Part 24

Strike from their several tones one octave chord Whose cadence being measureless would fly Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord Return refreshed with its new empery And more exultant power,—this indeed Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.

Ah! it was easy when the world was young To keep one’s life free and inviolate, From our sad lips another song is rung, By our own hands our heads are desecrate, Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.

Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown, And of all men we are most wretched who Must live each other’s lives and not our own For very pity’s sake and then undo All that we lived for—it was otherwise When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.

But we have left those gentle haunts to pass With weary feet to the new Calvary, Where we behold, as one who in a glass Sees his own face, self-slain Humanity, And in the dumb reproach of that sad gaze Learn what an awful phantom the red hand of man can raise.

O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! O chalice of all common miseries! Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne An agony of endless centuries, And we were vain and ignorant nor knew That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew.

Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, The night that covers and the lights that fade, The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, The lips betraying and the life betrayed; The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy.

Is this the end of all that primal force Which, in its changes being still the same, From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, Till the suns met in heaven and began Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man!

Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, Staunch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, That which is purely human, that is godlike, that is God.

FLOWER OF LOVE

ΓΛΥΚΥΠΙΚΡΟΣ ΕΡΩΣ

SWEET, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song, Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed, You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled mead.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine, Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name, And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of Fame.

I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young, And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre’s strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine, With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the dove, Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart, Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth, And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what else had I a boy to do,— For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is past, Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the root, And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s own mother was less dear to me, And less dear the Cytheræan rising like an argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better than the poet’s crown of bays.

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

FROM SPRING DAYS TO WINTER

(FOR MUSIC)