Gloucester Moors and Other Poems Part 5

And at the core of every life that crawls Or runs or flies or swims or vegetates-- Churning the mammoth's heart-blood, in the galls Of shark and tiger planting gorgeous hates, Lighting the love of eagles for their mates;

Yes, in the dim brain of the jellied fish That is and is not living--moved and stirred From the beginning a mysterious wish, A vision, a command, a fatal Word: The name of Man was uttered, and they heard.

Upward along the aeons of old war They sought him: wing and shank-bone, claw and bill Were fas.h.i.+oned and rejected; wide and far They roamed the twilight jungles of their will; But still they sought him, and desired him still.

Man they desired, but mind you, Perfect Man, The radiant and the loving, yet to be!

I hardly wonder, when they came to scan The upshot of their strenuosity, They gazed with mixed emotions upon _me_.

Well, my advice to you is, Face the creatures, Or spot them sideways with your weather eye, Just to keep tab on their expansive features; It is n't pleasant when you 're stepping high To catch a giraffe smiling on the sly.

If nature made you graceful, don't get gay Back-to before the hippopotamus; If meek and G.o.dly, find some place to play Besides right where three mad hyenas fuss: You may hear language that we won't discuss.

If you 're a sweet thing in a flower-bed hat, Or her best fellow with your tie tucked in, Don't squander love's bright springtime girding at An old chimpanzee with an Irish chin: _There may be hidden meaning in his grin._

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY

All day he drowses by the sail With dreams of her, and all night long The broken waters are at song Of how she lingers, wild and pale, When all the temple lights are dumb, And weaves her spells to make him come.

The wide sea traversed, he will stand With straining eyes, until the shoal Green water from the prow shall roll Upon the yellow strip of sand-- Searching some fern-hid tangled way Into the forest old and grey.

Then he will leap upon the sh.o.r.e, And cast one look up at the sun, Over his loosened locks will run The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour Its rapture out to make life seem Too sweet to leave for such a dream.

But all the swifter will he go Through the pale, scattered asphodels, Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells, To where the ancient basins throw Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones Of gold upon the temple stones.

There noon keeps just a twilight trace; Twixt love and hate, and death and birth, No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth May enter in that haunted place.

All day the fountain sphynx lets drip Slow drops of silence from her lip.

To hold the porch-roof slender girls Of milk-white marble stand arow; Doubt never blurs a single brow, And never the noon's faintness curls From their expectant hush of pride The lips the G.o.d has glorified.

But these things he will barely view, Or if he stay to heed them, still But as the lark the lights that spill From out the sun it soars unto, Where, past the splendors and the heats, The sun's heart's self forever beats.

For wide the brazen doors will swing Soon as his sandals touch the pave; The anxious light inside will wave And tremble to a lunar ring About the form that lieth p.r.o.ne Before the dreadful altar-stone.

She will not look or speak or stir, But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white Will lie amid the pool of light, Until, grown faint with thirst of her, He shall bow down his face and sink Breathless beneath the eddying brink.

Then a swift music will begin, And as the brazen doors shut slow, There will be hurrying to and fro, And lights and calls and silver din, While through the star-freaked swirl of air The G.o.d's sweet cruel eyes will stare.

HEART'S WILD-FLOWER

To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire, And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire, And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire.

And though no word shall e'er be said to ease the ghostly sting, And though our hearts, unhoused, unfed, must still go wandering, My sign is set upon her head while stars do meet and sing.

Not such a sign as women wear who make their foreheads tame With life's long tolerance, and bear love's sweetest, humblest name, Nor such as pa.s.sion eateth bare with its crown of tears and flame.

Nor such a sign as happy friend sets on his friend's dear brow When meadow-pipings break and blend to a key of autumn woe, And the woodland says playtime 's at end, best unclasp hands and go.

But where she strays, through blight or blooth, one fadeless flower she wears, A little gift G.o.d gave my youth,--whose petals dim were fears, Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies, and tears.

O heart of mine, with all thy powers of white beat.i.tude, What are the dearest of G.o.d's dowers to the children of his blood?

How blow the shy, shy wilding flowers in the hollows of his wood?

HARMONICS

This string upon my harp was best beloved: I thought I knew its secrets through and through; Till an old man, whose young eyes lightened blue 'Neath his white hair, bent over me and moved His fingers up and down, and broke the wire To such a laddered music, rung on rung, As from the patriarch's pillow skyward sprung Crowded with wide-flung wings and feet of fire.

O vibrant heart! so metely tuned and strung That any untaught hand can draw from thee One clear gold note that makes the tired years young-- What of the time when Love had whispered me Where slept thy nodes, and my hand pausefully Gave to the dim harmonics voice and tongue?

ON THE RIVER

The faint stars wake and wonder, Fade and find heart anew; Above us and far under Sphereth the watchful blue.

Silent she sits, outbending, A wild pathetic grace, A beauty strange, heart-rending, Upon her hair and face.

O spirit cries that sever The cricket's level drone!

O to give o'er endeavor And let love have its own!

Within the mirrored bushes There wakes a little stir; The white-throat moves, and hushes Her nestlings under her.

Beneath, the l.u.s.trous river, The watchful sky o'erhead.

G.o.d, G.o.d, that Thou should'st ever Poison thy children's bread!

THE BRACELET OF GRa.s.s

The opal heart of afternoon Was clouding on to throbs of storm, Ashen within the ardent west The lips of thunder muttered harm, And as a bubble like to break Hung heaven's trembling amethyst, When with the sedge-gra.s.s by the lake I braceleted her wrist.

And when the ribbon gra.s.s was tied, Sad with the happiness we planned, Palm linked in palm we stood awhile And watched the raindrops dot the sand; Until the anger of the breeze Chid all the lake's bright breathing down, And ravished all the radiancies From her deep eyes of brown.

We gazed from shelter on the storm, And through our hearts swept ghostly pain To see the shards of day sweep past, Broken, and none might mend again.