Part 1

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. *579* Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

The Three Sphinxes and Other Poems

George Sylvester Viereck

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1907, by Moffat, Yard and Company. Copyright, 1912, by Moffat, Yard and Company. Copyright, 1916, by Mitchell Kennerley. Copyright, 1924, by George Sylvester Viereck.

[Other selections from Mr. Viereck’s poetry appear in the Haldeman-Julius Pocket Series under the title “The Haunted House and Other Poems,” No. 578.]

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents

The Poet Psycho-Analyzes Himself

Poems

Slaves Iron Passion The Three Sphinxes The Cynic’s Credo The Ghost of Oscar Wilde The Parrot The Candle and the Flame A Ballad of King David Benediction Spring A Vision of Man Inhibition The Protozoan The Plaint of Eve The Conqueror The Winners Jesus in New England The Ballad of the Golden Boy The Magic City The Challenge The Pilgrim Attar of Song The Buried City Triumphatrix At Nightfall Finale The Love Seal Respite Dr. Faust’s Descent from Heaven Man to His Maker

THE POET PSYCHO-ANALYZES HIMSELF

This volume, like its predecessor, “The Haunted House, and Other Poems,” No. 578, contains selections from “Nineveh and Other Poems,” “The Candle and the Flame,” “Songs of Armageddon,” in addition to a number of poems not previously published in book form. The second volume embraces a number of lyric ballads, being on the whole less intensely personal, if no less intensely passionate than volume one.

However, such differences are superficial. Wherever we touch a book, we touch a man. If we but search an author, we always discover a master key! Every manifestation of the Life Force is a confession. It is impossible to write a treatise on radio without revealing one’s self. The libido, however disguised, will always assert itself.

It was my original intention to divide my poetry into certain well defined psychological groups. There are clusters of thought and emotions, “complexes,” to use the vocabulary of psycho-analysis, which seem to occur again and again in my verse. Eros and Jesus, Lilith and Eve, constitute my chief lyric “complexes.”

Almost every poem owes its inspiration to one of these four fundamental types. However, no symbol is entirely adequate. At every step the complexes grow more complex. Frequently one merges into the other.

“The Three Sphinxes” visualizes the conflict between Jesus and Eros, between heavenly and earthly love; between Lilith and Eve, love, sweetly human, and “woman wailing for her demon lover.” The antagonism between Eros and Jesus appears in “Spring”: an attempt to synthesize the two conceptions enlivens the finale of “Jesus in New England.”

In “Children of Lilith,” we catch a glimpse of Lilith in the countenance of Eros. Both Lilith and Eve appear in “A Vision of Woman,” but no attempt is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. The Eve-Lilith conflict is the struggle between Helen of Troy and the blonde Marguerite. The desire to achieve a new synthesis of woman, dissolving the Eve-Lilith conflict, lends significance to “Dr. Faust’s Descent from Heaven.”

It would be necessary to play with divers combinations and permutations in order to make the grouping psychologically correct. This task is too pedantic for me. I leave it to the psycho-analysts and to the ingenuity of the reader. Perhaps I may change my mind some day when I publish my collected poems or my autobiography. Most of my books of verse are out of print. The two little volumes in the Pocket Series are the only form in which my verse is, at present, accessible.

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.

New York, June, 1924.

SLAVES

_No puppet master pulls the strings on high, Portioning our parts, the tinsel and the paint: A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry, Predestinates the sinner and the saint._

_Each, held more firmly than by hempen band, Slave of his entrails, struts across the scene: The malnutrition of some obscure gland Makes him a Ripper or the Nazarene._

IRON PASSION

Love’s smiling countenance I know, But not the anger of the god, For I have wandered where Boccaccio And Casanova trod.

I am aweary of these pleasant things, The gallant dalliance and the well-watched fire: Give me the magic of a thousand springs That shook the blood of young Assyrian kings, That stirs the young monk in his cell, and stings Crimson and hot! Wearing the crown of unassuaged desire, Break me or bless me--only love me not!

Come as a wanton red with rouge and wine And I shall weave out of my song for thee A purpler cloak than his Who, hating, loved that Lesbia. Come to me A saint--the halo shall be thine Of Beatrice.

There is no joy in tender loves or wise, No sweet in wrong: Come unto me with cruel, loveless eyes, O iron passion of the lords of song!

THE THREE SPHINXES

Before the image older than the world, Or ill or good, By Titan hand into the desert hurled, In the Egyptian sunset musing stood-- Long having travelled by fantastic roads Where in deep sands the tremulous footstep sinks-- The oldest and the youngest of the gods, Saying: “Upon my life has fallen thy shadow, O Sphinx!”

Replied the Sphinx: “O son of Aphrodite, Shall wisdom teach thee how the soul is won, Or the hot sands be balsam on thy lids? Behold approach from Thebes and Babylon, Huge birds grotesque against the falling gloom, My far-come younger sisters.” And a mighty Thunder of pinions shook the pyramids, And made the mummies mumble in their tomb.

The three stern sisters of the mystery Enduring and miraculously wrought In granite and in porphyry, Then, holding concourse in the desert, spake With the great sound of billows on the sea That rumble as they break: “Thou, Eros, art the eternal riddle, we Are but in stone the semblance of thy thought.”

Limbed like the panther, featured like a man, The wisest of the Sphinxes thus began, That still had waited where the river steams And winds the caravan: “In my brain’s cavern seven cubits span Dwell visions splendorous Of the great lords of song and thought and might, Who in the large eyes of Antinous Behold the Deeper Light, Upon my lashes gleams Still Shakespeare’s rhythmic tear; Here Plato musing dreamed his dreams Of spirit-passion; David here In the long night-watch sang of Jonathan.”

Then rose the wingèd Theban, figure dual Of maid and lion strangely wed; “I am the blood that tingles, and the jewel Of all the world’s desire adorns my head-- The lithe-limbed youths that fell for Helen’s sake Have died for me, The lads that wake To ripeness curse me as they ache Beneath my tyranny. My mandates sweet and cruel Nor prayer nor penance shall revoke: I am the flame, men’s bodies are the fuel, Men’s souls the smoke.”

The pinioned Sphinx of Babylon, Human in naught, Lord Eros thus addressed: “Wherever men have spat thy face upon Or sought strange pleasure in unholy quest, My breath had made them mad. I am the dream that Nero’s mother had Ere burned his natal star. I am the ghastly vision of de Sade: Astarte and Priapus wage War for my beauty monstrous, barren, bare; The Cretan knew me and from far My image fell upon the crimson page Of Swinburne and of Baudelaire.” The silence shivered as in tearless woe When they had done, the Foam-begotten broke Across his knee the sceptre and the bow: “The empyrean is beyond your reach, Your substance earth of earth, And even she that called on Plato’s name Bears soilure of a mortal birth. The triple mirror are you of my shame Half-beast are two, one wholly beast, in each Is something bestial, and your wings’ winds choke Within my heart the unadulterate flame.”

But the three Sphinxes mighty murmuring Thus answer made: “O Love, Turn thou thy wrath above, Where round God’s throne the cosmic sunsets fling The light that shall not fade. Beneath his feet the countless æons roll, His slow relentless purpose knows the goal Of things, and joining flesh and spirit made A beast the mansion of the soul.”

And lo, the spring’s breath faded from Love’s charm, The sunshine from his hair, And in his arm The arrows turned to rods. He heeded not the silent years that crawl Like uncouth spiders. Weary, cynical, Self-conscious, disenchanted stood he there, The oldest and the saddest of the gods.

THE CYNIC’S CREDO

From the cloistered halls of knowledge where fantastic lights are shed By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead entomb their dead, Let us walk into the city where men’s wounds are raw and red. Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for coward and for brave, Only three, no more--the belly and the phallus and the grave!

When the slow disease of time writes on our face its horrid scrawl, These be good gifts, these be real, let what will the rest befall, Both the first gift and the second--but the last is best of all. Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cerecloth’s folds are drawn; These remain while life remains and one remains when all are gone.

Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to damn the thief? We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the self-same reef. Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with some primal grief, Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to our carcass, slave To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than God) the grave.

Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more when we have these? Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they may live in ease. Not for us God’s angel choir and His cosmic silences! Lay not that we, too, are gods, since no god is strong to save From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and the grave.

Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy while a trace Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes the race Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good man and the base. Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats our hearts: we crave For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and the grave.

Let us nurse no vain delusion! Feast on love and wine and meat, While girls’ breasts blush into rosebuds and the touch of flesh is sweet, For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound of dancing feet! Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His consciousness He gave Still the belly and the phallus and life’s final thrill--the grave!

And who knows but the Almighty in His heart may envy us? If a little draught of knowledge makes man’s life so dolorous, Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of thorns, and thus Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic incubus. We at least, through evolution climbing upward from the cave, Have the belly and the phallus and God’s kindest gift, the grave.

THE GHOST OF OSCAR WILDE

Within the graveyard of Montmartre Where wreath on wreath is piled, Where Paris huddles to her breast Her genius like a child, The ghost of Heinrich Heine met The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

The wind was howling desolate, The moon’s dead face shone bright; The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed The sad wraith with delight: “Is it the slow worm’s slimy touch That makes you walk the night?

“Or rankles still the bitter jibe Of fool and Pharisee, When angels wept that England’s law Had nailed you to the Tree, When from her brow she tore the rose Of golden minstrelsy?”

Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde While shrill the night hawk cried: “Sweet singer of the race that bare Him of the Wounded Side, (I loved them not on earth, but men Change somehow, having died).

“In Pere La Chaise my head is laid, My coffin-bed is cool, The mound above my grave defies The scorn of knave and fool, But may God’s mercy save me from The Psychopathic School!

“Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still I hear the din thereof When with sharp knife and argument They pierce my soul above, Because I drew from Shakespeare’s heart The secret of his love....

“Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host Of lepers in my aid, I was sufficient as God’s flowers And everything He made; Yea, with the harvest of my song I face Him unafraid.

“The fruit of Life and Death is His; He shapes both core and rind....” Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice, (The worm to none is kind), While through the graveyard of Montmartre Despairing howled the wind.

THE PARROT

O bird grotesque and garrulous, In green and scarlet liveried, Thy ceaseless prattle hides from us The secret of thy dream indeed. But in thine eyeball’s mystic bead Are mirrored clear to them that read Vague, nameless longings, like the breed Of some exotic incubus.

Where is thy vision? Overseas? In some bright tropic far-off land Where chiding simians in tall trees Swing by luxurious breezes fanned, While at fantastic phallic feasts Brown women uncouth idols hail, And through the forest sounds the wail Of the fierce matings of wild beasts?

Or are thine other memories, Of other lives on other trees, Encasements in some previous flesh In far-off lost existences? For, as the tiger leaves his spoor Upon the prairie, firm and sure Life writes itself upon the brain, The soul keeps count of loss and gain, And in the vibrant, living cells Of the small parrot’s brain there dwells A sparkle of the flame benign That makes the human mind divine.

The self-same Life-Force fashions us: Its writings are the stars on high, Its transient mansions thou as I. Through Plato’s mouth it speaks to us, Through the earth’s vermin even thus. The heaving of a baby’s breast And the gyrations of the sun To its omnipotence are one And make its meaning manifest.

We both are wanderers through all time Who, risen from the primal slime When God blew life into the dust, Press to some distant goal sublime. And often through the thin soul-crust Rush memories of an alien clime, Of gorgeous revels more robust Than any dream of hate or lust In the gilt cage upon us thrust, And visions strange beyond all rhyme.

The Life-Force with itself at war Moulds and remoulds us, blood and brain, Yet cannot quench us out again, And after every change we _are_. The soul-spark in all sentient things Illumes the night of death and brings, Remembered, immortality.

Time cannot take thy soul from thee! All living things are one by kind, Heritors of the cosmic mind. Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee The kitten slumbered peacefully, And surely good Saint Francis, he Who as his sister loved the hind.

THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME

Thy hands are like cool herbs that bring Balm to men’s hearts, upon them laid; Thy lovely-petalled lips are made As any blossom of the spring. But in thine eyes there is a thing, O Love, that makes me half afraid.

For they are old, those eyes.... They gleam Between the waking and the dream With antique wisdom, like a bright Lamp strangled by the temple’s veil, That beckons to the acolyte Who prays with trembling lips and pale In the long watches of the night.

They are as old as Life. They were When proud Gomorrah reared its head A new-born city. They were there When in the places of the dead Men swathed the body of the Lord. They visioned Pa-Wak raise the wall Of China. They saw Carthage fall And marked the grim Hun lead his horde.

There is no secret anywhere Nor any joy or shame that lies Not writ somehow in those child-eyes Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise. Thou art the lad Endymion, And that great queen with spice and myrrh From Araby, whom Solomon Delighted, and the lust of her.

The legions marching from the sea With Cæsar’s cohorts sang of thee, How thy fair head was more to him Than all the land of Italy. Yea, in the old days thou wert she Who lured Mark Antony from home To death and Egypt, seeing he Lost love when he lost Rome.

Thou saw’st old Tubal strike the lyre, Yea, first for thee the poet hurled Defiance at God’s starry choir! Thou art the romance and the fire, Thou art the pageant and the strife, The clamour, mounting high and higher, From all the lovers in the world To all the lords of love and life.

Through thy slow slumberous long lashes Across the languor of thy face The gleam of primal passion flashes That is as ancient as the race, But we that live a little space, Which when beholding feel in it The horror of the Infinite....

Perhaps the passions of mankind Are but the torches mystical Lit by some spirit-hand to find The dwelling of the Master-Mind That knows the secret of it all, In the great darkness and the wind.

We are the Candle, Love the Flame, Each little life-light flickers out, Love bides, immortally the same: When of life’s fever we shall tire He will desert us, and the fire Rekindle new in prince or lout.

Twin-born of knowledge and of lust, He was before us, he shall be Indifferent still of thee and me, When shattered is life’s golden cup. When thy young limbs are shrivelled up, And when my heart is turned to dust.

Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last That thou and I, or knave, or fool, Are but the involitient tool Of some world purpose vague and vast. No bar to passion’s fury set, With monstrous poppies spice the wine: For only drunk are we divine, And only mad shall we forget!

A BALLAD OF KING DAVID

As David with Bath-Sheba lay, Both drunk with kisses long denied, The King, with quaking lips and gray, Beheld a spectre at his side That said no word nor went away.

Then to his leman spake the King, The ghostly presence challenging: “Bath-Sheba, erst Uriah’s wife, Thy lips are as the Cup of Life That holds the purplest wine of God, Too sweet for any underling.”

“Yet,” spake Bath-Sheba, sad of mien, “Why from thy visage went the sheen As though thy troubled eye had seen A shadow, like a dead man’s curse, Rise threatening from the mound terrene?”

“’Twas but the falling dusk, that fills The palace with fantastic ills. Uriah sleeps in alien sands Soundly. ’Tis not his ghost that stands, Living or dead, or anything ’Twixt the King’s pleasure and the King.” Bath-Sheba’s glad heart rose, then fell: “Where is it that thy fancies dwell? Is there some maid in Israel Broad-hipped, with green eyes like the sea, Whose mouth is like a honey-cell, And sweeter than the mouth of me?”

“The pressure of thy lips on mine Is exquisite like snow-cooled wine. Over the wasteness of my life Thy love is risen like a sun: All other loves that once seemed sweet Are seized by black oblivion.”

Again upon the shadow-thing He gazed in silence, questioning. And lo! with quaint familiar ring A spectral voice addressed the King: “O David, David, Judah’s swan! Why unto me dost thou this thing?” “Who art thou?” “I am Jonathan, My heart is like a wounded fawn.

“When Saul’s fierce anger, like a bull, Rose, by the Evil One made blind, My love to thee was wonderful, Passing the love of womankind. Hast thou forgotten everything My heart aches in remembering? Is such the harvest of our spring Of war and love and lute-playing?”

Was it a ghost’s voice or the wind? For still Bath-Sheba, unaware, Smiled. But King David ill in mind Scarce deemed her Beauty half so fair: “Stale is the wine this evening, And sick with roses is the air!” He tore the garland from his hair, And left Bath-Sheba lying there Perturbed, and vaguely wondering....

BENEDICTION

Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear! Such is the prayer most meet for one Whose eyes look up so starry-clear-- With all his flowerets new-begun Still may he bless your pathway, dear, Who weaves his golden threads around Your heart and mine together bound: Because your eyes are starry-clear-- Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child, When all the earth with longing swells, And lilies ring their silver bells For joy that he is nigh, And open wide, their lord to greet, Adoring humbly at his feet (Ah, spring has come, and spring is sweet!) Their inmost pageantry, And all the earth with love is wild-- Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child, And may the song of nightingales Re-echo from the wooded dales-- Like women’s arms so soft and mild, And as deep crimson roses wild, (Such is the song of the nightingales, And sad as tears of one that wails Where love’s high temple is defiled); Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

Spring’s blessing be upon your ways, Before in life’s distracting maze We fall on hopeless evil days! True, summer comes more richly warm And fraught with wilder passion’s storm Of torturing blisses; But golden gleams spring’s youthful form, More sweet his kisses; Soft breezes sing his roundelays-- Spring’s blessing be upon your ways!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear! His hair is decked with flowery cheer; Upon his brow the diadem Shines out by right of youth immortal; His might brings glad release to them That were condemned without the portal Of hope to live in sickening fear; Spring’s blessing be upon you, dear!

Spring’s blessing be upon you, child! And never may the wine-cup hold One drop of bitter questioning. May Death in spring-time find you, child-- But Love shall toss his locks of gold And make all life an endless spring, And fate and he be reconciled: Spring’s blessing be upon you, child!

SPRING

_For Peter Pan_

Spring came carolling through the land, Roses and laughter on every hand; But I was gazing with steadfast eye Where Christ was nailed on high.

Hawthorn blossoms were white and gay, Promise of fruit in the laden spray-- Only the tree of the Cross bare naught Save the ruin that death had wrought!

Spring passed on, and a breath of bloom Swept through the casement, filled the room. I cried in a sudden agony: “Lord Jesus, set me free!

“See, I am young, and the blood is hot, Longing for what I compass not-- Love, and sunshine, and fond delight In beauty warm and white.

“Lord, Thy Cross is a heavy load, Thorny and steep the upward road-- Lord, from the woods astir I hear Laughter and joyous cheer.

“Far be it from me, Lord, to scorn The bitter anguish that Thou hast borne: But redder his mouth in its youthful pride Than the spear-wound in Thy side!

“Ah, see how his hair like soft-spun gold Falls curling over his raiment’s fold, And his laughing eyes look out with glee The great wide world to see!

“I thrill at his music silvery sweet, And I long to follow his dancing feet: For lo! where they fall the flowers are born-- And hearts no more forlorn!

“My soul goes out to him since the hour He passed me by in his winsome power, And my blood is stirred by his witchery-- Prince Jesus, set me free!”

Bowed to my prayer the wounded Head, Died in the west the sunset red-- And a slow, slow drop of blood ran down From under the thorny crown.

Strange, in the years that have gone, the Cross Had grown so dear to me that its loss Went to my heart with a thrill of pain-- I had half turned back again!