The Cup of Comus Part 12

_DON QUIXOTE_

_On receiving a bottle of Sherry Wine of the same name_

What "blus.h.i.+ng Hippocrene" is here! what fire Of the "warm South" with magic of old Spain!-- Through which again I seem to view the train Of all Cervantes' dreams, his heart's desire: The melancholy Knight, in gaunt attire Of steel rides by upon the windmill-plain With Sancho Panza by his side again, While, heard afar, a swineherd from a byre Winds a hoa.r.s.e horn.

And all at once I see The glory of that soul who rode upon Impossible quests,--following a deathless dream Of righted wrongs, that never were to be,-- Like many another champion who has gone Questing a cause that perished like a dream.

_THE WOMAN_

With her fair face she made my heaven, Beneath whose stars and moon and sun I wors.h.i.+ped, praying, having striven, For wealth through which she might be won.

And yet she had no soul: A woman As fair and cruel as a G.o.d; Who played with hearts as nothing human, And tossed them by and on them trod.

She killed a soul; she did it nightly; Luring it forth from peace and prayer, To strangle it, and laughing lightly, Cast it into the gutter there.

And yet, not for a purer vision Would I exchange; or Paradise Possess instead of h.e.l.l, my prison, Where burns the pa.s.sion of her eyes.

_THE SONG OF SONGS_

_Read November 14th, 1913, before the American Academy and National Inst.i.tute of Arts and Letters in joint session at Chicago, Ill._

I heard a Spirit singing as, beyond the morning winging, Its radiant form went swinging like a star: In its song prophetic voices mixed their sounds with trumpet-noises, As when, loud, the World rejoices after war.

And it said:

I

Hear me!

Above the roar of cities, The clamor and conflict of trade, The frenzy and fury of commercialism, Is heard my voice, chanting, intoning.-- Down the long corridors of time it comes, Bearing my message, bidding the soul of man arise To the realization of his dream.

Now and then discords seem to intrude, And tones that are false and feeble-- Beginnings of the perfect chord From which is evolved the ideal, the unattainable.

Hear me!

Ever and ever, Above the tumult of the years, The blatant cacophonies of war, The wrangling of politics, Demons and spirits of unrest, My song persists, Addressing the soul With the urge of an astral something, Supernal, Elemental, Promethean, Instinct with an everlasting fire.

II

Hear me!

I am the expression of the subconscious, The utterance of the intellect, The voice of mind, That stands for civilization.

Out of my singing sprang, Minerva-like, Full-armed and fearless, Liberty, Subduer of tyrants, who feed on the strength of Nations.

Out of my chanting arose, As Aphrodite arose from the foam of the ocean, The Dream of Spiritual Desire, Mother of Knowledge, Victor o'er Hate and Oppression,-- Ancient and elemental daemons, Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts, Have ruled for eons of years.

III

Hear me!

Should my chanting cease, My music utterly fail you, Behold!

Out of the h.o.a.ry Past, most swiftly, surely, Would gather the Evils of Earth, The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten, And buried in darkness: Amorphous of form, Tyrannies and Superst.i.tions Torturing body and soul: And with them, Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages-- Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons, Cruel, inhuman, Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world.

Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideous The cycles of error and crime: Grendels of darkness, Devouring the manhood of Nations: Demogorgons of War and Misrule, Blackening the world with blood and the l.u.s.t of destruction.

Hear me!-- Out of my song have grown Beauty and joy, And with them The triumph of Reason; The confirmation of Hope, Of Faith and Endeavor: The Dream that's immortal, To whose creation Thought gives concrete form, And of which Vision makes permanent substance.

IV

Fragmentary, Out of the Past, Down the long aisles of the Centuries, Uncertain at first and uneasy, Hesitant, harsh of expression, My song was heard, Stammering, appealing, A murmur merely: Coherent then, Singing into form, a.s.sertive, Ecstatic, Louder, lovelier, and more insistent, Sonorous, proclaiming; Clearer and surer and stronger.

Attaining expression, evermore truer and clearer: Masterful, mighty at last, Committed to conquest, And with Beauty coeval; Part of the wonder of life, The triumph of light over darkness: Taking the form of Art-- Art, that is voice and vision of the soul of man.-- Hear me!

Confident ever, One with the Loveliness song shall evolve, My voice is become as an army of banners, Marching irresistibly forward, With the roll of the drums of attainment, The blare of the bugles of fame: Tramping, tramping, evermore advancing, Till the last redoubt of prejudice is down, And the Eagles and Fasces of Learning Make glorious the van o' the world.

V

They who are deaf to my singing, Who disregard me.-- Let them beware lest the splendor escape them, The glory of light that is back o' the darkness of life, And with it-- The blindness of spirit o'erwhelm them.-- They who reject me, Reject the gleam That goes to the making of Beauty; And put away The loftier impulses of heart and of mind.

They shall not possess the dream, the ideal, Of ultimate worlds, That is part of the soul that aspires; That sits with the Spirit of Thought, The radiant presence who weaves, Directed of Destiny, There in the Universe, At its infinite pattern of stars.

They shall not know, Not they, The exaltations that make endurable here on the Earth The ponderable curtain of flesh.

Not they! Not they!

VI

Hear me!

I control, and direct; I wound and heal, Elevate and subdue The vaulting energies of Man.

I am part of the cosmic strain o' the Universe: I captain the thoughts that grow to deeds, Material and spiritual facts, Pointing the world to greater and n.o.bler things.-- Hear me!

My daedal expression peoples the Past and Present With forms of ethereal thought That symbolize Beauty: The Beauty expressing itself now, As Poetry, As Philosophy: As Truth and Religion now, And now, As science and Law, Vaunt couriers of Civilization.

_OGLETHORPE_

_An Ode to be read on the laying of the foundation stone of the new Oglethorpe University, January, 1915, at Atlanta, Georgia_

I

As when with oldtime pa.s.sion for this Land Here once she stood, and in her pride, sent forth Workmen on every hand, Sowing the seed of knowledge South and North, More gracious now than ever, let her rise, The splendor of a new dawn in her eyes; Grave, youngest sister of that company, That smiling wear Laurel and pine And wild magnolias in their flowing hair; The sisters Academe, With thoughts divine, Standing with eyes a-dream, Gazing beyond the world, into the sea, Where lie the Islands of Infinity.

II

Now in these stormy days of stress and strain, When Gospel seems in vain, And Christianity a dream we've lost, That once we made our boast; Now when all life is brought Face to grim face with naught, And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped, Of works material, leaving Beauty out Of G.o.d's economy; while, horror-dipped, Lies our buried faith, full near to perish, 'Mid the high things we cherish, In these tempestuous days when, to and fro The serpent, Evil, goes and strews his way With dragon's teeth that play Their part as once they did in Jason's day; And War, with menace loud, And footsteps, metal-slow, And eyes a crimson hot, Is seen, against the Heaven a burning blot Of blood and tears and woe: Now when no mortal living seems to know Whither to turn for hope, we turn to thee, And such as thou art, asking "What's to be?"