Idyllic Monologues Part 10

Behold! we have gathered together our battles.h.i.+ps near and afar; Their decks they are cleared for action, their guns they are shotted for war: From the East to the West there is hurry, in the North and the South a peal Of hammers in fort and s.h.i.+pyard, and the clamor and clang of steel; And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of G.o.d, O Spain!

II.

Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:-- "She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance G.o.d holds on high!"

The balance He once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in: One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin; Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years, Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears; In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain, Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!

III.

Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!-- Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese-- Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night, That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight; From the New-World sh.o.r.es they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain, To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!

IV.

Summon thy s.h.i.+ps together, gather a mighty fleet!

For a strong young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat.

Summon thy s.h.i.+ps together, there on thy blood-stained sands!

For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands, A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell, That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to h.e.l.l; A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain-- Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of G.o.d, O Spain!

Her Vivien Eyes

Her Vivien eyes,--beware! beware!-- Though they be stars, a deadly snare They set beneath her night of hair.

Regard them not! lest, drawing near-- As sages once in old Chaldee-- Thou shouldst become a wors.h.i.+per, And they thy evil destiny.

Her Vivien eyes,--away! away!-- Though they be springs, remorseless they Gleam underneath her brow's bright day.

Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost!

Lest in their deeps thou lures behold, Through which thy captive soul were lost, As was young Hylas once of old.

Her Vivien eyes,--take heed! take heed!-- Though they be bibles, none may read Therein of G.o.d or Holy Creed.

Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,-- As Merlin was, romances tell,-- And in their sorcerous spells immersed, Hoping for Heaven thou chance on h.e.l.l.

There Was a Rose

There was a rose in Eden once: it grows On Earth now, sweeter for its rare perfume: And Paradise is poorer by one bloom, And Earth is richer. In this blossom glows More loveliness than old seraglios Or courts of kings did ever yet illume: More purity, than ever yet had room In soul of nun or saint.--O human rose,-- Who art initial and sweet period of My heart's divinest sentence, where I read Love, first and last, and in the pauses love; Who art the dear ideal of each deed My life aspires by to some high goal,-- Set in the haunted garden of my soul!

The Artist

In story books, when I was very young, I knew you first, one of the Fairy Race; And then it was your picture took its place, Framed in with love's deep gold, and draped and hung High in my heart's red room: no song was sung, No tale of pa.s.sion told, I did not grace With your a.s.sociated form and face, And intimated charm of touch and tongue.

As years went on you grew to more and more, Until each thing, symbolic to my heart Of beauty,--such as honor, truth, and fame,-- Within the studio of my soul's thought wore Your lineaments, whom I, with all my art, Strove to embody and to give a name.

Poetry and Philosophy

Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet Hyblaean bees seemed swarming my retreat Around the reedy well of Poesy.

I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee, Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat High on the summit of Philosophy.

Around the wave of one Religion taught Her first rude children. From the stars that burned Above the mountained other, Science learned The first vague lessons of the work she wrought.

Daughters of G.o.d, in whom we still behold The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold.

"Quo Vadis"

It is as if imperial trumpets broke Again the silence on War's iron height; And Caesar's armored legions marched to fight, While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke, Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke, Again I see the living torches light The horrible revels, and the bloated, white, Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke: And here and there a little band of slaves Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul, Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word: And towards the North the tottering architraves Of empire; and, wild-waving over all, The flaming figure of a Gothic sword.

To a Critic

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads The world too often!--where the poet reads, As in a fable, of old envyings, Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings, Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds, Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings.

But here and there the wisdom of a School Unknown to these hath often written down "Fame" in white ink the future hath turned brown; When every beauty, heaped with ridicule, In their ign.o.ble prose, proved their renown, Making each famous--as an a.s.s or fool.

_AFTERWORD._

_The old enthusiasms Are dead, quite dead, in me; Dead the aspiring spasms Of art and poesy, That opened magic chasms, Once, of wild mystery, In youth's rich Araby.

That opened magic chasms._

_The longing and the care Are mine; and, helplessly, The heartache and despair For what can never be.

More than my mortal share Of sad mortality, It seems, G.o.d gives to me, More than my mortal share._

_O world! O time! O fate!

Remorseless trinity!

Let not your wheel abate Its iron rotary!-- Turn round! nor make me wait, Bound to it neck and knee, Hope's final agony!-- Turn round! nor make me wait._