NOW the high holocaust of hours is done,And all the west empurpled with their death,How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,How little while the dusk remembereth!
Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail,And took the morning on auspicious crest,Crying to fortune "Back, for I prevail!"—Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest;
And some that stole so soft on destinyMethought they had surprised her to a smile;But these fled frozen when she turned to see,And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile.
But now the day is emptied of them all,And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught;And so my life lies, as the gods let fallAn empty cup from which their lips have quaffed.
Yet see—night is not . . . by translucent ways,Up the grey void of autumn afternoonSteals a mild crescent, charioted in haze,And all the air is merciful as June.
The lake is a forgotten streak of dayThat trembles through the hemlocks' darkling bars,And still, my heart, still some divine delayUpon the threshold holds the earliest stars.
O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feetHaunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind,Art thou a watcher stealing to entreatPrayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind?
Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race,Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here?Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face,Lest I should look on it and call it dear.
For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die;Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head,Midnight will fall from the revengeful skyAnd hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead.
Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight,Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave,So shalt thou sink through mitigated nightAnd bathe thee in the all-effacing wave.
But upward still thy perilous footsteps fareAlong a high-hung heaven drenched in light,Dilating on a tide of crystal airThat floods the dark hills to their utmost height.
Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leansOut of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass?What victory is imaged there? What meansThy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass.
Nay . . . pause and let me name thee! For I see,O with what flooding ecstasy of light,Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me,Thou'rt not day's latest, but the first of night!
And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick,From hand to hand they toss the flying fire,Till all the zenith with their dance is quickAbout the wheeling music of the Lyre.
Dread hour that lead'st the immemorial round,With lifted torch revealing one by oneThe thronging splendours that the day held bound,And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun—
Be thou the image of a thought that faresForth from itself, and flings its ray ahead,Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares,To where our lives are but the ages' tread,
And let this year be, not the last of youth,But first—like thee!—of some new train of hours,If more remote from hope, yet nearer truth,And kin to the unpetitionable powers.
A THIN moon faints in the sky o'erhead,And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,But forth of the gate and down the road,Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.
Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:It is only their call that comes on the breeze;Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:It is only the touch of their hands that grope—For the year's on the turn and it's All Souls' night,When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.
And where should a man bring his sweet to wooBut here, where such hundreds were lovers too?Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,The empty hands that their fellows miss,Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.
And now they rise and walk in the cold,Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thusIn the prime of the year it went with us!"Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.
Till they say, as they hear us—poor dead, poor dead!—"Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed—Just a thrill of the old remembered painsTo kindle a flame in our frozen veins,A touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart—For it's turn of the year and All Souls' night,When the dead can hear and the dead have sight."
And where should the living feel aliveBut here in this wan white humming hive,As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,And one by one they creep back to the fold?And where should a man hold his mate and say:"One more, one more, ere we go their way"?For the year's on the turn, and it's All Souls' night,When the living can learn by the churchyard light.
And how should we break faith who have seenThose dead lips plight with the mist between,And how forget, who have seen how soonThey lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too,Who must do so soon as those others do?For it's All Souls' night, and break of the day,And behold, with the light the dead are away. . .
ALL so grave and shining see they comeFrom the blissful ranks of the forgiven,Though so distant wheels the nearest crystal dome,And the spheres are seven.
Are you in such haste to come to earth,Shining ones, the Wonder on your brow,To the low poor places of your birth,And the day that must be darkness now?
Does the heart still crave the spot it yearned onIn the grey and mortal years,The pure flame the smoky hearth it burned on,The clear eye its tears?
Was there, in the narrow range of living,After all the wider scope?In the old old rapture of forgiving,In the long long flight of hope?
Come you, from free sweep across the spaces,To the irksome bounds of mortal law,From the all-embracing Vision, to some face'sLook that never saw?
Never we, imprisoned here, had sought you,Lured you with the ancient bait of pain,Down the silver current of the light-years brought youTo the beaten round again—
Is it you, perchance, who ache to strain usDumbly to the dim transfigured breast,Or with tragic gesture would detain usFrom the age-long search for rest?
Is the labour then more glorious than the laurel,The learning than the conquered thought?Is the meed of men the righteous quarrel,Not the justice wrought?
Long ago we guessed it, faithful ghosts,Proudly chose the present for our scene,And sent out indomitable hostsDay by day to widen our demesne.
Sit you by our hearth-stone, lone immortals,Share again the bitter wine of life!Well we know, beyond the peaceful portalsThere is nothing better than our strife,
Nought more thrilling than the cry that calls us,Spent and stumbling, to the conflict vain,After each disaster that befalls usNerves us for a sterner strain.
And, when flood or foeman shakes the sleeperIn his moment's lapse from pain,Bids us fold our tents, and flee our kin, and deeperDrive into the wilderness again.
BEFORE the clepsydra had bound the daysMan tethered Change to his fixed star, and said:"The elder races, that long since are dead,Marched by that light; it swerves not from its baseThough all the worlds about it wax and fade."
When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres,Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its rayShe reared and said: "Long as this star holds swayIn uninvaded ether, shall the yearsRevere my monuments—" and went her way.
The Pyramids abide; but through the shaftThat held the polar pivot, eye to eye,Look now—blank nothingness! As though Change laughedAt man's presumption and his puny craft,The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky.
Yet could the immemorial piles be swungA skyey hair's-breadth from their rooted base,Back to the central anchorage of space,Ah, then again, as when the race was young,Should they behold the beacon of the race!
Of old, men said: "The Truth is there: we rearOur faith full-centred on it. It was knownThus of the elders who foreran us here,Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere,And found it, 'mid mutation, fixed alone."
Change laughs again, again the sky is cold,And down that fissure now no star-beam glides.Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not oldStill at the central point of space beholdAnother pole-star: for the Truth abides.
THOUGH life should comeWith all its marshalled honours, trump and drum,To proffer you the captaincy of someResounding exploit, that shall fillMan's pulses with commemorative thrill,And be a banner to far battle daysFor truths unrisen upon untrod ways,What would your answer be,O heart once brave?Seek otherwhere; for me,I watch beside a grave.
Though to some shining festival of thoughtThe sages call you from steep citadelOf bastioned argument, whose rampart gainedYields the pure vision passionately sought,In dreams known well,But never yet in wakefulness attained,How should you answer to their summons, save:I watch beside a grave?
Though Beauty, from her fane within the soulOf fire-tongued seers descending,Or from the dream-lit temples of the pastWith feet immortal wending,Illuminate grief's antre swart and vastWith half-veiled face that promises the wholeTo him who holds her fast,What answer could you give?Sight of one face I crave,One only while I live;Woo elsewhere; for I watch beside a grave.
Though love of the one heart that loves you best,A storm-tossed messenger,Should beat its wings for shelter in your breast,Where clung its last year's nest,The nest you built together and made fastLest envious winds should stir,And winged each delicate thought to ministerWith sweetness far-amassedTo the young dreams within—What answer could it win?The nest was whelmed in sorrow's rising wave,Nor could I reach one drowning dream to save;I watch beside a grave.
AGE after age the fruit of knowledge fallsTo ashes on men's lips;Love fails, faith sickens, like a dying treeLife sheds its dreams that no new spring recalls;The longed-for shipsCome empty home or founder on the deep,And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep.
So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day,And yet not wholly dark,Since evermore some soul that missed the markCalls back to those agropeIn the mad maze of hope,"Courage, my brothers—I have found the way!"
The day is lost? What then?What though the straggling rear-guard of the fightBe whelmed in fear and night,And the flying scouts proclaimThat death has gripped the van—Ever the heart of manCheers on the hearts of men!
"It hurts not!"dying cried the Roman wife;And one by oneThe leaders in the strifeFall on the blade of failure and exclaim:"The day is won!"
HUNTERS, where does Hope nest?Not in the half-oped breast,Nor the young rose,Nor April sunrise—thoseWith a quick wing she brushes,The wide world through,Greets with the throat of thrushes,Fades from as fast as dew.
But, would you spy her sleeping,Cradled warm,Look in the breast of weeping,The tree stript by storm;But, would you bind her fast,Yours at last,Bed-mate and lover,Gain the last headland bareThat the cold tides cover,There may you capture her, there,Where the sea gives to the groundOnly the drift of the drowned.Yet, if she slips you, once found,Push to her uttermost lairIn the low house of despair.There will she watch by your head,Sing to you till you be dead,Then, with your child in her breast,In another heart build a new nest.
WHEN you and I, like all things kind or cruel,The garnered days and light evasive hours,Are gone again to be a part of flowersAnd tears and tides, in life's divine renewal,
If some grey eve to certain eyes should wearA deeper radiance than mere light can give,Some silent page abruptly flush and live,May it not be that you and I are there?
AH, from the niggard tree of TimeHow quickly fall the hours!It needs no touch of wind or rimeTo loose such facile flowers.
Drift of the dead year's harvesting,They clog to-morrow's way,Yet serve to shelter growths of springBeneath their warm decay,
Or, blent by pious hands with rareSweet savours of content,Surprise the soul's December airWith June's forgotten scent.
ON a sheer peak of joy we meet;Below us hums the abyss;Death either way allures our feetIf we take one step amiss.
One moment let us drink the blueTranscendent air together—Then down where the same old work's to doIn the same dull daily weather.
We may not wait . . . yet look below!How part? On this keen ridgeBut one may pass. They call you—go!My life shall be your bridge.
Note.—Vesalius, the great anatomist, studied at Louvain and Paris, and was called by Venice to the chair of surgery in the University of Padua. He was one of the first physiologists to dissect the human body, and his great work "The Structure of the Human Body" was an open attack on the physiology of Galen. The book excited such violent opposition, not only in the Church but in the University, that in a fit of discouragement he burned his remaining manuscripts and accepted the post of physician at the Court of Charles V., and afterward of his son, Philip II, of Spain. This closed his life of free enquiry, for the Inquisition forbade all scientific research, and the dissection of corpses was prohibited in Spain. Vesalius led for many years the life of the rich and successful court physician, but regrets for his past were never wholly extinguished, and in 1561 they were roused afresh by the reading of an anatomical treatise by Gabriel Fallopius, his successor in the chair at Padua. From that moment life in Spain became intolerable to Vesalius, and in 1563 he set out for the East. Tradition reports that this journey was a penance to which the Church condemned him for having opened the body of a woman before she was actually dead; but more probably Vesalius, sick of his long servitude, made the pilgrimage a pretext to escape from Spain.
Fallopius had meanwhile died, and the Venetian Senate is said to have offered Vesalius his old chair; but on the way home from Jerusalem he was seized with illness, and died at Zante in 1564.