Alcyone | Page 7

creed.
An old grave man I found, white-haired and gently spoken,
Who, as I
questioned, answered with a smile benign,
'Long years have come

and gone since these poor gauds were broken, Broken and banished
from a life made more divine.
'But still we keep them stored as once our sires deemed fitting, The
symbol of dark days and lives remote and strange,
Lest o'er the minds
of any there should come unwitting
The thought of some new order
and the lust of change.
'If any grow disturbed, we bring them gently hither,
To read the
world's grim record and the sombre lore
Massed in these pitiless
vaults, and they returning thither, Bear with them quieter thoughts, and
make for change no more.'
And thence I journeyed on by one broad way that bore me
Out of that
waste, and as I passed by tower and town
I saw amid the limitless
plain far out before me
A long low mountain, blue as beryl, and its
crown
Was capped by marble roofs that shone like snow for whiteness, Its
foot was deep in gardens, and that blossoming plain
Seemed in the
radiant shower of its majestic brightness
A land for gods to dwell in,
free from care and pain.
And to and forth from that fair mountain like a river
Ran many a dim
grey road, and on them I could see
A multitude of stately forms that
seemed for ever
Going and coming in bright bands; and near to me
Was one that in his journey seemed to dream and linger,
Walking at
whiles with kingly step, then standing still, And him I met and asked
him, pointing with my finger,
The meaning of the palace and the lofty
hill.
Whereto the dreamer: 'Art thou of this land, my brother,
And knowest
not the mountain and its crest of walls,
Where dwells the priestless
worship of the all-wise mother? That is the hill of Pallas; those her
marble halls!

'There dwell the lords of knowledge and of thought increasing, And
they whom insight and the gleams of song uplift;
And thence as by a
hundred conduits flows unceasing
The spring of power and beauty,
an eternal gift.'
Still I passed on until I reached at length, not knowing
Whither the
tangled and diverging paths might lead,
A land of baser men, whose
coming and whose going
Were urged by fear, and hunger, and the
curse of greed.
I saw the proud and fortunate go by me, faring
In fatness and fine
robes, the poor oppressed and slow,
The faces of bowed men, and
piteous women bearing
The burden of perpetual sorrow and the stamp
of woe.
And tides of deep solicitude and wondering pity
Possessed me, and
with eager and uplifted hands
I drew the crowd about me in a mighty
city,
And taught the message of those other kindlier lands.
I preached the rule of Faith and brotherly Communion,
The law of
Peace and Beauty and the death of Strife,
And painted in great words
the horror of disunion,
The vainness of self-worship, and the waste of
life.
I preached, but fruitlessly; the powerful from their stations Rebuked me
as an anarch, envious and bad,
And they that served them with lean
hands and bitter patience Smiled only out of hollow orbs, and deemed
me mad.
And still I preached, and wrought, and still I bore my message, For well
I knew that on and upward without cease
The spirit works for ever,
and by Faith and Presage
That somehow yet the end of human life is
Peace.
AMONG THE ORCHARDS

Already in the dew-wrapped vineyards dry
Dense weights of heat
press down. The large bright drops
Shrink in the leaves. From dark
acacia tops
The nuthatch flings his short reiterate cry;
And ever as
the sun mounts hot and high
Thin voices crowd the grass. In soft long
strokes
The wind goes murmuring through the mountain oaks.
Faint
wefts creep out along the blue and die.
I hear far in among the
motionless trees--
Shadows that sleep upon the shaven sod--
The
thud of dropping apples. Reach on reach
Stretch plots of perfumed
orchard, where the bees
Murmur among the full-fringed golden-rod,

Or cling half-drunken to the rotting peach.
THE POET'S SONG
I
There came no change from week to week
On all the land, but all one
way,
Like ghosts that cannot touch nor speak,
Day followed day.
Within the palace court the rounds
Of glare and shadow, day and
night,
Went ever with the same dull sounds,
The same dull flight:
The motion of slow forms of state,
The far-off murmur of the street,

The din of couriers at the gate,
Half-mad with heat;
Sometimes a distant shout of boys
At play upon the terrace walk,

The shutting of great doors, and noise
Of muttered talk.
In one red corner of the wall,
That fronted with its granite stain
The

town, the palms, and, beyond all,
The burning plain,
As listless as the hour, alone,
The poet by his broken lute
Sat like a
figure in the stone,
Dark-browed and mute.
He saw the heat on the thin grass
Fall