A Reading Of Life, Other Poems Part 2

Near is he to great Nature in the thought Each changing Season intimately saith, That nought save apparition knows the death; To the G.o.d-lighted mind of man 'tis nought.

She counts not loss a word of any weight; It may befal his pa.s.sions and his greeds To lose their treasures, like the vein that bleeds, But life gone breathless will she reinstate.

Close on the heart of Earth his bosom beats, When he the mandate lodged in it obeys, Alive to breast a future wrapped in haze, Strike camp, and onward, like the wind's cloud-fleets.

Unresting she, unresting he, from change To change, as rain of cloud, as fruit of rain; She feels her blood-tree throbbing in her grain, Yet skyward branched, with loftier mark and range.

No miracle the sprout of wheat from clod, She knows, nor growth of man in grisly brute; But he, the flower at head and soil at root, Is miracle, guides he the brute to G.o.d.

And that way seems he bound; that way the road, With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone, Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown, He travels, urged by some internal goad.

Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing He would become is in his mind its child; Astir, demanding birth to light and wing; For battle prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.

So moves he forth in faith, if he has made His mind G.o.d's temple, dedicate to truth.

Earth's nouris.h.i.+ng delights, no more gainsaid, He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in youth.

Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls; The star of sky upon his footway cast; Then match in him who holds his tempters fast, The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.

Then Earth her man for woman finds at last, To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.

Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?

Seen has she virulent days of heat in flood; The sly Persuader snaky in his blood; With her the barren Huntress alternate; His rough refractory off on kicking heels To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed; And as a torrent stream where cattle grazed, His tumbled world. What, then, the faith she feels?

May not his aspect, like her own so fair Reflexively, the central force belie, And he, the once wild ocean storming sky, Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?

'Tis that in each recovery he preserves, Between his upper and his nether wit, Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit; He less the shaken thing of l.u.s.ts and nerves; With such a grasp upon his brute as tells Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.

A Sun goes down in wasted fire, a Sun Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.

THE CAGEING OF ARES

ILIAD, v. V. 385

[_Dedicated to the Council at The Hague_.]

HOW big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed At sight of her boy Giants on the leap Each over other as they neighboured home, Fronting the day's descent across green slopes, And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.

Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess, Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft, It signalled some adventurous master-trick To set Olympians buzzing in debate, Lest it might be their G.o.dhead undermined, The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high On shoulders of his brother Otos waved For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news, Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam Of gra.s.s and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last Subsided, and the serious naked deed, With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around, Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized, These two made up of lion, bear and fox, Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy, Still by the reckoning infants among men, Had done the deed to strike the t.i.tan host In envy dumb, in envious heart elate: These two combining strength and craft had snared, Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War; Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes; The barren furrower of anointed fields; The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky, Her hated enemy, too long her scourge: Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth When they had seized on his implacable spear, Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite His G.o.dlike fury startled from amaze.

For he had eyed them nearing him in play, The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled, Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there On Earth's original fisticuffs they called For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the G.o.d, Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms, Good servitors of Ares they would be, And ply the pointed spear to dominate Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced Amusedly he watched them, and as one The l.u.s.ty twain were on him and they had him.

Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!

c.o.c.k of Olympus he, superb in plumes!

Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!

Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him, Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste; A desolating fire to blind the sight With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes; The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice; Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice, Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.

Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased, And tumbled down the cave. But rather look-- Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought, Of all the G.o.ds to let her secret fly, Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!

Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts, And shatter earth's delirious holiday, Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream, Resolving to composure on its throbs.

But see her in the Seasons through that year; That one glad year and the fair opening month.

Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!

War with her, gentle war with her, each day Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung, On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won, From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids, Her ready secret: the abounding life Returned for valiant labour: she and they Defeated and victorious turn by turn; By loss enriched, by overthrow restored.

Exchange of powers of this conflict came; Defacement none, nor ever squandered force.

Is battle nature's mandate, here it reigned, As music unto the hand that smote the strings; And she the rosier from their showery brows, They fruitful from her ploughed and harrowed breast.

Back to the primal rational of those Who suck the teats of milky earth, and clasp Stability in hatred of the insane, Man stepped; with wits less fearful to p.r.o.nounce The mortal mind's concept of earth's divorced Above; those beautiful, those masterful, Those lawless. High they sit, and if descend, Descend to reap, not sowing. Is it just?

Earth in her happy children asked that word, Whereto within their breast was her reply.

Those beautiful, those masterful, those lawless, Enjoy the life prolonged, outleap the years; Yet they ('twas the Great Mother's voice inspired The audacious thought), they, glorious over dust, Outleap not her; disrooted from her soar, To meet the certain fate of earth's divorced, And clap lame wings across a wintry haze, Up to the farthest bourne: immortal still, Thenceforth innocuous; lovelier than when ruled The Tyranny. This her voice within them told, When softly the Great Mother chid her sons Not of the giant brood, who did create Those lawless G.o.ds, first offspring of our brain Set moving by an abject blood, that waked To wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights;-- Imagination's cradle poesy Become a monstrous pressure upon men;-- Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lords.h.i.+p the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath Young vine-leaves pus.h.i.+ng timid fingers forth, Confidently to cling. And when brown corn Swayed armied ranks with softened cricket song, With gold necks bent for any zephyr's kiss; When vine-roots daily down a rubble soil Drank fire of heaven athirst to swell the grape; When swelled the grape, and in it held a ray, Rich issue of the embrace of heaven and earth; The very eye of pa.s.sion drowsed by excess, And yet a burning lion for the spring; Then in that time of general cherishment, Sweet breathing balm and flutes by cool wood-side, He the harsh rouser of ire being absent, caged, Then did good Gaea's children gratefully Lift hymns to G.o.ds they judged, but praised for peace, Delightful Peace, that answers Reason's call Harmoniously and images her Law; Reflects, and though short-lived as then, revives, In memories made present on the brain By natural yearnings, all the happy scenes; The picture of an earth allied to heaven; Between them the known smile behind black masks; Rightly their various moods interpreted; And frolic because toilful children borne With larger comprehension of Earth's aim At loftier, clearer, sweeter, by their aid.

THE NIGHT-WALK

AWAKES for me and leaps from shroud All radiantly the moon's own night Of folded showers in streamer cloud; Our shadows down the highway white Or deep in woodland woven-boughed, With yon and yon a stem alight.

I see marauder runagates Across us shoot their dusky wink; I hear the parliament of chats In haws beside the river's brink; And drops the vole off alder-banks, To push his arrow through the stream.

These busy people had our thanks For tickling sight and sound, but theme They were not more than breath we drew Delighted with our world's embrace: The moss-root smell where beeches grew, And watered gra.s.s in breezy s.p.a.ce; The silken heights, of ghostly bloom Among their folds, by distance draped.

'Twas Youth, rapacious to consume, That cried to have its chaos shaped: Absorbing, little noting, still Enriched, and thinking it bestowed; With wistful looks on each far hill For something hidden, something owed.

Unto his mantled sister, Day Had given the secret things we sought And she was grave and saintly gay; At times she fluttered, spoke her thought; She flew on it, then folded wings, In meditation pa.s.sing lone, To breathe around the secret things, Which have no word, and yet are known; Of thirst for them are known, as air Is health in blood: we gained enough By this to feel it honest fare; Impalpable, not barren, stuff.

A pride of legs in motion kept Our spirits to their task meanwhile, And what was deepest dreaming slept: The posts that named the swallowed mile; Beside the straight ca.n.a.l the hut Abandoned; near the river's source Its infant chirp; the shortest cut; The roadway missed; were our discourse; At times dear poets, whom some view Transcendent or subdued evoked To speak the memorable, the true, The luminous as a moon uncloaked; For proof that there, among earth's dumb, A soul had pa.s.sed and said our best.

Or it might be we chimed on some Historic favourite's astral crest, With part to reverence in its gleam, And part to rivalry the shout: So royal, unuttered, is youth's dream Of power within to strike without.

But most the silences were sweet, Like mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to bid it feel It lived in such divine conceit As envies aught we stamp for real.

To either then an untold tale Was Life, and author, hero, we.

The chapters holding peaks to scale, Or depths to fathom, made our glee; For we were armed of inner fires, Unbled in us the ripe desires; And pa.s.sion rolled a quiet sea, Whereon was Love the phantom sail.

THE HUELESS LOVE

UNTO that love must we through fire attain, Which those two held as breath of common air; The hands of whom were given in bond elsewhere; Whom Honour was untroubled to restrain.

Midway the road of our life's term they met, And one another knew without surprise; Nor cared that beauty stood in mutual eyes; Nor at their tardy meeting nursed regret.

To them it was revealed how they had found The kindred nature and the needed mind; The mate by long conspiracy designed; The flower to plant in sanctuary ground.

Avowed in vigilant solicitude For either, what most lived within each breast They let be seen: yet every human test Demanding righteousness approved them good.

She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared Abandonment to help if heaved or sank Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank, Life rosier were she but less revered.

An arm that never shook did not obscure Her woman's intuition of the bliss-- Their tempter's moment o'er the black abyss, Across the narrow plank--he could abjure.

Then came a day that clipped for him the thread, And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold, Was all of earthly in their love untold, Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

So has there come the gust at South-west flung By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist, When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed, And one pa.s.sed out, and one the bell-head hung.

SONG IN THE SONGLESS

THEY have no song, the sedges dry, And still they sing.

It is within my breast they sing, As I pa.s.s by.