The Star-Treader and other poems Part 6

THE CHERRY-SNOWS

The cherry-snows are falling now; Down from the blossom-clouded sky Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough, In widely settling whirls they fly.

The orchard earth, unclothed and brown, Is wintry-hued with petals bright; E'en as the snow they glimmer down; Brief as the snow's their stainless white.

FAIRY LANTERNS

'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light The elves upon their midnight way; That fairy toil and elfin play Receive their beams of magic white.

I marvel not if it be true; I know this flower has lighted me Nearer to Beauty's mystery, And past the veils of secrets new.

NIRVANA

Poised as a G.o.d whose lone, detached post, An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks Of finite years, and those unvaried darks That veil Eternity, I saw the host Of worlds and suns, swept from the furthermost Of night--confusion as of dust with sparks-- Whirl tow'rd the opposing brink; as one who harks Some warning trumpet, Time, a withered ghost, Fled with them; disunited orbs that late Were atoms of the universal frame, They pa.s.sed to some eternal fragment-heap.

And, lo, the G.o.ds, from s.p.a.ce discorporate, Who were its life and vital spirit, came, Drawn outward by the vampire-lips of Sleep!

THE NEMESIS OF SUNS

Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world, Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun-- Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun Beneath the roof of Night, and torn or furled By Night at will? All opposite powers upwhirled Are less than chaff to this imperious one-- As wind-tossed chaff, until its sport be done, Scattered, and lifted up, and downward hurled.

All gyres are held within the path unspanned Of Night's aeonian compa.s.s--loosely pent As with the embrace of lethal-tightening weight; All suns are grasped within the hollow hand Of Night, the G.o.dhead sole, omnipotent, Whose other names are Nemesis and Fate.

WHITE DEATH

Methought the world was bound with final frost; The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe, Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw.

Then on my road, with instant evening crost, Death stood, and in its shadowy films enwound, Mine eyes forgot the light, until I came Where poured the inseparate, unshadowed flame Of phantom suns in self-irradiance drowned.

Death lay revealed in all its haggardness-- Immitigable wastes horizonless; Profundities that held nor bar nor veil; All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed In light invariable nullified; All darkness rendered shelterless and pale.

RETROSPECT AND FORECAST

Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast The breast that fed thee--Death, disguiseless, stern; Even now, within thy mouth, from tomb and urn, The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn.

Kingdoms debased, and thrones that starward yearn, All are but ghouls that batten on the past.

Monstrous and dread, must it fore'er abide, This unescapable alternity?

Must loveliness find root within decay, And night devour its flaming hues alway?

Sickening, will Life not turn eventually, Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied?

SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE

What hand is this, that unresisted grips My spirit as with chains, and from the sound And light of dreams, compels me to the bound Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips?

Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips, The threats of that Omnipotence confound All days and hours of gladness, girt around With sense of near, unswervable eclipse.

So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier, Whose flight is traced on roofs of white abodes, Wherein from court to court, from room to room, In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom, Is slowly trailed the slime of crawling toads.

THE SONG OF A COMET

A plummet of the changing universe, Far-cast, I flare Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind, And s.p.a.ces bare That intermediate darks immerse By road of sun nor world confined.

Upon my star-undominated gyre I mark the systems vanish one by one; Among the swarming worlds I lunge, And sudden plunge Close to the zones of solar fire; Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone, Flash, and with momentary rays Compel the dark to yield Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze In ashes chill is now inurned.

A s.p.a.ce revealed, I see their planets turned, Where holders of the heritage of breath Exultant rose, and sank to barren death Beneath the stars' unheeding eyes.

Adown contiguous skies I pa.s.s the thickening brume Of systems yet unshaped, that hang immense Along mysterious sh.o.r.es of gloom; Or see--unimplicated in their doom-- The final and disastrous gyre Of blinded suns that meet, And from their mingled heat, And battle-clouds intense, O'erspread the deep with fire.

Through stellar labyrinths I thrid Mine orbit placed amid The multiple and irised stars, or hid, Unsolved and intricate, In many a planet-swinging sun's estate.

Ofttimes I steal in solitary flight Along the rim of the exterior night That grips the universe; And then return, Past outer footholds of sidereal light, To where the systems gather and disperse; And dip again into the web of things, To watch it shift and burn, Hearted with stars. On peaceless wings I pierce, where deep-outstripping all surmise, The nether heavens drop unsunned, By stars and planets shunned.

And then I rise Through vaulting gloom, to watch the dark s.n.a.t.c.h at the flame of failing suns; Or mark The heavy-dusked and silent skies, Strewn thick with wrecked and broken stars, Where many a fated orbit runs.

An arrow sped from some eternal bow, Through change of firmaments and systems sent, And finding bourn nor bars, I flee, nor know For what eternal mark my flight is meant.

THE RETRIBUTION

Old Egypt's G.o.ds, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth, Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet Revealed, were as the levin's fire and heat.

The hosts of Rome, the Arab and the Goth Have left their altars dark, yet stern and wroth In olden power they stood, whose wings were fleet, And mighty as with strength of storms that meet In mingled foam of clouds and ocean-froth.

Above my dream, with arch of dreaded wings, In judgement and in sentence of what crime I knew not, sate the G.o.ds outcast of time.