A GOLDEN LAD

(D. V. M.)

“Golden lads and lasses must
Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.”
SHAKESPEARE.

So young, but already the splendor
Of genius robed him about
Already the dangerous, tender
Regard of the gods marked him out

(On whom the burden and duty
They bind, at his earliest breath,
Of showing their own grave beauty,
They love and they crown with death.)

We were of one blood, but the olden
Rapt poets spake out in his tone;
We were of one blood, but the golden
Rathe promise was his, his alone.

And ever his great eye glistened
With visions I could not see,
Ever he thrilled and listened
To voices withholden from me.

Young lord of the realms of fancy,
The bright dreams flocked to his call
Like sprites that the necromancy
Of a Prospero holds in thrall

Quick visions that served and attended,
Elusive and hovering things,
With a quiver of joy in the splendid
Wild sweep of their luminous wings;

He dwelt in an alien glamor,
He wrought of its gleams a crown,
But the world, with its cruelty and clamor,
Broke him and beat him down;

So he passed; he was worn, he was weary,
He was slain at the touch of life;
With a smile that was wistful and eerie
He passed from the senseless strife;

So he ceased (is their humor satiric,
These gods that make perfect and blight?)
He ceased like an exquisite lyric
That dies on the breast of night.

THE SAGE AND THE WOMAN

’TWIXT ancient Beersheba and Dan
Another such a caravan
Dazed Palestine had never seen
As that which bore Sabea’s queen
Up from the fain and flaming South
To slake her yearning spirit’s drouth
At wisdom’s pools, with Solomon.

With gifts of scented sandalwood,
And labdanum, and cassia-bud,
With spicy spoils of Araby
And camel-loads of ivory
And heavy cloths that glanced and shone
With inwrought pearl and beryl-stone
She came, a bold Sabean girl.

And did she find him grave, or gay?
Perchance his palace breathed that day
With psalters sounding solemnly
Or cymbals merrier minstrelsy
Perchance the wearied monarch heard
Some loose-tongued prophets meddling word;
None knows, no one but Solomon!

She looked with eyne wherein were blent
All ardors of the Orient;
She spake all magics of the South
Were compassed in the witchs mouth;
He thought the scarlet lips of her
More precious than En Gedi’s myrrh,
The lips of that Sabean girl;

By many an amorous sun caressed,
From lifted brow to amber breast
She gleamed in vivid loveliness
And lithe as any leopardess
And verily, one blames thee not
If thine own proverbs were forgot,
O Solomon, wise Solomon!

She danced for him, and surely she
Learnt dancing from some moonlit sea

Where elfin vapors swirled and swayed
While the wild pipes of witchcraft played
Such clutching music ’twould impel
A prophets self to dance to hell
So spun the light Sabean girl.

He swore her laughter had the lilt
Of chiming waters that are spilt
In sprays of spurted melody
From founts of carven porphyry,
And in the billowy turbulence
Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense
Dark tides and deep, O Solomon!

Perchance unto her day belongs
His poem called the Song of Songs,
Each little lyric interval
Timed to her pulses rise and fall;
Or when he cried out wearily
That all things end in vanity
Did he mean that Sabean girl?

The bright barbaric opulence,
The sun-kist Temple, Kedars tents,

How many a careless caravan
’Twixt Beersheba and ruined Dan,
Within these forty centuries,
Has flung their dust to many a breeze,
With dust that was King Solomon!

But still the lesson holds as true,
O King, as when she lessoned you:
That very wise men are not wise
Until they read in Folly’s eyes
The wisdom that escapes the schools,
That bids the sage revise his rules
By light of some Sabean girl!

NEWS FROM BABYLON

“Archaeologists have discovered a love-letter among the ruins
of Babylon.” Newspaper report.

The world hath just one tale to tell, and it is very old,
A little tale a simple tale a tale that’s easy told:
“There was a youth in Babylon who greatly loved a
maid!”
The world hath just one song to sing, but sings it
unafraid,
A little song a foolish song the only song it hath:
“There was a youth in Ascalon who loved a girl in
Gath!"

Homer clanged it, Omar twanged it, Greece and
Persia knew!
Nimrod’s reivers, Hiram’s weavers, Hindu, Kurd,
and Jew
Crowning Tyre, Troy afire, they have dreamed
the dream;
Tiber-side and Nilus-tide brightened with the
gleam

Oh, the suing, sighing, wooing, sad and merry
hours,
Blisses tasted, kisses wasted, building Babel’s
towers!
Hearts were aching, hearts were breaking, lashes
wet with dew,
When the ships touched the lips of islands Sappho
knew;
Yearning breasts and burning breasts, cold at last,
are hid
Amid the glooms of carven tombs in Khufu’s
pyramid
Though the sages, down the ages, smile their cynic
doubt,
Man and maid, unafraid, put the schools to rout;
Seek to chain love and retain love in the bonds of
breath,
Vow to hold love, bind and fold love even unto
death!

The dust of forty centuries has buried
Babylon, And out of all her lovers dead rises only
one; Rises with a song to sing and laughter in his
eyes, The old song the only song for all the rest are lies!

For, oh, the world has just one dream, and it is very
old
’Tis youth’s dream a silly dream but it is flushed
with gold!

A RHYME OF THE ROADS

PEARL-SLASHED and purple and crimson and
fringed with gray mist of the hills,
The pennons of morning advance to the music of
rock-fretted rills,
The dumb forest quickens to song, and the little
gusts shout as they fling
A floor-cloth of orchard bloom down for the flashing,
quick feet of the Spring.

To the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! ’Tis the
mad piper, Spring, who is leading;
’Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through
the brain, irresistibly pleading;
Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman,
light-footed, lute-throated and fleet,
We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer’s song;
let us follow his feet!

Like raveled red girdles flung down by some
hoidenish goddess in mirth
The tangled roads reach from rim unto utter-most
rim of the earth
We will weave of these strands a strong net, we
will snare the bright wings of delight,
We will make of these strings a sweet lute that
will shame the low wind-harps of night.

The clamor of tongues and the clangor of trades
in the peevish packed street,
The arrogant, jangling Nothings, with iterant,
dissonant beat,
The clattering, senseless endeavor with dross of
mere gold for its goal,
These have sickened the senses and wearied the
brain and straitened the soul.

“Come forth and be cleansed of the folly of strife
for things worthless of strife,
Come forth and gain life and grasp God by foregoing
gains worthless of life

It was thus spake the wizard wildwood, low-voiced
to the hearkening heart,
It was thus sang the jovial hills, and the harper
sun bore part.

O woman, whose blood as my blood with the fire
of the Spring is aflame,
We did well, when the red roads called, that we
heeded the call and came
Came forth to the sweet wise silence where soul
may speak sooth unto soul,
Vine-wreathed and vagabond Love, with the goal
of Nowhere for our goal!

What planet-crowned Dusk that wanders the
steeps of our firmament there
Hath gems that may match with the dew-opals
meshed in thine opulent hair?
What wind-witch that skims the curled billows
with feet they are fain to caress
Hath sandals so wing’d as thine art with a
god-like carelessness?

And dare we not dream this is heaven? to wander
thus on, ever on.
Through the hush-heavy valleys of space, up the
flushing red slopes of the dawn?
For none that seeks rest shall find rest till he
ceaseth his striving for rest,
And the gain of the quest is the joy of the road
that allures to the quest.

THE LAND OF YESTERDAY

AND I would seek the country town
Amid green meadows nestled down
If I could only find the way
Back to the Land of Yesterday!

How I would thrust the miles aside,
Rush up the quiet lane, and then,
Just where her roses laughed in pride,
Find her among the flowers again.
I’d slip in silently and wait
Until she saw me by the gate,
And then ... read through a blur of tears
Quick pardon for the selfish years.

This time, this time, I would not wait
For that brief wire that said, Too late!
If I could only find the way
Into the Land of Yesterday.

I wonder if her roses yet
Lift up their heads and laugh with pride,
And if her phlox and mignonette
Have heart to blossom by their side;
I wonder if the dear old lane
Still chirps with robins after rain,
And if the birds and banded bees
Still rob her early cherry-trees....

I wonder, if I went there now,
How everything would seem, and how
But no! not now; there is no way
Back to the Land of Yesterday.

OCTOBER

CEASE to call him sad and sober,
Merriest of months, October!
Patron of the bursting bins,
Reveler in wayside inns,
I can nowhere find a trace
Of the pensive in his face;
There is mingled wit and folly,
But the madcap lacks the grace
Of a thoughtful melancholy.
Spendthrift of the seasons’ gold,
How he flings and scatters out
Treasure filched from summer-time!
Never ruffling squire of old
Better loved a tavern bout
When Prince Hal was in his prime.
Doublet slashed with gold and green;
Cloak of crimson; changeful sheen,
Of the dews that gem his breast;
Frosty lace about his throat;

Scarlet plumes that flaunt and float
Backward in a gay unrest
Where’s another gallant drest
With such tricksy gaiety,
Such unlessoned vanity?
With his amber afternoons
And his pendant poets moons
With his twilights dashed with rose
From the red-lipped afterglows
With his vocal airs at dawn
Breathing hints of Helicon
Bacchanalian bees that sip
Where his cider-presses drip
With the winding of the horn
Where his huntsmen meet the morn
With his every piping breeze
Shaking from familiar trees
Apples of Hesperides
With the chuckle, chirp, and trill
Of his jolly brooks that spill
Mirth in tangled madrigals
Down pebble-dappled waterfalls
(Brooks that laugh and make escape
Through wild arbors where the grape

Purples with a promise of
Racy vintage rare as love)
With his merry, wanton air,
Mirth and vanity and folly
Why should he be made to bear
Burden of some melancholy
Song that swoons and sinks with care?
Cease to call him sad or sober,
He’s a jolly dog, October!

CHANT OF THE CHANGING HOURS

THE Hours passed by, a fleet, confused crowd;
With wafture of blown garments bright as fire,
Light, light of foot and laughing, morning-browed,
And where they trod the jonquil and the briar
Thrilled into jocund life, the dreaming dells
Waked to a morrice chime of jostled bells;
They danced! they danced! to piping such as
flings
The garnered music of a million Springs
Into one single, keener ecstasy;
One paused and shouted to my questionings:
“Lo, I am Youth; I bid thee follow me!”

The Hours passed by; they paced, great lords and
proud,
Crowned on with sunlight, robed in rich attire;
Before their conquering word the brute deed
bowed,
And Ariel fancies served their large desire;

They spake, and roused the mused soul that dwells
In dust, or, smiling, shaped new heavens and
hells,
Dethroned old gods and made blind beggars kings:
“And what art thou,” I cried to one, “that brings
His mistress, for a brooch, the Galaxy?
“I am the plumed Thought that soars and sings:
Lo, I am Song; I bid thee follow me!”

The Hours passed by, with veiled eyes endowed
Of dream, and parted lips that scarce suspire,
To breathing dusk and arrowy moonlight vowed,
South wind and shadowy grove and murmuring
lyre;
Swaying they moved, as drows’d of wizard spells
Or tranc’d with sight of recent miracles,
And yet they trembled, down their folded wings
Quivered the hint of sweet withholden things,
Ah, bitter-sweet in their intensity!
One paused and said unto my wonderings:
“Lo, I am Love; I bid thee follow me!”

The Hours passed by, through huddled cities loud
With witless hate and stale with stinking mire:

So cowled monks might march with bier and shroud
Down streets plague-spotted toward some cleansing pyre;
Yet, lo! strange lilies bloomed in lightless cells,
And passionate spirits burst their clayey shells
And sang the stricken hope that bleeds and clings:
Earth’s bruised heart beat in the throbbing strings,
And joy still struggled through the threnody!
One stern Hour said unto my marvelings:
“Lo, I am Life; I bid thee follow me!”

The Hours passed by, the stumbling hours and
cowed,
Uncertain, prone to tears and childish ire,
The wavering hours that drift like any cloud
At whim of winds or fortunate or dire,
The feeble shapes that any chance expells;
Their wisdom useless, lacking the blood that swells
The tensed vein: the hot, swift tide that stings
With life. Ah, wise! but naked to the slings
Of fate, and plagued of youthful memory!
A cracked voice broke upon my pityings:
“Lo, I am Age; I bid thee follow me!”

Ah, Youth! we dallied by the babbling wells
Where April all her lyric secret tells;
Ah, Song! we sped our bold imaginings
As far as yon red planets triple rings;
O Life! O Love! I followed, followed thee!
There waits one word to end my journeyings:
“Lo, I am Death; I bid thee follow me!”