I. The Man Against the Sky   
10. Eros Turannos   
     
SHE fears him, and will always ask      
  What fated her to choose him;      
She meets in his engaging mask      
  All reasons to refuse him;      
But what she meets and what she fears           5   
Are less than are the downward years,      
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs      
  Of age, were she to lose him.      
   
Between a blurred sagacity      
  That once had power to sound him,          10   
And Love, that will not let him be      
  The Judas that she found him,      
Her pride assuages her almost,      
As if it were alone the cost.—      
He sees that he will not be lost,          15   
  And waits and looks around him.      
   
A sense of ocean and old trees      
  Envelops and allures him;      
Tradition, touching all he sees,      
  Beguiles and reassures him;          20   
And all her doubts of what he says      
Are dimmed with what she knows of days—      
Till even prejudice delays      
  And fades, and she secures him.      
   
The falling leaf inaugurates          25   
  The reign of her confusion;      
The pounding wave reverberates      
  The dirge of her illusion;      
And home, where passion lived and died,      
Becomes a place where she can hide,          30   
While all the town and harbor side      
  Vibrate with her seclusion.      
   
We tell you, tapping on our brows,      
  The story as it should be,—      
As if the story of a house          35   
  Were told, or ever could be;      
We’ll have no kindly veil between      
Her visions and those we have seen,—      
As if we guessed what hers have been,      
  Or what they are or would be.          40   
   
Meanwhile we do no harm; for they      
  That with a god have striven,      
Not hearing much of what we say,      
  Take what the god has given;      
Though like waves breaking it may be,          45   
Or like a changed familiar tree,      
Or like a stairway to the sea      
  Where down the blind are driven.

I. The Man Against the Sky   
11. Old Trails   
     
(WASHINGTON SQUARE)


I MET him, as one meets a ghost or two,      
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.      
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”      
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.”      
   
He led me down familiar steps again,           5   
Appealingly, and set me in a chair.      
“My dreams have all come true to other men,”      
Said he; “God lives, however, and why care?      
   
“An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.”      
He laughed, and something glad within me sank.          10   
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm,      
For now his laugh was lost in what he drank.      
   
“They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said;      
“I might have known it.” And he made a face      
That showed again how much of him was dead,          15   
And how much was alive and out of place.      
   
And out of reach. He knew as well as I      
That all the words of wise men who are skilled      
In using them are not much to defy      
What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled.          20   
   
What evil and infirm perversity      
Had been at work with him to bring him back?      
Never among the ghosts, assuredly,      
Would he originate a new attack;      
   
Never among the ghosts, or anywhere,          25   
Till what was dead of him was put away,      
Would he attain to his offended share      
Of honor among others of his day.      
   
“You ponder like an owl,” he said at last;      
“You always did, and here you have a cause.          30   
For I’m a confirmation of the past,      
A vengeance, and a flowering of what was.      
   
“Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress,      
With even your most impenetrable fears,      
A placid and a proper consciousness          35   
Of anxious angels over my arrears.      
   
“I see them there against me in a book      
As large as hope, in ink that shines by night      
Surely I see; but now I’d rather look      
At you, and you are not a pleasant sight.          40   
   
“Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul,      
And on my conscience. I’ve an incubus:      
My one distinction, and a parlous toll      
To glory; but hope lives on clamorous.      
   
“’Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what—          45   
The kind that blinks and rises when it falls,      
Whether it sees a reason why or not—      
That heard Broadway’s hard-throated siren-calls;      
   
“’Twas hope that brought me through December storms,      
To shores again where I’ll not have to be          50   
A lonely man with only foreign worms      
To cheer him in his last obscurity.      
   
“But what it was that hurried me down here      
To be among the ghosts, I leave to you.      
My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear:          55   
Though you are silent, what you say is true.      
   
“There may have been the devil in my feet,      
For down I blundered, like a fugitive,      
To find the old room in Eleventh Street.      
God save us!—I came here again to live.”          60   
   
We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then,      
And followed us unseen to his old room.      
No longer a good place for living men      
We found it, and we shivered in the gloom.      
   
The goods he took away from there were few,          65   
And soon we found ourselves outside once more,      
Where now the lamps along the Avenue      
Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor.      
   
“Now lead me to the newest of hotels,”      
He said, “and let your spleen be undeceived:          70   
This ruin is not myself, but some one else;      
I haven’t failed; I’ve merely not achieved.”      
   
Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined      
With more of an immune regardlessness      
Of pits before him and of sands behind          75   
Than many a child at forty would confess;      
   
And after, when the bells in Boris rang      
Their tumult at the Metropolitan,      
He rocked himself, and I believe he sang.      
“God lives,” he crooned aloud, “and I’m the man!”          80   
   
He was. And even though the creature spoiled      
All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim.      
Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled      
In Yonkers,—and then sauntered into fame.      
   
And he may go now to what streets he will—          85   
Eleventh, or the last, and little care;      
But he would find the old room very still      
Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there.      
   
I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt      
If many of them ever come to him.          90   
His memories are like lamps, and they go out;      
Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim.      
   
A light of other gleams he has to-day      
And adulations of applauding hosts;      
A famous danger, but a safer way          95   
Than growing old alone among the ghosts.      
   
But we may still be glad that we were wrong:      
He fooled us, and we’d shrivel to deny it;      
Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long,      
I wish the bells in Boris would be quiet.         100

I. The Man Against the Sky   
12. The Unforgiven   
     
WHEN he, who is the unforgiven,      
Beheld her first, he found her fair:      
No promise ever dreamt in heaven      
Could then have lured him anywhere      
That would have been away from there;           5   
And all his wits had lightly striven,      
Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.      
   
There’s nothing in the saints and sages      
To meet the shafts her glances had,      
Or such as hers have had for ages          10   
To blind a man till he be glad,      
And humble him till he be mad.      
The story would have many pages,      
And would be neither good nor bad.      
   
And, having followed, you would find him          15   
Where properly the play begins;      
But look for no red light behind him—      
No fumes of many-colored sins,      
Fanned high by screaming violins.      
God knows what good it was to blind him,          20   
Or whether man or woman wins.      
   
And by the same eternal token,      
Who knows just how it will all end?—      
This drama of hard words unspoken,      
This fireside farce, without a friend          25   
Or enemy to comprehend      
What augurs when two lives are broken,      
And fear finds nothing left to mend.      
   
He stares in vain for what awaits him,      
And sees in Love a coin to toss;          30   
He smiles, and her cold hush berates him      
Beneath his hard half of the cross;      
They wonder why it ever was;      
And she, the unforgiving, hates him      
More for her lack than for her loss.          35   
   
He feeds with pride his indecision,      
And shrinks from what will not occur,      
Bequeathing with infirm derision      
His ashes to the days that were,      
Before she made him prisoner;          40   
And labors to retrieve the vision      
That he must once have had of her.      
   
He waits, and there awaits an ending,      
And he knows neither what nor when;      
But no magicians are attending          45   
To make him see as he saw then,      
And he will never find again      
The face that once had been the rending      
Of all his purpose among men.      
   
He blames her not, nor does he chide her,          50   
And she has nothing new to say;      
If he were Bluebeard he could hide her,      
But that’s not written in the play,      
And there will be no change today;      
Although, to the serene outsider,          55   
There still would seem to be a way.

I. The Man Against the Sky   
13. Theophilus   
     
BY what serene malevolence of names      
Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus?      
Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games      
Would have you long,—and you are one of us.      
   
Told of your deeds I shudder for your dream           5   
And they, no doubt, are few and innocent.      
Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems,      
Heredity outshines environment.      
   
What lingering bit of Belial, unforeseen,      
Survives and amplifies itself in you?          10   
What manner of devilry has ever been      
That your obliquity may never do?      
   
Humility befits a father’s eyes,      
But not a friend of us would have him weep.      
Admiring everything that lives and dies,          15   
Theophilus, we like you best asleep.      
   
Sleep—sleep; and let us find another man      
To lend another name less hazardous:      
Caligula, maybe, or Caliban,      
Or Cain,—but surely not Theophilus.          20

   
I. The Man Against the Sky   
14. Veteran Sirens   
     
THE GHOST of Ninon would be sorry now      
To laugh at them, were she to see them here,      
So brave and so alert for learning how      
To fence with reason for another year.      
   
Age offers a far comelier diadem           5   
Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace,      
When time’s malicious mercy cautions them      
To think a while of number and of space.      
   
The burning hope, the worn expectancy,      
The martyred humor, and the maimed allure,          10   
Cry out for time to end his levity,      
And age to soften its investiture;      
   
But they, though others fade and are still fair,      
Defy their fairness and are unsubdued;      
Although they suffer, they may not forswear          15   
The patient ardor of the unpursued.      
   
Poor flesh, to fight the calendar so long;      
Poor vanity, so quaint and yet so brave;      
Poor folly, so deceived and yet so strong,      
So far from Ninon and so near the grave.          20

I. The Man Against the Sky   
15. Siege Perilous   
     
LONG warned of many terrors more severe      
To scorch him than hell’s engines could awaken,      
He scanned again, too far to be so near,      
The fearful seat no man had ever taken.      
   
So many other men with older eyes           5   
Than his to see with older sight behind them      
Had known so long their one way to be wise,—      
Was any other thing to do than mind them?      
   
So many a blasting parallel had seared      
Confusion on his faith,—could he but wonder          10   
If he were mad and right, or if he feared      
God’s fury told in shafted flame and thunder?      
   
There fell one day upon his eyes a light      
Ethereal, and he heard no more men speaking;      
He saw their shaken heads, but no long sight          15   
Was his but for the end that he went seeking.      
   
The end he sought was not the end; the crown      
He won shall unto many still be given.      
Moreover, there was reason here to frown:      
No fury thundered, no flame fell from heaven.          20

I. The Man Against the Sky   
16. Another Dark Lady   
     
THINK not, because I wonder where you fled,      
That I would lift a pin to see you there;      
You may, for me, be prowling anywhere,      
So long as you show not your little head:      
No dark and evil story of the dead           5   
Would leave you less pernicious or less fair—      
Not even Lilith, with her famous hair;      
And Lilith was the devil, I have read.      
   
I cannot hate you, for I loved you then.      
The woods were golden then. There was a road          10   
Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed      
Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar,      
For I shall never have to learn again      
That yours are cloven as no beech’s are.

   
I. The Man Against the Sky   
17. The Voice of Age   
     
SHE’D look upon us, if she could,      
As hard as Rhadamanthus would;      
Yet one may see,—who sees her face,      
Her crown of silver and of lace,      
Her mystical serene address           5   
Of age alloyed with loveliness,—      
That she would not annihilate      
The frailest of things animate.      
   
She has opinions of our ways,      
And if we’re not all mad, she says,—          10   
If our ways are not wholly worse      
Than others, for not being hers,—      
There might somehow be found a few      
Less insane things for us to do,      
And we might have a little heed          15   
Of what Belshazzar couldn’t read.      
   
She feels, with all our furniture,      
Room yet for something more secure      
Than our self-kindled aureoles      
To guide our poor forgotten souls;          20   
But when we have explained that grace      
Dwells now in doing for the race,      
She nods—as if she were relieved;      
Almost as if she were deceived.      
   
She frowns at much of what she hears,          25   
And shakes her head, and has her fears;      
Though none may know, by any chance,      
What rose-leaf ashes of romance      
Are faintly stirred by later days      
That would be well enough, she says,          30   
If only people were more wise,      
And grown-up children used their eyes

I. The Man Against the Sky   
18. The Dark House   
     
WHERE a faint light shines alone,      
Dwells a Demon I have known.      
Most of you had better say      
“The Dark House,” and go your way.      
Do not wonder if I stay.           5   
   
For I know the Demon’s eyes,      
And their lure that never dies.      
Banish all your fond alarms,      
For I know the foiling charms      
Of her eyes and of her arms,          10   
   
And I know that in one room      
Burns a lamp as in a tomb;      
And I see the shadow glide,      
Back and forth, of one denied      
Power to find himself outside.          15   
   
There he is who is my friend,      
Damned, he fancies, to the end—      
Vanquished, ever since a door      
Closed, he thought, for evermore      
On the life that was before.          20   
   
And the friend who knows him best      
Sees him as he sees the rest      
Who are striving to be wise      
While a Demon’s arms and eyes      
Hold them as a web would flies.          25   
   
All the words of all the world,      
Aimed together and then hurled,      
Would be stiller in his ears      
Than a closing of still shears      
On a thread made out of years.          30   
   
But there lives another sound,      
More compelling, more profound;      
There’s a music, so it seems,      
That assuages and redeems,      
More than reason, more than dreams.          35   
   
There’s a music yet unheard      
By the creature of the word,      
Though it matters little more      
Than a wave-wash on a shore—      
Till a Demon shuts a door.          40   
   
So, if he be very still      
With his Demon, and one will,      
Murmurs of it may be blown      
To my friend who is alone      
In a room that I have known.          45   
   
After that from everywhere      
Singing life will find him there;      
Then the door will open wide,      
And my friend, again outside,      
Will be living, having died.          50

I. The Man Against the Sky   
19. The Poor Relation   
     
NO longer torn by what she knows      
And sees within the eyes of others,      
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,      
Her fears are for the few she bothers.      
She tells them it is wholly wrong           5   
Of her to stay alive so long;      
And when she smiles her forehead shows      
A crinkle that had been her mother’s.      
   
Beneath her beauty, blanched with pain,      
And wistful yet for being cheated,          10   
A child would seem to ask again      
A question many times repeated;      
But no rebellion has betrayed      
Her wonder at what she has paid      
For memories that have no stain,          15   
For triumph born to be defeated.      
   
To those who come for what she was—      
The few left who know where to find her—      
She clings, for they are all she has;      
And she may smile when they remind her,          20   
As heretofore, of what they know      
Of roses that are still to blow      
By ways where not so much as grass      
Remains of what she sees behind her.      
   
They stay a while, and having done          25   
What penance or the past requires,      
They go, and leave her there alone      
To count her chimneys and her spires.      
Her lip shakes when they go away,      
And yet she would not have them stay;          30   
She knows as well as anyone      
That Pity, having played, soon tires.      
   
But one friend always reappears,      
A good ghost, not to be forsaken;      
Whereat she laughs and has no fears          35   
Of what a ghost may reawaken,      
But welcomes, while she wears and mends      
The poor relation’s odds and ends,      
Her truant from a tomb of years—      
Her power of youth so early taken.          40   
   
Poor laugh, more slender than her song      
It seems; and there are none to hear it      
With even the stopped ears of the strong      
For breaking heart or broken spirit.      
The friends who clamored for her place,          45   
And would have scratched her for her face,      
Have lost her laughter for so long      
That none would care enough to fear it.      
   
None live who need fear anything      
From her, whose losses are their pleasure;          50   
The plover with a wounded wing      
Stays not the flight that others measure;      
So there she waits, and while she lives,      
And death forgets, and faith forgives,      
Her memories go foraging          55   
For bits of childhood song they treasure.      
   
And like a giant harp that hums      
On always, and is always blending      
The coming of what never comes      
With what has past and had an ending,          60   
The City trembles, throbs, and pounds      
Outside, and through a thousand sounds      
The small intolerable drums      
Of Time are like slow drops descending.      
   
Bereft enough to shame a sage          65   
And given little to long sighing,      
With no illusion to assuage      
The lonely changelessness of dying,—      
Unsought, unthought-of, and unheard,      
She sings and watches like a bird,          70   
Safe in a comfortable cage      
From which there will be no more flying.