrivelled up,
  And when my heart is turned to dust.

  Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last
    That thou and I, or knave, or fool,
  Are but the involitient tool
  Of some world purpose vague and vast.
  No bar to passion’s fury set,
    With monstrous poppies spice the wine:
    For only drunk are we divine,
  And only mad shall we forget!




A BALLAD OF KING DAVID


  As David with Bath-Sheba lay,
    Both drunk with kisses long denied,
  The King, with quaking lips and gray,
    Beheld a spectre at his side
  That said no word nor went away.

  Then to his leman spake the King,
  The ghostly presence challenging:
    “Bath-Sheba, erst Uriah’s wife,
    Thy lips are as the Cup of Life
  That holds the purplest wine of God,
  Too sweet for any underling.”

  “Yet,” spake Bath-Sheba, sad of mien,
  “Why from thy visage went the sheen
  As though thy troubled eye had seen
    A shadow, like a dead man’s curse,
  Rise threatening from the mound terrene?”

  “’Twas but the falling dusk, that fills
  The palace with fantastic ills.
    Uriah sleeps in alien sands
    Soundly. ’Tis not his ghost that stands,
  Living or dead, or anything
  ’Twixt the King’s pleasure and the King.”
  Bath-Sheba’s glad heart rose, then fell:
  “Where is it that thy fancies dwell?
  Is there some maid in Israel
    Broad-hipped, with green eyes like the sea,
  Whose mouth is like a honey-cell,
    And sweeter than the mouth of me?”

  “The pressure of thy lips on mine
  Is exquisite like snow-cooled wine.
  Over the wasteness of my life
    Thy love is risen like a sun:
  All other loves that once seemed sweet
    Are seized by black oblivion.”

  Again upon the shadow-thing
  He gazed in silence, questioning.
  And lo! with quaint familiar ring
  A spectral voice addressed the King:
    “O David, David, Judah’s swan!
  Why unto me dost thou this thing?”
    “Who art thou?” “I am Jonathan,
    My heart is like a wounded fawn.

  “When Saul’s fierce anger, like a bull,
    Rose, by the Evil One made blind,
  My love to thee was wonderful,
    Passing the love of womankind.
  Hast thou forgotten everything
  My heart aches in remembering?
  Is such the harvest of our spring
  Of war and love and lute-playing?”

  Was it a ghost’s voice or the wind?
    For still Bath-Sheba, unaware,
  Smiled. But King David ill in mind
    Scarce deemed her Beauty half so fair:
  “Stale is the wine this evening,
    And sick with roses is the air!”
    He tore the garland from his hair,
    And left Bath-Sheba lying there
  Perturbed, and vaguely wondering....




BENEDICTION


  Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!
    Such is the prayer most meet for one
  Whose eyes look up so starry-clear--
    With all his flowerets new-begun
  Still may he bless your pathway, dear,
    Who weaves his golden threads around
    Your heart and mine together bound:
  Because your eyes are starry-clear--
  Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child,
    When all the earth with longing swells,
    And lilies ring their silver bells
        For joy that he is nigh,
  And open wide, their lord to greet,
  Adoring humbly at his feet
  (Ah, spring has come, and spring is sweet!)
        Their inmost pageantry,
  And all the earth with love is wild--
  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child,
    And may the song of nightingales
    Re-echo from the wooded dales--
  Like women’s arms so soft and mild,
  And as deep crimson roses wild,
    (Such is the song of the nightingales,
    And sad as tears of one that wails
  Where love’s high temple is defiled);
  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

  Spring’s blessing be upon your ways,
  Before in life’s distracting maze
  We fall on hopeless evil days!
    True, summer comes more richly warm
    And fraught with wilder passion’s storm
      Of torturing blisses;
    But golden gleams spring’s youthful form,
      More sweet his kisses;
  Soft breezes sing his roundelays--
  Spring’s blessing be upon your ways!

  Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!
  His hair is decked with flowery cheer;
    Upon his brow the diadem
      Shines out by right of youth immortal;
    His might brings glad release to them
      That were condemned without the portal
  Of hope to live in sickening fear;
  Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!
    And never may the wine-cup hold
      One drop of bitter questioning.
  May Death in spring-time find you, child--
    But Love shall toss his locks of gold
      And make all life an endless spring,
  And fate and he be reconciled:
  Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!




SPRING

  _For Peter Pan_


  Spring came carolling through the land,
    Roses and laughter on every hand;
    But I was gazing with steadfast eye
    Where Christ was nailed on high.

  Hawthorn blossoms were white and gay,
  Promise of fruit in the laden spray--
    Only the tree of the Cross bare naught
    Save the ruin that death had wrought!

  Spring passed on, and a breath of bloom
  Swept through the casement, filled the room.
    I cried in a sudden agony:
    “Lord Jesus, set me free!

  “See, I am young, and the blood is hot,
  Longing for what I compass not--
    Love, and sunshine, and fond delight
    In beauty warm and white.

  “Lord, Thy Cross is a heavy load,
  Thorny and steep the upward road--
    Lord, from the woods astir I hear
    Laughter and joyous cheer.

  “Far be it from me, Lord, to scorn
  The bitter anguish that Thou hast borne:
    But redder his mouth in its youthful pride
    Than the spear-wound in Thy side!

  “Ah, see how his hair like soft-spun gold
  Falls curling over his raiment’s fold,
    And his laughing eyes look out with glee
    The great wide world to see!

  “I thrill at his music silvery sweet,
  And I long to follow his dancing feet:
    For lo! where they fall the flowers are born--
    And hearts no more forlorn!

  “My soul goes out to him since the hour
  He passed me by in his winsome power,
    And my blood is stirred by his witchery--
    Prince Jesus, set me free!”

  Bowed to my prayer the wounded Head,
  Died in the west the sunset red--
    And a slow, slow drop of blood ran down
    From under the thorny crown.

  Strange, in the years that have gone, the Cross
  Had grown so dear to me that its loss
    Went to my heart with a thrill of pain--
    I had half turned back again!

  O sweet Lord Spring, I am free at last
  To follow wherever thy feet have passed,
    Over the dales and over the rills
    To the gladsome Grecian hills!




A VISION OF MAN


  The proud free glance, the thinker’s mighty brow,
  The curling locks and supple, slender limbs,
  The eye that speaks dominion, victor’s smile--
  All these I know. By them I hail thee Man,
  Lord of the earth. Thou art the woman’s slave,
  And yet her master....

  I know thee when about thy sunburnt thighs
  Thou swing’st the tawny skin a tiger wore
  Till thy rude weapon dashed him to the ground.
  I know thee also when thy shoulders bear
  The purple mantle of an emperor,
  Stained with the blood of thousand tiny lives;
  The golden sandals clasped upon thy feet;
  Thy hair made rich with spikenard, and thy brow
  Graced with the gifts that mutual east and west
  Conspire to offer to their sovereign lord.

  I know thee too in lust’s relentless rage,
  Dragging the chosen woman to thy lair,
  To frame upon her body at thy will
  Sons in thine image, strong of loin as thou:
  And when, the bearer of thy father’s sins,
  Within the portals of the House of Shame
  Monstrous delight thy passion seeks to find
  In futile quest, and Nature pitiful
  Will not transmit unto the future’s womb
  Thy weakened generation....

  Image of God I know thee--God thyself.
  Walking the world on India’s sun-parched plains
  Thy name was Rama; thou in desert sands
  Of Araby didst dream thy wondrous dream;
  The cradles of all races thou hast seen--
  Thou Zarathustra--thou the Son of Man!
  I know the wounds of hands and feet and side....
  Ah, and I know the ring about thy neck
  Of ruddy curls! Say, Judas, in thine ear
  Make they sweet music still, the silver coins,
  As on the day the temple’s veil was rent?

  So, in the far-stretched background of all time
  I watch thy progress through the sounding years--
  Wielding the sceptre here, and there the lyre,
  The lord or servant of thy master-passion,
  Pure or polluted, fool or nobly wise.
  And this it is that justifies the whole,
  This is thy greatness: thou hast stumbled oft,
  And straying often fallen. Yet all the while,
  Wandering the stony wilderness of life,
  Thine eyes were fixed upon the steadfast star
  That far-off stands above the Promised Land.
  Rough is the road, beset by mocking heavens
  And false illusory hells--the strong, the weak
  Alike by dancing fires are led astray,
  And poisoned flowers bloom rankly on the path.
  Self in the guise of selfishness approached,
  Frailty in garment of a god benign;
  Pleasure with lying accents “I am sin”
  Proclaimed, and vice, “I am bold action” cried;
  “I am contentment,” spoke the belly full,
  And the applause of groundlings, “I am fame.”

  And so it came that only here and there
  In all the years a strong, unerring one
  Plucked boldly at the flowers of brief delight,
  Yet by the dust of tumult unconfused
  Pressed on to reach the goal; the strong man’s goal:
  To rule and to enjoy, to hold command
  Over both’ things and spirits, to enjoy
  All pleasant sounds and all sweet gifts, yet strive
  Untiring, ever upward to that sun
  Which no world-master’s blind despotic will,
  But his own hand, with more than Titan strength,
  Unto the utmost firmament has flung.




INHIBITION

  _To My Parents_


  O for the blithesomeness of birds
    Whose soul floods ever to their tongue!
  But to be impotent of words
    With blinding tears and heart unstrung!

  Each breeze that blows from homeward brings
    To me who am so far away
  The memory of tender things
    I might have said and did not say.

  Like spirit children, wraiths unborn
    To luckless lovers long ago,
  Shades of emotion, mute, forlorn,
    Within my brain stalk to and fro.

  When to my lips they rush, and call,
    A nameless something rears its head,
  Forbidding, like the spectral wall
    Between the living and the dead.

  O guardian of the nether mind
    Where atavistic terrors reel
  In dark cerebral chambers bind
    Old nightmares with thy mystic seal!

  But bar not from the sonant gate
    Of being with thy fiery sword
  The sweetest thing we wring from fate:
    Love’s one imperishable word!

THE PROTOZOAN

  (_A Chant of Immortality_)


  No torches light the tragic night
    In which I grope,
  Friend have I none under the sun,
    Nor hope.

  Heedless I press past deeds that bless
    And deeds that damn.
  For I know this, that while Life is,
    I am.

  Beholding me, the Fateful Three
    Ironies chortle.
  Creeds are a sham. Gods die. I am
    Immortal.

  The pristine cell wherein I dwell
    Outlasts the stars,
  Renewing life ’spite cosmic strife
    And scars.

  Through pain and fear I persevere
    Upreared from sod
  And primal slime, to challenge Time
    And God.

THE PLAINT OF EVE


  “Man’s mate was I in Paradise,
    Since of the fruit we twain did eat,
  Through the slow toiling days his slave.
  Because I asked for truth, God gave
  All the world’s anguish and the grave.
  But, being merciful and wise,
  Ha bade His angel bathe mine eyes
    With the salt dew of sorrow. Sweet
  Had been the dew of Paradise.”

  _Yet through the immemorial years,
  Has she not healed us with her tears?_

  “Albeit upon my lips I wore
  A smile, my heart was ever sore.
  Because I heard the Serpent hiss,
    Therefore I suffered patiently.
  But now I pray for bread, and ye
    Gave me a stone or worse--a kiss.”

  _Shall not the stone rebound on us?
  Shall not the kiss prove venomous?_

  “No expiation dearly won,
  Can turn the ancient loss to gain,
  The Son of Man was Mary’s Son...
    Have I not borne the child in pain?
  My sighs were mingled with His breaths!
  Yet, though I died a thousand deaths,
    A thousand times a thousandfold,
  With Him, my babe, upon the Cross,
    My bloody sweats are never told,
  And still the world’s gain is my loss.”

  _Has she not suffered, has not died,
  With every creature crucified?_

  “The hallowed light of Mary’s eyes
  Within my bosom never dies.
    The learned Faust, for all his pride,
    Was saved by Gretchen--glorified--
    To God, his master, thrice denied.
  Love’s smallest holy offices
  When have I shirked them, even these?
  From the grey dawn when time began
  To the Crimean battle-field.
    By every wounded soldier’s side
  With cool and soothing hands I kneeled.”

  _She is the good Samaritan
  Upon life’s every battle-field._

  “The secret book of Beauty was
  Unlocked through me to Phidias.
  Petrarcha’s dream and Raphael’s,
  Rossetti’s blessèd damozels,
    And all men’s visions live in me.
  The shadow queens of Maeterlinck,
  Clothed with my soft flesh, cross the brink
    Of utter unreality.
  Rautendelein and Juliet,
  Who shall their wistful smile forget?
  The leader of my boyish band
  I rule in Neverneverland.”

  _Her’s is the sweetest voice in France,
  And hers the sob that like a lance
  Has pierced the heart of Italy._

  “With stylus, brush and angelot,
  I seize life’s pulses, fierce and hot.
  In Greece, a suzerain of song,
    The swallow was my singing mate,
  My lyric sisters still prolong
    My strain more strange than sea or fate.
  Though Shakespeare’s sonnets, sweet as wine,
  Were not more ‘sugared’ than were mine,
  Ye who with myrtle crown my brow,
  Withhold the laurel even now.”

  _The world’s intolerable scorn
  Still falls to every woman born._

  “Strong to inspire, strong to please,
  My love was unto Pericles;
    The Corsican, the demigod
    Whose feet upon the nations trod,
    Shrunk from my wit as from a rod.
  The number and its secret train
  Eluded not my restless brain.
  Beyond the ken of man I saw,
  With Colon’s eyes, America.
    Into the heart of mystery,
    Of light and earth I plunged, to me
  The atom bared its perfect plot.”

  _What gifts have we, that she has not?_

  “Was I not lord of life and death
  In Egypt and in Nineveh?
    Clothed with Saint Stephen’s majesty
    My arm dealt justice mightily.
  Men that beheld me caught their breath
  With awe. I was Elizabeth.
  I was the Maid of God. Mine was
  The sway of all the Russias.
  What was my guerdon, mine to take?
  A crown of slander, and the stake!”

  _How shall we comfort her, how ease
  The pain of thousand centuries?_

  “Back from my aspiration hurled,
  I was the harlot of the world.
  The levelled walls of Troy confess
  My devastating loveliness.
  Upon my bosom burns the scar
  Eternal as the sexes are.
    I was Prince Borgia’s concubine,
    Phryne I was, and Messaline,
    And Circe, who turned men to swine.”

  _But shall they be forgotten, then,
  Whom she has turned from swine to men?_

  “New creeds unto the world I gave,
    But my own self I could not save.
  For all mankind one Christ has sighed
    Upon the Cross, but hourly
    Is every woman crucified!
    The iron stake of destiny
  Is plunged into my living side.
    To Him that died upon the Tree
  Love held out trembling hands to lend
    Its reverential ministry,
  And then came Death, the kindest friend--
    Shall my long road to Calvary,
  And man’s injustice, have no end?”

  _O sons of mothers, shall the pain
  Of all child-bearing be in vain?
  Shall we drive nails, to wound her thus,
  Into the hands that fondled us?_




THE CONQUEROR


  _“I, John Pierpont Morgan,
  ... commit my soul into the
  hands of my Savior, in full confidence
  that having redeemed
  and washed it in His most precious
  blood He will present it
  faultless before the throne of
  my Heavenly Father.”_

  --_The Last Will and Testament
  of John Pierpont Morgan._


  When all was silent and the gloom
    Grew thick, the dead man rose. The mask
  Slipped. Loath to tarry in the room,
    He glanced not at the agate casque;

  Nor at his tapestries, his scrolls,
    The ransom of an hundred kings--
  For he that conquers life, his soul’s
    Wraith is not chained to mundane things.

  His cane with slow, deliberate care
    Swinging, along the street moved he,
  Until he reached the Golden Stair
    That only dead men’s eyes may see.

  Of newly dead a spirit host
    Made low obeisance when he came.
  Though some be saved and some be lost,
    He was the Master of the Game
  In life and death. A grunt, a nod,
    Thanked them. They nudged each other’s sides
  For each was fettered to the sod
    By some earth memory. A bride’s

  Caress. A lad’s clean limbs. The sheen
    In a child’s face. A battle won.
  A crime. A dream. What might have been.
    --August, untroubled he passed on.

  He puffed at his cigar. The spheres
    Made music. Then the ceaseless drone
  Of prayer went up. By myriad tiers
    Encircled rose the Holy Throne.

  With no uncertainty of fate
    He brushed aside the angel throng
  And strode through the emblazoned gate
    Into the Heaven of the Strong.




THE WINNERS

  _To my Wife,
  Margaret Edith Viereck._


  Never on the winning side,
    Always on the right--
  Vanquished, this shall be our pride
    In the world’s despite.

  Let the oily Pharisees
    Purse their lips and rant,
  Calm we face the Destinies:
    Better “can’t” than Cant.

  Bravely drain, then fling away,
    Break the cup of sorrow!
  Courage! He who lost the day
    May have won the morrow.




JESUS IN NEW ENGLAND

  He saw the drab and dreary town
    Upon the mirthless Sabbath day;
    All pleasant things had crept away
  Like serfs before the master’s frown;
  The very trees their heads hung down
    Upon the mirthless Sabbath day.

  Through joy-deserted streets He trod,
    The church bells tolling mournfully.
    There was no sound of childish glee,
  No peal of laughter praising God
  Hailed Him that loved the little ones
    From Judah unto Galilee.

  Barred in His name the magic bower
    Of mimic kings and queens that seem,
    Where still the fairy-jewels gleam,
  And sonant for a little hour--
  From faded parchment conjured up
    Incarnate walks the poet’s dream.

  But through a gate obscure and small
  He watched a pale-faced stripling crawl
    Into a closely-shuttered place
    Where Magdalens untouched of grace
  Held their unlovely festival,
    Wearing the hunted look, uncanny,
    Of them that love not much but many.

  And right across the house of guilt
  Where sweet young lips were made all-wise
    In unchaste knowledge, and the wine
  Of glorious youth was hourly spilt--
    Grinning upon Him like a skull,
  With windows bare like sightless eyes,
    There rose the House Unbeautiful
  Wherein God’s holy shrine was built.

  And buzzing like a swarm of bees
    Around the church’s open door,
  In long frock coats and tall silk hats,
  The sleek, the oily Pharisees
    With the complacent smile of yore--
  Dear God, how He remembered these!

  Upon a cross of ebony
    He saw His image painted bleak
    With pallid lips that seemed to speak;
  “My God, thou hast forsaken me!”
    Such was the symbol of their faith--
    Not like a godhead, like a wraith
  Convulsed with futile agony,
    Wherefrom no man might solace seek.

  There was no incense in the air,
    Never a sweet-faced acolyte,
  No priest in sacrificial dress
    Trailing with colors strange and bright;
  No organ sounded pæans there,
    No candelabrum shed its light.
  No gleam of hope ... of loveliness,
    Of awe ... or beauty anywhere.

  Beside the tabernacle stood,
    Choked with things hateful that destroy,
    A weazened person cursing Joy;
  And in his veins there flowed no blood.
  Upon his tongue were words of grace,
    Yet every time he spake afresh
    He drove a nail into His flesh,
  And praying ... spat into His face!

  And, while his curses poured like showers
    Upon all things that men hold fair:
  The pearls, the satin and the flowers,
    Life’s graces, perfumed, debonair,
  With voice of thunder spake the Master:
    “_Hold, parson! Cease thy blasphemy!_”
    “Who art thou, stranger?”

                                    “_I am He
  Who suffered her of Magdala
    With the smooth satin of her hair
    To dry His consecrated feet,
  And break for Him the alabaster
    That held the spikenard rare and sweet._”

  The weazened parson deaf and blind
    Proceeded of God’s wrath to tell,
    And of a lad, of one who fell
  Through his hot blood and fates unkind,
    Whom to the terrors of God’s Hell
  And to His vengeance he consigned.
    Again the voice rose threateningly:
    “_Hold, parson! Cease thy blasphemy!_”
    “Who art thou, stranger?”

                                    “_I am He
  Who in the wilderness forsaken,
    Plucked from His flesh temptation’s spur,
  Forgave one in adultery taken
    And bade ye throw no stone at her!_”

  And still the parson cursed and whined,
  And thus he spoke to womankind:
    “Vileness and sin of every shape
    Lure in the ferment of the grape.
  Seize by the root the fruit malign
  That turns all good men into swine!”
      “_Impious parson, on thy knee!
    How dare ye judge your Maker? He
  Am I who at His mother’s sign,
    And for her glory, turned the water
    In the six water-pots to wine!_

  “_I am who through the bigot pride
  Of righteous fools is crucified.
    All lovely things, if these be slain,
    Then were My sacrifice in vain!
  For man is not the devil’s booty,
    Not mine the scorpion and the rod,
  Not sorrow is your heavy duty,
  And they that worship Him in beauty
    And gladness ... are most dear to God._

  “_Men of the New World, heed Me, bliss
    And all God’s good gifts are your gain!
    From Old World nightmares cleanse your brain:
    Columbus has not cross the main
    To open up new worlds to pain!
  But he and they who tell you this,
    Good folk, betray you with a prayer
  As they betrayed Me with a kiss!_”

  And like mysterious music died
    His accents on the shivering air;
  And through the heavens opening wide
  He vanished where no man might follow.
    Roses for thorns were in His hair,
    And on His visage, dwelling there,
  Those who beheld Him saw, enticed,
    The awful beauty of Apollo,
  The loving kindness which is Christ.
    But choked with visions that destroy,
  Still by the cross the parson stood,
    A gibbering madman cursing Joy!...




THE BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY


  Da Vinci’s brow in curious lines
    Of contemplation deep was knit.
    Fair dreams before his eyes alit
  Like water when the moonlight shines,
    Or amber bees that come and flit:
    How to make rare and exquisite
  A pageant for the Florentines.

  He beckoned to his page, a lad
    Whose lips were like two crimson spots,
    Eyes had he like forget-me-nots.
  Yet all his boyhood sweet and glad
  In frock of homely-spun was clad.

  And of his multi-colored whims
    The strangest thus the master told:
    “Child, I shall crown thy head with gold,
  And stain with gold thy lovely limbs.
    For once in this sad age uncouth
    The bloom of boyhood and of youth
  Shall be with splendour aureoled.”

  The boy’s heart leaped in one great bound.
    “Thy gracious will,” said he, “be done!”
  And ere the lad was disengowned
    The eager painter had begun
  To clothe his hair with glory round
    And make his visage like the sun.

  Then, seven stars upon his breast,
    And in his hands a floral horn,
  Like a young king or like a guest
    From heaven, riding on the morn,
    Splendid and nude, the boy was borne
  In triumph on the pageant’s crest.

  Like the sea surging on the beach,
    Reverberant murmurs rise to greet
    The masqueraders on the street.
  But what is this? A learned leech
    Hatless, dishevelled, runs to meet
  The train. White terror halts his speech.

  “Poor lad, my lad, for Heaven’s pity,”
    Shakes on the air a father’s cry,
    “Strip from thy flesh this gilded lie,
  Else, for the pleasure of the city,
    A self-slain Midas, thou must die!”

  And terror smote the revelry.
    The master’s features white and sad
  Twitched, yet no single word spake he,
    But full and straight rose up the lad,
  Upon his lips curled wistfully
    The smile that Mona Lisa had.

  “Good Sir,” said he, “what mortal power
    In all the dark-winged years and fleet,
  Could me, a lowly lad, endower
    With any boon more great, more sweet,
  Than to have felt one epic hour
    A city’s homage at my feet?

  “By the slow tooth of time uneaten,
    And all the foul things that destroy,
  From Life’s mad game I rise unbeaten,
    Drenched with the wine of youth and joy,
    Great Leonardo’s Golden Boy.

  “Let this be told in song and story,
    Until the eyes of the world grow dim,
  Till the sun’s rays are wan, and hoary
    The ringlets of the cherubim,
  That in my boyhood’s glow and glory
    I died for Florence and for him.

  “And when the damp and dreary mould
  Full soon my little limbs shall hold,
    Let Leonardo’s finger write
  Upon my grave, in letters bold:
  ‘_His life was as a splash of gold
    Against the plumage of the night._’”

  Thus spake the lad; and onward rolled
    The world’s great pageant fierce and bright.




THE MAGIC CITY


  Who knows where Babylon’s forgotten kings
    Now keep their state?
  Laid to their rest ’neath purple coverings,
    They meet the common fate.

  No traces that abide
    Of all the Christs who bled upon the Cross
  Ere Jesus died,
    And by the Ganges sought the gain of loss:
      Behold their priestly mantle’s dye
      Has faded, and their day gone by.

  The witching girls with eyes so crystal-clear
    And honeyed tresses bright,
    Full many a fool’s delight
      And his heart’s all:
  These with the snows of yester-year
    Not Villon’s cry shall wake to light--
      Asleep beyond recall.

  The tables of the law are broken;
    The flocks are feeding on the grass that grows
  About each sculptured token
    Of ancient empire, and the wild wind blows
      Yet, though the spell of death and ruin lord
    The earth, above all mortal woes

  Deathless triumphant sounds the poet’s word,
    Clothed with thought’s flame, and through the storm-fraught night,
  Blazes like a mighty sword
    Leaping to the fight.

  Through the clang of battle, and the crash
    Of worlds that to destruction fall,
    Song rings out like silver trumpets’ call,
    Or, heard through all,
  Harmonious still, great chords consenting clash.

  Never is melody silent on earth;
  Faint, far-away, but forever rings the sound of its mirth,
  Not even the sun is eternal, but immortal, O Homer, thy birth!
    And still the listening years
      Repeat her lyric name,
    Who wove song’s deathless garland from her tears
      And from her shame.

  And raised by music’s might
    --High walls in battlemented line--
  A magic city dawns before my sight:
      Golden temples rear their haughty heads on high.
      Domes like new suns blazing seem to span the sky.

  I enter in, and straying stand at length
    Amazed before a vast cathedral’s door.
  Immense it rises there, in conscious strength
    That many a tempest bore.
      On the threshold swift I pause:
      Sound of ghostly footsteps awes
        My eager feet that would an entrance win,
          Bids me kneel and murmur low
          Prayers of reverence, as I know
        What holy thoughts, what wisdom dwell therein.

  This is the home of high Teutonic speech
    Where beauty’s sacred fire forever glows.
    Upon the Edda’s broad foundation rose
  The soaring columns vaulted each to each,
  And Goethe, Shakespeare, Ibsen reach
        Their spans cross the hall:
        And over all
          A dome that holds the light,
        The Master-Man, whose message mystical
          Bade us be bold and laugh and seize delight,
          Before he vanished into endless night
        At Zarathustra’s call!

  Of song is made the painted windows’ sheen,
    The lustre of the lamps,
      The tapestries shot with gold:
    On each his own design some singer stamps,
        The very stones have voices, that proclaim
      The Magic City and uphold
        Her deathless fame.

  The Holy of Holies is this place:
  Some hanging that the wall may grace
    To weave with care,
  Or with the smoking censer pace,
      Or do least service in that blessed throng,
    Is to claim kinship with God’s saints and wear
      The martyr’s crown of song.




THE CHALLENGE


  “I challenge you!” you said to me.
    The curtain parts. You enter in.
  A dream of pink and ivory
    Through the soft satin peeps your skin

  Before me, in defiance bold,
    Now all your little being stands.
  Your breasts like two small birds I hold--
    I feel their heart-beats with my hands

  But in your eyes there is no dread:
    A little animal at play
  You cuddle up within my bed,
    And simply will not go away.

  Perhaps some sober Puritan
    Would take your tender ways amiss,
  I am not marble, but a man--
    Worlds have been bartered for a kiss.

  And though but now your hand and eye
    Upon forbidden ways have strayed,
  Against the damask sheet you lie
    More like a flower than a maid.

  How white are you, how brown am I,
    My lily girl! My midnight rose!
  How delicate against my thigh
    Is the indenture of your toes.

  No after-savors mar your lips
    With memories of past delight,
  Save phantom lads who come on ships
    Of dreams to little girls at night.

  A thornless rose of memory
    Shall be this strange night’s white caress.
  My love with you deals tenderly,
    And life, I pray will do no less.

  “Is this not love’s way, even so?”
    You ask and smile triumphantly,
  And know not that still home you go
    With all your young virginity.

  Scat, little kitten, nor delay,
    While there, as yet, is naught to rue.
  The city swarms with beasts of prey
    Who lie in wait for such as you.

  Avaunt, incredible gamin!
    You have no right at all to be,
  Save in the sculptures of Rodin,
    Or else--in Greek mythology.




THE PILGRIM


  There knocked One nightly at the harlot’s house;
  Wan was His mouth as kisses without love.
  His groping fingers followed tremulous
  The winding of her delicate thin veins;
  He traced the waxen contour of her breast,
  And then, as baffled in some strange pursuit,
  Drew her to Him in weariest embrace;
  And, as she shuddered in His grasp, He watched,
  Still passionless, the working of her throat.
  The woman’s cheek grew crimson as He gazed,
  But He, a scowling and disgruntled guest,
  Rose white and famished from her body’s feast.
  Yet one night, pausing half-way, He turned back,
  Lured by the wraith of long-departed hope;
  And then He asked of her a monstrous thing.
  The strumpet blanched and, rising from the couch,
  Spat in His face.
                Straightway the Stranger’s eye
  Blazoned exultant with the pilgrim’s joy
  When ends the quest. He lifted up His hands
  In quiet benediction, and a light
  Miraculous upon His forehead shone.
  But she, being blind, still cursed Him, and reviled:
  “Albeit I sell my body for very shame
  I am a woman, not a beast; but thou----”
  “And I,” quoth he, “a Seeker after God....”




ATTAR OF SONG


  Like Lilith, mother Lilith, I have wound
    About my heart the serpent of desire.
    A purple galleon on a sea of fire
  Has borne my footsteps to forbidden ground,
  Where glittering with corruption of all time,
    Death in its shadow, dreams the Upas tree;
    But with its dew, as sugar sucks the bee,
  I have enriched the honeycomb of rhyme.

  A riot of strange roses is my life--
    Pale as Narcissus gazing wistfully,
  And crimson red as the great Rose of Strife
  Upon the zone of Menelaus’ wife,--
    Distilled by love with lyric alchemy,
    Heart of my heart, into one song for thee.




THE BURIED CITY


  My heart is like a city of the gay
    Reared on the ruins of a perished one,
    Wherein my dead loves cower from the sun,
  White-swathed like kings, the Pharaohs of a day.
  Within the buried city stirs no sound
    Save for the bat, forgetful of the rod,
    Perched on the knee of some deserted god,
  And for the groan of rivers underground.

  Stray not, my Love, ’mid the sarcophagi,
    Tempt not the silence ... for the fates are deep,
  Lest all the dreamers deeming doomsday nigh
    Leap forth in terror from their haunted sleep;
  And, like the peal of an accursèd bell,
  Thy voice call ghosts of dead things back from hell!




TRIUMPHATRIX


  As some great monarch in triumphal train
    Holds in his thrall an hundred captive kings,
    Guard thou the loves of all my vanished springs
  To wait as handmaids on thy sweet disdain.
  And thou shalt wear their tresses like bright rings,
    For their defeat perpetuates thy reign!
    With thy imperious girlhood vie in vain
  The pallid hosts of all old poignant things.

  Place on thy brow the mystic diadem
    With women’s faces cunningly embossed,
  Whereon each memory glitters like a gem;
    But mark that mine were regal loves that lost
    And loved like queens, nor haggled for the cost--
  And having conquered, oh be kind to them!




AT NIGHTFALL


  Sweet is the highroad when the skylarks call,
    When we and Love go rambling through the land.
    But shall we still walk gaily hand in hand
  At the road’s turning and the twilight’s fall?
  Then darkness shall divide us like a wall,
    And uncouth evil nightbirds flap their wings;
    The solitude of all created things
  Will creep upon us shuddering like a pall.

  This is the knowledge I have wrung from pain:
  We, yea, all lovers, are not one, but twain,
    Each by strange wisps to strange abysses drawn.
  But through the black immensity of night
  Love’s little lantern, as a glow-worm’s bright,
    May lead our steps to some stupendous dawn.




FINALE


  How changed the house is when not Love is there!
    Your deep eyes vex me like some magic book
    I cannot ponder. Nay, I will not brook
  The weariness of your too golden hair!
  Hush! Was not that the creaking of a stair?
    Was it Love’s footfall or the wind? I look
    In vain for him in every hidden nook--
  There is no sound of laughter anywhere....

  Ah, sweet, he has forsaken us, not base,
    But heedless, boyish--and the world is wide!
  He sees not now your sorrow-haunted face,
    Nor feels the dagger that has pierced my side,
  And how all joy is vanished from the place
    As from a house in which a child has died.




THE LOVE SEAL


  A silver sea beneath the stars--
    We paid to love his mystic rites,
  And from thy lips I kissed the scars
    Of fiercer joys and stranger nights.

  What redder lips, what mouth of fate,
    Till Buddha noddeth near the goal,
  Shall, stronger still, obliterate
    My one night’s madness from thy soul?

  I brand thee through eternity,
    Upon thy blood I set my seal,
  And boy and girl and change and sea
    Cannot wipe out my mark or heal.

  While the great life-snake sheds its coat,
    I must rehearse my tragic part,
  To kiss the love-wounds from thy throat,
    And burn the iron in thy--heart.




RESPITE

  (_For M. E. V._)


  I shall not, dead, miss love’s sublimities,
    The pageantry, the passion, and the smart,
  But only this, the sweet proximities
    Of flesh to flesh, of heart-beat to the heart.

  I shall not, dead, remember anything,
    The sun, the moon, the waters, and the lands,
  The wild adventure of my journeying:
    Only the weary flutter of white hands.

  Let earth the maggot feed upon my brain,
    Let me forget the rime, the rune, the rose,
  If but this vision to the end remain:
    A little body, birdlike, nestling close.

  Of all God’s deeds the foulest deed is this:
    Though my heart aches, though all my manhood squirms,
  When I am dead, your touch, your mouth, your kiss
    Dear Love, will seem no sweeter than the worm’s.

  For hearts and worms and lovers’ ecstasy
    To life’s Mad Master, on invention bent,
  Are but the ashes of his alchemy
    That he discards in his experiment.

  There is no lodestar in this lonely sea,
    No ghost of any harbor for my quest,
  Save Love’s eyes shining tenderly,
    Save for the respite of your breast,
    And--maybe--rest.




DR. FAUST’S DESCENT FROM HEAVEN


  I

  Though your womb be the mother of bliss,
          O Earth, and the mother of woes,
 Though your large hands be full of the strange gifts of life, the kiss,
      and the worm, and the rose,
  The thunders that break from the sky of fate, and the flash in the pan,
  To me they are empty, for I know all things encompassed of man.
 The devious desires that crouch through the brain like monsters that
      nest in the sea,
 Pass--pageants of ghosts--through the luminous eyes of one who is dear
      to me.
  The other--all pangs and delights of the visible world and its quests,
 Are engraved in the exquisite curve of her throat and the hieroglyphs
      of her breasts.
  One rides on the wingèd chimaera of dreams through aeons purple and red,
  The other--like new-mown grass is the scent of her flesh in my bed.
  What can you give me of joy, Earth, what of bitter and sweet?
  _I have loved Helen of Troy and the blonde Marguerite._


  II

  Straightforth with the Magical Seal I knocked at the musical gates
  Of Heaven. The angels grew pale, or swooned in the arms of their mates.
  “I have sounded all chords in the harp of man’s life,” I said,
  “It is I, Doctor Faust. Now give me your manna for bread.”
  And they gave me their manna to eat, and drink, and I drank thereof,
  But they tasted as ashes and stale in my mouth after the kisses of love.
  So I spake up to God: “In your realm, O Lord, there is nothing to do
  For a man such as I. Let me pass. T’were different if I could be you!
  To play with omnipotence, curb lightnings, and summon new worlds at my
      will--
  Yet I stretch out no impious hand for your kingdom. I, too, have my fill.
  Though the suns be your toy, of Love’s breasts have I joy, though the
      prayer of the saints be your meat,
  _Have you loved Helen of Troy and the blonde Marguerite?_”


  III

  Into Inferno I stalked to the stream where sulphur and brimstone well
  Through lonelinesses more deep than the Florentine’s Frozen Hell.
  I came to the nethermost place where Satan sate in splendor alone,
  The writhing limbs of anguished men were the pillars of his throne.
  His court was paved with dead men’s hopes stamped like designs into mud,
  From thousand scarlet candles came the drip of human blood.
  In his eyes were all the tortures of all nights barren and fever-tossed
  Of all who loved and won and all who loved and lost.
  And I grasped the hand of the Prince of Hell: “O brother once divine,
  Lo, all your thorns have pierced my side and all your hells were mine.
  Thorns of flame that destroy, remorse, with slow but infallible feet:
  _I have loved Helen of Troy and the blonde Marguerite_.”


  IV

  From the lesser gods to their masters, Time and Eternity,
  I turned--to crave the single boon that they could give to me.
  “I am the Pilgrim of Passion who ever must choose and grieve
  Between the earth-born daughters of Lilith and of Eve.
  For I have lost my way twixt Heaven and Hell and Earth,
  Give me oblivion,” I said, “or grant me another birth!
  Grant me another encasement where the flesh shall be the soul,
  Where good shall be as evil and pole as anti-pole.
  Let Lilith and her sister, both back into night be thrust,
  Fashion Woman anew out of their astral dust.
  Dreams of impossible joy and impossible loveliness meet
  _When beautiful Helen of Troy shall be one with the blonde Marguerite_.”




MAN TO HIS MAKER


  From the white ulcer of thy snow,
    From the green leprosy of spring,
    Preserve us, Lord, whose mercies sting,
  Whose loaded dice win every throw.

  Foredoomed to perish in the strife
    With maggots fattened by thy breath,
    Free us from life’s mad lover--death,
  And save us from death’s nightmare--life.

  Blind microscopic molluscs we,
    Beneath thy scorn that spawn and squirm,
    Redeem us from thy gloating worm
  And from the consciousness of thee.

  If play we must this sorry role
    For thy amusement, spare the cant:
    Make man equal of the ant,
  Celestial Sadist! Take the soul.

  And crush us back into the sod,
    Whose fate is futile utterly,
    Save as a prank of destiny
  Played by a bored and bilious god.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


The drop-caps and uppercase letters from the beginning of each poem
were removed for clarity purposes.

Spelling errors and typos were corrected.

A Table of Contents was created for this edition.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76846 ***