Part 2 (1/2)

Between two clouds a sullen flame Expands, and lo, the crescent moon Rides like a warrior through the sky.

Thus long ago the warning came When midnight towns lay all in swoon, That the great G.o.ds were coming nigh To crush the rebellious earth.

Now beneath the crescent moon No spirits stir, no wind makes mirth, Only a rhythmic monotone Of waters dropping in a well....

But who is this so broken with distress That steals like mist into my loneliness?

Why art thou weeping there, disconsolate child?

Thy tears fall like the waters of a well, And drip in silver notes upon the sands.

What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild That haunt the spirit of a child?

Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands, The b.l.o.o.d.y ruin of decaying realms That a war overwhelms And buries deep in the dust of history?

He raises his wet eyes and looks at me, His boyish face full of a yearning, An ancient pain, As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again, And answers, ”In myself, thy thoughts returning To other times shall slumber in the past, And be a child again, and die at last In the protecting arms of our great Mother Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother.

Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief, Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears, Thy sorrow rich with the repining years, My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief.”

Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf?

”I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself.”

Then falls a darkness on that starless sh.o.r.e.

Afar I hear the closing of a door....

I see on a sharp hill above the Styx, The bruised Christ upon his crucifix, And racked in anguish on his either side Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified.

Their heavy blood falls in a monotone Like deep well-water dropping on a stone.

None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods Eternal suffering triumphant broods.

Prometheus from his cliff of wild unrest Mocks them and draws the vulture to his breast.

Each year upon a darker Calvary Are hung the pallid victims of the tree, And none will watch with them, for none can see As I once saw, unending agony, Save where Prometheus from his dizzy place Regards those sufferers with scornful face, And his loud laughter rings through empty s.p.a.ce....

I can see nothing now, and only hear Through the thick atmosphere A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow, Intones the knell of ages long ago, And ages that no man can tell or know, Whose shadows roll before them on the sky, Black with forebodings of futurity.

Sweet sounds through midnight, liquid interlude, Voice of the lonely souls that yearn and brood, Voice of the unseen Life, the unsubdued, What wonder that He draweth nigh to taste Of your cool waters. Hail thou nameless One, Fair stranger from a realm beyond the Sun, Knowing that thou art G.o.d I do not fear,-- Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream.

”The whole night through thou liest here Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream, And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste; Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste, And show thee, reft from the embrace of night, The barren world, barren of revelry.

Happy art thou, O Man, happily free, Who wilt never see A thousand ages shed their life and light As petals fall at eventide.

Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside Into the frozen ocean of the Vast, Nor see thy world absorbed at last Into a nothingness, an airless void, Nor see the thoughts that Man has glorified Swept from the world, and with the world destroyed.

This have I seen a thousand times repeated, Unhappy as I am, unhappy G.o.d!

As many times as thou hast greeted The rising sun against the broad And tranquil clouds, so many times have I Greeted the dawn of a new Universe, And seen the molten stars rehea.r.s.e The lives and pa.s.sions of the stars gone by.

When worlds are growing old, and there draw nigh The shadows that shall cover them for ever, (Shadows like these which doom your ancient sky) Then to the well that feeds the sacred river I come, and as the liquid music drips Far in the ground, I plunge my lips Deep in forgetfulness, and wash away All the stains of the old griefs and joys, That with His lips as smiling as a boy's, G.o.d may rejoice in His created day.”

He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell Pauses its ringing in the well: A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep; Is it too late? I too would drink, drink deep, But weariness is on me and I sleep.

Cambridge, 1915

XIII - EPILOGUE

Dawn has come.

Faint hazes quiver with the faltering light; Some airy skein draws in the shadows from The broken forest where the war has pa.s.sed, The Forest Terrible, the grey despair, The forest broken in the withering blight Of the lean years,--the blight, the years, have pa.s.sed, Leaving a solitary watcher there, Silence at last.