MOONS
OF
GRANDEUR
WILLIAM ROSE BENET
MOONS OF GRANDEUR WIILLAM ROSE BENET
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
A BOOK OF POEMS
BY WILLIAM ROSE BENET
NEW XHr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO HENRY MARTYN HOYT
Remembering 1906-1920
4405-i?;
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOR permission to reprint here a few of the shorter poems included, the author thanks The Cen tury Magazine, Harper's Monthly Magazine, The Yale Review, The Bookman, The Delineator, Ains- lee's Magazine, The Munsey Magazine, The Touch stone, Romance, The Seven Arts, Poetry, Contem porary Verse, and The Bowling Green, New York Evening Post.
CONTENTS
GASPARA STAMPA 11
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY " . . . 15
LEGEND OF MICHELOTTO 24
THERE LIVED A LADY IN MILAN ... 29
IL MORO IN LOCHES 32
NICCOLO IN EXILE 40
RENEGADE 42
BOURBON'S LOVE 45
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN ... .52
MICHELANGELO IN THE FISH-MARKET . . 74
BAST 75
THE SUN GAZER 76
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL 83
THORSTAN'S FRIEND 93
THE BALLAD OF TAILLEFER .... 96
ON EDWARD WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER . 103 THE PRIEST IN THE DESERT . . . .104
EUGENIE'S SOLITAIRE . . . . 109
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION , i . 113
THE SILVER BALLOON . . . . . 125 THE MASTER OF THE FLYING CASTLE . .126
DUST OF THE PLAINS 130
THE RACE 132
THE VOYAGE 135
[vii]
CONTENTS
ALONG THE EMBARCADERO .... 145
THE CITY 147
WHEN THE CATERER SANG OF His WEDDING 150 METAMORPHOSIS — NOT IN OVID . . .152
THE HERETIC 154
THE LONELY 155
ENIGMA 157
RENCONTRE 158
THE PHILOSOPHER 160
FRIENDS 162
To MY FATHER 164
TRICKSTERS . . . . . . .168
BEING CURIOUS . . . . . .169
O'CONNOR'S CAFE . . . . .170
MENAGERIE .171
FROM SPARTA 172
THE FOIL 173
CHARLES DARWIN 174
NIGHT 175
[viii]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
MOONS OF GRANDEU&
GASPARA STAMPA
" Saffo de' nostri tempi alta Gagpara"
VENICE — CINQTJECEXTO
" I burned, I wept, I sang; I burn, sing, weep again, And I snail weep and sing, I shall forever burn Until or death or time or fortune's turn Shall still my eye and heart, still fire and pain."
LIKE flame, like wine, across the still lagoon
The colors of the sunset stream.
Spectral in heaven as climbs the frail veiled moon,
So climbs my dream.
Out of the heart's eternal torture fire
No eastern phoenix risen —
Only the naked soul, spent with desire,
Bursts its prison.
O love, magnificent and dreadful love At last consuming heart and brain, Palling all days with thoughts we weary of, Weary of pain, —
[in
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Gaspara Stampa [CONTINUED]
O golden city set in the sun's heart,
Isled in a golden sea,
Yet what a vague phantasmal counterpart
Of what Di'ght be,
Darkness comes down upon your domes and towers,
Dark gondolas gliding under evening bells.
Deep night spreads burning over faded hours
The hell of hells.
The shadows mock me with his step, his sigh.
The treacherous tapers flare
And flaw; but though I stare with burning eye
He is not there.
Collalto, my illustrious lord, it is
So strange! One word, one sign
Would turn, like Cana's metamorphosis,
These tears to wine,
Wine from my heart — or shall my blood be shed
To seal the crumpled scroll,
Who gave you living, who would give you dead
Body and soul?
Capitals, columns, arches, sculptures fall, The ivy crawls on Istrian stone; Tower and palace, chapel, drawbridge, all Time leaves prone; [12]
GASPARA STAMPA
Gaspara Stampa [CONTINUED]
Only our Alps whose blue without one stain Blends into higher light — My namesake stream of the Trevisian plain — Time finds bright.
Yet will not Time, kind to the Paduan, scroll
My name at last with yours
Vittoria, Veronica? If the soul
Of song endures
I grasp eternity. O barren bliss
Beside pomegranate flowers
Swayed in the moonlight, and one secret kiss, —
Bliss once ours.
For France is far, so far, my dearest lord,
Beyond the Alps so far, men say,
One little word, even one little word
Loses its way.
Is it not piteous then to die, to live
In death, to gasp unheard
In thirst unslaked for what one word could give,
One little word?
And for a faith to tread consuming heat And for a love to look on death And to go robed in fire, in fire complete, With sharp-drawn breath,
While the trapped heart, grown frenzied with its pain,
[13]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Gaspara Stampa [CONTINUED]
For joy once scorning fate
Storms with wild wings, again and yet again,
Your iron gate?
The gods returned to earth when Venice broke
Like Venus from the dawn-encircled sea.
Wide laughed the skies with light when Venice woke
Crowned of antiquity,
And as with spoil of gems bewildering earth
Art in her glorious mind
Jewelled all Italy for joy's rebirth
To all mankind.
And we were heirs, true bounden heirs of this
Epoch of glittering life and bannered love
Even as we whispered in our earliest kiss
The joy thereof,
Ere sunlight on a condottiere's lance,
A bitter trumpet blown
Scattered your words and swept your heart toward
France, Left me alone.
The hyssop on the reed, this, this to drink In this dark hour shall seal it as the last. No word, my lord — and no more thoughts to think When this is past.
Titian awhile his garden walk may tread And Sansovino keep
My words, words you may read when I am dead, But I — would sleep. [14]
THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY "
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY "
In the wild days, in the wild days when all Ro-
magna lay Blood-soaked by the ferocity of Borgia, loosed on
Italy, One woman faced him to the last — for that was
Catherine's way!
THE dawn of a new century crept over Forli town.
White and immaculate fell the snow on the be siegers, camped below;
And Catherine from the parapet of her battlements looked down.
The moonlight over Forli town lit up the trampled plain,
The enemy's camp, each street and square spat tered with blood. And high in air
Catherine, with chin on breast, looked down, and reckoned up the slain.
Her captains and her engineers stood in the
shadows, still. Mournful and pale the cold moonlight gleamed
upon ramp and tower that night, But troubled not the Countess* brows, knit by the
Sforza will.
[15]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
A month of beating off assault since Imola flamed
and fell And the town's signory, craven then, flung wide
the gates to Caesar's men, Though Catherine lashed them with her scorn, and
held the citadel.
Here was no soft and feeble flesh — Lucrezia's
golden shame. Here stood a woman steeled in grief, ravaged by
sorrows past belief, A condottiere's bastard born, who bore the Sforza
name.
"On such a night as this," she thought "The
infamy came to pass When, as the carded flax took fire, three poigniards
flashed upon my sire And the Duke Galeazzo fell, slain at Saint
Stephen's mass."
" On such a night as this/' she thought, her thin
lips tight with pain. " That apostate priest who blessed the bread
whereon the assassins' blood was shed Watched for the ending of their work done in Saint Stephen's fane ! "
[16]
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY *
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
" Yet Caesar, Valentino, mark my single purpose
here! Whatever may be dealt or done, I walk within the
steps of one Who — though he sowed and reaped much shame
— was never known to fear.
" They wed me to a scurvy hound called richest prince in Rome,
Who sought Lorenzo's overthrow — that brave, su perb Magnifico ! —
The loutish clown Riario, clerk in his uncle's home !
" Yet his foul deed in Florence done, with the
base Pazzi's aid, Shows not so ill as fratricide, whence Naples,
Caesar, spurned your pride! The Repetta's bargeman knew what deed made
that dark night afraid!
" Under a shuddering sickly sun they brought the
corpse to shore; And terrible bestial sounds of woe came screaming
from Saint Angelo Where Alexander frothed in pain and clawed upon
the floor.
[17]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
" Remorse, in full consistory, he vowed — white lips
a foam, — Repentance — ashes on his head ! . . . But living
lust forgets the dead, And Giulia Bella sways him still at the old game
in Rome.
" With fifteen thousand Papal troops you dare all
duchies then, The mercenary Swiss brigade and Louis' lancers for
your aid? Shame of the Purple, monster Duke, lay on — bring
up your men!
" I have surmounted many a death, ere this risked all and won:
Ten years of plot and counterplot, rebellion, mur der, hate grown hot —
So now I trust no broken reed — be it my elder son.
" When rebels rose at Imola and killed the castel lan,
Think you I flinched? I rode all night, though great with child. The morning light
Saw me still pacing forth and back before their barbican. [18]
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY '
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
" O Feo said, ' Tread not within ! Their swords
are out to slay ! ' But ' Come — alone — to parley here ! ' they cried.
I entered without fear. They groveled ere one hour had passed. Theirs
was none other way.
*r I faced the ride back : sixteen miles. I clung the
saddle-horn. A ruddy mist before mine eyes mile after mile
would dance and rise. The hoofs jarred 'Home!* The hoofs jarred
' Home ! ' . . . Next day my child was born.
" You Arab bastard of the Pope, — by the Blood,
what do you here? Yonder in Rome your father plays with topaz,
purple chrysoprase, Carbuncle and pink Indian pearl, half-slavering
o'er such gear!
" I saw your eyes, Caesar, your lips' full scarlet,
your bronzed skin Under your velvet bonnet doffed. Aye, with an
evil smile you scoffed. But Prince of Darkness though you be, your siege
shall never win ! "
[19]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
She lifted eyes and saw the stars bright-glistering on the night.
She turned and strode among her peers, her cap tains and her engineers,
Into the castle, and, flambeau-lit, wound down the stair's steep flight.
And like pale rose the New Year dawned.
More furious the attack Leapt up without. She sate within, grinding her
teeth. " You shall not win! " In the stone hearth the red sparks danced against
the chimney-back.
See only! Was she girl again, entering the People's
Gate; In gold-embroidered cloak arrayed, in crimson satin
and black brocade, 'Mid festooned flowers and censers swung, riding
through Rome in state?
To grand Saint Peter's riding slow — her marriage
day in Rome! The vision wavered on the air. Then, suddenly
and vivid there, She saw against the arrassed wall — a different
coming-home.
[20]
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY '
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED] Stiffening silent into stone, her green-blue eyes
looked through The wall — and saw the gala floats, and heard the
populace split their throats While the artillery salvoes boomed. In prophecy
she knew
The Borgia's captives passing slow by that same
massive gate, To crown his triumph. A glimpse of gray yonder,
the broad Flaminian Way Stretched o'er the flat Campagna — north. Escape?
Alas, too late!
For on her wrists what fetters clanked! Her wild
eyes, anguish-full, Gazed up, and drooped, as wearily in that fell
triumph, and heavily, She trod — the last, least slave of all — a hostage
to the Bull!
41 No ! " She sprang up. " A sortie then — at once !
That shall not be ! " Great shadows writhed upon the wall. She shouted
for her seneschal, Paced with ground teeth, and knew her life in
hopeless jeopardy.
[21]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
They burned the great carved wainscot even, be fore the breach was made.
She heard the roaring of the sack; turned on the tower-stair, beaten back,
And, for an instant, wavered there — most desolate and afraid.
Then, straight recovered, proud she rose. " God
knows what this may mean. But since I stand at last at bay, we all die — 'tis
the only way ! " And she dispatched two trusted men to fire the
magazine.
They heard the dull concussion boom; but pre science stifling speech
Warned them of failure, through the din, and that the foe swarmed on and in
Trampling along the corridors through one more widening breach.
So, in the moated tower, at last the Borgia strode
to find That perilous matron, stony-pale, standing like
stone, — nor might prevail By words, until two skulking braves pinioned her
from behind.
[22]
" THE DAUGHTER OF INIQUITY "
" The Daughter of Iniquity " [CONTINUED]
And Yves d'Allegre could tell of her black year
deep underground, Starving, for fear in cell to sup lest sweet white
powder in some cup Dispatch her; sleepless, lest she be a corpse in
Tiber found.
Florence could tell what wrongs were wrought on
a woman chained and lone Living the death beyond the dead. " For there
be things," she sometimes said, " That, an' I told them simply true, would turn
the world to stone."
So be it. I know she raised one son strong as her
will was strong; That the Black Bands in time became through
Italy a sign, a name Wherewith, and with their leader's fame, Romagna
echoed long.
In the wild days, in the wild days when the Bull
gored Italy , Through black mischance and heavy grief, a woman
held — beyond belief Against the Borgia's power and pride, one small
lost seigniory!
[23]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
LEGEND OF MICHELOTTO
So it befell, because the times were hard,
This Michelotto, Captain of the Guard,
Nigh to Cord Lane, in a vile drinking den
Lingered the last of Caesar Borgia's men,
Having found beyond Viana, in the vale,
That stripped, stark blood-laced body, prone and
pale,
Fixed eyes and wolf-teeth glittering to the stars. Thus last he saw the Duke. So from all wars, All coil of camp and court, he fled Navarre To live at hazard by the outlier's star Scornful of every faction — old and grim.
This was a night when musing fell on him, Secret in Rome, strayed lately from the sea.
Sprawled on his lousy pallet it seemed that he Was multiplied in forms around the room Where on the floor a lantern made the gloom Even more invading by its little light. Some fifteen Michelottos were that night Regarding him from all sides of his bed. He clutched again the wineskin, and his head Turned slow each way; his eyes revealed their whites. [24]
LEGEND OF MICHELOTTO
Legend of Michelotto [CONTINUED]
This was, perhaps, one of his troubled nights,
For suddenly that raped Venetian bride,
Caracciolo's, crouched by his bedside
With hair dishevelled, eyes glaring wildly round.
One feels it discommoding that the drowned From Tiber rise and walk, and come thus late; Nor, boy Astorre, should you, smiling, wait Blue by that window-grate the moon shines through. Those emaciated wraiths that crowd round you Forget how kindly you were used anon.
" Ecco ! These two were vilest. Smilest ? Smilest Thou — thou — or thou, mine image? Fiends, be gone!"
Thus, elbow-raised, the gulping sbirro cries, His coarse dark hair fallen tangled in his eyes.
He turned again. His hand groped for the wine. There gleamed the poigniard-hilt 'twixt neck and
spine
Driven home. It quivered yet. Ah, how the wan Forehead blood-smeared and dark eyes of this man, The wried mouth gaping to its gurgling cry, Called back the Ghetto midnight. . . . How
they ply
Dagger on dagger, till heavily he falls! Sparks flit from flints. Beneath the bagnio walls Wheels the white charger, champing at his load.
[25]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Legend of Michelotto [CONTINUED] Truly, not thus a Captain General rode Ere this through Rome!
So Gandia; let us hope
That Don Giovanni, captain to the Pope. . . . But no, he glimmers yonder by the wall. He bears the head that was so swift to fall By that backhanded blow.
The head smiles too !
The Borgia's will it was to run him through Because his wife was soft and weak of will.
As for the poisoned sleepers, how they fill
The earth-floored lean-to — many in their throes.
The Mantuan archbishop, I suppose,
Is he who lies the straightest, Giacomo's —
The protonotary — is the stiffest pose.
Gian the cardinal looks his pained surprise. . . .
The sbirro shook his mane, strained limbs to rise, Sank back — and entered Don Alfonso's room.
High-ceiled, that great apartment in the gloom, Save for the burning brazier, swarmed with night. The strangler with the bowstring craves no light However, and the fixed imperious glance Of the cloaked Duke precludes one look askance. Wail of all wails — 0 wail that rings forever! [26]
LEGEND OF MICHELOTTO
Legend of Michelotto [CONTINUED]
Veined eyeballs starting, with a huge endeavor,
This Don Michele Coreglia heaved upright.
Lying or sitting 'tis no better plight
Even with the palms pressed tight against the eyes.
Ramiro in Cesena square, the cries
Of the rebels in their dungeon, beasts at bay !
Red — as the hands press eyeballs — red as they Who fell at Capua — is the swimming light. The shrieking of the nuns upbraids the night — Or is it ghastly singing, far away:
All the power of earth and heaven
You were given! Borgia , swords in Our Lady's heart
Are sharp, are seven: Poigniards plunged to the bloody hiltf
Red daggers driven!
" Yet/' groaned this Michelotto, swaying now Upright, one arm across his streaming brow, His bare feet shuffling on the earthen floor, " Yet, thou dark man, I shall not see thee more, King of these kakodaimons — but a king! Ah, Caesar, Satan, sire, if this one thing Should pass — that thou couldst rise from earth and tell . . .!"
[27]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Legend of Michelotto [CONTINUED]
A voice spoke then. A voice said " Is it well
To summon weary shadows out of Hell? "
In armor red as blood he stood revealed
The golden lilies quartered in his shield.
The outstretched hand — oh grisly strangest
thing ! —
Flashed with the sapphire cardinalitial ring. Three-pointed flame licked up from foot to head.
So Michelotto, with the dawn, lay dead.
[281
THERE LIVED A LADY IN MILAN
THERE LIVED A LADY IN MILAN
THERE lived a lady in Milan Wrought for a madness unto Man, A fawn II Moro could not tame ; Her beauty unbedecked with pearls More than all Beatrice's girls, Her eyes a secret subtle flame.
Brocade wherein her body dressed
Was hallowed; flowers her footstep pressed
Suspired incense ere they died.
Her father mazed with alchemy
Wrought in his cellar ceaselessly.
She lived in quiet, gentle pride.
And by her garden in his hour Passed Leonardo, come with power From Florence. So he saw her face Bending above the shriveled stalks Of autumn on the garden walks. And Leonardo drank her grace.
She was as if a sunset were With fresher colors, clearer air, And a more golden coil of cloud.
[29]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
There Lived a Lady in Milan [CONTINUED]
She was as if all citherns swooned With one rich harmony myriad-tuned, Haunting, enchanting, pure and proud.
And Leonardo said, " Ladye,
I know not what you do to me
Who have and have not, seek nor find.
The sea-shell and the falcon's feather,
Greece and the rock and shifting weather
Have taught me many things of mind.
" My heart has taught me many things, And so have emperors, popes, and kings, And so have leaves and green May-flies ; Yea, I have learned from bird and beast, From slouching dwarf and ranting priest. Yet, in the end, how am I wise ?
" Though with dividers and a quill I weave some miracle of will, — Say, that men fly, — though I design For peace or war a thousand things Gaining applause from dukes and kings, — Though soft and deft my colors shine,
" Though my quick wit breed thunderbolts I may not loose on all these dolts, Things they are babes to comprehend, — Though from the crevice in stone or lime I trace grave outlines mocking Time, — I know when I am beaten, Friend ! [30]
THERE LIVED A LADY IN MILAN
There Lived a Lady in Milan [CONTINUED] " Say that there lived of old a saint Even Leonardo dared not paint, Even Leonardo dared not draw, — Too perfect in her breathing prime For colors to transmit to time Or quill attempt, — aye, €v'n in awe !
" Say this, cold histories, and say I looked not on her from this day Lest frenzied I destroy my art. O golden lily, — how she stands Listening! Beauty, — ah, your hands, Your little hands tear out my heart !
" Do you not know you are so fair, Brighter than springtime in the air ? What says your mirror to your mind ? " " Phantom," she whispered, " Do you plead With ghostly gestures? . . . Ah, indeed, Pity a lady deaf and blind
" Since birth ! " . . . Then Leonardo turned
Saluting, though the sunset burned
In nimbus round her, — went his way
In daze, repeating " God's defect,
Even he ! — and masterpiece elect ! "
He never saw her from that day.
[31]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
IL MORO IN LOCHES
OH sly and subtle light ! There ! At this hour,
As ever, you gleam and linger. So I thrust
This parchment hand of mine, whose withered
power
Mocks me, straight through your moted golden dust. Warm! It is warmth the pores feel, warmth that
lingers
So brief a space! Stiffly I twist my fingers, Shuddering to stand. Again my crayon marks Where now you quiver, cleaving my dungeon's
darks.
Light ! Fading — fading — ah, at last 'tis gone !
Only this twilight now, by which I read
My book of Heaven and Hell ; and so am drawn
Up through the nine concentric heavens indeed
Into the Empyrean, — yet dashed no less
Through the nine circles of Hell's wretchedness.
Certes, th' abyss of wailing gripes on me
" Mute of all light, and bellowing like the sea."
Yea, Florentine ! And mouthing shades are driven Across my vision, where none their God may name. Through inky air Francesca's form has striven, [32]
IL MORO IN LOCHES
// Moro in Loches [CONTINUED]
Speaking thy words, streaming discolored
flame . . .
Thy words I traced here on the stone, slow, slow In anguish: that " there is no greater woe Than the remembering in misery Of the glad time " — those words that stifle me !
For, ah ! the face is not Ravenna's now.
'Tis Isabella, with eyes that burn and burn.
" Those injured souls ! " Dante, you cry. You bow
Your face . . . Diavolo! I my face in turn
Bow in my shaking hands. Aragonese,
Begone! He sickened by natural disease.
My nephew was not murdered. . . . There were
things Of state — alliances — and French kings!
She imputes poison. Bice, do you hear? Her ghostly hands hold up a poisoned fruit. In Pavia's castle grounds the leaves are sere. The sun hangs red. . . . You guess what you
impute,
Sorceress ? Come, recall your weeping paries With that gap-mouthed and gargoyle-nosed King
Charles,
The drivelling idiot who mocked your pains And sickened a spirit still so proudly Spam's!
[33]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
II Moro in Loches [CONTINUED]
" Murder, murder, most foul and secret murder, — Evil most foul even for times most foul ! " Again ? again ? How often have I heard her By day, by night, like some soft hooting owl Circling my cell in unsubstantial flight Through the long night, the ghastly, dreadful
night ?
Begone, I say! Gesu! As soft as lace The death-owl's wings are fluttering in my face.
So ! Bring malvasia ! Wine — wine tonight ! Wine, and some woman's voice, — Cecilia's voice, — Or my Lucrece, the ferrionera tight Across her perfect brows, and there, for choice, A yellow Orient pearl silkily glistening; Half-pouted lips, as though her soul were listening To some far music. . . . But the shadow falls, As ever, around me from these mouldy walls !
Gloomy as galleries where the sentries standing With flickering lanterns saw me wildly fly That New Year's night, leaping from stair to land ing
To Bice's tower-room. The leaden sky Without snowed peacefully. In the great hall Courtiers and harlots whirled in festival To passionate music. But the page had said, " Her Grace is dying ! " I feared to find her dead. [34]
IL MORO IN LOCHES
// Moro in Loches [CONTINUED] All artful pomps that my Bramante wrought With Leonardo, — shows and dazzling lights, Feast and display, — flashed from my anguished
thought.
Bice was dying! Dio! That night of nights; The babe still-born; the monk with cross down- bending ;
The weeping women; " Vico, this is the end ing. . . .
Forgive me, Vico! " Bice, do thou forgive Me ! For thy words are poigniards while I live, —
Poigniards that turn and turn in the old wound. Yea, I am tricked, sanctissima, and sold To Satan, though God was with me as I swooned Through the black days when first your corpse was
cold. Jennet and greyhound mourned you in those
hours. . . .
And how my city of the hundred towers Once welcomed in your gorgeous cavalcade, — And all Milan, decked as for masquerade!
I met you with my knights. You shone with pearls. Heralds made martial music on our ride. . . . Brocades shake forth, the Viper flag unfurls, At the Castello I lift you down — my bride ! And how you flew the falcon, tracked the fawn, Wild elf-girl, rippling canzons to the dawn,
[35]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
II Moro in Loches [CONTINUED]
Or, through the heat, your gilded tresses dried
Atop your villa by the green water-side!
Ferrara's fairest — and both the sisters fair, The crown and kingdom of Duke Hercules ! In aureate satin and checlatoun, how rare! Yet, in mere tags and rags rare as in these ! Bice, you know I wed Cecilia then To Bergamini. . . . Yea! But men are men. " Merito e tempore " ? Naught, naught, I know. But I have suffered, and life would have it so.
I know all that they whisper, all they shout ; My brother Galeazzo's evil fame. . . . Yet, turn to the Visconti, if you doubt Others were worse than bore old Muzio's name ! Matteo the Ghibelline ? Time makes him vague. What of Gian Galeazzo, that the plague Well ended, — Gian Maria, who, past all bounds, Tortured dumb beasts, fed human flesh to hounds?
When my sire came, the Lombards blundered blind. Filippo tricked them as he tricked my sire. The Ajnbrosian Republic out of mind Put Naples and Venice, when the people's fire Later burned hottest. But the Sforza saw, Fought for the leadership and formed the law! Demos will always babble " Bought and sold ! " My brother was a match for Charles the Bold. [36]
IL MORO IN LOCHES
11 Moro in Loches [CONTINUED]
Cruelty? Aye! Then Simonetta came
With smooth conspiracies. What was the League ?
We stood for Naples. Oh, you bicker " Shame ! "
We matched intrigue with justified intrigue.
The Pazzi war? But I was Bari soon,
Playing to Bona a seductive tune
At the meet time. It oped the garden door.
So endeth Simonetta — shines the Moor!
We were the first Greek printers, and my court
Led art in Italy. The wild French claims
Answer the rest. Oh, intrigue of a sort!
One is not chary in a house in flames,
And such all Italy was then : the Pope
And Naples, and this one's plot and that one's
hope.
Bah ! Was Trivulzio better ? The people saw ! " Viva il Moro ! " — for I gave them law !
Car'dossa, Bellincione, — match them then! Ambrogio de Predis, — all the best, — But Leonardo most, that man of men, Though he complained I never gave him rest. . I bend to Time and listen, and I hear Such murmur as, through that Dionysius' ear His craft contrived for me, the clamor grew From far-off rooms. This clamor quickens too.
[37]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
II Moro in Loches [CONTINUED] They shout him with one voice, his second sight, His great " Cenacalo," his marvelous line, Contours absorbed as in a mist of light, Colors blent as by magic. . . . He was mine! Made clockwork monsters, labyrinths, — or in turn Lectured my sages past their power to learn, — Wrought armament or masque beyond all prize, Horsed my great father, limned Lucrezia's eyes !
Make hubbub, Time! ... Ah, Schattenhalb,
vile Swiss,
Again your fingers twist me round to see, — Passing beneath the pike. You leer, " But this — This is no priest. Bring shackles ! This is he! " La Tremouille smiled. So was Novara taken Through Alpine traitors, and all my splendor shaken About my ears. And now I rot and rot In this vile tomb. They feign to know it not.
They are so suave, these French! And Borgia
ramps
Abroad, and Florence raves as when that priest I hated so stirred all to warring camps ; And here this Louis spills tournament and feast About the land, betrothing his dear daughter. Venice and Genoa, by either water, Suffuse his eyes with tears of simple greed. . . . And Maximilian still has time, indeed. . . . [38]
IL MORO IN LOCHES
// Moro in Loches [CONTINUED] Who was that gay Burgundian ? Ah, Commines ! That was at Asti, when I met King Booby. A sharp-eyed noble ! Indeed the man had been Months in this very fortress. What a ruby Galeazzo gave him once at the Castello! They say he has retired, the clever fellow, To write his memoirs. As I hear it reckoned Best wits agree he'll be Plutarch the Second.
Weariness ! All my thoughts are weariness. They bring me food? They serve me with such
care!
Even allowed me friends in my distress Once. Yet they've grown much stricter with fresh
air
Of late. And so all that I have to do Is arabesque these walls with P and Q And pictures to drive Leonardo wild, — Twist on my pallet, and babble like a child.
The Sforza blood in me is sapped indeed! Was this the Moor — this once my arrogance ? See, my mouth dribbles. I quiver like a reed. Indeed I think the oubliettes in France Can cap Milan's. " The Condottiere laughs And with his sword writes blood-red epitaphs ! " So once I trolled the soldier-song. . . . Ah!
Keys!
Well, Messer Scowl, what viands, if you please ?
[39]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
NICCOLO IN EXILE
THE wineshop smells of grapes! Castruccio,
I thirst! Ah, and a salutation now
To thee, good miller ! Ha, bland Ambrosio,
Thou golden butcher, — the heat hath marked thy
brow
Red as thy beeves. News ? By the Blood, I vow 'Tis not ' good day,' but ill, for not a springe Within my little wood, beneath the bough, Hath caught one wren. Crops? By an old
wound's twinge I think 'twill rain. The cards! Aye! Pour the
wine!
Faugh, but the pack is greasy, — yet 'twill serve ! (So I forget his face, Duke Valentine, And slacken fortune's fardels, nerve by nerve, From off my mind. . . . I'll let the sunset shine Full in their eyes, my fingers swift to swerve.)
He cheats! Yea, I cry cheat! I saw that one! Nay, peace, Ambrosio, with that doughty roar, — Merely, next time, eschew the crudely done ! Have I not been Borgian ambassador? Peace ! Let me tell how Heliogabalus swore Once on a time. . . . Nay, seat thee; hark the humor ! [40]
NICCOLO IN EXILE
Niccolo in Exile [CONTINUED]
Chutt, miller, what's a small coin less or more ? As for the old Etolians, they rumor. . . . Rare drollery, eh? I'faith, a few days since That quaint folk-custom gat an illustration : My swineherd's wife. . . . (New chapter: How
a Prince
Should cater to the Vile for reputation ! Yea, murderer of Ursini and Vitelli, Borgia, still might'st thou learn of Machiavelli !)
So, at this last, good-night ! Nay, I must home. Good-night !
What misty moonlight ! There's the spark Of fitful fireflies. Fields are not like Rome Where steel strikes glittering out from alleys dark, Sunlight discovering the white and stark Body of grief. No, fields are friendly faring For velvet Secretaries. Far watch-dogs bark, But flower-scents rise, and I enjoy my airing. So to the ancients home, and home to thee, Soft Marietta! That man all falls above Is set who hath for his indemnity Against fate's ravage, two treasures, books and love. That butcher can't play cricca. I fleeced him then. As for the stratagems of those oven-men — /
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
RENEGADE
II Quattrocento
WITH rumbling cannon, rippling pennon and hal-
berts bright in the sun On war's way — god Mars' way The clamorous armies roam. Hot destriers shake their manes and ramp at rumor
of siege begun And high carracque and galleasse swing towering
through the foam. Venice is out with all her fleets, the Borgia's never
slept in sheets This long while, this wrong while, this black and
villainous tide, — But drunk with wine of June today from all
Romagna I'm away. Up, up through oak and ilex grove to lose the
world I ride.
Put faith in your misericorde, in parchment, rack or
rope Or wind your horn beyond the Alps to march
against the Pope, —
[42]
RENEGADE
Renegade [CONTINUED]
God of the sun, who made the moon drip golden
honey such nights in June, What dark hearts, these stark hearts, — how lost,
how lost to hope!
They're staggering, brawling through their camps.
Their torches splash the stones With red gleams, with dread gleams Where blood pools deep the mire. Their captains bellow bawdy songs to drown the
dying's groans And every southern vineyard glints an evil bivouac
fire. Yea, Sforza, dream you hold Milan — Este, Fer-
rara, — if he can; Let every tyrant sweat and curse and plot and
fume and rage; Far, far above you toward the moon my gelding
climbs this night in June To find and pluck the golden rose, to clasp an
heritage !
O joy that never your whole endeavor of plots and wars could win!
For soft — there — aloft there, through glimmer of falling bloom —
A light that shines through tangled vines, a star the dusk within,
The porch of even, the door to Heaven, — a shep herd's wattled room;
[43]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Renegade [CONTINUED]
A face for memories, soft dark hair, bright eyes
to heal the heart! (O roar your victories, boast your pomps and
grasp your golden prize !) Here — moonlight lies along the floor. O love, and
here thou art, Sacred and ghostly in the gloom as summer's slow
moonrise !
This still night, this strange night, its mystery so
deep That far away the chaos fades, the summoning
drums are gone As still I lie, and only hear her breathing in her
sleep While high in heaven the silent stars shine on —
shine on — shine on.
[44]
BOURBON'S LOVE
BOURBON'S LOVE
AT Monza is the Iron Crown That tempted France to Lombardy, And Valentina of Milan-town Nestled among the fleur-de-lis The crested Viper; and the wine Of lore and art in Italy Lured on the line called Angevine Between Vesuvius and the sea.
Louis the Spider held aloof
From the new sorceress of the south;
But wittold Charles would put to proof
His claim, and Naples kissed his mouth
A bitter kiss, a rueful kiss,
Whence the twelfth Louis gat no bliss
Since the Great Captain scourged him thence
And Ferdinand dropped all pretense.
The King of England took to wife An aunt of Charles the Emperor New-risen in a world of strife With kingdoms than all kingdoms more From Flanders unto far Peru,
[45]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED]
With Spain and Germany thereto.
The Great Child took the throne of France
And there was bloody work to do.
Montpensier was the greatest lord Of all his realm. Saint Louis' blood Ran in his veins. The folk adored The Lord of Bourbon. He withstood For France and Francis many a foe. Louise of Savoy brought him low, At last, to sequestrate his lands, — A jilted harlot, frenzied so.
Her " Caesar " wore the crown at last. She served him, with her Marguerite. The bitter strife with Anne was past. She left an empire at his feet Since Marignano shot the skies With blazing portent, gaudy dyes. Mother and son were made of lies And Bourbon met them as was meet.
This only tells what surmise tells Of a most desperate soul, Since beneath courtly-gilded shells Most furious oceans roll, And all stands not on history's page. For men are molded by their age But lose their loves and gnash and rage Withdrawn from out the whole. [46]
BOURBON'S LOVE
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED]
" You shall be false and I be true/'
The Marguerite of Marguerites
Sighed to great Bourbon in a dream
As his war-steed forded a stream
In Italy, and drowsy grew
His brain, with marches and retreats.
" And yet — such dark and tangled thread
Love weaves to gold, through dearth and dread ! "
Fate clasped — then struck their hands apart.
To Francis, king of lechery,
His royal sister's loyal heart
Clove, despite lies and treachery.
But Bourbon's pride could not abide
At last his grim mischance.
His sword was thrust in Bayard's side,
As it was fated to betide,
When his sword turned on France,
Yet he turned sword against his lord
And fought for Charles of Spain.
His destrier's back became his home.
(A second Alaric at Rome
You read his hated name
In history!) But do you see
Her face that left him never:
The Valois' Pearl, the star of France,
Whose wondrous pilgrims to Senance
Live on in prose forever?
[47]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED]
She, who could write with jeweled pen
The intrigue of her time,
The light and shade and colors all,
The languor and the festival,
The bloodshed and the grime, —
She, faithful to that swine of self,
Francis, men should have slain, —
Aye, even to standing to his lie,
The blackest one in history, —
Knew she not Bourbon's pain?
She saw the panache of his plumes,
The glitter of his greaves
And cuisses, 'gainst the paneled wall
Where truly stood no man at aH;
Or through the arbor leaves,
Where only sun-motes danced in gold,
She saw his darkling eyes,
His heavy casque. He spurred his steed
Down a dark valley, equerried
By death in royal guise.
Meanwhile the Admiral Bonnivet, Who would have brought her down, Made leg at mirrors, flung his fling, — He who lost Francis everything Through gross, half-witted flattering At siege of Pavia-town. [48]
BOURBON'S LOVE
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED]
But Bourbon spurred. She dreamed he heard
Her voice say, low and clear,
With thrilling trust in every word
She breathed against his ear:
" One thread throughout the dark design, —
One fiery thread — your love and mine! "
0 love indeed — to throb and burn In that most thwarted hour!
In proud Toledo or Madrid
1 think it was not always hid, While Francis lay in tower.
A glance, a handclasp, and the thought
Of Amboise and their youth
Come back — the glittering Loire below,
St. Hubert's chapel, all the glow
Of days when there was truth
Before the Regent asked her price —
She and Du Prat, her snake,
Who laid the rack, who turned the vise,
And watched the proud heart break!
Though Bourbon strode the Roman road
He fell in silvered mail,
In days of dark antiquity
'Fore walls of soft iniquity
He was not born to scale.
The weak Pope chattered in his tower;
[49]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED] And history turns wroth And brands the Condottiere's shame And sets him side by side in fame With Alaric the Goth!
But, as he stood within his tent
The night before the sack,
As his dark brows in anguish bent
On his accursed track
South and still south, and what it meant,
Borne by his starved wolf-pack,
Until great Rome in moonlight lay,
Whence none might turn them back, —
There as he stood, she seemed to stand
Just past the torches' light,
With darkness upon either hand
And nothing but the night.
" Transfiguring still the whole design,
One thread of gold — your love and mine! "
So the embattled halberdiers Stirred where they bivouacked. Across the camp the sleeping spears Murmured if aught attacked. A restless presage fanned the camp At love's last ghostly call. War-horses whinneyed all astamp. Stars trembled over all. [50]
BOURBON'S LOVE
Bourbon's Love [CONTINUED]
And Bourbon raised his arms and said,
" It is the end, my friend.
Ah, Marguerite, when I am dead,
I may have love to spend
Who here had only hate to wreak,
My dear, my only dear!
Press then your cheek against my cheek
And set your bosom here ! "
Upon his brow a warm breath seemed,
Seemed arms about his neck.
His head bowed forward as he dreamed
Beyond all battle-wreck,
Past Marignano, Pavia, or any earthly victory,
Some strange unravelling of knots,
Of the world's plots and counterplots,
Hint of Time's valedictory;
For on his heart she seemed to rest Where poor Suzanne had lain ; And there was peace within his breast And peace within his brain. . . .
While Love stood singing at the loom, Weaving forever dreams and doom!
[51]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
To Frances Rose Bentit.
DARK — all is dark and cold! No light is here Save this the candle in my helmet gives, The paper helmet of an old, old soldier Who toiled at trench and earthwork on the heights Of Florence ... it was very long ago. And now I chip and chisel through the dark, This sputtering goat-fat taper on my head, In a cold gloomy house of rats and spiders Off Trajan's forum.
Almost two years back The Council passed upon my wall design To stop the infection from that filthy pit Beneath the column, made when Paul the Third Demolished round its base, and excavated To the old forum's level. Of course they still Do nothing. And they dare to say that I Procrastinate over the dome of Peter's!
Ugh! The miasma's round me like a mist.
Night. The Campagna's ruined aqueducts Shine in the moon; the Coliseum lies Ghostly and white under the sky of March ; But there is stir in Rome. Young Giovanni [52]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
Comes to be Cardinal. This nepotismo Flourishes still. I can hear them. " Palle !
Palle!"
The coaches and the horsemen and the crowds That quiet a little now. I have not stirred For the new pomp; I hear them in my mind. How many times ! Laborious life creeps on Under the riot and the pageantry, The war, the jubilation, and the waste.
Yet Night remembers Day, for Day knew how,
Affianced of the sunlight, tristfully
She came along the cloisters; or we paced
Among the piazza's soaring colonnades ;
Or in the garden of San Silvestro sat
On a stone bench against an ivied wall
In shade of laurel bushes — Rome beneath.
She like her juniper, inviolate ever
In claustral peace from all encircling storms, —
With the white vision of the great church redeemed
Borne in her breast, and Pavia's sharp disaster
An old dulled pain ! Yes, a great general,
Faithful till death — yet with no faith for her
Who could have raised him . . .
Ah, now my bitter heart
Like some strange heavy fruit submits itself To the grinding pestle and colander of God Whence, crushed, bled forth and strained, a thin small wine
[53]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED] Of sacred numbers drips! I gird myself For heron-patience unto the agony's end. My Adorata, my sibyl from that isle Of oleanders, Ischia in the sea, Where once old Epomeo's mountain-height Guarded your singing soul! You also bore The weight of this interminable life, Suffered, endured, and conquered at the last.
Yes, I am very old. I have known it all; All ! — the great edifice that seems in dreams To rise divine out of the mind of man Till its proportions shoulder back the sun, The ideal grandeur. Ah, so to build, and be Some conquering Brunelleschi of the soul's Magnificent cathedral, domed and lanterned With gold stolen from God ! Yet, as she taught, Comparing Love to an entablature That we had pored on once amid the ruins: (While I supplied her terms of architects!) Passion's the cornice, nobility the frieze, Humility the architrave whereon All rests — a strong, erect humility . . . So apse and aisle and nave of the soul's church Must breathe that spirit, where the last is first. Humility . . . how knaves misunderstand The slandered term ! I have raged my life awry In art's own passionate humility. But to whom among these little mouthing men, [54]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
These harassing insects of my everyday,
Needs must I yield ? To Nanni ? He who yearns
To be chief architect, — that fool who plots
So childishly against me? Three years back
The old JEmilian Bridge they snatched from me,
(Puling that kindly they would spare my age
The imposition — and my over-caution!)
Why, three years back, in the next inundation
It laughed at yokel Nanni's strengthening
And strewed his mock foundations on the flood.
Have men no minds? There were great spirits
once.
Some I have seen — one, never seen, have known: The man who hated tyranny, as I; The true republican, as I have been; The immortal spirit, as I — could never be.
As where high mountains form their watershed Disparting equally the rains of heaven, So Dante's spirit soared, and so baptized His friends or enemies with lucific song Pouring from the steep summit of his soul.
But me they shackled to a sepulcher
All my life long, — Popes, pesterers, Cardinals,
Dukes of Urbino!
Forty statues planned, As many basso-relievos to be cast In bronze, and four facades — a mausoleum Truly heroic. For my reproach eternal
[55]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
Sits Moses in Saint Peter's of the Chains.
What though Mantova cried, " Why, this alone
Does superb honor to his memory ! "
When the thrice-changed contracts dwindled to the
last;
Six statues down to three; when Raffaello Of Montelupo, for fifteen hundred ducats, Had wrought his prophet, sibyl, and Madonna, — And Maso, the Pope on the sarcophagus, — And bad art crowned my single inspiration Achieved through all the thwarting years' de rision, —
I felt the heart within me sink like stone, Though the chapel waited my great Judgment, and " Now," they cried, " you are free ! "
They say the Jews
In Rome have flocked to look upon their leader, Speechless with adoration, praising me. . . . Though evil rumors insinuate themselves Through chinks in my mind's armor, such as one That leers " Why, 'tis the Ludovisi satyr Transferred to marble ! "
But, Dio mio ! who heeds
Thorn-crackling such as that? Let them go to And bask in II Perugino's cow-like masks, Who mistaught Raphael; nay, 'tis the same Old threadbare charge I know not fair proportions, Grace as they understand it! They know not [56]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
That life is agony. " Too much anatomy ! "
Yes; Yes indeed; Verily; only I groan
To think upon such grandeur as I planned
Eked out with gimcracks. Free? I turned away
From final contemplation of the Moses
Drowned in despair.
A lifetime's span ago I climbed a spur of Etruscan Apennine Above Carrara, where we worked the quarries Like mad eight months for marble . . . fifteen
years
Ere Leo drove me from the Carrarese To Pietrasanta, and the angered servants Of Marquis Massa, and the mariners, Blocked all my ships from Genoa to Pisa, Forced me to turn road-builder in the end And bridge the swampy plains with driven piles — Whence I fell ill at Seravezza there, The Arno shrank and dried, my columns broke, Consigned to Florence ; and how I cursed the Tomb, Always that gray colossal incubus ! . . . But my mind wanders. I was thinking of My thirtieth year, that day I stood and gazed From the mountains above Carrara across the blue Ligurian Sea. Far down below me wound A road, with silly miniature white oxen Hauling their load. The whip-crack of their driver And his voluble voice were little diminished sounds
[57]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED] Through the still noon. The puffy drifting cloud Moving along the road seemed hardly more Than that hidden dust I filliped from my palm The day I feigned to pare my David's nose For Soderini.
Blue sky — the sea below !
I stood and thought, what sea-mark might not rise Immaculate on this mountain? Thus, or thus Disposed, — why not some glorious Pieta Eluding schoolmen's definitions? Yes, The mountain-mother, Nature, — in her lap The tortured limbs relaxed of breathing Life Exempt at last from the long agony, Quieted by this vast mysterious sky That broods forever over us, and should lend Its elemental purity and pity To her deep immortal gaze. I felt the stone Already flaking from my flying chisel Seized by a spirit stronger than my own, As in the days when I despised clay models And flung myself against some massive block With fury — what they call my " terribleness." The Voice of the seaward scarp, I saw it grow Forth from the stone, an immemorial Astonishment to all the future's ships Whose sailors, stricken dumb, should drop the rope, Forget the sail, and stare, and bow their heads, Aye, bend their knees — adrift in waking trance! [58]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
The moment passed. I shambled down the moun tain
Moaning, " Oh, for the eyes of Uriel To see how all these leaguering ambitions Of the heart my triumph ! " Once more the mo ment passed.
Why, visions — and I have seen them — such as that Which took me in the garden of my house In the first year of Leo's rule, one Autumn: The marvelous three-rayed meteor that I drew With pen and colors, — one ray turned east and one O'er Rome, and one toward Florence, — visions, I
think,
Are no more strange (though less accountable) Than these inward dreams that grow and fill the
mind
Belittling life to a small mire for flies, Not men, to buzz about ! As proud — such dreams — As, for one instance, that glorious second sight Investing the bargaining Bernadone's son, Saint Francis, when he raised his eyes and saw A crucified seraph in the Apennine. Can one not image the feebly thundering wings, The iridescent glory, the wild heaven-grief, The torsions of those torn celestial limbs, The grandeur glowing through such clouds of pain !
But, Father, you wished a sound wool-stapling son,
[59]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
No " mere stone-mason " ! . . . So, there's
Lorenzo's garden And the mask of that old faun whose teeth I
pulled . . .
Five ducats a month, a violet-colored mantle, My father's customs-office, — Girolamo Thundering from the pulpit of Duomo, — The Brancacci chapel, and my broken nose ! Helter-skelter, out tumble the memories, — All heaped as offerings to Masaccio . . . ah, And there again — our great Poliziano, With his beaked nose, full eye, and scintillant mind, Who heartened me (with talk of Thessaly And how Peirithous and the Lapiths fought The galloping Centaurs all a summer night) To work my first relief ! He laughed indeed On being able to discover only One centaur — dead — in all the striving throng.
I wonder, could Lorenzo see me now, Would the poetic despot set his hand, As once, upon my shoulder, and with converse Of art show me from out his cabinets Some strange fifth century carnelian scarab Graeco-Pho2nician, or a Grecian seal Presenting the quadriga ? I well recall One signet of exceptional intaglio: 'Twas Heracles and the Nemean lion, Cufic calligraphy on gray sardonyx. . . . [60]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
Such music and tourneys, as if all life were
spring,—
Such feasts, such trysts, such jovial wicked wit, Withal such learning and culture: jongleurs singing The triumphs of love, and, in some high cool cham-
ber,
Pico, our Phoenix, arguing Arabic Or the haughty Chancellor explaining style ! . . . With all the great I sat at board in hall, Philologists, translators, poets, scholars. Most clear I see one exquisite spring evening. The sky was heliotrope and softest saffron. We were met in Pico's villa, on the slope Of Fiesole, — orange, olive, and vine Around us. Far beneath, the red-tiled roofs And domes of Florence, — beyond it, Arno's
meadows.
Many were gathered. One was the Greek savant Demetrius Chalcondylas ; another Linacre The English doctor. Everyone reclined 'Mid wax-lights winking under the spreading trees. Poliziano sang a gay ballata — One of his own, set to a mandoline. Lorenzo presided in an arrassed chair. Goblets of wine, chestnuts, and sugar-tarts, Almonds and other sweetmeats passed about. Ficino, the enthusiast, swam in words, Some near to heresy, as he expounded
[61]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
The Infinite First Cause, — most bravely striving
To reconcile his Plato with Saint Paul
To the youthful Pico, marvelously wise,
Whose forehead leant on one delicate pale hand,
His brown hair falling low, his gray eyes
stern. . . .
Soft from the pine-clad, heather-honeyed hills, Girdling our City of Flowers, floated the sound Of faint far music; stately overhead Swam forth the white processional of the stars.
Aye, once again beneath the palace walls
The masquers revel, girls dance the carola;
Or through the market-place I stroll, and pause
To watch some smiling contadina pass
Basket on arm, whose firm-set elbow cocked
Suggests a hard bit of foreshortening.
The night comes cool after the stifling heat
Of summer day — asimmer with the plague
That took its toll so often. In the broad square
Patterned with moonlight, burgher story-tellers
Chuckle and quip. . . . Nay! There's the
tramp of horse
In sunlight; the Magnifico returns From bowered Careggi with his retinue. . . .
Ah, Florence, Florence! And once, as 7 returned From San Miniato where our falconets Held off the siege, I marked upon the roof [62]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
Of Santa Croce, musicians seated playing,
And, on the piazza, two squads of whites and
greens
Battling at calcio for the football goal. Thus light you held disaster, thus you lifted A laughing face to doom, insurgent people, — As Niccolo named you, " vain and childish still ! " Yet with nobility and fortitude His sad embittered nature might not see. But blunderers, blunderers! For the Apennine
gorges
Had you sent forth but a few thousand men Instead of lavishing such craven gold You had turned Bourbon back — who knows? — and
saved
The sack of Rome and your own ravishment. True that France paltered, true that Venice quaked, Francesco Maria snapped like a broken reed And Clement swayed to every gust that blew; The muddle around Milan seemed worse than fate ; Yet, Florence, thou " most beauteous daughter of
Rome "
As Dante hailed thee, — Florence, Caesar's camp, Where was thy strong hand to save Italy That hour? Did thy banner not bear the badge Of a great free people — not a ship of fools ? Too late ! The viper Baglioni lurked Warm in your bosom. Again I hear the shout
[63]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
" Viva Gesu Cristo, nostro Re ! "
Leafy San Miniato gay with villas
Felt axe and hatchet fall. Upon the tower
I placed my wool-bales. With a moody mind
I carved that winged Victory for our camp —
Demolished by the victors ... all too late !
Rash hope of France — the great betrayal — soon Overthrow, rapine, sack, — and Florence dead. There stand the figures in the sacristy Of San Lorenzo, showing forth my mind. Who cared for the younger Medici? I carved Florence the warrior, gazing on her ruin; Florence the young and somewhat specious knight Of times of peace, luxurious and weak. There Day and Night, Twilight and Dawn display My various resignation or despair For her. I hid my grief. I came to Rome, Never to look upon my Florence more.
Was that a knock? This cramp gets in my legs And I can't move. The dogskin hose beneath My stockings, and these cordovan leather boots, Don't aid my sudden shifting either. So! Now another candle. Hola! I am coming!
You, Giorgio? Giorgio, Giorgio, is it you! A thousand welcomes, friend ! Come in ! Come in ! That is good f eltro you are clad in, friend ; 164]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
The weather still is sharp, though hardly yet
The time for malaria from the Pontine marshes.
Still, it is not the clean air of Casentino —
Especially — but I see you in the flesh!
And so you brought the Cardinal to Rome ?
Ah, what a jewel in your velvet cap
That is — no, that I meant, secures your feather.
Such a cape and tabard — and what riding-boots
Spacious and spurred! Why yes, of course you
came
Just as you are — to see the old man, eh? Sit down ! How did you manage to give the slip ? May I put up your horse ? He can munch straw Beside my chestnut pony. On foot, you say? Again, sit down! This armchair by the fireplace. That? Oh, stupidity, I've dropped the candle. That's my Pieta — no-o, 'tis not yet finished. You saw it before. 'Tonio! Where's the man? Ah, Giorgio, now my rare Urbino's gone . . . His wife Cornelia loved him not as I . . . His death and my brother Sigismondo's death . . . / But this is scurvy talk. Come, take some wine ? Somewhere I've wine from Florence — trebbiano. (Even better than water from the Trevi fountain!) Cheese? Figs? That orcio of olive oil Might freshen us a salad. Say you ? No, You've dined. Well then, tell me the gossip now. Your journey? Did your sumpter-mules kick loose,
[65]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED] Your guards fall into drinking? What's the ac count ?
Get on with it — Lorenzo's madrigal Had it, you know, that youth is sweet, but flies. Speak, or my youth will leave me all too soon, I fear, — this garrulous second youth of mine! I was thinking of these later Medici; At least that bastard mulatto . . . Me perdone, Giorgio! One forgets. But Cosmo seems Better. Ah, all those letters that you wrote me, And he ... I feel the honor sensibly, Yet, as I answered, I must not give up Seventeen years hard labor, while the breath Is in my body — to see it hacked apart By fools. When it is finished, it is finished. Then let them raze it. I'll be safely dead.
What's that you say? Such a triumph? My
catarrh
Affects my hearing slightly. Wild rejoicing Along your j ourney ? Ah, but did they truly ? With olive garlands on their heads, white robes, And branches in their hands ... a banquet
too!
Yes, I have eaten prugnoli, and the wine Of Monte Alcino is good. You live on plush, My Giorgio, these days. I am glad the Duke Has such a devoted servant.
[66]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
So-o? Now this
Must be the kernel of the nut. You say — ? I know — Girolamo's olden Council Hall. The Duke greatly desires my own opinion? Well, we'll exchange our models, Giorgio mio. Tomorrow — come in the forenoon — we will ride To Saint Peter's, and you shall see the wooden one That my divine, celestial Cavaliere Has at last prevailed upon my laziness To finish, and ease, says he, my aching head. Though there's an outline of the dome I drew Upon the marble floor of Saint Paul's — but that I fear is not so orderly ! Now see, For example, here's the cartoon showing the plan, The Greek Cross. I eked it out with various sheets Pasted together. Do you like it, eh? But, for tomorrow, we'll see that great antique The Belvedere torso. They say there's a Hercules By Lysippus, that he made for Alexander To carry upon the march, — a table figure The posture's worked from.
Ah, now I blush ! You make Too much of me in your most excellent book. " In contempt of envy, in despite of death ..." Tragically I sit for hours and try To sprout the wings to match; I, who they say Derive all anatomy from Pollaiuolo, All vigor from Signorelli. We-el, 'tis true
[67]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED] I do commend the latter's compositions. Something from Orvieto's in the Judgment, Have you noticed?
But let me bow to you in turn And thank you deeply for your thoughts of me In these last years, — sending Bartoli's book That " Defence of Dante," — that was when I fled From Rome to the mountains, from the Spanish
troops.
Those autumn weeks in oak and olive wood Verily saved my life; and I can say For once at least in my harassed career My solitude brought peace, and faith again. The sacrilege and simony of old Rome Passed, and the wars passed, and the blood of
Christ
Sold with both hands ; the splendor and the shame. The world dropped from my back for that short
space.
But you can understand. You have often spoken Of your Camaldoli among the firs, Among the mountains, where you healed your heart After Alessandro's murder,— among the snows Where gentle rivulets threaded from cell to cell Of that high Hermitage. I am recluse too.
How is the gentle wife? I joyed to hear You were rewarded for your ruined farms In the valley of Chiaua. Oh these wars! [68]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
For my part I declare I hate all men Who would begin with evil, — that is, murder, To bring forth good. It is a great presumption To dare kill anyone. The man who said, " I am no statesman, but an honest man." Spoke truth indeed.
What store is in your book Of artists. And I have upon my conscience That tilt with Leonardo. Yes, I said Rude things to Leonardo, and I thought him Utterly insincere. But, as for casting His Sforza — what is casting, after all. My Julius made a better cannon so ! And yet I well remember it was Francia Praised the Bologna statue, as it was, For the casting most. And how that angered
me!
Francia was suave like all his suave Madonnas, Too smooth enameled.
Yes, I have had my wrongs,
The Sangallists, and Bramante — though you state The case too strongly there — and now this oaf, This bungler, Nanni! But let us speak of other More lively things. . . .
You must go ? Ah, not so soon ! Well then, tomorrow. Giorgio mio, I thank Your immediate devotion and courtesy For this kind visit — thus — on both your cheeks.
[69]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
So you found the old fellow — eh? There's a step
down. You slide the bolt. Good night! Good night !
And now
Something to draw with. Here is the design : A graybeard — in a go-cart — with his hourglass. Anchora Imparo on the scroll above. Excellent truly. Such a one am I. I learn even in decay.
Ah yes, Bramante
Did wish to ruin me — for Raphael's sake We'll say — and certainly I never told him I was so singly sculptor as to be Unable to paint any foreshortened figure Upon a vault. . . . Yet that was toil indeed! The length of wet fine plaster, the cartoon Stretched on the surface, and the outlines traced, Muscles and draperies dashed in with the stylus, Till my head twisted like the wool-guild's lamb, My breast clove to my backbone, dropping plaster Bedaubed my face as though I wore a mask. And then the surface took a mist, and then That rascal, Julius, tried my twanging nerves With silly directions from his post below Till I was fain to wrench out scaffold planks And hurl them on his stubborn head.
I see him
Standing as on that April day he laid [70]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
The new Saint Peter's firm foundation-stone,
Shouting the crowd back from the pier's deep pit,
Sprinkling the marble with a benediction —
The stone that held the vase deposited
And filled with coins and medals ... I can see
His armor flashing as he reviewed the troops
Another time — or watch him as he plays
At tric-trac, wholly easeful, or again
Sight him against a marble balustrade
'Mid trellised roses, with his snowy beard
Pouring upon his crimson mantle, smiling
On two court lovers in a loggia. Ah,
He was a man ! He quelled the whole Romagna,
Panted for time toward more great purposes, —
And slave-drove Art — yet always with intention
Beyond the dull ambitions of the great.
Leo was waste, Clement was vacillation,
Julius was power, — Julius was power indeed!
The man of action, how he dwarfs the artist ! Though many a doffed beretta has done me honor And Francis and the Sultan fawned on me, Faugh for the artist's life!
I know I lie.
For this is sure among all things unsure : That he who holds, through good or evil hap, The hegemony of his soul's own city, Disfranchising all lusts and vanities, Has more than all the kingdoms of the earth,
[71]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED]
Is more than that poor Prince of Niccolo's, —
His brilliant, impossible, calculating — monster . . .
And so, as ever, Vittoria returns
To stateliest music through my memory.
Monte Cavallo, be thou blessed hence,
Though at thy foot they say red Nero stood . -
To watch the flame-filled cloud of burning
Rome !
For there my love would build a nunnery. I promised her designs. . . .
My drawings pleased her; the Pieta most.
On the last day she said that I should stand
At the Lord's right hand in heaven. Ah,, her heaven,
" Magnificent Messer Michelangelo," —
From which distilled such cooling dews upon
Your eternal misery of procrastination, —
What heaven for you ?
Heaven — heaven in those hours!
Her pamphlet on " The Passion of the Redeemer " Rests — here ; the same the Inquisition searched for. This folio of her sonnets. . . . God's spark!
God's spark !
Hands off, Bembo, thou polished humanist, They need not thine august imprimatur! She saw a flaming sign in Juan Valdez Who thundered at the Curia's corruption, — Wrote many poems in the Valdensian spirit, — [72]
THE TRIUMPHANT TUSCAN
The Triumphant Tuscan [CONTINUED] Loved the Capuchins, hated evil things, Took pity on poor Renee. . . .
Thanks to God
She sleeps, while cruel beasts hunt down the just. This church they see is not the church she saw Nor ever could be !
Oftentimes she came From Santa Caterina into Rome, And died within the convent of Sant' Anna. And died within the convent — here at Rome. . . . Now in that mystical convent of white stoles With Beatrice, where the yellowing Rose In sempiternal fragrance rays its light; A nd light in the form of a river gloweth there With ineffable effulgence . . . every side Living sparks like ruby and like topaz shine Among the flowers . . . "Light is thereabove Which makes the Creator visible to that creature Which has its peace only in seeing Him ... .' "
So-o! So-of Well, Messer Cock, don't split your
throat
Shrilling of dawn without ! The gray mists seep Through door and window. How my candle pales ! 'Tis time to stumble to my iron bed Up obdurate stairs, up past the Death I painted That with his coffin looms confronting me. . . .
" Rend thou the veil, Dear Lord! Break thou the wall! "
[73]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
MICHELANGELO IN THE FISH-MARKET
HERE'S color for my monsters ! Verily, This is no Arno-spawn, — far greater game ! These shimmering, gleaming, flashing forms first
came
To sunlight in the great JEgean Sea. , Ye sacred symbols ! They have whispered me Your Greek style bears the initials of His name And titles, where lies hidden in the same The Sibyl of Erythra's prophecy!
Howbeit, Messer Domenico, you
Shall gape to see my drawing when I'm through. . .
What dawn-pulsed gills, what splendor on each
scale !
This mullet's bottle-green, with silver under, — That weird, dark-flecked murena. . . . Well, no
wonder I shall net Popes when soon I spread my sail !
[74]
BAST
BAST
SHE had green eyes, that excellent seer, And little peaks to either ear. She sat there, and I sat here.
She spoke of Egypt, and a white Temple, against enormous night.
She smiled with clicking teeth and said That the dead were never dead;
Said old emperors hung like bats
In barns at night, or ran like rats —
But empresses came back as cats!
[75]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE SUN GAZER
THE zenith age was past of earthly spoil For Egypt. Amonhotep's and Thothmes' Scythed chariots swept Syria. For their foil Strange Akhenaten 'twas succeeded these With single worship, where the shrewmouse even Was sacred to some god of Egypt's heaven.
When kings were likened both to bulls and lions, Forth in simplicity came this one king, Foreshadowing Israel's belief and Zion's, With only words of love and peace to bring An age of banditry and ravening lust, — He the vain dreamer, the gentle and the just.
For there, in the far dark of history,
He saw one God above all gods endure
In the sun of heaven, one strange sublimity,
Source of all living things, one cause and cure, —
Nor mere effulgence and material heat,
But an all-being, that caused the heart to beat.
The fine green scarabs of his father's reign Bear graved accounts of festival, oblation, And ceremony. These the son thought were vain Unless to Aten, Lord of all Creation, [76]
THE SUN GAZER The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
Whose gross, deceitful shade was Amon-Ra. " Adoring with their wings thy sacred ka,
" The birds fly in their haunts ; the fishes be Dazed with the bright profusion of thy beams Even in the deeps of the green-glimmering sea ! " He sings; and when he died, slain by his dreams, The plotting priesthood triumphed with their guile And left his name no trace, and called him vile.
But beneath crescent cliffs there lay a bay And a small island, where Akhenaten made A city for the chosen of his day, Where all should love and no man be afraid And the many-handed beams touch all, and bless All equally, and wither wretchedness.
" The Aten my father 'twas who brought me here, The City of the Horizon this shall be. O rampart of a million cubits sheer, Remembrancer, thou, of eternity, — O thou whom no artificer hath known, Aid me to build ! I see in, thee alone ! "
He raised his temples, shadows-of-the-sun. " Words of the priests," he said, " more evil they Than those things King Nebmaara hath known done Or Menkheperura heard ! " So many a day
[77]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
They painted walls with lotus-flower buds,
Embossed the panels and set the golden studs,
Raised costly cedar covered all with gold,
Scored out the name of Amon from far cliffs
And graffti, made the courts fair to behold
With masts and chiseled scenes and hieroglyphs, —
But o'er each pylon, wall, and obelisk,
The true God flashed his symbol, the sun's disk.
Ah then the Theban triad paled and bowed, And Khnemu doffed the twi-plumed atef crown, And Nak, the demon-serpent of the cloud, And the great judge, Osiris, all bowed down; And Thoth, the ibis-headed giant turned Wild eyes and gnashing beak, and Isis burned
With frustrate wrath. Along the haunted road To the pyramids, along the lonely plain From Heliopolis' nome, a concourse flowed, Gods on the gods' high way, wailing in vain To Harmachis, the sphinx. The burial-ground Of ancient kings echoed and stirred around.
Processions of images and ghostly boats
And strange shapes striding with heads of cat and
ram
Or jackal-jaws; eyes of each beast that gloats Widened in panic of one who breathed " I am ! "
[78]
THE SUN GAZER
The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
The snake of the northwind, the barque of Ra
Drove eastward toward the dark peninsula.
Nun, of primaeval waters, led the van ;
Horus, the falcon; Mentu, god of war;
Atmu, Anubis; roaring Sekhmet ran
From Memphis; like a golden cloud, Hathor,
With Hekt, frog-headed, the goddess of all birth
And Set, the spirit of evil on the earth.
The goat- faced potter of the cataract;
Hawk, ram, and man-faced sphinxes, all fled by
Like refugees from out a city sacked,
A wave of darkness under the dark sky,
A rout of star-mist that far shepherds soon
On lonely hills saw travelling past the moon
In rolling clouds tinged with weird bloody dye And tossed in monstrous shapes. They seemed to
hear
Lowings and hissings and wilder sounds on high, And darkness fell upon them, and great fear, And their sheep huddled as at the khamsin's blast As out of Egypt the gods of Egypt passed.
So Akhenaten triumphed — a little space; But priest and warrior stood against his light. He sickened, died at last in the disgrace Of all— for Sephel, king of the Hittite,
[79]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
Smote the Canaan and conquered as with fire.
Ribaddi stood, and Abimilech of Tyre;
Ribaddi, king of Byblos, keeping faith
With Egypt, as did not faithless Aziru,
The Amorite. And rebels wrought great scaith,
Murder and plunder, and still the conquest grew.
" — And Tunip thy city weeps, her tears are falling!
For twenty years, oh king, we have been calling
The King, the King of Egypt, our great Sun . . . Simyra is a bird into the snare . . . But thou hast sent us not one word — not one ! " So wails their anguish in th' old character. Deputies, officers brought curse and prayer, Yet Akhenaten brooded in despair,
Still loving peace, still praying weariedly
To his one god that naught could quite abash.
" As long as the King's ships are on the sea
His strong arm held him Naharin and Kash,
But now the Khabiri sack the King's strong cities !
King, save thy land, this day of direful pities ! "
Thus the cuneiform from Palestine And all of Syria's empire holding leal. Then night came down on Akhenaten's line. The bitterest pang for any king to feel Rended his heart. His people died the death, And all that he could give seemed idle breath. [80]
THE SUN GAZER
The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
The city of brightness gradually darkened
To a city of the grave, necropolis
Of even God. All night, wide-eyed, he hearkened
Curses and wailings from a black abyss
Of slaughtered lives, — he, who would put no trust
In spear or chariot or the loud dust
Of marching hoplites with their emblems flashing O'er the lapped shields. His empire fell apart, And Egypt's earthly might ; and black waves, dash ing
Their tear-floods, roared in caverns of his heart, As some seamed warrior from the east, alone, Stood with clenched fists, imploring, at the throne.
The captured cities near Orontes mouth,
The sea-coast cities, the provinces all torn,
Despoiled and rent, the vineyards of the south,
The ravaged pasturage and trampled corn,
The desperate defense, the falling wall, —
And still he prayed, " There is one God for all ! "
Yes, he put by the sword, put by the sword, And so lay dead. And Harmhab took his place, That doughty captain whom all the folk adored, Who wrought and fought and won back for his race Gradual sway. Then Rameses held power Soon, and their conquest knew a zenith hour
[81]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Sun Gazer [CONTINUED]
Till, with his death, at length all fell apart,
And hordes from west and east, from south and
north,
Made the land strengthless. So our musings start On Akhenaten. Lonely he went forth, Lonely he died, the zealot to the last, Cast in a mould wherein no king was cast;
The man who saw his God so face to face All else was shadow in that blinding light ; The man who willed salvation for his race Through happiness at last before the night; He who would build on love, and love alone, The welfare of a kingdom and a throne.
His name they cut from all the monuments, Heaped the opprobrium, raised their gods once
more,
And passioned on after their own intents. Again I see him tread the painted floor Between the gilded columns, in the cool Of some high lakeward-looking vestibule.
He murmurs, " Living in Truth ! " — his title then. " Living in Truth ! " and " Aten, I behold ! " A pale, frail youth, whose body should have been Lapped, like his mother's, in sheets of purest gold Ere it was coffined, — for there a King stepped
down,
Of old, to doff his crown — and take his crown. [82]
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
KILIMANDJARO, Father of the Nile,
Smiled not on any fairer,
Nor Narmer, the old Scorpion, king of guile
In predynastic glory.
The diadems are two, the red and white, —
Of both she was the wearer,
Oasis apricot, the moon's delight!
Tis of the Queen Hatshepsut that I write.
Hear the Queen's story!
Queen of Two Lands, by Lower Egypt crowned
With thronelike headdress high
And red, whereon was Upper Egypt's bound
Of linen stiff and white, —
Sister and wife of Thothmes, she appeared
Beneath the Hawk-god's sky
Wearing the collar and the small false beard
To seem full monarch-man. The bright asp reared
Golden from brows as bright.
From Buto in the Delta to Aswan
At the first cataract
" King of the North and South " her titles ran,
And east to Sinai's cliffs, —
[83]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
Hailed " golden falcon of the solar blood "
Where e'er her camels tracked, —
Her father Amon named, who, in a flood
Of light and perfume o'er her mother stood,
As hymn the hieroglyphs.
Yet dreams, strange dreams perplexed the royal
heart.
The Queen to Karnak fared Where the superb propylons leaned apart Masted with cedars tall And brilliant pennants. She entered from the
light,
Heart-throbbing that she dared, And stood 'mid soaring pillars beneath the bright Enameled semblance blue of gilt-starred night In the hypostylic hall.
Beyond, in monolithic shrine, the god Held seat and sacred ark.
Around him, sculptured courts, where e'er one trod. With battle-scene and myth
The walls were colored. Palmed priests ap proached the king Bearing the holy barque
Of Amon, lord of thrones. Their rites they sing. " Souton di hotpou! " She renders offering, Invoking signs therewith.
[84]
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
" We love, O Father Amon, Lord of Thebes
And guardian of Karnak !
As silver dourah sprouts from darkest glebes
Our heart shows forth its love.
Then, as thou lovest the king, pray counsel Us
To find what now We lack, —
From the great Double House that 'mures Us thus
How to adventure some voyage perilous
We scarce feel worthy of ! "
The god bespeaks the priests who understand, While sistrums softly thrill: " The ladders of incense in the secret land With mystery tease my rest.
Plant these, to deck my house! When night ap pears
Then seek there what I will, — /, Amon thy Father, lord of hopes and fears; Through my strong genii of the myriad years And those of east and west! "
Sibylline utterance ceased. She bowed her head.
Copper-clasped leopard-ckin
Swung on her shoulder. The linen headdress
spread
Striped folds upon her breast. She turned — from apron to her ribboned queue Kingly, and next of kin
[85]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
To gods. She trod the whispering pave, and
through
Huge doorways to her waiting retinue And home through heat to rest.
Senmut, with his knobbed stick of cherry wood And black curled wig, in broidered linen gowned, Obeised before the high-plumed Queen, and stood Under her gleaming throne whose sides were bound With lotus and papyrus. " Thy temple walls Are finished, Majesty. The hot South calls.
" And at command we seek the Balsam-land, Put now to sea for Fount, where Thou hast heard Of fabulous treasure, jewel-dazzled sand, Numberless herds, and many a gorgeous bird. We bring you back the incense-trees you seek ! " The Queen's lids lowered. She thrilled to hear him speak.
The golden graven collar she had given To this her architect flashed on her eyes Collyrium-lengthened each to a dark heaven For his deep gaze. She leaned. He heard her
sighs.
" Instruct my captains," he heard her softly say, " And swiftly sail, — oh, swiftly sail away ! "
[86]
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
Each cabin is a very stately house
With pillared doors. The painted flag-ship gleams
From lotus-flower stern to golden bows
With green and yellow. The sail is cloth of dreams
Spread on a wide yard double the high mast's
height, And thirty rowers dip in tides of light.
The boardings are like chapels. Prow and stern Bear Harmachis, the Ibex, and the Cow. Brave-striped and diapered awnings, fans that burn With peacock eyes, shadow the deck. And now The captain lifts his wand. The green and red Chequered, embroidered, tasseled sail is spread.
And toward far Fount the graceful ships are gone
For stranger freight than other Nile-craft quest
Through caravans of ointments, cinnamon
From Ind ; or ships of Tarsus and the west
Lade with their precious woods, or argosies
Of Colchis, with their brass, bear down the breeze.
A month they loitered toward that wonderland, Then saw the small coned huts and short-horned
cows
And point-beard, pigtailed people on the strand As known to Chufu. For their necks and brows Gay necklets had they brought, daggers and rings. They set them out to barter with these things.
[87]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED] Then to these strangers from far Tamera drawn The ruler's heart was warmed; and cups of gold And birds of peacock plumage, snared at dawn, — Paint for the eyes, pearls priceless to behold (With apes dog-headed and monkeys with long
tails !) Crowded the decks 'mid casks and ropes and bales.
There was a cargo of rare khesit-wood
With powder of Ahem, kash and copper-ware,
Mountains of incense-resin purple-hued,
And hunting leopards, snarling with golden stare;
Gold stone and blue and green! The sailors sing,
" Never was like brought back to any king! "
All treasures of the Land of Fount, all balms Of the Divine Land ; thirty-one growing trees For Amon-Ra ! They left the cocoa-palms And Parihu, the Prince, throned at his ease. The suite of the great Queen's ambassador Struck camp and left that white sea-whispering shore.
When the canal was reached, two years or more Had passed at last. By the high granite quay People from wharves and roofs watched them out pour
Their curious spoils. The Queen came down to See, [88]
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
Borne in her naos, with emeralds of Sinai
Globed from brown ears, green uat on lid of eye,
Snake bracelets and a helm of blue with brass Studs, and her skin made gold, — on all her limbs The oil of Ani. So Senmut saw her pass, Newly-returned. Along the quay she swims Reclined on cushions of red and blue, fresh-bathed And dressed, in silver tissues sashed and swathed.
The painted ships, giraffes and monkeys green, Wild-bearded chiefs — all in the hot sunlight, Black Nubians white-toothed, and, there between The brick-hued sailors, and the wondrous height Of trees and scented bales, — on these there smiled A radiant Queen, enchanted as a child !
" The merchants from Javan, traders of Tyre, Arabian horsemen with their cream-skinned mares, Slavemen of Sais who have bound with wire Slaves black as fish-spawn, — those who cry the
wares
Of Persia or of Kedar,— verily/' She cried with laughter, " now must envy me ! "
But Senmut, seamed and sunburnt, stood apart Watching — whene'er the crowd craned necks a space
[89]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
To hark some foreign parrot — how there would
dart
A shadow of desolation o'er her face And a strange query line her little brows. So she rode back to the great Double House,
Sighing, " But where is he ? " with troubled looks. And then she called the temple scribe, to see Number and measure entered in temple books. Careful of count, and grave, was Te-hu-ti, For the god Horus watched, and the just scales Held Theban Amon's tribute in roped bales.
All afternoon the measurement went on, The checking and the storing, on the quays The din and dust. At last the trees were drawn Up the long dromos to the terraces Of the King's temple, from the Libyan beach. But still Senmut came not and sent no speech.
And she, too proud to question, since he did Her this discourtesy, who — hated not Her architect, — paled lest his bones be hid In some far desert grave, some ghastly spot Of lean cadaverous lions. And then she said, " My other envoy spoke — he is not dead — "
Yet bit her nails for doubt. Red evening came, And swiftly was blue night. And many lights Twinkled afar o'er Thebes. Now, since the flame Of day was cooled, on the gay-awninged heights [90]
THE QUEEN'S IDYLL
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
Of flat white roofs the people took their ease, Or under tamarisk or cedar trees
In their pooled gardens. But Hatshepsut made Her favorite baris glide across the Nile. At the river-steps her Nubian guard she bade Halt and await her. And up the moonlit aisle Of crouching sphinxes, her likeness in each
face, She moved, so small, yet with such state and
grace.
Up past the first propylons, now alone From terrace on to terrace. There the night Showed shadows where the new myrrh-trees lay
prone
Or stood to wait the coming of the light When men should plant them. At last the col onnades Of the portico, alternate lights and shades.
And therewithin to Amon she abased, Bidding him take his own, the trees of myrrh, Her gift and venture. Yet she prayed in haste As swift to somewhat else. He answered her Only by grave full silence. Forth she stepped — Stood waiting. The dim stars burned. A foun tain wept.
[91]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Queen's Idyll [CONTINUED]
Then, gazing on her terraces full set
With " ladders of myrrh " under that holy gleam
Of trembling stars — yet with a wild regret —
Before her glimmering temple, " O barren dream
Of loveliness ! " she sobbed.
Her lover came
Forth from the shadows. Senmut breathed her name.
Pressed close against his heart, " Thy words to me, Amon, my Father! " she murmured in amaze. " So far I sought! Yet all I sought was— he! And knew not ! "
Thus the night's dim violet haze Veils their embrace. Anon, a lingering breeze Wafts dreamy fragrance from the incense trees.
[92]
THORSTAN'S FRIEND
THORSTAN'S FRIEND
To Laura
Now when we were come to that bright gleam of
waves
Frowned on by purple dusk, lit like a cave's Dim gulph with fox-fire — too malicious lit Before the thunder split
Heaven and earth with shattering peal on peal! — Under the canopied dark all Thorstan's steel Flashed as he leapt upright And stood with folded arms affronting night.
The great prow dragon-headed His right hand clutched, as though that clutch im bedded
The mane of some proud steed by prouder master Praised fiercely for dominion of disaster.
He spoke. It was as when the gull-king cries. He looked, and all his life stood in his eyes, And mine stayed terrored on his furrowed face.
So we two, and the ship, in that strange place Were glassed within the storm's green evil light.
[98]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Thorstan's Friend [CONTINUED]
Then Thorstan raised both arms up to their
height And cried " Thor ! " (hearing the thunder) and
cried "Thor!"
Dropped arms, and cried no more. His beard like mistletoe lay on his breast.
There is one track that all our fates attest And when we reach the end it is well known.
So Thorstan cried no more. He groaned no groan. He raised his head again and took my hand. " You who come after, may you understand ! " He gazed, mounting the bulwark. Flashing spray
Blinded my eyes. I turned my head away.
f
Then the storm burst. The dark blew out the day.
At the long last I lay along the shore. Pennons of chilly light whipped in the west. My limbs were leaden and I longed for rest.
Vikings, you will not find him any more. He knew, who had reached his end. To save him — would a man not save his friend Before his life? But this was other kind. He knew. I knew his mind.
[94]
THORSTAN'S FRIEND
Thorstan's Friend [CONTINUED] And if I live the sun again will rise, And if I live the moon be in the skies, A warm hand touch me and a dear face see !
With him the thing was other. Such as he Desire no crown of our dull victories. They Fling from their eyes the jeweled glittering spray Of kingdoms and peer ever toward the west.
By such strange. rending hunger dispossessed Of steed, of store and stead, of wife and bairn, Thorstan's gnarled body in some sandy cairn Under the shifting tides lies turquoise-eyed.
But that, the ghost in Thorstan, doth not bide By wet or dry or where we feel the air. This heart within me knows it is not there. (My friend, my friend, my friend!) This heart says, crying, it is not the end. Bringing no peace, it says — yet says and says; For here — here was the parting of our ways. I cannot know — but he? ... Broad lies the light along the level sea.
[95]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE BALLAD OF TAILLEFER
To Elinor Wylie
ON the judgment seat of Alfred, Acclaimed by churl and thane, Sat Harold the son of Godwin With the sword of Athelstane, — The Earl of the West Saxons, With Edward in his mind, Harold, Lord of Britain, King of the English kind.
In Rouen fumed Duke William And swore this should not be, By the Mount of the Archangel, By the saints of Normandy; And Tostig, Harold's brother, Northumbria's banished earl, Spake with Harold Hardrada And saw his fierce lip curl.
So the Norse returned to England With fire and sword, and found One gift from the golden Dragon — Seven feet of English ground! [96]
THE BALLAD OF TAILLEFER
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED]
A shield wall by Gate Fulford, Thick spears on a windy ridge, The last of the ancient sea-kings Routed at Stamfordbridge.
But below the Picard river
The south wind came at last
To the sails of all Duke William's ships.
His ships were sailing fast
North on the misty channel
When stars were glittering,
And under the Mora's lantern
One knight sang to the king.
Taillefer, Cleaver of Iron, Bearing a name for the strong, — Yet Taillefer, youth of laughter, Thrilling the night with a song Of Charlemagne and Roland, Of a horn that mocked despair, With a voice of youth and victory — Taillefer ! Taillefer !
Brooding the Conqueror watched him And his rapt uplifted face, Light of the eyes that challenged, Freedom and strength and grace, Merry, untouched by evil, Open and frank and kind;
[97]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED] And a serpent stirred in the darkness That filled Duke William's mind.
Through the wet wave at Pevensey
The armed host threshed to shore,
And the Duke would first have reached the land
But a light step leapt before
First on the coast of England
Bareheaded with blowing hair
Bounded that unleashed leopard
The young knight, Taillefer.
Sudden abashed and halted
By the Conqueror's loud commands
He paused. Duke William tripped and fell,
The earth in his two hands.
" So I take seizin of England ! "
He cried with a surly glare,
Yet caught youth's impish laughter
In the eyes of Taillefer.
Now a thane rode to King Harold With tidings strange indeed, And Harold marched for London Ere the man had turned his steed, Calling aloud to the muster All sons of English sires. The Dragon and the Fighting Man Flamed southward through the shires. [98]
THE BALLAD OF TAILLEFER
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED] And southward from London muster And the rood in Waltham's fane Levies pressed to the Standard Of the troops that met the Dane, Till they stood on the heights of Senlac From all the shires and towns, Battleaxe men and darters High on a spur of the downs.
And south on the Hill of Heathland Duke William, peering, vowed A minster to St. Martin Where the English gleamed like cloud. To the blessing of Bishop Odo Knelt men from Boulogne and Maine, Poitevin, Breton, Picard, That their hope be not in vain.
So the night passed. The morning
Grew gray in the chilly air.
The Conqueror summoned to his tent
The young knight Taillefer.
" Youth would go first ! " He eyed him.
" Rashness best fits the fray.
Singer of songs of daring
Lead thou the van today ! "
With open eyes of wonder Youth faced embittered craft.
[99]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED] Then, in a flash of vision, Sudden the young knight laughed, And a shaft of early sunlight Struck gold from his tangled hair. " By the banner of the Apostle, Yea, sire ! " cried Taillefer.
So beyond Telham northward The Norman knighthood rode. Billmen and jerkined archers Through marsh and wasteland strode. Toustain the White with the banner Bright glimmering through the haze, Odo in gleaming armor By the Bastard of Falaise.
There was to cross the English fosse And then the host stood still Where that ash-woven barricade Frowned from the sloping hill. A burthened pause ere battle About the hour of prime, And sunlight burst upon the downs, A lark began to climb,
And out from the Norman vanguard Tossing his lance on high, Unhelmeted, unheralded Under the open sky, [100]
THE BALLAD OF TAILLEFER
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED]
On a charger that stepped like dancing, With a song for all to share, A vivid flame in the sunlight Rode the minstrel Taillefer.
Taillefer, Cleaver of Iron, Bearing a name for the strong, Yet Taillefer, lord of laughter Thrilling the day with a song Of Charlemagne and Roland, Of one hour that mocked despair, With a glorious voice of victory — Taillefer! Taillefer!
Swift flew the sleet of arrows As the English trumpets blew. Up surged the host of the Normans. Blood glinted on the dew. Warriors of Kent and Essex Shouted defiance back. Hildebrand's flaming ensign Mounted to the attack.
But he tossed his lance and caught it As his charger caracoled, And high over horn and battle-cry His ringing singing rolled
[101]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Ballad of Taillefer [CONTINUED] Taunting, immortal, haunting, Snp<**b oh the sunlit air, A gauntlet flung in the teeth of Death — • j • t J •?. Taillefer ! Taillefer !
Then they saw him reel in the saddle And clutch at the saddle bow And the fight closed on the hill crest With curse and clashing blow, Till at length on a blinded Harold The shades of Senlac close And deep in the heart of England Burns the spear of her foreign foes.
And so wars come and so wars pass —
God knows what end to wars!
Rapine and craft and murder
Under the quiet stars.
Voice of Youth's clearer vision,
O trumpet against despair,
Lift us to surer victory —
Taillefer! Taillefer!
[102]
ON WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER
ON EDWARD WEBBE, ENGLISH GUNNER
His troublesome travailes
HE met the Danske pirates off Tuttee ;
Saw the Chrim burn " Musko " ; speaks with bated
breath
Of his sale to the great Turk, when peril of death Chained him to oar their galleys on the sea Until, as gunner, in Persia they set him free To fight their foes. Of Prester John he saith Astounding things. But Queen Elizabeth He worships, and his dear Lord on Calvary.
Quaint is the phrase, ingenuous the wit Of this great childish seaman in Palestine, Mocked home through Italy after his release With threats of the Armada ; and all of it Warms me like firelight jeweling old wine In some ghost inn hung with the golden fleece!
[103]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE PRIEST IN THE DESERT
To Douglas Duer New Mexico — Sixteenth Century
BLOOD stained the purple panoply, blood smirched
the holy zeal When Mexico long, long ago learned God from
grim Castile. Great green-plumed Montezuma's folk writhed in
a roaring flame. For this — remembrance in our hearts, remembrance
that is shame.
Yet, with no captained companies, when Cortez's
fame burned far, High Marquis of the Valley under the Western
Star,— With no cuirasses ringing, no pomp of banner and
sword, Into the unknown North went forth plain men who
served the Lord.
The seven golden cities miraged the golden sand, But serpents crowned fire-ringed them round, black
angels held that land.
[104]
THE PRIEST IN THE DESERT
The Priest in the Desert [CONTINUED]
Still Coronado's canyon yawns a chasm of awe and
dread Wherein pulse wizard blues of noon and Hell-pits
crumbling red;
And rumored grotesque monsters, rock-realms of devilish beasts
On gorgeous painted mesas, seemed gospel to the priests.
Infamous demons flapped the waste on black Sa tanic wings
With sulphurous breath of hideous death. All men believed these things.
So once, in more than Hell's despite, north strode Fray Estevan,
North from the New Galicia, scourged by the blaz ing dawn,
Sand burning through his sandals, — far-clumped mesquit and sage
Mazing his sneezing burro's steps, — the skyline quivering rage.
" Deus in adjutorium meum intende ... / " Now The first five Joyful Mysteries smoothed clear his
lifted brow. At Prime he said his office through with fitting
psalms and prayers, Though the sun a brazen giant clomb his Heaven's
golden stairs.
[105]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Priest in the Desert [CONTINUED]
That brazen giant lolled and gazed upon him,
jowl on hands. Tarantula and scorpion crept rustling through the
sands. When he said Tierce he felt the fierce scorn of
those barbarous skies. When at the next he came to Sext, all round flamed
lions' eyes.
At None his thought, by small food stayed, wist fully strayed to Spain.
He saw the sanctuary lamp, the tall wax-lights again;
He saw the tabernacle veil crimson for Pentecost,
The censers swinging at High Mass, the lifting of the Host.
Fray Estevan, the Jesuit, wandered through clois ters cool.
He stopped to watch a mouthing carp gulp from the garden pool.
He heard his Novice-master's voice, he chanted from his stall. ...
Yet on from None he trod alone waste sands till Evenfall!
The colors from far mesas died, blue mountains
turned to black. Ineffable a cooler air breathed down the desert
track.
[106]
THE PRIEST IN THE DESERT
The Priest in the Desert [CONTINUED]
At Vespers there were stars above — and shadows long and high.
The cactus took mysterious forms under the eve ning sky!
Wild treasure-cities, he had heard, crowded those
cliffs so far. Weird mythologic beast and bird shrieked there
to sun and star. The reek of mad blood-sacrifice sickened his sense
afresh, All devilish and ghoulish things wrought on the
shrinking flesh.
His burro sneezed again, behind; gray gophers whisked aside;
Screamed a blue-headed pinyon-jay; a far coyote cried.
Then — stillness and the myriad stars, the swish- swish of the sand, —
And Satan's dark familiars prowling the desolate land!
He told his beads the three times through, striv ing with silent dread:
Pater Noster, Ave Maria, each added Gloria said.
His mind clove to the Mysteries, down to Our Lady Crowned.
Less loudly raced his heart, his feet more firmly gripped the ground.
[107]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Priest in the Desert [CONTINUED]
Then, in the solitary night, he touched his burro's
back. The altar stone lay safely there, the relic in the
pack,— Chalice and paten and altar wine, — safe were the
wafers too, And alb and stole and maniple. Courage from
each he drew.
Ah, clearly shone his sacred hour! He saw the
Bishop stand ... In awe once more he gazed upon — his consecrated
hand. Bronzed? In moonlight? Not swathed in white?
. . . Yet fierce-white blazed that tryst With Heaven! His heart leapt, feeling still the
glorious yoke of Christ.
So, lips apart as if for song, once more he raised
his eyes. Above the eternal star-sown worlds unfolded deeper
skies Even to that white bewildering Throne whence
healing thrills on men. " Deus in adjutorium — / " his lips began again.
[108]
EUGENIE'S SOLITAIRE
EUGENIE'S SOLITAIRE
To Kathleen Norris
IN a yellow room
Till past mid-night,
A scarf of black lace
Across white hair
And around her face
That, on blue gloom
Or in pale light,
Swims ivory-clear,
She of the fluttering parchment hands
Plays solitaire.
The clock tocks.
Each long black pane
Streams with the rain.
Against the fire
The fire-irons' brass
Glitters like glass,
Or gold, or vain
Desire.
The cards are laid,
The cards are laid
As breaths respire.
[109]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Eugenie's Solitaire [CONTINUED]
White and exact
On green baize
The lady lays
Her cards.
Her hand hovers
To see
What the card covers.
She
Thinks swift small thoughts
Of temper — of tact, —
Quickens her hand
Or retards,
Shifting the ill-planned pattern of the cards.
On each card's back Is a gold crown And golden curlicues, A web design. The cards shine Brittle as glass, as she Lays them down Like a person paying dues: King — knave — (You see?)
A heart — a spade for a grave — A club for a crown — A diamond to brave The rabble, like renown, — [110]
EUGENIE'S SOLITAIRE
Eugenie's Solitaire [CONTINUED]
But not to save! As the eyes smart, A spade, a heart, She lays them down.
Red — black,
A Queen — a Jack,
A Heart — a Spade, —
Black— Red,
A Club — A Diamond instead!
They are laid.
The light flickers;
The room widens;
The walls fade:
Flaring and blazing chandeliers,
Conversational surf seething beneath the lights.
Ices, spilt wine;
Floors that shine
Like glass; a uniform
With a crinoline, that nears;
Bright eyes, bright lips, —
Bright mockeries, bright nights,
And the golden bees aswarm, —
And the fears, and the fears!
Her hand hovers To see
[111]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Eugenie's Solitaire [CONTINUED]
What the card covers.
She
Purses her lips to imaginary roses
In Spain again;
Then the thought closes
Like a black box-lid in her mind.
Her eyes swim blind,
As her hand
Quickens its fluttering movement, or retards
That gesture of a sunny, gallant land.
Red — black (And the rain!)
Blood — death, France and Spain!
Erectly now, imperial again
In her midnight dress,
Exact and passionless,
She plays the cards.
[112]
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
1914
WHAT am I saying, Katti? Yes, it's good,
The claret. This room is just the same, nicht
tvahr?
Its walls do not dissolve? Plaster and wood Somehow cohere, my dear. So here we are, You and I, facing, thinking, and the storm About to break. Old friend, we're safe and warm Just for an instant, though the world without Topples to crash. Yes, I'll lie down. A-ah,
thanks !
Just for a little. An old man with the gout — All that is left. All Europe forming ranks For such a war as I foresee and dread. So — you arrange a cushion for my head. Dankel I'll try to doze. But the closed eye Knows the house falling, Katti. One builds it
high,
Yet only like a house of cards it stands Falling forever, slipping through my hands That are grown so feeble. Do I hear a clock Striking? It seems to mock — it seems to mock This house of shadows — and how the shadows
spread !
[113]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] The purgatory of the unredeemed Uplifts its myriad hands to clutch; the dead White faces writhe; and every night I've dreamed Such ghastly dreams . . . until at last she stands (For all the madhouse whirl, for all the sorrow!) A cluster of white orchids in her hands, And there is peace a little — until tomorrow. (Not like the woman in white, who also comes Under the raven's wings !) Elizabeth, Listen! (No, no cessation from the drums That roll and roll and roll us down to death!) But — where you are — you can forgive, and see All you are now, all you are now to me.
So beautiful, so straight upon her horse, Backing " The Boy " superbly, fearless still And thoroughbred to finish out the course For all the slipping avalanche of ill; Thirst like a Cziko's for the open plain — Halloo, hoof-thunder, and the loosened rein, — But delicate, fragile, cold, the edelweiss That drinks the sun on glacial glares of ice; At last — Luccheni, by the Mont Blanc quay Under a heaven as blue as the blue lake, The boat so near.
It aches so terribly,
One wonders how the heart can fail to break. Beast! How we suffer! Beast! The sky above Clear as her eyes, pure as their trust and love !
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] Ah dear, recall Corfu, — your villa there Against the hill ; the rose-field, the sea-wall Rose-marble; on that purely glittering air Your heavenly cadences that rise and fall Reading from Heine in your templed nook With sunlight patterns shifting on the book.
Life was, well say, a puzzle. It resembled These scroll-work German toys, some print or map On wood, all cut apart to be assembled With hair-like lines that scarcely show the gap If the hands firmly press — but delicate Of touch lest, with the merest knock or nudge, The pieces fidget loose. Such was the State And is. This Nationalism, every grudge Engendered, and — the hands of power have spasms. Crevices show, till crevices are chasms. Hungarian, Italian, Croatian, Serbian, all the pieces of the nation In such a maze of jointures, joggling loose! One needs to be a connoiseur of glues. My life has just been dabbing every part With bayonet-bristled brushes. Is it true Such brushes are too stiff? One trusts the heart Too little? This Humanitarian glue Seems thin and pale. I always understood The best cement was blood. You told me blood, Mother, my tutors, my marshals, all those leading ! Like old-time surgery, the cure was bleeding.
[115]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] As to my figure, some pieces interlock Naturally, it seems. They felt the shock, In Serbia, for example, when we pried Herzegovina, Bosnia, from her side To fit them otherwise. Well, I have tried.
After Sadowa, we should have formed a state
With all the Jugoslavs incorporate
In amity. By the Hungarian pact
We ruined all. Now I perceive the fact.
Language, religion, all we undermined
To cut the wild Serb growth whose roots entwined
So fatally, we thought, the Magyar kind
And Austria's power. At last we could not shun
That solemn rising of the Balkan sun,
Serbia goaded champion in the lists.
Yet the Archduke they slew saw through the mists
A third power in the empire must have place.
We builded pomps of mist without a base
Save on the slaughtered bodies of a race
That heave the empire over, dying not.
So there came plot and plot and counterplot
And the mailed fist, and mouths that out of Hell
Grin their revenge, with taunts I cannot quell!
Such is an empire. So an emperor reigns. Not just gold candelabra and court-trains, Uniforms, orders, jewels; a bloody cross, Rather, — loss on irreparable loss, [116]
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] And archdukes gibbering with a madhouse leer, Who should have aided. It is a house of fear And shade, like Sternberg with its gondola-throned Blood-royal inmate, where mad Ludwig moaned. So, dear, you fled to Biarritz, Bruckenau, Yschl or Ireland, — kept your youth somehow. My mother sneered; even Charlotte, I aver, Was jealous — there too! But who was not, of her Who wished none harm, not even the anarchist. Charlotte! But though I hear her, I resist The wild indictment.
That white road seems to twist Above the Adriatic, skirts the coast Over the sparkling blue, and then, almost A league from Trieste, past villas flashing white, The sea-road ends, and Miramar's in sight, The castled crag that holds such secrets close. A coup d'etat indeed ! But then suppose He had returned as Emperor? The folk Wanted my abdication. So I spoke To the Baron over there. To think, with grief, 'Twas, after all, de Moray's base, black heart; As Bismarck said, " That amiable thief ! " The usurer Jecker, the upstart Bonaparte, — And so they sold out Max, and, on the day I took the crown in Buda. . . .
A-ah, they say
Just what they please, despite! 'Twas the De cree —
[117]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] For that they shot him! My note exonerates me. I'd have returned his rights of the succession Had he been freed; so why — feel — this oppression Upon my chest? Such smothering! . . . 'Tis
avouched
He stretched his hand, and every murderer pouched A golden coin. He cried, " Aim surely, aim, Muchachos, here! " — hand on his heart. How lame Our schemes are, sometimes. He had that other
trick
I hated, though, — running long fingers slick Back through his flaxen hair. Eyes of a girl!
Benedek and Sadowa ? Yes, there too. . . . But I must fold my arms against this whirl Of accusation. If we only knew What this new murder means ! They'll not accede To such gross terms — they'll never. Ah, poor fool Of Sarajevo! Boy, you simply freed The waiting lever. Germany must rule. Back to Charles Fifth and Francis, and we face The Gaul against the strong Germanic race. Louis Fifteenth felt Austria better neighbors? That was but once. Those days seem idle labors. When Francis bid for Maximilian's crown And lost, this centuried blood in which we drown Was brewed for broaching. Now at last it runs Red from the spigots of our great steel guns. [118]
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] One could not change the blood. The blood was
bad. It must be drawn — though all the world go mad !
It is no dream. Was Meyerling a dream,
And Rudie's murder? The whole long fateful
scheme
Of sorrow on sorrow's head so wearies me. . . . What do I hear? What do I seem to see?
The great black bloodhound whines at the door, Sniffs, sniffs, sniffs 'neath the throne-room door,
Whining " War ! War ! War ! " Pads down each corridor, stands at each stair. As I pass my chancellor — he is there. In the great cathedral, kneeling at prayer, As I lift my eyes to the holy altar, In the midst of the nave — he is there !
My shoulders shudder, my phrases falter.
As I drive down the Ringstrasse (guards of pride
Plumed and cuirassed, riding beside)
Close within their ranks, where I turn my scowl,
Is the great black head and the onyx glare
Of those two wild eyes, and the slaverous jowl
With its lolled red tongue. He is there, he is there !
Catherine, Catherine, did you dream
What still the Russian dreams? Your school
Of nation-building saw the gleam
From the far-off turrets of Stamboul.
[119]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED]
Even then, — aye, even then
Your yellow hand came clutching forth
From your fastness in the North,
On Bulgaria set your mark
And withdrew into the dark
Caldron of your plots again.
Dog that whines, dog that cries, — Catherine, he has Poland's eyes. " Light came forth From the North."
Aye, Voltaire, — and lightning comes. Harken, I can hear the drums, Hear the wild " Kol Slaven " rise. Vultures breed in Northern skies.
You too drained the cup I drain, Iron, red with battle-stain, (Hohenlinden, Austerlitz, Wagram, huge Napoleon, And the deathly gray of dawn!) Son of Leopold, you knew More than I have travailed through; But the brilliant reptile wits Of Prince Metternich availed Had Louisa's marriage failed. Nay, this is a snarling mood; Yet — your Christian Brotherhood! Are alliances like these? [120]
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED]
Peace, peace, and there is no peace!
Do I doubt of dynasties?
Is my wandering brain so wild?
Never — hush !
But I recall,
By my archduke father's side When — in youth (one day of all Burnt in fire upon my mind !) In a chapel cool and kind 'Neath a cross where Christ had died I knelt down . . . and saw a dove Pass athwart a censer swinging; And the sound of children singing; And a holy rose of love Spread its petals in my heart, Whispering, " You are but a part Of an hundred warring nations. Spread my love among them^ child, — Bring them to their free salvations, Save my people, rude and wild! "
Well, ah well ! But what ablution
Granted, for that " Constitution,"
To these dark and stained hands?
Then I planned the risen lands.
Grant it, God! None understands. . . .
Fight the Russian 'gainst the Prussian,
Fight the Prussian 'gainst the Russian ;
[121]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED] Austria must have what is hers; Might makes right!
Yes, ministers,
Chatter on! But it was dark In that maze. I — missed the mark.
No, Berchtold, no! Say not we ever sold
Our spoils — Schleswig, Venetia — for base gold.
We gave them over, ours to lose outright.
(By Bismarck's theft!) And Lissa sends a light
O'er Europe, Baron! On the other hand
Was Albert — like Radetsky — on the land,
And won Custozza, ere the princely fates
Ended those bloody weeks at Konniggratz.
(Shadow of Sadowa! Forty thousand dead!
There, as at Solferino, blood was shed.)
Yes, Count Cavour, I hear you. You make free With your reiteration, " Liberty ! " Italy? I remember Italy. 7* it not branded on the soul of me? The Quadrilateral — four forts, you see, Upon which forts turned all our strategy. . . . What are you saying, Count? Well, give it vent! Even as Denmark ? But at Prague I meant Good things for Schleswig ! It was my intent. . . . Ah no — no! God is right. 'Tis little use To palsy penitence with vain excuse. I am too old, too old! [122]
IN THE HOUSE OF HALLUCINATION
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED]
Peace ? Can the Hague
Make true the ruined hopes I built at Prague ? Prussia is very strong — oh, very strong! Auffenberg needs her. Life is much too long. I should have leave to die. How hugely spent, Those Reichstag revenues: massed armament: And voting more. And England? War-engrossed Since the first heretoga led his host.
Why are you silent, Berchtold? Do you find Jebusites man our walls, the halt and blind? Your smile does not deceive. What can we do ? You know this Nationalism. So you too Must answer for the juggernaut that comes. The Serb pot has seethed over. A few crumbs Of comfort thrown into — a tiger's den. That for your altruist! Men are but men. The better rule. The ignorant must obey.
Yes, yes I know, ghosts, what you wish to say ! Yes, yes I know, phantoms ! Your writhen lips Mouth well enough the bitter word that slips Poisoned from deep-stirred peasant hearts. But I Have labored for you. . . . Curse me, then, and
die! The royal dead, the House that weighs me
down. . . .
This is the crown of kings, the Iron Crown !
[123]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
In the House of Hallucination [CONTINUED]
So ! Is he whining at the door,
Still sniffing beneath the throne-room door?
Whining and snarling, " War ! War ! War ! "
Nay, God, he is howling " War! War! War! "
All through the Hofburg, wild and dismaying
The black bloodhound is leaping and baying,
Along the corridors, down the halls,
Through the Volkesgarten, over streets and walls,
Clear to the Prater, leaping and running,
Mad with life again, loosed from cunning;
Nose to the ground and tracking Death
With a swinging stride and a growling breath;
Toward the Carpathians hungrily,
From Cracow on — on to the Baltic Sea;
From the Tyrol to Calais hoarsely growling
Over all Europe foaming and howling
"WAR! WAR! WAR!"
So, Hound, you settle one old, old score; And then — or what are we Emperors for? — Till the end of the world, more wars and more, More wars and more!
[124]
THE SILVER BALLOON
THE SILVER BALLOON
1915
THE soubrette's song still echoing in his ears, The footlight dazzle still upon his eyes, He craned to look, and saw the blinded skies Yield what the searchlight sought. Great shafts
like shears Raked west and east. " How calm that beggar
steers!"
He thought, appraising with but small surprise The floating doom. Two aeroplanes like flies Crawled up the stars ... it seemed for years
and years.
The searchlights dimmed. The four-point-sevens
spoke.
The great bulk lurched a little, loosed a speck, — And from the crowd fierce pandemonium
broke. . . .
He saw no bomb, no flare, no toppling wreck, But — in his mind — Kensington Garden noons, And an old woman selling toy balloons.
[125]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE MASTER OF THE FLYING CASTLE
WHEN white canvas towered in tiers From the sealine, cloud by cloud ; When from roadstead out to offing All the seas gleamed thick with fame, In from Java and the East, From the lairs of god and beast, With a wake like mermaids dancing, Aymar's Flying Castle came.
She was laid in Port o' Moonbeams, She was launched in Noah's prime, She seemed older than the triremes As we peered from headland grass. In her hold was gold and cedar Out of Tarshish, Tyre and Edar And she trailed a bannered sunset On a tide like burning glass.
Aymar, Master of the Cove, Every salty shipwright knew, Everywhere a rope was rove Or a mate signed on a crew; Trim white house with hollyhocks, Walk of shells and hedge of box ; [126]
MASTER OF FLYING CASTLE
The Master of the Flying Castle [CONTINUED" Meet him rolling down to harbor, Buttons blazing from his blue.
Bought a black in Mozambique, Some outlandish port of call; Brought him home that very week When we watched her tower so tall; Be a gardener for the lady, Keep her little garden close. How we watched him weed of mornings With the bangle in his nose. Soon enough the Flying Castle Faced the seas where Auster blows.
Talked like Choctaw, did the black; Lifted gentle dark dog's eyes. But we scouted through a crack In his shanty — and were wise. He would hold the withered charm High with one long apelike arm, Muttering, moaning as he swayed, — Till we crowded close together, Hurrying homeward — yes, and prayed !
When the Autumn storms were brewing And the trees were leaved with flame, Like a lover to proud wooing Home the Flying Castle came ;
[127]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Master of the Flying Castle [CONTINUED] Goblins jigging in her rigging Were the freezing flaws of spray; Every samphire-bearded Triton Greenly hailed her on her way. Plunging, rearing like a stallion In the trough and through the crest; Bulking golden as a galleon On the witchcraft of the West; Purple night in all the shrouds Of her tropic-tinted clouds, Till the headland flowered its beacon — And the Fiend stood manifest! Mumbling more and more by fits, White of eyeball rolled askance, Worked the black's weird secret wits, Till we feared and fled his glance, Till one night the dark infernal Ritual rose to dim nocturnal Toil by moonlight — oil and kindlings — And a trancelike moonlight dance. Blood was smeared upon the portal. (Only voodoos understand!) Out of terror stark and mortal, Shriek on shriek — a smothering hand. Then the crackling rose to roaring And the swarms of sparks went soaring And the house flared like a pharos To the Castle, close off land.
[128]
MASTER OF FLYING CASTLE
The Master of the Flying Castle [CONTINUED] Aymar's face was gray and shrunken, Aymar's voice was but a croak, Aymar's eyes were charred and sunken And they burned you, when he spoke; Tottering palsied, as if drunken, Through hushed streets he did not see, — And the Flying Castle rotting, Sunk and sand-filled, off the quay!
[129]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
DUST OF THE PLAINS
RAILS unreeling past the brass gate-bars, Loud-capped tourists with brown cigars, Idle chatter and a giggling girl, And the plains' dust rising whirl on whirl — Rising and spreading like eagle wings, Ghostily hosting the redskin kings!
A bed of live coals the sunset sky,
All cherry embers, pulsed on high.
Mesas like giant buffalo
Loomed, like the ghosts of long ago.
And the silver rails reeled out, thinned far
From the click aclacJcet of our flying car.
Oglallas, Arapahoes, fighting Utes
Wheeled from the shadow'of the buttressed buttes ;
Painted Sioux, Cheyennes, Shoshones,
Clinging, swinging from their piebald ponies ;
Squaws and tepee-poles trailing by
Through the purple twilight of the flaring sky.
Bears' claws and beads on twisted wires, Sign of the Seven Council Fires, War-bonnets dancing, feathered with flame, Out of the golden dust they came, [130]
DUST OF THE PLAINS
Dust of the Plains [CONTINUED] Trotting, trotting their ancient trail, Lo-hallooing their spectral hail:
They that crouched ere our time began, Smoking the pipe of Powhatan; Kin of the panther, hawk, and snake : Birch canoes on the moonlit lake, Creeping death on the forest path, Wind of the desert, whirling wrath !
Wild and vigilant, stoic, fierce, Circling the road of the pioneers ; Spirits of lightning, wind, and rain, And the golden corn of the open plain; Bronzed hard riders with flying hair, Lords and gods of the open air !
Out of the dust, the dust of the plain, In phantom phalanx they rise again; Far from our cities of stone and glass, Restless forever their legions pass; Red Cloud and Black Moon's silent braves Filling the West like an ocean's waves !
Black stood the mesas against the sky, Gorges tossed back our clamoring cry. Back from our track fled the skein of rails, Binding the distance, bearing the mails, Winding the world on steely thread, And " Let me tell you — ! " a drummer said.
[131]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE RACE
YOUR pursed lips suddenly sucked in a sound that
your horse Leapt to. He tossed his head and stretched his
muzzle,
Hauling the reins, and started off at a canter. Riding astride in your heavy McClellan saddle, With straight flat back — in white shirtwaist and
high white stock And black cocked hat — you wavered against the
hills,
On that broad white road, a clear, clean flame to me. Blowing into the glory of the sun Over the marshes.
Caleppit — caleppit — caleppit ! The hoofs of my horse rang out in suddec
pursuit
Little puffs of dust like shots from gnomish rifles Followed your horse's flying heels. The road Rose and fell before us, as over a ridge By a ranch we clattered, and slanted around a curve Where a sheep-dog barked from a byre. The high
sun moved Following us.
[132]
THE RACE
The Race [CONTINUED]
I saw you sling your quirt Lightly over the flank of the reaching roan, And the easy cradle-motion beneath me told How my horse was nearing a run.
The wind from the Straits Came slashing into our faces. The dusty road, Hard under hoof, racketed with our flight. A dooryard fluttered orange poppies. A team Drew into the dusty, bitten border grass To w^atch us by. A winding herd of cows Stopped to stare from a mounded hill, in the cloak- spread shadow
Of crooked live-oaks. Out on that strip of steel, Beyoi d the marshes, some veering red-brown sails Of Portuguese fishermen made for a ramshackle
pier.
The hills, like a humping school of porpoises, Kept pace with us on the left, and luring white The road ran on before.
A stretch of sand
Muffled the hoofs, and seemed to check us. Then Caleppit — caleppit — caleppit! again. And neither
gaining . . . Pursuer, pursued, and all a flowing illusion !
You rode in a cloud, and I in a cloud. We moved Like the wistful-tingeing sunlight of afternoon That glinted far out on the slowly-turning wings
[133]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Race [CONTINUED]
Of an inland-drifted gull. And high and still A dark hawk hovered. Our eyes, astare with speed. Dilated into a bright indifferent sky.
And then you pulled on the reins, and I tugged,
and the horses,
Snorting and sweating, were wrestled back to a trot And we laughed and ambled along in companionship While I was thinking, " I wonder if she is the
One?"
And you, perhaps, " I really wonder if he ? "
Both meanwhile talking scattered half-chaffing
things, One of your leather gauntlets busied aboi .!; your
hair,
I fumbling in my khaki coat for a pipe, Each in youth's calm pursuit Of a magnificent and mateless dream!
[134]
THE VOYAGE
THE VOYAGE
MY father came to me across the grass. Seating himself in a chair of Chinese straw His clever eyes peered at me askance, Mutely appraising.
" You think you wish to go? " he suddenly said.
I munched at pepper berries.
The sun sloped on the summer afternoon.
The fountain trickled.
The leaves of my book stirred idly.
I said, " I'll go ! " I got upon my feet.
Moonlight that night had something more to
say
Than for long, O long! The California house, beloved and rambling Held games and meals and reading, wood-fires
crackling, Familiar voices Arguing kindly
And dreams — but — the dream of dreams — !
[135]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
High in my moonlit room I lay, star-haunted.
I pondered also the look in my father's eyes.
The engines tramp and stamp from the narrow
alleyway
Between my stateroom and the malodorous galley Of the big rhythmically-quivering Army Transport. The galley-gang, whose chief is a coal-black negro Fit for a fez in any Soudanese regiment, Splash and clatter the dishes and jabber their
jocularity.
Washed for supper, I cross from the door to the
rail,
Roll a smoke from small brown fluttering papers And watch grape-colored water frothing by Where the flashing log Trails and leaps like a flying-fish. Elbow to elbow along the rail — Coal-passers, engineers, non-coms — and I !
Next me is " Chuck," his cheerful full-moon face
Florid, aglisten. Beefy of bulk is he,
A comic fat boy — truly, hard as nails.
He is anxious to prove that to you, anxious to show
That his genial views are backed by excellent
brawn.
He wears his cap one side and his mouth one side. He struts a trifle, swinging his big pink arms. [136]
THE VOYAGE
The voyage [CONTINUED]
He has straw-colored hair and freckles, and mops
his neck
And looks you over, and blurts a question, and grins, And vents his airy soul and expressive slang On the building sunset sky.
I sit at mess
On the right of the stocky ferocious second mate.
(As to face and voice — his heart
Is as soft as the puddled butter!) " Well, young
fellah, Got yer braces hitched to climb the mainmast —
huh?" " They got one pipe aboard this boat! " " What's
that? " "It's that Deck Yeoman's job!" "Well, y'see,
when I Was just that green—" ..." Yeah, I told the
Chief, but he — " "What's she done today? Two-forty?" . . .
" Pass the spuds ! "
Grinning, in some unease, I sand my coffee, Unclog the condensed-milk can, And plunge into floury biscuits and corn-beef hash.
In the murmurous, melancholy Star-hung evening of the Pacific Ocean, With the ship bowling, passengers strolling above, My clerk-jobs done for the day, and the little eyes
[137]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
Of our cigarettes atwinkle through purple velvet
The goo-goos for'ard tune their mandolines,
They tremor our lazy dreams
With the flickering twinkle-tinkle of mandolines.
On the upper deck the passengers — white moth;
or stalking ghosts — Turn and clot by the rail. Or the ship's phonograph starts with a raucou;
burr,
(Lugged down from the saloon.) It whirrs to the nasal yowl of a popular song. It erupts barbaric black-face dialogue, Flinging brazen badinage at the big white moon That splashes the vast dark sea with silver coins The flying smoke blows backward from our stacki In writhing patterns. Beneath, the deep-shadowed deck Is blanched as white as bone.
Cliffs and cliffs rising out of the sea
In the weeping dawn.
Low cliffs, far cliffs, a strange coast lifting;
Shouts of sunrise — that first enchanted harbor!
Sleek brown boys dive like shimmering fish fo
coins. Shouts and banging trucks concatenate gangplanl
clatter. Stores shoot out on the wharves. Diaphanou
dresses and laughter
[138]
THE VOYAGE
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
And starchy white fill the passenger-deck and the
gang-way.
I stretch my legs on the dock, with the hurly-burly Ramping around me in hot and dizzy sunlight. I work, and the itching sweat is in my eyes, But the sun is in my heart.
I checked freight in Manila. Perched on the canvas cover of a hatch, Watching the bales swing outboard, and the boxes, Or sneezing down in the hold In a golden shaft of dusty sunlight, While the natives jabbered,
I checked and checked the freight, and surrepti tiously Scribbled verses, and checked the freight again.
" Chuck," Lord, " Chuck," you almost burst my
ribs,
Thin as I am, and nearly split the sides Of that rickety caromata we grandly hired. (But no one walks !) Before us our withered brown driver's nightshirt
flapped
As he squatted nearly upon his pony's rump. Our two-wheeled chariot rattled with amazing
speed For the size of that pony !
[139]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
Remember the cock-fight we saw; the horrible
messes
They sold outside, for a snack ; the gabble-gabble Of contestants, umpires, backers ; the segregation Of seats, the unbearable odors, the whirring birds Slicing each other with twinkling spurs, fluff-ruffed With peckishness ?
And the gawping beaten bird Flopping in blood on the sawdust !
Remember the night our driver drove us out Far into damp deep-foliaged moonlit country, — Slipped down to fix the harness, and we got ready For an owl-like whistle, for bandits from the
jungle?
Bandits ? Bolo-men with butcher-knives ! It was only the harness though. A piece of string Had busted !
Do you remember the Chinese shops Still lit and doing business round by dawn, Narrow booths with flickering jets of glare Flinging high shadows behind the bronze-like
figures
That sat or shuffled within, whose slanted eyes Held centuries ? And the stately old walled city, The drowsing Bridge of Spain?
And, " Chuck," do you remember
[140]
THE VOYAGE
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
The faces behind the lattices in those mysterious
houses
Our driver thought we meant, — that sailor reeling Across the road, shaking his fist and cursing " Robbery ! " at the wink of a closing door?
Eternal rain on the Pasig,
Eternal mournful rain; and then one night
The band on the luneta, among the open carriages,
Soothed our blistered souls with — Sousa's marches !
But ah, the bells and the boats and the lights of the
launches, The bulk of big ships in the darkness, the scurry
of sampans, My breathless embrace of a dream as we smoothly
glided Into Nagasaki harbor, —
0 the swish of our rickshaws, the racing rickshaw
men,
The shops like a Fair, like a jeweled peacock- fan Waved on a night alight with Arabian visions, — The ludicrous things we bought at the little booths !
All day I saw them coaling.
1 saw the wonderful unfaltering ease
With which a basket mounts from hand to hand Of stringy native and small brown native woman, An endless chain of purely primitive labor
[141]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
All through the time of siesta.
I remember the little children filling baskets,
The little brown children scampering round the cas-
coes
Filled with coal. And I remember That Irish quartermaster who yarned of the
Yangtze
He had sailed on a battleship, and the Hoangho. One night, under a davit, He told us, and showed us a pasteboard box he
carried
Filled with a set of dragon-patterned china For his mother in San Francisco.
I remember the half-doped derelict
Who stopped a few of us going ashore one night,
Pleading to only be smuggled back to the States.
The Ancient Mariner ! He used to be
A gob. He called himself " a Navy man/'
Drink had done him. Part way sober at least
He had flunkeyed Chinamen, played in a vaudeville
troupe
Of Japanese, and drifted back to the port Crawling through rubbish and refuse for a living, Drained by disease and the climate, maudlinly Sobbing for home, for home.
Harbor waters of dream, where even tragedy Turned fantastic! [142]
THE VOYAGE
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
0 were dying only the proud advance of a ship Into mirrored starlight, to which descend the walls And streets of a moon-white city whose phantom
piers Dance with brilliant lanterns of salutation!
1 should find my florid Pythias, honest " Chuck/' A roustabout of those eternal quays,
Heaving a cask athwart a doughty hip
To roll it into the shed. I can hear him sing
" Hey, cul! Who let you in? They do get keer-
less. Some job I've got here — hey?"
And I, why I
Would draw and fill a small brown cigarette With Bull, and twist the end, and proffer it; And he would stick it in a beaded face And scratch a match on his pants.
So, after the day and the job,
In a twilight of blue tobacco,
Under golden awnings,
Gazing over the harbor to the white night-waking city
Where lazy bells had tinkled in weed-grown court yards
Through the sweltering afternoon, —
Where, in dim old cloisters the dark old Spanish paintings,
Cracked and smeared with age, somberly dream of scourgings
[143]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Voyage [CONTINUED]
And fast and penance and strange ineffable
vision, —
Gazing thither, or past the spectral sea-wall Where sea-birds flash and settle in the sunset., Where smoke on the bright horizon Stands like a spire,
The spire of a sunken city, of jasper walls, Of life one tumult of perilous fond adventure — Unending glimmering dream of starry youth ! — Then would we muse and remember, truly remem ber? Aye, " Chuck/' indeed!
[144]
ALONG THE EMBARCADERO
ALONG THE EMBARCADERO
ALONG the Embarcadero
By stanchion, plank and rope,
The masts and crosstrees lifted
And funnels at the slope.
The wharfinger offices,
The rattling winch and crane
Were struck with dazzling sunlight
That dreamed of ancient Spain.
Along the Embarcadero The Slav and Swede and Finn Tried many a rotgut liquor At many a sordid inn, Yet ghosts of earringed seamen Crowded the tangled spars Above the scattering clanging Of the Belt Line cars.
Tramp-schooner, bark and steamer, Both passenger and freight, Beguiled the boyish dreamer Beyond the Golden Gate —
[145]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Along the Embarcadero [CONTINUED] Alaska or New Zealand, Siberia or Japan — Oh, seas forever singing To the sailor-man !
Along the Embarcadero House-flags from East and West The goddess San Francisco Has gathered to her breast. Along the Eastern seaboard The wistful sunsets say " Man, when are you returning To San Francisco Bay ? "
[146]
THE CITY
THE CITY
To Robert H. Davis
I WENT forth to sing the city, today's city —
The blank stone sphinx, the monster search-light- eyed,
The roaring mill where gods grind without pity, The falling torrent, the many-colored tide.
Granite and steel upflung became my fountains, Cunningly reared and held as by a spell.
Lost in colossal stone, my newer mountains, I wandered witlessly through miracle.
And snared in tiny toils both frail and idle I lost my wonder as I had lost my stars, Though here a mammoth heaved no man might
bridle,
A terrible symphony rolled through crashing bars.
But small and obvious life fogged every wonder And itching needs and each small thirst and
lust.
Over me and about me roared the thunder Of the city's heart; I trafficked with its dust.
[147]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The City [CONTINUED]
Yet beyond Babylon its ways were regal;
Even Jerusalem its dreams outsoared. Loins of the lion and splendor of the eagle,
Where swarming vermin hailed it god and lord;
Where hardly one could touch, save to defile it, The dream phantasm it spread aloft at night;
Where men snared men, and made all men revile
it, Save in its moments of bewildering light.
Yet men had thought and raised and poised its splendor,
And fed the torrents of its living veins, And had fallen prone before it in surrender,
Seeing its awful being repay their pains.
A living being, but blind, where all misprision Flourished and fattened, and, lashed as by a
scourge, Flowed fear-struck crowds — yet dupes of some
strange vision As on the instant ready to emerge,
But ever foiled — and still forever trembling Just past the reach of mind, the urge of will ;
Sum of all jaded aims and drab dissembling, Something unbuilded, to be builded still ! [148]
THE CITY
The City [CONTINUED]
So once again, almost against desire,
The appalling city unsealed the eyes she sealed, Until her darkest streets ran weltering fire
For thought of love at point to be revealed.
So all their eyes are fixed on mine forever, Eyes of dark pain, unfathomable will I
Something unbuilded, to be builded — never? Something unbuilded, to be builded still !
[149]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
WHEN THE CATERER SANG OF HIS WEDDING
To Sinclair Lewis
To a crumbly wine-tanged writhing of macaroons,
A tarantella of dwarf green anchovies,
The rainbow-bubbled surf from claret seas
Under delicate confectionary moons,
Where aspic islands quivered with white whipped
cream, Flung high the dancing dream.
Fluttering round brown quails with crisped skin And gilt-foiled bottles aslant in glittering ice, Florentine gravies, sauces bold with spice, Scrolled rolls — all conscious courses suave as sin — Came the white breeze of napkin seeking chin, The undermunch so flattering and so scorning, And a hint of phantasmagorias to begin In the very early morning!
The tart black- j ellied beads of caviare, White sleek asparagus in mayonnaise, Stuffed peppers stifled from their natural blaze By celery chips; striped trout with sauce tartare; [150]
WHEN THE CATERER SANG
When the Caterer Sang [CONTINUED] Brindled potatoes to make the palate burn, Olives and almonds salted crisp and thin, Black coffee coifed with neufchatel — a djinn Risen from the silver urn —
In animate masque these jigged upon a frieze Where golden pheasants mixed with sky-blue trees, Then vanished. Terrace by terrace, upward sprang White as bright frost, that palace of glamouries Built to the wild and golden god Meringue. Perilous carven sweetness brittly built, With curlicued devices pink and gilt, — Wizarded mist such as the moon doth make! On solider foundation fitly planted Where now a gleaming knife descended, slanted, And portioned melting slabs of angel cake. . . .
Thus, on an evening when his moon was blue, Since Ermintrude had kissed him in the dark, The caterer sang the greatest things he knew, Dancing round Rockbridge Park!
[151]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
METAMORPHOSIS— NOT IN OVID
To Sinclair Lewis
To think behind a bib or in a crib
May lurk some modernized Sennacherib!
Awed saucer eyes and bland uncertain smile, Will they gull thousands in a little while?
That imperturbable art of blowing bubbles To stoop to diagnosing liver troubles!
That twinkling candor and artless lurching gait, Lost, lost in ministerial robes of state!
0 golemn babies, so absurd and antic, My silent apprehension drives me frantic.
Away with horoscope and astrolabe!
1 shall not read the stars for any babe.
Yet — laurelled Caesar, in short dress and socks, Site, fatly chuckling, toppling building-blocks.
Kings, dustmen, clowns, Napoleon, Scaramouch, Chew cap-strings from each blanketed barouche. [152]
METAMORPHOSIS— NOT IN OVID
Metamorphosis — Not in Ovid [CONTINUED] Through their contemplative fixed scrutiny The world's weird unknown future winks at me !
[153]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE HERETIC
" THEN/' said my Angel, " I leave you ! " " So ! " whispered my Devil, " I come !
But my lips framed no regretting; I stood struck dumb.
With pathos the angels would grieve you;
With threats the devils would fright. Man travails within, begetting
A god of light.
Now though all Heaven bereft me Of flowers and music's sound,
Now though all Hell, to win me, Flamed red around,
Only one tiling was left me,
One only since time began : To speak the truth that was in me
And play the man.
[154]
THE LONELY
THE LONELY
YOU'RE away, and best away ; yes, it's best for you,
Out in a white and a trim ship on the salty blue.
O you're a happy man, sailor ! May all that's good betide
Your landfall and your home-coming and the har bor where you ride. . . .
Let you forget the ghosts that walked when the fog was overside!
And you're a jog by hill and bog and striding up the
scarp Where the wind has famous trees to flog and harps
an iron harp. Your valley lamp, your evening star, your white
street in the moon — May the house you seek have its door ajar, and
she stand in it, soon. . . . Let you forget the graveyard wall and the spectres'
rigadoon!
And I'm away in jeweled caves, wishing myself as
well, On Eastern isles the tide-turn laves, bound by a
master-spell ;
[155]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
The Lonely [CONTINUED]
And I'll not shiver for ghosts or graves, nor knock
my pipe and brood — But when the blood of the heart craves, and cries
and finds no food Lonelier far than earth or sea the mind's vain
solitude!
[156]
ENIGMA
ENIGMA
IMPERISHABLE trust
Even in the vagrant wind that blows the dust
Painting the sunset to our clouded gaze ;
Even in the stone that is
Compact of verities
We cannot know, or, if we know, despise !
Strange limits, laws as strange
Of the eternal prison where we range
Traversing but bewildered by its days !
Think, and be filled with awe ;
The very breath you draw
If on this wise, how strangely on this wise!
[157]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
RENCONTRE
No, I am not so cold as that. I would
Not have you read my mind. And that is all. Let
be!
No, I am not so bold as that. I could Not grasp and soil your spirit shining free. And something in your own I would not have Fasten on mine and feed. For something comes
between. And so this is as other things have been.
O brilliant broken lights of life ! I thrill To your allure. Awhile I shiver in your blaze. O still unspoken heights, ere the fixed will Stabs with its blinding beam the drowsy haze ! Then comes the shudder and the little laugh And we are gladly free of the decreed unseen — And this time is as other times have been.
Admitting, I accept my loss. We seek
A different shrine, although set in the same cliff- face.
Fitting the purpose is. We are not weak
Nor rancorous of each other in the race. [158]
RENCONTRE
Rencontre [CONTINUED]
This trifling time may yet be balm to salve
The sharp and sudden wounds with which all time
is keen; So let this be as other times have been !
So let us smile and pass. And if you go Through death to life, or from your puzzled life
to death,
(Knowing as little as the wisest know), At least for me you draw no troubled breath ; And I shall have a peaceful epitaph — Who might in Ilium have gazed on Helen queen, — Save that this is as other things have been !
[159]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
THE PHILOSOPHER
To have been far places, yes that indeed were
merry ; To have seen immortal faces, — ah yes, that were
well; White steeds in golden traces and golden chariots
burning, Red cap and laureled column and a crazed world
turning Round your world-applauded triumph — a stirring
thing to tell ;
Yes, yes, that were all very Well!
There's many a plain and many a mountain, many a city,
Many a glittering epoch, — O yes, that may be;
But all the hearts exalted, and all the spirits shat tered
That burned like fields afire, have not so greatly mattered
Though a mighty stir they made as they strove to make free;
And if that be so, God pity
Me!
[160]
THE PHILOSOPHER
The Philosopher [CONTINUED]
For I feel as if ionight it were all a mere phantasm A flowing of blue clouds and of dim-colored shapes ; A game of curious symbols that shine and lose
their meaning 'Twixt the light that blinds them and the dark
that's screening, In a fiery fitful twilight where we moil but none
escapes
Save at last where the dark chasm Gapes.
Leave then your talk of towns, talk of crowns and
wreathes and kisses ; Sit you silent in the starlight where the leaves
whisper low; It is strange enough, at least, that our minds are
still turning
Our eyes still asearching, our pulses still burning! Chink like coins in the hand all your memories of
old woe ;
That turns them into blisses, You know!
[161]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
FRIENDS
To Aims McMichael Hoyt
WALKING a lonely street, I thought,
One thing warms more than fire
Or wine, and is not sold or bought
At any man's desire,
And, unlike love, not wholly of
Passion too near despair —
Yet walls around a sacred ground
And builds a secret stair.
Friends — that can set the mind aglow
With their unfading light
And steel the soul at overthrow
Against the ceaseless fight,
And, beautiful beyond men's worth,
Walk on the walls of Time,
Because in dearth they turned our earth
To mirth and ringing rhyme.
I'll add it to the mysteries That start on every side. Whoever knows and keeps the keys Whereto all heaven swings wide [162]
FRIENDS
Friends [CONTINUED]
Through hours that pass — as in a glass Pass golden clouds and slow — He gave our friends for certain ends, Far greater than we know.
[163]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
TO MY FATHER
You rhymed like Lear for us when we were small. Our walks with you were full of things mysterious Made magic by your twinkle and half-drawl, Because we could not tell if you were serious. You rose to some occasions quite imperious, " Explained " the jokes to us in comic papers, And read us Russian fairy-tales, the shapers Of visions grim, fantastic, and delirious.
You laughed at us and teased us and regarded Our mediaeval lives with understanding; And often there were monsters that you warded Away with words unique and mirth commanding. We'd hang across the landing till we'd fall, Waiting to hear your step down in the hall.
" Well, bears ! " or " How is Little John tonight? " " The man who made this match, my son, must be
a—"
" Oh, Father, you'll not please turn on the light Until we hear what happened to Gackelea ! "
[164]
TO MY FATHER
To my Father [CONTINUED]
"Dark? Nonsense! Read? A very strange idea ! "
The leather chair at last denounced this attitude,
And, coiled at various lengths, we breathed beati tude
Before some world's-end castle on Mount Moria.
There, at endearing sprawl that never cost your
True dignity the loss of one iota,
We would regard you from precarious posture,
Squirming with exclamation points, or stilly
As a hushed mouse, while thrillingly you'd quote a
Rhyme, or wake fairies in a tiger-lily.
in
Time, the dark whale, spouts blithely from his
spiracle
A jet of memory that makes glad the sun. In you the intuition for true fun Wrought us the breathless and quotidian miracle. You taught us words like these with pomp satirical, And I have but to listen and I hear Your voice croon, " Shed no tear, oh shed no tear ! " Swayed between the ironic and the lyrical.
Hard lines in Caesar, equations in quadratics, Charades, acrostics, walks that made us pant And sit on stones because our breath was scant And our legs short; the furbishings from attics,
[165]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
To my Father [CONTINUED]
Furniture, daily bread, child-grief that stings,
You took, transformed, and made amazing things.
Yet you have looked, even as all men must, On the Medusa, and looked down her eyes. Now I perceive it, in my time made wise Though not with half the valor or the trust; Your spirit blue as steel unflecked by rust, Your mind forever snapping dragon-flies Whimsical at their sheen, their sting of lies But relish, where so soon all things are dust.
You held life to us like a twirling prism Nor flinched a facet with your curious gaze. You said, " Yes, so it sparkles, so it sways." You hated, loved, and smiled. No syllogism Had said the last. All ways you cast your looks And walked the world and read a thousand books.
v
You had the touch, the gesture, the exact Quick divination for a thing well-said. Sometimes I only find in what you read To us your overtones, that drove the fact Of greatness home with thrust, that thrid close- packed
And marvelous Browning with a tongue in cheek, Thrilled to him on his heights, enjoyed his Greek, And so took all the gods, with spacious tact. [166]
TO MY FATHER
To my Father [CONTINUED]
Your detestation inchoate Carlyle
Turned Prussian-blue; your weakness, Stevenson.
(" They " call it weakness !) In the lucky-bag
Of literature you angled, for a while
Parceled the patchwork, when the day was done
Knew every banner from every bogus rag.
VI
You found a quartz-stone, Duty, and you found A white lamp, Truth, and Honor, a sweet fire, Whose ways are up the jagged crags that tire But whose domain has azure for a ground Where trumpets snarl no more but golden sound Hangs rapt like the great ending of a song. There you have peers. There all your years belong Who took that road, slung with a magic lyre.
Your hands would never touch it, but in shade Of your proud thoughts, your dreams, to childrens'
ears
What men will never know, but the heart hears And sees bright-meteored mount the frowning years, All of itself, all of itself it played That high fantastic tune your spirit made !
[167]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
TRICKSTERS
To Vachel Lindsay
I AM bewildered still and teased by elves That cloud about me even through city streets. One sings a stave and one a dream repeats, One, crueller, in some old resentment delves. I am aware they are my other selves, Yet to what dazzling vision each entreats, Casting a glamour over shams and cheats, Ennobling cant, buzzing by tens and twelves !
So then my smiling grieves the passerby. I strut in all vocations not my own, Wearing the centuries like a baldric slung; Whilst shabby I gawk at this splendid I. Chronos and Momus through my lips intone, Archangels, heroes,— rascals yet unhung!
[168]
BEING CURIOUS
BEING CURIOUS
To Stephen
I DID not think the patriarch would speak
But, as he slept, and dribbled at lip for drouth,
I stuck a salty olive in his mouth
Green with the juicy greenness of a leek.
He swayed a little on his throne of teak
And the fruit vanished. An afreet from the south
Stood straight before us, like as when one vow'th
Splendor to Baal. My legs got very weak.
Yet, even so, I thought, he'll cry — he'll bid — And there will be a tablet raised to me ! O grief ! The patriarch gestured with his thumb. Truth from one more awed generation hid, And I so safe beneath this greenlit sea, And the unanswered riddle, " Is he dumb? "
[169]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
O'CONNOR'S CAFE
Greenwich Avenue, near Sixth
WHERE JOHN MASEFIELD AFORETIME TENDED BAR
THEY'LL have " apartments " on the upper floors And shops below, here where the crossways meet, Where " L " trains shake high trestles down the
street
And idle loungers lean from dirty doors. No more some shrewd-eyed Bacchus shakes and
pours
Glittering decoctions when the Spring is sweet With violet twilight, or through festering heat Of summer, while the eternal traffic roars.
O'Connor's passes, and that tall Bastille With clock-face ever owlish of late hours Rules on, where once a strange young sailor passed To scour bar bright-work, dream of nights at wheel On vast dark seas, and to invoke such powers As guard his greatness here until the last.
[170]
MENAGERIE
MENAGERIE
To Don Marquis
ONE is a beaver with a wrinkled nose,
One is a weasel, — and I do declare
I see a melancholy small ant-bear,
Curled furriness that snuffles at its toes!
The wombat is both sleepy and morose,
The Bengal tiger-cub has such a stare
Of topaz! Two white lemmings sit at prayer
With proper paws, superior to foes.
The taxidermist with scissors at his waist Enters my heart and says, before them all, (But then he always waves a silver charm!) " They should be stuffed! " I eye him with dis taste.
My sins are so bright-eyed and warm and small, The little animals that mean no harm !
[171]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
FROM SPARTA
YOUR voice is perilous to me. Your clear Unconscious voice and delicate cameo face, Quaintly coiled hair and subtly careless grace Lead me too close to quiet brinks of fear. Just for a space my fire-maned fancies rear Raked by the snaffle and the grinding curb. Then, I sink back to stone, and you disturb My facile thought no more. But you are dear As the mysterious sky, the glittering sea, The ending of a peerless symphony That very breath might shatter to discoid; Fragility, brimmed with mesmeric light, Though held against immense and starless night, And sacred as the stillness round a sword.
[172]
THE FOIL
THE FOIL
THANK God for all the wrath of hypocrites That burnishes the blade of truth so bright ! Thank God indeed for malice, envy, spite, Fated to crown and throne their opposites ! Else might we, for a lack of babbling wits, Lose true comparative to judge that height Where thunder-crowned, with lightning for a light, Wild and benign the winged archangel sits.
Even his cup of fiery agony Must fill with wine of mirth to overrun When pismires urge on ants that moon and sun Err in an orbit! And so anew we see, With lifted eyes, what things the planets are, How even all heaven can burn through one pale star.
[173]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
CHARLES DARWIN
To Henry Seidel Canby
THIS is the soul who sought and found new keys To Life, and bade Man rise and grasp his powers; Who wrested many a secret from the flowers And cast a shadow on bright hierarchies. Patient to ponder, he mounted stormy seas Of bigot wrath, met craft that skulks and cowers, And searched laborious years and days and hours To link the primrose with the Pleiades.
The Cordilleras than any church more holy He found, Brazilian forests long adored, Turned to his task of truth and fathered slowly Man's honest search, while men cried, " God, our
Lord!"
Protesting still in weakness. This is he Who raised a temple to integrity.
[174]
NIGHT
NIGHT
To Christopher Morley
LET the night keep What the night takes, Sighs buried deep, Ancient heart-aches, Groans of the lover, Tears of the lost; Let day discover not All the night cost!
Let the night keep Love's burning bliss, Drowned in deep sleep Whisper and kiss, Thoughts like white flowers In hedges of May; Let such deep hours not Fade with the day!
Monarch is night y
Of all eldest things, Pain and affright, Rapturous wings;
[175]
MOONS OF GRANDEUR
Night [CONTINUED]
Night the crown, night the sword Lifted to smite. Kneel to your overlord, Children of night !
[176]
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY
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