​THE TORRENT

AND THE NIGHT BEFORE

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON

ROBINSON, GARDINER

MAINE 1889-1896

Qui pourrais-je imiter pour etre original ?

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR

I found a torrent falling in a glen
Where the sun s light shone silvered and leaf-split ;
The lxom, the foam, and the mad flash of it
All ma<le a magic symphony ; but when
I thought upon the coming of hard men
To out those patriarchal trees away,
And turn to gold the silver of that spray,
I shuddered. Hut a gladness now and then
I>id wake me to myse.f till I was glad
In earnest, and was welcoming the time
For streaming saws to sound above the chime
Of idle waters, and for me to know
The jealous visionings that I had had
Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.

AARON STARK

Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark
Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose :
A miser was he, with a miser s nose,
And eyes like little dollars in the dark.
His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark ;
And when he spoke there came like sullen blows
Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,
As if a cur were chary of its bark.
​ Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,
Year after year he shambled through tin- town,
A loveless exile moving with a st;i!l ;
And oftentimes there, erept into his earn
A Hound of alien pity, touched with tears,
And then (and only then) did Auron laugh.

THE DEAD VILLAGE

Here there is death. Hut oven here, they say
II re where the dull sun shine* this afteruoou
AH deHolute as ever the M.-.id moon
Did glimmer on tle.id S;u-li-> - men were gay;
Ami there were little children here to play,
With small soft hand* that once did keep in tune
The string thut streteh from heaver, till tooi>oti
The change came, and the music passed uway.
Now their i.s nothing hut the ghosis of thinga:
No life, no love, no ehildren, and no men;
And over the forgotten plaee then- eliugn
The strange and unremrml>eral>le light
That is in dreams. The muie failed, and then
<Jod frowned, and >hut the village from KUftigtti

BALLADE OF A SHIP

Down by the flash of the restless water
The dim White Ship like a white bird lay;
Iaughing at lite and the world tht -y snught her,
And out she Huung to the silvering hay.
Then oil they tit w on their ro>tering way,
And the keen moon tired the light foam Hying
I p from the MOM! ^here the faint xtarn play,
Aiul the 1 >onei of the hr.ive in the wave are lying.
T was a king s fair son with a king s fair daughter,
And full three hundred beside, they nay,
Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter
So soon to sei/e them and hide them for ave;
​ Nor ever they knew of a ghoul’s eye spying
Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.
Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her
(This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend s prey:
The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her,
And hurled her down where the dead men stay.
A torturing silence of wan dismay
Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying
Then down they sank to slumber and sway
Where the bones of the brave in the ware arc lying.
Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway
Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds crying?
Or does love still shudder and steel still slay,
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?

DEAR FRIENDS

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own: the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill ;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that be deplores:
So friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.
​ SONNET

WHEN we can all so excellently give The mcasure of love s wisdom with a blow, Whv can wo nut in turn receive it so, Ami end this murmur for the life we live ? And when we do so frantically strive To win strange faith, why do we shun to know Tlmt in love s elemental over-glow (lod s wholeness gleams with light superlative ? brother men, if you have eyes at all, Look at a branch, a bird, a ehild, a rose Or anything (iod ever made that grows Nor let the smallest vision of it .slip Till you can read, as on BeUbazzar wall, TI.e glory of eternal partnership!

HER EYES

Up from the street and the crowds that went,
Morning and midnight, to and fro,
Still was the room where bin ditvs he spent,
And the .stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

Year after year, with his dream shut fast,
He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim
Fort he love that his brushes had earned at List
And the whole world rang with tin- praise of him,

lint he cloaked his triumph, andscarched, instead,
Till his eheekiiwere sere and his luiirs were gray,
"There are women enough, God knows," he said....
"There are stars enough when the sun’s away."

Then he went back to the same still room
That had held his dream in the long ago,
When he buried his days in a nameless tomb,
And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

And a passionate humor seized him there —
Seized him and held him, until there grew
​Like life on his canvas, plowing and fair,
A perilous face and an angel’s, too.

AniM-1 and maiden, and all in one.
All but the eyes. They were there, hut yet
They seemed somehow like a soul half done;
What was the matter ? Did God forget ?…

Hut he wrought them at last with a skill so sure
That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman,
With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,
And a glimmer of hell to make them human.

God never forgets. And he worships her
There in that same still room of his,
For his wife, and his constant arbiter
Of the world that was and the world that is.

And he wonders yet what her love could be
To punish him after that .strife so prim;
But the longer he lives with her eyes to see,
The plainer it all comes hack to him.

SONNET
The master ami the slave go hand in hand,
Though touch l>e lost. The poet is a slave,
Ami there he kings do sorrowfully crave
The joyanee that a scullion may command.
Hut ah, the sonnet-slave must understand
The mission of his Inmdage, or the grave
May clasp his hones or ever he shall save
The perfect word that is the poet s wand.

The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes
Arc for Thought s purest gold the jewel-stones;
Hut shapes and echoes that are never done
Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes
Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones
The crash of battles that are never won.
​ ZOLA

BECAUSE he puts the compromising ehart
Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid;
Because he counts the price that you have paid
For innocence, and counts it from the start,
You loathe him. But he sees the human heart
Of God meanwhile, and in God s hand has weighed
Your squeamish and emasculate crusade
Against the grim dominion of his art.
Never until we conquer the uncouth
Conniving* of our shamed indifference
(We call it Christian faith !) are we to Mean
The racked and shrieking hideousncss of Truth
To Hud, ill hate s polluted self -de fence.
Throbbing, the puUe, the divine heart of man.

BALLADE

In dreams I crowed a barren laud,
A land of ruin, far away ;
Around me hung on every hand
A deathful stillness of decay;
And silent, as in bleak dismay
That song should thus forsakcn be,
On that forgotten ground there lay
The broken flutes of Already.

Hie forcitt that was ail HO grand
When pi|>cs and tabors had their away
Stood leatless now, a gluntly band
Of skeletons in cold array.
A lonely surge of aneu-nt spray
Told of an unforgetful sea,
But iron blows had hn-died for aye
The broken Hutcs of A ready.
No more by Hummer breezes fanned,
The place wan desolate and gray;
​ But still my dream was to command
New life into that shrunken clay.
I tried it. Yes, you scan to-day,
With uncommiseratiiig glee,
Hie songs of one who strove to play
The broken flutes of Arcady.

ENVOY

So, Rook, I join the common fray,
To tight where Mammon may decree;
And leave, to crumble as they may,
The broken flute* of Arcady.

FOR SOHE POETS
BY HATTHEW ARNOLD

Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand
He wakes lost echoes from song s classic shore.
And brings their crystal cadence back once more
To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land
Where (lod s truth, cramped and fettered with a band
Of iron creeds, he cheers with golden lore
Of hcrocii and the men that long before
Wrought the romance of ages yet unscanned.

Still docs a cry through sad Valhalla go
For Balder, pierced with look s unhappy spray
For Haider, all but spared by Frca s charms;
And still does art s im|>rial visU show,
On the hushed sands of Oxus, far away,
Young Suhrab dying in his father s arms.

GEORGE CRABBE

Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,
Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,
But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still
With the sure strength that fearless truth eudows: —
​ In spite of nil flue science disavows,
Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill
There vet remains what fashion cannot kill,
Though ears have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether ur not we read him, we can frel
Front time to time the igor of his namu
A^aint us like u tinker for the shame
And emptiness of vthat our hoiils reveal
In bol - that are as altars when ve kneel
To concentrate the tiirker, not the flame.

5ONNET

On, for a poet for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray:
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with u newer light:
To put thrse little sonnet-men to ill-lit
Who fashion, in a .shrewd meehanic way,
Son^s without sou l.t that flicker for u day
To vanish in irrevocable night.

What does it mean, this barren age of ours?
Here arc the men, thu women, and the flowers,
The h asns, and the sunset, as before.
What does it mean? Shall not one burd arise
To wrench one banner from the western
And mark it with his name for evermore?

THE ALTAR

Alone, remote, nor witting where I went,
1 found an altar huildrd in u dream
A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam
So uwift, so Hcarchintf, and MO eloquent
Of upward promise that IOVC M murmur, blent
With sorrow s warning, gave but a supreme
Intending impulse to that human stream
Whose Hood was all for the flame * fury U tit.
​ Alas! I said, the world is in the wrong.
Hut the same quenchless ferer of unrest
That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng
Thrill, il me, and I awoke . . . and was the same
Bewildered insect plnnging for the flame
That burns, and must bum somehow for the best.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL

They are all gone away.
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill;
They are all g<ne away.

Nor is there one to-dav
To speak them good or ill: .
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around that sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There Ls nothing more to say.

THE WILDERNESS

Come away ! come away ! there s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
​ Of a dirge that sings to gend us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left hut ashen now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer s languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we eanuot follow,
To the :>lii|. s of oilier valley* and the kounds of other shores.

Come airaiff com? atrtiy! you <vm hear them cnlliny, callini/,
Calling n. to come to thtin, and roam no more.
Oi tr thrre beyond the ritfyct and the Inml that lie*
There * an old totg calling us to come!

Come away! come away! for the iceue we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home ami a flame that a young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond tin- mount aiiiH.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men In-fore us,
And the winds that hlow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;
Hut this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us
In the NtrangeiieMN of home-coming, ami a faithful woman ii eyes.

Comf tuniff! t-innr nirmj! tttrrf in imthiny non-to clut-r in
Notfiinif non to comfort m, hut lotr t road komf:
Over there twi/und thf dnrinest there * a window glniim to t/reet nx,
And a wartn hmrth icttitafor u* uithtn.
​ Cone away! come away! or the roving-fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:
There are no men yet can leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,
There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.
So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we brag the better
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to hlight it,
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.

Come away. come away! there are dead men all around us —
Frozen men that mock with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes
And the long fall wind on the lake.

LUKE HAVERGAL

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The wind will moan, the leaver will whisper some
Whisper of her, and strike yon as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call,
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
Luke Havergal. *

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that s in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything: —
​ God idaya Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell in inort* than half of paradise.
No, then* is nut a dawn in eastern skies,
In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you tin-.,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kis4
That ll.iMu-s UJMHI your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that >-u must fro.
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is
Hitter, hut one th.it faith can never mi-,.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
To tell you tin*.

There is the western gate, Luke Havcrgul,
There are. the crimson leaven upon the wall.
(io, for the winds are tearing them away
Nur think to riddle the dead words they hay,
Nor any IMI in- to feel them an they fall;
Hut p>! and if you trust her she will call.
There is the western gate, Luke llavergul,
Luke Havergal.

THE CHORUS OF OLD HEN IN ÆGEUS

Ye gods that have u home beyond the world,
Ye that have eye:) for all in.iu s agony
Ye that have seen this woe that we have nceii,
Look with a jut regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a biitVering world where men grow old
And wander like Had shadow* till, at hist,
Out of the Hare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
Into the mLst they go,
Into the mUt of death.

O hhadct of you that loved him long before
The cruel threads of that black s.ul were spun,
​ May loyal anus and ancient welcomings
Receive him once again
Who now no longer moves
Here in this flickering dance of changing days
Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath.
And the Mack master Death is over all,
To chill with his approach,
To level with his touch,
The reigning strength of youth,
The fluttered heart of age.

Woe for the fateful day when Delphi s word was lost
Woe for the loveless prince of ..Tithra s line!
Woe for a father s tears and the curse of a king s release
Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom!
And thott the saddest wind
Tliat ever blew from Crete,
Sing the fell tidings Itack to that thrice unhappy ship!
Sing to the western flame,
Sing to the dying foam,
A dirge for the snndered years and a dirge for the years to be!

JJetter his end had l>eeu as the end of A cloudless day,
Bright, ly the word of Zens, with a golden star,
Wrought of a golden fame, and flnng to the central sky,
To gleam on a stormless tomh for evermore:
Whether or not there fell
To the touch of an alien hand
The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem,
(letter his end had been
To die as an old man dies,
But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown ever a crown.
​ THE MIRACLE

"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead,
And you shall see no more this faee of mine,
Let nothing but red roses be the sign
Of tho white life I lost for him," she said;
14 No, do not curse him, pity him instead;
Forgive him! forgive me! . . . God’s anodyne
Fur human hate is pity; and the wine
That makes men wise, forgiveness. 1 have read
Love s message, in love s murder, and I die."
And so they laid her just where she would lie,
Under red roses. Ked they bloomed and fell;
Hut when Hushed autumn and the snows went by,
And spring came, lo, from every bud s green shell
Burst a white blossom. Can love reason why?

HORACE TO LEUCONOE

I PRAY you not, IxMiconoe, to jmre
With unpermittcd eyes on what may be
Appointed by tin- gods for you und me,
Nor on Chuldfuu figures any more.
T were infinitely better to implore
The present only: whether Jove decree
Mure winters yrt to come, or whether he
Make even this, whose hard, wavc-cutcn shore
Shutters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last
He wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill
Your bosom with large hopes; for while 1 sing,
The envious close of time is narrowing:-
So seize the day, or ever it be past
And let the morrow come for what it will.

THE BALLADE OF DEAD FRIENDS As we the withered ferns
By the roadway lying,
Time, the jester, spurns
​ All our prayers and prying,
All our tears and sighing,
Sorrow, change, and woe,
All our where-and-whying
For friends that come and go.

Life awakes and burns,
Ape and death defying,
Till at last it learns
All but Ixve i* dying;
Love s the trade we re plying,
God has willed it so;
Shrouds are what we re buying
For friends that come and go.

Man forever yearns
For the thing that f s flying:
Everywhere he turns,
Men to dust are drying
Dust that wanders, eyeing
(With eyes that hardly glow)
New faces, dimly spying
For friends that come and go.

ENVOY

And thus we all are nighing
The truth we fear to know:
Death will end our crying
For friends that come and go.

VILLANELLE OF CHANGE

Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;
​ And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

Hut into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cant:
Long centuries have come and gone

The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last:
Since 1 ersia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have conic and gone.

THOMAS HOOD

Tut: man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never - ir to look with common ejes
Upon a world of anguish and of hin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities
The nameless and eternal tragedies
That render hope and hopelessness akin.

We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel
A still chord sorrow swept, a weird unrest;
And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal,
As if the very ghost of mirth were dead
As if the joys of time to dreams had tied,
Or sailed away with lues to the Writ.

FOR A BOOK BY THOMAS HARDY With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways,
I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near,
​ Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear,
Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, -
When, like an exile given by God s grace
To feel onee more a human atmosphere,
I caught the world s first murmur, large and clear,
Flung from a Ringing river s endless race.
Then, through a magic twilight from below,
I heard its grand sad song as in a dream:
Life s wild infinity of mirth and woe
It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam,
Across the music of its onward flow,
I saw the cottage lights of Wessei beam.

SUPREMACY

There. is a drear and Ir.nely tra-t of hell
From all the common gloom removed afar:
A Hat, sad land it is, where shadows are
Wh.sc lorn estate my vers,e may never tell.
1 walked among them and I ku^w them well:
Men I hud slandered on life s little star
For churl* and sluggard*; and I knew the sear
t pon their brows of woe Ineffable.
Hut as I went majestic on my way,
Into the dark they vanished, one by one,
Till, with a shaft "of God s eternal day,
The dream of all my glory was undone,
And, with a fool s importunate dismay,
I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

THREE QUATRAINS

As long as Fame s imperious music rings
Will poets mock it with crowned words august;
And haggard men will clamber to be kings

Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled,
Nor shudder for the revel* that are done:
The wines tli.it Hushed Luenllu* are all spilled,
The string* that Nero fingered are all gone.

We cunuot crown ourselves with everything,
Nor e.m we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:
No matter what we air, or what we sing,
Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.

FOR CALDERON

And now, my brother, it is time
For mi- to tell the truth to you:
To tell the story of a crime
As black as Mona s eyes wen- blue.
Yen, here to -night, before I die,
1 11 .speak the words that burn in me;
And you may send them, bye-and-bye,
To Calderon acroa* the sea.

Now get Mime paper atid a pen,
And hit tight here, beside my U-d.
Write every word I say, and then
And then . . . well," what then? I’ll be dead!
. . . Hut here I am alive enough,
And I remember all I vo done . . .
(iod knows Nvli.it I was thinking of!
Hut send it home to Calderon.

And you, Franeisco, brother, say,
What is there for a man like me?-
1 tell you (104! sounds far away
AH far almost as far as she!
I killed her! . , . Yes, I poisoned her
So slowly that ho never knew …
Franeiseo, I m a murderer.
Now tell me what there .-> to do!
​ To die of course ; but after that,
I wonder if I live again!
And if I live again, for what?
To suffer ? . . . Hah! there is no pain
But on-; and that I know so well
That I can shame the devil s eyes! . . .
For twenty years I’ve heard in hell
What Mona sings in Paradise!

Strange, that a little Northern girl
Should love niv brother Caldcron,
And set my brain so in a whirl
That I was mad till she was gone! ...
I wonder if all men le such
As I ? I wonder what love is!
I never loved her very much
I ntil I saw that she was his;

And then I knew that I was lost:
And then I knew that I was mad.
I reasont d what it all would cost,
But that wax nothing. I was glad
To feel myself so foul a thing!
And I was glad for Calderon. ...
My God! if he could hear her sing
Just oisce, as I do! There! she s done.

No, it was only something wrong
A minute something in my head.
(tod, no ! she *11 never stop that song
As long as I m alive or dead!
As long as I am here or there,
She 11 sing to me, a murderer!
Well, I suppose the gods are fair. . . .
I killed her . . . yes, I poisoned her!

But yon, Francisco, you are young;
So take my hand and hear me, now:
There are no lies upon jour tongue,
There is no guilt upon your brow.
But there is blood upon jour name ?
And blood, you say, will rust the steel
​ That strike* for honor or for shame? . . .
FrancUco, it u feur you feel!
And Mich a miserable fear
That you, my boy, will coll it pride;
Hut you will grope from year to year
Until at hist the clouds divide,
And all at once you meet the truth,
And curse yourself, with helpless rage,
For something you have lost with youth
And found again, too late, with age.
The truth, my brother, is just this:
our title here, is nothing more
Or less than what your courage, is:
The in. in must put himself IK- fore
Tin- mime, and onee the master stay
Forever or forever fall.
Ciood-bye! Kememher what I say . . .
(iood-hye! (iood-hye ! . . . Ami that waa all.
The lips were, still: the man ;is dead.
FraiUMM-o, with a weird aurprUo,
Stood like abtranger hv the l>ed,
And there were no tears in his eves.
Hut in In > heart there watt a grief
Too strong for human tears to free,
And in his hand a written leaf
For C alderon across the sea.

JOHN eVI;KI;UX)WN

V liner are you going to-night, to-night,
Where are you going, John Kvereldown?
There *s never the higu of a star in sight,
Nor a lamp that s nearer than Tilbury Town.
Why do you stare as a dead man might?
Where are you pointing away from the light?
And where are you going to-night, to-night,
Where are you going, John Kvereldown?
​ Right through the forost, where none can see,
There s where I m going to Tilbury Town.
The men ar asleep or awake, may be
Hut the women arc calling John Evereldown.
Ever and ever they call for me,
And while they enll can a man be free?
So right through the forest, where none can see,
There *s where I *m going to Tilbury Town.

But why are you going so late, so late,
Whv are vou going, John Kvereldown?
Though the road be smooth and the path be straight,
There are two long leagues to Tilbury Town.
Come in bv the fire, old man, and wait!
Why do you chatter out there by the gate?
And why are you going so late, so late,
Why are you going, John Evcreldown?

I follow the women wherever they call,
That s why I *ni going to Tilbury Town.
God knows if I pray to be done with it all,
But God is no friend to John Evereldown.
So the clouds may come and the rain may fall.
The shadows may creep and the dead men crawl ;
But I follow the women wherever they call,
And that s why I m going to Tilbury Town.

THE WORLD

SOME are the brothers of all humankind,
And own them, whatsoever their estate;
And some, for sorrow and self-worn, arc blind
With enmity for man s unguarded fate.

For some there is a music all day long
Like flutes in paradise, they are so glad;
And there is hell s eternal under-soug
Of corses and the cries of men gone mad.
​ Some My the Scheme with love htam.K ItiininoiiH,
Some sav t wore better hack to chaos hurled;
And to t U what we at- that makes for u
The measure and the m< Miiiug of the world.

CREDO

I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anyhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That 1 can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair.
And angel tinkers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there U not a glimmer, nor a call,
Fr one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears.
The black and awful chaos of the night.
KIT through it all above, beyond it all
I know the fur-sent message of the yearn,
I feel the coming glory of the Light!

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

For those that never know the light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the Night,
Seem lost ia Fortune * winnowing.

Hut some arc strong and some are weak, -
And there s the .->t<rv. House and home
Are shut from countless hearts tint seek
World-refuge that will never come.

And if there he. no other life,
And if there he no other ch:iucc
To weigh their sorrow and their strife
Thau in the scales of circumstance

T were better, ere the sun go down
Upon the first day we embark,
​ In life s embittered sea to drown
Than sail forever in the dark.

But if there be a soul on earth
So blinded with its own misuse
Of man s revealed, jnoessant worth,
Or worn with anguish that it views

No linht but for a mortal eye
No rest but of a mortal sleep
No (iod but in a prophet s lie
No faith for " honest doubt " to keep

If there be nothing, good or bad,
But ehaos for a soul to trust,
God counts it for a soul gone mad,
And if God be God, He b just.

And if God be God, He is Love;
And though the Dawn be still so dim,
It shows us we have played enough
With creeds that make a- tic ml of Him.

There is one creed, and only one,
That glorifies God s excellence;
So cherish, that His will be- done,
The common creed of common sense.

It is the crimson, not the gray.
That charms the twilight of all time;
It is the promise of the day
That makes the starry sky sublime;

It is the faith within the fear
That holds us to the life we cane;
So let as in ourselves revere
The Self which is the Universe!

Let us, the Children of the Night,
Put off the cloak that hides the scar!
Let us be Children of the Light,
And tell the aged what we are!
​ THE CLERKS

I did not think that I should find them there
When I came back again ; but there they stood,
As in the days they dreamed of when young blood
Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.
He sure, they met mo with an ancient air,
And ye*, there wan u hliop-woru brotherhood
About them ; but the men were just as good,
Ami just a* human as they over were.
Anil you that aehe HO much to be sublime,
And you that feed yourselves with your descent,
What fume* of all your vi>i.m and your fear*?
Poets and kings are but the elerka of Time,
Tiering the .same dull webs of diseoiitent,.
Clipping the same sad aluage of the years.

A BALLADE BY THE FIRE

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee,
The while a witless masquerade
Of thing* that only i-hildren &eo
Float* ii: a mi..t of light and shade :
They pass, u flimsy euvaleade,
And with a weak, remindful glow,
The fulling embers break and fade,
As one by one the oiiuntoms go.

Then, with a melaneholy glee
To think where onee my funey htrayed,
I muse on what the years may bo
Whose coming titles are all unsaid,
Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid
Within their shadowed niches, grow
By grim degrees to pick and spade,
As one by one the phantoms go.
​ Hut then, what though the mystic Three
Around me ply their merry trade?
And Charon soon may carry me
Across the gloomy Stygian glade?
He up, my soul! nor be afraid
Of what some unlwrn year may show;
Hut mind your human debts are paid,
As one by one the phantoms go.
Life is the gai.ie that must be played:

This truth at least, good friend, we know.
So live and laugh, nor be dismayed
As one by one the phantoms go.

ON THE NIGHT OF A FRIEND’S WEDDING

IF ever I am old, and all alone,
I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;
For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.
The devil only knows wh.^t I have done,
Hut here I am, and here are six or eight
Good friends who mos . ingenuously prate
About my songs to such and such a one.

Hut everything is all askew to-night,
As if the time were come, or almost come,
For their nntenanted mirage of me
To lose itself and crumble out of sight
Like a tall ship that floats above the foam
A little while, and then breaks utterly.

VERLAINE

WHY do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
To touch the covered corpse of him that tied
The uplands for the fens and rioted
Like a sick satyr with doom s worshippers ?
Come ! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
​ To tell the tory of the life he led.
Let the in, ni gu: let the dead flesh be dead,
And lut the worms be its biographers.

Song sloughs away the sin to find redress
In uit complete remembrance: nothing clings
For lung but laurel to the stricken brow
That felt the Muse’s finger; nothing less
Than hell s fulfilment of the end of thing!*
Can blot the star that shines on 1 ai is now.

THE GARDEN

There is a fenceless garden overgrown
With buds und blossoms and all sorts of leaves
And once, among the roses and the sheaves,
The Gardener and I were there alone.
He led me to the plot when* I had thrown
The femii l of my diiys on waited ground,
And in that riot of sad weeds I found
Thu fruitage of a life that wa* my own.
My life! . . . Ah yes, there * a-s my life, indeed!
And there were all the lives of humankind;
And they were like a hook that I eould read,
Whose every leaf, miraculous! v Nigued,
Outrolled itsrlt from Thought s eternal seed,
Iove-roott d in (iod a garden of the mind.

TWO SONNETS

Just as I wonder at the twofohl soreen
Of twisted innoeeiice that you wonhl plait
For eyes that uneourageou.sly a ait
The ruining of a kingdom that has been,
So do 1 wonder what God’s love ean mean
To you that all ho strangely estimate
The put POM- and the consequent estate
Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.
​ No, I have not your backward faith to shrink
Lone-faring from the doorway of God’s home,
To find Him in the names of buried men;
Nor your ingenious reciranee to think
We cherish, in the life tliat is to come,
The scattered features of dead friends again.

Never until our souls are strong enough
To plunge into the crater of the Scheme
Triumphant in the Hash there to redeem
Love’s handsel and for evermore to slough,
Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough
And reptile skins of us whereon we set
The stigma of scared years are we to get
Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.

Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste
Of life in the beneficence divine
Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine
That we have squandered in sin s frail distress.
Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste,
The mead of Thought’s prophetic endlessness.

WALT WHITMAN

The master-songs are ended, and the man
That sang them is name. And so is God
A name; and so is love, and life, and death,
And everything. But we, who are too blind
To read what we have written, or what faith
Has written for us, do not understand:
We only blink, and wonder.

Last night it was the song that was the man,
But now it is the man that is the song.
We do not hear him very much to-day;
His piercing and eternal cadence rings
Too pure for us too powerfully pure,
​Too lovingly triumphant, and too large;
Hut there are some that hear him, and they know
That he shall sing to-morrow for all men,
And that oil time shall listen.

The master-songs are ended? Rather say
No songs are ended that are ever sung,
And that no named are dead names. When we write
Men s letters tut proud marble or on sand,
We write them there forever.

KOSMOS

All, shuddering men that falter and shrink so
To look on death, what were the days we live,
Where life is half a struggle to forgive,
Hut for tin; love that finds us when we go?
Is God a jester? likes he laugh and throw
Poor hranded wretehes here to sweat and strive
For some vague end that never shall arrive?
And is lie not yet weary of the show?

Think of it, all ye millions that have planned,
And only planned, the larges.s of hard youth!
Think of it, all ye builder* on the sand,
Whose works are down! Is love so small, for sooth?
lie brave! To-morrow you will understand
The doubt, the pain, the triumph, and the Truth!

AN OLD STORY

Strange that I did not know him then,
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign;

Hut cursed him for the ways he had
To make me see
My envy of the praise he had
For praising me.
​ I would have rid the earth of him
Oner, in my pride! . . .
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.

A POEM FOR MAX NORDAU

Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow,
And thrscared night shudders at the hrown owl’s ery;
The Weak reeds rattle as the winds whirl by,
And frayed leaves flutter through the clumped shrubs callow.

Chill dews elinging on the low cold mallow
Make a steel-keen shimmer where the spent stems lie;
Pan shades quiver down the lone long fallow,
And the scared night shudders at the brown owl’s cry.

Pale stars peering through the clouds* curled shallow
Make a thin still flicker in a foul round sky;
Hlaek damp shadows through the hushed air fly;
The lewd gloom wakens to a moon-sad sallow,
Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow.

BOSTON

My northern pines are good enough for me,
But there s a town my memory uprears —
A town that always like a friend appear?,
And always in the sunrise by the sea.
And over it, somehow, there seems to be
A downward flash of something new and fierce
That ever strives to clear, but never clean
The dimness of a charmed antiquity.

I know my Boston is a counterfeit,
A frameless imitation, all bereft
​ Of living nearness, noise, and common speech;
Hut I am glad for every glimpse of it,
And there it is plain ad a name that’s left
In letters by warm hands I cannot reach.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

"At if God made him and then wondered why."

Look yon, Dominc; look yon, and listen.
Look in my face, first: search every line there;
Mark every feature, chin, lip, and forehead.
Look in my eyes, and tell ine the lesson
Yon read there; measure my nose, and tell me
Where I am wanting. A man s i.ose, Domine,
Is often the east of his inward spirit;
So mark mine well. . . . Hut why do you smile so?
Pity, or what? Is it written all over,
This faee of mine, with a brute** confession?
Nothing hut aiu there ? nothing but hell-scars?
Or is it because there is something better
A glimmer of good, mayle, or a shadow
Of something that s followed me down from childhood
Followed me all these years and kept me,
Spite of my slips and sins and follies
Spite of my last red sin, my mimler,
Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind?
And you smile for that? . . . You re a good man, Domine!
The one good man in the world who knows me
My one good friend in a world that moeks me,
Here in this hard stone cage. . . . Hut I leave it
To-morrow. . . . To-morrow! My (lod! am I crying?
Are thes e things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened ?
I who swore I should go to the scaffold
​ With big strong steps, and ... No more, I thank you,
But no. ... I am all right now! . . . No! listen!
1 am here to l>e hanged: to be hanged to-morrow
At six o clock, when the sun is rising.
And why am I here? Not a soul can tell you
But this poor shivering thing before you
This fluttering wreck of the man God made him.
For God knows what wild reason. Hear me,
And learn from my lips the truth of my story.
There’s nothing strange in what I shall tell you
Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly,
But damnably human; and you shall hear it.
Not one of those little black lawyers were told it;
The judge, with his big bald head, never knew
And the jury (God rest their poor souls! ) never dreamed it,
Once there were three in the world who could tell it,
Now there are two. There 11 be two to-morrow :
You, my friend, and . . . But there s the story.
When I was a boy the world was heaven.
I never knew then that the men and the women
Who petted and called me a brave big fellow
Were ever less happy than I ; but wisdom
Which comes with the years, you know, soon showed me
The secret of all my glittering childhood
The broken key to *the fairies castle
That held my life in the fresh glad season
When 1 was the king of the earth. Then slowly
​ And yet so swiftly! there came the knowledge
That tho marvelous life I had lived was my life;
That the glorious world 1 haul loved was my world;
And that every man and every woman
And every child was a different being,
Wrought, witli a different heat and tired
With pansion born of a iugle spirit;
That tin- pleasure I felt wax nut their pleasure,
Nor my orr>w a kind of imim-leh* pity
For something, I knew not what their sorrow.
And thus wax I tan- lit my that hard lesson,
Tin- It >-on we Mill, i the most in learning:
That a happy man it a man forfeit id
Of all the toi turiiig tll around him.

When or where I first met tho woman
I cherished and made my wife, no matter.
Enough to hay that I found her and kept her
Here in my heart with as pure a devotion
As ever Christ felt for hi* brothers. Forgive me
For naming his name iu your patient presence;
But I feel my words, and the truth I utter
Is God’s own truth. 1 loved that woman!
Not for her face, but for something fairer
Something diviner I thought than Wanty:
1 loved the spirit the human something
That seemed to ehime with my own eoudition,
And makcsoul-tmiMe when we we it? together;
And we were never apart from the moment
My eyes flashed into her eyes the mes.sagu
That hwept it.ielf in a quivering answer
Hack through mv htraiige l<t being. My pulses
Leapt with an aehing hpeed ; and the measure
()f this great world grew Miiall and Miualler,
Till it heemed the riky and the land and the oeean
Closed at last in a nist all golden
Around UM two. And we stood for a season
​ Like gods out flung from chaos, dreaming
That we were the king and the queen of the fire
That reddened tin- clouds of love that held us
Blind to the new world soon to he ours
Ours Jo seize and sway. The passion
Of that great love was a nameless passion
Bright as the hlaze of the sun at noonday,
Wild as the flames of hell; hut, uiark you,
Never a whit less pure for its fervor.
The Imseness in me (for 1 was human)
Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing
Was left me then hut a soul that mingled
Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered
In fearful triumph. When I consider
That helpless love and the cursed folly
That w reeked iny life for the sake of a woman,
Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage
(Whatever the word may mean) I wonder
If all the woe was her sin, or whether
The chains tlwimelVM were enough to lend her
In love s despite to break them. . . .Sinners
And saints 1 viv :>n> rooked in the cradle,
But never are known till the will within them
Speaks in its own good time, So I foster
Kven to-night for the woman who wronged me
, Xothinjj of hate, nor of hive, but a foeling
Of still regret, For the man . . . But hear me,
And judge for yourself:
For a time the seasons
Changed and parsed in a sweet succession
That seemed to me like n endless music:
Life was a rolling psalm, and the choirs
Of God were glad for our love. I fancied
All this, and more than I dare to tell you
To-night, yes, more than I dare to remember;
And then .... well, the music stopped. There are moments
In all men s lives when it stops, I fancy,
​ Or seems to stop, (ill it comes to cheer them
Again with a larger wound. Tin- ciirtuiu
Of life just then ia lift, -a a little
To give to their sight new joys new sorrows
Or nothing at all, HomctimcH. I was watching
The H!OW sweet seem-.- of a golden picture,
Flushed ami alive with a long delusion
That made the murmur of home, when I shuddered
And felt like a knife th.it awful silence
That coineH when the music goe* forever.
The trnth came over my life like a darkness
Over a forest where one man wanders,
Worse than alone. For a time I daggered
And stumbled on with a weak persistence
After the phantom of hope that darted
And dodged like a frightened thing In-fore we,
To quit me at last, .tin I vanish. Nothing
Was left me then hut the curse of living
And Waring through all my da , the fever
And thir.st of a poiMtned love. Were I stronger,
Or weaker, perhaps mv scorn had navcd me
(liven me strength to crush my hoi row
With hate for her and the world that praised her
To have left her, then and there, to have conquered
That old falhe life with a new and a wiser;
Such things are easy in word*. . . . You listen,
And frown, I suppose, that 1 never mention
That beautiful word, forgive ! I forgave her
First of all; and 1 praised kind heaven
That I wan a brave clean man to do it;
And then I tried to forget. Forgiveness! . . .
What does it mean hcii the one forgiven
Shivers and weeps and clings and ktsiwt
The ereiluloiiM fool that holds her, and tellt him
A thousand thing* of a good man * merry,
And then slips .ll with a laugh and plunges
Hack to the .sin she has quit for a season
​ To tell him that boll and the world are better
For her than a prophet s heaven? Believe me,
The love that dies ere its flames are wasted
In search of an : lien soul is In-tter,
Better by far than the lonely passim
That bums baek into the heart that feeds it.
For I loved her still; and the more she mocked me,
Fooled with her endless pleading promise
Of future faith, the more I believed her
The penitent thing she seemed; and the stronger
Her ehoking arms and her small hot kisses
Hound me and burned my brain to pity.
The more she grew to the heavenly creature
That brightened the life I had lost forever.
The truth was gone somehow for the moment;
The curtain fell for a time; and I fancied
We were again like gods together,
Loving again with the old glad rapture.
But the scenes, like these, too often repeated,
Failed nt last and her gnile was wasted,
1 made an end of her shrewd caresses
And told her a few straight words. She took them . -
Full at their worth and the faree was over.

At first my dreams of the past upheld me,
But they were a short support: the present
Pushed them away, and I fell. The mission
Of life (whatever it was) was blasted;
My game was lost. And I met the winner
Of that foul deal as a sick slave gathers
His painful strength at the sight of his master;
And when he was past I cursed him, fearful
Of that strange chance which makes us mighty
Or mean, or both. I cursed him and hated
The stones he pressed with his heel; I. followed
His easy march with a backward envy,
And cursed myself for the beast within me.
But pride is the master of love; and the vision
Of those old days grew faint and fainter:
​ The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered
Wan nothing now but a woman; it woman
Out of my way, and out of my nature.
My buttle with blinded love was over,
My battle with aching pride beginning.
If I was the loser at first, I wonder
If I am the winner now! ... I doubt it.
My life is u losing game; and to-morrow . . .
To-morrow! . . . Christ! did 1 say tomorrow ? . . .
Is your brandy good for death? . .. . There; listen:

When love goes out, and a man is driven
To bhnii mankind for the sears that make him
A joke for all chattering tongues, h* carries
A double burden. The wtH-s I suffered
After tbat hard Ixurayal made me
1 ity, at tii >t, all breathing creature*
On this bewildered earth. 1 studied
Their faces and made for in) self tbe ntory
Of ail their Mcattered liven. Like brother*
And HixtrrH they hccmcd to me then; and I liourUhrd
A ntran^er friendship wrought in my fancy
Hctweeli thone |ieo|le and me. Hut somehow,
AH time went on, there came |iieer ^l.iiu-es
Out of their ees; and the hhamethat stiiiig me
llurassed my pride with a era/ed impression
That every face in the surging city
Was turned to me; and I saw hi/ whispers,
Now and then, as I walked and wearied
M Wasted life twice over in bearing
With all my sorrow the sorrows of other*,
Till I found myself tbeir fool. Then 1 trembled
A poor seared thing and their prving faces
Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing
At me, and my fate. My God, 1 could feel it
That laughter! And then the children caught it;
​ And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened.
And then when I met tin- man who had weakened
A woman s love to his own desire,
It seemed to me that all hell were laughing
In fiendish concert! I was their victim
And his, and hate s. And there was the struggle !
As long as the earth we tread holds something
A tortured heart can love, the meaning
Of life is not wholly blurred; but after
The last loved thing in the world has left us,
We know the triumph of hate. The glory
Of good goes out forever; the beacon
Of sin is the light that leads us downward
I>own to the fiery end. The road runs
Right through hell; and the souls that follow
The cursed ways where its windings lead them
Suffer enough, I say, to merit
All grace that a God can give. The fashion
Of our lielief is to lift all beings
Born for a life that knows no struggle
In sin s tight snares to eternal glory
All apart from the branded millions
Who carry through life their faces graven
With sure brute scars that tell the story
Of their foul, fated passions. Science
Has yet no salve to smooth or soften
The cradle-sears of a tvrant s visage;
Xo drug to purge, from the vital essence
Of souls the sleeping venom. Virtue
May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted
A nd wound withtherootsof vice; butthejstronger
Never is known till there comes that battle
With sin to prove the victor. PeriloJis
Things are these demons we call our passions
Slaves are we of their roving fancies,
Fools of tiieir devilish glee. You think me,
I know, in this maundering way designing
To lighten the load of my guilt and cast it
Half on the shoulders of God . . . Bat bear me!
​I’m in partly u man fur all my wraknc**,
If weakness it wrrc tn htand an. I ii iuder
llcfo.-o men eyes tlu< IIIHII who had immli i <l
Mr, uiul tlrivru my burning forehead
With horns fur ihe wurUI tu laugh at ... Tru&t mi-!
And try tu l>elieve my word* hut a portion
Of what (i oil s purpose made me ! 1 he coward
Within mo cues for tin*; and I beg you
Now, as 1 come tu the end, tu remember
Th.it women and mm ,iu- on earth tu travel
All on a different road, Hereafter
i ln- road-, may mcut ... 1 trust in something
I know not what . . .
Well, thin was thr way of it:
Stung with the .si, aim- and thr .secret fury
That comritto the man who has thro* u his pittance
Of M-ll at a tr.nttu -. frrt, 1 wandrn-il
Wrck and wrrki in a hal llril firn/y,
Till at last the devil aimke. I hratrd him,
And laughed ut the iovu that htrovu tu touch me t
The dead, lost love; and I gripprd thr demon
(Mo.se tu my hrra>t, and held him, pr.ii-.ing
The fatc .mil tin- furiestlutt gave me the courage
Tu follow hit* wild command. forgetful
Of all to come ulu-n the work was uver
There came tu me then nu htonv vixiuu
Of these three hundred days I rhcrisdied
An awful joy in my hrain. I pondered
And weighed the thing in my mind, and gloried
In life tu think tint 1 was to eoinpier
l)cath at his own dark door, and chuckled
To think of it done MI cleanly. One evening
1 knew that my time had come. I shuddered
A little, hut rather for douht than terror,
And followed him led hy the nameless devil
I worshipped and called my brother. The city
Shone like a dream that night: the windowrt
Flashed with a piercing ilamc,and the pavements
​ Pulsed nn<l swayed with a warmth or some thing
Hint seemed o then to my foot and thrilled me
With a quick, dizzy joy; and the women
And men, like marvellous things of magic,
Floated and laughed and sang by my shoulder.
Sent with a wizard motion. Through it
And over and under it all there sounded
A nmrnmr of life, like bees; and I listened
And laiighrtl again to think of the flower
That grew, blood red, for me! . . . This fellow
Was one of the popular sort who flourish
Uunifiled where gods would fall. For a conscienee
He carried a snug deceit that made him
The man of the time and the place, whatever
The time or the place might be: were he sounding
With a genial craft that cloaked its purpose,
Nigh to itself, the depth of a woman
Fooled with his brainless art, or sending
The midnight home with songs and bottles, &
The cad was there, and his ease forever
Shone with the smooth and slippery polish
That tells the snake. That night he drifted
Into an tip-town haunt and ordered
Whatever it was with a soft assurance
That made me mad as I stood behind him,
Gripping his death, and waited. Coward,
I think, is the name the world has given
To men like mo; but I 11 swear I never
Thought of mv own disgrace when I shot him . . .
Yes, in the back; I know it. I know it
Now, but what if I do? . . . As I watched him
Lying there dead in the scattered sawdust,
Wet with a day s blown froth, I noted
That things were still: that the walnnt tables,
Where men but a moment before were sitting,
Were gone ; tlia* a screen of something around me
Shut them ont of my sight. But the gilded
​ Signs of a hundred beers and whiskies
Flashed from the walls above, and the mirrors
Ami glasses In-hind tlu- bar were lighted
In some ht range way, aiul into my spirit
A thousand shafts of terrible tiro
(turned like death, uiul 1 fell. The story
Of wlmteamu then, you know.

Hut tell me,
What dtH s the whole thing menu? What are we
Slaves of an awful Ignorance? puppets
Pulled by attend? or gtnla without knowingit?
Do e shut from ourselves our own salvation,
Or what do we do! 1 tell on, Homine,
There are tim . in the liven of us poor deviU
When heaven and hell get mixed: though i-on- seieiu-e
May eoine like a whis(ter of Christ to warn ua
Away from our sins, it is lost or laughed at,
Anil then we fall. And for all who have fallen
Kvell for him - I hold no imtlk e,
Nor iniu-h eoinpassion: a mightier mercy
Than mine must &hrieve him. And I, 1 am going
Into the light? or into the darkness?
Why do 1 sit through these Mrkening hours,
And hope? (iood (Jotl! are they hours! —hours? . . .
Yes! lam done with days. And to-morrow
We two may meet! . . . To-morrow! . . . Tomorrow! . . .