I.
I know not if it was a dream. I viewedA city where the restless multitude,Between the eastern and the western deepHad roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.Colossal palaces crowned every height;Towers from valleys climbed into the light;O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domesHung in the blue, barbarically bright.But now, new-glimmering to-east, the dayTouched the black masses with a grace of gray,Dim spires of temples to the nation's GodStudding high spaces of the wide survey.Well did the roofs their solemn secret keepOf life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake,The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.The gardens greened upon the builded hillsAbove the tethered thunders of the millsWith sleeping wheels unstirred to service yetBy the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,Looked on the builder's blocks about his baseAnd bared his wounded breast in sign to say:"Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race."'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsedUpon my slopes, and in my caves I housedYour shaggy fathers in their nakedness,While on their foeman's offal they caroused."Ships from afar afforested the bay.Within their huge and chambered bodies layThe wealth of continents; and merrily sailedThe hardy argosies to far Cathay.Beside the city of the living spread—Strange fellowship!—the city of the dead;And much I wondered what its humble folk,To see how bravely they were housed, had said.Noting how firm their habitations stood,Broad-based and free of perishable wood—How deep in granite and how high in brassThe names were wrought of eminent and good,I said: "When gold or power is their aim,The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,Men dwell in cities; to this place they fareWhen they would conquer an abiding fame."From the red East the sun—a solemn rite—Crowned with a flame the cross upon a heightAbove the dead; and then with all his strengthStruck the great city all aroar with light!
I know not if it was a dream. I cameUnto a land where something seemed the sameThat I had known as 't were but yesterday,But what it was I could not rightly name.It was a strange and melancholy land.Silent and desolate. On either handLay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,And dead above it seemed the hills to stand,Grayed all with age, those lonely hills—ah me,How worn and weary they appeared to be!Between their feet long dusty fissures cloveThe plain in aimless windings to the sea.One hill there was which, parted from the rest,Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.Silent and passionless it stood. I thoughtI saw a scar upon its giant breast.The sun with sullen and portentous gleamHung like a menace on the sea's extreme;Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak barsOf cloud were conscious of his failing beam.It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,That desert in its cold, uncanny light;No soul but I alone to mark the fearAnd imminence of everlasting night!All presages and prophecies of doomGlimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,And in the midst of that accursèd sceneA wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.
Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep(Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)Sealed upon my senses with so deepA stupefaction that men thought me dead.The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;I saw mankind in dim procession sweepThrough life, oblivion at each extreme.Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing,Loaded my lap and o'er my knees was flowing.The generations came with dance and song,And each observed me curiously there.Some asked: "Who was he?" Others in the throngReplied: "A wicked monk who slept at prayer."Some said I was a saint, and some a bear—These all were women. So the young and gay,Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,Doddered at last on failing limbs away;Though some, their footing in my beard entangled,Fell into its abysses and were strangled.At last a generation came that walkedMore slowly forward to the common tomb,Then altogether stopped. The women talkedExcitedly; the men, with eyes agloomLooked darkly on them with a look of doom;And one cried out: "We are immortal now—How need we these?" And a dread figure stalked,Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow,And all men cried: "Decapitate the women,Or soon there'll be no room to stand or swim in!"So (in my dream) each lovely head was choppedFrom its fair shoulders, and but men aloneWere left in all the world. Birth being stopped,Enough of room remained in every zone,And Peace ascended Woman's vacant throne.Thus, life's elixir being found (the quacksTheir bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped)'Twas made worth having by the headsman's axe.Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking,And crumbled all to powder in the waking.
What! "Out of danger?" Can the slighted DameOr canting Pharisee no more defame?Will Treachery caress my hand no more,Nor Hatred He alurk about my door?—Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed,Not close the loaded palm to make a fist?Will Envy henceforth not retaliateFor virtues it were vain to emulate?Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout,Not understanding what 'tis all about,Yet feeling in its light so mean and smallThat all his little soul is turned to gall?What! "Out of danger?" Jealousy disarmed?Greed from exaction magically charmed?Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets,Like horses fugitive in crowded streets?The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell,Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well?The Critic righteously to justice haled,His own ear to the post securely nailed—What most he dreads unable to inflict,And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked?The liar choked upon his choicest lie,And impotent alike to villifyOr flatter for the gold of thrifty menWho hate his person but employ his pen—Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirtBelonging to his character and shirt?What! "Out of danger?"—Nature's minions all,Like hounds returning to the huntsman's call,Obedient to the unwelcome noteThat stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?—Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire,Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire,The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake,The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake(Automaton malevolences wroughtOut of the substance of Creative Thought)—These from their immemorial prey restrained,Their fury baffled and their power chained?I'm safe? Is that what the physician said?What! "Out of danger?" Then, by Heaven, I'm dead!
'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warningHe lifted up hisjodelto the following effect:O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tusslesO ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!And a little while the digital and maxillary musclesAnd attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never foundIn the letter of a lover; cease "exposing" and "replying"—Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November—Only day of opportunity before the final rush.Carpe diem!go conciliate each person who's a memberOf the other party—do it while you can without a blush."Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the seasonHaving howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone,Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown."Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belongingTo the opposite political denominations meet!"Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unrulySupersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon highWhen Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palaceAnd in customary manner sets her banner in the sky."Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!'"Then that Venerable Person went away without returningAnd, the madness of the season having also taken flight,All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burningWhen Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.
In Bacon see the culminating primeOf Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime.He dies and Nature, settling his affairs,Parts his endowments among us, his heirs:To every one a pinch of brain for seed,And, to develop it, a pinch of greed.Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice,Buries the talent to manure the vice.
As sweet as the look of a loverSaluting the eyes of a maid,That blossom to blue as the maidIs ablush to the glances above her,The sunshine is gilding the gladeAnd lifting the lark out of shade.Sing therefore high praises, and thereforeSing songs that are ancient as gold,Of Earth in her garments of gold;Nor ask of their meaning, nor whereforeThey charm as of yore, for behold!The Earth is as fair as of old.Sing songs of the pride of the mountains,And songs of the strength of the seas,And the fountains that fall to the seasFrom the hands of the hills, and the fountainsThat shine in the temples of trees,In valleys of roses and bees.Sing songs that are dreamy and tender,Of slender Arabian palms,And shadows that circle the palms,Where caravans, veiled from the splendor,Are kneeling in blossoms and balms,In islands of infinite calms.Barbaric, O Man, was thy runingWhen mountains were stained as with wineBy the dawning of Time, and as wineWere the seas, yet its echoes are crooning,Achant in the gusty pineAnd the pulse of the poet's line.
Hard by an excavated street one satIn solitary session on the sand;And ever and anon he spake and spatAnd spake again—a yellow skull in hand,To which that retrospective PioneerAddressed the few remarks that follow here:"Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,'Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern CrossFrom the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine?Or did you drive a bull team 'all the wayFrom Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?—say!"Was you in Frisco when the water cameUp to Montgum'ry street? and do you mindThe time when Peters run the faro game—Jim Peters from old Mississip—behindWells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bustBy Sandy, as regards both bank and crust?"I wonder was you here when Casey shotJames King o' William? And did you attendThe neck-tie dance ensuin'?Idid not,But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friendEd'ard McGowan; for we was resolvedIn sech diversions not to be involved."Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seedYour face afore. I don't forget a face,But names I disremember—I'm that breedOf owls. I'm talking some'at into spaceAn' maybe my remarks is too derned free,Seein' yer name is unbeknown to me."Ther' was a time, I reckon, when I knowedNigh onto every dern galoot in town.That was as late as '50. Now she's growedSurprisin'! Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown,Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cussWe didn't know, the cause was—he knowed us."Maybe you had that claim adjoinin' mineUp thar in Calaveras. Was it youTo which Long Mary took a mighty shine,An' throwed squar' off on Jake the Kangaroo?I guess if she could see ye now she'd takeHer chance o' happiness along o' Jake."You ain't so purty now as you was then:Yer eyes is nothin' but two prospect holes,An' women which are hitched to better menWould hardly for sech glances damn their souls,As Lengthie did. By G——! Ihopeit's you,For"(kicks the skull)"I'm Jake the Kangaroo."
I stood upon a hill. The setting sunWas crimson with a curse and a portent,And scarce his angry ray lit up the landThat lay below, whose lurid gloom appearedFreaked with a moving mist, which, reeking upFrom dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban,Took shapes forbidden and without a name.Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reedsWith cries discordant, startled all the air,And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom—The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled,And shrieks of women, and men's curses. AllThese visible shapes, and sounds no mortal earHad ever heard, some spiritual senseInterpreted, though brokenly; for IWas haunted by a consciousness of crime,Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. AllThese things malign, by sight and sound revealed,Were sin-begotten; that I knew—no more—And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreamsThe sleepy senses babble to the brainImperfect witness. As I stood a voice,But whence it came I knew not, cried aloudSome words to me in a forgotten tongue,Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn,Returned from the illimited inane.Again, but in a language that I knew,As in reply to something which in meHad shaped itself a thought, but found no words,It spake from the dread mystery about:"Immortal shadow of a mortal soulThat perished with eternity, attend.What thou beholdest is as void as thou:The shadow of a poet's dream—himselfAs thou, his soul as thine, long dead,But not like thine outlasted by its shade.His dreams alone survive eternityAs pictures in the unsubstantial void.Excepting thee and me (and we becauseThe poet wove us in his thought) remainsOf nature and the universe no partOr vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread,Unspeakable land about thy feet, with allIts desolation and its terrors—lo!'T is but a phantom world. So long agoThat God and all the angels since have diedThat poet lived—yourself long dead—his mindFilled with the light of a prophetic fire,And standing by the Western sea, aboveThe youngest, fairest city in the world,Named in another tongue than his for oneEnsainted, saw its populous domainPlague-smitten with a nameless shame. For thereRed-handed murder rioted; and thereThe people gathered gold, nor cared to looseThe assassin's fingers from the victim's throat,But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed:'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the LawLook to the matter.' But the Law did not.And there, O pitiful! the babe was slainWithin its mother's breast and the same graveHeld babe and mother; and the people smiled,Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,'Then the great poet, touched upon the lipsWith a live coal from Truth's high altar, raisedHis arms to heaven and sang a song of doom—Sang of the time to be, when God should leanIndignant from the Throne and lift his hand,And that foul city be no more!—a tale,A dream, a desolation and a curse!No vestige of its glory should surviveIn fact or memory: its people dead,Its site forgotten, and its very nameDisputed.""Was the prophecy fulfilled?"The sullen disc of the declining sunWas crimson with a curse and a portent,And scarce his angry ray lit up the landThat lay below, whose lurid gloom appearedFreaked with a moving mist, which, reeking upFrom dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban,Took shapes forbidden and without a name.Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reedsWith cries discordant, startled all the air,And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom.But not to me came any voice again;And, covering my face with thin, dead hands,I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!
That land full surely hastens to its endWhere public sycophants in homage bendThe populace to flatter, and repeatThe doubled echoes of its loud conceit.Lowly their attitude but high their aim,They creep to eminence through paths of shame,Till fixed securely in the seats of pow'r,The dupes they flattered they at last devour.
Successive bards pursue Ambition's fireThat shines, Oblivion, above thy mire.The latest mounts his predecessor's trunk,And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk.So die ingloriously Fame'sélite,But dams of dunces keep the line complete.
You may say, if you please, Johnny Bull, that our girlsAre crazy to marry your dukes and your earls;But I've heard that the maids of your own little isleGreet bachelor lords with a favoring smile.Nay, titles, 'tis said in defense of our fair,Are popular here because popular there;And for them our ladies persistently goBecause 'tis exceedingly English, you know.Whatever the motive, you'll have to confessThe effort's attended with easy success;And—pardon the freedom—'tis thought, over here,'Tis mortification you mask with a sneer.It's all very well, sir, your scorn to paradeOf the high nasal twang of the Yankee maid,But, ah, to my lord when he dares to proposeNo sound is so sweet as that "Yes" from the nose.Our ladies, we grant, walk alone in the street(Observe, by-the-by, on what delicate feet!)'Tis a habit they got here at home, where they sayThe men from politeness go seldom astray.Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and that lotCan stand it (God succor them if they cannot!)Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure,And what they 're not called on to suffer, endure."'Tis nothing but money?" "Your nobles are bought?"As to that, I submit, it is commonly thoughtThat England's a country not specially freeOf Croesi and (if you'll allow it) Croesae.You've many a widow and many a girlWith money to purchase a duke or an earl.'Tis a very remarkable thing, you'll agree,When goods import buyers from over the sea.Alas for the woman of Albion's isle!She may simper; as well as she can she may smile;She may wear pantalettes and an air of repose—But my lord of the future will talk through his nose.
[Read at the Celebration of Independence Day in SanFrancisco, in 1888.]
Goddess of Liberty! O thouWhose tearless eyes behold the chain,And look unmoved upon the slain,Eternal peace upon thy brow,—Before thy shrine the races press,Thy perfect favor to implore—The proudest tyrant asks no more,The ironed anarchist no less.Thine altar-coals that touch the lipsOf prophets kindle, too, the brandBy Discord flung with wanton handAmong the houses and the ships.Upon thy tranquil front the starBurns bleak and passionless and white,Its cold inclemency of lightMore dreadful than the shadows are.Thy name we do not here invokeOur civic rites to sanctify:Enthroned in thy remoter sky,Thou heedest not our broken yoke.Thou carest not for such as we:Our millions die to serve the stillAnd secret purpose of thy will.They perish—what is that to thee?The light that fills the patriot's tombIs not of thee. The shining crownCompassionately offered downTo those who falter in the gloom,And fall, and call upon thy name,And die desiring—'tis the signOf a diviner love than thine,Rewarding with a richer fame.To him alone let freemen cryWho hears alike the victor's shout,The song of faith, the moan of doubt,And bends him from his nearer sky.God of my country and my race!So greater than the gods of old—So fairer than the prophets toldWho dimly saw and feared thy face,—Who didst but half reveal thy willAnd gracious ends to their desire,Behind the dawn's advancing fireThy tender day-beam veiling still,—To whom the unceasing suns belong,And cause is one with consequence,—To whose divine, inclusive senseThe moan is blended with the song,—Whose laws, imperfect and unjust,Thy just and perfect purpose serve:The needle, howsoe'er it swerve,Still warranting the sailor's trust,—God, lift thy hand and make us freeTo crown the work thou hast designed.O, strike away the chains that bindOur souls to one idolatry!The liberty thy love hath givenWe thank thee for. We thank thee forOur great dead fathers' holy warWherein our manacles were riven.We thank thee for the stronger strokeOurselves delivered and incurredWhen—thine incitement half unheard—The chains we riveted we broke.We thank thee that beyond the seaThe people, growing ever wise,Turn to the west their serious eyesAnd dumbly strive to be as we.As when the sun's returning flameUpon the Nileside statue shone,And struck from the enchanted stoneThe music of a mighty fame,Let Man salute the rising dayOf Liberty, but not adore.'Tis Opportunity—no more—A useful, not a sacred, ray.It bringeth good, it bringeth ill,As he possessing shall elect.He maketh it of none effectWho walketh not within thy will.Give thou or more or less, as weShall serve the right or serve the wrong.Confirm our freedom but so longAs we are worthy to be free.But when (O, distant be the time!)Majorities in passion drawInsurgent swords to murder Law,And all the land is red with crime;Or—nearer menace!—when the bandOf feeble spirits cringe and pleadTo the gigantic strength of Greed,And fawn upon his iron hand;—Nay, when the steps to state are wornIn hollows by the feet of thieves,And Mammon sits among the sheavesAnd chuckles while the reapers mourn;Then stay thy miracle!—replaceThe broken throne, repair the chain,Restore the interrupted reignAnd veil again thy patient face.Lo! here upon the world's extremeWe stand with lifted arms and dareBy thine eternal name to swearOur country, which so fair we deem—Upon whose hills, a bannered throng,The spirits of the sun displayTheir flashing lances day by dayAnd hear the sea's pacific song—Shall be so ruled in right and graceThat men shall say: "O, drive afieldThe lawless eagle from the shield,And call an angel to the place!"
Hassan Bedreddin, clad in rags, ill-shod,Sought the great temple of the living God.The worshippers arose and drove him forth,And one in power beat him with a rod."Allah," he cried, "thou seest what I got;Thy servants bar me from the sacred spot.""Be comforted," the Holy One replied;"It is the only place where I am not."
I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boatUpon the surface of a shoreless seaWhereon no ship nor anything did float,Save only the frail bark supporting me;And that—it was so shadowy—seemed to beAlmost from out the very vapors wroughtOf the great ocean underneath its keel;And all that blue profound appeared as naughtBut thicker sky, translucent to reveal,Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,Or at the bottom traveled or abided.Great cities there I saw—of rich and poor,The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,Forest and field, the desert and the moor,Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails,And seas of denser fluid, white with sailsPushed at by currents moving here and thereAnd sensible to sight above the flatOf that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fairThe nether world that I was gazing atWith beating heart from that exalted level,And—lest I founder—trembling like the devil!The cities all were populous: men swarmedIn public places—chattered, laughed and wept;And savages their shining bodies warmedAt fires in primal woods. The wild beast leaptUpon its prey and slew it as it slept.Armies went forth to battle on the plainSo far, far down in that unfathomed deepThe living seemed as silent as the slain,Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;And, truly, most were married shortly after.Above the wreckage of that silent frayStrange fishes swam in circles, round and round—Black, double-finned; and once a little wayA bubble rose and burst without a soundAnd a man tumbled out upon the ground.Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apaceOn that pellucid sea, beneath black skiesAnd o'er the heads of an undrowning race;And when I woke I said—to her surpriseWho came with chocolate, for me to drink it:"The atmosphere is deeper than you think it."
KRASLAJORSK, SIBERIA, March 29.
"My eyes are better, and I shall travel slowly toward home."
From the regions of the Night,Coming with recovered sight—From the spell of darkness free,What will Danenhower see?He will see when he arrives,Doctors taking human lives.He will see a learned judgeWhose decision will not budgeTill both litigants are fleecedAnd his palm is duly greased.Lawyers he will see who fightDay by day and night by night;Never both upon a side,Though their fees they still divide.Preachers he will see who teachThat it is divine to preach—That they fan a sacred fireAnd are worthy of their hire.He will see a trusted wife(Pride of some good husband's life)Enter at a certain doorAnd—but he will see no more.He will see Good Templars reel—See a prosecutor steal,And a father beat his child.He'll perhaps see Oscar Wilde.From the regions of the NightComing with recovered sight—From the bliss of blindness free,That's what Danenhower'll see.1882.
Swains and maidens, young and old,You to me this tale have told.Where the squalid town of DaeIrks the comfortable sea,Spreading webs to gather fish,As for wealth we set a wish,Dwelt a king by right divine,Sprung from Adam's royal line,Town of Dae by the sea,Divers kinds of kings there be.Name nor fame had Picklepip:Ne'er a soldier nor a shipBore his banners in the sun;Naught knew he of kingly sport,And he held his royal courtUnder an inverted tun.Love and roses, ages through,Bloom where cot and trellis stand;Never yet these blossoms grew—Never yet was room for two—In a cask upon the strand.So it happened, as it ought,That his simple schemes he wroughtThrough the lagging summer's dayIn a solitary way.So it happened, as was best,That he took his nightly restWith no dreadful incubusThis way eyed and that way tressed,Featured thus, and thus, and thus,Lying lead-like on a breastBy cares of State enough oppressed.Yet in dreams his fancies rudeClaimed a lordly latitude.Town of Dae by the sea,Dreamers mate above their stateAnd waken back to their degree.Once to cask himself awayHe prepared at close of day.As he tugged with swelling throatAt a most unkingly coat—Not to get it off, but on,For the serving sun was gone—Passed a silk-appareled spriteToward her castle on the height,Seized and set the garment right.Turned the startled Picklepip—Splendid crimson cheek and lip!Turned again to sneak away,But she bade the villain stay,Bade him thank her, which he didWith a speech that slipped and slid,Sprawled and stumbled in its gaitAs a dancer tries to skate.Town of Dae by the sea,In the face of silk and laceRags too bold should never be.Lady Minnow cocked her head:"Mister Picklepip," she said,"Do you ever think to wed?"Town of Dae by the sea,No fair lady ever made aWicked speech like that to me!Wretched little PicklepipSaid he hadn't any ship,Any flocks at his command,Nor to feed them any land;Said he never in his lifeOwned a mine to keep a wife.But the guilty stammer soThat his meaning wouldn't flow;So he thought his aim to reachBy some figurative speech:Said his Fate had been unkindHad pursued him from behind(How the mischief could it else?)Came upon him unaware,Caught him by the collar—thereGushed the little lady's gleeLike a gush of golden bells:"Picklepip, why, that isme!"Town of Dae by the sea,Grammar's for great scholars—sheLoved the summer and the lea.Stupid little PicklepipAllowed the subtle hint to slip—Maundered on about the shipThat he did not chance to own;Told this grievance o'er and o'er,Knowing that she knew before;Told her how he dwelt alone.Lady Minnow, for reply,Cut him off with "So do I!"But she reddened at the fib;Servitors had she,ad lib.Town of Dae by the sea,In her youth who speaks no truthNe'er shall young and honest be.Witless little PicklepipManned again his mental shipAnd veered her with a sudden shift.Painted to the lady's thoughtHow he wrestled and he wroughtStoutly with the swimming driftBy the kindly river broughtFrom the mountain to the sea,Fuel for the town of Dae.Tedious tale for lady's ear:From her castle on the height,She had watched her water-knightThrough the seasons of a year,Challenge more than met his viewAnd conquer better than he knew.Now she shook her pretty pateAnd stamped her foot—'t was growing late:"Mister Picklepip, when IDrifting seaward pass you by;When the waves my forehead kissAnd my tresses float above—Dead and drowned for lack of love—You'll be sorry, sir, for this!"And the silly creature cried—Feared, perchance, the rising tide.Town of Dae by the sea,Madam Adam, when she had 'em,May have been as bad as she.Fiat lux!Love's luminationFell in floods of revelation!Blinded brain by world aglare,Sense of pulses in the air,Sense of swooning and the beatingOf a voice somewhere repeatingSomething indistinctly heard!And the soul of PicklepipSprang upon his trembling lip,But he spake no further wordOf the wealth he did not own;In that moment had outgrownShip and mine and flock and land—Even his cask upon the strand.Dropped a stricken star to earth,Type of wealth and worldly worth.Clomb the moon into the sky,Type of love's immensity!Shaking silver seemed the sea,Throne of God the town of Dae!Town of Dae by the sea,From above there cometh love,Blessing all good souls that be.
False to his art and to the high commandGod laid upon him, Markham's rebel handBeats all in vain the harp he touched before:It yields a jingle and it yields no more.No more the strings beneath his finger-tipsSing harmonies divine. No more his lips,Touched with a living coal from sacred fires,Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires.The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak;They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek!The more the wayward, disobedient songErrs from the right to celebrate the wrong,More diligently still the singer strums,To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs.Gods, what a spectacle! The angels leanOut of high Heaven to view the sorry scene,And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute,"Though now compassion makes their music mute,Among the weeping company appears,Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears.
Once I "dipt into the future far as human eye could see,"And saw—it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she—The Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ranHere and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man.But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set,And that tardiest of mortals hadn't evoluted yet.Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apartAll the tendinous connections of her indurated heart.Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search:"In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch!Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudesI have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes.Now without a mate of any kind where am I?—that's to say,Where shall I be to-morrow?—where exert my rightful swayAnd the purifying strength of my emancipated mind?Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined?Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance—From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance—Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my returnTo share the degradation he's reluctant to unlearn.But I fancy I detected—though I pray it wasn't that—A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat.So I've held my way regardless, evoluting year by year,Till I'm what you now behold me—or would if you were here—A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proudAn Independent Entity appropriately loud!Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woful, woful state!)Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate—To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated ManStill awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van.O the horrible dilemma!—to be odiously linkedWith an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!"As Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air,Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare—Plato's Man!—bipedal, featherless from mandible to rump,Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump.First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable termsIt invited her to banquet on imaginary worms.Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the head,And in accents of affection and of sympathy it said:"My estate is some 'at 'umble, but I'm qualified to drawNear the hymeneal altar and whack up my heart and clawTo Emancipated Anything as walks upon the earth;And them things is at your service for whatever they are worth.I'm sure to be congenial, marm, nor e'er deserve a scowl—I'm Emancipated Rooster, I am Expurgated Fowl!"From the future and its wonders I withdrew my gaze, and thenWrote this wild unfestive prophecy about the Coming Hen.
"Ours is a Christian Army"; so he saidA regiment of bangomen who led."And ours a Christian Navy," added heWho sailed a thunder-junk upon the sea.Better they know than men unwarlike doWhat is an army and a navy, too.Pray God there may be sent them by-and-byThe knowledge what a Christian is, and why.For somewhat lamely the conception runsOf a brass-buttoned Jesus firing guns.
When a fair bridge is builded o'er the gulfBetween two cities, some ambitious fool,Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leaveTo push his clumsy feet upon the span,That men in after years may single him,Saying: "Behold the fool who first went o'er!"So be it when, as now the promise is,Next summer sees the edifice completeWhich some do name a crematorium,Within the vantage of whose greater maw'sQuicker digestion we shall cheat the wormAnd circumvent the handed mole who loves,With tunnel, adit, drift and roomy stope,To mine our mortal parts in all their dipsAnd spurs and angles. Let the fool stand forthTo link his name with this fair enterprise,As first decarcassed by the flame. And ifWith rival greedings for the fiery fameThey push in clamoring multitudes, or ifWith unaccustomed modesty they allHold off, being something loth to qualify,Let me select the fittest for the rite.By heaven! I'll make so warrantable, wiseAnd excellent censure of their true deserts,And such a searching canvass of their claims,That none shall bait the ballot. I'll spread my choiceUpon the main and general of thoseWho, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born,Protested 'twere a sacrilege to burnGod's gracious images, designed to rot,And bellowed for the right of way for eachDistempered carrion through the water pipes.With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaimThey did discharge themselves from their own throatsAgainst the splintered gates of audience'Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouthThan ear. These shall burn first: their ignibleAnd seasoned substances—trunks, legs and arms,Blent indistinguishable in a mass,Like winter-woven serpents in a pit—None vantaged of his fellow-fools in pointOf precedence, and all alive—shall serveAs fueling to fervor the retortFor after cineration of true men.