Many Gods

VIA AMOROSA

(To A. H. R.)When we two walk, my love, on the pathThe moon makes over the sea,To the end of the world where sorrow hathAn end that is ecstasy,Should we not think of the other roadOf wearying dust and stoneOur feet would fare did each but careTo follow the way alone?When we two slip at night to the skiesAnd find one star that we keepAs a trysting-place to which our eyesMay lead our souls ere sleep,Should we not pause for a little spaceAnd think how many must sighBecause they gaze over starry waysWith no heart-comrade by?When we two then lie down to our dreamsThat deepen still the delightOf our wandering where stars and streamsStray in immortal light,Should we not grieve with the myriadsFrom East of earth to WestWho lay them down at night but to drownThe longing for some loved breast?Ah, yes, for life has a thousand gifts,But love it is gives life.Who walks thro his world alone e'er liftsA soul that is sorrow-rife.But they to whom it is given to treadThe moon-path and not sinkCan ever say the unhappiest wayEarth has is fair to the brink.

DUSK AT HIROSHIMA

Softly the bamboo bendsAs the sun sinks down unglowing,Softer the willow endsA sigh to the dusk around.Quickly the brief bat wendsHis flittering way, thro flowingFields of the autumn air,That are husht of the city's sound.Temple and thatch and streamAre forgetting the light that lingers,Mountain and mist in dreamAlready are lost, afar.Faintingly comes the beamOf the moon – then viewless fingersTinkle a samisen,And astir on the East is a star.

THE WANDERER

When moonlight on the faceOf the great Buddha fallsAs he sits in NirvanaOn the shores of Kamakura,When the pines about him placeSoft shadows at his feetLike offerings of penitence and tears,I hear in the graceOf the wind's low susurraA voice that calls me stillTo my home within the West,But I've lingered overlongIn the East's strange arcanaAnd no more is there desire within my breast.I left it when a boy,That far home and, alas,'Twas so fair that my dreamingEarth had fairer was a madness.I left it for the joyOf wandering the world,And heathen-hearted lands have I beheld!But when at last cloyOf delight brought sadnessLike lotus to my veins,And forgetfulness seemed fate,I had fared unto this shrineAnd the moon as now was beaming,And here have I awaited – and await.But not for any giftOf its god, or any graceThat in living or in dyingMen in text or sutra sigh for.And not for any shriftNirvana has, or skiesWhere Paradise imperishably smiles.But only for the siftOf the wind, that seems to die forMy soul's enduring peaceIn the dwelling of the Tomb.And only for the driftOf the moon that comes denyingEternity to everything but Doom.

IN A SHINTO TEMPLE GARDEN

Under the torii, robed in green,The old priest creeps to the shrine.Over the bridge the still stork stands,The crow caws not in the pine.Far in the distance bugles blow,War's bloody memory wakes.The priest prays on – for his sons that are dead,And the heart within him breaks.

FAR FUJIYAMA

Against the phantom gold of failing skiesI see the ghost of Fujiyama riseAnd think of the innumerable eyesThat have beheld its vision sunset-crowned.The peasant in his field of rice or tea,The prince in gardens dreaming by the sea,The priest to whom the sêmi in the treeWas but some shrilling soul's incarnate sound.And as I think upon them, lo, the tranceOf backward time and distant circumstance,Of Karma's all-remembering necromance,Lies suddenly before my boundless sight.It is as if, a moment, BuddhahoodWere given to me; as if understoodAt last were vague Nirvana's vaguer good;As if time were dissolved in living light.

ON MIYAJIMA MOUNTAIN

(To A. H. R.)Out on the sea the sampans rideAnd the mountains brim with mist and sun.O we are in Japan againAnd the spell is about us spun!The spell of the old enchanting East,Of Buddha and many a blissful priest,The spell that has never, never ceasedTo haunt us!Glad we behold the temple-topsAnd the lanterns in religious rowStanding, like acolytes of stone,Where the pine and camphor grow.And o'er them the old pagoda praysBlessing upon their dreaming days,And upon the eightfold sacred waysFrom Sorrow!Ah, and the torii too is thereWhere the tranced sea enters to his shrineDaily, with tidal mysteryAnd majesty divine.He enters now, as the nuptial seaOf love first entered our hearts, to beLord of their tides eternally,And Master!

OLD AGE

I have heard the wild geese,I have seen the leaves fall,There was frost last nightOn the garden wall.It is gone to-dayAnd I hear the wind call.The wind?.. that is all.If the swallow will lightWhen evening is near;If the crane will not screamLike a soul in fear;I will think no moreOf the dying year,And the wind, its seer.

ON THE YANG-TSE-KIANG

Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junkAnd tatterdemalion sampan glide,Sails of brown and black and yellow swinging.Down the Yang-tse bat-wing junksFish-eyed and gaudy take the tide,Forth to the sea in sloth they ride,The coolies singing.Off in the field the peasant toilsAnd along the canal the low tows slip,Fruit of the red persimmon piled upon them.Off in the field the peasant toils —With lip and brow the dull years stripBare of the dreams of life, whose gripHas grimly drawn them.High on the hill the yamên restsAnd the temple beside it sleeps in sun,Far in the distance faints the city dreary.High on the hill the yamên rests,And dun dead shadows o'er it run:This is the land where Time begunAnd now grows weary.

THE SEA-ARMIES

The wild sea-armies led by the windAre following in our wake,White-crested shouting millions moving on.They have broken their camp of Calm and o'erThe world rebellion make,With banner of cloud and mist above them drawn.They have heard the call of infinite Death,The ordering of his word,"Arise, go forth and conquer where ye can;For that is the only law ye know,Its mandate men have heard,Let them beware when they your path would span."Let them beware, for I am lordOf all that on earth has name,And unto you is given most my might.Ride on, ye have many a ship to rend,And many a mast to maim,And many a land to lash and soul to fright."So on they ride, a ravaging horde,From shore to shuddering shore,Beyond us in the bleak star-buried dawn;Nor know that when they have camped againAnd sleep, Life will restoreUnto her world the hope they have withdrawn.

THE CHRISTIAN IN EXILE

(Mandalay)The palms along the old fort wall are paling,The mountains in the evening light are red,The moon has dropped into the moat from heaven,A spell barbaric over all is spread.But what is that to him, a stranger lonely,In a land strange to all his faith and dim?He cares not for old splendours, he would onlyHear on the air a simple Sabbath hymn.The paddy-birds their snowy flight are takingFrom the tall tamarind unto their nest,The bullock-carts along the road are creaking,The bugles o'er the wall are sounding rest.On a calm jetty looking off to MeccaSons of Mahomet watch the low day's rim.He too is waiting for it – with an echoUpon his lips of a believer's hymn.The red gate-towers rise against the twilight,The palace of the heathen king is hid,The white bridge bent across the moat beside itSeems now of all unholinesses rid.He wishes it were so with all this cityWhose Buddha-built pagodas skyward swim;But he can only gaze on them and pity —And sing within his heart a Christian hymn.

THE PARSEE WOMAN

(At Bombay)Cast me out from among you,I will not see my childLaid aloft where the vulturesMay clamour for him, wild!The earth you say is holy,Not to be soiled by death,And a Parsee still should hold divineWhat Zoroaster saith.Ay, and so I will hold it,But see his pale sweet face,As pure as the palest flowerLeft dead in Spring's embrace.The sun we worship dailyShrined it for seven years,Then shall it go to cruel beaks,There where the sea-wind veers?No, no, no! tho you send meA beggar from your door,You, my lord, whom I honour,And you, his sisters four,To whom there have come no childrenTo make your bosoms feelHow even a thought so full of throeCan make my sick brain reel.Ah, you are deaf? you scorn meAnd loathe, as a thing defiled?My lord, I am but a womanWho longs to see her childLaid in a tomb, entreasuredUnder the shrouding sod.O would I had never given birth,Or that earth had no God!

SHAH JEHAN TO MUMTAZ MAHAL

I see as in a pale mirageThe palm that o'er you sways,The waters of the Jumna wan are beating.One pearl-cloud, like a far-off Taj,A dome of grief betrays —Its beauty as was yours will be too fleeting!The world is wider than I knewNow that your face is gone!While you were here no destiny seemed boundless.So I am lost and find no clueTo any dusk or dawn!Life has become a quest decayed and groundless.Come back! come back or let me findThe jungle leads at lastUnto your lips and bosom recreated!O somewhere I again must windMy arms about you, castInto one word my love all unabated!

PRINCESS JEHANARA

Where the road leads from Delhi to the South,And dingy camel-trains creep in the dustPast ruin-heaps of old FirozabadAnd Indropat unpitied of the drouth;By a lone tree, above a Pool whose sadPrayer-water all the turban-people trust,Is a heat-hidden tomb, and on it justA few faint blades of bent and grieving grass."Jehanara's it is," with ready mouthA Moslem tells the stranger, "once she said,'The covering of the poor is only grass,Let it be mine alone when I am dead.'"And who has stood there, where about her RestRise high Imperial tombs, knows hers is best.

A SINGHALESE LOVE LAMENT

As the cocoanut-palmThat pines, my love,Away from the soundOf the planter's voice,Am I, for I hearNo more resoundYour song by the pearl-strewn sea!The sun may comeAnd the moon wax round,And in its beamMy mates may rejoice,But I feast notAnd my heart is dumb,As I long, O long, for thee!In the jungle-deeps,Where the cobra creeps,The leopard liesIn wait for me.But O, my love,When the daylight diesThere is more to my dread than he!Harsh lonely tearsThat assail my eyesAre worse to bear,For the miseryThat makes them wellIs the long, long yearsThat I moan away from thee!O again, again,In my katamaranA-keel would I pushTo your palmy door!Again would I hearThe heave and hushOf your song by the plantain-tree.But far awayDo I toil and crushThe hopes that ariseAt my sick heart's core.For never nearDoes it come, the dayThat draws me again to thee!

ON THE ARABIAN GULF

From a far minaret of faithful cloudA wraith-muezzin of the sunset criedOver the sea that swung with sultan pride,"Allah is Beauty, there is none beside!Allah is Beauty, not to be deniedBy Death or any Infidel dark-browed!"And every wave that worshipped, every oneUnder the mosque of heaven arching high,Lifted a white crest with assenting sighAnd answered, "Let all gods but Allah die,Yea, let all gods! until the world shall cry,Beauty alone is left under the sun!"

THE RAMESSID

Upon an image of immortal stone,Seated and vast, the moon of Luxor falls,Lending to it a stillness that appals,A mystery Osirian and strange.The hands outplaced upon the knees in loneAnd placid majesty reveal the powerOf Egypt in her most triumphal hour,The calm of tyranny that cannot change.It is of that Great king, who heard the criesOf millions toil to lift him to the skies,Who saw them perish at their task like flies,Yet let no eye of pity o'er them range.What rue, then, if his desecrated faceRots now at Cairo in a mummy case?

IMMORTAL FOES

At Bedrashein between the pyramidsI saw the wingèd sun fold up his pinionsAnd sink into the nether world's dominionsWhere Set sent ill on the Egyptian dead.I saw the ancient Desert, that outbidsThe Nile for the date-lands between them spread,Fling over Memphis that is vanishèd,Another shroud of sand, then bid his minions,The winds, lie down upon their boundless bed.I saw where temples vowed to SerapisAnd granite splendours men name PharaonicAre kept by Time in silence and sardonicConcealment – mummied in deep mystic tombs.And when the stars came out in quiet bliss,I heard Eternity with all its dooms,Past and to come, sound softly the mnemonicOf Death who waits all worlds that Life enwombs.

THE CONSCRIPT

The camel at the old sakiyehToils around and round.Aweary is he of the NileAnd of the wailing soundOf the slow wheel he turns all dayTo lift the water on its wayOver the fields of Ahmed Bey,That with green grain abound.Aweary is he, too, of fellàheenWho compel him on,With thick-voiced chanting till the dayOver the West has gone.For the bold Desert was he made,The Bedouin, his lord, to aid,Not for this peasant wheel of tradeThat ever must be drawn.But on he toils while dahabiyehAnd dark felucca glideBelow him on the glassy flowOf the gray river's tide.Then when the night has come lies down,In sleep the servile day to drown —Like all whom Life turns with a frownFrom their true fate aside.

NAVIS IGNOTA

Lord, what ship goes forth to-day?I see her setting West.Shall she have thy winds aright,Stars to guide her with their light,Shall she sweep the seas to sightOf land and harbour-rest?Awful is thy ocean-wrath,And none can chart thy shoalsWhen storm unassuaging hathBlotted sun and planet-path.Shall she, Lord, escape the scathAnd live, with all her souls?For it is a beauteous thingThat ships should sail the sea.Splendid is their plunge and swingInto waves that foam and flingMaelstroms at their bows to bringThem down to destiny.And she, too, courageous ridesAway into the gloom.Now her lights are lost in tidesOf the windy spray that glidesThro the darkness, Lord, abidesThy Dove with her – or Doom?I shall know perhaps some day,Or, knowing not, recallHow my heart was fain to prayFor a ship that bravely layTo her task: O Lord, so mayEach vessel of us all!

THE CROSS OF THE SEPULCHRE

Within the Holy Sepulchre, breast-high,There is a cross uncounted lips have kissed,Millions the world to dust has long dismissed,Millions that now hope of it but to die.Pilgrims, I saw, from out far fervid landsOf superstition, North and West and South,Bend to it each a trembling, reverent mouth,Then kneel where Christ was said to loose Death's bands.And then I wondered if He who believedIn the One God were wounded sore by this,Whether He shrinks at each ecstatic kiss,Or knowing how humanity is grieved,Knows too that it is better to give HopeThan Truth, if only one is in man's scope.

THE NUN

A lone palm leans in the moonlightOver a convent wall.The sea below is waking and breakingWith quiet heave and fall.A young nun sits at the window;For Heaven she is too fair;Yet even the Dove of God might nestIn her bosom beating there.A lone ship sails from the harbour:Whom does it bear away?Her lover who sin-hearted has partedAnd left her but to pray?She has no lover, nor everHas heard afar love's sigh.Only the convent's vesper vowHas ever dimmed her eye.For naught knows she of her beauty,More than the palm of its peace;And who beyond Christ's portal to mortalDesires would bend her knees?The ways of the World have flowers,And any who will pluck those;But let there ever be a placeWhere none may pluck God's rose.

ALPINE CHANT

I'm tramping thro the mountains,They are rising white around me,Snow peaks like patriarchsThat Winter has enthroned.I'm tramping up the valleysWhere the cataracts sound meThunders they have shrillyFrom eternity intoned.I'm tramping thro the mountains,With the clouds for my companions,Soft clouds that float and clingFrom crag to cloven crag.I'm passing by the chaletsThat o'erhang the high cañons,Passing where the shepherdsAnd the flocks they pipe to lag.I'm tramping thro the mountainsWhere the pines in proud processionClimb like a hardy hostTo halo-heights of sun.I'm listening for the salliesOf the avalanche's HessianHurl of ice and graniteInto gulfs Avernian.I'm tramping thro the mountainsAnd the wind is yodling to meYearnings of the glaciersTo flow to summer lands.I'm treading up the valleysWith no wanting to undo me —For to-day I'm goallessAnd the great God understands!

THE MAN OF MIGHT

No moment drooped between his thought and action,No morrow died between his dream and deed.Within his soul there was no fatal factionThat could betray him in his hour of need.

IN TIME OF AWE

The fierce sea-sunset over the worldSprings like a wounded spirit,The waves all day have hissed and hurledTheir fangs and the spray has swept and swirled,And ships in the gray gale's lair have furledTheir sails – well may they fear it!The night will be but a monstrous seetheOf terrors elemental.The clouds will wrap in a ghastly wreathOf gloom the winds that in them breathe,And all that lives in the sea beneathBy fear shall be made gentle;And sink down, down to the nether deeps,Below the foam and fretting.Down where the sullen water sleepsAlway and the slow sand coldly creepsOver the lone wreck, which Death keepsTo guard him 'gainst forgetting.And there in the ominous vast calmThey'll harbour, like enchantedChill shapes he has strangely conjured fromThe silence of his masterdom;There float till again they feel the qualmOf hunger thro them panted.And then once more far up will they spring,To drift and sport and plunder,Shark, eel and whale and devil-thing,With tooth to rend and tail to sting.To the sea, O God, does horror clingAnd haunting past all wonder.

SUNRISE IN UTAH

The dun sand-cliffs that break the desert's seaRose suddenly upon my sight at dawn,And terrible in an eternityOf death took silently the sunrise on.Purple funereal from rifted skiesSwept down across their proud sterility,Only to die as here all glory dies,On barrenness I did not dream could be.O God, for a bird-song! or opening lipsOf but one flower upon the fatal air,For but the voice of water as it drips,Or stir of leaves the day-wind makes aware!O God, for these, for life! or from the faceOf the world wipe so irreparable a place!

CONSOLATION

ICome to me, shadows, down the hill,Lie softly at my feet.The sun has worked his willAnd the day is done.Come to me softly and distilYour dews and dreams, that heatAnd hours of heartless glare have overrun.IICome to me, shadows, down the hillAnd bring with you the night,Fire-flies and the whippoorwillAnd ah, the moon —Whose soft interpretings can stillThe tangled tongues of rightAnd wrong, and hope and fear, that haunt the noon.IIICome to me, shadows, down the hill —And let there follow Sleep,Which is God's tidal WillThat overflowsThe world – obliterating ill,And in its soothing sweepMurmuring more of mercy than man knows.

WAVES

The evening sails come homeWith twilight in their wings.The harbour-light across the gloamSprings;The wind sings.The waves begin to tellThe sea's night-sorrow o'er,Weaving within their ancient spellMoreThan earth's lore.The rising moon wafts strangeLow lures across the tide,On which my dim thoughts seem to range,StrideUpon stride,Until, with flooding thrill,They seem at last to blendWith waves that from the Eternal WillWend,Without end.

VIS ULTIMA

There is no day but leads me toA peak impossible to scale,A task at which my hands must fail,A sea I cannot swim or sail.There is no night I suffer throBut Destiny rules stern and pale:And yet what I am meant to doI will do, ere Death drop his veil.And it shall be no little thing,Tho to oblivion it fall,For I shall strive to it thro allThat can imperil or appal.So at each morning's trumpet-ringI mount again, less slave and thrall,And at the barriers gladly flingA fortitude that scorns to crawl.

MEREDITH

What am I reading? He is dead?He the great interpreterAnd seer – England's noblest head?What am I reading? It is hushed?The deepest voice that life had foundTo read a century profoundWith all time's seethe and stir?Why, it is but a scanty scoreOf days, since, at his side,Clasping his hand with more than pride,I felt that the immortal tideOf his great mind would long break o'erThe cold command of Death.Still in my ear is echoingThe surf of his strong words, and stillAgainst the wild trees on the HillHis cottage sheltered under,I see the toss of his gray locks,Like Lear's – for he had felt the stingOf all too greatly givingThe kingdom of his mind to thoseWho for it held him mad.O England, guard thy livingLike him from a like fate!For not the mighty thunderOf thy proud name from all the rocksOf all the world can compensateA nation whom no Song makes glad,And whom no Seer makes great.THE END