Perpetual Light | Page 9

revealed, when all the gates of being?Burst open to a torrent of such blinding light!
Yes, and here I stand warped by life's derision,?A mountebank grimacing lest at last I weep.?What man could tell that I had ever seen a vision?More wonderful than any on the steeps of sleep?
Days come, days go, as the clock ticks hours.?Years loom, years pass; the shadows rise....?Like the twilight breathing over holy flowers?Once my love drew near. And I lifted up my eyes....
TRIBUTE
Remembering one woman I have seen?And have known,?Benignant eyes, nobility of mien,?A scarf from off a perfect shoulder blown,?Solicitude, white ardor in a face,?Motions like water under the moon's grace,--?I wonder much how men can be so base,?So worse than stone.
Oh murmurings of music through the world,?Ye women born?To arduous things and angers, and upwhirled?Like tongues of flame through smoke of the world's scorn,?Crystalline lights, awful and fitful gleams?Of reconciliation with our dreams,?Through you alone the world's true spirit streams?Sounding her silver horn.
All things I wish for you that height may hold,?Who hold the race,?Oh desperate runners on the track unrolled?Over the highlands now, in the sun's face;?O swift and free, hoverers on the verge?Whence the impossible things we mocked emerge,--?O wings--wings--sliding the starry surge?And veering on the chase!
The satyr and the centaur race below?Deriding wings above.?Manful they meet and fight to overthrow?All they are wearied of,--?Manful they build, demolish, drive, are driven,--?But you are free, who have more greatly striven,?Yours is the light above their lightless heaven,?For yours is Love!
THE SILVER HIND
Through the black forest?You glance, you start,--?Through the black forest?That is my heart!?Beautiful, silver-heeled,?Swift as wind,?Topping the brake?Like a flying hind!
I have a bugle?Of ivory?The wizard of twilight?Gave to me.?I hear it winding in my heart,?In the black forest, where you start.
And I know,?Like huntsmen in gold and green,?That my thoughts spur past?Where you have been,?And, like hounds that have slipped the leash,?They race,--?Bell-tongued brachets?Upon your trace.
Through the black forest?You reach, you run,?Out of the shadow,?Into the sun.?And the hunt behind?Is lyric and loud?Where horses and hounds?And huntsmen crowd....
But you are gone--?Oh, you are gone?Out to the blaze and glory of dawn!?Leaving the print of blood-red anemones?In the mould, and echoes of ancient glees?Shaking like silver leaves on my sombre trees!
ARISTEAS RELATES HIS YOUTH
(_Who, in his age, was reported a magician throughout all Greece, as it was said that his soul could leave his body at will._)
Early rose was the light?As I sought the portico?Whence her wings had fluttered in flight?And with surge and flow?Had risen to soar, and go?Out, out over the sea,?Dwindling white and soft and slow?To a memory.
Oh, grief of all years to be!?Most miserable of men!?My throat ached with my tears,?As a sword driven through my ears?Was my anguish then.
Dark were the rooms where they lay?Who loved in the flesh?(Diana's disciples they said!)?In that lupanar of the dead.?Sweet was the flesh they loved,?Graceful the limbs that moved,?Wild the passion that they
Desired afresh?In the night. Were they not of the world,?Of lust and toil and war??And I--I too??Yea--till that music swirled?About me, and I knew?I was visited of a star!
A star it was grew and grew?(As hot in the dark I lay,?Panting, after the feast,)?Glorious out of the east,?And a face that made my soul?A slowly uncrumpling scroll,?It glimmered so near and fey!
Her voice rippled like water?In the light gold-green?Of some mid-noon ravine.?She stooped, the moon's daughter,?With her hand underneath my head?And her lips on the lips of the dead.?I arose from my rumpled bed.
A waterfall sliding green?In a silver-mosaicked screen?We two trod under;?Then I turned where her light touch led,?Trembling but unafraid.?Across some Elysian sod,?Winged of heel, I floated--a god!--?Down and into a moon-filled glade,?A glade of wonder....
But the east grew steadily bright,?A glaring sea of light.?I throbbed to drums of dread.?And my eyes still held her flight?When she broke that dream with one kiss?Of agonizing bliss,?Stood in streaming flame by my bed,?Gestured, and fled.
Between the pillars I saw,?Beyond the pillars I heard?Wings of no mortal bird?Flare and withdraw.?And they who had feasted and passioned?Slept, finding light no bar,?Slept in their bodies' ease.?But under those rustling seas?That lapped at the water-stair?I ached to plunge my despair?And my heart, that some grim God fashioned?To be visited of a star!
MAN POSSESSED
Shaken, a thousand times shaken, with the millions that grieve, Now at last I am overtaken. I will say I believe.?I ran with the pennons of morning astream over me.?On the precipice, scorning its warning, I ran to be free.?Still I love high winds and the great running and the steep verge, But strength past my strength overtakes my cunning, and stars emerge High over me, eternal, deathless, deep over deep,?And my head sways heavy as I run breathless, my eyelids droop with sleep.
Yet it is not this has shaken my soul in me,?Not the bounds of life have