III

Choral Song

Have ye gazed on its grandeur Or stood where it stands With opal and amber Adorning the lands, And orcharded domes Of the hue of all flowers? Sweet melody roams Through its blossoming bowers, Sweet bells usher in from its belfries the train of the honey-sweet hour.

A city resplendent, Fulfilled of good things, On its ramparts are pendent The bucklers of kings. Broad banners unfurled Are afloat in its air. The lords of the world Look for harborage there. None finds save he comes as a bridegroom, having roses and vine in his hair.

'Tis the city of Lovers, There many paths meet. Blessed he above others, With faltering feet, Who past its proud spires Intends not nor hears The noise of its lyres Grow faint in his ears! Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears.

It was thither, ambitious, We came for Youth's right, When our lips yearned for kisses As moths for the light, When our souls cried for Love As for life-giving rain Wan leaves of the grove, Withered grass of the plain, And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain.

Under arbor and trellis, Full of flutes, full of flowers, What mad fortunes befell us, What glad orgies were ours! In the days of our youth, In our festal attire, When the sweet flesh was smooth, When the swift blood was fire, And all Earth paid in orange and purple to pavilion the bed of Desire!

The Sultan's Palace

My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face, As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright; As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace, To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.

I have roamed far in search; white road and plunging bow Were keys in the blue doors where my desire was set; Obedient to their lure, my lips and laughing brow The hill-showers and the spray of many seas have wet.

Hot are enamored hands, the fragrant zone unbound, To leave no dear delight unfelt, unfondled o'er, The will possessed my heart to girdle Earth around With their insatiate need to wonder and adore.

The flowers in the fields, the surf upon the sands, The sunset and the clouds it turned to blood and wine, Were shreds of the thin veil behind whose beaded strands A radiant visage rose, serene, august, divine.

A noise of summer wind astir in starlit trees, A song where sensual love's delirium rose and fell, Were rites that moved my soul more than the devotee's When from the blazing choir rings out the altar bell.

I woke amid the pomp of a proud palace; writ In tinted arabesque on walls that gems o'erlay, The names of caliphs were who once held court in it, Their baths and bowers were mine to dwell in for a day.

Their robes and rings were mine to draw from shimmering trays — Brocades and broidered silks, topaz and tourmaline — Their turban-cloths to wind in proud capricious ways, And fasten plumes and pearls and pendent sapphires in.

I rose; far music drew my steps in fond pursuit Down tessellated floors and towering peristyles: Through groves of colonnades fair lamps were blushing fruit, On seas of green mosaic soft rugs were flowery isles.

And there were verdurous courts that scalloped arches wreathed, Where fountains plashed in bowls of lapis lazuli. Through enigmatic doors voluptuous accents breathed, And having Youth I had their Open Sesame.

I paused where shadowy walls were hung with cloths of gold, And tinted twilight streamed through storied panes above. In lamplit alcoves deep as flowers when they unfold Soft cushions called to rest and fragrant fumes to love.

I hungered; at my hand delicious dainties teemed — Fair pyramids of fruit; pastry in sugared piles. I thirsted; in cool cups inviting vintage beamed — Sweet syrups from the South; brown muscat from the isles.

I yearned for passionate Love; faint gauzes fell away. Pillowed in rosy light I found my heart's desire. Over the silks and down her florid beauty lay, As over orient clouds the sunset's coral fire.

Joys that had smiled afar, a visionary form, Behind the ranges hid, remote and rainbow-dyed, Drew near unto my heart, a wonder soft and warm, To touch, to stroke, to clasp, to sleep and wake beside.

Joy, that where summer seas and hot horizons shone Had been the outspread arms I gave my youth to seek, Drew near; awhile its pulse strove sweetly with my own, Awhile I felt its breath astir upon my cheek.

I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay, — What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine, I only lived to search and sample them the day When between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine!

Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be, As though in any fond imaginary sphere Lay more to tempt man's soul to immortality Than ripens for his bliss abundant now and here!

Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth. Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them, I want no better joys than those that from green Earth My spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem.

I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor. I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more Into the dearly loved eternal spectacle.

Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fair I yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine, Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there, And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine.

Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men, You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know, Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even then Of lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so.

Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commend This immaterial self and flamelike part of me, — Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end, The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea, —

Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of those Who love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may be The elemental cells and nervules that compose Its divine consciousness and joy and harmony.

Fragments

I

In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules, I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced In yielding to all amorous influence And multiple impulsion of the flesh, To feel within my being surge and sway The force that all the stars acknowledge too. Amid the nebulous humanity Where I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered, I saw a million motions, but one law; And from the city's splendor to my eyes The vapors passed and there was nought but Love, A ferment turbulent, intensely fair, Where Beauty beckoned and where Strength pursued.

II

There was a time when I thought much of Fame, And laid the golden edifice to be That in the clear light of eternity Should fitly house the glory of my name.

But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan, Over the fair foundation scarce begun, While I with lovers dallied in the sun, The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran.

And now, too late to see my vision, rise, In place of golden pinnacles and towers, Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers, Only beloved of birds and butterflies.

My friends were duped, my favorers deceived; But sometimes, musing sorrowfully there, That flowered wreck has seemed to me so fair I scarce regret the temple unachieved.

III

For there were nights . . . my love to him whose brow Has glistened with the spoils of nights like those, Home turning as a conqueror turns home, What time green dawn down every street uprears Arches of triumph! He has drained as well Joy's perfumed bowl and cried as I have cried: Be Fame their mistress whom Love passes by. This only matters: from some flowery bed, Laden with sweetness like a homing bee, If one have known what bliss it is to come, Bearing on hands and breast and laughing lips The fragrance of his youth's dear rose. To him The hills have bared their treasure, the far clouds Unveiled the vision that o'er summer seas Drew on his thirsting arms. This last thing known, He can court danger, laugh at perilous odds, And, pillowed on a memory so sweet, Unto oblivious eternity Without regret yield his victorious soul, The blessed pilgrim of a vow fulfilled.

IV

What is Success? Out of the endless ore Of deep desire to coin the utmost gold Of passionate memory; to have lived so well That the fifth moon, when it swims up once more Through orchard boughs where mating orioles build And apple flowers unfold, Find not of that dear need that all things tell The heart unburdened nor the arms unfilled.

O Love, whereof my boyhood was the dream, My youth the beautiful novitiate, Life was so slight a thing and thou so great, How could I make thee less than all-supreme! In thy sweet transports not alone I thought Mingled the twain that panted breast to breast. The sun and stars throbbed with them; they were caught Into the pulse of Nature and possessed By the same light that consecrates it so. Love!—'tis the payment of the debt we owe The beauty of the world, and whensoe'er In silks and perfume and unloosened hair The loveliness of lovers, face to face, Lies folded in the adorable embrace, Doubt not as of a perfect sacrifice That soul partakes whose inspiration fills The springtime and the depth of summer skies, The rainbow and the clouds behind the hills, That excellence in earth and air and sea That makes things as they are the real divinity.

Thirty Sonnets:

Sonnet I

Down the strait vistas where a city street Fades in pale dust and vaporous distances, Stained with far fumes the light grows less and less And the sky reddens round the day's retreat. Now out of orient chambers, cool and sweet, Like Nature's pure lustration, Dusk comes down. Now the lamps brighten and the quickening town Rings with the trample of returning feet. And Pleasure, risen from her own warm mould Sunk all the drowsy and unloved daylight In layers of odorous softness, Paphian girls Cover with gauze, with satin, and with pearls, Crown, and about her spangly vestments fold The ermine of the empire of the Night.

Sonnet II

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, Between the rivers and the illumined sky Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze. They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare Beyond the hilltops in the evening air How bright the cressets at her portals blaze. On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow; There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams. Her paths are disillusion and decay, With ruins piled and unapparent woe, The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.

Sonnet III

There was a youth around whose early way White angels hung in converse and sweet choir, Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray, — In cloud and far horizon to desire. His life was nursed in beauty, like the stream Born of clear showers and the mountain dew, Close under snow-clad summits where they gleam Forever pure against heaven's orient blue. Within the city's shades he walked at last. Faint and more faint in sad recessional Down the dim corridors of Time outworn, A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past, A hymn of glories fled beyond recall With the lost heights and splendor of life's morn.

Sonnet IV

Up at his attic sill the South wind came And days of sun and storm but never peace. Along the town's tumultuous arteries He heard the heart-throbs of a sentient frame: Each night the whistles in the bay, the same Whirl of incessant wheels and clanging cars: For smoke that half obscured, the circling stars Burnt like his youth with but a sickly flame. Up to his attic came the city cries — The throes with which her iron sinews heave — And yet forever behind prison doors Welled in his heart and trembled in his eyes The light that hangs on desert hills at eve And tints the sea on solitary shores. . . .

Sonnet V

A tide of beauty with returning May Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; And through the streets, like veins when they abound, The lust for pleasure throbs itself away. Here let me live, here let me still pursue Phantoms of bliss that beckon and recede, — Thy strange allurements, City that I love, Maze of romance, where I have followed too The dream Youth treasures of its dearest need And stars beyond thy towers bring tidings of.

Sonnet VI

Give me the treble of thy horns and hoofs, The ponderous undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame, The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among! It walks here aureoled with the city-light, Forever through the myriad-featured mass Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, — Heard sometimes in a song across the night, Caught in a perfume from the crowds that pass, And when love yields to love seen face to face.

Sonnet VII

To me, a pilgrim on that journey bound Whose stations Beauty's bright examples are, As of a silken city famed afar Over the sands for wealth and holy ground, Came the report of one—a woman crowned With all perfection, blemishless and high, As the full moon amid the moonlit sky, With the world's praise and wonder clad around. And I who held this notion of success: To leave no form of Nature's loveliness Unworshipped, if glad eyes have access there, — Beyond all earthly bounds have made my goal To find where that sweet shrine is and extol The hand that triumphed in a work so fair.

Sonnet VIII

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like the jewel on the breast of dawn: Not though high heaven should rend would deeper awe Fill me than penetrates my spirit thus, Nor all those signs the Patmian prophet saw Seem a new heaven and earth so marvelous; But, clad thenceforth in iridescent dyes, The fair world glistens, and in after days The memory of kind lips and laughing eyes Lives in my step and lightens all my face, — So they who found the Earthly Paradise Still breathed, returned, of that sweet, joyful place.

Sonnet IX

Amid the florid multitude her face Was like the full moon seen behind the lace Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, So to my being's innermost recess Flooded the light of so much loveliness; She held as in a vase of priceless ware The wine that over arid ways and bare My youth was the pathetic thirsting for, And where she moved the veil of Nature grew Diaphanous and that radiance mantled through Which, when I see, I tremble and adore.

Sonnet X

A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, With palms extent for amorous charity And eyes incensed with love for all they see, A wonder more to be adored than wooed, On whom the grace of conscious womanhood Adorning every little thing she does Sits like enchantment, making glorious A careless pose, a casual attitude; Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise Hath come the realm of those old fabulous queens Whose storied loves are Art's rich heritage, To keep alive in this our latter age That force that moving through sweet Beauty's means Lifts up Man's soul to towering enterprise.

Sonnet XI

* A paraphrase of Petrarca, 'Quando fra l'altre donne . . .'

When among creatures fair of countenance Love comes enformed in such proud character, So far as other beauty yields to her, So far the breast with fiercer longing pants; I bless the spot, and hour, and circumstance, That wed desire to a thing so high, And say, Glad soul, rejoice, for thou and I Of bliss unpaired are made participants; Hence have come ardent thoughts and waking dreams That, feeding Fancy from so sweet a cup, Leave it no lust for gross imaginings. Through her the woman's perfect beauty gleams That while it gazes lifts the spirit up To that high source from which all beauty springs.

Sonnet XII

Like as a dryad, from her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole. See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's way on the woods below, Filling all nature where its pathway lies With arms that supplicate and trembling sighs.

Sonnet XIII

I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen, Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, So moved amid the multitude Faustine. My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, Be charged with sin if ever before yours A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his Who owning grandeur marvels and adores. Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory tower I made your image the high pearly sill, And mounting there in many a wistful hour, Burdened with love, I trembled and was still, Seeing discovered from that azure height Remote, untrod horizons of delight.

Sonnet XIV

It may be for the world of weeds and tares And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows One from the train of Love's true courtiers Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, Reft by that sight of purpose and repose, Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears. Then on the soul from some ancestral place Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth, When, in the light of that serener sphere, It saw ideal beauty face to face That through the forms of this our meaner Earth Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.

Sonnet XV

Above the ruin of God's holy place, Where man-forsaken lay the bleeding rood, Whose hands, when men had craved substantial food, Gave not, nor folded when they cried, Embrace, I saw exalted in the latter days Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed, Wafted toward Cyprus, lily-breasted, nude, Standing with arms out-stretched and flower-like face. And, sick with all those centuries of tears Shed in the penance for factitious woe, Once more I saw the nations at her feet, For Love shone in their eyes, and in their ears Come unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo! The breast your lips abjured is still as sweet.

Sonnet XVI

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine. The morning planet poised above the sea Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid; Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid, That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes, Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

Kyrenaikos

Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down In grove and garden to the sapphire sea; Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown; Let music reach and fair heads circle me, Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news Of merchant cities seek our harbors here, Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse; But here, with love and sleep in her caress, Warm night shall sink and utterly persuade The gentle doctrine Aristippus bare, — Night-winds, and one whose white youth's loveliness, In a flowered balcony beside me laid, Dreams, with the starlight on her fragrant hair.

Antinous

Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest, Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees, With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed, Flowerlike crept o'er with emerald aphides. Single he couched there, to his circling flocks Piping at times some happy shepherd's tune, Nude, with the warm wind in his golden locks, And arched with the blue Asian afternoon. Past him, gorse-purpled, to the distant coast Rolled the clear foothills. There his white-walled town, There, a blue band, the placid Euxine lay. Beyond, on fields of azure light embossed He watched from noon till dewy eve came down The summer clouds pile up and fade away.

Vivien

Her eyes under their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world. Her robes were gauzes—gold and green and gules, All furry things flocked round her, from her hand Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet. Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat Beside a fountain in Broceliande. Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here, Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas, Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find her not . . . But wake that night, lost, by some woodland mere, Powdered with stars and rimmed with silent trees.

I Loved . . .

I loved illustrious cities and the crowds That eddy through their incandescent nights. I loved remote horizons with far clouds Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights. I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways Of wearing among hands that covet and plead The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base That bounds the world's desire and all its need. Nature I worshipped, whose fecundity Embraces every vision the most fair, Of perfect benediction. From a boy I gloated on existence. Earth to me Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there One trembling opportunity for joy.

Virginibus Puerisque . . .

I care not that one listen if he lives For aught but life's romance, nor puts above All life's necessities the need to love, Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives. But sometime on an afternoon in spring, When dandelions dot the fields with gold, And under rustling shade a few weeks old 'Tis sweet to stroll and hear the bluebirds sing, Do you, blond head, whom beauty and the power Of being young and winsome have prepared For life's last privilege that really pays, Make the companion of an idle hour These relics of the time when I too fared Across the sweet fifth lustrum of my days.

With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets on Leaving College

As one of some fat tillage dispossessed, Weighing the yield of these four faded years, If any ask what fruit seems loveliest, What lasting gold among the garnered ears, — Ah, then I'll say what hours I had of thine, Therein I reaped Time's richest revenue, Read in thy text the sense of David's line, Through thee achieved the love that Shakespeare knew. Take then his book, laden with mine own love As flowers made sweeter by deep-drunken rain, That when years sunder and between us move Wide waters, and less kindly bonds constrain, Thou may'st turn here, dear boy, and reading see Some part of what thy friend once felt for thee.

Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles

Be my companion under cool arcades That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. Lie near me in dim forests where the croon Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, Or musing late till the midsummer moon Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose. Sweetest of those to-day whose pious hands Tend the sequestered altar of Romance, Where fewer offerings burn, and fewer kneel, Pour there your passionate beauty on my heart, And, gladdening such solitudes, impart How sweet the fellowship of those who feel!

Coucy

The rooks aclamor when one enters here Startle the empty towers far overhead; Through gaping walls the summer fields appear, Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red. The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown The gate where banners blazoned with a cross Rolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon. Decay consumes it. The old causes fade. And fretting for the contest many a heart Waits their Tyrtaeus to chant on the new. Oh, pass him by who, in this haunted shade Musing enthralled, has only this much art, To love the things the birds and flowers love too.

Tezcotzinco

Though thou art now a ruin bare and cold, Thou wert sometime the garden of a king. The birds have sought a lovelier place to sing. The flowers are few. It was not so of old. It was not thus when hand in hand there strolled Through arbors perfumed with undying Spring Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening, Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold. Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hears Vague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale ray From those old, old, far-off, forgotten years? Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held sway He stands. Their names are strangers to his ears. Even their memory has passed away.

The Old Lowe House, Staten Island

Another prospect pleased the builder's eye, And Fashion tenanted (where Fashion wanes) Here in the sorrowful suburban lanes When first these gables rose against the sky. Relic of a romantic taste gone by, This stately monument alone remains, Vacant, with lichened walls and window-panes Blank as the windows of a skull. But I, On evenings when autumnal winds have stirred In the porch-vines, to this gray oracle Have laid a wondering ear and oft-times heard, As from the hollow of a stranded shell, Old voices echoing (or my fancy erred) Things indistinct, but not insensible.

Oneata

A hilltop sought by every soothing breeze That loves the melody of murmuring boughs, Cool shades, green acreage, and antique house Fronting the ocean and the dawn; than these Old monks built never for the spirit's ease Cloisters more calm—not Cluny nor Clairvaux; Sweet are the noises from the bay below, And cuckoos calling in the tulip-trees. Here, a yet empty suitor in thy train, Beloved Poesy, great joy was mine To while a listless spell of summer days, Happier than hoarder in each evening's gain, When evenings found me richer by one line, One verse well turned, or serviceable phrase.

On the Cliffs, Newport

Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom A savor steals from linden trees in bloom And gardens ranged at many a palace door. Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line, Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine, Crown with fair culture all the sounding shore. How sweet, to such a place, on such a night, From halls with beauty and festival a-glare, To come distract and, stretched on the cool turf, Yield to some fond, improbable delight, While the moon, reddening, sinks, and all the air Sighs with the muffled tumult of the surf!

To England at the Outbreak of the Balkan War

A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er. The world takes sides: whether for impious aims With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames A generous people to heroic war; Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore, Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress Still offer hearts that thirst for Righteousness A glorious cause to strike or perish for. England, which side is thine? Thou hast had sons Would shrink not from the choice however grim, Were Justice trampled on and Courage downed; Which will they be—cravens or champions? Oh, if a doubt intrude, remember him Whose death made Missolonghi holy ground.

At the Tomb of Napoleon Before the Elections in America—November, 1912

I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame. Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim No hero now, no man with whom men side As with their hearts' high needs personified? There are will say, One such our lips could name; Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man Lift their low calumny and sneering cries The Pharisaic multitude, the host Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes Know not what greatness is and never can.

The Rendezvous

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour. Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell. Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves. He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates — Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves. She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Braided with streams of silver incense rise The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones. 'Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies; 'Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones. He marks not the monotonous refrain, The priest that serves nor him that celebrates, But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain! She will not come, the woman that he waits.

How like a flower seemed the perfumed place Where the sweet flesh lay loveliest to kiss; And her white hands in what delicious ways, With what unfeigned caresses, answered his! Each tender charm intolerable to lose, Each happy scene his fancy recreates. And he calls out her name and spreads his arms . . . No use! She will not come, the woman that he waits.

But the long vespers close. The priest on high Raises the thing that Christ's own flesh enforms; And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows by And through the portal's carven entry swarms. Maddened he peers upon each passing face Till the long drab procession terminates. No princess passes out with proud majestic pace. She has not come, the woman that he waits.

Back in the empty silent church alone He walks with aching heart. A white-robed boy Puts out the altar-candles one by one, Even as by inches darkens all his joy. He dreams of the sweet night their lips first met, And groans—and turns to leave—and hesitates . . . Poor stricken heart, he will, he can not fancy yet She will not come, the woman that he waits.

But in an arch where deepest shadows fall He sits and studies the old, storied panes, And the calm crucifix that from the wall Looks on a world that quavers and complains. Hopeless, abandoned, desolate, aghast, On modes of violent death he meditates. And the tower-clock tolls five, and he admits at last, She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Through the stained rose the winter daylight dies, And all the tide of anguish unrepressed Swells in his throat and gathers in his eyes; He kneels and bows his head upon his breast, And feigns a prayer to hide his burning tears, While the satanic voice reiterates 'Tonight, tomorrow, nay, nor all the impending years, She will not come,' the woman that he waits.

Fond, fervent heart of life's enamored spring, So true, so confident, so passing fair, That thought of Love as some sweet, tender thing, And not as war, red tooth and nail laid bare, How in that hour its innocence was slain, How from that hour our disillusion dates, When first we learned thy sense, ironical refrain, She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Do You Remember Once . . .

I

Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais?

The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned. Out of the starry south provoking rumors brought us Far promise of the spring already northward turned.

And breast drew near to breast, and round its soft desire My arm uncertain stole and clung there unrepelled. I thought that nevermore my heart would hover nigher To the last flower of bliss that Nature's garden held.

There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure, The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes, I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies.

Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides,

Out of the past's remote delirious abysses Shine forth once more as then you shone,—beloved head, Laid back in ecstasy between our blinding kisses, Transfigured with the bliss of being so coveted.

And my sick arms will part, and though hot fever sear it, My mouth will curve again with the old, tender flame. And darkness will come down, still finding in my spirit The dream of your brief love, and on my lips your name.

II

You loved me on that moonlit night long since. You were my queen and I the charming prince Elected from a world of mortal men. You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then, You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west, Like a returning caravel caressed By breezes that load all the ambient airs With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears From harbors where the caravans come down, I see over the roof-tops of the town The new moon back again, but shall not see The joy that once it had in store for me, Nor know again the voice upon the stair, The little studio in the candle-glare, And all that makes in word and touch and glance The bliss of the first nights of a romance When will to love and be beloved casts out The want to question or the will to doubt. You loved me once. . . . Under the western seas The pale moon settles and the Pleiades. The firelight sinks; outside the night-winds moan — The hour advances, and I sleep alone.*

—

* <Greek> D|/eduke m|\en |'a sel|/anna ka|\i Plh|/iadec, m|/essai de n|/uktec, p|/ara d' |'/erxet' |'/wra |'/egw de m|/ona kate|/udw. <EndGreek>—Sappho. <See appendix for an ASCII to Greek mapping.>

—

III

Farewell, dear heart, enough of vain despairing! If I have erred I plead but one excuse — The jewel were a lesser joy in wearing That cost a lesser agony to lose.

I had not bid for beautifuller hours Had I not found the door so near unsealed, Nor hoped, had you not filled my arms with flowers, For that one flower that bloomed too far afield.

If I have wept, it was because, forsaken, I felt perhaps more poignantly than some The blank eternity from which we waken And all the blank eternity to come.

And I betrayed how sweet a thing and tender (In the regret with which my lip was curled) Seemed in its tragic, momentary splendor My transit through the beauty of the world.

The Bayadere

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid By the light veils they burned and blushed amid, Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways, And there was invitation in her voice And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes, As though above the gates of Paradise Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom, Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom, She floated with delicious arms outspread. There was no pose she took, no move she made, But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled Fierce exhalations of hot human love, — Around her beauty valuable above The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world; Flowing as ever like a dancing fire Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists, Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists The nimbus of a thousand hearts' desire.

Eudaemon

O happiness, I know not what far seas, Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, That thus in Music's wistful harmonies And concert of sweet sound A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore, Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store:

Whether thy beams be pitiful and come, Across the sundering of vanished years, From childhood and the happy fields of home, Like eyes instinct with tears Felt through green brakes of hedge and apple-bough Round haunts delightful once, desert and silent now;

Or yet if prescience of unrealized love Startle the breast with each melodious air, And gifts that gentle hands are donors of Still wait intact somewhere, Furled up all golden in a perfumed place Within the folded petals of forthcoming days.

Only forever, in the old unrest Of winds and waters and the varying year, A litany from islands of the blessed Answers, Not here . . . not here! And over the wide world that wandering cry Shall lead my searching heart unsoothed until I die.

Broceliande

Broceliande! in the perilous beauty of silence and menacing shade, Thou art set on the shores of the sea down the haze of horizons untravelled, unscanned. Untroubled, untouched with the woes of this world are the moon-marshalled hosts that invade Broceliande.

Only at dusk, when lavender clouds in the orient twilight disband, Vanishing where all the blue afternoon they have drifted in solemn parade, Sometimes a whisper comes down on the wind from the valleys of Fairyland ——

Sometimes an echo most mournful and faint like the horn of a huntsman strayed, Faint and forlorn, half drowned in the murmur of foliage fitfully fanned, Breathes in a burden of nameless regret till I startle, disturbed and affrayed: Broceliande — Broceliande — Broceliande. . . .

Lyonesse

In Lyonesse was beauty enough, men say: Long Summer loaded the orchards to excess, And fertile lowlands lengthening far away, In Lyonesse.

Came a term to that land's old favoredness: Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless.

Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day, In Lyonesse.

Tithonus

So when the verdure of his life was shed, With all the grace of ripened manlihead, And on his locks, but now so lovable, Old age like desolating winter fell, Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn: Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less With pious works of pitying tenderness; Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes, And hoary height bent down none otherwise Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, — So bowed with years—when still he lingered on: Then to the daughter of Hyperion This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar By dove-gray seas under the morning star, Where, on the wide world's uttermost extremes, Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams, High in an orient chamber bade prepare An everlasting couch, and laid him there, And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he, Deathless by Jove's compassionless decree, Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest. There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed, Still in an aural, visionary haze Float round him vanished forms of happier days; Still at his side he fancies to behold The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old; And oft, as over dewy meads at morn, Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea, Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, — Lisping sweet names of passion overblown, Breaking with dull, persistent undertone The breathless silence that forever broods Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes. Times change. Man's fortune prospers, or it falls. Change harbors not in those eternal halls And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies. But through his window there the eastern skies Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end. There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend, The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er Falter and turn where they can sail no more. There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow — Cedars and silver poplars, row on row, Through whose black boughs on her appointed night, Flooding his chamber with enchanted light, Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere, Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.

An Ode to Antares

At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills Clamor from every copse and orchard-side, I watched the red star rising in the East, And while his fellows of the flaming sign From prisoning daylight more and more released, Lift their pale lamps, and, climbing higher, higher, Out of their locks the waters of the Line Shaking in clouds of phosphorescent fire, Rose in the splendor of their curving flight, Their dolphin leap across the austral night, From windows southward opening on the sea What eyes, I wondered, might be watching, too, Orbed in some blossom-laden balcony. Where, from the garden to the rail above, As though a lover's greeting to his love Should borrow body and form and hue And tower in torrents of floral flame, The crimson bougainvillea grew, What starlit brow uplifted to the same Majestic regress of the summering sky, What ultimate thing—hushed, holy, throned as high Above the currents that tarnish and profane As silver summits are whose pure repose No curious eyes disclose Nor any footfalls stain, But round their beauty on azure evenings Only the oreads go on gauzy wings, Only the oreads troop with dance and song And airy beings in rainbow mists who throng Out of those wonderful worlds that lie afar Betwixt the outmost cloud and the nearest star.

Like the moon, sanguine in the orient night Shines the red flower in her beautiful hair. Her breasts are distant islands of delight Upon a sea where all is soft and fair. Those robes that make a silken sheath For each lithe attitude that flows beneath, Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, Call them far clouds that half emerge Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; There always from serene horizons blow Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow That Phoenix robbed to line his fragrant nest Each hundred years in Araby the Blest.

Star of the South that now through orient mist At nightfall off Tampico or Belize Greetest the sailor rising from those seas Where first in me, a fond romanticist, The tropic sunset's bloom on cloudy piles Cast out industrious cares with dreams of fabulous isles — Thou lamp of the swart lover to his tryst, O'er planted acres at the jungle's rim Reeking with orange-flower and tuberose, Dear to his eyes thy ruddy splendor glows Among the palms where beauty waits for him; Bliss too thou bringst to our greening North, Red scintillant through cherry-blossom rifts, Herald of summer-heat, and all the gifts And all the joys a summer can bring forth ——

Be thou my star, for I have made my aim To follow loveliness till autumn-strown Sunder the sinews of this flower-like frame As rose-leaves sunder when the bud is blown. Ay, sooner spirit and sense disintegrate Than reconcilement to a common fate Strip the enchantment from a world so dressed In hues of high romance. I cannot rest While aught of beauty in any path untrod Swells into bloom and spreads sweet charms abroad Unworshipped of my love. I cannot see In Life's profusion and passionate brevity How hearts enamored of life can strain too much In one long tension to hear, to see, to touch. Now on each rustling night-wind from the South Far music calls; beyond the harbor mouth Each outbound argosy with sail unfurled May point the path through this fortuitous world That holds the heart from its desire. Away! Where tinted coast-towns gleam at close of day, Where squares are sweet with bells, or shores thick set With bloom and bower, with mosque and minaret. Blue peaks loom up beyond the coast-plains here, White roads wind up the dales and disappear, By silvery waters in the plains afar Glimmers the inland city like a star, With gilded gates and sunny spires ablaze And burnished domes half-seen through luminous haze, Lo, with what opportunity Earth teems! How like a fair its ample beauty seems! Fluttering with flags its proud pavilions rise: What bright bazaars, what marvelous merchandise, Down seething alleys what melodious din, What clamor importuning from every booth! At Earth's great market where Joy is trafficked in Buy while thy purse yet swells with golden Youth!

Translations

Dante. Inferno, Canto XXVI

Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. So noble were the five I found to dwell Therein—thy sons—whence shame accrues to me And no great praise is thine; but if it be That truth unveil in dreamings before dawn, Then is the vengeful hour not far withdrawn When Prato shall exult within her walls To see thy suffering. Whate'er befalls, Let it come soon, since come it must, for later, Each year would see my grief for thee the greater.

We left; and once more up the craggy side By the blind steps of our descent, my guide, Remounting, drew me on. So we pursued The rugged path through that steep solitude, Where rocks and splintered fragments strewed the land So thick, that foot availed not without hand. Grief filled me then, and still great sorrow stirs My heart as oft as memory recurs To what I saw; that more and more I rein My natural powers, and curb them lest they strain Where Virtue guide not,—that if some good star, Or better thing, have made them what they are, That good I may not grudge, nor turn to ill.

As when, reclining on some verdant hill — What season the hot sun least veils his power That lightens all, and in that gloaming hour The fly resigns to the shrill gnat—even then, As rustic, looking down, sees, o'er the glen, Vineyard, or tilth where lies his husbandry, Fireflies innumerable sparkle: so to me, Come where its mighty depth unfolded, straight With flames no fewer seemed to scintillate The shades of the eighth pit. And as to him Whose wrongs the bears avenged, dim and more dim Elijah's chariot seemed, when to the skies Uprose the heavenly steeds; and still his eyes Strained, following them, till naught remained in view But flame, like a thin cloud against the blue: So here, the melancholy gulf within, Wandered these flames, concealing each its sin, Yet each, a fiery integument, Wrapped round a sinner.

On the bridge intent, Gazing I stood, and grasped its flinty side, Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide, Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "Behold Where swathed each in his unconsuming fold, The spirits lie confined." Whom answering, "Master," I said, "thy words assurance bring To that which I already had supposed; And I was fain to ask who lies enclosed In the embrace of that dividing fire, Which seems to curl above the fabled pyre, Where with his twin-born brother, fiercely hated, Eteocles was laid." He answered, "Mated In punishment as once in wrath they were, Ulysses there and Diomed incur The eternal pains; there groaning they deplore The ambush of the horse, which made the door For Rome's imperial seed to issue: there In anguish too they wail the fatal snare Whence dead Deidamia still must grieve, Reft of Achilles; likewise they receive Due penalty for the Palladium." "Master," I said, "if in that martyrdom The power of human speech may still be theirs, I pray—and think it worth a thousand prayers — That, till this horned flame be come more nigh, We may abide here; for thou seest that I With great desire incline to it." And he: "Thy prayer deserves great praise; which willingly I grant; but thou refrain from speaking; leave That task to me; for fully I conceive What thing thou wouldst, and it might fall perchance That these, being Greeks, would scorn thine utterance."

So when the flame had come where time and place Seemed not unfitting to my guide with grace To question, thus he spoke at my desire: "O ye that are two souls within one fire, If in your eyes some merit I have won — Merit, or more or less—for tribute done When in the world I framed my lofty verse: Move not; but fain were we that one rehearse By what strange fortunes to his death he came." The elder crescent of the antique flame Began to wave, as in the upper air A flame is tempest-tortured, here and there Tossing its angry height, and in its sound As human speech it suddenly had found, Rolled forth a voice of thunder, saying: "When, The twelvemonth past in Circe's halls, again I left Gaeta's strand (ere thither came Aeneas, and had given it that name) Not love of son, nor filial reverence, Nor that affection that might recompense The weary vigil of Penelope, Could so far quench the hot desire in me To prove more wonders of the teeming earth, — Of human frailty and of manly worth. In one small bark, and with the faithful band That all awards had shared of Fortune's hand, I launched once more upon the open main. Both shores I visited as far as Spain, — Sardinia, and Morocco, and what more The midland sea upon its bosom wore. The hour of our lives was growing late When we arrived before that narrow strait Where Hercules had set his bounds to show That there Man's foot shall pause, and further none shall go. Borne with the gale past Seville on the right, And on the left now swept by Ceuta's site, 'Brothers,' I cried, 'that into the far West Through perils numberless are now addressed, In this brief respite that our mortal sense Yet hath, shrink not from new experience; But sailing still against the setting sun, Seek we new worlds where Man has never won Before us. Ponder your proud destinies: Born were ye not like brutes for swinish ease, But virtue and high knowledge to pursue.' My comrades with such zeal did I imbue By these brief words, that scarcely could I then Have turned them from their purpose; so again We set out poop against the morning sky, And made our oars as wings wherewith to fly Into the Unknown. And ever from the right Our course deflecting, in the balmy night All southern stars we saw, and ours so low, That scarce above the sea-marge it might show. So five revolving periods the soft, Pale light had robbed of Cynthia, and as oft Replenished since our start, when far and dim Over the misty ocean's utmost rim, Rose a great mountain, that for very height Passed any I had seen. Boundless delight Filled us—alas, and quickly turned to dole: For, springing from our scarce-discovered goal, A whirlwind struck the ship; in circles three It whirled us helpless in the eddying sea; High on the fourth the fragile stern uprose, The bow drove down, and, as Another chose, Over our heads we heard the surging billows close."

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso, Canto X, 91-99

Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, The bridle of his winged courser loosed, And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; High in the air, even to the topmost banks Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, And now across the sea he shaped his course, Till gleaming far below lay Erin's emerald shores.

There round Hibernia's fabled realm he coasted, Where the old saint had left the holy cave, Sought for the famous virtue that it boasted To purge the sinful visitor and save. Thence back returning over land and wave, Ruggiero came where the blue currents flow, The shores of Lesser Brittany to lave, And, looking down while sailing to and fro, He saw Angelica chained to the rock below.

'Twas on the Island of Complaint—well named, For there to that inhospitable shore, A savage people, cruel and untamed, Brought the rich prize of many a hateful war. To feed a monster that bestead them sore, They of fair ladies those that loveliest shone, Of tender maidens they the tenderest bore, And, drowned in tears and making piteous moan, Left for that ravening beast, chained on the rocks alone.

Thither transported by enchanter's art, Angelica from dreams most innocent (As the tale mentioned in another part) Awoke, the victim for that sad event. Beauty so rare, nor birth so excellent, Nor tears that make sweet Beauty lovelier still, Could turn that people from their harsh intent. Alas, what temper is conceived so ill But, Pity moving not, Love's soft enthralment will?

On the cold granite at the ocean's rim These folk had chained her fast and gone their way; Fresh in the softness of each delicate limb The pity of their bruising violence lay. Over her beauty, from the eye of day To hide its pleading charms, no veil was thrown. Only the fragments of the salt sea-spray Rose from the churning of the waves, wind-blown, To dash upon a whiteness creamier than their own.

Carved out of candid marble without flaw, Or alabaster blemishless and rare, Ruggiero might have fancied what he saw, For statue-like it seemed, and fastened there By craft of cunningest artificer; Save in the wistful eyes Ruggiero thought A teardrop gleamed, and with the rippling hair The ocean breezes played as if they sought In its loose depths to hide that which her hand might not.

Pity and wonder and awakening love Strove in the bosom of the Moorish Knight. Down from his soaring in the skies above He urged the tenor of his courser's flight. Fairer with every foot of lessening height Shone the sweet prisoner. With tightening reins He drew more nigh, and gently as he might: "O lady, worthy only of the chains With which his bounden slaves the God of Love constrains,

"And least for this or any ill designed, Oh, what unnatural and perverted race Could the sweet flesh with flushing stricture bind, And leave to suffer in this cold embrace That the warm arms so hunger to replace?" Into the damsel's cheeks such color flew As by the alchemy of ancient days If whitest ivory should take the hue Of coral where it blooms deep in the liquid blue.

Nor yet so tightly drawn the cruel chains Clasped the slim ankles and the wounded hands, But with soft, cringing attitudes in vain She strove to shield her from that ardent glance. So, clinging to the walls of some old manse, The rose-vine strives to shield her tender flowers, When the rude wind, as autumn weeks advance, Beats on the walls and whirls about the towers And spills at every blast her pride in piteous showers.

And first for choking sobs she might not speak, And then, "Alas!" she cried, "ah, woe is me!" And more had said in accents faint and weak, Pleading for succor and sweet liberty. But hark! across the wide ways of the sea Rose of a sudden such a fierce affray That any but the brave had turned to flee. Ruggiero, turning, looked. To his dismay, Lo, where the monster came to claim his quivering prey!

On a Theme in the Greek Anthology

Thy petals yet are closely curled, Rose of the world, Around their scented, golden core; Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er Thy tender clusters that begin To swell within The dewy vine-leaves' early screen Of sheltering green.

O hearts that are Love's helpless prey, While yet you may, Fly, ere the shaft is on the string! The fire that now is smouldering Shall be the conflagration soon Whose paths are strewn With torment of blanched lips and eyes That agonize.

After an Epigram of Clement Marot

The lad I was I longer now Nor am nor shall be evermore. Spring's lovely blossoms from my brow Have shed their petals on the floor. Thou, Love, hast been my lord, thy shrine Above all gods' best served by me. Dear Love, could life again be mine How bettered should that service be!

Last Poems

1916

The Aisne (1914-15)

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn In the stark branches of the riven pines, Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on the withered hill Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down; Or light snows fell that made forlorner still The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair, The winter constellations blazing forth — Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear — Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar On wings of strong emotion as he knew That kinship with the stars that only War Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow With the pale rockets' intermittent light, He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow The rumble of far battles in the night, —

Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote, Borne from red fields whose martial names have won The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, — Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau, Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead, I found for all dear things I forfeited A recompense I would not now forego.

For that high fellowship was ours then With those who, championing another's good, More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could, Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life, And on sublimer summits came to learn, After soft things, the terrible and stern, After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There where we faced under those frowning heights The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills; There where the watchlights on the winter hills Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain, Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain — Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial, We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.

Champagne (1914-15)

In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world,

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth.

Here, by devoted comrades laid away, Along our lines they slumber where they fell, Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle,

And round the city whose cathedral towers The enemies of Beauty dared profane, And in the mat of multicolored flowers That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne.

Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . .

That other generations might possess — From shame and menace free in years to come — A richer heritage of happiness, He marched to that heroic martyrdom.

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat.

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow with maturing vines.

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, Blessing his memory as they toil and sing In the slant sunshine of October days. . . .

I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely, But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,

And faces that the joys of living fill Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, In beaming cups some spark of me shall still Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear.

So shall one coveting no higher plane Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, Even from the grave put upward to attain The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known;

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, Not death itself shall utterly divide From the beloved shapes it thirsted for.

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms Life held delicious offerings perished here, How many in the prime of all that charms, Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear!

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, Where in the anguish of atrocious hours Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes,

Rather when music on bright gatherings lays Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, Be mindful of the men they were, and raise Your glasses to them in one silent toast.

Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well, They asked no tribute lovelier than this — And in the wine that ripened where they fell, Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.

__

Champagne, France, July, 1915.

The Hosts

Purged, with the life they left, of all That makes life paltry and mean and small, In their new dedication charged With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, That lends a light to their lusty brows And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, These are the men that have taken vows, These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, — These are the men that are moved no more By the will to traffic and grasp and store And ring with pleasure and wealth and love The circles that self is the center of; But they are moved by the powers that force The sea forever to ebb and rise, That hold Arcturus in his course, And marshal at noon in tropic skies The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain And drift out over the peopled plain. They are big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their columns surge! They seem To follow the goddess with outspread wings That points toward Glory, the soldier's dream. With bayonets bare and flags unfurled, They scale the summits of the world And fade on the farthest golden height In fair horizons full of light.

Comrades in arms there—friend or foe — That trod the perilous, toilsome trail Through a world of ruin and blood and woe In the years of the great decision—hail! Friend or foe, it shall matter nought; This only matters, in fine: we fought. For we were young and in love or strife Sought exultation and craved excess: To sound the wildest debauch in life We staked our youth and its loveliness. Let idlers argue the right and wrong And weigh what merit our causes had. Putting our faith in being strong — Above the level of good and bad — For us, we battled and burned and killed Because evolving Nature willed, And it was our pride and boast to be The instruments of Destiny. There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air And set the stars in the infinite And made night gorgeous and morning fair, And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat and watched how the action veered — Waited, profited, trembled, cheered — We saw not clearly nor understood, But yielding ourselves to the masterhand, Each in his part as best he could, We played it through as the author planned.

Maktoob

A shell surprised our post one day And killed a comrade at my side. My heart was sick to see the way He suffered as he died.

I dug about the place he fell, And found, no bigger than my thumb, A fragment of the splintered shell In warm aluminum.

I melted it, and made a mould, And poured it in the opening, And worked it, when the cast was cold, Into a shapely ring.

And when my ring was smooth and bright, Holding it on a rounded stick, For seal, I bade a Turco write 'Maktoob' in Arabic.

'Maktoob!' "'Tis written!" . . . So they think, These children of the desert, who From its immense expanses drink Some of its grandeur too.

Within the book of Destiny, Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space, The day when you shall cease to be, The hour, the mode, the place,

Are marked, they say; and you shall not By taking thought or using wit Alter that certain fate one jot, Postpone or conjure it.

Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart. If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan.

And, seeing that through the ebon door Once only you may pass, and meet Of those that have gone through before The mighty, the elite ——

Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.

So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted;

And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board.

So, when the order comes: "Attack!" And the assaulting wave deploys, And the heart trembles to look back On life and all its joys;

Or in a ditch that they seem near To find, and round your shallow trough Drop the big shells that you can hear Coming a half mile off;

When, not to hear, some try to talk, And some to clean their guns, or sing, And some dig deeper in the chalk — I look upon my ring:

And nerves relax that were most tense, And Death comes whistling down unheard, As I consider all the sense Held in that mystic word.

And it brings, quieting like balm My heart whose flutterings have ceased, The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death . . .

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air — I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath — It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Sonnets:

- Sonnet I -

Sidney, in whom the heyday of romance Came to its precious and most perfect flower, Whether you tourneyed with victorious lance Or brought sweet roundelays to Stella's bower, I give myself some credit for the way I have kept clean of what enslaves and lowers, Shunned the ideals of our present day And studied those that were esteemed in yours; For, turning from the mob that buys Success By sacrificing all Life's better part, Down the free roads of human happiness I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, And lived in strict devotion all along To my three idols—Love and Arms and Song.

- Sonnet II -

Not that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less cramped and bowed, I think I might have done a great deal worse; For I have ever gone untied and free, The stars and my high thoughts for company; Wet with the salt-spray and the mountain showers, I have had the sense of space and amplitude, And love in many places, silver-shoed, Has come and scattered all my path with flowers.

- Sonnet III -

Why should you be astonished that my heart, Plunged for so long in darkness and in dearth, Should be revived by you, and stir and start As by warm April now, reviving Earth? I am the field of undulating grass And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, And all my lyric being, when you pass, Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring. I asked you nothing and expected less, But, with that deep, impassioned tenderness Of one approaching what he most adores, I only wished to lose a little space All thought of my own life, and in its place To live and dream and have my joy in yours.

- Sonnet IV -

To . . . in church

If I was drawn here from a distant place, 'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address, But, gazing once more on your winsome face, To worship there Ideal Loveliness. On that pure shrine that has too long ignored The gifts that once I brought so frequently I lay this votive offering, to record How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me. Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing To vent in crowded nave and public pew. My creed is simple: that the world is fair, And beauty the best thing to worship there, And I confess it by adoring you.

__ Biarritz, Sunday, March 26, 1916.

- Sonnet V -

Seeing you have not come with me, nor spent This day's suggestive beauty as we ought, I have gone forth alone and been content To make you mistress only of my thought. And I have blessed the fate that was so kind In my life's agitations to include This moment's refuge where my sense can find Refreshment, and my soul beatitude. Oh, be my gentle love a little while! Walk with me sometimes. Let me see you smile. Watching some night under a wintry sky, Before the charge, or on the bed of pain, These blessed memories shall revive again And be a power to cheer and fortify.

- Sonnet VI -

Oh, you are more desirable to me Than all I staked in an impulsive hour, Making my youth the sport of chance, to be Blighted or torn in its most perfect flower; For I think less of what that chance may bring Than how, before returning into fire, To make my dearest memory of the thing That is but now my ultimate desire. And in old times I should have prayed to her Whose haunt the groves of windy Cyprus were, To prosper me and crown with good success My will to make of you the rose-twined bowl From whose inebriating brim my soul Shall drink its last of earthly happiness.

- Sonnet VII -

There have been times when I could storm and plead, But you shall never hear me supplicate. These long months that have magnified my need Have made my asking less importunate, For now small favors seem to me so great That not the courteous lovers of old time Were more content to rule themselves and wait, Easing desire with discourse and sweet rhyme. Nay, be capricious, willful; have no fear To wound me with unkindness done or said, Lest mutual devotion make too dear My life that hangs by a so slender thread, And happy love unnerve me before May For that stern part that I have yet to play.

- Sonnet VIII -

Oh, love of woman, you are known to be A passion sent to plague the hearts of men; For every one you bring felicity Bringing rebuffs and wretchedness to ten. I have been oft where human life sold cheap And seen men's brains spilled out about their ears And yet that never cost me any sleep; I lived untroubled and I shed no tears. Fools prate how war is an atrocious thing; I always knew that nothing it implied Equalled the agony of suffering Of him who loves and loves unsatisfied. War is a refuge to a heart like this; Love only tells it what true torture is.

- Sonnet IX -

Well, seeing I have no hope, then let us part; Having long taught my flesh to master fear, I should have learned by now to rule my heart, Although, Heaven knows, 'tis not so easy near. Oh, you were made to make men miserable And torture those who would have joy in you, But I, who could have loved you, dear, so well, Take pride in being a good loser too; And it has not been wholly unsuccess, For I have rescued from forgetfulness Some moments of this precious time that flies, Adding to my past wealth of memory The pretty way you once looked up at me, Your low, sweet voice, your smile, and your dear eyes.

- Sonnet X -

I have sought Happiness, but it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within. Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue and toil, I knew what came the nearest to content. For there at least my troubled flesh was free From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so; Discord and Strife were what I used to know, Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy; By War transported far from all of these, Amid the clash of arms I was at peace.

- Sonnet XI -

On Returning to the Front after Leave

Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. War has its horrors, but has this of good — That its sure processes sort out and bind Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood And leave the shams and imbeciles behind. Now turn we joyful to the great attacks, Not only that we face in a fair field Our valiant foe and all his deadly tools, But also that we turn disdainful backs On that poor world we scorn yet die to shield — That world of cowards, hypocrites, and fools.

- Sonnet XII -

Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun, Depths of the azure eastern sky between, Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run, Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green, — Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies The cannon's note has ceased to be a part, I shall return once more and bring to these The worship of an undivided heart. Of those sweet potentialities that wait For my heart's deep desire to fecundate I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants; And the great cities of the world shall yet Be golden frames for me in which to set New masterpieces of more rare romance.

Bellinglise

I

Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds The head of a green valley that I know, Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds Of Bellinglise, the beautiful chateau. Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, It was my joy to come at dusk and see, Filling a little pond's untroubled glass, Its antique towers and mouldering masonry. Oh, should I fall to-morrow, lay me here, That o'er my tomb, with each reviving year, Wood-flowers may blossom and the wood-doves croon; And lovers by that unrecorded place, Passing, may pause, and cling a little space, Close-bosomed, at the rising of the moon.

II

Here, where in happier times the huntsman's horn Echoing from far made sweet midsummer eves, Now serried cannon thunder night and morn, Tearing with iron the greenwood's tender leaves. Yet has sweet Spring no particle withdrawn Of her old bounty; still the song-birds hail, Even through our fusillade, delightful Dawn; Even in our wire bloom lilies of the vale. You who love flowers, take these; their fragile bells Have trembled with the shock of volleyed shells, And in black nights when stealthy foes advance They have been lit by the pale rockets' glow That o'er scarred fields and ancient towns laid low Trace in white fire the brave frontiers of France.

__ May 22, 1916.

Liebestod

I who, conceived beneath another star, Had been a prince and played with life, instead Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far From the fair things my faith has merited. My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread And those that make romance of poverty — Soldier, I shared the soldier's board and bed, And Joy has been a thing more oft to me Whispered by summer wind and summer sea Than known incarnate in the hours it lies All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.

I know not if in risking my best days I shall leave utterly behind me here This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways And that no disappointment made less dear; Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire, Behind the mist Death only can make clear, There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire, Lies what shall ease my heart's immense desire: There, where beyond the horror and the pain Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.

Truth or delusion, be it as it may, Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so, That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day When to the last assault our bugles blow: Reckless of pain and peril we shall go, Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare, And we shall brave eternity as though Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair — One waited in whose presence we would wear, Even as a lover who would be well-seen, Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.

Resurgam

Exiled afar from youth and happy love, If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence I have no doubt but, like a homing dove, It would return to its dear residence, And through a thousand stars find out the road Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.

A Message to America

You have the grit and the guts, I know; You are ready to answer blow for blow You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, But your honor ends with your own back-yard; Each man intent on his private goal, You have no feeling for the whole; What singly none would tolerate You let unpunished hit the state, Unmindful that each man must share The stain he lets his country wear, And (what no traveller ignores) That her good name is often yours.

You are proud in the pride that feels its might; From your imaginary height Men of another race or hue Are men of a lesser breed to you: The neighbor at your southern gate You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. To lend a spice to your disrespect You call him the "greaser". But reflect! The greaser has spat on you more than once; He has handed you multiple affronts; He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; And you, in the depths of your easy-chair — What did you do, what did you care? Did you find the season too cold and damp To change the counter for the camp? Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? I can't imagine, but this I know — You are impassioned vastly more By the news of the daily baseball score Than to hear that a dozen countrymen Have perished somewhere in Darien, That greasers have taken their innocent lives And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.

Not by rough tongues and ready fists Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. The armies of a littler folk Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, Sobeit a nation that trains her sons To ride their horses and point their guns — Sobeit a people that comprehends The limit where private pleasure ends And where their public dues begin, A people made strong by discipline Who are willing to give—what you've no mind to — And understand—what you are blind to — The things that the individual Must sacrifice for the good of all.

You have a leader who knows—the man Most fit to be called American, A prophet that once in generations Is given to point to erring nations Brighter ideals toward which to press And lead them out of the wilderness. Will you turn your back on him once again? Will you give the tiller once more to men Who have made your country the laughing-stock For the older peoples to scorn and mock, Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, A country that turns the other cheek, Who care not how bravely your flag may float, Who answer an insult with a note, Whose way is the easy way in all, And, seeing that polished arms appal Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, Would tell you menace does not exist? Are these, in the world's great parliament, The men you would choose to represent Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, And the virtues your fathers dignified? Oh, bury them deeper than the sea In universal obloquy; Forget the ground where they lie, or write For epitaph: "Too proud to fight."

I have been too long from my country's shores To reckon what state of mind is yours, But as for myself I know right well I would go through fire and shot and shell And face new perils and make my bed In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; But I have given my heart and hand To serve, in serving another land, Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise Is the same that fires the French these days, And, when the flag that they love goes by, With swelling bosom and moistened eye They can look, for they know that it floats there still By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, And through perils countless and trials unknown Its honor each man has made his own. They wanted the war no more than you, But they saw how the certain menace grew, And they gave two years of their youth or three The more to insure their liberty When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. They wanted the war no more than you, But when the dreadful summons blew And the time to settle the quarrel came They sprang to their guns, each man was game; And mark if they fight not to the last For their hearths, their altars, and their past: Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry For love of the country that WILL not die.

O friends, in your fortunate present ease (Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), If you would see how a race can soar That has no love, but no fear, of war, How each can turn from his private role That all may act as a perfect whole, How men can live up to the place they claim And a nation, jealous of its good name, Be true to its proud inheritance, Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!

Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem

I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death And stood beside the cavern through whose doors Enter the voyagers into the unseen. From that dread threshold only, gazing back, Have eyes in swift illumination seen Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein What things were vital and what things were vain. Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet Spreading away into the morning sky, I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo, Oblivion like a morning mist obscured Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease, And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf, Gleamed only through the all-involving haze The hours when we have loved and been beloved.

Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love You rise absorbed into the harmony Of planets singing round magnetic suns, Let not propriety nor prejudice Nor the precepts of jealous age deny What Sense so incontestably affirms; Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone Were that which makes life worth the pain to live. What is so fair as lovers in their joy That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy? Caressing arms are their light pillows. They That like lost stars have wandered hitherto Lonesome and lightless through the universe, Now glow transfired at Nature's flaming core; They are the centre; constellated heaven Is the embroidered panoply spread round Their bridal, and the music of the spheres Rocks them in hushed epithalamium.

. . . . .

I know that there are those whose idle tongues Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was So wondrous and so worshipful to me. I call them those that, in the palace where Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay, Wandered without the secret or the key. I know that there are those, of gentler heart, Broken by grief or by deception bowed, Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive The bliss they found not here; but, as for me, In the soft fibres of the tender flesh I saw potentialities of Joy Ten thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth, In this dark month when deep as morning dew On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best, If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs, Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified By that Lethean agony and clad In more resplendent powers, I ask nought else Than reincarnate to retrace my path, Be born again of woman, walk once more Through Childhood's fragrant, flowery wonderland And, entered in the golden realm of Youth, Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys I savored here yet scarce began to sip; Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well Resume the banquet we had scarce begun When in the street we heard the clarion-call And each man sprang to arms—ay, even myself Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share Its pain no less than its delight. If prayers Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be this My resurrection, this my recompense!

Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

(To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916.)

I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, Commemorative of our soldier dead, When—with sweet flowers of our New England May Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray — Their graves in every town are garlanded, That pious tribute should be given too To our intrepid few Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas. Those to preserve their country's greatness died; But by the death of these Something that we can look upon with pride Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make That from a war where Freedom was at stake America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

II

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring, Not only that in May, when life is loveliest, Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering, In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt, Parted impetuous to their first assault; But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose The cenotaph of those Who in the cause that history most endears Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

III

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise, Nor to be mentioned in another breath Than their blue coated comrades whose great days It was their pride to share—ay, share even to the death! Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks (Seeing they came for honor, not for gain), Who, opening to them your glorious ranks, Gave them that grand occasion to excel, That chance to live the life most free from stain And that rare privilege of dying well.

IV

O friends! I know not since that war began From which no people nobly stands aloof If in all moments we have given proof Of virtues that were thought American. I know not if in all things done and said All has been well and good, Or if each one of us can hold his head As proudly as he should, Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead Whose shades our country venerates to-day, If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray. But you to whom our land's good name is dear, If there be any here Who wonder if her manhood be decreased, Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed, Be proud of these, have joy in this at least, And cry: "Now heaven be praised That in that hour that most imperilled her, Menaced her liberty who foremost raised Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, Came back the generous path of Lafayette; And when of a most formidable foe She checked each onset, arduous to stem — Foiled and frustrated them — On those red fields where blow with furious blow Was countered, whether the gigantic fray Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot, Accents of ours were in the fierce melee; And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, And on the tangled wires The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: — Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops; Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."

V

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness, Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers, They lie—our comrades—lie among their peers, Clad in the glory of fallen warriors, Grim clusters under thorny trellises, Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores, Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon; And earth in her divine indifference Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean Prate to be heard and caper to be seen. But they are silent, calm; their eloquence Is that incomparable attitude; No human presences their witness are, But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued, And showers and night winds and the northern star. Nay, even our salutations seem profane, Opposed to their Elysian quietude; Our salutations calling from afar, From our ignobler plane And undistinction of our lesser parts: Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. Double your glory is who perished thus, For you have died for France and vindicated us.

[End of original text.]

Appendix: ASCII to Greek Character Map

A,a alpha B,b beta G,g gamma D,d delta E,e epsilon Z,z zeta H,h eta Q,q theta I,i iota K,k kappa L,l lambda M,m mi/mu N,n ni/nu J,j ksi/xi O,o omikron/omicron P,p pi R,r rho S,s,c sigma T,t tau U,u ypsilon/upsilon F,f phi X,x chi/khi Y,y psi W,w omega

The ASCII character | (pipe) precedes the following symbols: ''/\^ to mark accents in Greek. These in turn Precede the vowel they refer to.

Appendix: Corrections made to original text.

The following corrections have been made:

In "The Deserted Garden", 'Down beechen allies' has been corrected to read 'Down beechen alleys', as the former is more than doubtful.

One occurrence each of "bazar" and "twelve-month" have been corrected to read "bazaar" and "twelvemonth", to be consistent both with other mentions in the text, and with the most common usage.