Part 6

Higher far into the pure realm, Over sun and star, Over the flickering Daemon film, Thou must mount for love; Into vision where all form In one only form dissolves; In a region where the wheel On which all beings ride Visibly revolves; Where the starred, eternal worm Girds the world with bound and term; Where unlike things are like; Where good and ill, And joy and moan, Melt into one.

There Past, Present, Future, shoot Triple blossoms from one root; Substances at base divided, In their summits are united; There the holy essence rolls, One through separated souls; And the sunny Aeon sleeps Folding Nature in its deeps, And every fair and every good, Known in part, or known impure, To men below, In their archetypes endure. The race of gods, Or those we erring own, Are shadows flitting up and down In the still abodes. The circles of that sea are laws Which publish and which hide the cause.

Pray for a beam Out of that sphere, Thee to guide and to redeem. O, what a load Of care and toil, By lying use bestowed, From his shoulders falls who sees The true astronomy, The period of peace. Counsel which the ages kept Shall the well-born soul accept. As the overhanging trees Fill the lake with images,-- As garment draws the garment's hem, Men their fortunes bring with them. By right or wrong, Lands and goods go to the strong. Property will brutely draw Still to the proprietor; Silver to silver creep and wind, And kind to kind.

Nor less the eternal poles Of tendency distribute souls. There need no vows to bind Whom not each other seek, but find. They give and take no pledge or oath,-- Nature is the bond of both: No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns,-- Their noble meanings are their pawns. Plain and cold is their address, Power have they for tenderness; And, so thoroughly is known Each other's counsel by his own, They can parley without meeting; Need is none of forms of greeting; They can well communicate In their innermost estate; When each the other shall avoid, Shall each by each be most enjoyed.

Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves Do these celebrate their loves: Not by jewels, feasts and savors, Not by ribbons or by favors, But by the sun-spark on the sea, And the cloud-shadow on the lea, The soothing lapse of morn to mirk, And the cheerful round of work. Their cords of love so public are, They intertwine the farthest star: The throbbing sea, the quaking earth, Yield sympathy and signs of mirth; Is none so high, so mean is none, But feels and seals this union; Even the fell Furies are appeased, The good applaud, the lost are eased.

Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, Bound for the just, but not beyond; Not glad, as the low-loving herd, Of self in other still preferred, But they have heartily designed The benefit of broad mankind. And they serve men austerely, After their own genius, clearly, Without a false humility; For this is Love's nobility,-- Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold; But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand and body and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good. He that feeds men serveth few; He serves all who dares be true.

THE APOLOGY

Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band, For the idle flowers I brought; Every aster in my hand Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery But 'tis figured in the flowers; Was never secret history But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song.

MERLIN I

Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Free, peremptory, clear. No jingling serenader's art, Nor tinkle of piano strings, Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs. The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Secrets of the solar track, Sparks of the supersolar blaze. Merlin's blows are strokes of fate, Chiming with the forest tone, When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; Chiming with the gasp and moan Of the ice-imprisoned flood; With the pulse of manly hearts; With the voice of orators; With the din of city arts; With the cannonade of wars; With the marches of the brave; And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.

Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme. 'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, 'In to the upper doors, Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.'

Blameless master of the games, King of sport that never shames, He shall daily joy dispense Hid in song's sweet influence. Forms more cheerly live and go, What time the subtle mind Sings aloud the tune whereto Their pulses beat, And march their feet, And their members are combined.

By Sybarites beguiled, He shall no task decline; Merlin's mighty line Extremes of nature reconciled,-- Bereaved a tyrant of his will, And made the lion mild. Songs can the tempest still, Scattered on the stormy air, Mould the year to fair increase, And bring in poetic peace.

He shall not seek to weave, In weak, unhappy times, Efficacious rhymes; Wait his returning strength. Bird that from the nadir's floor To the zenith's top can soar,-- The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length. Nor profane affect to hit Or compass that, by meddling wit, Which only the propitious mind Publishes when 't is inclined. There are open hours When the God's will sallies free, And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;-- Sudden, at unawares, Self-moved, fly-to the doors. Nor sword of angels could reveal What they conceal.

MERLIN II

The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs; Balance-loving Nature Made all things in pairs. To every foot its antipode; Each color with its counter glowed; To every tone beat answering tones, Higher or graver; Flavor gladly blends with flavor; Leaf answers leaf upon the bough; And match the paired cotyledons. Hands to hands, and feet to feet, In one body grooms and brides; Eldest rite, two married sides In every mortal meet. Light's far furnace shines, Smelting balls and bars, Forging double stars, Glittering twins and trines. The animals are sick with love, Lovesick with rhyme; Each with all propitious Time Into chorus wove.

Like the dancers' ordered band, Thoughts come also hand in hand; In equal couples mated, Or else alternated; Adding by their mutual gage, One to other, health and age. Solitary fancies go Short-lived wandering to and fro, Most like to bachelors, Or an ungiven maid, Not ancestors, With no posterity to make the lie afraid, Or keep truth undecayed. Perfect-paired as eagle's wings, Justice is the rhyme of things; Trade and counting use The self-same tuneful muse; And Nemesis, Who with even matches odd, Who athwart space redresses The partial wrong, Fills the just period, And finishes the song.

Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, Murmur in the house of life, Sung by the Sisters as they spin; In perfect time and measure they Build and unbuild our echoing clay. As the two twilights of the day Fold us music-drunken in.

BACCHUS

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew In the belly of the grape, Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through, Under the Andes to the Cape, Suffer no savor of the earth to scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

We buy ashes for bread; We buy diluted wine; Give me of the true,-- Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled Among the silver hills of heaven Draw everlasting dew; Wine of wine, Blood of the world, Form of forms, and mould of statures, That I intoxicated, And by the draught assimilated, May float at pleasure through all natures; The bird-language rightly spell, And that which roses say so well.

Wine that is shed Like the torrents of the sun Up the horizon walls, Or like the Atlantic streams, which run When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread, Food which needs no transmuting, Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting, Wine which is already man, Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which Music is,-- Music and wine are one,-- That I, drinking this, Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; Kings unborn shall walk with me; And the poor grass shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man. Quickened so, will I unlock Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice For all I know;-- Winds of remembering Of the ancient being blow, And seeming-solid walls of use Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine; Retrieve the loss of me and mine! Vine for vine be antidote, And the grape requite the lote! Haste to cure the old despair,-- Reason in Nature's lotus drenched, The memory of ages quenched; Give them again to shine; Let wine repair what this undid; And where the infection slid, A dazzling memory revive; Refresh the faded tints, Recut the aged prints, And write my old adventures with the pen Which on the first day drew, Upon the tablets blue, The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.

MEROPS

What care I, so they stand the same,-- Things of the heavenly mind,-- How long the power to give them name Tarries yet behind?

Thus far to-day your favors reach, O fair, appeasing presences! Ye taught my lips a single speech, And a thousand silences.

Space grants beyond his fated road No inch to the god of day; And copious language still bestowed One word, no more, to say.

THE HOUSE

There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan;

Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible, Worthy her design,

She threads dark Alpine forests Or valleys by the sea, In many lands, with painful steps, Ere she can find a tree.

She ransacks mines and ledges And quarries every rock, To hew the famous adamant For each eternal block--

She lays her beams in music, In music every one, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances round the sun--

That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But for the love of happy souls Outlive the newest stars.

SAADI

Trees in groves, Kine in droves, In ocean sport the scaly herds, Wedge-like cleave the air the birds, To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks, Browse the mountain sheep in flocks, Men consort in camp and town, But the poet dwells alone.

God, who gave to him the lyre, Of all mortals the desire, For all breathing men's behoof, Straitly charged him, 'Sit aloof;' Annexed a warning, poets say, To the bright premium,-- Ever, when twain together play, Shall the harp be dumb.

Many may come, But one shall sing; Two touch the string, The harp is dumb. Though there come a million, Wise Saadi dwells alone.

Yet Saadi loved the race of men,-- No churl, immured in cave or den; In bower and hall He wants them all, Nor can dispense With Persia for his audience; They must give ear, Grow red with joy and white with fear; But he has no companion; Come ten, or come a million, Good Saadi dwells alone.

Be thou ware where Saadi dwells; Wisdom of the gods is he,-- Entertain it reverently. Gladly round that golden lamp Sylvan deities encamp, And simple maids and noble youth Are welcome to the man of truth. Most welcome they who need him most, They feed the spring which they exhaust; For greater need Draws better deed: But, critic, spare thy vanity, Nor show thy pompous parts, To vex with odious subtlety The cheerer of men's hearts.

Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say Endless dirges to decay, Never in the blaze of light Lose the shudder of midnight; Pale at overflowing noon Hear wolves barking at the moon; In the bower of dalliance sweet Hear the far Avenger's feet: And shake before those awful Powers, Who in their pride forgive not ours. Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach: 'Bard, when thee would Allah teach, And lift thee to his holy mount, He sends thee from his bitter fount Wormwood,--saying, "Go thy ways; Drink not the Malaga of praise, But do the deed thy fellows hate, And compromise thy peaceful state; Smite the white breasts which thee fed. Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head Of them thou shouldst have comforted; For out of woe and out of crime Draws the heart a lore sublime."' And yet it seemeth not to me That the high gods love tragedy; For Saadi sat in the sun, And thanks was his contrition; For haircloth and for bloody whips, Had active hands and smiling lips; And yet his runes he rightly read, And to his folk his message sped. Sunshine in his heart transferred Lighted each transparent word, And well could honoring Persia learn What Saadi wished to say; For Saadi's nightly stars did burn Brighter than Jami's day.

Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot: 'O gentle Saadi, listen not, Tempted by thy praise of wit, Or by thirst and appetite For the talents not thine own, To sons of contradiction. Never, son of eastern morning, Follow falsehood, follow scorning. Denounce who will, who will deny, And pile the hills to scale the sky; Let theist, atheist, pantheist, Define and wrangle how they list, Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,-- But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer, Unknowing war, unknowing crime, Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme; Heed not what the brawlers say, Heed thou only Saadi's lay.

'Let the great world bustle on With war and trade, with camp and town; A thousand men shall dig and eat; At forge and furnace thousands sweat; And thousands sail the purple sea, And give or take the stroke of war, Or crowd the market and bazaar; Oft shall war end, and peace return, And cities rise where cities burn, Ere one man my hill shall climb, Who can turn the golden rhyme. Let them manage how they may, Heed thou only Saadi's lay. Seek the living among the dead,-- Man in man is imprisonèd; Barefooted Dervish is not poor, If fate unlock his bosom's door, So that what his eye hath seen His tongue can paint as bright, as keen; And what his tender heart hath felt With equal fire thy heart shalt melt. For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh Nature veritable; And though he speak in midnight dark,-- In heaven no star, on earth no spark,-- Yet before the listener's eye Swims the world in ecstasy, The forest waves, the morning breaks, The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, And life pulsates in rock or tree. Saadi, so far thy words shall reach: Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech!'

And thus to Saadi said the Muse: 'Eat thou the bread which men refuse; Flee from the goods which from thee flee; Seek nothing,--Fortune seeketh thee. Nor mount, nor dive; all good things keep The midway of the eternal deep. Wish not to fill the isles with eyes To fetch thee birds of paradise: On thine orchard's edge belong All the brags of plume and song; Wise Ali's sunbright sayings pass For proverbs in the market-place: Through mountains bored by regal art, Toil whistles as he drives his cart. Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, A poet or a friend to find: Behold, he watches at the door! Behold his shadow on the floor! Open innumerable doors The heaven where unveiled Allah pours The flood of truth, the flood of good, The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. Those doors are men: the Pariah hind Admits thee to the perfect Mind. Seek not beyond thy cottage wall Redeemers that can yield thee all: While thou sittest at thy door On the desert's yellow floor, Listening to the gray-haired crones, Foolish gossips, ancient drones, Saadi, see! they rise in stature To the height of mighty Nature, And the secret stands revealed Fraudulent Time in vain concealed,-- That blessed gods in servile masks Plied for thee thy household tasks.'

HOLIDAYS

From fall to spring, the russet acorn, Fruit beloved of maid and boy, Lent itself beneath the forest, To be the children's toy.

Pluck it now! In vain,--thou canst not; Its root has pierced yon shady mound; Toy no longer--it has duties; It is anchored in the ground.

Year by year the rose-lipped maiden, Playfellow of young and old, Was frolic sunshine, dear to all men, More dear to one than mines of gold.

Whither went the lovely hoyden? Disappeared in blessed wife; Servant to a wooden cradle, Living in a baby's life.

Still thou playest;--short vacation Fate grants each to stand aside; Now must thou be man and artist,-- 'T is the turning of the tide.

XENOPHANES

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity: all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. Beheld far off, they part As God and devil; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. The specious panorama of a year But multiplies the image of a day,-- A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; And universal Nature, through her vast And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, Repeats one note.

THE DAY'S RATION

When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying, 'This be thy portion, child; this chalice, Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw From my great arteries,--nor less, nor more.' All substances the cunning chemist Time Melts down into that liquor of my life,-- Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust. And whether I am angry or content, Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, All he distils into sidereal wine And brims my little cup; heedless, alas! Of all he sheds how little it will hold, How much runs over on the desert sands. If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, And I uplift myself into its heaven, The needs of the first sight absorb my blood, And all the following hours of the day Drag a ridiculous age. To-day, when friends approach, and every hour Brings book, or starbright scroll of genius, The little cup will hold not a bead more, And all the costly liquor runs to waste; Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop So to be husbanded for poorer days. Why need I volumes, if one word suffice? Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills My apprehension? Why seek Italy, Who cannot circumnavigate the sea Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn The nearest matters for a thousand days?

BLIGHT

Give me truths; For I am weary of the surfaces, And die of inanition. If I knew Only the herbs and simples of the wood, Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony, Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras, Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sundew, And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods Draw untold juices from the common earth, Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply By sweet affinities to human flesh, Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,-- O, that were much, and I could be a part Of the round day, related to the sun And planted world, and full executor Of their imperfect functions. But these young scholars, who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names. The old men studied magic in the flowers, And human fortunes in astronomy, And an omnipotence in chemistry, Preferring things to names, for these were men, Were unitarians of the united world, And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell, They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars, And strangers to the mystic beast and bird, And strangers to the plant and to the mine. The injured elements say, 'Not in us;' And night and day, ocean and continent, Fire, plant and mineral say, 'Not in us;' And haughtily return us stare for stare. For we invade them impiously for gain; We devastate them unreligiously, And coldly ask their pottage, not their love. Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us Only what to our griping toil is due; But the sweet affluence of love and song, The rich results of the divine consents Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover, The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld; And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves And pirates of the universe, shut out Daily to a more thin and outward rind, Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes, The stunted trees look sick, the summer short, Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay, And nothing thrives to reach its natural term; And life, shorn of its venerable length, Even at its greatest space is a defeat, And dies in anger that it was a dupe; And, in its highest noon and wantonness, Is early frugal, like a beggar's child; Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims And prizes of ambition, checks its hand, Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped, Chilled with a miserly comparison Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.

MUSKETAQUID