The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy

The "happy year" of 1914An hour from dawn:The snow sweeps onAs it swept with sleet last night:The Earth aroundBreathes never a sound,Wrapped in its shroud of white.A waked cock crowsUnder the snows;Then silence. – After whileThe sky grows blue,And a star looks throughWith a kind o' bitter smile.A whining dog;An axe on a log,And a muffled voice that calls:A cow's long low;Then footsteps slowStamping into the stalls.A bed of strawWhere the wind blows rawThrough cracks of the stable door:A child's small cry,A voice nearby,That says, "One mouth the more."A different noteIn a man's rough throatAs he turns at an entering tread —Satyrs! see!"My woman – sheWas brought last night to bed!"A cry of "Halt!" —"Ach! ich bin kalt!""A spy!" – "No." – "That is clear!There's a good shake-downI' the jail in town —For her!" – And then, "My orders here."A shot, sharp-rolledAs the clouds unfold:A scream; and a cry forlorn…Clothed red with fire,Like the Heart's Desire,Look down the Christmas Morn.The babe with lightIs haloed bright,And it is Christmas Day:A cry of woe;Then footsteps slow,And the wild guns, far away.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE AISNE

Imperial Madness, will of hand,Builds vast an altar here, and rearsBefore the world, on godly land,A Moloch form of blood and tears.And far as eye can see, behold,Priests plunge into its brazen armsMen, that its iron maw of moldMangles, returning horrible forms.Its Priests are armies, moving slow,And crowned like kings, in human-guise:And theirs it is to make it flow —The crimson stream of sacrifice.

THE CRY OF EARTH

The Season speaks this year of lifeConfusing words of strife,Suggesting weeds instead of fruits and flowersIn all Earth's bowers.With heart of Jael, face of Ruth,She goes her way uncouthThrough hills and fields, where fog and sunset seemWild smoke and steam.Around her, spotted as a leopard skin,She draws her cloak of whin,And through the dark hills sweeps dusk's last red glareWild on her hair.Her hands drip leaves, like blood, and burnWith frost; her moony urnShe lifts, where Death, 'mid driving stress and storm,Rears his gaunt form.And all night long she seems to say"Come forth, my Winds, and slay! – "And everywhere is heard the wailing cryOf dreams that die.

CHILD AND FATHER

A little child, one night, awoke and cried,"Oh, help me, father! there is something wildBefore me! help me!" Hurrying to his sideI answered, "I am here. You dreamed, my child.""A dream? – " he questioned. "Oh, I could not see!It was so dark! – Take me into your bed!" —And I, who loved him, held him soothingly,And smiling on his terror, comforted.He nestled in my arms. I held him fast;And spoke to him and calmed his childish fears,Until he smiled again, asleep at last,Upon his lashes still a trace of tears…How like a child the world! who, in this nightOf strife, beholds strange monsters threateningAnd with black fear, having so little light,Cries to its Father, God, for comforting.And well for it, if, answering the call,The Father hear and soothe its dread asleep! —How many though, whom thoughts and dreams appall,Must lie awake and in the darkness weep.

THE RISING OF THE MOON

The Day brims high its ewerOf blue with starry light,And crowns as King that hewerOf clouds (which take their flightAcross the sky) old Night.And Tempest there, who housesWithin them, like a cave,Lies down and dreams and drowsesUpon the Earth's huge grave,With wandering wind and wave.The storm moves on; and wingingFrom out the east – a bird,The moon drifts, calmly bringingA message and a wordOf peace, in Heaven it heard.Of peace and times called golden,Whose beauty makes it glowWith love, like that of olden,Which mortals used to knowThere in the long-ago.

WHERE THE BATTLE PASSED

One blossoming rose-tree, like a beautiful thoughtNursed in a broken mind, that waits and schemes,Survives, though shattered, and about it caught,The strangling dodder streams.Gaunt weeds: and here a bayonet or pouch,Rusty and rotting where men fought and slew:Bald, trampled paths that seem with fear to crouch,Feeling a bloody dew.Here nothing that was beauty's once remains.War left the garden to its dead alone:And Life and Love, who toiled here, for their painsHave nothing once their own.Death leans upon the battered door, at gaze —The house is silent where there once was stirOf husbandry, that led laborious days,With Love for comforter.Now in Love's place, Death, old and halt and blind,Gropes, searching everywhere for what may live. —War left it empty as his vacant mind;It has no more to give.

THE IRON AGE

And these are Christians! – God! the horror of it —How long, O Lord! how long, O Lord! how longWilt Thou endure this crime? and there, above it,Look down on Earth nor sweep away the wrong!Are these Thy teachings? – Where is then that pity,Which bade the weary, suffering come to Thee? —War takes its toll of life in field and City,And Thou must see! – O Christianity!And then the children! – Oh, Thou art another!Not God! but Fiend, whom God has given release! —Will prayer avail naught? tears of father, mother?To give at last the weary world surceaseFrom butchery? that back again hath brought herInto that age barbarian that pricedHate above Love; and, shod with steel and slaughter,Stamped on the Cross and on the face of Christ.

THE BATTLE

Black clouds hung low and heavy,Above the sunset glare;And in the garden dimlyWe wandered here and there.So full of strife, of troubleThe night was dark, afraid,Like our own love, so merelyFor tears and sighings made.That when it came to parting,And I must mount and go,With all my soul I wished it —That God would lay me low.

ON RE-READING CERTAIN GERMAN POETS

They hold their own, they have no peersIn gloom and glow, in hopes and fears,In love and terror, hovering roundThe lore of that enchanted ground! —That mystic region, where one hears,By bandit towers, the hunt that nearsWild through the Hartz; the demon cheersOf Hackelnberg; his horn and hound —They hold their own.Dark Wallenstein; and, down the years,The Lorelei; and, creased with sneers,Faust, Margaret; – the Sabboth sound,Witch-whirling, of the Brocken, drownedIn storm, through which Mephisto leers, —They hold their own.

ON OPENING AN OLD SCHOOL VOLUME OF HORACE

I had forgot how, in my dayThe Sabine fields around me layIn amaranth and asphodel,With many a cold Bandusian wellBright-bubbling by the mountain-way.In forest dells of Faun and FayHow, lounging in the fountain's spray,I talked with Horace; felt his spell,I had forgot.With Pyrrha and with LydiaHow oft I sat, while LalagaSang, and the fine Falerian fell,Sparkling, and heard the poet tellOf loves whose beauty lasts for aye,I had forgot.

LAUS DEO

In her vast church of glimmering blue,Gray-stoled from feet to chin,Her dark locks beaded with the dew,The nun-like dawn comes in:At once the hills put on their spencersOf purple, swinging streaming censersOf mist before the God of DayWho goes with pomp his way.With sapphire draperies of lightIs hung the sombre pines;Filling each valley, every heightWith sacerdotal lines —Shrines, where, like priests with worship vestured,The forests bow and, heavenly gestured,Lift high the chalice of the sun,Intoning, "Night is done!"

THE NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER

The Woolworth BuildingEnormously it liftsIts tower against the splendor of the west;Like some wild dream that driftsBefore the mind, and at the will's behest, —Enchantment-based, gigantic steel and stone, —Is given permanence;A concrete fact,Complete, alone,Glorious, immense,Such as no nation here on Earth has known:Epitomizing allThat is American, that stands for youth,And strength and truth;That's individual,And beautiful and free, —Resistless strength and tireless energy.Even as a cataract,Its superb factSuggests vast forces Nature builds with – Joy,And Power and Thought,She to her aid has broughtFor eons past, will bring for eons yet to be,Shaping the world to her desire: the threeHer counsellors constantly,Her architects, through whom her dreams come true, —Her workmen, bringing forth,With toil that shall not cease,Mountains and plains and seas,That make the EarthThe glory that it is:And, one with these,Such works of man as this,This building, towering into the blue,A beacon, round which like an ocean wide,Circles and flows the restless human tide.

ROBERT BROWNING

Master of human harmonics, where gongAnd harp and violin and flute accord;Each instrument confessing you its lord,Within the deathless orchestra of Song.Albeit at times your music may sound wrongTo our dulled senses, and its meaning barredTo Earth's slow understanding, never marredYour message brave: clear, and of trumpet tongue.Poet-revealer, who, both soon and late,Within an age of doubt kept clean your faith,Crying your cry of "With the world all's well!"How shall we greet you from our low estate,Keys in the keyboard that is life and death,The organ whence we hear your music swell?

RILEY

His Birthday, October the 7th, 1912Riley, whose pen has made the world your debtor,Whose Art has kept you young through sixty years,Brimming our hearts with laughter and with tears,Holding her faith pure to the very letter:We come to you to-day, both man and woman,And happy little children, girl and boy, —To laurel you with all our love and joy,And crown you for the dreams your pen made human:For Orphant Annie and for Old Aunt Mary,The Raggedty Man, who never will grow older,And all the kindly folks from Griggsby's Station,Immortal throngs, with Spirk and Wunk and Faery,Who swarm behind you, peering o'er your shoulder,Sharing with you the blessings of a Nation.

DON QUIXOTE

On receiving a bottle of Sherry Wine of the same nameWhat "blushing Hippocrene" is here! what fireOf the "warm South" with magic of old Spain! —Through which again I seem to view the trainOf all Cervantes' dreams, his heart's desire:The melancholy Knight, in gaunt attireOf steel rides by upon the windmill-plainWith Sancho Panza by his side again,While, heard afar, a swineherd from a byreWinds a hoarse horn.And all at once I seeThe glory of that soul who rode uponImpossible quests, – following a deathless dreamOf righted wrongs, that never were to be, —Like many another champion who has goneQuesting a cause that perished like a dream.

THE WOMAN

With her fair face she made my heaven,Beneath whose stars and moon and sunI worshiped, praying, having striven,For wealth through which she might be won.And yet she had no soul: A womanAs fair and cruel as a god;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 visionWould I exchange; or ParadisePossess instead of Hell, my prison,Where burns the passion of her eyes.

THE SONG OF SONGS

Read November 14th, 1913, before the American Academy and National Institute 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:IHear 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 ariseTo the realization of his dream.Now and then discords seem to intrude,And tones that are false and feeble —Beginnings of the perfect chordFrom 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 soulWith the urge of an astral something,Supernal,Elemental,Promethean,Instinct with an everlasting fire.IIHear 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 dæmons,Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts,Have ruled for eons of years.IIIHear me!Should my chanting cease,My music utterly fail you,Behold!Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely,Would gather the Evils of Earth,The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten,And buried in darkness:Amorphous of form,Tyrannies and SuperstitionsTorturing 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 hideousThe 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 lust of destruction.Hear me! —Out of my song have grownBeauty and joy,And with themThe 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.IVFragmentary,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,Assertive,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 LearningMake glorious the van o' the world.VThey 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 gleamThat goes to the making of Beauty;And put awayThe 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 EarthThe ponderable curtain of flesh.Not they! Not they!VIHear me!I control, and direct;I wound and heal,Elevate and subdueThe 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 nobler things. —Hear me!My dædal expression peoples the Past and PresentWith forms of ethereal thoughtThat 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

IAs when with oldtime passion for this LandHere once she stood, and in her pride, sent forthWorkmen 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 wearLaurel and pineAnd 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.IINow 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 broughtFace to grim face with naught,And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped,Of works material, leaving Beauty outOf God'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 froThe serpent, Evil, goes and strews his wayWith dragon's teeth that playTheir 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 blotOf blood and tears and woe:Now when no mortal living seems to knowWhither to turn for hope, we turn to thee,And such as thou art, asking "What's to be?"And that thou point the pathAbove Earth's hate and wrath,And Madness, stalking with his torch aglowAmid the ruins of the Nations slowCrumbling to ashes with Old Empire thereIn Europe's tiger lair.IIIA temple may'st thou be,A temple by the everlasting sea,For the high goddess, Ideality,Set like a star,Above the peaks of dark reality:Shining afarAbove the deeds of War,Within the shrine of Love, whose face men marWith Militarism,That is the prismThrough which they gaze with eyes obscured of Greed,At the white light of God's Eternity,The comfort of the world, the soul's great need,That beacons Earth indeed,Breaking its light intenseWith turmoil and suspenseAnd failing human Sense.IVFrom thee a higher CreedShall be evolved.The broken lights resolvedInto one light again, of glorious light,Between us and the Everlasting, that is God. —The all-confusing fragments, that are night,Lift up thy rodOf knowledge and from Truth's eyeballs stripThe darkness, and in armor of the Right,Bear high the standard of imperishable light!Cry out, "Awake! – I slept awhile! – Awake!Again I takeMy burden up of Truth for Jesus' sake,And stand for what he stood for, Peace and Thought,And all that's Beauty-wroughtThrough doubt and dread and ache,By which the world to good at last is brought!"VNo more with silence burdened, when the LandWas stricken by the handOf war, she rises, and assumes her standFor the Enduring; setting firm her feetOn what is blind and brute:Still holding fastWith honor to the past,Speaking a trumpet word,Which shall be heardAs an authority, no longer mute.VIAgain, yea, she shall standFor what Truth means to ManFor science and for Art and all that canMake life superior to the things that weightThe soul down, things of hateInstead of love, for which the world was planned;May she demandFaith and inspire it; Song to lead her wayAbove the crags of WrongInto the broader day;And may she standFor poets still; poets that now the LandNeeds as it never needed; such an oneAs he, large Nature's SonLanier, who with firm handHeld up her magic wandDirecting deep in music such as noneHas ever heardSuch music as a birdGives of its soul, when dying,And unconscious if it's heard.VIISo let her rise, mother of greatness still,Above all temporal ill;Invested with all old nobility,Teaching the South decision, self controlAnd strength of mind and soul;Achieving ends that shall embrace the wholeThrough deeds of heart and mind;And thereby bindIts effort to an endAnd reach its goal.VIIISo shall she winA wrestler with sin,Supremely to a place above the years,And help men riseTo what is wiseAnd true beyond their mortal finite scan —The purblind gaze of man;Aiding with introspective eyesHis soul to see a higher planOf life beyond this life; above the gyvesOf circumstance that bind him in his placeOf doubt and keep away his faceFrom what alone survives;And what assuresImmortal life to that within, that givesOf its own self,And through its giving, lives,And evermore endures.

A POET'S EPITAPH

Life was unkind to him;All things went wrong:Fortune assigned to himMerely a song.Ever a mysteryHere to his heart;In his life's historyLove played no part.Carve on the granite,There at the end,Where all may scan it,Death was his friend.Giving him all he missedHere upon Earth —Love and the call he missedAll that was worth.