A Reading of Life, and Other Poems | Page 6

growth of
man in grisly brute;
But he, the flower at head and soil at root,
Is
miracle, guides he the brute to God.
And that way seems he bound;
that way the road,
With his dark-lantern mind, unled, alone,

Wearifully through forest-tracts unsown,
He travels, urged by some
internal goad.
Dares he behold the thing he is, what thing
He would become is in his
mind its child;
Astir, demanding birth to light and wing;
For battle
prompt, by pleasure unbeguiled.
So moves he forth in faith, if he has
made
His mind God's temple, dedicate to truth.
Earth's nourishing
delights, no more gainsaid,
He tastes, as doth the bridegroom rich in

youth.
Then knows he Love, that beckons and controls;
The star of
sky upon his footway cast;
Then match in him who holds his tempters
fast,
The body's love and mind's, whereof the soul's.
Then Earth her
man for woman finds at last,
To speed the pair unto her goal of goals.
Or is't the widowed's dream of her new mate?
Seen has she virulent
days of heat in flood;
The sly Persuader snaky in his blood;
With
her the barren Huntress alternate;
His rough refractory off on kicking
heels
To rear; the man dragged rearward, shamed, amazed;
And as
a torrent stream where cattle grazed,
His tumbled world. What, then,
the faith she feels?
May not his aspect, like her own so fair

Reflexively, the central force belie,
And he, the once wild ocean
storming sky,
Be rebel at the core? What hope is there?
'Tis that in each recovery he preserves,
Between his upper and his
nether wit,
Sense of his march ahead, more brightly lit;
He less the
shaken thing of lusts and nerves;
With such a grasp upon his brute as
tells
Of wisdom from that vile relapsing spun.
A Sun goes down in
wasted fire, a Sun
Resplendent springs, to faith refreshed compels.
Poem: The Cageing Of Ares
[Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]
How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
At sight of her boy
Giants on the leap
Each over other as they neighboured home,

Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,
And up fired mountain
crags their shadows danced.
Close with them in their fun, she scarce
could guess,
Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
It
signalled some adventurous master-trick
To set Olympians buzzing in
debate,
Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
The Tyranny
menaced. Ephialtes high
On shoulders of his brother Otos waved

For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
Compact,
complexioned in his gleeful roar

While Otos aped the prisoner's

wrists and knees,
With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
Till
Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
And both upon her bosom
shaken to speech,
Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
Like
rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
The hurried spout. And as
when drifting storm
Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon
A
peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
Of grass and the river's crooks
and snaky coils,
Signification marvellous she caught,
Through
gurglings of triumphant jollity,
Which now engulphed and now gave
eye; at last
Subsided, and the serious naked deed,
With
mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
Stood in her sight
confirmed: she could believe
That these, her sprouts of promise, her
most prized,
These two made up of lion, bear and fox,
Her sportive,
suckling mammoths, her young joy,
Still by the reckoning infants
among men,
Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
In envy
dumb, in envious heart elate:
These two combining strength and craft
had snared,
Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged

The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
Destroyer, ravager,
superb in plumes;
The barren furrower of anointed fields;
The
scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
Her hated enemy, too long
her scourge:
Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth
When
they had seized on his implacable spear,
Hugged him to reedy
helplessness despite
His godlike fury startled from amaze.
For he
had eyed them nearing him in play,
The giant cubs, who gambolled
and who snarled,
Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount
Ossa,
beside a brushwood cavern; there
On Earth's original fisticuffs they
called
For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,

Approving,
deemed that sometime trained to arms,
Good servitors of Ares they
would be,
And ply the pointed spear to dominate
Their rebel
restless fellows, villain brood
Vowed to defy Immortals. So it
chanced
Amusedly he watched them, and as one
The lusty twain
were on him and they had him.
Breath to us, Powers of air, for
laughter loud!
Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!
Bound like a
wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
Because they knew our Mother

Gaea loathed him,
Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
A
desolating fire to blind the sight
With splendour built of fruitful
things in ashes;
The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
Her
deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
Heard from the babe as from
the broken crone.
Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
And
tumbled down the cave. But rather look -
Ah, that the woman tattler
had not sought,
Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
Hermes, after
the thirteen songful months!
Prompting the Dexterous to work his
arts,
And shatter earth's delirious holiday,
Then first, as where the
fountain runs a stream,
Resolving to composure on its throbs.
But
see