The pines shake and the winds wake,And the dark waves crowd the sky-line!The birds wheel out on a troubled sky;The widening road runs white and long,And the page is turned,And the world is tired!
So I want no more of twilight sloth,And I want no more of resting,And of all the earth I ask no moreThan the green sea, the great sea,The long road, the white road,And a change of life to-day!
If I love you, woman of roseAnd warmth and wondering eyes,If it so fall outThat you are the woman I choose,Oh, what is there left to say,And what should it matter to me,Or what can it mean to you?For under the two white breastsAnd the womb that makes you womanThe call of the ages whispersAnd the countless ghosts awaken,And stronger than sighs and weepingThe urge that makes us one,And older than hate or loving or shameThis want that builds the world!
What shall I care for the waysOf these idle and thin-flanked women in silkAnd the lisping men-shadows that trail at their heels?What are they worth in my worldOr the world that I want,These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate womenAnd these half-women daring to call themselves menYet afraid to get down to the earthAnd afraid of the wind,Afraid of the truth,And so sadly afraid of themselves?How can they help me in trouble and death?How can they keep me from hating my kind?Oh, I want to get out of their coffining rooms,I want to walk free with a man,A man who has lived and daredAnd swung through the cycle of life!God give me a man for a friendTo the End,Give me a man with his heel on the neck of Hate,With his fist in the face of Death,A man not fretted with womanish things,Unafraid of the light,Of the worm in the lip of a corpse,Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart,—God give me a man for friend!
When the sun is high,And the hills are happy with light,Then virile and strong I am!Then ruddy with life I fare,The fighter who feels no dread,The roamer who knows no bounds,The hunter who makes the world his prey,And shouting and swept with pride,Still mounts to the lonelier height!
In the cool of the day,When the huddling shadows swarm,And the ominous eyes look outAnd night slinks over the swalesAnd the silence is chill with death,Then I am the croucher beside the coals,The lurker within the shadowy cave,Who listens and mutters a charmAnd trembles and waits,A hunted thing grownAfraid of the hunt,A silence enisled in silence,A wonder enwrapped in awe!
I saw a woman standUnder the seas of bloom,Under the waves of colour and light,The showery snow and rose of the odorous treesThat made a glory of earth.She stood where the petals fell,And her hands were on her breast,And her lips were touched with wonder,And her eyes were full of pain—For pure she was, and young,And it was Spring!
Quietly I closed the door.Then I said to my soul:"I shall never come back,Back to this haunted roomWhere Sorrow and I have slept."I turned from that hated doorAnd passed through the House of Life,Through its ghostly rooms and gladAnd its corridors dim with age.Then lightly I crossed a thresholdWhere the casements showed the sunAnd I entered an unknown room,—And my heart went cold,For about me stood that Chamber of PainI had thought to see no more!
I am desolate,Desolate because of a woman.When at midnight walking aloneI look up at the slow-wheeling stars,I see only the eyes of this woman.In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded,Where once I sought peace,I find now only unrestAnd this one unaltering want.When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-topsI hear only her voice's whisper.When by day I gaze into the azure above meI see only the face of this woman.In the sunlight I cannot find comfort,Nor can I find peace in the shadows.Neither can I take joy in the hill-wind,Nor find solace on kindlier breasts;For deep in the eyes of all women I watchI see only her eyes stare back.Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my heartAnd the ache for her out of my hours.Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreamsAnd wounds me in sleep;And my body cries out for her,Early and late and forever cries out for her,And her alone,—And I want this woman!
I am sick at heart because of this woman;I am lost to shame because of my want;And mine own people have come to mean naught to me;And with many about me still am I utterly alone,And quite solitary now I take my wayWhere men are intent on puny thingsAnd phantasmal legions pace!And a wearisome thing is life,And forever the shadow of this one womanIs falling across my path.The turn in the road is a promise of her.The twilight is thronged with her ghosts;The grasses speak only of her,The leaves whisper her name forever;The odorous fields are full of her.Her lips, I keep telling myself,Are a cup from which I must drink;Her breast is the one last pillowWhereon I may ever find peace!Yet she has not come to me,And being denied her, everything stands denied,And all men who have waited in vain for loveCry out through my desolate heart;And the want of the hungering worldRuns like fire through my veinsAnd bursts from my throat in the cryThat I want this woman!
I am possessed of a great sicknessAnd likewise possessed of a great strength,And the ultimate hour has come.I will arise and go unto this woman,And with bent head and my arms about her kneesI shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words,Others have sought your side,And many have craved your kiss,But none, O body of flesh and bone,Has known a hunger like mine!And though evil befall, or good,This hunger is given to me,And is now made known to you,—For I must die,Or you must die,Or Desire must dieThis night!"
In the white-walled roomWhere the white bed waitsStand banks of meaningless flowers;In the rain-swept streetAre a ghost-like row of cabs;And along the corridor-duskPhantasmal feet repass.Through the warm, still airThe odour of ether hangs;And on this slenderest threadOf one thin pulseHangs and swingsThe hope of life—The life of herI love!
You bid me to sleep,—But why, O Daughter of Beauty,Was beauty thus born in the world?Since out of these shadowy eyesThe wonder shall pass!And out of this surging and passionate breastThe dream shall depart!And out of these delicate rivers of warmthThe fire shall wither and fail!And youth like a bird from your body shall fly!And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed!And this perilous bosom that pulses with loveShall go down to the dust from which it arose,—Yet Daughter of Beauty, close,Close to its sumptuous warmthYou hold my sorrowing head,And smile with shadowy eyes,And bid me to sleep again!
The opal afternoonIs cool, and very still.A wash of tawny air,Sea-green that melts to gold,Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill.Out of the black-topped pinelandsA black crow calls,And the year seems old!A woman from a doorway sings,And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks,And through the umber woods the echo falls.Then silence on the still world lies,And faint and far the birds fly south,And behind the dark pines drops the sun,And a small wind wakes and sighs,And Summer, see, is done!
Alone amid the Rockies I have stood;Alone across the prairie's midnight calmFull often I have faredAnd faced the hushed infinity of night;Alone I have hung poisedBetween a quietly heaving seaAnd quieter sky,Aching with isolation absolute;And in Death's Valley I have walked aloneAnd sought in vain for some appeasing signOf life or movement,While over-desolate my heart called outFor some befriending faceOr some assuaging voice!But never on my soul has weighedSuch loneliness as this,As here amid the seething London tidesI look upon these ghosts that come and go,These swarming restless souls innumerable,Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcernMust know and nurse the thought of kindred ghostsAs lonely as themselves,Or else go mad with it!
"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses,"The worst of it is, when I think of Death,That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful,And Summer by Summer be lovely again,—And I shall be gone!"
"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses,"If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind!But the thought that Earth and AprilYear by casual yearShall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful,Year by year when I am away,—This, this breaks my heart!"
I watched the workers in steel,The Pit-like glow of the furnace,The rivers of molten metal,The tremulous rumble of cranes,The throb of the Thor-like hammersOn sullen and resonant anvils!I saw the half-clad workersTwisting earth's iron to their use,Shaping the steel to their thoughts;And, in some way, out of the furyAnd the fires of mortal passion,It seemed to me,In some way, out of the tortureAnd tumult of inchoate Time,The hammer of sin is shapingThe soul of man!
The city is old in sin,And children are not for cities,And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not,You say with a broken laugh.Yet out of each wayward softness of voice,And each fulness of breast,And each flute-throated echo of song,Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things,Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown,Each whisper and touch in the silence of night,Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth,Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought,Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain,Arises the old and the inappeasable cry!Every girl who leans from a tenement sillAnd flutters a hand to a youth,Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk,Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heelThat would trample truth down in the dust,Reaches unknowingly out for its own,And blind to its heritage waitsFor its child!
Remote, in some dim room,On this dark April morning soft with rain,I hear her pensive touchFall aimless on the keys,And stop, and play again.
And as the music wakensAnd the shadowy house is still,How all my troubled soul cries outFor things I know not of!Ah, keen the quick chords fall,And weighted with regret,Fade through the quiet rooms;And warm as April rainThe strange tears fall,And life in some way seemsToo deep to bear!
Over my home-sick head,High in the paling lightAnd touched with the sunset's glow,Soaring and strong and free,The unswerving phalanx sweeps,The honking wild geese go,—Go with a flurry of wingsHome to their norland lakesAnd the sedge-fringed tarns of peaceAnd the pinelands soft with Spring!
I cannot go as the geese go,But into the steadfast North,The North that is dark and tender,My home-sick spirit wings,—Wings with a flurry of longing thoughtsAnd nests in the tarns of youth.
Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes,Is this the day she comes?O wild-flower face of Morning,Must you never wake?Silvery, silvery sea-line,Does she come to-day?O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves,Beneath your whispering shadowShe will surely pass;And thrush beneath the black-thornAnd white-throat in the pine-top,Sing as you have never sung,For she will surely come!
The lone green of the lawn-slope,The grey light on the sky-line,The mournful stir of birch-leaves,The thin note of the brown thrush,And the call of troubled white-throatsAcross the afternoon!—Ah, Summer now is over,And for us the season closed,For she who came an hour agoHas gone again—Has gone!
God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed,That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game,That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song,That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content!But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all,I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time,I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out,I want to make peace with myself,And say what I have to say,While still there is time!
Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said,To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind,Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated!Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soulThe shackles and chains of song!
But, lo, on my wrists are the scars,And here on my ankles the chain-galls,And the cell-pallor, see, on my face!And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust,And for guidance I grope to the walls,And after my moment of light
I want to go back to the Dark,Since the Open still makes me afraid,And silence seems best in the sun,And song in the dusk!
I feel all primal and savage to-day.I could eat and drink deep and love strongI could fight and exult and boast and be glad!I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it!I could crush into panting submission the breast of a womanA-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door!I could glory in folly and fire and ruin,And race naked-limbed with the wind,And slink on the heels of my foesAnd dabble their blood on my brows—For to-day I am sick of it all,This silent and orderly empty life,And I feel all savage again!
Black with a batter of mudStippled with silvery poolsStands the pavement at the street-end;And the gutter snow is goneFrom cobble and runnelling curb;And no longer the ramping windIs rattling the rusty signs;And moted and soft and mistyHangs the sunlight over the cross-streets,And the home-bound crowds of the cityWalk in a flood of gold.
And suddenly out of the duskThere comes the ancient question:Can it be that I have livedIn earlier worlds unknown?Or is it that somewhere deepIn this husk that men call MeAre kennelled a motley kinI never shall know or name,—Are housed still querulous ghostsThat sigh and awaken and move,And sleep once more?
I am only a note in the chorus,A leaf in the fluttering June,A wave on the deep.These things that I struggle to utterHave all been uttered before.In many another heartThe selfsame song was born,The ancient ache endured,The timeless wonder faced,The unanswered question nursed,The resurgent hunger felt,And the eternal failure known!
But glad is the lip of its whisper;The wave, of its life;The leaf, of its lisp;And glad for its hour is my soulFor its echo of godlier music,Its fragment of song!
The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill;In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchardA group of girls are quietly gathering apples.Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all,And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad.There are no birds,And the goldenrod is gone.And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight;And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper,And all the world seems old!
I tire of these empty masks,These faces of city womenThat seem so vapid and well-controlled.I get tired of their guarded waysAnd their eyes that are always emptyOf either passion or hateOr promise or love,And that seem to be oldAnd are never young!I think of the homelier facesThat I have seen,The vital and open facesIn the by-ways of the world:A Polish girl who metHer lover one wintry morningOutside the gaol at Ossining;A lean young Slav violinistAnd the steerage women about him,Held by the sound of his music;A young and deep-bosomed TeutonSuckling her shawl-wrapped childOn a grey stone bridge in Detmold;A group of girls from Ireland,Crowding the steps of a colonist-carAnd singing half-sadly togetherAs their train rocked on and onOver the sun-bathed prairie;A mournful Calabrian motherStanding and staring outPast the mists of IschiaAfter a fading steamer;A Nautch girl held by a sailorWho'd taken a knife from her fingersBut not the fire from her eyes;And a silent Sicilian motherStanding alone in the MarinaAwaiting her boy who had beenLong years away!—These I remember!And of theseI never tire!
There is strength in the soil;In the earth there is laughter and youth.There is solace and hope in the upturned loam.And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed!And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song;For I know it is good to get back to the earthThat is orderly, placid, all-patient!It is good to know how quietAnd noncommittal it breathes,This ample and opulent bosomThat must some day nurse us all!
On opal Aprilian mornings like thisI seem dizzy and drunk with life.I waken and wander and laugh in the sun;With some mystical knowledge enormousI lift up my face to the light.Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem;With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel;And my arm could fling Time from His throne;I could pelt the awed taciturn archOf Morning with music and mirth;And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought,That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest starsThat are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of NightCould never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song!
My heart stood empty and bare,So I hung it with thoughts of a woman.The remembered ways of this womanHung sweet in my heart.So I followed where thought should lead,And it led to her feet.But the mouth of this woman was pain,And the love of this woman, regret;And now only the thoughtOf all those remembered thoughtsOf remembered ways,Is shut in my heart!
When they flagged our train because of a broken rail,I stepped down out of the crowded car,With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk.I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night,And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face,And somewhere I heard the running of water,I felt the breathing of grass,And I knew, as I saw the great white stars,That the world was made for good!
There's a poet tombed in you,Man of blood and iron!There's a dreamer dead and buriedDeep beneath your cynic frown,Deep beneath your toil!
And deep beneath my music,There's a strong man stirs in me;There's a ghost of blood and graniteCoffined in this madnessCarpentered of Song!
You live your day and drain it;I weave my dream and lose it;But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times,At all your city's sky-line,At all your roaring market-place,At all its hum of power—And the poet dead within you stirsStill at the plaintive note or twoOf a dreamer's plaintive song!
Glad with the wine of life,Reeling I go my way,Drunk with the ache of livingAnd mouthing my drunken song!Then comes the lucid momentAnd the shadow across the lintel;And I hear the ghostly whisper,And I glimpse with startled eyesThe Door beyond the doorway,And I see the small dark houseWhere I must sleep.
Then song turns sour on my lips,And the warmth goes out of my blood,And I turn me back to the beaker,And re-draining my cup of dream,I drown the whispering voices,I banish the ghostly questionAs to which in the end is true:The wine and the open road?Or the waiting Door?
Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love,Their claim that love is the only thing that survives.For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate,Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin,I can hate as strong and as long as I love!
There are hours and issues I hate;There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate;There are men I hate to the uttermost;And although in their graves they listen and weep,Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace,I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate!
I lay by your side last night.By you, in my dreams,I felt the damp of the grave.I was dead with you—And my bones still ache with Death.For my hand went out and I touched your lips,And I found them fallen away,Wasted and lost!Those lips once warm with lifeWere eaten and gone!And my soul screamed out in the darkAt the intimate blackness of Death.And then I arose from the deadAnd returned to the day;And my bones and my heart still ache with it all,And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life,The crowd in the hurrying street,The tumult and laughter and talk,To make me forget!
One room in my heart shall be closed, I said;One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked!I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it!But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands,You came with this trivial key,And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back,And disdainfully now you wander and brood and waitIn this room that I thought was my own!
It isn't the Sea that I love,But the shipsThat must dare and endure and defy and survive it!It isn't the flesh that I love,But the spiritThat guides and derides and controls and outlives it!It isn't this earth that I love,But the mortalsWho give to it meaning and colour and passion and life!For what is the Sea without ships?And what is the flesh without soul?And what is a world without love?
You have said that I soldMy life for a song;Laid bare my heartThat men might listenAnd go their ways—My inchoate heartThat I dare not plumb,That goes unbridledTo the depths of Hell,That sings in the sunTo the brink of Heaven!I have tossed you the spindriftBorn of its frettingOn its shallowest coast,But over the depths of itBastioned in wonderAnd silent with fearGod sits with me!
All my lean lifeI garnered nothing but a dream or two,These others gathered harvestsAnd grew fat with grain.But no man lives by bread,And bread alone.So, forgetful of their scorn,When starved, they cried for life,I gave them my last dreams,I bared for them my heart,That they might eat!
A canyon of granite and steel,A river of grim unrest,And over the fever and street-dustArches the azure of dream.And fretting along the tumult,Threading the iron curbs,Tawdry in tinsel and featherDrift the daughters of pleasure,The sad-eyed traders in song,The makers of joy,The Columbines of the citySeeking their ends!But under the beaded eye-lash,Under the lip with its rouge,Under the mask of whiteSplashed with geranium-red,As God's own arch of azureLeans softly over the street,Surely, this day, runs warmerThe blood through a wasted breast!
Must I round my life to a song,As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone?Shall the mortal beat and throbOf this heart of mineBe only to crumble a dream,And fashion the pebbles of fancy,That the tides of time may cover,Or a child may find?
Little in truth it matters;But this at the most I know:Infinite is the oceanThat thunders upon man's soul,And the sooner the soul falls broken,The smoother will be its song!
Ere the thread is loosed,And the sands run low,And the last hope fails,Wherever we fare,O Fond and True,May it fall that we come in the end,Come back to the crimson valleys,Back to the Indian Summer,Back to the northern pine-lands,And the grey lakes draped with silence,And the sunlight thin and poignant,And the leaf that flutters earthward,And the skyline green and lonely,And the ramparts of the dead worldRuddy with wintry rose!May we fare, O Fond and True,Through our soft-houred Indian Summer,Through the paling twilight weather,And facing the lone green uplands,And greeting the sun-warmed hills,Step into the pineland shadowsAnd enter the sunset valleyAnd go as the glory goesOut of the dreaming autumn,Out of the drifting leafAnd the dying light!
If I tire of you, beautiful woman,I know that the fault is mine;Yet not all mine the failureAnd not all mine the loss!In loveliness still you walk;But I have walked with sorrow!I have threaded narrows,And I have passed through perilsThat you know nothing of!And I in my grief have gazedIn eyes that were not yours;And my emptier hours have knownThe sigh of kindlier bosoms,The kiss of kindlier mouths!Yet the end of all is written,And nothing, O rose-leaf woman,You ever may dream or doHenceforth can bring me anguishOr crown my days with joy!
Three tears, O stately woman,You said could float your soul,So little a thing it seemed!Yet all that's left of lifeI'd give to know your love,I'd give to show my love,And feel your kiss again!