Part 3

By Tigris, or the streams of Ind, Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon, Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned, Setting tall towns against the dawn,

Which, when the proud Sun smote upon, Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride; Their names were ... Ask oblivion! ... "They had no poet, and they died."

Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned, That loll where fellow leopards fawn ... Their hearts are dust before the wind, Their loves, that shook the world, are wan!

Passion is mighty ... but, anon, Strong Death has Romance for his bride; Their legends ... Ask oblivion! ... "They had no poet, and they died."

Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn, Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined, Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;

They built with bronze and gold and brawn, The inner Vision still denied; Their conquests ... Ask oblivion! ... "They had no poet, and they died."

Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn, Was it but flesh they deified? Their gods were ... Ask oblivion! ... "They had no poet, and they died."

NEW YORK

SHE is hot to the sea that crouches beside, Human and hot to the cool stars peering down, My passionate city, my quivering town, And her dark blood, tide upon purple tide, With throbs as of thunder beats, With leaping rhythms and vast, is swirled Through the shaken lengths of her veined streets... She pulses, the heart of a world!

I have thrilled with her ecstasy, agony, woe-- Hath she a mood that I do not know? The winds of her music tumultuous have seized me and swayed me, Have lifted, have swung me around In their whorls as of cyclonic sound; Her passions have torn me and tossed me and brayed me; Drunken and tranced and dazzled with visions and gleams,

I have spun with her dervish priests; I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts And found love sleeping there; I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams; I have sunk with her dull despair; I have sweat with her travails and cursed with her pains; I have swelled with her foolish pride; I have raged through a thick red mist at one with her branded Cains, With her broken Christs have died.

O beautiful half-god city of visions and love! O hideous half-brute city of hate! O wholly human and baffled and passionate town! The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight, Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul, I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby! Wakened and shaken and broken, For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through thy rapid veins The beat of the heart of a world.

A HYMN

(1914)

CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel And black against the dawn The whirling armies clash and reel.... A wind, and they are gone Like mists withdrawn, Like mists withdrawn!

Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands, Earth's body vanisheth: One solid thing unconquered stands, The ghost that humbles death. All else is breath, All else is breath!

Man rose from out the stinging slime, Half brute, and sought a soul, And up the starrier ways of time, Half god, unto his goal,

He still must climb, He still must climb!

What though worlds stagger, and the suns Seem shaken in their place, Trust thou the leaping love that runs Creative over space: Take heart of grace, Take heart of grace!

What though great kingdoms fall on death Before the stabbing blade, Their brazen might was only breath, Their substance but a shade-- Be not dismayed, Be not dismayed!

Man's dream which conquered brute and clod Shall fail not, but endure, Shall rise, though beaten to the sod, Shall hold its vantage sure-- As sure as God, As sure as God!

THE SINGER

A LITTLE while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing:-- He felt life's pulses hot and strong Beat all his rapid veins along; He wrought life's rhythms into song: He laughed, he sang the Dawn! So close, so close to life he dwelt That at rare times and rapt he felt The fleshly barriers yield and melt; He trembled, looking on Creation at her miracles; His soul-sight pierced the earthly shells And saw the spirit weave its spells, The veil of clay withdrawn;-- A little while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing!

A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming;--

No more the thunder and the urge Of earth's full tides that storm the verge Of heaven with their sweep and surge Shall lift, shall bear him on; Where is the golden hope that led Him comrade with the mighty dead? The love that aureoled his head?-- The glory is withdrawn! How shall one soar with broken wings? The leagued might of futile things Wars with the heart that dares and sings;-- It is not always Dawn! A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming.

WORDS ARE NOT GUNS

Put by the sword (a dreamer saith), The years of peace draw nigh! Already the millennial dawn Makes red the eastern sky!

Be not deceived. It comes not yet! The ancient passions keep Alive beneath their changing masks. They are not dead. They sleep.