Textarchiv - Anna Hempstead Branch

Nimrod

mrbot — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 21:10:09 +0000

Part I

One time, in Shinar, when the setting sun,
With all his thousand javelins, drove the day
Before him and the myriad tribes of light
Departed sullenly with bleeding feet,
Great Nimrod, the strong huntsman of the Lord,
Returning hot with bloodshed from the chase,
Beheld great Babel, wrathful, beautiful,
Burn like a blood-red cloud upon the plain.
Then Nimrod, when he saw it, laughed aloud,
And turning to his warriors cried, "Behold
How those steep battlements defy the cloud
With starry dome and precipice of brass.
Their sword-like minarets have stabbed the sun.
What fiery ledge, what blazing battlement,
What savage bastion flushed with angry gold
Bulwarks the dreadful bright acropolis!
Look how yon crags of bronze, fantastic, burn
In God's great conflagration, not consumed,
Imperishable; but built of flaming cloud
His high pavilions perish. Lo, how strong
Yon citadel of stone! Is it not great?
Is it not ribbed with sinew? Flanked with war?
Are not its ramparts beautiful? Lo now
Whose is the city?"And his warrior chiefs
Saw how its arrowy splendors smote the light
And how its ledges, gorges, furious cliffs,
And all its savage multitudinous crags
Besieged the silent sky; then, being amazed,
Gazing upon such splendors, answered, "Thine."

For it had come on Nimrod, in the waste,
That he should build a huge metropolis
For Bathsheba the queen. And it was built.
Its strong foundations were sunken in deep rock,
And on the walls were graven mighty shapes.
For Nimrod had gone forth and laid his hand
Upon the barren stones and they were runed
With ancient script, embodiment of words
That once were heard in Babel—such utterance
As when before the flood the sons of God
Spoke to men's daughters, or when on the sheer marge
Of time stood Adam and with august cries
Saluted nature—star, sun, cloud, earth, moon,
Bright angels, wondering beasts—and from his lips
Shook huge ejaculations, piercing calls
Of keen astonishment, smooth murmuring tones
When he gazed forth on beauty, and when he saw
Eve, in her whiteness, the first awful word
Whereby a man cried unto a woman his love.
Such was the speech of Babel. These words revealed
Men's hearts to one another. For the earth
Had been made spiritual and with waters purged
Of ancient wrong and grief. Man was new made.
Not innocent as in Eden—oh not fresh
With Paradisal sweetness—but grown wise
And taught by the sons of God, they set their minds
To august ends and great. So had they left
Strong nations in the desert and multiplied
Like myriad hordes of sand and they had raised
Their thoughts to beauty and conceived high deeds,
Truths, honors, valors, heroisms, loves,
Faiths, aspirations, sacrifices, prayers,
And unto them had built a beauteous speech,
Revealing all things truly. For not yet
Was mortal falseness harbored in their thought.
Imagination had not dreamed of this.
Not yet the bastions of high Heaven had rocked
Beneath that onslaught. God's deepest angels hid
In placid innocence had never yet
Shed tears of nameless grief nor their warm wings
Grown chill with that cold vapor from the earth.

No man had learned how vessels of sweet tone,
Blessed for the sacred wine of truth, might lift
To trusting lips abominable drink.
No man on earth had lied; but words, fair-shaped,
Blushed with the spirit's sense, fluid as thought.
Priest-like their speech moved on its ancient task,
The sacred ceremonials of the truth.
For with that speech great prophets known of old
With glowing symbols uttered secrets hid;
Wonderful doctrines of stars, suns, and moons;
Litanies of the seasons; hidden charms
Wherewith the earth works miracles; the spells
Of soft angelic water; the rich creeds
Of deeply brooding air entranced at noon;
High versicles that from the lips of time
Spake of the eternal; runes of numbers, shapes,
And all the myriad moving powers that build
The architecture of the world. These words
Shone in the lucid firmaments of thought,
The bright melodious orbs of heavenly speech.
And Nimrod traced their shadows in dark script.
For he inscribed upon his brassy walls
Marvelous symbols stranger than the sphinx
Breeding eternal secrets; gorgeous shapes,
Bright-blazoned, beautiful; letters, that as thick
As footprints of innumerable slaves,
Swept on the stately caravans of thought;
And there were signs and symbols, deeply carved,
Rich characters that wreathed like thick-set vines
Yielded a mortal vintage of sweet tone
Whereof the juice was wisdom, and God's sons,
When they had drunk of it, forevermore
Must go enraptured; jungles of black script,
Where howling in the wilderness like beasts
Ranged forth the dreadful wisdoms of the Lord.
And there were dark and dreaming hieroglyphs,
Beautiful, old, occult, in which were breathed
As was God's wind into the clay, grave sounds,
Angelic musics, syllables austere.

But when Bathsheba saw those histories,
How manifold, and how from out those signs
Spoke prophecies and powers, and how the bronze
Was dark with secret knowledge and such creeds
As Nimrod heard from mighty men of old,
She was astonished, and to her Lord she cried,
"Art thou not great in Babel? Art thou not wise?
Hast thou not learned to read the ancient sign
God writes upon the wind? Do not thy words
Like dawn upon the mountain peaks make plain
God's will before us? Is not thy casual speech
Beautiful to us? When thou dost comfort us
With thy deep wisdom, do our souls not feast?
Dost thou not cast thy voice abroad like thunder
To teach His law to us? From His cloudy speech
Thou hast snatched the fires of His meaning down.
Lo, now, thou hast transcribed for us His lore
And grayed His ancient spelling on the stone.
Thou art great Nimrod. Where then is the Word
That burns forever on the midmost page
Of God's most secret book, in Heaven set deep?
What is it? Canst thou say it? How long shall earth
Groan with the lack of it, that utterance
Whereby all things grow beautiful, that Word
That being spoken, the angels at the gates
Shall drop their flaming swords, and we return
Into that Eden—which they tell us of—
Lost in the forests of the dawn! Go thou,
And learn that secret wisdom from the Lord.
Then, when thou hast revealed it, never more
Shall our flesh wither, and our souls put on
Sackcloth and ashes. In shapes fulfilled of light
We shall attain God's likeness. Never again
Shall sorrow be upon us nor affliction
Make in our flesh its lair. But death shall set
His face away from us. And thou shalt grow
Ancient in years and beautiful with time.
And I will bear thee harvests of strong males,
And thou and all thy sons shall be as Kings."
Then Nimrod spoke to Bathsheba, the queen,
"From out the midmost page of that dark book
God sets in His deep Heaven, I will bring down
To thee the blazing fires of the Word
Whereby this earth shall be lit up and shine
As with fierce conflagration. Then indeed
Our souls shall be enlightened. Then our flesh
Shall blush with joy under the waning moon.
Then death shall turn his face away. No more
Shall sorrow be upon us nor affliction
Make in our flesh its lair. But thou shalt grow
Ancient in years and beautiful with time.
And I will lead thee back where Eden glows
Like dawn across the desert. Am I not he
That when he speaks, all hearing are astonished?
Do not my words teach wisdom? Does not my speech
Cast scourges on the unrighteous? But on them
That fear the Lord is not mine utterance
Sweet as the rain at noon? Am I not Nimrod?
Lo, thou shalt bear me harvests of strong males,
And I, and all my sons, shall be as Kings."

Part II

And Nimrod looked on Babel and beheld
How beautiful it was, and how it glowed,
A rose of splendor, burning on the plain.
And in his heart the king conspired to build
Sweeter and lovelier spires, more smiling fanes
Than ever yet had been upon the earth
And such vast arches as not yet had been,
But that with mortal beauty should persuade
The immortal angels, wondering, to explore
Those beauteous vaults of glimmering marble made,
Hollowed of whiteness like the spherèd moon,
Roofed terribly with arched and blazing wings;
Walls like the bosoms of the Cherubim;
And milk-white pavements, clear and richly pale
Like alabaster, but of starrier stone,
Swimming with many a floating sweetness, shed
From many a violet-colored robe and green,
Or rosy foot, or viol shaped of gold.
There should be laughter heard—angelic guests
At pastime with the queen—and they should play,
With plumèd wings and innocent grave smiles
And silvery footfalls in the chastened groves;
And with God's smile upon them, they should speak
To men His secret Wisdom from the Book.
Oh, it should be like Paradise new made
And God himself should walk with them at eve.
And it was builded and there moved the Queen.
But if the angels in celestial games
Down those calm alleys wandering, around
The rosy pillars swept their golden plumes,
No pale reflection of their dancing feet
With starry sweetness pleased the placid stone.
But still the polished, pale, white pavement shone
Like smoothèd water tranced with many a moon,
And if they came they tarried there unseen.

Then, in the streets of Babel, Nimrod made
A feast before the Lord, and Bathsheba
Led forth the women; and with shawms blown loud,
With trumpet and with cymbal, they declared
The greatness of Jehovah; but Nimrod went,
And sought the Lord on a high mountain peak,
And standing with uplifted arms, he raised,
In great and fearful cries, his voice to God.
And Nimrod cried aloud, "Lord, I am he
That crouched alone in the desert. Among rocks
I herded with the wolves. Then did I seek
To build unto my people a strong town,
With bulwarks of firm rock. Then did I heave
My shoulder to the stone. Lord, I have set
My citadel upon the plain; and lest
My people go astray, I have inscribed
Upon my brassy walls bright characters
Uttering knowledge. With a thousand tongues
My walls proclaim Thee. But that Wisdom, Lord,
That burns forever on the midmost page,
Of thy great Book the awful hieroglyph—
I have not seen nor spoken. Send from Heaven
Thy angel to us and I will learn from him
Thy sacred Word; and when upon that feast
My spirit has grown wise, lo, I will turn
My people's hearts to wisdom and we shall be
Beautiful nations bourgeoning the plain,
And I and all my sons shall be as kings."
And he was silent. But upon the town
No voice shook like thunder, and from the sky
No angel, sweeping earthward, in mid air,
Held up God's burning Word. And he was wroth,
And in his sullen heart defied Jehovah.
But God sent forth a pale and spectral host
Of war horse and of rider. From the steeps
And citadels of cloud on the horizon,
They mightily plunged upon the embattled plain
Encircled round great Babel. Blazing scouts
Skirmished the valley; shadowy stallions reared,
Driven by vast archangels, whose fierce spears
Whirling aloft, they stabbed upon the town.
A thousand gusty shapes rushed forth to war.
And there were chariots of dust that drove
Windily down the plain. Bright meteors lit
Upon them screaming. Built among the clouds
Were domes and turrets; and blazing with pale lights
Acropolis towered above acropolis.
Then Nimrod, throned upon his peak, looked down
To where the blazing cohorts of the Lord
Threatened the town with vengeance; and he rose,
Obscured with wrath as is the sun with cloud.
And like an engine of dread war he set
His shoulder to the mountain side and heaved
Its giant bowlders forth till from the cliff
With sudden scream, as if some savage chief
Would drive his angry cohorts into war,
They leaped with sound of grating wheels and plunged
Down the precipitous slope at God's encampment.
But Nimrod, leaping to the mightiest stone,
Then bounding to another as they plunged,
With arms outstretched and darkly beetling breast,
With angry locks, with great and godlike eye,
With furious shouts of battle and laughter huge,
And challenges to Heaven, scourged with cries
His screaming stallions maned with whistling wind
Goaded the vengeance of His flinty wheels
That bright with many a whirling fire appeared
Bestrid with eyes—yes—like the lightning perched
Upon the gale, he swept upon God's hosts
His monstrous cavalcades. Then, driving down
His thousand thundering chariots of stone,
Enraged, enraptured, pale, with bow upraised,
Great Nimrod shot his arrow at the gods.
And lo, the heavenly onslaught flamed away.
God's dark encampment lifted from the plain.
Then there were rushings heard in the deep air
And all the spectral host paled from the sky.

Then Nimrod unto Babel cried aloud.
"Lo, I have shot in Heaven God's great white horse!
With neighings and fearful tramplings he went down!
And his affrighted angel drifts pale wings
Across his bosom, lest he take from me
The anguish of mine arrow in mid air.
Am I not Nimrod?"And he cried aloud,
"Am I not Nimrod?"Then spoke he to his soul:
"Lo, such dark cities smoulder in my brain
As light the air with terror. I will achieve
A great and mighty town such as not yet
Has mortal plotted and no angel dreamed.
With my strong ramparts I will storm the sky—
Yes—cleave it with my turrets. I will lift
My fortress straight against God's citadels.
And having with my frontage besieged the pale
Frontiers of Heavenly air, then will I lift
My slow invasion to the immortal plains.
And there, defying all His hosts, will drive
His bright fleeced whirlwinds; hurricanes with eyes;
His golden-bellied lightnings; shaggy thunders;
His meteors that dart like screaming birds
Among tumultuous forests of black night;
All strange unhuman monsters that frequent,
Angelic, brutish, the jungles of fierce air;
His Silences, that crouch amid the waste
To slay who heareth them beneath the stars
Awakened out of sleep; His awful Noise,
Whose mane is like a thousand lions' deep,
And that with fires doth bristle; His Circumstance,
His Peradventure, His Go To—all beasts
Furious with dreadful beauty that He keeps
To rage with splendor up and down this earth;
His Wars that move with such velocity
They shine as sweet as simple doves; His Feignings
Wherewith he shaketh man; His Abominations
That howl at night, and His deep Desolation
That seizeth them rejoicing at noon day;
His Furies—Retributions—that do scream
From pinnacles of air and plunging down
Snatch up the guilty conscience, so they keep
Upon its living flesh perpetual feast;
Yes, all His angelic beasts that ravage with wrath
The deep invisible air, these will I slay.
Hear then! On His own cohorts will I turn,
And many a starry breast shall bleed that night
And many a snow-white sweet immortal shape
That cannot ever die shall writhe and bend,
Blown up and down as windy fires would burn.
And there shall be great tramplings, whinneyings
Of wingèd steeds astonished. Archangels pale
Shall rend their blazing splendors off and wrapped
In panic only, seek escape in night,
To hide them in the vastness. The Cherubim
Shall swell their gorgeous eyes with dread. So then,
Having dismayed His host, I will besiege
The splendor of His deep acropolis,
And thence will drive those inner ones that move
In garments sweet of pale serenities;
The great, mild-eyed, most docile, loveliest,
Whose soft meek bodies sing like great white birds
Beneath the golden forest of their deep wings,
Whereof the sound is like a noonday gale,
That causeth dropping of fruit mild and strange;
Whereof the sound is like a silver fountain
That springeth in a golden basin;
Whose placid bodies are like chastened pillars,
Simple transparencies to the Lord, by which
A great and archèd roof is lifted up,
That is the embracing splendor of their pinions;
Whose bodies are strong as alabaster, shapen
Of pale translucent brightness, limpid stillness,
Like shining water wreathed with many a star.
Oh, as a star deep sunken under water,
Their bodies are sleeked like ivory set in amber.
Large, peaceful, bounteous, their dreamy bodies are.
These, hastening them along their happy halls
Reared of supreme delight, through corridors
With music paven, till their ruffled wings
Ache with my violence, I will drive forth
Over the high roads of high noon to where
My earthly citadel shines on the plain.
So leading in before my people's eyes
My triumph unbelievable—all these
Shall pass, meek-looted, wondering, before Her
That is my Love, my Queen—and they shall go
Into her chambers and with chastened touch
Shall lay their hands upon my brazen walls
And marvel at them, and shall turn mild eyes
Of deep astonishment when they behold
Our human beauty, how the pride of man
Has waxed like cedars where the stars of God
Walk forth for pleasure and His wind lies down.
And I will drive them, if I will, as slaves
To build me huger temples, more awful fanes,
A terrible citadel from which to heave
My flaming battle axe at God's own breast!
Then will I plunge into His secret place
And snatch from out His page that Hieroglyph.
So will I scourge to labors beyond thought
The bare immortal sweetness of their shapes,
Beating with whips their pale astonished wings,
Or if it please me, I will comfort them—
Feed them with mortal fruit and with my hand
Smooth to obedience their trembling plumes,
Till their discordant feathers sweetly sing.
Then when among themselves they speak and cry,
And say to one another, `Brothers, behold!
Who is this man that has so driven us
From our dear placid courts! that with his thought
Can scourge us till we cry or run to do
The whispered bidding of his sleep! whose wish,
Being raised against us, fearfully doth blind
With terror all the century seeing eyes
That live among our wings; but, being inclined
Can soothe our grief! Brothers, who is this man
That hath defeated God and mastered us,
His great soft snow-white children?'—Then indeed
Shall I to my great chamber lead them in,
Hollowed of splendor, like the spherèd moon,
Roofed over as with fierce and blood-red wings.
Here, in this chamber, on a polished stone
As evidence that man shall pass away
But he whose name endureth on that stone
Shall be remembered; from its surface springing
Two brazen wings of aspect terrible,
Spreading their steadfast breadth as if to lift
The name inscribed thereon to Heaven; shall flame
A monstrous syllable, a symbol strange,
To be a sign and evidence of him
Who built great Babel in the empty plain,
The corner-stone and column of its greatness,
Its roof, its strong foundation, and its wall,
Its rose in a deep garden, its sweet water
That is a wellspring in the rock…Lo, now,
I will go in and write thereon my name,
That my enslaved great powers shall see and cry,
' Behold the man that snatched God's Word from Heaven,
Great Nimrod!'"…
And he built upon the plain
A mightier city; and he raised on high
Sheer peaks of bronze and armaments of domes
That bright with sullen splendor spread their shields
Against God's anger. But the eternal sky
Preserved its shape in silence and the sun
With all its hosts of light sped on its way,
Bright, unappeasable. And God came down,
Invisible, in radiance panoplied,
And spoke with Nimrod. But Nimrod, in his heart,
Being greatly wroth, hated Him for His speech.

PART III
And Nimrod came to Bathsheba the Queen,
And spoke with her; but of that golden speech
There is no likeness upon earth to show
How mild its sound, how beauteous its shape.
But when the dying swan fulfills at eve
His passion on the lake and music swells
With aching sweetness all his snow-white plumes,
And he, that never, never shall return,
Like music burning floats into the sun;
Or when upon a sleek and polished water
The moon all night performs her dance serene
In solitary loveliness; or if
Smooth hands should serve to beautiful strange guests
Pale-colored honey in a golden dish;
Or if a water carrier, in the dusk,
Should in his earthen jar such water lift
As stars had shined on, in the wilderness,
And she who drank it said—it tasteth sweet;
Oh then, with singing sound and moving shape,
There would be written on our mortal air
An old immortal alphabet from which
Wrapped in her dark and sacred hieroglyph
An awful visitor with shape unseen
Would move with music and would take the breath,
And there would shine along her ancient script
The solemn beauty of that either speech.
For there is not a tongue upon the earth
To tell how in that city famed of old
The stately ministers of lovely sound
Had laid their hands on music and built up
A gracious architecture of sweet tone;
Or how their great and gorgeous grammar raised
Its pillars, arches, corridors, and domes,
Beneath whose roofs ethereal thoughts like doves
Melodiously breathed; pale visions swept
With eyes enraptured; and in music stoled,
Before the altars, with rituals rich and slow,
Angelic meanings served before the Lord.
And Nimrod said to Bathsheba, the Queen,
"Am I not great? When I my voice east forth
Does it not roar like thunder? Shall I lay
My hand upon the earth and it not break
Like potter's clay dried up? When I go forth
Does not the ground smoke? Who has seen my face
And, having seen it, not covered up his eyes,
Crying, 'Great Nimrod'? Are my feet not set
Like cedars in the desert? Is not my breast
Unto my people as a spring that gushes
Out of a rock? When mine eyes glance abroad
Do they not pluck up terror as the eagle
Bears up the ram? I lifted up my voice
And cried unto the Lord—yes—unto Heaven
I shook my spear; yes—unto them that boasted
Upon the seats of the angels, in high places
I shook my strong spear! And the Lord was vexed
And He sent down a whirlwind strewn with eyes.
And it did roar and spread itself and I
Did cast it howling underneath my feet.
The whirlwind did I cast beneath my feet.
The whirlwind burst its belly under me—
Yes, God's strong whirlwind! Behold, am I not great?
Am I not dreadful as the unicorn?
Am I not a palace hung with blazing shields.?
Am I not Nimrod?"
And Bathsheba spoke,
And unto Nimrod said, "Oh, thou art He."

And Nimrod said to Bathsheba, "Why then!
The whirlwind fell beneath me. I am one
That with a dagger stabs the empty gale
And scourging air with whips shall make it bleed!
Then was deep space astonished! For the Lord
Camped mightily upon the plain. His tents
Were of thick cloud. His war horses were there,
His chariots of dust, His fighting angels;
And He did lead on me His cohorts vast,
His fierce battalions. He swept down on me
His monstrous meteors. And I laughed at God.
And riding in thunder down the mountain side
Unto the lightning I did cry—Thou Fool.
And I raised up my strong bow and I shot
Mine arrow at the Gods. And when it fell
I saw it red with blood. For I did slay
His strong white horse that plunged upon the gale.
His fierce horse did I slay that spouted forth
Pale smoke of vengeance; and the storm white angel
That drove him unto battle, between its wings
Upon its starry bosom—did I wound.
Groaning in Heaven His great angel bleeds.
Am I not as a city girt about
With forests of tall spears? Am I not spread?
Am I not one whose visage flames like brass?
Am I not Nimrod?"
And Bathsheba stirred
Upon his breast her pale and beauteous face
And unto Nimrod answered, "Thou art He."

And Nimrod spoke to Bathsheba and said,
"Lo, who hath built this citadel? Who reared
These furious bastions glittering on the plain?
Who wailed it round about with dreadful brass?
Who founded its deep fortress and decreed,
Swollen abroad with splendor, terrific domes?
Who planted it with green and pleasant trees?
Was it God did it? Who conceived the town?
Whose finger sleeked the brazen corridors?
From whose imagination then did spring
These bright mailed armaments of towers that sweep
Their rugged radiance towards the sun? Lo, now
Did God disturb His placid hours of ease
And wearying of His Heaven descend to build
That monstrous chamber roofed with blood-red wings?
Did the Lord shape it? Verily I think
He was not moved from off His sacred throne
To come into the plain, and make for us
A thatch amid the wilderness, or build
Unto His sons a comfortable roof.
When was it that He left the triumphing
And being grieved for us in our distress
Harnessed His meteor to the groaning rock
And dragged it for us? When, with blazing ax
Of His sharp lightning did He split in twain
Impregnable strong stone for us? And when
Did He make derricks of the desert blast,
Or of His falling stars link mighty chains?
When? When? Nay then, I think He was not stirred
To sweat with us when we did heave the stone.
I have not seen Him when the sun was hot
Upon the desert perish of slow thirst.
Hath He smelted bronze in a furnace? Hath He been
Scourged with the slaves? For when the sunbaked clay
Upon the plain was red with blood, I think
It was the footprint of some starveling child
That strove with a burden, but not ever yet
Because Jehovah bled. Yet when He saw
My great bright citadel, the Lord was wroth,
And in the darkness spied upon my speech.
Yes—seized upon my utterance! His ears
Snatched up my words as the avenging eagle
Bears up its prey. Yes—plunged on them through space
And feeding on their fatness He grew wroth.
For a great city shined upon my brain.
And I did dream of vast and spheral hails,
Broad, deep, high-arched, like Heaven's inverted dome.
And I would build such towers as should search
The countenance of the sun. And I would storm
God's fortress with my great acropolis,
And drive his frightened angels out, and thence,
To do my bidding and to help me build
Upon the earth a citadel more vast;
A precipice so high that I might leap
Into sheer gulfs of Heaven! Then, having plunged
Through that abyss of brightness, I would scale
Its secret ramparts, dare its highest wall,
Triumph above its batteries, show my face
With laughter on its pinnacles, then rush
Into its central silence, and, from the Book
Bring down to earth—against His will—God's Word.
Therefore I would inscribe upon a stone,
'Great Nimrod!'
For behold, upon the earth
Am I not mighty? Am I not one who dreams
But when he wakens seeks not any man
To speak with cunning counsel but with deeds
Interprets his own dream? Am I not one
Whose name is as a silver shawm blown loud?
Am I not Nimrod?"
And Bathsheba raised,
Shining as does the terrible chrysoprase,
Her pale and awful beauty from his breast
And unto Nimrod said, "Lord, thou art He."

Then Nimrod in his rage did spread abroad
And in his violent robes gathered such wrath
As hidden in dark clouds shall shake the sky.
The thick locks on his head in anger reared
And bristled as with sparks. His challenging eyes
Swept the dark air with such velocities
As when with onslaught fierce a thundering drove
Of neighing steeds stampede the plain. His brow
Was black with deep and swollen veins. His hands
Were stretched aloft as if to snatch from Heaven
God's thunderbolts. So Nimrod speechless stood,
With such a silence as should scourge the air
More fearfully than does the hurricane.
So Nimrod stood; and Bathsheba, the Queen,
Gazing upon his presence was appalled;
And casting down her beauty at his feet
Spread out the yellow harvest of her hair
Upon the stone. Not like a woman now,
But having seen an omen in mid air,
A portent and a devastating doom,
A part of groaning nature she fell down,
Her broad and simple flanks like the white herds
Submissive on the plain, her bones like rock,
The sinew of the earth—like earth she lay,
The dark, the elemental, the chastised—
And waited for his wrath. And Nimrod spoke.

"Break, break, ye clouds, and cast upon the earth
Your progeny of fierce, angelic lights.
Rage, rage, ye stars that never more should creep
Like hounds about God's footstool. Heave, thou earth,
And cast thy broth at Heaven. Ye mighty hills,
Tremble I say, for sickness of His feet.
Howl, thou meek air! Thou earth, sky, sun, moon, wind,
Ye forests, clouds! Oh all ye visible things,
Be purged of God. For I, that am a man,
Having observed the ways of the Most High,
Am utterly astonished. God was wroth.
He was afraid because I sought to build
A citadel so huge it should confound
His High Archangels. So he drew a cloud
Of angry darkness round about his throne
And restless amid rest he cast about,
Eternal, jealous, how he should subdue
Our mortal glory. Then the Lord came down,
Invisible, in radiance panoplied.
And when I saw His front, I was amazed.
Then was He pleased. Then was His mind set up.
Then did His countenance boast and in His heart
Unto His watching hosts He cried—Ha! Ha!
For He is one that having not ever sown
Shall reap the harvest. And He was consumed,
When He beheld great Babel, as with fire
Is the dry flax. Then did He smoke with rage,
And in His dark and monstrous heart decreed
That those who sweat, who bled, who died, should cry
To Him, enthroned in the eternal ease,
`Behold, God did it!' And He said to me,
`Lo, now thou art confounded and cast down.
Go thou into the chamber and on the stone
Write thou Jehovah's name.'"…
Then Bathsheba
Arose before him and upon him shone
Her pale and awful beauty. Her large eyes
Cast darkness forth upon the air and filled it
With premonition of a doom august.
And she spoke to him as the Sovereign Night
Utters forth stars that shape the destinies
Of other worlds.
"Lo, who shall war with God?
Hast thou such spears as those that from the sky
Cleave earth straight through? Hast thou a war horse shod
With flame? Whose mane is thunder? Canst thou shake
The stars with murmuring? Or by thy nod
Confound great waters? Canst thou do this? My Lord,
Thou art vainglorious. Think upon the flood.
Remember Adam. For upon my dreams
Such awful portents ride as meteors
Astride the blast. I see!—I see!—I see!—
And there is doom upon the land and wailing,
And direful confusion! Make peace with God.
Else where this citadel is reared to-day,
To-morrow wolves shall haunt and hooting owls
Shall lodge them in the ruin. Then thou, cast out,
Shalt stretch thy hands into a windy air
And cry `Lord, Lord!' upon an empty plain.
Go thou, and on the brightly polished stone
Write thy Lord's name."…

Then Nimrod went from her
He passed beyond the brazen door and stood
Upon a massive landing flanked with stone,
Bright paved with various-colored stone and arched
With moon-white marble, hushed with many a shape
Of pale and dancing creatures carved in light;
Blossoms and garlands; wild and starry forms
That ran soft-fooled through the tender stone;
Deep fruitage, shadowy grapes, apples of snow,
White shining pears, pomegranates richly pale;
Dim hands and silver flagons—and anon,
Blushing with sweetness, all the soft white stone
Smiled like a rose, where vaguely seen as though
From some profound and spiritual air
Their fair immortal shapes had melted through,
With laughing eyes, with soft and cloudy hair,
Angelic faces smiled and dimly shone.
The portal was blood red and it was carved
With haloes of fierce angels, burnished bright
With glowing ribs of deeply crudded wings.
And on the left a brazen cherub stood
With locks outspread. His pinions were blood red.
His breast was alabaster and his eyes
Of topaz, flaming fearfully. In his hand
He poised a jewelled spear before the Lord.
And on the right a brazen cherub stood
With locks outspread. His pinions were blood red.
His breast was alabaster and his eyes
Of topaz, flaming fearfully. In his hand
He poised a jewelled spear before the Lord.
'Twixt massive balustrades of thick carved gold
Downward there swept a huge Olympian stair
Of grave, celestial whiteness like the moon.
It swelled abroad, calm, beautiful, and bland.
Descending into beauty yet more vast,
It moved as some white-bosomed awful god
Slowly matures his shape upon the air.
So with large curves it did embody space.
With godlike love embracing emptiness,
In austere nuptials it sank down in bliss.
For lo, there swelled upon the mortal sight
A vast, a spheral chamber, as did seem
The breeding place of immortality.
Young angels here might lay a soothing hand
On space made infinite and grievèd time
Become eternal. Here such calm was spread
As doth inhabit greatness. The rich air
Conceived such splendors as appeared to sweep
Like divine blazing eagles the huge roof.
From column unto column space swept on,
Breathing, enraptured, god-like and austere—
Music made visible. And Nimrod gazed.
And when he saw, globed forth beneath that dome,
All human beauty sphered before his eyes,
Even like mortality shrined in one tear;
When he bethought him how upon a night
He with imagination was consumed;
Yes, even he that haunted with the wolves
Among the rocks, naked upon the plain,
Was seized with such great awfulness of dream
As blows mortality from off our souls
And leaves them to a high and god-like doom;
And how—even upon him, the warrior chief—
There swept upon his spirit, burning, bright,
The knowledge of that chamber—beautiful;
Then he stretched out his arms upon the air
And stood as one astonished. For behold,
Spread like a glassy sea the radiant floor
Was smoothed in golden pools of deep delight.
The blazing walls of fierce and polished brass
Were bright as bosoms of the cherubim,
And angel-shaped strong columns lifted up
A solemn dome of arched and blood-red wings.
Then Nimrod moved along the placid floor
Till, in the center of its vastness, set
Upon a pedestal of blackened bronze,
He came upon a huge and polished stone
Like the shield of a great angel. On each side
Two dreadful cherubim in brass did flame
And their bright swords were crossed above to bid
The Powers of Heaven hide before a name
Soon to be graved forever upon stone.
And Nimrod looked about him and he saw
The dim and dove-like smoke of incense, rising,
Float palely in the air before the shrine.
And he beheld the fiery spread wings
Of those four blazing cherubim, and read
Upon the pedestal of bronze, strange script,
That being translated cried, "Angels, Archangels,
Ye generations of men; hereon is writ
The name of him who built great Babel. Lo—
He is our stronghold. In the wilderness
Our sweet well water gushing from a stone,
Our sword, our buckler, and our blazing shield,
Our rose in a fair garden."…
And behold,
That radiant chamber rushed upon his soul
Like a great host of angels and he spread
His gaze about him. And when Nimrod saw
How empty was the broad and blazing space,
And how no eye disturbed the air, he turned—
And on the polished stone wrote his own name.

PART IV
Then did the powers of the air breed forth
Sight in no mortal shape involved that flew
Furious as eagles blazing in mid noon—
And snatching Heavenward that naked deed
Swept up its prey, screaming, into the sun.
Then was there heard upon steep slopes of air,
Like fearful rushings of invisible steeds,
The trampling of innumerable eyes,
That mounted up to God, angry, amazed,
Terrific smoking, furious and appalled,
By earth affrighted. But when around the Throne
Vast multitudes of angels robed in wrath,
Displeased and splendid, gazed into God's face,
The Lord looked down upon great Nimrod's deed
And seated in large silence, pitied him.
Then from His breast a blazing angel came
And looking down upon the earth he cried,
"Oh blind, oh fatuous, knowing not thyself!
For I that am in God am thine own soul,
Thine own deep Self—unutterably real.
But thou wouldst build thy towers and threaten us
And snatch from out the Book His secret Word.
Yet—at thy voice—I will come down to earth,
And I will sphere before thy mortal sight
His midmost Truth, God's utterance crystal clear,
Shape of angelic substance that contains
The stars of destinies, astrologies,
Prophecies, histories, retributions, spells,
Births, crucifixions, resurrections, dooms,
And God's own heart that ever burns therein,
Made visible. Lo then, thine eyes shall see!
And thou shalt know how through thy walls are stretched
High Heaven's bastions; how angels' mighty feet
Tread deep thy strong foundations and their great arms
Uplift thy arches; how their heavenly breath
Bears up thy highest turrets, and how thy domes
Are symbols of their passing. Gazing on me,
Made wise with Truth, thou shalt grow glorious.
And I will shine through thee as does the flame
In sacred vessels—burning before the Lord.
A Prophet and a Saviour thou shalt be.
And thy great citadel shall open lie
To bright celestial guests and thou shalt walk
Among our sacred and dark groves; but if
I do not please thee, smite me with thy sword,
And I will leave thee and to Heaven return."

Then, from His inmost bosom, God sent down
That angel unto Nimrod. And the King,
In Babel, made to Bathsheba a feast.
For he had marshalled hosts of armored men
In that great hall; and when Bathsheba moved
In silent radiance down the snow-white stair
There swept among them a vast murmuring
And a low roaring as of ardent flame.
Behold, she walked among them, and her feet
Were bound in golden sandals. The robe she wore
Was scarlet; and her face was pale. She came.
Then those that gazed upon her, being abashed,
Could lift their eyes no longer. But she moved
As does the sunset on an empty plain.
Beautiful and alone she walked unseen.
Only great Nimrod's eyes were not made blind,
But he observed the pageant of her face.
His shaggy warriors, bright as burning trees,
Blazed like deep forests all on fire, and lit
With smouldering helmet and with flaming shield
The air with conflagration; but their eyes
Fell down like flaming leaves, while over them
In the broad sky two eagles soared and met
And, mated in mid air, fledged on the gale
Great golden birds of love. So swiftly paired
The eyes of mighty Nimrod and the Queen.
Unwatched, unseen, amid vast multitudes,
She melted in his arms and on his breast
Laid down the awful splendor of her face.
And Nimrod saw the Angel, and his brow
Was pale, translucent; and a garb of light
Concealed the burning softness of his shape;
And he was mild and glorious and his eyes
In deep obedience smiled and as he shone,
Immortal doves were bred out of his sight—
And flew among the thousand columns of gold.
Like some strong diver he plunged down through light,
Through gulfs of quiet and eternal seas
Of such delight his bosom swelled with bliss,
And his large pantings shook the silvered deep.
With heaving sides he swam beneath the flood
And drenched with beauty floated into sight.
So Nimrod gazed upon him and he saw
Such rich benevolence as warmed the air
Like a celestial orchard deep with fruit
Of milky substance, bounteous and mild.
And the translucent brightness of his limbs
Was all inscribed with prophecies and dooms,
With retributions, ecstasies and dreams.
How starry was his substance, and his shape
How chastened unto beauty! How austere!
For he was lovelier than the Milky Way;
More ancient than the moon; more white than stars;.
And glories, dying from some fairer clime,
Did palely swim along his silent smile
Like great white singing swans. And Nimrod knew
His own deep self, unutterably real.
And in his hand he held an awful sphere,
A monstrous globule shaped like the full moon,
A dreadful brightness, stranger than a star.
Eternal, beautiful, orbed in golden light,
A vessel of pure fire it flamed serene,
More fearful than clear water when't is still.
Eternal beauty solved into one tear—
It laid a shape upon unshapen air,
And, as the radiant moon reveals the sun,
Held up to mortal vision the unseen.
And Nimrod saw it and he cried aloud.
And from his limbs, as out of gnarlèd trees,
Slow heavy drops exuded; and his sweat
Dropped from him like thick amber and he fixed
Upon that spirit astonished, staring eyes—
And cried unto the angel, "It is the Word."
For lo, made visible to mortal sight,
Strange mingled colors swam upon its shape.
Like skies at noon its pure angelic substance
Contained all stars and they engendered forth
Prophecies, histories, high astrologies,
Falls, crucifixions, resurrections, dooms,
Portents and charms; bright times, like ripened fruit,
Fell from its surface; seas and shifting lands
Were hurried from its face; vast nations rushed
And circling round it in mad hurricanes
Chastened its limpid stillness. Then, all gone,
Closed in its central sweetness, sphered in calm,
Blushed the perpetual smile of God.
Then spoke
That Angel unto Nimrod and he said,
"See in my hand God's awful Hieroglyph.
This is His secret Utterance, the Word
Which thou dost seek, in prayers that thou hast shaped
And raised to Heaven in thy domes august,
Thy soaring towers and thy spires that dream.
Take it from me. I am thy Spirit's Truth,
And we are one another, and from thee
Shall future times beget me. Thou shalt grow
Mild, ancient, and at ease, eternal, wise.
A prophet and a saviour—thou shalt be.
And thy great citadels shall open lie
To bright celestial guests and thou shalt walk
At will among our sacred and dark groves—
And thou and all thy sons shall be as kings.
Stretch out thy hand. Lay hold upon God's Word."
And Nimrod gazed upon that Utterance.
And from it streamed such splendor as lit up
Bathsheba's face, inclined on Nimrod's breast.
And they perceived the galleries of the hall
Uplifted on the shoulders of archangels
And how amid the thick and blackened bronze
Was spread their hair and how their powerful shoulders
Supported Nimrod's bulwarks and their breath
Blew forth round domes like bubbles and their eyes
Bred out of earth his battlements, as the sun
Bids forests into growth; and they beheld
Strong Gravitations that with gigantic knees
Forced down his bastions while ethereal hands
Lifted his pinnacles; and they perceived
That through the ramparts of that mighty town
Were stretched sweet angels' wings and how mild eyes
Gazed at them from the stones and the great arches
Were lifted on the backs of angels, bent
To lift that joyous burden; and bright feet
Were spread amid the rock and rushing raiment
Of splendid spirits roared along the stone
For Nimrod when he built. And they perceived
How Cherubim had beckoned, and behold,
The city had grown upward; wingèd steeds
Were chained to drag the stones and forms unseen
Had built among the laborers on the plain.
And she remembered what God said to Nimrod,
And looking on the polished stone that stood
Between great brazen angels, she saw it hid
In purple cloth. Then Bathsheba drew down
Great Nimrod's face unto her own and said,
"Son of Almighty God—what hast thou done?
Tell me, great Nimrod, hast thou kept His word?
For I remember how I bade thee go
And write upon the stone, even as He said.
And if thou didst not do it—never more
Can I in solace lean upon thy breast.
No more can I learn from thine eyes, or say
Unto my soul,' This man shall lead thee forth
And marshal thee to God'—But I in grief
Would cloud my presence even to thy face.
Tell me, what didst thou write upon the stone?
Oh—ere I come to thee again—I say
Was it God's name?"
And Nimrod turned and saw
That burning shape, bright as the breast of God,
Gaze at him from the air and unto him
That Utterance spoke. "What has thy soul conceived?
What thought has taken thee? Oh, in thy heart
What strange imagination has sprung forth?
What speech is this that thou reflectest on?
If thou dost speak it, thou shalt be accursed.
Tell her what thou hast done, else with thy hand
Cast down the Word of God."…
And Nimrod turned.
And gazing on Bathsheba he beheld
The pale and awful beauty of her face.
Then he cast down God's Word before her feet,
And said, "Upon the stone I wrote God's name."

PART V
That night the angels in their citadels,
The great mild-eyed, whose snow-white innocence
Was soft upon them and like plumage deep,
Moved forth for pleasure and their gliding step
Peacefully on the radiant pavement shone.
Their silvery feet like doves beneath the sun
With tender pacing bred ethereal sound
Which in the melodious substance of the stone
Throbbed with the pulse of many an echoing tones
As in the sunlight sweetly sunken moons.
Some walked in the warm gardens where they ate
A placid fruit, milk white, whereof the taste
Increased in them their wisdom. With delight
Some camped beneath the trees and in deep groves
Played secret lovely games that left the air
More innocent with mirth. Some from the lips
Of Awes and Terrors and Powers and Blazing Thrones
Learned that which passeth speech. Some stretched through space
Gigantic limbs or plunged into the void
To try their strength with nothingness, and some,
Through gazing upon beauty having grown
Miraculously quiet, wrapt in calm
Received the silent ecstasy of sleep.

Some, wardens of the barricades, high up
Upon the ramparts of God's citadel,
Gazed from the parapets and saw how smooth
The plains of pure and undisturbed bright thought
In shining levels lay'twixt them and man.
But as they gazed upon the eternal ways,
Lo, Heaven itself was shaken. Then mid air
Was split asunder. Then was the void struck deep
With blackened precipices and stern cliffs.
Then space was made astonished and was rent.
Then dreadful whirlpools of dark, thundering time
Swept forth their reeling floods. From jagged steeps
Plunged shrieking shapes of stars on fire. Then thought,
That once had stretched a lucid interval
'Twixt God and man, convulsed with darkness, broke
In fearful chasms, gorges of despair,
Fathomless seas, sharp-peaked and distant heights,
Sheer walls of distance, deep and echoing flumes,
Untrodden plains and jungles of dark air,
Where fierce monstrosity and brutish rage
Devoured each other. With anguished meteors pained,
Eternal hurricanes of grief disturbed
The deep arboreal forests of black night.
Then struggling up the dark abyss they saw
An urgent spirit whose white angelic shape
Was poisèd for an instant on the cliff
Of utter darkness, like the morning star;
Then plunged again into the black ravine,
Then forth once more; then, fearfully obscured,
Rushed up through trackless distances, pursued
By howling furies; then followed the harsh trail
Which skirted the high citadel; then leaped
Across the blazing bulwarks, up the heights.
So swept among them, of his splendors stripped,
Great Nimrod's angel! Anguished, bleeding, bright,
Exhausted, beautiful, aggrieved, appalled,
He beat the air with large astonished eyes.
Then, like a steed gone frantic, forward plunged,
And like one burning cast himself abroad.
Pale with celestial anguish his body shone
Like the white spirit of eternal flame,
While wildly throbbing on the angelic stone
Spread the crushed splendor of his beaten wings.
Then once again he reared himself and stood
Enraged and potent with a blazing front
And cried with such a voice as shook the air—
"What has been done on earth? What has been thought?
What dreamed of? What conceived? How shall I speak,
That come as witness to you from that orb
Which is man's habitation! With what voice
Shall I cast knowledge, howling, through these streets?
Shall I confound your presence? With my speech
Shall I your bleeding brightness so afflict,
Your bodies shall melt forth in tears? Oh ye!
Ye Spirits, that dispersed upon the air
Feel Nature trembling; Angels, that so close
Are driven to one another by the gales
Of earthly devastation, ye surge like seas
Of troubled radiance; ye august Archangels,
That lift complacent, towering in the sun,
Your glacier beauty of precipitous wings;
Oh ye almighty Thrones whose blazing eyes
Breed forth astonishments, dominions, powers;
Ye principalities that in the air,
Fearfully spread in conflagration bright,
Consume the darkness of the void; Ye Wars
Beautiful, shaggy, bristling, circumstanced,
That ride with thunder and with cohorts vast
March forth with Dominations; Oh, all ye Times,
Ye fearful Times, ye Half Times! on this day
I say man has accomplished a strange thing,
And on God's altar there smokes up to Heaven
The savor of unnatural deeds. For when
At dawn, in Eden, underneath the trees,

Eve, slumbering at peace in Adam's arms,
Enraptured, docile, in her sleep conceived
A dark monstrosity —direful, new—
Man's disobedience; when fatuous Cain
Gazing into his brother's living eyes,
With hate ecstatic, first conceived of death;
Or when before the flood the sons of men
Whored fearfully and of adulterous flesh
Bred frightful progeny; I say that then
There was a speech in Heaven and it declared
Man's dark inventions to the stars. But now
What word shall shape before you this new thing?
For never yet has man, who fashioneth
Great cities and great progenies of dust,
Created a new virtue; but his wit
Conceives unnatural monsters of misdeed
And fierce original crime. I came to him
Through skies of lovely thought. Oh, like a star
Singing athwart the dawn, I swept the air
Of his clean spirit, morning fresh. I came,
Beautiful, wrapped in light, beyond all dreaming.
What he had not imagined, I shone on him,
His own deep Self unutterably real.
And in my raiment were his secret dawns.
Pale was my substance with the spiritual stars
That were the fires of his ancient prayers.
My body poised in the air did sing
Like silvery strings with music, and he gazed,
And knew how beautiful I was and saw
His own deep Self, unutterably real,
But in his heart preferred an alien thing.
Oh, can ye in this citadel conceive
What Nimrod plotted? How shall I make plain
Without vast ruin blackening these halls
His spirit's dark achievement! For he wrought
A harsh invention and a blind machine,
And from his lips there sped an iron word—
A direful engine that did bring to waste
The gardens of his being. Then on his brain
Seized black negation. With a staring eye,
His thought regarded emptiness. He groaned.
Then he stretched forth a groping hand upon
Annihilation, and swart nothingness
He drew about him with its ancient chill.
I saw his senses swim, dizzy as clouds
Dispersed upon the ethers of his soul.
Then did his mortal presence ail. His flesh
Melted upon his bone. His eyelids pale
Were cold and sweated heavily. His eyes
Started and were astonished. In his breast
He felt protesting nature with huge throes
Endeavor to escape and leave him strewn,
By all the elements cast out. Aghast,
His snow-white flesh was shaken like a city
That cracks upon the gale ready to fall.
And from his deep disease such vapor smoked
As if a fire in the groins or breast
Were prophesying ruin. Not like a man
Turned Nimrod unto me, but some wild shape
Reared of disaster, built of empty ash.
So sorrowed he before me and with tears
Large in his godlike eyes, he gazed at me—
His spirit's Truth—and groaning heavily,
With devastation shaking his huge frame,
He spoke forth monstrous syllables and cried
What was not true before the Lord; then cast
The Word of God upon the barren stone,
And from great Nimrod's lips emerged pale death."
Then was the silence of that listening host
Congealed, as when beneath the Northern blast
Deep solemn pools their quietness increase.
And stillness lay among their glittering spears
Like snow in a deep forest. But once more
That Angel lifted up his voice and spoke.
"Lo then, I waned from out his mortal sight
And sank myself into the golden air
That was his spirit—wherefrom I had dawned,
His own deep Self unutterably real.
But oh, that world of thought not any more
Lay pure, transparent like a shining sky,
Betwixt his world and ours. It had grown dark,
And on his soul's horizon many shapes
Foreboded tempest. Then was split in twain
His spiritual earth. Dark gulfs of thought
Swallowed up his peaks of radiance. Hideous forests
Besieged his intellect with shaggy growth
Wherein roved many a wandering, livid beast
Of rage and hatred. In the evil air
Were floating idiocies and blank despairs,
Insanities and disembodied palsies,
Fright, and such leprosies as in the waste
Of his soul's desert howled among the tombs
Or at the town's gate, smelling out the feast,
Entered the helpless citadel of flesh.
Through these I rushed and from my substance waned
The beauty of his spiritual stars,
Until the fires of his ancient prayers
Seemed almost out. Then did I set my face
Against the whirlwinds of his deep despair,
His rage, his privy council, his muttering,
His peeping spirits perched upon the gale.
I rode on Revolutions and I leaped
From mammoth time to mammoth time. I clung
To gorgeous wheels of cycles and was whirled forth
From them into mid air. I sat astride
Event and guided it. Over vast plains
I drove his chariots of change! Look! Look!
Am I not wounded? Am I not aghast?
For I have ridden on his soul's eclipse
Unto the uttermost reaches of man's thought.
A thousand centuries lie beneath my feet—
His own deep Self, unutterably real."
Then to the bulwarks that great angel leaped
And gazing down into the nether air
Lit up the darkness with his blazing eyes.
With arms outstretched and with exalted brow,
He cried, "Lo now! Upon this town shall fall
An ending and a devastating doom!
For in its streets and mighty citadel
Truth reigns no more. Wherefore no more shall Truth
Be its chief servant. Ye doers of foul deeds!
Manipulators! Hiders! Plotters of schemes!
Runners on dark errands! Creepers on unshod feet!
Oh ye that dwell in Babel, breeders of lies!
Have ye not heard of that unholy spawn
That eateth its progenitors? Lo now!
Soon shall ye be devoured. Never more
Shall God's high angels lift your mighty walls
In their serene great hands. Not any more
Shall they upon their shoulders heave your domes!
Ye are forsaken utterly. Shake! Shake!
Ye mighty citadels! Ye are not built
Upon a real foundation. Ye shall sink
Amid soft brass and sickly dreaming stone.
Fall, ye high towers! Oh all ye constellations
Of domes resplendent, like a thousand moons,
Ye are eclipsed forever. Ye bright walls,
Whose rugged armaments drive against God's hosts,
Mailed in magnificence, ye shall be as dust.
Oh thou great Babel—out of nothing reared—
Shake! Crumble utterly! Be thou dismayed!
For God is wroth upon you and to Him
Thy citadel is as a voice at night—
Thy brazen bastions built of empty wind.
Thou art abolished fearfully. His feet
Are darkly spread among you. Ye shall go
Afflicted and confounded. Ye shall rage
In scattered tribes. God's strong and awful wars
He will send down upon you. And no man
Shall to his brother lift a cry of peace.
Words shall be taken from you. On your lips
Your utterance shall be confused. Your breath
Shall sicken in your nostrils and send forth
A stench upon this land. With wailing voices
Ye shall breed forth new words and every one
Like old death-bearing Cain shall breathe out death.
Your tribe henceforth shall speak a various tongue,
And there shall be a curse upon your speech."

Then from that stellar orb that is the earth,
Rose such a lamentation that it vexed
The listening brightness of the zodiac.
And many a star fell from the sky that night
With mortal grief afflicted. Meteor-eyed,
Eternity watched a new epoch dawn
Upon that furious planet set in time.
Then in high heaven all the angelic host,
Beating about God's ramparts like a tide,
Swelled terrible with glory, and the eyes
Of no Archangel could range forth so far
As to declare the end of that vast sea.
But bright with billowy radiance they heaved
Their rugged splendor underneath the sun
And surged against the battlements. For, lo!
There shot among them fires that were such thoughts
As never more should blaze upon the earth,
Whose terrible radiance was the garb of speech.
Breathed in by Heaven, swept back God's beauteous words
To the eternal peace from which they came.
Burning, they plunged into the Angel's hands.
They sunk their glowing shapes into his brain.
They shouted in his thighs, and in his feet
Raised paeans of delight until he leaped
Before the Lord with prophecy enraged.
They foamed upon his brow. They swam serene
Through the translucent whiteness of his breast.
Amid his spiritual substance, fires shone
With moving splendor and interior flame.
They made soft music in his throbbing plumes
And on his finger tips did sweetly sing.
But never more on earth those orbs of light
Choired truth along the orbits of man's brain.
And with them rushed swart algebras, disturbed
From their deep lairs of stone; and numbers swept
Their wings from earth until material things
Groaned, crumbled, were no more. Swift accuracies,
Smooth-limbed and beautiful with flying feet,
Fled from their bright abodes of tower and wall
And, poisèd in high air, looked down amazed
To see huge towers stricken by their flight;
Lines, whirled about the heavenly ramparts, swung
From ancient straightness into anguished shapes
They had not dreamed of, arcs, and angles strange,
And terrible spirals. Many a tortured curve,
Unwoven from arch and dome, was stretched in pangs
Of pained and frigid straightness. High in air
Moved mournful, calm and stern geometries—
Pale priests of space—that from their ancient hands
Loosed the old order and, at God's altars bowed,
Laid down their sacrifice of beauty. Then
A murmur rose among the radiant ones,
And they grew turbulent in Heaven, for lo,
The angel had gone down. His terrible wings,
That with bright comets bristled as with eyes,
Did shake the atmosphere like living wars.
Blown through his hair were strong bright meteors
Consuming as with flame. His thundering feet
Ploughed up the earth till fearfully she rocked
And groaned as chaos did of old. His eyes
Blazed like volcanoes from pale peaks of air
And prophesied destruction. His screaming voice
Perched like an eagle on white cliffs of the sky
And snatched earth's vision Heavenward. His brow
Passed judgment on the universe. His robes
With conflagration burned the gale. Oh then
There was a cry in Heaven, for all the host
Of bright magnificence, with thundering voice,
Shouted abroad in Heaven, "Great Babel Falls."
Then that bright sea of plunging radiance
Ebbed back to silence and eternal calm.

PART VI
Three days, above the plain, the setting sun
Moved over Babel; and its thousand courts,
Ruined beneath the sky, lay silently
Like pools of blood. Its devastated domes
Shone forth no more but blackened on the ground,
Rent into shapes gigantic. Its vast walls,
Spread fearfully, lay swart upon the sand,
Cleft in deep chasms, gorges of dark bronze,
Black, wind-swept cliff and brassy precipice.
Its towers had ceased like thunder. Its temples huge,
Convulsed in mammoth shapes, crouched on the plain
Like anguished gods—doomed and forever dumb.
For, with its spirits gone, what tongue can tell
The speechless agony of aching bronze,
The groanings and convulsions of strong stone.
Bed rock was heaved from earth. From dungeons deep
Emerged pale waters that, in mighty halls,
Spread glassy lakes beneath the shattered domes.
It seemed eternal ruin. No voice broke
That death-like stillness and not any man
Looked forth to query where his home had been.
But the gaunt wolf skulked slant-eyed from the plain,
And when the sun was set the jackal whined
Down empty echoing corridors of stone.
Under the roofless pillars the night owl
Flew among ruined arches and the wind
Sighed through disconsolate forests of black bronze.
But when upon the third night the full moon
Shone on the plain, a dark and awful shape
Loomed forth upon the rock and spread abroad
Its shadow in the waste. For a long time
It crouched, squat in the sand, nor moved at all,
But its huge bulk was like a bowlder cast
In the eternal idiocy of stone.
At length that sombre entity did move,
And with colossal labor without sound
Heaved up its groaning ruins; and the moon
Revealed the shaken semblance of a man.
With vague spread feet, gnarled knees and shaggy sides,
With bulging eyes and large, astonished face,
With matted locks of horror-whitened hair,
Gigantic in the waste he towered alone,
That once in Babel was a mighty King.
He stared abroad, as if a diver, lost
Beneath deep waters, gazed on a sunken town.
Then with a vacuous eye he seemed to search
As for a thing forgotten—that being found
He would remember it. And he moved on,
Desolate in the silence—and he saw
Unearthly crawling monsters of slow stone,
And buried in a sea of livid light
Black on the sand, unutterable shapes.
Through ruined vaults and roofless corridors
He moved with stealthy step. Sometimes he came
To empty chambers open to the sky
Whose lone inhabitant was the windy owl
Wheeling his ghostly shadow to and fro
With melancholy hooting. Much amazed
At these unearthly ruins he moved on,
Turning his steps along a corridor
That promised him the end he sought and seemed
As when along an insane countenance
A look of recognition strangely creeps.
But at the end it led him to a place
Made imbecile with ruin—where not one thing
Preserved its ancient contour. Sometimes he beat
Against a barricade of rock or rushed
Like one gone frantic to some parapet
Or from a ruined casement stared far off
Upon a sea of moonlit waste. At last,
Not knowing where he went, he turned his steps
Among the ruins of that mighty hall
Where once great Babel held her festival,
And his bright warriors, shaggy as burning trees,
Blazed forth like conflagration. Nimrod strode
Under the sky and on that ruin gazed.
For lo—those walls, graven with mighty shapes
Beautiful, old, occult, were spread abroad
In gorgeous devastation. And he gazed
On awful effigies of sculptured bronze.
Cast from their habitations they appeared
With frigid gestures to forbid or warn.
Carved out of purple marble, slit-eyed, straight—lipped,
With gold set in their nostrils and their mouths,
With hands upon their knees, about to speak,
Yet dumb forever, stared swart images.
Hewn out of uncouth rock, old sacred beasts,
Elephants, lions, monsters terrible,
Dragons and birds that flew before the flood
With scaly wings of brass, grotesquely shaped,
Stared at him from those devastated walls,
Shaken with thunder each one from his niche
Of lawful meaning. As if the shining beasts
That rage with love and splendor about God's throne,
Beneath His hand unutterably good,
Being cast to earth returned to natural wrath
And whined or whinnied, bellowed, roared or screamed,
Each after his own kind, desiring flesh;
So these immortal symbols, fallen from grace,
Unspiritual, brutish, uttered death.
Monsters of twisted bronze, griffin or sphinx,
Strange mythologic beasts no eye had seen,
Beneath the moon, in effigies of hate,
That once in ordered harmony had choired
With golden mouths a psalmody of love,
Stared at him as he moved and with mad lips
Cried dissolute meanings that were not the truth.
Then his flesh cowered before old hieroglyphs
Of chronicles forgotten—gods asleep—
That muttered forth sad dreams and vaguely spoke
Into his soul, dark, unimagined crime
And uncreated horror. Letters strange
Leered at him wildly and with insane eyes
Told tales abominable of an earth
They saw not well. But some were chastely made,
More lovely than the white and ancient moon;
But like the moon they ever turned away
An occult fire from the eyes of man.
Others of more intelligible shape
Seemed beautiful to him—but oh, how dumb,
Like mouths of speechless angels—lost syllables,
That had no meaning for him, yet did seem

To have that in them which should ease his grief
If his soul's eyes could read their outlawed script.
Adamic spellings, palely glimmering runes,
And broken shapes of ancient alphabets!
He seemed like one who argued with the speech
Of furious madmen—for upon the night
They worked such images as with fearful shapes
Floated upon the air in horrors pale.
Insanities, that in the shadowy wind
Beat round his face like harpies and befouled
His spirit's sustenance! Contagious fear
Begot abomination where it was not,
And having sickened all things, on his soul
Cast off its trembling and diseasèd sweat.
Murder sat throned on emptiness, and hate
Was soured in the air's stomach till it spat
A living venom around Nimrod's feet.
Wrath shook his marrow. Floating idiocies,
Like watery jellies in voluptuous shapes,
Swam through his brain; and disembodied lust
Fearfully drifted towards his dreamy flesh.
Then panic seized him and on his body cast
Disintegration, till what time should do
By terror was accomplished. Palsy shook
The virtue from his bone. His flesh distilled
In unseen waters. He stretched forth withering arms.
With vacuous eyes, with horror-whitened hair,
He might have lived innumerable years.
Awful he stood, unutterably old.
But as he groped for some remembered sight,
His trancèd eyes grew suddenly awake.
He came upon a crumbling arch, carved deep
With cunning skill and devious workmanship.
Beneath its shadowy arches, beating thick,
Bats throbbed athwart the darkness with shrill cries
Or in warm dusky garlands hung festooned.
Then gazing underneath that arch, he saw
A ruined marble stair, monstrous, snow white;
Upon the left, over the sunken steps,
A roaring torrent; shattered on the right
Huge fragments of a golden balustrade,
Wherefrom hung shining coils of mighty snakes;
And at the top a barred and brazen door.
Then Nimrod groaned. And plunging up besieged
With breast and hands that portal. It was carved
With haloes of bright angels and burnished red
With glowing ribs of deeply crudded wings.
And on the left a brazen cherub stood
With wings outspread. His pinions were blood red,
His breast of alabaster and his eyes
Of topaz, flaming fearfully. In his hand
He poised a jeweled spear before the Lord.
And on the right a brazen cherub stood
With wings outspread. His pinions were blood red,
His breast of alabaster and his eyes
Of topaz, flaming fearfully. In his hand
He poised a jeweled spear before the Lord.
Then Nimrod with huge clamor beat the door,
With shouts and speech of anguish; old great cries
He had not yet forgotten; Adamic prayers;
And prehistoric signals of the flesh
When it was pure in Eden; tribal calls
Of spirit unto spirit; ambrosial speech;
Curses that Cain once taught unto his sons
In his great city; Paradisal words
Ineffable to us, rich syllables
That fed the soul, calm as angelic milk,
With deep and immemorial tones of love.
And lo, beneath his violence that door
Groaned, yielded, gave, and fell, and its harsh sound
Echoed through the reverberating halls.
But Nimrod, gazing from a windy cliff,
Beheld the floating clouds and the dark sky.
Over a sunken ruin sailed the moon.
Cast far below he saw Bathsheba's towers
Flung forth in natural shapes, fantastic cliffs,
Caverns of bronze, or promontories steep;
And pale with ghostly splendor in their midst
The polished silence of a smoothèd lake,
Until that night by no man ever seen,
Paved with such bitter whiteness of the moon
A brazen dragon well might dance thereon.
Then Nimrod turned. But now not with huge cries
He broke the stillness, but his glassy eyes
Rolled forth on nothingness. Round his large face
Floated vague locks of horror-whitened hair.
Down that great marble stair he swept as if
A temple fell and in the ruined hall,
Gorgeous in devastation, groped among
His monstrous images. Then suddenly,
Shaken with palsy, with a staring eye,
He pointed down among the shattered wings
Of crumbled brazen angels, and plucked forth
A slab of polished stone on which was writ
A name of might. This, seizing in both hands,
He raised high in the air, and on it shone
In letters bright, a disobedient word—
"Great Nimrod." Then he cast it in the dust
And raised to Heaven a primeval cry.
And at that cry dark shadows dimly stirred
From obscure places, and as snuffing hounds
Seek to the prey, vague human beings moved
Among the shaken ruins and appeared
From secret haunts where they in anguish hid.
Slowly from vaults and echoing corridors
They dolorously crept and were aghast
Seeing him white with age; and still they came
And huddled round him. But speechless through the night
Loomed the great King. Repulsed upon his lips
His words did sit like dark-browed effigies
In sculptured silence and he did not speak.
About their sombre chief they studded the dark
As when God's whisper spake into the sky
A thousand planets. So there appeared in sight,
In fearful resurrection, hosts of men.
And Nimrod lifted up his voice and spoke.
And from his lips his mighty arguments
Did lock their shoulders like great struggling gods
In the clear fierce arena of mid air.
For he alone of all that lived in Babel
Remembered the old God-like words nor yet
Had lost from off his tongue that ancient speech.
"Oh! Oh! Ye men of Babel! Wherefore then
Do ye stare round about with dog-like eyes
That beg the sop of charity from me?
There was a man that once on Shinar's plain
Built such a lordly city as not yet
Had Heaven looked upon…. I am not He….
Oh! Oh! Ye men of Babel! Get ye hence,
Out of this ruined city to a strange land,
And build new towns upon a distant plain.
They said that Nimrod was a mighty man.
His garments were like thunder. His head shone
With fleeces of the sun, and his bright lips
Flashed javelins of persuasion…Where is He?…
Oh! Oh! Ye men of Babel! I say that God
Is terrible on earth, and if our speech
Shall make a stench in Heaven, we are cut off.
Obey the Lord…I would ye had a king!…
But if ye love me, if ye have no fear
Of mine affliction, lest I bring a curse
Upon your tents and lest your women's milk
Be dried from out their breasts because of me,
Then place chains on my wrists; and on my brow
Write `slave,' and drive me with an iron scourge,
Bearing your burdens like the patient beast,
While ye shall wax like cedars in green plains.
If ye would have me with you, cry to me!
But if ye fear me, silently depart."
But they, with looks askance, heard Nimrod's speech,
Not understanding his great ancient words.
And, being full of wrath, thinking he said
Unnatural, grievous things—with angry eyes
And sullen aspect they silently moved away.
That night they traveled forth upon the plain,
Nor unto Nimrod did his sons return.
But venerable Assher stayed with him,
The ancient, the white-haired, and his true friend,
That once had loved him for his bounteous youth.
And when he saw how health had left the King
And he had grown unutterably old,
The tears fell from his eyes; and Nimrod said,
Lo now, thou art my only and true friend."
But when he heard that speech, old Assher thought
The King was mad and answered unto him,
"How can I serve thee?" Then was Nimrod's mind
Bewildered utterly and he conceived
That Assher hated him and with a cry
Of wrath and anguish, lifted up his sword
And smote him in the breast. And Assher fell,
And the blood flowed. And Nimrod stared at him,
Fearing lest curses crouched in hostile eyes
Spring from their lair and slay him who had slain.
But Assher, raising vaguely on his arm
And breathing heavily, gazed up once more
In Nimrod's angry eyes, and ere he died
With a loud voice he cried an unknown word.
Then was great Nimrod shaken grievously.
And from the shadows moved a dreary shape
And settled mournfully at Nimrod's feet,
Unnoticed. For from Nimrod's anguished lips
Swept words like planets. Golden and full orbed
They rode the silence as the throbbing stars
Rehearse the centuries or foretell new days
Or move through Heaven prophesying woe.
"Spirit of truth! Oh, how shall I make peace
With thy enraged great nature? I am one
Who having bid his tribe unto the feast
Pollutes the bread. Have mercy upon me.
For lamentation seizes on my flesh
And in my soul there is a deep disease.
Ye purities that in the wind and rain
Shall dredge the air of foulness—find out a way
To cleanse me! Never! Never shall I be clean.
Then cast me in the purging fires of Hell
And in eternal flames let me be burned.
Let me be damned. But oh, from out my soul
Let this ripe sickness somehow be consumed.
For if it were a horror of the flesh
That had unseasoned me—how quickly then
Might Nature work in me her ancient cure.
Then she might rend my body off from me
And cast its fevers in the air, and turn
Its leprosies into the earth, and fling
My spirit forth, a creature clean and bold.
But this strikes deeper. When I die, my soul
Shall howl outside the citadel of God,
And with rent garments cry `Unclean! Unclean!'
Thou happy flesh, that when distressed too far
Melts off in vaporish airs and is no more!
Oh, for some power that swiftly should unlock
The atoms of my spirit, that they might fly
Asunder once for all, and all my thoughts
Be cast abroad under the windy stars,
Blown off in gulfs of nothingness. Then no more,
Fixed in immortal entity of woe,
Should I ejaculate to mine own grief
That syllable of god-like torture— `I.'
What doom has come on me that I must go
Seeking mine own soul's death, yet find it not?
But still my spirit, breathed of God, must bear
Its ancient and intolerable shape.
Thou gaze of Truth, that, sphering forth my soul,
Still keeps me focussed—for one moment lift
That splendor from me! Then I'll plunge out in dark
And be no more a self… Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!
Who am I? What?… Once did I have a name?—
Ye blocks of nothingness that, hewn by me,
Built up in dungeons dreadful and unseen,
Immure my soul in darkness! I, no more,
Shall feel upon my spirit that sweet breath
Of ancient freedom. I, no more, shall plunge
Like droves of horses up my thoughts' steep plains
Nor in deep coverts hunt out mighty prey
Of fearful knowledge—Huntsman before the Lord.
Nor perched upon some mighty spiritual cliff
Shall I snatch down the lightning out of Heaven
To be unto my sons a flaming sword.
When I was young and in my spirit's health,
I dreamed such deeds as great archangels dream,
Such that astonished cherubs plumed in flame
Bent down to listen to my murmuring sleep.
I plotted triumphs beautiful and great,
With battle calls and singing clamor sweet!
Then, like mellifluous pipes with silver sound,
By mine own soul my flesh was blown upon!
Where is my clarion? On what inner hills
Blows my shrill trumpet? When shall my host return?
And oh, ye sweet and many-voicèd pipes,
To what harsh discord has your music gone!
I have so frightened nature that her milk
Has lost its sustenance, and when I turn
To her rich bosom she yields unto my soul
A food that palsies and a drink that kills.
Where shall I go? What shall I do? What hearth
Shall warm me now with flames? Is there a roof
To shield me from the tempest? No! No—I say!
For I am not as one that being thrust
Out of an alien door goes forth alone
Cursing his hostile tribe, but in the plains
Habits in some dark cave with lynx or owl,
Befriended by nutritious earth! I am
A wandering vacuum by space cast out,
Abhorred by nature and by God accursed.
Oh thou appalling universe! Thou hast
No darkened cranny wherein I can hide
From mine affliction. What will ye do to me?
Ye crouching, hostile, savage entities
Of earth, air, water, wood, flesh, spirit, stone!
There's not one grain of sand upon the plain
But from its breast such furies are unleashed
As hound my spirit forth—it knows not where.
Oh, while I live on earth, each thing that is
Shall scourge my soul with its identity,
Accusing, awful, unutterably real.
Ye fierce existing things, how shall I make
Peace with you ever! Brand upon my lips,
Thou Spirit of Truth, some burning word, so deep
Pain cannot shake it thence. Then I will go
Shouting it forth. But let my people turn
On me in wrath and scourge me for my speech!
Yes, stone me to the dust! Yes—strip from me
My clamorous flesh and send mine outraged ghost
Breathing forth vengeance and a shout of truth!
So might ye be appeased, ye things that bear
A shape upon you and mine own soul might feel
A solace to its grief. It cannot be!
But when I die and leave this earth I'll go
An ancient wanderer through the universe,
Hounded by meteors, cast off by the stars,
Plunged into chaos. Oh ye musics huge
That deepen into splendors with rich suns
Or wane with dying moons—never by you
Shall I be comforted but yet more damned
Because ye are so real. For I am one
With such deep contradiction in my soul
That when God to the void cried— `Let there be'—
I, unto groaning chaos, shouted, `No.'
Ye giant harmonies that in deep space
Build up proud architectures—not with you,
Shall I in sounding chambers of delight
Seek shelter from the intolerable waste.
Not in your shining palace may I dwell,
Who raised myself amid the howling waste
A small and evil tent of the unreal.
Ye powers that drive upon that failing roof
Your blazing weapons—be merciless to me.
With your strong, glittering spears stab me clean
through.
Let not my dangerous spirit rove at large.
Fix me forever on some shuddering orb,
Sad and for ages doomed. For if I go,
Sweeping through space my pale terrific ghost,
Against mine own deep will I shall afflict
The duteous orbits of the stars; shall drive
My hounds of fierce negation forth with howls,
Devouring living entities, until
The world shall reek with carcasses of thought.
Or I might snatch from Heaven its accuracies
That twist and wreathe and wonderfully bind
His seasons and His planets! Whirl them forth—
Shuddering, beautiful, voluminous, bright,
Then cast them hissing underneath my feet
With all their cunning gone! Then, then indeed,
God's whole creation fearfully shall rock!
Or if with spells of hate and mutterings deep
I snare his numbers forth from midmost air
So that his strong foundations crumble quite!
Think, think, ye angels! with what eyes of grief
Ye would survey your aching atmosphere,
If I should snatch their poles from the swift orbs
Or casting grief upon the air whirl forth
Great shrieking circles that my thought had flayed
Of their circumference—or if my hand
Stripped time from off the stars—then—Send me peace!
Thou blasting light, shine not upon me so
That I should see the face of mine offence.
Thou burning Truth! How fearfully lit up
Is my own thought before me, as when dark crags
Jutting from off a mountain's thundering peak,
With blazing lightning sheeted in living flame,
Glow terribly apparent.
Oh,—if from out my spirit there had sprung
Some great new virtue—some unimagined good—
Such as the angels of the choiring spheres
Might gaze upon with love and breed it forth
For their delight—like great melodious doves!
Then should this cruel splendor show me plain,
Set on time's promontory where men's eyes
Gazing upon me ever should behold
Eternal beauty on my breast. But now,
With haggard front and a bewildered eye,
With barren countenance and shaking bone,
They see me lifting in accursèd hands
A fearful offering of archetypal woe,
Deep in my breast an everlasting shame,
And on my lips an immemorial lie.
Yet shine, shine on, thou awful Truth, and make
My deep affliction deeper. Let me know
Full well what I have done. Yes, let me sit
For centuries staring at this deed of mine,
So I may see on it thy fearful light
Nor wholly lose thee from mine eyes gone blind.
Increase my woe. Let me behold thee more.
Oh, not with slow recessional of light
Subdue my anguish in me. Ease me not
With lesser wisdom. But upon my soul
Beat down thy full and devastating light.
So I shall mourn for æons, eternal, sad,
Original, disastrous, inventive, stretched
Upon the starry wheels of cosmic pain,
Tremendous and afflicted, huge, chastised,
Greatest among the anguished gods of wrong—
I will preserve my planetary throes—
Nor yield my nature unto smaller pains."

But lo, ere he was done, upon the peaks
Of his soul's mountains, thunder roared and shook
The hidden regions of his mind. The spears
Of multitudes of angels flashed and plunged
In his deep substance, as the fiery bolt
Buries itself in stone. Then from God's eyes
Swept forth a cloud of darkness, such as cast
His consciousness in foggy night. Bright thoughts,
Like stars in the deep heaven of his mind,
Tore their fixed bodies, screaming, from that sky,
And flashed away to emptiness. Oh, then
Was Nimrod seized with violent grief that shook
His giant limbs. He reared, he plunged, he bent.

He filled the air with such harsh cries as when
Wild horses deep in forest fires, raise
Upon the shuddering night, unearthly screams.
He swerved this way and that, and falling prone
Like a huge herd of cattle, beat the dust.
Then, raised aloft, he flung his groaning bulk
Into the air and dizzily swept through space
Circles of anguish as if a falling orb
Wheeled through the heavens on vast curves of pain.
Then, drawing back his thousand agonies,
His shakings, sweatings, terrors, dreads, despairs,
His furies, retributions, rages, griefs,
He bound them as the fearful hand of God
Locks fiery whirlwind into speechless stone.
Silent he spread, to helpless earth appalled,
And Babel's curse fell on great Nimrod's tongue.
Then, then, his spirit's golden bastions shook!
His starry dome of high philosophy
Flung down its meteors, and the columns huge
Of stately logic crumbled. In his soul
The shining architectures of sweet tone
Were spread in ruin. Down the corridors
Of his dark brain plunged wild and gusty shapes
Of syllables affrighted. Routed forth,
Flared great white faces of astonished words.
From chambers of music and deep vaults of sound
Where they had hidden, wild and lovely dreams,
Clothed in a virginal vesture of sweet song,
Went mad with discord. Then forgetfulness
Swept its slow fogs on mighty Nimrod's brain.
Awful aphasias, with their bleeding whips,
Scourged from its palace sweetly singing speech,
Beautiful symbols out of music made,
Syllables lovely, metaphors sweet shaped
That, floating brightly, danced before the Lord;
And from their altars many a priest-like word
They drove from ceremonials of high thought.
Then guiles and crafts, wreathing like thick black snakes,
Choked meaning like snared birds and creeping lies
Soft, thick and shining, monstrous and snow white,
Coiled palely round the struggling limbs of speech.
Then forth upon the air, not to return,
There leaped from Nimrod's lips terrific sounds
Driven by God's anger. Verbs like men at arms
Charged battling forth; and bold and blazing nouns
Like chariots, fury ridden; adjectives
That spread their fiery bellies in the sun
Till all their quivering wings as copper shone;
Ejaculations huge, deep tones of woe,
Thundering gutturals, hissing sibilants
Of fire-breathing serpents—every sound
That once had ministered to dream or thought,
Plunged from his shouting lips and shook the air,
Blazed brightly on the shadowy gale and then
Swept up to Heaven. When Nimrod saw them go
He stood confounded, and upon him fell
Vacuity, that numbed with aching sleep
All he had ever known. Then did he seem
Like one whose will, in bitter conflict plunged,
Grapples with thought, but with a flaming shield
That Heavenly warrior to the Lord returns.
Then from those lips that once had moved the earth
And swayed God's ramparts with their prayers, there came
First accents of a speech before unheard;
Faint murmurings, and sighs and querulous breaths,
Mutterings, peevish whispers, babble wild,
Bewildered utterances and whimpering cries
Like those of bleeding curs. And fiercer notes
Of astonishment and wrath shook from his lips,
New fearful curses, shoutings of dismay,
Alarums, prophecies of dire events,
And wild deliriums of mongrel tones.
But when he strove to lift his voice to Heaven
And cast with splendor before the Golden Throne
His great and ancient prayers—then his vague lips
Loose, stammering, uttered speech against his will,
Terrible laughter, crazy emptiness—
And a thick mumbling blurred great Nimrod's lips.
Then did he speak no more. But knowing now
What he had done before God's face, he stood
Refusing from his voice those lesser tones
That like the Titans had pursued the Gods
From his Olympian lips. Silent he grew,
Choosing instead to be forever dumb.
Thus Nimrod stood and the slow night wore on,
And her dark patience wasted into dawn.
But when that august silence on his lips,
Unbearable, unending, seemed to draw
Her soul up to him, as the old dead moon
Bids up the sombre tide, the huddled shape,
That had so long been crouched at Nimrod's feet,
Heaved heavily and underneath his eyes
Spoke syllables he did not understand.
But when upon his glassy eye there shone
The pale and awful beauty of her face,
Once more the trancèd waters of his mind
Shone with the glimmering radiance of words,
Reflections of such thoughts as in the sky
Of his soul's Heaven hung like spiritual stars.
And a vast cry issued from Nimrod's lips,

A primal utterance and an ancient word.
Then did eternal silence seize his tongue
And there was heard no more upon the earth
The solemn beauty of that elder speech.

PART VII
And they that went from Babel were a host
Of mighty men. And with them they bore forth
Monsters of bronze and grotesque images
Cast from the walls, and wandering in the plains
They worshiped these false gods and unto them
Were terror and disaster. For since God's hand
Cast down the vessels of their lying tongue,
Men dwelt no more in brotherhood, but built
Cities against each other, breeders of war,
And spoke with differing and hostile speech.
And they were scattered westward on the plains
And built up mighty cities known of old,
Dark Nineveh—ferocious Babylon.
But ere they left the desert sands they turned,
And pointing back beheld upon the plain,
Besieged with glittering armies of the sun,
The ruins of great Babel. And that town
Lay in vast stillness. In the silent halls
No human voice broke the empty air.
No human footfall when the dusk was cool
Left desolate sound upon the echoing stone;
But in the deep, reverberating gloom
Down thundering gullies heaped of gold and bronze
The bell-like roaring of the unicorn—
And in far courts the windy satyr screamed!
At night with mournful voice the gusty gale
Searched through dark corridors of ruinous bronze.
With ghostly shout and supernatural cries
It filled the air with desolate shapes unseen.
When noon was hot, the desert lion came
And slaked his thirst at many a quiet pool.
Hyenas laughed where once sweet courts were green.
The flying serpent with his sighing tune
Beat the hot sunshine with metallic wings.
Through hideous gorges and down sounding flumes
That had been streets in Nimrod's mighty town,
Deep rivers roared or snow-white cataracts plunged.
Dragons were in their pleasant palaces—
Grey wolves howled down the corridors unseen.
Over hot fragments of smooth paving stone
In bright mercurial arabesques there flamed
The glimmering viper, and in colonnades,
With brassy columns or columns of black bronze,
Huge snakes in cruel stupor darkly hung
Their bulky richness, fierce, arboreal.
The bat beneath the arches made his home.

And all alone in melancholy halls,
Over a windy shadow, swept the owl.
Eve after eve, through jagged clouds, the sun
In blood-red splendor gazed upon the flumes,
The gorges deep, the terrible ravines
Of those deserted ruins. It did not seem
Within the years of man, but might have been
Some fearful ravage of primeval gods.
For like a ruined god whose fearful shape
Had been appalled to everlasting stone,
Rock-like in devastation, with his beard
Moss-like upon his bosom, and his hair,
With horror whitened, the only moving thing
Upon the air of night, great Nimrod reared
His shattered bulk. Gigantic, Nimrod stood,
Flanked with majestic ruin. But his gaze
Was set against the darkness and the wind.
Huge monsters huddled round him wrought of bronze.
He had not moved since from his lips that last
Great ancient word had broken, but he stood
With arms outstretched and mighty palms pressed down,
Bulwarked in anguish and in grief composed.
His solemn strife besieged the midnight gloom.
Nor might that shape crouched darkly at his feet
Shake down the solid bastion of his woe.
For since the moment when gigantic grief,
Bracing his bulwarks war-like against time,
Heaved up the mighty derricks of his bone—
He was as one in spirit so enthroned
Beyond mortality that never more
Might he know grief, save of his spirit's throes.
As if an anguished angel on a star,
Throbbing with golden immemorial woes
For cosmic wrong, heard not upon the earth
In jungles dark the howling of the beast—
So, fixed upon his starry orb of grief,
He gave no heed unto the brutish rage
That shook the mortal forests of his flesh.
But he was not more silent than the shape
Of earth-like devastation at his feet.
He did not cry to her nor moved at all
When in the night the rolling clouds immured
The brightness of the moon and in the dark
Obscured the staring whiteness of her face.
Nor when the heavy thunder of God's throne
Split into fearful chasms the black night
And he was sunk in dizzying gulfs of rain.
Nor when the lightning swept him forth once more
In speechless patience, as if burning wheels
Had whirled him up from nothingness accursed,
Stretched on a vast circumference of flame.
Nor when with huge and fiery bolts he seemed
Struck through and through with such large pangs as gods
Nailed against empty chaos might endure—
The great progenitor of a new crime,
Doomed to immortal grief and cosmic pain.
For still his crag-like presence flanked the gale
Like a calm precipice, nor did he shake
His citadel of woe. But when at last
The whirlwind of God's chariot rolled away,
With shuddering sinew and with groping hand,
With frightful palsies and reachings of dumb pain,
He plucked the woman crouching at his feet,
And pointing to almighty Heaven, he stretched
A hand upon her, turning to the sky
The pale and watchful beauty of her face.
For poised aloft out of dark wracks of cloud,
There flamed amid the fastness of the sky
A monstrous globule, a soft shining sphere,
A fearful brightness, stranger than a star.
A vessel of pure fire, it moved serene.
Eternal, beautiful, orbed in golden light
The moon shone over Babel—and it seemed
As if an Angel, before celestial hosts,
Raised in mid Heaven the eternal Word of God.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

So I may feel the Hands of God

mrbot — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 21:10:02 +0000

How swiftly, once, on silvery feet
I saw thee bound beneath the sun!
Oh, savage innocence! The fleet,
The wild, the sweet, the glistening one!

God made in thee the gentlest sound
To win for thee the dear caress.
Like flowers growing in the ground
We heard that trembling daintiness.

Thou art strange Nature's subtlest child,
The offspring of her alien mood.
Now age has come on thee, the wild,
And stricken thee, the simply good.

Animal sweetness, when it goes,
Leaves emptiness behind.
Dear, thou must wither like the rose
And dimness take thy creature mind.

No more we laugh to see thee run—
The innocent, the fierce, the sweet!
Thy snow-white dancing in the sun!
The rushing of thy happy feet!

The hearthstone and the friendly touch,
Thou art grown needy, now, for these.
How strange that wanting them so much
Thou hast forgot the arts to please.

Oh, creature age! creature distress!
The haunting, old, and dim surprise!
Would I might charm with tenderness
The grief from those bewildered eyes!

Thou hast no more, at love's commands,
The simple sweetness of a purr.
Then let me comfort with my hands
The saddening of thy shining fur.

When cold afflicts thy piteous sod
Then let me warm that need of thine,
So I may feel the hands of God
Laid over thee—more close than mine.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

The Warrior Maid

mrbot — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:10:10 +0000

They bade me to my spinning
Because I was a maid,
But down into the battle
I marshalled unafraid.

Brightly against the sunbeams
I shook the flaming lance.
Then out I swept to gather
With the red and royal dance.

The war was stately in me,
And in my heart was pride—
Fierce moods like neighing horses
Most terribly did ride.

Deep as a sea of scarlet
I saw the banners roll—
And then the great war terror
Laid hold upon my soul.

I laughed aloud to feel it
And royally did cheer:
I strode amid my tremblings
And did not fear to fear.

A warrior rode against me.
I laid him to his rest.
I could not stop to gather
The bright sword from his breast.

But on I drove in splendor,
I—that was but a maid—
With piercing calls of triumph
And I was not afraid.

But once, beneath my charging,
A face shone up below.
Dead in the bloody furrow,
A stranger white as snow!

The foe rode close behind me!
I lost the day for this—
I sprang from off my stallion
And left on him a kiss.

The sword that pierced his bosom
With jewelled splendor shone.
I snatched it from him bleeding,
And lo, it was my own.

The spears blazed thick around me
When I leaped forth again.
But jubilant they found me
To face a thousand men.

Bright-voiced was my laughter,
I—that was but a maid!
And when the sharp gyve bound me,
Then was I not afraid.

Ah, hadst thou lived, my warrior,
Among the glorious ones,
I had borne thee savage daughters
And beautiful fierce sons.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

Selene

mrbot — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:10:10 +0000

But when Endymion, wandering alone,
With youth and love of loveliness forlorn,
Being greatly sorrowful with beauty, came
Upon the silence of a moonlit lake
Deep in a sacred grove; and when he saw
How in the water a pale presence shone,
So he might touch that ancient loveliness,
Yet never lay a hand upon the moon;
He cried aloud,"Oh, Spirit of this earth,
That in the flame and cloud, water and wind,
Hast shed thine image, yet art never seen!
Invisible! Where art thou?"
Then to him
Selene from her fastness in the air
Spoke, with no mortal voice in his ear,
But to his soul and as a goddess speaks
With divine utterance. "Oh, Watcher! Thou,
Mover among innumerable shapes
And lover of my shadow, many years
With shining substance have thy hands been filled
And pleased with lovely changes. But on me
Thy flesh has not laid hold. Not with thine eye
Hast thou perceived my smoothness and thine ear
Has heard me never. Underneath a tree
When hast thou found me sleeping? To what spring
Have I come down to drink? In what dark groves
Have my feet led thee, shining among leaves?
Thou hast not seen me dance among the nymphs
Nor sport with fauns at dusk. For in this world
I say there dwells a spirit and she lives
Hidden even from the gods, and of her face
Zeus has not dreamed. She is consuming, fierce,
Beautiful and withheld. She layeth waste
The gardens of men's flesh—and I am She.
I am the fearful Huntress. With my hounds
I all men must pursue until they seek
My silent altar in an ancient place
No man has thought on and no eye has seen.
I am the Runner. I am the goddess chaste.
If with thy fleshly eye thou shouldst perceive
Mine angry whiteness, swiftly would I slay.
For I am set apart and spiritual,
And me in spiritual ways thou must discern.
Oh, not with doves or bleeding snow-white hinds
Or incense burned or harvest of wild grapes
Shalt thou appease me. But thou shalt lay down
Upon my shrine the shadow and the sound,
The sheen and whisper of the tender earth,
All shapes and brightnesses and music sweet,
And soft mysterious touch, the breath, the look

The beauty changing ever. From thine eyes
All loveliness shall pale. Then not for thee
Shall Aphrodite from the golden wave
Blush rosily nor from the snow-white foam
Float like a star before thee. Not for thee
Shall the soft nymphs their shining dances weave
In places sweet with loveliness. But then,
Out of the hollow of thy hand shall fall
All lovely substance that has ever pleased
Thy finger tips with shapes, all curves that shed
Sweet music in the concave of thy palm
As in the sky the orbèd planets sing.
Thy sense shall be obscured. Thy austere touch
Deny the chilly sweetness of the dew
That cools the apple plucked at early dawn
Or whitens the blue grape. Never again
Shall thy smooth body plunging between waves
Divide the hard bright water nor thy brow
Flush in the noonday sun nor thy feet cling
To the bare rock when thou dost climb high hills.
Thou shall forego the tenderness of hands
Nor ever feel upon thy human cheek
The sweetness of a mortal breath. No kiss
Shall leave its softest shadow on thy lips,
But thou shalt find thyself in a still place
Where light nor shade nor forms of visible things
Nor sense of things perceived with hands shall wake
Thy heart in thee—not one least sound at all—
As when the shadow of a cloud shall drift
Dim music from a lonely lake. Not then
Shalt thou love voices, oh, Endymion!
Then not for thee strong laughter and the shouts
Of boys beside the sea cliffs dragging in
Their nets at yellow evening; not the cries
Of girls on the brown beaches; nor the speech
Of mortal love. I bid thee light for me
A blazing fire on my shrine—all flames
Of suns and moons and stars, such glories as burn
In sunset and the rose, all loveliest hues
That on this earth glow brightest. In their midst
Cast down the vision of thine eyes as one
Snares from the sky a bird whose radiant plumes
Burn amid sacrificial flames. Oh, Thou!
Give me the sound that in thine ears doth make
Earth good to thee. Relinquish from thy hands
All feelings of fair things, sweetly entwined
With votive wreaths of flowers. Yet not in death
Yield me thy body's sweetness, but alive,
Rapturous, alert, with thy desires swift,
Warm, breathing, upright, in thy bourgeoning youth,
With consecrated purpose and with will
Cast in my flames thy sense and make of it
A fragrance to the gods, and of thy flesh
A vapor of light smoke. For I am one
That once suspected shall not ever more
Let go of thee, but being invisible
Must needs disturb thee ever. Never again
Shall earth seem simple to thee, beautiful
With shapes familiar and with readable signs,
But thou shalt move a stranger in the land
And thine own threshold seem an alien thing
And thy hearth fearful. Earth shall complain to thee.
Then all things shall be haunted and the stones
Shall falter words obscure, like men in dreams,
Of things unguessed by thee. The dust shall utter
A bright foreboding. Sound shall prophesy,
The air grow thick with shapes unseen, thy hands
Lay hold on wonder and thy heart shall break
For mystery of this earth. But thou must be
Unto thy kindred as a man unknown,
Unheard of, in thy village, and thy words
Explain thee to them never. I shall lie
About thy spirit with my ancient mirth
And vex thy soul in secret, disturbing thee
With hurrying brightnesses that come and go
And are not unto others, but to thee
Obscure dull earth with beauty. Thou shalt suspect
A presence in the solitude, a light
Where no light is. This world shall be to thee
A voice that cries' Behold!' So all seen things
Shall drive thee to my bosom, mine—that men
Flee from in terror, hating me, the strong,
The ancient, the eternal, the wide spread,
The many-breasted mother, the Unseen!
Dreadful am I to them; yes, feared the most
Of all the gods—whom Zeus from the beginning
Made separate and supreme, relentless, fierce,
The great avenger, scourger of men's souls,
Flesh-eater! Aye! Me do they hate indeed.
And they would slay me in my secret lair
And smite me with sharp whips and bleed with swords
And drive me to the market branded `slave,'
Me, the fierce Woman, mistress of living men!
This would they do and nudge each other and cry
'Well done' to one another.
But I am set
Beyond the reach of hate. Not any sword,
No, not the sharpest, can search out my breast
Here in my silence where I sit and watch
With my eternal laughter and disdain
And scorn unspeakable. Justly they fear,
For I am goddess of the bow and strike
With my bright arrows all who know me not.
Yes, with my darts pursue them till they pluck
From out their breasts the bleeding barbs of sense
And cast them underneath their feet and fall
With faces in the dust crying,'Pity us,
Oh, Vanquisher of all things! Ease in us
Our sharp affliction, heal our wounds and take
Thine anguish from us.' Them do I heal indeed.
But those who see, yet heed not, being unwise,
How this earth trembles and brightness ails and time
Blows all things from us like a mist disturbed
By silent air; all those that having perceived
My dangerous presence have not sought with gifts
My altar, and from consecrated urns
Pour no libations of rich tears, I scourge
With my sharp rods and I unleash my hounds
And set them on them, dividing their frantic flesh,
And drive them into Hell. For I am queen
Of earth and of the shades, and of the gods
The dark mysterious mother, and the dead
Worship me in deep places. So I set
My anguish on them, until they fill the air
With lamentation and cast themselves abroad
Like men who burn. But thou, Endymion,
Hast sought me ever and art not afraid,
Feeling earth reel beneath thee, seeing the rocks
Soft as dissolving cloud and the strong hills
Not more substantial than vague dreams when I
Steal forth upon thee. Thou art not dismayed
At my strange brightness when I lay my hand
Upon the dust and turn to vanishings
All that has pleased thee. Thou hast not turned away,
Hiding thy face, for fear thou shouldst perceive
My shrine, built in the air, that once being found
Men worship me forever, and their flesh
Floats from them like pale smoke. But I have seen
How thou hast sought me, yearning unto me,
And all things grow distasteful and thine eyes
Weary of all things. I have watched thee all
Among thy kindred, seeing they have grown
Alien to thee, not friendly to thy tears,
Marvelling at thy laughter and at thy speech
Nudging each other; for thou seest cause
For solitary mirth when in their eyes
The tears are heaviest. Thou art cast down
When they are brave with gladness. Beauty strange
Comes on thee unaware and lures thee forth
Under their very eyes to a far land
That lies betwixt two breaths, and is as deep
With hidden beauty as Olympian vales.
Then seek me ever, where in a secret place
I have for centuries waited, aye, all time
Have waited for thee—virgin to the gods,
Untouched, unseen of any. Hunt me forth;
Yes, spy upon me in my hiding place
Behind the branchéd forests of the stars
In my deep lairs of silence. I would be found,
Yes, feel man's eyes upon me and a breath
Laid on my eternal sweetness, richly chaste.
Rend from me all the shadowy veils of sense
That men in the beginning wrought for me
In terror lest my loveliness, left bare,
Should strike them dead. For I am beautiful,
And to men's ways destruction, and to their flesh
A menace always. Wherefore do I wear
My robes of brightness, spun of gorgeous dyes,
Woven of waters and pale stars and hills
And lovely sky, and wrought with devious sound
And weavings of dim music. Strip from me
My mantle of the sun and moon and earth,
Seasons and earthquakes and fierce thunderbolts,
Heavy with deep mid ocean, soft with tears,
Sweet colored with rich buds and mellow fruit,
Aglow with mortal smiles and floating hair,
And flashing with innumerable eyes.
Rend it in twain. Lay hold on it, I say,
For what ye dream is solid and stout earth,
Is mine apparel, fluttering like smoke
About mine inner fire. Oh, be swift,
And watchful with thy spirit, for on hills
Invisible to man, in forests deep,
Unthought of by the gods, I hunt men's souls,
And rush upon them with sharp savage cries.
Reach forth thy mighty hands and rend from me
The mortal garment, hiding from thine eyes
My deep immortal beauty. Unswathe the light.
Then, then, Endymion, with what rich reward
Shall I delight thee? With what circumstance
Shall I uplift thee to the eyes of the world,
A flaming pillar set in a pillar of cloud?
This will I give to thee; thou shalt be struck
With blinding awfulness, and beauty fierce
Consume with splendor every mortal dream
From thy soul's tissue. Thou shalt sink unsaved
From anguish into anguish. Yes, shall drift
Like spiritual ashes in a wind of flame.
But when I see thee cleansed with beauty, fresh
As tenderest mist of morning, mild as dew,
With wisdom infantile, helpless as cloud,
Lovely as starry water, beneath mine eyes
A placid well that knows not anything
Save to be bright; then will I shine on thee.
Thou shalt receive my beauty in thy soul
As the clear lake accepts the radiant moon;
And I will lead thee to a pleasant land
Whose greener vales no eye has ever seen."
But now Endymion stretched his mighty arms
Up to the starry heavens and the hills
And to the whirling clouds and cried aloud:
"How shall I rend this earth in twain or snatch
From thy pure being the sky with all its suns,
And its strong meteors? How shall I strip from thee
The mountains and the violence of wars,
And human breath and mortal loveliness,
Woven with spells! Magical! Beautiful!
How shall I rid thee of it? Should I slay
Thousands of doves, nature would have a mind
To breed again innumerable wings.
Shall I stab water at its source? Unweave
The solid earth beneath me? With what sword
Shall I divide the sky and with what chains
Bind into slavery the snow-white cloud?
Oh, what is man that he should rend the earth
And tear its webs of splendor? Yet on me
Has this desire fallen! I must turn
To ways unheard of and with spiritual hands
Unswathe the veils that hide thee, goddess strange,
Loved always, terrible. Wherefore I say,
Ye sights and sounds of earth, I will deny
Your presence to my spirit. I will forbid
Touch to my hands and vision to mine eyes.
Yes, I will lift my radiant senses up,

Burning with sweetest odors at thy shrine,
Like golden vials, to be filled by thee.
Thee will I worship only. Never more
Shall my thought covet earthly loveliness
That is thy vesture, but my will shall turn
My spirit to things spiritual. I will rend
Thy moral garment, hiding from mine eyes
Thy deep immortal beauty. Lift the veil
And from thy secret brightness, unswathe the light.
Then lead me forth into a pleasant land
Whose greener vales no man has ever seen."
But ere his words were done, upon his eyes
A flaming spirit rushed, wearing a shape
Of virgin nothingness, whose whiteness shone
Like frost on fire. She was beautiful
Beyond men's prayers for beauty, and she drew
Her silvery flesh out of the starlit air
And her cold sweetness from the midnight dew.
Virginal was she, loveliest, austere
With visible purity. A godlike love
Swathed her soft shape in plumes of snow-white flame,
And unto him she cried "Endymion,
What hast thou sworn? Behold how in a shape
I come to thee and out of substance weave
A visible semblance for thee of my soul.
My flesh is breathed out of the glittering air
And fragrance of the night. I come to thee
With beauty terrible—to the gods austere—
But unto thee on fire with love. Lo now,
Shall I not tempt thee from my own soul's plea,
I—that am in her image, beautiful?
Wilt thou refuse me? Shall my splendor all
Before thee and my loveliness blow out
Before thy blindness like a midnight gale?
Lo now—I am embodied, lord, for thee,
Of sight and sound and sweetest, shyest earth.
Wilt thou forswear my visible loveliness
For my far spirit, consuming and unseen?
Me thou canst master! Me thou needst not fear
For all my fearful shining! Me thou canst drive
Before thee like a slave, humbled and bright,
Meek with afflicted beauty. Thou canst scourge
My magic powers to do thy will and I
Shall have no word before thee but to cry
`Master' beneath thy hand.
But She, my bright
And Heavenly Spirit, thou canst not subdue,
But she will rule thee always, and thou shalt be
Helpless before her. While the moment waits,
Wilt thou deny me, whom the gods in vain
Have wooed on high Olympus? Chase me, I say—
Hunt me, as she has hunted thee, with hounds.
Heed not my godlike screams when in the vales
I run from thee in terror lest thy breath
Shall burn my hurrying whiteness as it flees.
Rush on me, seize me, rend me with thy hands—
Streak me with blood and cast me on the ground
Throbbing beneath thine eyes like a white hind
Slain by the hunter. Then thou shall comfort me—
And lift me to thy bosom, of fleetness shorn,
As a wild bird of wings, and pitying
My godlike terror, with thy mighty arms
Bind my deep pantings back into my breast."
But when Endymion saw how beautiful
She paled before him, poisèd in the air
Like music amid silvery strings, he cried,'
"Oh Divine Ghost, that from an invisible shrine
Communed with me in secret, save me! Save
My helpless spirit from thy beauty seen.
Oh not with wrath avenge thy semblance cast
Forth from thy vision, if I shake thy dews
Of mortal sweetness, hissing among flames
Of sacrificial fire! Oh sight! Oh sound!
Oh Beauty seen, begone! For I am sworn
To one invisible!"…
Then from the savage precincts of mid-air
Rose laughter of disdain and ghost-like tones
That uttered things unspeakable and strange.
And the Shape wavered like a snow-white cloud
Dispersed at morning. Fearfully she shone,
Out of a brightly changing vapor. Then
Her starry presence melted on the gale
And her pale substance mingled with the stream.
But at Endymion's feet in ruin lay
All of earth's beauty, and the watchful nymphs
Wept in their fastness. Brightness had withered. Shape
Was crumbled into dust. From leaf and bough
And star and hill and sky, the glory waned.
All of earth's splendor, beating round about,
Fell back before his sightless eyes as foam,
Dashed from the sharp rocks, sinks into the sea.
All things whereon his eyes that night had gazed
With mortal longing, lay about his feet
Like planets dead, while he, obscured with dream,
Seemed gazing on some inner thing. The earth
Smoked palely forth in curling wreaths. The rocks
Swam dizzily. The solid mountains gleamed
Like the unsteady sea. Upon the air
Melodious ashes blew of music burned.
Then did he stand like a god blackened and charred
Amid the ruins of the world, transfixed
By things invisible but unto him
Visible now forever. Only once
He seemed like one in traps of anguish snared.
His introspective eyes, in a far place,
Fought battles with fierce visions and laid hold
Of spiritual horror, nameless and unknown
To any man on earth. His body wept
Great drops of living tears and his pale flesh
Quivered, as if upon an altar lone,
They had stretched him bare amid a fire to burn.
Once, in the silence, great Endymion groaned.
Then did the nymphs with their pure eyes discern
Another world grow visible. It gleamed
Upon the circling vapors of stout earth
With sudden brightnesses of tower and dome.
Great blazing cities changed upon the gale.
Fair courts and blossoming gardens, lovelier groves
Than had by mortal eyes been seen. The night
Was full of rushing gods, whose large white feet
Sloped up the midnight gale. Bright swarms of eyes
Flashed in the air like multitudinous stars.
Prophetic voices screamed upon the wind.
Then from a place, beyond all countries far,
Beyond all beauty, beautiful—a land
Of pleasantness divine, a land unseen—
There came a godlike and exalted cry
And a great voice proclaimed "Endymion!"
But on the bank beside the glittering lake
Sank great Endymion, his limbs, moon-charmed,
Stretched in the moss. And the moon sunk and day
Reddened—and lo—out of the glen stole forth
Full many a silent-looted wondering nymph
To watch his dreaming loveliness. For now
His blossoming splendor breathed such fragrance sweet
As divine roses yield. His body seemed
Like garlands of cool flowers lightly twined
About a heavenly fountain of clear flame.
His chastèd substance shaped of burning snow
Shone rose and silver. For a godlike change
Had come on him in slumber and he lay
In youth eternal, exquisite with dream.
Now from his spirit ever and anon
A ghostly beauty floated into sight
And like a lily in a lake moon-pale
Swam in the placid silence of his smile.
Then did the nymph who hovered near his sleep
Cry to the dryads, "'T is Selene's kiss."
Now from his shape divinest odors rose
As if a golden casket set in flames
Breathed out sweet vapors on a shrine. Warm shades
Hovered about him, tender hues obscure
And mothlike splendors of invisible wings
Whereby men's eyes had never yet been pleased.
Now from the lyre of his exalted flesh
Music exhaled, unutterably strange.
Now from his secret fountains of delight
The radiant smiles up welled and then the nymph
Feared not to lean her cold and virgin mouth
And sip the scarlet bubble from his lips.
All nature fed on him. She cried, "Behold—
Thou fount of golden loveliness! thou spring
Of silvery sweetness flowing! thou basin bright
Wherein life pours with solemn melodies
The music of her waters! let me drink
Of thy immortal presence and not die."
But when a goat-herd, wondering that his flocks
Were prospered and that they each night returned,
Their udders plenteous with fragrant milk
And with such odors clinging to their flanks
It seemed the nymphs had dressed them with sweet wreaths,
Sought out the pastures, wandering at dusk,
And in the moonlight stole upon the glen
And saw Endymion lying and beheld
Him beautiful with slumber and alone,
Solemn as alabaster, as austere,
Effigied on the silent tomb of night;
Carved in the magic marble of pale sleep;
And saw the unearthly splendor of the grove,

How dark and deep and radiant its trees
Swathed in the mystic terror of the night;
How shadowed with black grapes or glowing pale
With amber-colored grapes; and saw strange fruits
Strewn on the ground as if invisible boughs
Had shed their glories at his feet and saw
How from the bee-loved crevices of rock
Streamed the warm honey; and beheld his herd
Crop the deep grass whereon Endymion
Had shed the fertile shadow of his sleep;
He was affrighted, and stealing silently
Out of that grove, god-haunted, he went his way
Back to the village and there he told strange things,
So that thereafter if a herd grew fat
They said, "It is Endymion's."And that land
Was prospered like the secret vales that lie
In the footholds of Olympus, and they knew
The river of Endymion's sacred sleep
Had overflowed the valley and blessed its fruits
And made its harvests bountiful.
But when,
Once and again, some vision-haunted youth
Would seek the glens and forests and alone
Commune with the high gods, they warned him, saying,
"Be thou content with thine own kind. At home,
Love thine own thatch and at a quiet hearth
Grow old like us, in peace, knowing not much,
But living as men live, and at the last
Dying as men die, underneath a roof.
Commune not with the gods. They give to thee
Strange gifts and alien and on thee will bring
A doom unhuman."
Thus spake they, of their kind,
In the small village, fearing the unseen.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

Dream

mrbot — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 21:10:03 +0000

But now the Dream has come again, the world is as of old.
Once more I feel about my breast the heartening splendors fold.
Now I am back in that good place from which my footsteps came,
And I am hushed of any grief and have laid by my shame.

I know not by what road I came—oh wonderful and fair.
Only I know I ailed for thee and that thou wert not there.
Then suddenly Time's stalwart wall before thee did divide,
Its solid bastions dreamed and swayed and there was I inside.

It is thy nearness makes thee seem so wonderful far.
In that deep sky thou art obscured as in the noon, a star.

But when the darkness of my grief swings up the mid-day sky
My need begets a shining world. Lo, in thy light am I.

All that I used to be is there and all I yet shall be.
My laughter deepens in the air, my quiet in the tree.
My utter tremblings of delight are manna from the sky,
And shining flower-like in the grass my innocencies lie.

And here I run and sleep and laugh and have no name at all.
Only if God should speak to me then I would heed the call.
And I forget the curious ways, the alien looks of men,
For even as it was of old, so is it now again.

Still every angel looks the same and all the folks are there
That are so bounteous and mild and have not any care.
But kindest to me is the one I would most choose to be.
She is so beautiful and sheds such loving looks on me,

She is so beautiful—and lays her cheek against my own.
Back—in the world—they all will say, "How happy you have grown."
Her breath is sweet about my eyes and she has healed me now,
Though I be scarred with grief, I keep her kiss upon my brow.

All day, sweet land, I fight for thee outside the goodly wall,
And 'twixt my breathless wounds I have no sight of thee at all!
And sometimes I forget thy looks and what thy ways may be!
I have denied thou wert at all—yet still I fight for thee.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

Ere the Golden Bowl is Broken

mrbot — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 21:10:09 +0000

He gathered for His own delight
The sparkling waters of my soul.
A thousand creatures, bubbling bright—
He set me in a golden bowl.

From the deep cisterns of the earth
He bade me up—the shining daughter—
And I am exquisite with mirth,
A brightening and a sunlit water.

The wild, the free, the radiant one,
A happy bubble I did glide.
I poised my sweetness to the sun
And there I sleeked my silver side.

Sometimes I lifted up my head
And globed the moonlight with my hands,
Or thin as flying wings I spread
Angelic wildness through the sands.

Then, woven into webs of light,
I breathed, I sighed, I laughed aloud,
And lifting up my pinions bright
I shone in Heaven, a bird-white cloud.

Then did I dance above the mead,
And through the crystal fields would run,
And from my scarlet splendors breed
The golden thunders of the sun.

Beneath the whitening stars I flew
And floated moon-like on the breeze,
Or my frail heart was piercéd through
With sharp sweet flowers of the trees.

Of giant crags I bear the scars,
And I have swept along the gale,
Such multitudes as are the stars,
My myriad faces rapt and pale.

As savage creatures strong and free
Make wild the jungle of the wood,
The starry powers that sport in me
Habit my silver solitude.

From out my smallness, soft as dew,
That utter fastness, stern and deep,
Terrible meanings look at you
Like visions from the eyes of sleep.

I cannot leap—I cannot run—
I only glimmer, soft and mild,
A limpid water in the sun,
A sparkling and a sunlit child.
What stranger ways shall yet be mine
When I am spilled, you cannot see.
But now you laugh to watch me shine,
And smooth the hidden stars in me.

Lightly you stroke my silver wing—
The folded carrier of my soul.
A soft, a shy, a silent thing,
A water in a golden bowl!

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

The Monk in the Kitchen

mrbot — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 21:10:09 +0000

Order is a lovely thing;
On disarray it lays its wing,
Teaching simplicity to sing.
It has a meek and lowly grace,
Quiet as a nun's face.
Lo—I will have thee in this place!
Tranquil well of deep delight,
Transparent as the water, bright—
All things that shine through thee appear
As stones through water, sweetly clear.
Thou clarity,
That with angelic charity
Revealest beauty where thou art,
Spread thyself like a clean pool.
Then all the things that in thee are
Shall seem more spiritual and fair,
Reflections from serener air—
Sunken shapes of many a star
In the high heavens set afar.

Ye stolid, homely, visible things,
Above you all brood glorious wings
Of your deep entities, set high,
Like slow moons in a hidden sky.
But you, their likenesses, are spent
Upon another element.
Truly ye are but seemings—
The shadowy cast-off gleamings
Of bright solidities. Ye seem
Soft as water, vague as dream;
Image, cast in a shifting stream.

III

What are ye?
I know not.
Brazen pan and iron pot,
Yellow brick and gray flag-stone
That my feet have trod upon—
Ye seem to me
Vessels of bright mystery.
For ye do bear a shape, and so
Though ye were made by man, I know
An inner Spirit also made
And ye his breathings have obeyed.

Shape, the strong and awful Spirit,
Laid his ancient hand on you.
He waste chaos doth inherit;
He can alter and subdue.
Verily, he doth lift up
Matter, like a sacred cup.
Into deep substance he reached, and lo
Where ye were not, ye were; and so
Out of useless nothing, ye
Groaned and laughed and came to be.
And I use you, as I can,
Wonderful uses, made for man,
Iron pot and brazen pan.

What are ye?
I know not;
Nor what I really do
When I move and govern you.
There is no small work unto God.
He requires of us greatness;
Of his least creature
A high angelic nature,
Stature superb and bright completeness.
He sets to us no humble duty.
Each act that he would have us do
Is haloed round with strangest beauty.
Terrific deeds and cosmic tasks
Of his plainest child he asks.
When I polish the brazen pan
I hear a creature laugh afar
In the gardens of a star,
And from his burning presence run
Flaming wheels of many a sun.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,
He is an angel of all light.
When I cleanse this earthen floor
My spirit leaps to see
Bright garments trailing over it.
Wonderful lustres cover it,
A cleanness made by me.
Purger of all men's thoughts and ways,
With labor do I sound Thy praise,
My work is done for Thee.
Whoever makes a thing more bright,
He is an angel of all light.
Therefore let me spread abroad
The beautiful cleanness of my God.

One time in the cool of dawn
Angels came and worked with me.
The air was soft with many a wing.
They laughed amid my solitude
And cast bright looks on everything.
Sweetly of me did they ask
That they might do my common task.
And all were beautiful—but one
With garments whiter than the sun
Had such a face
Of deep, remembered grace,
That when I saw I cried—"Thou art
The great Blood-Brother of my heart.
Where have I seen thee?"—And he said,
"When we are dancing `round God's throne,
How often thou art there.
Beauties from thy hands have flown
Like white doves wheeling in mid air.
Nay—thy soul remembers not?
Work on, and cleanse thy iron pot."

VII

What are we? I know not.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

Connecticut Road Song

mrbot — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 21:10:02 +0000

In the wide and rocky pasture where the cedar trees are gray,
The briar rose was growing with the blueberry and bay.
The girls went forth to pick them and the lads went out to play,
But I had to get to Stonington before the break of day.

And when I came to Stonington, she was a town of pride.
"Come in," they said, "and labor, and be at home and bide.
For gold shall be thy wage," but 't was past the hour of morn—
And I had to get to Jordan while the dew was on the thorn.

There is a girl at Jordan, she sweetly smiled at me,
As pale as are the berries on the gray cedar tree.
And "Oh," she cried, "thou traveler, come bide awhile with me,"
But I had to get to Lebanon while light was in the tree.

The pale church spires of Lebanon shone sweet upon the sky.
The Sabbath bells were ringing, the parson passed me by.
"Oh wait, traveler, wait, for you've need to say a prayer,"
But I had to be in Wallingford while noon was in the air.

The road that leads to Wallingford, it runs through mire and stone.
I was parched with the dust, I was bleeding and alone.
"My lad, you will die, if you do not tarry here."
But I had to get to Killingworth while day was on the mere.

And when I got to Killingworth I heard the people say
"He has come to bring the news from a hundred miles away."
But I had not any news and not any time to stay,
For I had to be at Jericho before the end of day.

And when I came to Jericho I heard the people call,
"Do you run to save a city that you will not wait at all?"
"I run to save no city, yet must I leave you soon,
For I have to be in Windsor with the rising of the moon."

And when I got to Windsor, then was I spent for bread.
"Come in," they cried, "poor traveler! and be thou comforted.
What strange great need is on thee that makes thee journey so?"
But I had to be in Coventry ere yet the moon was low.

For a strange great need was on me that I should hunt the rain,
And take into my body a breakage and a pain;
That I should tame the sunset and goad the hurry-ing plain,
And that the leagues behind me should lie a thousand slain.

Wherefore, ye men of Coventry, if ye desire to stay,
Lay not your curb upon me, that love the open way.
For I want to smell the dew, the blueberry and the bay,
And I have to get to Colchester before the break of day.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

The Wedding Feast

mrbot — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 21:10:09 +0000

Part I

Oh who art thou—thou fearful guest—
Too burning bright, too strangely fair?
"I am the dæmon of unrest,
From the kingdom of the air."

Brightness, I bid thee from my door.
Off! off! I say, with spur and goad!
"I have come,"he cried, "to drive the bride
Over a lonely road."

But where? But where? In earth or air
Where would ye hurry me?
"To a bright place we must repair
Where She would have us be.

"Her power this night is on us both,
And I am sent by Her.
Pale wandering shape, thou shalt obey
Her flaming messenger."

Oh let me be for a single night.
For a single night, lord, let me be.
The torch is lit, the feast is bright,
My love has come to marry me!

"I cannot wait for a single night!
Her voice calls. We must be gone!
Her feast is set with lovelier light
And She is whiter than the sun."

Oh let me be for a mortal hour,
For a mortal hour, lord, let me be,
That I may bring my lover the wine
And that he may break the bread with me.

"I cannot wait for a mortal hour.
Her splendor calls us from afar.
She fain would sup from a living cup
Her radiant hands have lifted up
Like the brightness of a star."

Oh let me be for a breath of time,
For a breath of time, lord, let me be.
I shall run more warm through cold and storm
If my love has given a kiss to me.

"I cannot wait for a breath of time.
There's many a league for us to run,
Through brakes through mire,
Through frost, through fire,
To Her palace of the sun."

What shall I do in her palace bright?
Why should she bid me there?
"Love waits outside Her door to-night
In Her citadel of air.

"Unto Her breast He fain would come,
But Him She will not see,
Unless the bread She sets for Him
Shall of thy body be."

She is a witch, bright as the devil.
She shall not lay her spells on me.
She is a bubble, blown of evil,
Pale foam of an unholy sea.

"She lifts a goblet from her breast.
Like a star She holds it up.
She will not bid Him in to feast
Unless thy soul is in the cup."

Witches' feet shall never tread
From my soul its precious wine.
Her Love shall not go comforted
With holy blood of mine!

"Her lips shall never be the throne
Whereon shall rule Her great Love's kiss
Unless I snatch thee from thine own
And whirl thee through the dark abyss.

"If She lose what She desires
Her sufferings will be more than human.
She is wrought of Heavenly fires,
Greater than any mortal woman.

"She would ravage wide and high,
Dashed from Her orbit out of space.
Meteors should not burn the sky
More than the stars Her face."

Then let her lose and let her bear
Alone her strange and mighty grief.
I will not shed a single tear
To bring her soul relief.

"Thou wilt not? Nay—beneath Her eyes
Thou art a helpless creature.
She is the music of the skies
And thou art wanton nature."

Is she of the land of faery,
That she should be so brightly cruel,
In a ghostlike palace airy,
Cloud built, set with many a jewel?
Is she charmed and is she spelled?
Is she of magic softly woven?
I will pray to my Lord God.
He shall rule her with his rod,
The way betwixt us twain be cloven.

"She is charmed and She is spelled.
She is not of the land of faery.
Yes—She is brightly cruel—
Ghostlike, in a palace airy,
Set with stars like many a jewel.
Pray to thy Lord God.
She is of such wild magic woven
He will not rule Her with His rod
Nor shall the road to Her be cloven."

Oh goblin bright, thou fierce-eyed sprite,
I fear thee with thy spur and goad!
"I am Her Will that drives thy flight
On Her appointed road."

But who is she whose magic will
Seems such a fearful thing?
Tell her I rule my kingdom still,
The daughter of a king.

"Thy kingdom is of sea and land,
Unstable as the glittering wind.
She rules thy nature with Her hand
In the kingdom of the mind."

Who is she and what is she,
That I should follow as night the noon?
"She is deeper than the sky
And taller than the fire-white moon.

"The sunsets of the eternal years
Yield unto Her their mellow wines.
The sunrise of all living spheres
Her breast incarnadines."

I hate her that she shines so bright.
I hate her for her elfin dower.
I hate her that she rules this night
With an unearthly power.

Who is she and what is she,
Thou blazing, bright, mysterious elf?
"She is the empress over thee
Thy deep, eternal Self.

"As time from out the skies shall thresh
The stars with all their ancient fires,
She bids me scourge from out thy flesh
The throbbing of its deep desires.

"'Wherefore beware! Wherefore beware!
Her will upon this night be done.
I'll drive thee forth into the air
And we will dart into the sun."

Part II

With fires bedight that magic sprite
Leaped upon my back to ride.
He was a creature fierce and bright.
He struck his spurs into my side.

"Oh leave me to my mortal mirth!
I am afraid of that bright spirit.
I am too young to quit this earth.
Nay, let me this sweet earth inherit.

"If I should gaze upon her face
A fearful change on me would come.
Then I should be estranged with grace,
An alien in my home.

"When at the hearth I drive my loom
And my love gazes in my eyes,

He will see powers and thrones and doom
And suns and stars and ancient skies.

"Then, when he reaches for my hands,
No smallness will he comfort there,
But he will touch the seas, the lands,
The seasons and the throbbing air.

"When from her splendor I return
And in the flesh dwell once again,
Too mystic warm my heart shall burn
To please the hearts of men.

"Unearthly bright my brow would gleam
To them that hate all brightness still.
My laughing calm to them would seem
Like snow upon a hill.

"They would resent my high emprise,
My haunted speech, my echoing mien.
I could not shake from out mine eyes
The visions they had seen.

"I should be charged with errands high,
Strange roads should bind my speeding feet.
Then I should be a voice, a cry,
A portent in the street.

"I fear her call. I fear her face.
I fear the silent, shining change.
They will stone me in the market place
For uttering lovely things and strange!

"But oh, not they, with living whips,
Shall scourge from me my folded wings,
Nor burn with flames from off my lips
Murmurs of dread ecstatic things.

"But yet, abhorring when I go
With gracious gifts, sweet as the sky,
They in the dust will lay me low,
And at the last will crucify.

"Lord, let me keep these eyes that weep,
This heart that breaks, these wounds to bind,
These limbs that leap, that dance, that sleep,
And nearness to my kind!"

He laughed aloud, as in a cloud
A meteor beats and clings.
So in my thought his voice was wrought.
He flashed his bright, melodious wings.

"Too late! Too late! Thou canst not choose.
She calls thee from Her radiant spheres.

What thou dost now with tears refuse
To-night thou shalt beseech with tears.

"For thou must come to Her with blood,
Purged brightly clean with mightiest grief,
With chastened longing and a mood
Humble beyond belief.

"I'll show thee many an empty sight.
Through many a void shalt thou run,
Until thou wailest for the light
In the city of the sun.

"Until, deep panting for the light,
Thou layest down thy mortal nature.
Then shalt thou be transformed and bright,
Eternal and angelic creature."

Part III

That god rode forth upon my mind.
He perched upon my affrighted wit,
As meteors bristling in the wind
Amid their shining plumage sit.

I felt his glance around me stream.
His flaming hair flew over me.
His eyes laid hold upon my dream
And made me see as he did see.

When like great steeds appalled at night
My astonished eyes would rear and run,
He set his bit upon my sight
And made it drive into the sun.

He scourged it down into the dust.
He drove it down into the stone.
It ran as ridden creatures must
On magic journeys bound alone.

With blood and sweat my wits were wet.
He raced them through a solid wall.
It was a dream I might forget,
A dimness that was not at all

A soft, a pale, a silent thing,
My face did cleave and set it by,
And underneath its cloudy wing
I heard its separate atoms sing
Like the great stars in the sky.
For what is large and what is small
To spiritual eyes?
The great Lord careth not at all
For the dream that men call size.

But what thou dost, that art thou. Lo,
The atoms that rehearse
Their orbits in the stone are vast
As an æoned universe.

The pebble has a curious will
That in my hand doth lie.
It seems as motionless and still
As the zenith in the sky.

It seems to make not any sound.
It does not hum nor sing.
It keeps a helpless simple round
Yet is a fearful thing.

Its molecules weave in and out,
They leap, they plunge, they dive.
Up from dark gulfs they whirl about
As if they were alive.

They live, they dance, they burn, they die,
Their Judgment Days draw on apace!
Between their smallest atoms lie
Oceans of darkest space.

Those atoms ache, they groan, they quake,
They hiss, they plunge, they roar!
And I that hold a silent stone
Lift up a living war.

It does not burst, it does not shake,
Nor fly dispersed in grains of sand.
Its shape is folded over it,
Like a divine great hand.

It is the hand that lies so still!
It never sets them by.
A shape serene, but under it
Those whirling atoms dance and flit
Like the quick stars in the sky!

This earth, it is not as it seems.
It is the strangest place!
Once did I run on solid stones,
But now I trod on space.

On empty gulfs of space trod I!
Worlds were beneath my feet,
And many a brightly speeding sky
And heaven spreaded sweet.

"Thou magic sprite, fearfully bright,
Now have I wandered far.
What are these gulfs of roaring night
Wherein whirls many a flaming star?"
"Substance, before thy mortal sight,
Shows all things as they are."

"What is this world so green, so fair,
That hovers brightly over me?"
"It is the atom in the air
Too small for human eyes to see.

"Behold, its forests and its lakes,
Its mountains and its rugged scars,
And like a bristling mane it shakes
Lights of innumerable stars.

"It has its sunrise beautiful
On shining mountains morning pale.
And many a praying temple stands
In many a quiet vale.

"Its magic towns are brightly set
Amid the spacious air.
Your heavy earth is the varying breeze
That sweetly hovers there,
Your mountains and your solid seas
To them are purest air."

Their casements open on the gale
But none of them are seen.
Another earth, another sky,
Strange gardens sweetly green!

"No siege to them was ever laid.
Unseen their bulwarks are.
With gulfs of nearness are they stayed
As distance stays the star."

"You cannot see their flashing eyes.
Their songs and prayers you cannot hear.
Oh they seem further than the skies
Because they are so near.

"A world within your world doth lie,
Hidden from mortal men.
Another world in that is furled
And a thousand worlds again."

The solid air around me there
Heaved like a roaring ocean.
And far and wide on every side
I saw the smoking planets ride
In waves of angry motion.

All faces of all living men
Among those waves did glide,
A moment palely floated, then
Were gulfed amid the tide.

Amid the gleaming, swimming sea
I saw my love drift dimly by.
"Oh lure him up, bright sprite, to me,
Or I of grief shall die.

"Out of this fluid flashing earth
Let one thing solid be.
His beauteous body that God made,
Lord, let it comfort me.

"I reach to thee with my hands, my love.
On lightnings I lay hold;
On clouds and citadels and domes
And kingdoms dark and old.

"Through unseen flesh of secret tribes
That no man's eyes may see,
Through wrath and hate and love and death
I lay my hands on thee."

I touched his garment and it seemed
A mantle wrought of cosmic pain!
Of sighing worlds and dying moons
And many a stellar hurricane.

For he was clothed in day and night,
And aching chills and chaos cold,
And groaning worlds and mortal blight
And all things terrible and old.
Then was I far that would be near,
And substance was a fearful thing.
I was appalled and full of fear,
That was the daughter of a king.

I plunged to him through whirling night.
The stars, the times, I swept aside.
Once more, upon his bosom bright,
I lay, his own anointed bride.

"Oh, let me kiss his lips once more,
His sweet lips, or I die.
So near they are no gulf, no star
Betwixt our breaths shall lie."

"Nearness, thou art a fearful thing,
And no man sails thy ghostly tide,
But angels with a flaming wing
On thy strange gulfs can glide.
Spirits, that walk on shining feet,
Can reach the other side.
Across the ocean will we float.
Thy kiss shall be a living boat!"
My radiant dæmon cried.
"My eyes shall leave a fiery trail,
My spread wings be thy bellying sail,
I will be thy guide."

His face gleamed palely at my prow,
His spread wings were my sails.
His screaming voice bestrid the air
As a meteor rides the gales.
His glances streamed about my sides,
With light they burnished me,
Among the sails and in and out
His hovering vision flew about
As bright as it could be.

"What is this ocean, goblin bright,
This silent, smooth and crimson sea?
I have sailed all day and sailed all night.
Is there no port to left or right
Where I might harbored be?"

Above the prow, with happy brow,
I saw that radiant dæmon shine:
"This is that nearness that divides
Thy true love's lips from thine.

"What is great and what is small?
What is near and what is far?
Unto the Lord that made us all
The mote is equal to the star."

"What is this shore to which I come,
Where sunrise reddens into day?
It seems a sweet and pleasant home
Where a wanderer might stay.

"Laughing folks move to and fro,
A gentle tribe are they.
The flutes they sing, the pipes they blow,
The harps they sweetly play!

"Upon my prow they lay their hands,
They draw me swiftly to the shore.
What are these heavenly happy lands
Where no man ever was before?

"They twine their garlands on my prow.
They clothe me in a garment fair.
With laughing flowers they crown my brow,
Then into happy vales repair."

The goblin spoke—that fierce-eyed sprite—
He swayed me with his spell:
"These are thy gardens of delight
That in his lips do dwell.
Through many a Heaven shalt thou rove
In the mystic flesh of him you love,
And many a fearful Hell.

"His mortal flesh, it is a mesh
Of worlds and space and time.
A universe, it doth rehearse
Old chronicles sublime.

"Made in the image of the Lord,
Of moons and stars and suns,
And round about and in and out
His Heavenly nature runs.

"And thou art lit into a star
That on his lip doth flame.
But yet thou art so far—more far
Than the world from which you came."

Amazed, I gazed upon the ground.
I looked upon the air.
White clouds were floating in the sky
And the wind was everywhere.

"Why did they greet me when I came
And garland me their queen?"
"His substance is thy living land,
Thy sacred own demesne."

"Thou magic sprite, thou goblin bright,
These sweet vales blossom so,
And forth to gather garlands green
The men and maidens go.
The flutes they sing, the harps they play,
The pipes they sweetly blow!

"It is the joy of his heart,
That keeps perpetual Spring.
In him lies furled full many a world,
And all rise up to sing.
They all rise up to sing—to sing—
Meadow and hill and lea!
His body glows like a sweet new rose
Because he dreams of thee."

"Thou fierce-eyed sprite, dæmonic, bright,
The singing season goes.
A barren waste, a faded tree,
And withering of the rose!

"The maidens with their flowering wreaths
Are shedding bitter tears.
Their eyes that laughed, their mouths that sang,
Are nebulous with years."

"It is the passion that devours
That eats his flesh away.
His youthful gardens glowing green
Are blasted with decay.
Where once they kept their festival,
Lo now, the bloodhounds bay,
And in his sweetest pastures rove
The wild-eyed beasts of prey.
This hast thou done that lured too far
The urgence of the clay."

"The earth is cracked, the sea runs dry,
The mountains sink into the ground!"
"It is the wreckage of his flesh
From his spirit's grievous wound."

"Whence came these priests with eyes austere?
They lay on me their hands.
See—I am bled with cruel gyves
And bound with sullen bands."

"Their ancient god in angry mood
Looks down on thee with wrathful eyes,
Until on altars red with blood
Thou art the sacrifice."

"Who is that ancient god?"…
"His Soul,
The great, the high, the superhuman!
He is beautiful and far.
He is throned upon a star,
Waiting for a mystic Woman."

"Master of light, thou dæmon bright,
Now dawns the Judgment Day!
The earth that once did shine so bright
Is withered all away.
The earth and air and all the skies
Are folded up like scrolls,
And from the pit in which they cry
Comes the wailing of lost souls."

"It is the wrath his Spirit feels
For what His flesh has done.
He turns to a diviner feast
In the city of the sun.
In lovelier lands thou canst not see
He seeks a cosmic bride.
Beneath Her face He gathers grace,
He casts His flesh aside.

"For thou art Eve and thou dost tempt
And lead astray since time began.
But She is Mary and brings forth
The perfect Man."

"But who is she and what is she,
Thou blazing, bright, mysterious elf?"
"She is the empress over thee,
Thy deep eternal Self.

"Throughout thy flesh He seeks Her face.
Her lips He fain would kiss.
Wherefore He runs through roaring suns
And many a dark abyss."

"Thou magic sprite, dæmonic, bright,
Lay then on me thy goad!
For if he seeks her face to-night
I will pursue the self-same road.

Through moon and sun I'll run. I'll rove
Through solid earth and flumes of fire!
But I will be his only love,
My breast, the end of his desire."

Then shalt thou search through thine own flesh
Thou shalt not find Him there.t
For lo,'t is an enchanted mesh
Woven of unearthly air."

That goblin bright, that fierce-eyed sprite,
Loud and long laughed he.
He laid his bit upon my sight
And made me see as he did see.

The atoms of my body stirred,
Chanting cosmic tunes.
Through gulfs of time they wheeled and veered
Or through deep spaces dipped and steered,
Like great white separate moons.

In the caverns of my brain
I saw fierce planets whirl and dip,
Burn in the hollow of my hand
Or slide along my finger tip.

Where once my flesh was wont to be,
Great comets swept their fearful wars.
My bone, it shone with fires and seas,
My body shook with stars.

Sunsets with gold and scarlet crest
Through my flesh did gleam, did glide;
Through flashing hair and swimming breast,
Melting forehead and trembling side.

"Brightness, I see a shape that runs.
I see it sink! I see it rise!
Sometimes it clings to gorgeous suns
And now it drowns in dizzy skies."

"Thee He searches through and through,
Every world that in thee lies,
Seeking for a Heavenly Woman
In an ancient Paradise."

"But who is she whose spirit face
Appears to him so fair, so high?
Is she clothed in deeper grace?
Is she more beautiful than I?"

"She is enthroned on high—afar.
Moons are wreathed about Her brow.
She shines brightlier than a star,
She is more beautiful than thou."

Who is she and what is she,
In her citadel of air?
Where can her secret bosom be,
That I may stab her, heavenly fair?"

She is hid in a palace of light,
Deeper than the midmost sky.
If thou shouldst wound Her breast to-night,
Swiftly, swiftly, wouldst thou die."

"Who is she?… What is she?
Thou blazing, bright, mysterious elf!"
"She is the empress over thee,
Thy deep eternal self."

"He follows Her through cloud and star,
He follows Her through death and dream,
Into a land lovely and far!
Her kingdom holy
Is lit with a spiritual gleam.

"With blessed food They shall be fed,
In Her citadel divine.
Thy flesh shall be the immortal bread,
Thy soul—the everlasting wine."

"' Let me gaze upon her face
That is so beautiful, so far.
Let me behold her blinding grace
Throned upon her midmost star.

"I will rend her with my hands—
Hostile, bright, fearfully high.
I will wound her where she stands.
Then swiftly, swiftly, let me die."

Beware! Beware! I say beware!
Her eyes shall burn thee like the sun.
She is fierce and She is fair,
Her will upon this night be done."

Part IV

What strange pavilions builded bright
Shine in the upper air!
Scourged with sharp rods of living light,
How swiftly was I there!

She was more radiant than the noon,
More innocent than the gentlest sky,
Taller than the fire-white moon!
She was more beautiful than I.

Her garments, blown about my breast,
Were music in my heart and brain.
They were more exquisite than rest,
More terrible than pain.

Before God's eyes She met Her mate.
Not yet They throbbed with single bliss.
Their silent lips, austere, elate,
Dreamed of the great forbidden kiss.

"Never, never shall it be!
They shall not go comforted,
Until They strain Their wine of thee,
And eat thee for Their daily bread.

"If They, lose what They desire,
Greater than mortal man or woman,
They shall be dispersed in fire.
Their sufferings shall be superhuman."

All about on every side
I saw the blazing planets go.
Ashes of Judgment Days did ride
On gales as white as snow.

Many a laughing Paradise
Stricken in the air did ail,
And many a spent and anguished moon
Blackened the midnight gale.

Each to each with grievous cry,
Withered from its living mesh,
And well I knew that they were I,
The weavings of my mortal flesh.

She could not rule them with desire
Nor bid them from their eternal pain,
Until my breath had blown the fire
By which they should be purged again.

"Lay me in Her altar flame,
Thou blazing, bright, mysterious elf.
She is the empress over me,
My deep eternal Self.

"Splendor, let me be Thy wine,
Crimson, in a starry cup.
Let me be Thy drink divine.
Pour me forth and drink me up.

Seize me, Splendor, where I stand!
On my substance be Thou fed.
Break me with Thy radiant hand—
Anguished and nutritious bread.

"Then no more, not any more,
Shall I hate and worship Thee!
But Thy kiss, shaped of my death,
Be the utter end of me.

"In Thy citadel of air—
Fearful art Thou, like the sun.
Thou art fierce and Thou art fair!
Thy Will upon this night be done."

Part V

At last from dreamless sleep I came,
The seeds of fire were in my eyes.
I seemed to come from blood and flame
As from a sacrifice.

Oh in that sleep where had I been,
What fearful pathways had I trod?
What had I done? What had I seen?
That I should feel so near to God!

Upon an altar had I lain.
With snow-white fire they wrapped me round.
I can remember that vast pain,
Spiritual, profound.

For centuries in a speechless place
I was a spent and anguished thing.
They drifted flame upon my face.
I was a sacred offering.

I waked—and peace was in my eyes,
And happiness did me enfold;
A single sleep had made me wise,
Serene, immeasurably old.

My mortal dream I had laid by
And no desire had I now.
Wrapped in eternal calm was I
And peace was throned upon my brow.

Strange was the place where I had been.
It seemed to me like deepest Hell.
Lo, now I glistened, brightly clean,
Detached, immutable, and well.

And oh, I was not any more
As I had been, unhappy, human,
But beauteous as I was before,
Greater than any mortal woman.

The sunsets of the eternal years
Poured forth for me their mellow wine.
I felt the sunrise of the spheres
My breast incarnadine.

All abroad, on every side,
Singing stars did shine and beat,
And they were messengers of joy
On beautiful swift feet.

Then with my looks I bade them move
With laughter down the sweet blue years,
And they were globed of loveliest love,
Roseate and angelic spheres.

Each to each did cry and sing
Out of their bright melodious mesh.
And lo—I knew each laughing star
Was spun into my earthly flesh.

Beautiful, before my eyes
Strangest light they did receive.
Orbs of sweetest Paradise!
Gardens where God walked at eye!

For I was come into a place
Wherefrom all things are wrought.
I shaped my body forth in space
In myriad orbs of thought.

Upon the earth, in her father's hall,
I saw a simple maiden stand.
A thousand worlds, I held them all,—
Her mystic body,—in my hand.

Sweetly to me my great Love came.
"Love, I have waited long," He said.
I poured for Him the mystic wine.
He gave me white angelic bread.

Then did we glow with rapture high!
We felt a deep, ethereal bliss.
He laid me on His breast. I gave
To my great Love, a holy kiss.

Part VI

No more—no more—not any more
Those dæmon eyes were bent on me.
I was a maid as I was before.
My love had come to marry me.

They knew not of my spirit's flight,
Guessed not my starry wandering.
The torch was lit, the feast was bright,
For the daughter of the king.

In at the door my true love came.
Trembling, I looked into his eyes.
I saw the stars of memory flame,
Eternal as the skies.

I cried, "When I abroad did rove
You saw me shine, exalted, strange.
Lo now, the miracle of love—
In me,—a silent, shining change.

"Forevermore my wings must reach
And in fair skies must brightly spread.
My mouth must utter beauteous speech,
And stars must shine above my head.

"A change has come on me. Mine eyes
Are spiritual and I must see
Another world and stranger skies
Than ever used to be.

"Nothing is now as once it seemed
Before I ran with the dæmon bright.
Beauty has out of terror streamed,
All in a single night!"

I cried, "What change has come on death,
That I no more corruption see,
But breathe a keener breath?
It is a change in me!
I have grown ethereal,
Exalted, immaterial,
Wiser and merrier than I used to be.

"When I regard the church-yard dust
And touch the grain of dead men's bones,
My sight, as spirit vision must,
Sinks through the melting stones.

"I seem to hear upon the air
A sweet, a multitudinous sound!
Ten thousand creatures dancing there
Make beautiful the ground.

"The fountains leap! The fountains spring!
They heal me with their cool delight!
I weep, and merrily I sing,
A creature passionately bright.

I feed upon the loveliest fruit
That ever shone on any tree.
I bite its mild mysterious root,
I dance in ecstasy.
Gleaming softly in and out
Calm dead people move about
As happy as can be.

"I cannot grieve! I cannot weep!
I cannot see an unholy thing!
Behold—a corpse laid out to sleep.
Death swathed it in a living wing,
And underneath that snow-white plume
I heard a happy creature sing.

For now love's breath is in my hair,
Mine eyes have seen the greater bliss.
My smiling lips shall always wear
The splendor of my great Love's kiss.

"Now must they be deep welts of truth,
Wherefrom a fount of beauty springs.
The mouth, whereon His lips were pressed,
Shall murmur dread ecstatic things."

I laughed aloud—"Love, we are gods,
Beyond all earthly bars!
And underneath our feet the sod
Is suns and moons and stars.

"We gather meteors in our hands,
We drink the bubbling spheres.
Our bread is seas and lands. We breathe
The cyclones of the years.

"Our garments bright are woven of light,
Of golden stars and whirling air.
And times and change and histories strange,
And Judgment Days, are acted there.

"Thy shape is white with murmuring moons,
Woven of strong stars thy body is.
Thou art those flashing orbs—my soul,
Their ancient melodies!

"Now are we one before God's sight,
Purged brightly clean with mightiest grief,
With chastened longing and a mood
Humble beyond belief.

"Love, thou art Priest at Heaven's shrine!
The Truth thou knowest, cry again!
My breasts are beautiful with milk.
I am mother to all living men!"

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910

Dominus Vineae Spiritus Agricolaa

mrbot — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 21:10:09 +0000

Once more among our archangelic hills
The streets of this old, grave, and gracious town
Throb with renewing vigor as when Spring
Rushes upon the forest and through it spills
Her ancient rapture. Now the campus thrills
With feet that run and voices that sing.
It is the College in her bourgeoning!

Happy are we
Returning homeward that we still can see
In the old places
The tenderly remembered kindly faces
Of those who taught us wisdom in our youth;
In faith established, having made plain the truth
Of beautiful friendship, honorably proved;
Yes, in a chastened and a lofty mood
Of thoughtful gratitude
Seeing once more in the accustomed ways
Him whom we come to praise,
Presence revered and loved.

Ever among life's solemn things
Are such rejoicings.
Beneath the laughter and the song there fall
Rich silences,
And stronger cadences,
And deeper voices call
"Ending is here "—and cycles new and strange
Sweep through the air a solemn undertone.
Deeper than depth beneath all things are blown
The rushings of the invisible wings of change.

Not ours to know
His deep rejoicings
When with strict vigilance and with secret pains
He turned to visible gains
Hard and invisible things.
Not ours the solemn splendor of those wings
That in his sombre vigils of the night
Seized him with visions excellently bright.
Not ours the speechless grievings,
The glorious believings,
When with a glad surmise
He saw the future with prophetic eyes.
Not ours to know,
During laborious years,
The downcast moment or with what aching need
He watched upon the bursting of the seed;
Nor the interior spiritual tears
That are the bitter waterings
Of all heroic things;
Nor amid what savor of his midnight prayer
The Spirit came upon him with a mood
That drove him forth into the solitude
Of sleepless, holy watching. And he went.
And beholding a vision wonderfully fair
He wrestled with the Lord before the tent.

But ours is the harvesting,
The joyous bringing-in,
The drinking of the wine
That is the vintage of his thought benign.
Ours is the glory won!
What ritual shall be done?
What shall be said?
Ye feasters upon bread
Made of nutritious grain,
The very kernel of his faith and pain!
Upon this day
There is accomplished a great deed,
A beautiful fruition
From the small sowing of an early seed.
Behold, a work is brought into completion.
Let us rejoice, for we have need I say,
Of every praiseful speech and loving word,
Knowing that when night falls upon this town
A good man has laid down
His fruits upon the table of the Lord.

Behold the Pioneer!
Stout-hearted, with keen eyes, of vision clear,
A natural searcher for such land as lies
In distant seas and under alien skies.
Would I might trace
The courtly quaintness and the austere grace,
The angelic shrewdness of that kindly face,
Inscribed with characters, as if lightning-struck
God's gracious scripture was engraved on rock.
A son of our New England stock,
Serene, high-souled, and exquisitely plain
As mountain air is, after a cold rain!
But yet with no severity
In his sweet austerity!
So charitably mild
I think that any child
Would run to meet him if he only smiled!

I like to muse
On his first simple strenuous days
And the high-hearted girls that greatly kept
Their great companionships
With sages, prophets, poets. With what glad eyes
They tripped, girl-wise,
Through many a blossoming Paradise!
In flower-sweet vales where dreaming Pindar slept
The bees left honey on their lips.
In classic porticos of thought,
By Grecian boys befriended,
With lofty speech and young imaginings
They jealously attended
High counsels held on spiritual things,
Angelic—human.
Still by mankind forbidden, they eagerly sought
What Diotima unto Plato taught
And Socrates learned from a mystic Woman.

Yes—it should be our glory and elation
That among the earliest women of this nation
They vowed themselves to that great exploration.
How many a girl has set
Her face against the unhuman wind that blows
From the imperishable snows
Of mathematical glaciers and beheld
Such fierce auroral splendors as not yet
Have shown in gentler climates, but flash forth
Out of the frozen north
Of ultimate thought that has not any pole;
Or has explored the regions of the soul
And from some philosophic precipice
Has swept
Her innocent vision over the dark abyss
Of mortal night;
With spirit lowly
And with dreaming eyes
Has guarded well the sight
Of visions lovely and holy,
And half a child, in solitude, has kept
Her solemn watch beneath the infinite skies.

Look—we arise
Before the eider daughters gathered here.
Scanning young faces with gaze steady and clear
They search them and require
A spiritual accounting and a just.
"How have ye answered to the sacred trust?
Before the lamps we lighted have ye slept?
Have ye forsook the service? or have ye kept
Your spirits constant and your minds austere?
Out of our vessels have ye spilt the wine?
Are ye troubled with a spiritual yearning?
Are ye dream-enchanted?
What are your visions? Are your souls star-haunted?

Speak, in the fennel is the fire still burning?
Is the incense good? Is the fragrance pungent and fine?
What prayers do ye breathe over it?
Ye unknown daughters of this generation,
In sacred places is the service fit?
And with the old mysterious elation,
Ye younger vestals, have ye kept the shrine?
Oh, is the flame upon our altars lit?"

Last night among our academic trees
Gleamed golden bubbles, globes of scarlet light,
Blue stars, and moons diaphanously white,
As if great comets blew through our mortal night
A fiery and a planetary seed.
Then was there laughter and such sights indeed
As once we never dreamed.
It seemed
As if the altar spirit had been spent
In delirious merriment.
Amid the ancient failing of the dew
Flashed spirits white, the very maddest crew
That ever charmed the grass with dances new.
Like morning stars singing in the deep skies!
With silvery halloo and gracious cries
Of friendship! Why, in such a magic air,
One looked no more for any mortal thing,
But for such faery pageants as were seen
When Vivian dressed in green
Charmed Wisdom into strange imagining.
Then, as of gay and friendly fauns,
Were daintiest skippings on the lawns,
Bright screams and singing calls
Of innocent Bacchanals,
While through the darkness in delicious swirls,
Sport beguiled,
Delicately wild,
Swept lightly frenzied girls.

Sedulously the elders catechize,
But to the watchful query of their eyes
Gaze back young eyes as clear.
"Before the lamps ye lighted we have not slept.
Still, still do we behold with ritual lowly
Visions and things unutterably holy,
And with strict pain and vigilance have kept
Our spirits constant and our minds austere.
Even as of old our spiritual waters
Are troubled with the angels. Oh, believe!
Now, as of old, communing with His daughters
God walks among these gardens in the eve."

Now, as of old! Still do the orchard trees
Bear fruits for ardent girls. In Paradise
Forget-me-nots still look with childlike eyes.
To the intimate skies
Point familiar towers.
It is no alien grace
That mocks from a strange face.
Unspeakably ours!
But the old Spirit, with influence divine,
Is worshiped still upon this mystic shrine.
Happy are they who in their youth inherit
That vast and lovely Spirit
To whom our steps are led—
The invisible, scarce dreamed of, superhuman,
The Ultimate Woman—
The moon of Heaven is underneath Her feet
And twelve bright stars are orbed about Her head.

Oh, let it on this day of him be said,
He had the sight,
The interior vision, and he saw such things,
As John the Belovéd dreamed on. And he came,
And raised a holy altar in the night,
And that Her presence should be known by flame
He set upon Her shrine an eternal light.
So did the Seer remind us,
Lest the new morning blind us,

That beauty and youth and youth's own spiritual yearning,
All loves and aspirations,
Hard labors and elations,
All passionate learning,
Should be the oil to that holy burning.

Wherefore let us wisdom take
And of it make
A garment innocent and fair
Radiant as the early air.
Let us turn it into Spring:
Out of ancient, alien dust
Wake a joyous blossoming;
With a heart of ardent trust
Refreshing earth with untouched dew,
Cultures exquisite and new,
Praising him, if praise we can,
That in a time when men on Customs lean,
By a great man,
Womanhood has been beautifully seen.

Oh man of battles! Hero in God's sight!
Zealous fighter for the right,
Stout wielder of the sword,
Lover of things desirable and hard!
How beautiful he goes!
As graciously as a rose
Unfolds its sweetness to a larger light!
The work achieved and with the Lord put by,
He goes to other deeds,
Fulfilling unseen needs,
To greatnesses hard and high.

By his influence benign,
And by his battles at the great redoubt,
By his purged and chastened sight,
That saw a Woman raised upon the night—
Oh by his faith divine,
And the pure flame he set upon Her shrine,
Let not that light go out.

Anna Hempstead Branch

1910