Part 5

A funeral wreath of sombre tone Where Death has shed a ray of gloom; And someone mourns for someone gone Within a vacant darkened room. So eloquent of human grief Is every leaf!

Such is the laurel crown that waits Our journey’s end through toil and tears; The emblem grim that decorates Your door and mine, e’er many years So that some idle passer by May wonder why!

MEMORY

She crouches in the caves of thought Enchantress, brooding o’er the fire, And those her mystic charms have sought Shall sometime gain their heart’s desire. With mumblings and averted gaze She weaves her spells, while to and fro Like shadows from the mounting blaze, Upon the walls there come and go The scenes of far off happier days Faint visions of the long ago.

The eastern tyrant steals in dead of night Down rock hewn stairs and through an iron door; And feasts his eyes by flaring torch’s light Upon the wealth heaped on his treasury floor; On bursting sacks of coin, caskets of gems Scepters of ruby, diamond diadems, A kingdom’s plunder. We, like him, have stored Our hidden wealth, and memory keeps the key, No jewels lustreless, are in our hoard But trophies of a richer dynasty, The sweet experiences that time endears Sifted and winnowed gleanings of the years.

With halting steps and labored breath we climb The attic stairs and rummage sadly through The toys and trifling things our childhood knew, Until our brooding thoughts are lost to time, And like the dust motes dancing in the beams Come thronging memories through a mist of dreams.

Forth from an aged tome there falls a flower Faded and crumbling, yet its petals glow, Once more in the sweet memory of that hour When loving fingers gave it long ago.

As through the spectral city of the dead With downcast eyes and reverential tread We note the broken columns and the urns In marble draped, and e’er our gaze returns To our own name graved on the granite bare The death date blank - yet it will soon be there!

Then Memory leads us with a sad, sweet smile Among those grass grown mounds. On many a stone Are names of those we loved - A little while And we shall be with them among our own. We seem to hear their welcoming voices ring; A whisper comes - “O death where is thy sting?”

Alone we came into this world - alone We venture forth. And recollections fond Are all that we may bear to the beyond To lay, some day, before a great white throne!

Our life has been a path forlorn that winds Forever on through gnarled and twisted years Of forest gloom. A path that memory finds And helps us trace it backward through our tears.

Upon a beechen trunk, deep in the bark Two carven hearts by single arrow cleft: How many years since youth, with ardent hand Inscribed them there. Two hearts and one bereft!

In the long autumn afternoons we go By russet moors and watch the slanting rays Bathe all the landscape with a golden haze That melts its harsher outlines. Thus the flow Of years has smoothed away each grief and pain Of childhood and life’s later bitterness, While Memory, with a witching tenderness, Has glorified the things that still remain.

In pensive revery our fancy turns Out to the west where the red sunset burns, Fain would we ponder when our sun may set And yield to the sad sweetness of regret, But Memory thrills with wild ecstasies Before that miracle of blazing skies.

In awe we gaze as lengthening shadows loom And night peers forth. But Memory hovers near We clutch her fingers in the deepening gloom And trembling hang upon her words of cheer, Till with a hopeful glance she points afar Where, like a gem on velvet, gleams a star!

We stand aghast beneath the vaulted dome Aglitter with creation’s rhapsodies The countless stars. And let our fancy roam Through space unfathomed, past the Pleiades Out to the deeps beyond. Until the veil That shuts us from the past seems strangely stirred And recollections vague - beyond the pale - Flit through our brain, half thoughts confused and blurred. A former life upon some sunnier sphere! Things long forgot and dimly sensed again Far off, for one rapt moment hover near. We strive to clutch them, but we strive in vain. Does Memory mock us, or in fear perchance

Shield us from some grim Terror’s Gorgon glance That glares unseen, from out the dark! Farflung A wisp of cloud darts like a dragon’s tongue And laps Orion’s belt. At glowing dawn The constellations fade - the veil is drawn!

The blood stained trail of history winds away Through ruined cities and past crumbling walls Half buried, where the tottering columns sway To winds that blunder through the vacant halls. Beyond lie relics of remoter time Dolmens and cromlechs, monoliths of stone Inscriptions weird and uncouth monsters carved On cavern walls, and bits of splintered bone Traced when the hairy mammoth ranged among Wild fens and woodlands when the world was young.

For all the runes inscribed on History’s page As Time’s slow finger etched them age by age For our dim eyes to see, Are but the priceless, deathless heritage Of Memory.

The traveler venturing into deserts grim That shimmer on the hot horizon’s rim, Does battle with the demons of the heat While sands like burning fingers, claw his feet But other wayfarers have braved the wrath Of scorching wastes - their bones still mark the path!

Our counsellor and guide, calm Memory holds The golden balances whose scale unfolds The wisdom of the tried - experience true. The balance trembles, what ought we to do? It dips, it falls, the standard points the way Today’s decisions rest on yesterday.

Upon the shores of Time’s vast sea we stand And peer into the gathering mists that rise Dark and portentious before our eyes, While through our fingers slip the grains of sand. We know the waves advancing, will not stay But wash our stumbling footprints all away.

Into that sea have sailed the winged hours Like argosies by youthful fancy sent On joyous quest to some far Orient Created in our dreams, pagoda’d towers To bold adventure beckoning gaily on, While tropic skies lent their romantic lure. But those exotic hours, alas, have gone And broken memories alone endure.

O time may rob us of our dearest friends. But not our memories! The present blends Into the vanished vistas of the past. Riches have taken wings but at the last A pittance left us. Old, we yet may drink From youth’s eternal fount. A golden link Still binds us with the loved we see no more. The lamp lit circle on our chamber floor Our little kingdom bounds. Within its space Our eyes, through Memory’s magic, see a face That shed, long years ago, a reliance there, A form adorned that graced a vacant chair. How rich and full was life, how barren now! Forsaken in our poverty we bow To Fate’s decree. But in despairing mood Kind Memory, pitying, shares our solitude.

Are memories but the vain desire For happier hours that once were mine? The embers of a dying fire. The dwindled lees of life’s rich wine? Or echoes from a seraph’s lyre But lightly touched by hands divine?

THE STOKER

_While a student at college, I voyaged to Naples in the steerage of an Italian liner. That was long before the days of the modern oil burner and the engine room was a fair reproduction of Dante’s Inferno. One afternoon a young stoker, begrimed and perspiring, crept up the iron ladder from the stoke hold and sat for a few minutes gazing out of an open port. His wistful face remains a vivid memory and occasioned the following lines._

Framed in the iron port there looms a face That Rembrandt’s stilus or the sombre muse Of Dante might have etched. Pale cheeks and eyes That gaze unseeing, out - a forehead damp With sweat and smeared with grime - a haunting face Through which there peers in wistful apathy A parched and withered soul. Some stoker crept, Gasping for air up from that hell below, Of lurid fires and gloom, where engines groan Like blinded Titans, and with giant strength Shoulder the huge hulk forward through the brine.

What thoughts beguile the furrows of that brow Does he perchance, recall the sunlit days Of childhood in some cottage gay with flowers Where Italy, enthroned among her rocks Broods o’er her vanished grandeur? Does the spell Of romance conjure up the golden past When his proud forbears bore the pomp of Rome To seas remote, when Roman legions ruled The servile world? Did he in flaunting crest, And burnished armour tread the galley deck? Or did a scourging destiny condemn His pain wracked shoulders to the oaken oar?

To his dulled ears float strains of music sweet From gilded cabins where the zest of life Enthralls the voyagers, while his the hand That drives the moving palace on her course Through seas of shimmering light. A gnome begrimed, Breathing foul dust and blistered by the heat In caverns far below. A galley slave Heaving and straining at a deadlier oar - An iron bar that burns the calloused palm.

Whene’er the furnace gapes its dragon jaws And blasts him with its breath, with reckless hand He flings his youth into that Moloch’s maw! And his reward? O bargain infamous A mess of pottage for a birth right riven Like Esau’s ancient sin. Repulsive fare A stinking hole to kennel like a cur Battling with vermin, foul and desperate Too bitter punishment for branded crime.

Chained by the manacles of circumstance To Vulcan’s smoking forge, a fate more dire Than once befell Prometheus wracked upon His cross of crags on grizzled Caucausus; With every shovel speed the winged hours His hopes, his dreams, his life but sordid lumps Of coal to feed those flames insatiate. Then Death, the pitiful, brings welcome rest. His body, warped and shrivelled, slides adown The tilted hatchway, weighted at the feet A burned out clinker cast into the sea!

IMAGINATION

Blest Being from some happier sphere O bend thy luminous footsteps near Were Heaven’s gates ajar, When down a moonlit path you came With dazzling smile and wings of flame Fair as the morning star?

Imagination, radiant sprite With crescent crown and stars bedight, And seraph’s eyes; O guide us up that filmy stair By ladders raised on buoyant air To vaulting skies!

Imagination is the singing rhyme In life’s dull prose. She blooms among the cruel thorns of time A beauteous rose. No Circe’s spell is hers, the poppy’s lure From present pain In drug engendered dreams; but calm and pure Is her sweet reign. Her finger traces in the storm cloud gray The rainbow’s arc; She sees within the gnarled volcanic clay The diamond’s spark; Forecasts the harvests in the sodded rows The plough shares fling; When all the world is buried neath the snows She dreams of spring. The cave man followed up the savage road The torch she bore, She marks within life’s rock encumbered lode The glinting ore. Imagination melts in purple mist The jagged peaks; And petty things yield to this alchemist The gold she seeks. No priestess of illusions, vague, unreal And not of earth, She rather helps us know and see and feel A thing’s true worth.

Along the wistful trail of yesterdays Backward sad Memory directs her gaze And points her withered hand. “Tomorrow” is the magic word that cheers Imagination onward through the years Where lies her promised land.

Imagination only can explain Those jewelled etchings on our window pane By fairies of the frost; From icy peaks and breaker fretted seas To elven glens beneath snow laden trees So cunningly embossed.

Calm reason tells us there is nothing there But mists congealing in the frosted air; ’Tis false, calm reason lies. For in that witching square the eye beholds A glittering world of wonder that unfolds Its luminious mysteries.

Imagination plumbs the deeps of space To roam among the stars, She gilds the workshop, lights the market place, And sunders prison bars. Her inspiration made Da Vinci thrill And o’er his canvas shone, And Michelangelo’s god like visions still Endure in living stone.

Beyond the sunset’s molten lava flood Lie mysteries yet untold - Imagination sails those seas of blood And mounts those walls of gold. Her finger laid on blind old Milton’s eyes Kindled no earthly glow - And deaf Beethoven thrilled to melodies No mortal ear may know.

Imagination decks the naked tree With candles burning clear, Until transfigured by her witchery It blooms with Christmas cheer. Life’s pathway leads us to the yawning tomb And there it seems to end - Imagination peering through the gloom Sees visions that transcend.

Imagination marked the goal That fired Columbus’ burning soul, Till like a vision through the haze A new world burst upon his gaze That voyage of destiny.

And ancient chroniclers relate Magellan, groping through the strait, Beyond the blue horizon’s rim Saw far off islands beckon him Out to an unknown sea!

“Imagination rules the world” so said The great Napoleon, and at the head Of conquering armies drove his ruthless way Made Afric sands and Russian snows obey His iron decrees. Upon an Alpine height Poised like an eagle, terrible as night, He swooped on Italy. His boundless reign Was the creation of his lonely brain.

On upstart thrones he set his underlings. Like puppets played with kingdoms and with kings - His fingers marked their bounds, his will their power Earth’s dictator, in that tremendous hour He dreamed like Lucifer, as grandly wove His dreams into realty, then strove For Godlike heights, and from those heights was hurled And in his meteor fall amazed the world!

The naked truth itself is never true. Stern facts are but the skeleton that binds Our living fancies. If we seek to view Truth absolute, her grisly horror blinds Our eyes, for her’s is but the mocking skull, Stark, hideous, the poor grain’s withered hull After the kernel dies. The glance, the smile, Expression, character, the soul beguile When, taking form o’er Truth’s repellent base Imagination beams with radiant face.

Imagination is the martial strain That fires disheartened soldiers for the fray; Her pitying fingers smooth the brow of pain, She whispers low, - “This too, shall pass away.” Her’s is the vision, the all seeing eye That pierces where truth’s nuggets lie concealed. Illusions crumble at her query, “Why?” The Sphinx’s ancient wisdom is revealed To her clear sight. She holds the golden key That can unlock the guarded door of fate. She is the lodestar of our destiny, Her’s is the Godlike impulse to create. The treasure that Prometheus once stole From Heaven’s high altar is her sacred fire; To the insensate clod she is the soul, The Phoenix risen from the funeral pyre!

The atoms spin, the elements adhere Till matter forms like mold: and vaunted life A fungus growth upon a dying sphere Whirls on into the dark. “The futile strife “Of some vast mechanism’s grinding gears.” - Grim science tells us - but the vision comes Of life immortal ranging down the years Through endless vistas of milleniums!

IN WELLFLEET BY THE SEA

“Why do you dwell in Wellfleet by the sea?” Inquires some wondering friend, “Is this quaint village in the dunes the end To life’s bright trail, the world that you have known Shut out behind you? From a weed draped stone “A barnacle might thus survey the sky, “As the grand pageant of mankind sweeps by.”

To this I answer, “Not this quiet place But vaster regions are his home as well Who humbly seeks where the immortals dwell, Those kingly souls of every clime and race. The seven branching candlestick ablaze With wisdom’s radiant light Brightens his studious library at night And sheds its all illuminating rays Across the lengthening years, Till loving presences sages and seers, Are his true friends. Must he alone abide With Socrates or Shakespeare as his guide?

Art’s priceless treasures stored in Greece or Rome The mighty masters limned By the slow lapse of centuries undimmed. Fade into nothingness beneath the dome Whereon a mightier Artist graves His lines And blocks His bold designs; For He can etch with lightnings, and His dyes Are wrung from clouds that drip with red and gold, While silent watchers, awestruck, may behold His wonders blazoned on the midnight skies.

One need not dwell alone beside the sea, There are no bars To sunder Him who walked on Galilee Or blur the vision of the loftiest stars No solitary being, set apart, Is he who feels the soul sustaining calm Steal o’er his spirit like a healing balm From Mother Nature’s all embracing heart.

His dreams are lulled by the resounding sea, The rhythm of the waves that never tire, While sweeter than the strains of Orpheus’ lyre The dying wind’s melodious minstrelsy, Ranging this narrow bourne of surf and sand, Seems echoing from the horns of fairyland.

And when he strolls in solitude, the breeze That breathes upon his face, Was never curbed by this confining space, For once it roamed the lonely Hebrides. The murmuring tide That swells the shallows of this pleasant bay, Washed coral islands half a world away And coursed through boundless oceans far and wide.

Rather he looks with sympathetic eye As with their faces tense and shut from heaven By scorpion whips of fear and envy driven The jostling multitudes of men rush by; Spurning the bounties kindly Nature gave As though in haste for an untimely grave.

No shadows cast by avarice or pride Darken this countryside; That tyrant trinity, fame, wealth, and power Have somehow lost their spell. Each passing hour Bears costlier freight than theirs, the gifts divine - Health, gratitude, content. Those gifts are mine So why should reckless wastrels pity me With all my wealth, in Wellfleet by the sea?

PRINTED BY THE CAPE CODDER PRINTERY ORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS

Transcriber’s Notes

Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Unusual punctuation has been retained as printed.