Part 12

I rode with Nimrod ... strove at Troy ... A slave I stood in Crowning Tyre, A queen looked on me and I loved And died to compass my desire.

THE WAGES

EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross, Her golden souls, to waste; The cup she fills for her god-men Is a bitter cup to taste.

Who sees the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.

Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld And beats some falsehood down Shall pass the pallid gates of death Sans laurel, love or crown;

For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee-- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane.

IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR?

"In Vishnu-land, what avatar?" --BROWNING.

PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth Are destined to another birth, And worn-out creeds regain their worth In the kindly air of other stars-- What lords of life and light hold sway In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way? What avatars in Mars?

What Aphrodites from the seas That lap the plunging Pleiades Arise to spread afar The dream that was the soul of Greece? In Mars, what avatar?

Which hundred moons are wan with love For dull Endymions? Which hundred moons hang tranced above Audacious Ajalons?

What Holy Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star? What fables sway the Milky Way? In Mars, what avatar?

When morning skims with crimson wings Across the meres of Mercury, What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings Of miracles on Mercury? What Christs, what avatars, Claim Mars?

THE GOD-MAKER, MAN

NEVERMORE Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned flute;

Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore; And the gods of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor? Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

And into what night have the Orient dieties strayed? Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged you eternal!) decayed.

The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pass Like a breath from the face of a glass, Or a blossom of summer blown shallop-like over The clover And tossed tides of grass.

Sink to silence the psalms and the paeans The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the aeons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worships grow senseless and strange,

And the mockers ask, "Where be thy altars?" Crying, "Nothing is changeless--but Change!"

Yes, nothing seems changeless, but Change. And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, One story for ever appears; The tale of a City Supernal-- The whisper of Something eternal-- A passion, a hope, and a vision That peoples the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- Manifold are the tale's variations, Race and clime ever tinting the dreams, Yet its essence, through endless mutations, Immutable gleams.

Deathless, though godheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason-defying, Lives that passionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, Never

Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- I will storm the black bastions of Night! I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a god!"

As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his gods they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs; And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, he clothes them with music and fire; Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, that he worships his own desire; And mixed with his trust there is terror, and mixed with his madness is ruth, And every man grovels in error, yet every man glimpses a truth.

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow, too;

For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion But is worthy some worship of mine;-- Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble--but open-eyed!

UNREST

A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core Of all existing things: It was the eager wish to soar That gave the gods their wings.