The Little Book of Modern Verse Part 19

The dreamy dog beside thee Presses against thy knee; He, too, oh, sweet Agathocles, Is deaf and visioned like thee.

Thou art so lithe and lovely And yet thou art not ours.

What Delphic saying compels thee Of kings or topless towers?

That little blowing mantle Thou losest from thine arm -- No shoon nor staff, Agathocles, Nor sword, to fend from harm!

Thou hast the changed impersonal Awed brow of mystery -- Yesterday thou wast burning, Mad boy, for Glaucoe.

Philis thy mother calls thee: Mine eyes with tears are dim, Turn once, look once, Agathocles -- (~The G.o.ds have blinded him.~)

Come back, Agathocles, the night -- Brings thee what place of rest?

Wine-sweet are Glaucoe's kisses, Flower-soft her budding breast.

He seems to hearken, Glaucoe, He seems to listen and smile; (~Nay, Philis, but a G.o.d-song He follows this many a mile.~)

Come back, come back, Agathocles!

(~He scents the asphodel; Unearthly swift he runneth.~) Agathocles, farewell!

To-Day. [Helen Gray Cone]

Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion, English scorners of Spain, sweeping the blue sea-way, Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous pa.s.sion Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!

Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded, Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay, Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed; Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day!

The Man with the Hoe. [Edwin Markham]

(Written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting)

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world.

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord G.o.d made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the pa.s.sion of Eternity?

Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?

Down all the stretch of h.e.l.l to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this -- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed -- More filled with signs and portents for the soul -- More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?

What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Judges of the World, A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to G.o.d, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this Man?

How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings -- With those who shaped him to the thing he is -- When this dumb Terror shall reply to G.o.d, After the silence of the centuries?

Exordium. [George Cabot Lodge]

Speak! said my soul, be stern and adequate; The sunset falls from Heaven, the year is late, Love waits with fallen tresses at thy gate And mourns for perished days.

Speak! in the rigor of thy fate and mine, Ere these scant, dying days, bright-lipped with wine, All one by one depart, resigned, divine, Through desert, autumn ways.

Speak! thou art lonely in thy chilly mind, With all this desperate solitude of wind, The solitude of tears that make thee blind, Of wild and causeless tears.

Speak! thou hast need of me, heart, hand and head, Speak, if it be an echo of thy dread, A dirge of hope, of young illusions dead -- Perchance G.o.d hears!

The Frozen Grail. [Elsa Barker]

(To Peary and his men, before the last expedition)

Why sing the legends of the Holy Grail, The dead crusaders of the Sepulchre, While these men live? Are the great bards all dumb?

Here is a vision to shake the blood of Song, And make Fame's watchman tremble at his post.

What shall prevail against the spirit of man, When cold, the lean and snarling wolf of hunger, The threatening spear of ice-mailed Solitude, Silence, and s.p.a.ce, and ghostly-footed Fear Prevail not? Dante, in his frozen h.e.l.l Shivering, endured no bleakness like the void These men have warmed with their own flaming will, And peopled with their dreams. The wind from fierce Arcturus in their faces, at their backs The whip of the world's doubt, and in their souls Courage to die -- if death shall be the price Of that cold cup that will a.s.suage their thirst; They climb, and fall, and stagger toward the goal.

They lay themselves the road whereby they travel, And sue G.o.d for a franchise. Does He watch Behind the lattice of the boreal lights?

In that grail-chapel of their stern-vowed quest, Ninety of G.o.d's long paces toward the North, Will they behold the splendor of His face?

To conquer the world must man renounce the world?

These have renounced it. Had ye only faith Ye might move mountains, said the Nazarene.

Why, these have faith to move the zones of man Out to the point where All and Nothing meet.

They catch the bit of Death between their teeth, In one wild dash to trample the unknown And leap the gates of knowledge. They have dared Even to defy the sentinel that guards The doors of the forbidden -- dared to hurl Their breathing bodies after the Ideal, That like the heavenly kingdom must be taken Only by violence. The star that leads The leader of this quest has held the world True to its...o...b..t for a million years.

And shall he fail? They never fail who light Their lamp of faith at the unwavering flame Burnt for the altar service of the Race Since the beginning. He shall find the strange -- The white immaculate Virgin of the North, Whose steady gaze no mortal ever dared, Whose icy hand no human ever grasped.

In the dread silence and the solitude She waits and listens through the centuries For one indomitable, destined soul, Born to endure the glory of her eyes, And lift his warm lips to the frozen Grail.

The Unconquered Air. [Florence Earle Coates]