. . .
They call . . . across strange seas they call,
Strange seas, and haunted coasts of time. . . .
They startle me with wordless songs
To which the Sphinx hath known the rhyme.
Our hearts swell big with dead men's hates,
Our eyes sting hot with dead men's tears;
We are ourselves, but not ourselves,
Born heirs, but serfs, to all the years!
I rode with Nimrod . . . strove at Troy . . .
A slave I stood in Crowning Tyre,
A queen looked on me and I loved
And died to compass my desire.THE WAGES
EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross,
Her golden souls, to waste;
The cup she fills for her god-men
Is a bitter cup to taste.
Who sees the gyves that bind mankind
And strives to strike them off
Shall gain the hissing hate of fools,
Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.
Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld
And beats some falsehood down
Shall pass the pallid gates of death
Sans laurel, love or crown;
For him who fain would teach the world
The world holds hate in fee--
For Socrates, the hemlock cup;
For Christ, Gethsemane.
IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR?
"In Vishnu-land, what avatar?"
--BROWNING.
PERCHANCE the dying gods of Earth
Are destined to another birth,
And worn-out creeds regain their worth
In the kindly air of other stars--
What lords of life and light hold sway
In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way?
What avatars in Mars?
What Aphrodites from the seas
That lap the plunging Pleiades
Arise to spread afar
The dream that was the soul of Greece?
In Mars, what avatar?
Which hundred moons are wan with love
For dull Endymions?
Which hundred moons hang tranced above
Audacious Ajalons?
What Holy Grail lures errants pale
Through the wastes of yonder star?
What fables sway the Milky Way?
In Mars, what avatar?
When morning skims with crimson wings
Across the meres of Mercury,
What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings
Of miracles on Mercury?
What Christs, what avatars,
Claim Mars?
THE GOD-MAKER, MAN
NEVERMORE
Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow
Pan's moods as he lolls by the shore
Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow;
Nevermore
Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fashioned
flute;
Fallen mute
Are the strings of Apollo,
His lyre and his lute;
And the lips of the Memnons are mute
Evermore;
And the gods of the North,--are they dead or
forgetful,
Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?
Are they drunk, or grown weary of worship and
fretful,
Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?
And into what night have the Orient dieties
strayed?
Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed,
Brooding Isis and somber Osiris,
You were gone ere the fragile papyrus,
(That bragged you eternal!) decayed.
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