But I reach out, and grasp the air, I rage, and the brute rock echoes my words in mockery— How can one fight the sliding moonlight on the cliffs? You gods, coward gods, Come down, I challenge you!— You who set snares with roses and with passion, You who make flesh beautiful and damn men through the flesh, You who plump the purple grape and then put poison in the cup, You who put serpents in your Edens, You who gave me delight of my senses and broke me for it, You who have mingled death with beauty, You who have put into my blood the impulses for which you cursed me, You who permitted my brain the doubts wherefore you damn me, Behold, I doubt you, gods, no longer, but defy!— I perish here? Then I will be slain of a god! You who have wrapped me in the scorn of your silence, The divinity in this same dust you flout

Flames through the dust, And dares, And flings you back your scorn,— Come, face to face, and slay me if you will, But not until you've felt the weight Of all betricked humanity's contempt In one bold blow!— Speak forth a Reason, and I will answer it, Yes, to your faces I will answer it; Come garmented in flesh and I will fight with you, Yes, in your faces will I smite you, gods; Coward gods and tricksters that set traps In paradise!— Far gods that hedge yourselves about with silence And with distance; That mock men from the unscalable escarpments of your Heavens."

Thus I raved, being mad. I had no sooner finished speaking than I felt The darkness fluttered by approaching feet, And the silence was burned through by trembling flames of sound, And I was 'ware that Something stood by me.

And with a shout I leapt and grasped that Being, And the Thing grasped me. We came to wrestling grips, And back and forth we swayed, Hand seeking throat, and crook'd knee seeking To encrook unwary leg, And spread toes grasping the uneven ground; The strained breast muscles cracked and creaked, The sweat ran in my eyes, The plagued breath sobbed and whistled through my throat, I tasted blood, and strangled, but still struggled on— The stars above me danced in swarms like yellow bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;— But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth and knelt upon his breast

And listened till the fluttering pulse was stilled. Man, god, or devil, I had wrenched the life from him!

And lo!—even as he died The moonlight failed above the vale,— And somehow, sure, I know now how!— Between the rifted rocks the great Sun struck A finger down the cliff, and that red beam Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain; And in that light I read the answer of the silent gods Unto my cursed-out prayer, For he that lay upon the ground was—I! I understood the lesson then; It was myself that lay there dead; Yes, I had slain my Self.

THE REBEL

No doubt the ordered worlds speed on With purpose in their wings; No doubt the ordered songs are sweet Each worthy angel sings; And doubtless it is wise to heed The ordered words of Kings;

But how the heart leaps up to greet The headlong, rebel flight, Whenas some reckless meteor Blazes across the night! Some comet—Byron—Lucifer— Has dared to Be, and fight!

No doubt but it is safe to dwell Where ordered duties are; No doubt the cherubs earn their wage Who wind each ticking star;

No doubt the system is quite right!— Sane, ordered, regular;

But how the rebel fires the soul Who dares the strong gods' ire! Each Byron!—Shelley!—Lucifer!— And all the outcast choir That chant when some Prometheus Leaps up to steal Jove's fire!

THE CHILD AND THE MILL

BETTER a pauper, penniless, asleep on the kindly sod— Better a gipsy, houseless, but near to the heart of God,

That beats for ears not dulled by the clanking wheels of care— Better starvation and freedom, hope and the good fresh air

Than death to the Something in him that was born to laugh and dream, That was kin to the idle lilies and the ripples of the stream.

For out of the dreams of childhood, that careless come and go, The boy gains strength, unknowing, that the Man will prove and know.

But these fools with their lies and their dollars, their mills and their bloody hands, Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their whirring bands,

They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the brute machines. Dull-eyed, weary, and old—old in his early teens—

Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the mills of grief, Can your factories fashion a Man of this thing— a Man and a Chief?

Dumb is the heart of him now, at the time when his heart should sing— Wasters of body and brain, what race will the future bring?

What of the nation's nerve whenas swift crises come? What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of the drum?

Thieves of body and soul, who can neither think nor feel, Swine-eyed priests of little false gods of gold and steel,

Bow to your obscene altars, worship your loud mills then! Feed to Moloch and Baal the brawn and brains of men—

But silent and watchful and hidden forever over all The masters brood of those Mills that "grind exceeding small."

And it needs no occult art nor magic to foreshow That a people who sow defeat they will reap the thing they sow.

"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI"

CONQUERORS leonine, lordly, Princes and vaunting kings, Ye are drunk with the sound of your braggart trumps— _But lo! ye are little things!

Earth ... it is charnel with monarchs! And the puffs of dust that start Where your war steeds stamp with their ringing hoofs Were each some warrior's heart._

Peoples imperial, mighty, Masterful, challenging fate, The tread of your cohorts shakes the hills— _But lo! ye are not great!

Nations that swarm and murmur, Ye are moths that flutter and climb— Ye are whirling gnats, ye are swirling bees, Tossed in the winds of time!_

Earth that is flushed with glory, A marvelous world ye are! _But lo! in the midst of a million stars Ye are only one pale star!

A breath stirs the dark abysses.... The deeps below the deep Are troubled and vexed ... and a thousand worlds Fall on eternal sleep!_

THE COMRADE

I

HATH not man at his noblest An air of something more than man?— A hint of grace immortal, Born of his greatly daring to assist the gods In conquering these shaggy wastes, These desert worlds, And planting life and order in these stars?— So Woman at her best: Her eyes are bright with visions and with dreams That triumph over time; Her plumed thought, wing for wing, is mate with his.

II

The world rolls on from dream to dream, And 'neath the vast impersonal revenges of its going,

Crushed fools that cried defeat Lie dead amid the dust they prophesied— Ye doubters of man's larger destiny, Ye that despair, Look backward down the vistaed years, And all is battle—and all victory! Man fought, to be a man! Through painful centuries the slow beast fought, Blinded and baffled, fought to gain his soul;— Wild, hairy, shag, and feared of shadows, Yet the clouds Made him strange signals that he puzzled o'er;— Beast, child, and ape, And yet the winds harped to him, and the sea Rolled in upon his consciousness Its tides of wonder and romance;— Uncouth and caked with mire, And yet the stars said something to him, and the sun Declared itself a god;— The lagging cycles turned at last The pictures into thought, Thought flowered in soul;— But, oh, the myriad weary years Ere Caliban was Shakespeare's self And Darwin's ape had Darwin's brain!— The battling, battling, and the steep ascent, The fight to hold the little gained, The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart, The stubborn, groping slow recovery!— But looking backward toward the dim beginnings, You that despair, Hath he not climbed and conquered? Look backward and all's Victory! What coward looks forward and foresees defeat?

III

Who climbed beside him, and who fought And suffered and was glad? Is she a lesser thing than he, Who stained the slopes with bloody feet, or stood Beside him on some hard-won eminence of hope Exulting as the bold dawn swept A harper hand along the ringing hills? Flesh of his flesh, and of his soul the soul, Hath she not fought, hath she not climbed?

And how is she a lesser thing?— Nay, if she ever was 'Twas we that made her so, who called her queen But kept her slave.

IV

Had she not courage for the fight? Hath she not courage for the years to come? Hath she not courage who descends alone— (How pitifully alone, except for Love!) Where man's thought even falters that would follow, Into the shadowy abyss (Through vast and murmurous caverns dark with crowding dread And terrible with hovering wings), To battle there with Death?—to battle There with Death, and wrest from him, O Conqueror and Mother, Life!

V

Hath she too long dwelt dream-bound in the world of love,

Unconscious of the sterner throes, The more austere, impersonal, wide faith, The urge that drives Christs to the cross Not for the love of one beloved, But for the love of all? If so, she wakes! Wakes and demands a share in all man's bolder destinies, The high, audacious ventures of the soul That thinks to scale the bastioned slopes And strike stark Chaos from his throne. We still stand in the dawn of time. Not meanly let us stand nor shaken with low doubts! For there beyond the verge and margin of gray cloud The future thrills with promise And the skies are tremulous with golden light;— She too would share those victories, Comrade, and more than comrade;— New times, new needs confront us now; We must evolve new powers To battle with;— We must go forward now together, Or perchance we fail!

ENVOI

A LITTLE WHILE

_A little while the tears and laughter, The willow and the rose— A little while, and what comes after No man knows.

An hour to sing, to love and linger ... Then lutanist and lute Will fall on silence, song and singer Both be mute.

Our gods from our desires we fashion.... Exalt our baffled lives, And dream their vital bloom and passion Still survives;

But when we're done with mirth and weeping, With myrtle, rue, and rose, Shall Death take Life into his keeping? ... No man knows._

_What heart hath not, through twilight places, Sought for its dead again To gild with love their pallid faces? ... Sought in vain! ...

Still mounts the Dream on shining pinion ... Still broods the dull distrust ... Which shall have ultimate dominion, Dream, or dust?

A little while with grief and laughter, And then the day will close; The shadows gather ... what comes after No man knows!_



Note: In "The Parting," page 161, line 4, I have changed "they face" to "thy face"; in "The Struggle," page 173, line 4, I have changed "l!o" to "lo!"

THE END