The Chinese Nightingale | Page 6

is
unconquerable and eternal.
I
Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining hair the
May-winds fan,
Making it tangled as they can,
A mystery still,
star-shining yet,
Through ancient ages known to me
And now once
more reborn with me: --
This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,

Lord of the race since the world began.
This is my city Springfield,
My home on the breast of the plain.

The state house towers to heaven,
By an arsenal gray as the rain . . .

And suddenly all is mist,
And I walk in a world apart,
In the
forest-age when I first knelt down
At your feet, O Peace-of-the-Heart.
This is the wonder of twilight:
Three times as high as the dome

Tiger-striped trees encircle the town,
Golden geysers of foam.

While giant white parrots sail past in their pride.
The roofs now are
clouds and storms that they ride.
And there with the huntsmen of

mound-builder days
Through jungle and meadow I stride.
And the
Tiger Tree leaf is falling around
As it fell when the world began:

Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground,
Or the cloak of
a medicine man.
A deep-crumpled gossamer web,
Fringed with the
fangs of a snake.
The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs.

It shimmers on clay-hill and lake,
With the gleam of great bubbles
of blood,
Or coiled like a rainbow shell. . . .
I feast on the stem of
the Leaf as I march.
I am burning with Heaven and Hell.
II
The gray king died in his hour.
Then we crowned you, the prophetess
wise:
Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored
For the witchcraft hid in
your eyes.
Gift from the sky, overmastering all,
You sent forth your
magical parrots to call
The plot-hatching prince of the tigers,
To
your throne by the red-clay wall.
Thus came that genius insane:
Spitting and slinking,
Sneering and
vain,
He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf,
The
drug that was cunning and splendor and grief.
He had fled from the
mammoth by day,
He had blasted the mammoth by night,
War was
his drunkenness,
War was his dreaming,
War was his love and his
play.
And he hissed at your heavenly glory
While his councillors
snarled in delight,
Asking in irony: "What shall we learn
From this
whisperer, fragile and white?"
And had you not been an enchantress
They would not have loitered to
mock
Nor spared your white parrots who walked by their paws

With bantering venturesome talk.
You made a white fire of The Leaf.
You sang while the tiger-chiefs
hissed.
You chanted of "Peace to the wonderful world."

And they
saw you in dazzling mist.
And their steps were no longer insane,

Kindness came down like the rain,
They dreamed that like fleet

young ponies they feasted
On succulent grasses and grain.
. . . . .
Then came the black-mammoth chief:
Long-haired and shaggy and
great,
Proud and sagacious he marshalled his court:
(You had sent
him your parrots of state.)
His trunk in rebellion upcurled,
A curse
at the tiger he hurled.
Huge elephants trumpeted there by his side,

And mastodon-chiefs of the world.
But higher magic began.
For the
turbulent vassals of man.
You harnessed their fever, you conquered
their ire,
Their hearts turned to flowers through holy desire,
For
their darling and star you were crowned,
And their raging demons
were bound.
You rode on the back of the yellow-streaked king,
His
loose neck was wreathed with a mistletoe ring.
Primordial elephants
loomed by your side,
And our clay-painted children danced by your
path,
Chanting the death of the kingdoms of wrath.
You wrought
until night with us all.
The fierce brutes fawned at your call,
Then
slipped to their lairs, song-chained.
And thus you sang sweetly, and
reigned:
"Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men.

Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer,
And now it
comforts every heart that seeks for love again.
And now the
mammoth bows the knee,
We hew down every Tiger Tree,
We send
each tiger bound in love and glory to his den,
Bound in love . . . and
wisdom . . . and glory, . . . to his den."
III
"Beware of the trumpeting swine,"
Came the howl from the
northward that night.
Twice-rebel tigers warning was still
If we
held not beside them it boded us ill.
From the parrots translating the
cry,
And the apes in the trees came the whine:
"Beware of the
trumpeting swine.
Beware of the faith of a mammoth."
"Beware of the faith of a tiger,"
Came the roar from the southward

that night.
Trumpeting mammoths warning us still
If we held not
beside them it boded us ill.
The frail apes wailed to us all,
The
parrots reechoed the call:
"Beware of the faith of a tiger."
From the
heights of the forest the watchers could see
The tiger-cats crunching
the Leaf of the Tree
Lashing themselves, and scattering foam,

Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
The chiefs of the mammoths
our mastery spurned,
And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.

The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling
And told how
they trampled, maneuvered, and turned.
Ten thousand man-hating
tigers
Whirling down from the north, like a flood!
Ten thousand
mammoths oncoming
From the south as avengers of blood!
Our
child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead,
The roots of the
Tiger