I. The Man Against the Sky   
20. The Burning Book   
     
OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN

TO the lore of no manner of men      
  Would his vision have yielded      
When he found what will never again      
  From his vision be shielded,—      
Though he paid with as much of his life           5   
  As a nun could have given,      
And to-night would have been as a knife,      
  Devil-drawn, devil-driven.      
   
For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes      
  On the work he is doing,          10   
He considers the tinder that flies      
  And the quick flame pursuing.      
In the leaves that are crinkled and curled      
  Are his ashes of glory,      
And what once were an end of the world          15   
  Is an end of a story.      
   
But he smiles, for no more shall his days      
  Be a toil and a calling      
For a way to make others to gaze      
  On God’s face without falling.          20   
He has come to the end of his words,      
  And alone he rejoices      
In the choiring that silence affords      
  Of ineffable voices.      
   
To a realm that his words may not reach          25   
  He may lead none to find him;      
An adept, and with nothing to teach,      
  He leaves nothing behind him.      
For the rest, he will have his release,      
  And his embers, attended          30   
By the large and unclamoring peace      
  Of a dream that is ended.

I. The Man Against the Sky   
21. Fragment   
     
FAINT white pillars that seem to fade      
As you look from here are the first one sees      
Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade      
Of beeches and oaks and hickory trees.      
Now many a man, given woods like these,           5   
And a house like that, and the Briony gold,      
Would have said, “There are still some gods to please,      
And houses are built without hands, we’re told.”      
   
There are the pillars, and all gone gray.      
Briony’s hair went white. You may see          10   
Where the garden was if you come this way.      
That sun-dial scared him, he said to me;      
“Sooner or later they strike,” said he,      
And he never got that from the books he read.      
Others are flourishing, worse than he,          15   
But he knew too much for the life he led.      
   
And who knows all knows everything      
That a patient ghost at last retrieves;      
There’s more to be known of his harvesting      
When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves;          20   
And there’s more to be heard than a wind that grieves      
For Briony now in this ageless oak,      
Driving the first of its withered leaves      
Over the stones where the fountain broke.

I. The Man Against the Sky   
22. Lisette and Eileen   
     
“WHEN he was here alive, Eileen,      
There was a word you might have said;      
So never mind what I have been,      
Or anything,—for you are dead.      
   
“And after this when I am there           5   
Where he is, you’ll be dying still.      
Your eyes are dead, and your black hair,—      
The rest of you be what it will.      
   
“’Twas all to save him? Never mind,      
Eileen. You saved him. You are strong.          10   
I’d hardly wonder if your kind      
Paid everything, for you live long.      
   
“You last, I mean. That’s what I mean.      
I mean you last as long as lies.      
You might have said that word, Eileen,—          15   
And you might have your hair and eyes.      
   
“And what you see might be Lisette,      
Instead of this that has no name.      
Your silence—I can feel it yet,      
Alive and in me, like a flame.          20   
   
“Where might I be with him to-day,      
Could he have known before he heard?      
But no—your silence had its way,      
Without a weapon or a word.      
   
“Because a word was never told,          25   
I’m going as a worn toy goes.      
And you are dead; and you’ll be old;      
And I forgive you, I suppose.      
   
“I’ll soon be changing as all do,      
To something we have always been;          30   
And you’ll be old.… He liked you, too,      
I might have killed you then, Eileen.      
   
“I think he liked as much of you      
As had a reason to be seen,—      
As much as God made black and blue.          35   
He liked your hair and eyes, Eileen.”

I. The Man Against the Sky   
23. Llewellyn and the Tree   
     
COULD he have made Priscilla share      
  The paradise that he had planned,      
Llewellyn would have loved his wife      
  As well as any in the land.      
   
Could he have made Priscilla cease           5   
  To goad him for what God left out,      
Llewellyn would have been as mild      
  As any we have read about.      
   
Could all have been as all was not,      
  Llewellyn would have had no story;          10   
He would have stayed a quiet man      
  And gone his quiet way to glory.      
   
But howsoever mild he was      
  Priscilla was implacable;      
And whatsoever timid hopes          15   
  He built—she found them, and they fell.      
   
And this went on, with intervals      
  Of labored harmony between      
Resounding discords, till at last      
  Llewellyn turned—as will be seen.          20   
   
Priscilla, warmer than her name,      
  And shriller than the sound of saws,      
Pursued Llewellyn once too far,      
  Not knowing quite the man he was.      
   
The more she said, the fiercer clung          25   
  The stinging garment of his wrath;      
And this was all before the day      
  When Time tossed roses in his path.      
   
Before the roses ever came      
  Llewellyn had already risen.          30   
The roses may have ruined him,      
  They may have kept him out of prison.      
   
And she who brought them, being Fate,      
  Made roses do the work of spears,—      
Though many made no more of her          35   
  Than civet, coral, rouge, and years.      
   
You ask us what Llewellyn saw,      
  But why ask what may not be given?      
To some will come a time when change      
  Itself is beauty, if not heaven.          40   
   
One afternoon Priscilla spoke,      
  And her shrill history was done;      
At any rate, she never spoke      
  Like that again to anyone.      
   
One gold October afternoon          45   
  Great fury smote the silent air;      
And then Llewellyn leapt and fled      
  Like one with hornets in his hair.      
   
Llewellyn left us, and he said      
  Forever, leaving few to doubt him;          50   
And so, through frost and clicking leaves,      
  The Tilbury way went on without him.      
   
And slowly, through the Tilbury mist,      
  The stillness of October gold      
Went out like beauty from a face.          55   
  Priscilla watched it, and grew old.      
   
He fled, still clutching in his flight      
  The roses that had been his fall;      
The Scarlet One, as you surmise,      
  Fled with him, coral, rouge, and all.          60   
   
Priscilla, waiting, saw the change      
  Of twenty slow October moons;      
And then she vanished, in her turn      
  To be forgotten, like old tunes.      
   
So they were gone—all three of them,          65   
  I should have said, and said no more,      
Had not a face once on Broadway      
  Been one that I had seen before.      
   
The face and hands and hair were old,      
  But neither time nor penury          70   
Could quench within Llewellyn’s eyes      
  The shine of his one victory.      
   
The roses, faded and gone by,      
  Left ruin where they once had reigned;      
But on the wreck, as on old shells,          75   
  The color of the rose remained.      
   
His fictive merchandise I bought      
  For him to keep and show again,      
Then led him slowly from the crush      
  Of his cold-shouldered fellow men.          80   
   
“And so, Llewellyn,” I began—      
  “Not so,” he said; “not so at all:      
I’ve tried the world, and found it good,      
  For more than twenty years this fall.      
   
“And what the world has left of me          85   
  Will go now in a little while.”      
And what the world had left of him      
  Was partly an unholy guile.      
   
“That I have paid for being calm      
  Is what you see, if you have eyes;          90   
For let a man be calm too long,      
  He pays for much before he dies.      
   
“Be calm when you are growing old      
  And you have nothing else to do;      
Pour not the wine of life too thin          95   
  If water means the death of you.      
   
“You say I might have learned at home      
  The truth in season to be strong?      
Not so; I took the wine of life      
  Too thin, and I was calm too long.         100   
   
“Like others who are strong too late,      
  For me there was no going back;      
For I had found another speed,      
  And I was on the other track.      
   
“God knows how far I might have gone         105   
  Or what there might have been to see;      
But my speed had a sudden end,      
  And here you have the end of me.”      
   
The end or not, it may be now      
  But little farther from the truth         110   
To say those worn satiric eyes      
  Had something of immortal youth.      
   
He may among the millions here      
  Be one; or he may, quite as well,      
Be gone to find again the Tree         115   
  Of Knowledge, out of which he fell.      
   
He may be near us, dreaming yet      
  Of unrepented rouge and coral;      
Or in a grave without a name      
  May be as far off as a moral.         120

I. The Man Against the Sky   
24. Bewick Finzer   
     
TIME was when his half million drew      
  The breath of six per cent;      
But soon the worm of what-was-not      
  Fed hard on his content;      
And something crumbled in his brain           5   
  When his half million went.      
   
Time passed, and filled along with his      
  The place of many more;      
Time came, and hardly one of us      
  Had credence to restore,          10   
From what appeared one day, the man      
  Whom we had known before.      
   
The broken voice, the withered neck,      
  The coat worn out with care,      
The cleanliness of indigence,          15   
  The brilliance of despair,      
The fond imponderable dreams      
  Of affluence,—all were there.      
   
Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes,      
  Fares hard now in the race,          20   
With heart and eye that have a task      
  When he looks in the face      
Of one who might so easily      
  Have been in Finzer’s place.      
   
He comes unfailing for the loan          25   
  We give and then forget;      
He comes, and probably for years      
  Will he be coming yet,—      
Familiar as an old mistake,      
  And futile as regret.          30

I. The Man Against the Sky   
25. Bokardo   
     
WELL, Bokardo, here we are;      
  Make yourself at home.      
Look around—you haven’t far      
  To look—and why be dumb?      
Not the place that used to be,           5   
Not so many things to see;      
But there’s room for you and me.      
  And you—you’ve come.      
   
Talk a little; or, if not,      
  Show me with a sign          10   
Why it was that you forgot      
  What was yours and mine.      
Friends, I gather, are small things      
In an age when coins are kings;      
Even at that, one hardly flings          15   
  Friends before swine.      
   
Rather strong? I knew as much,      
  For it made you speak.      
No offense to swine, as such,      
  But why this hide-and-seek?          20   
You have something on your side,      
And you wish you might have died,      
So you tell me. And you tried      
  One night last week?      
   
You tried hard? And even then          25   
  Found a time to pause?      
When you try as hard again,      
  You’ll have another cause.      
When you find yourself at odds      
With all dreamers of all gods,          30   
You may smite yourself with rods—      
  But not the laws.      
   
Though they seem to show a spite      
  Rather devilish,      
They move on as with a might          35   
  Stronger than your wish.      
Still, however strong they be,      
They bide man’s authority:      
Xerxes, when he flogged the sea,      
  May’ve scared a fish.          40   
   
It’s a comfort, if you like,      
  To keep honor warm,      
But as often as you strike      
  The laws, you do no harm.      
To the laws, I mean. To you—          45   
That’s another point of view,      
One you may as well indue      
  With some alarm.      
   
Not the most heroic face      
  To present, I grant;          50   
Nor will you insure disgrace      
  By fearing what you want.      
Freedom has a world of sides,      
And if reason once derides      
Courage, then your courage hides          55   
  A deal of cant.      
   
Learn a little to forget      
  Life was once a feast;      
You aren’t fit for dying yet,      
  So don’t be a beast.          60   
Few men with a mind will say,      
Thinking twice, that they can pay      
Half their debts of yesterday,      
  Or be released.      
   
There’s a debt now on your mind          65   
  More than any gold?      
And there’s nothing you can find      
  Out there in the cold?      
Only—what’s his name?—Remorse?      
And Death riding on his horse?          70   
Well, be glad there’s nothing worse      
  Than you have told.      
   
Leave Remorse to warm his hands      
  Outside in the rain.      
As for Death, he understands,          75   
  And he will come again.      
Therefore, till your wits are clear,      
Flourish and be quiet—here.      
But a devil at each ear      
  Will be a strain?          80   
   
Past a doubt they will indeed,      
  More than you have earned.      
I say that because you need      
  Ablution, being burned?      
Well, if you must have it so,          85   
Your last flight went rather low.      
Better say you had to know      
  What you have learned.      
   
And that’s over. Here you are,      
  Battered by the past.          90   
Time will have his little scar,      
  But the wound won’t last.      
Nor shall harrowing surprise      
Find a world without its eyes      
If a star fades when the skies          95   
  Are overcast.      
   
God knows there are lives enough,      
  Crushed, and too far gone      
Longer to make sermons of,      
  And those we leave alone.         100   
Others, if they will, may rend      
The worn patience of a friend      
Who, though smiling, sees the end,      
  With nothing done.      
   
But your fervor to be free         105   
  Fled the faith it scorned;      
Death demands a decency      
  Of you, and you are warned.      
But for all we give we get      
Mostly blows? Don’t be upset;         110   
You, Bokardo, are not yet      
  Consumed or mourned.      
   
There’ll be falling into view      
  Much to rearrange;      
And there’ll be a time for you         115   
  To marvel at the change.      
They that have the least to fear      
Question hardest what is here;      
When long-hidden skies are clear,      
  The stars look strange         120

I. The Man Against the Sky   
26. The Man Against the Sky   
     
BETWEEN me and the sunset, like a dome      
Against the glory of a world on fire,      
Now burned a sudden hill,      
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,      
With nothing on it for the flame to kill           5   
Save one who moved and was alone up there      
To loom before the chaos and the glare      
As if he were the last god going home      
Unto his last desire.      
   
Dark, marvelous, and inscrutable he moved on          10   
Till down the fiery distance he was gone,      
Like one of those eternal, remote things      
That range across a man’s imaginings      
When a sure music fills him and he knows      
What he may say thereafter to few men,—          15   
The touch of ages having wrought      
An echo and a glimpse of what he thought      
A phantom or a legend until then;      
For whether lighted over ways that save,      
Or lured from all repose,          20   
If he go on too far to find a grave,      
Mostly alone he goes.      
   
Even he, who stood where I had found him,      
On high with fire all round him,      
Who moved along the molten west,          25   
And over the round hill’s crest      
That seemed half ready with him to go down,      
Flame-bitten and flame-cleft,      
As if there were to be no last thing left      
Of a nameless unimaginable town,—          30   
Even he who climbed and vanished may have taken      
Down to the perils of a depth not known,      
From death defended though by men forsaken,      
The bread that every man must eat alone;      
He may have walked while others hardly dared          35   
Look on to see him stand where many fell;      
And upward out of that, as out of hell,      
He may have sung and striven      
To mount where more of him shall yet be given,      
Bereft of all retreat,          40   
To sevenfold heat,—      
As on a day when three in Dura shared      
The furnace, and were spared      
For glory by that king of Babylon      
Who made himself so great that God, who heard,          45   
Covered him with long feathers, like a bird.      
   
Again, he may have gone down easily,      
By comfortable altitudes, and found,      
As always, underneath him solid ground      
Whereon to be sufficient and to stand          50   
Possessed already of the promised land,      
Far stretched and fair to see:      
A good sight, verily,      
And one to make the eyes of her who bore him      
Shine glad with hidden tears.          55   
Why question of his ease of who before him,      
In one place or another where they left      
Their names as far behind them as their bones,      
And yet by dint of slaughter toil and theft,      
And shrewdly sharpened stones,          60   
Carved hard the way for his ascendency      
Through deserts of lost years?      
Why trouble him now who sees and hears      
No more than what his innocence requires,      
And therefore to no other height aspires          65   
Than one at which he neither quails nor tires?      
He may do more by seeing what he sees      
Than others eager for iniquities;      
He may, by seeing all things for the best,      
Incite futurity to do the rest.          70   
   
Or with an even likelihood,      
He may have met with atrabilious eyes      
The fires of time on equal terms and passed      
Indifferently down, until at last      
His only kind of grandeur would have been,          75   
Apparently, in being seen.      
He may have had for evil or for good      
No argument; he may have had no care      
For what without himself went anywhere      
To failure or to glory, and least of all          80   
For such a stale, flamboyant miracle;      
He may have been the prophet of an art      
Immovable to old idolatries;      
He may have been a player without a part,      
Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies          85   
For such a flaming way to advertise;      
He may have been a painter sick at heart      
With Nature’s toiling for a new surprise;      
He may have been a cynic, who now, for all      
Of anything divine that his effete          90   
Negation may have tasted,      
Saw truth in his own image, rather small,      
Forbore to fever the ephemeral,      
Found any barren height a good retreat      
From any swarming street,          95   
And in the sun saw power superbly wasted;      
And when the primitive old-fashioned stars      
Came out again to shine on joys and wars      
More primitive, and all arrayed for doom,      
He may have proved a world a sorry thing         100   
In his imagining,      
And life a lighted highway to the tomb.      
   
Or, mounting with infirm unsearching tread,      
His hopes to chaos led,      
He may have stumbled up there from the past,         105   
And with an aching strangeness viewed the last      
Abysmal conflagration of his dreams,—      
A flame where nothing seems      
To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed;      
And while it all went out,         110   
Not even the faint anodyne of doubt      
May then have eased a painful going down      
From pictured heights of power and lost renown,      
Revealed at length to his outlived endeavor      
Remote and unapproachable forever;         115   
And at his heart there may have gnawed      
Sick memories of a dead faith foiled and flawed      
And long dishonored by the living death      
Assigned alike by chance      
To brutes and hierophants;         120   
And anguish fallen on those he loved around him      
May once have dealt the last blow to confound him,      
And so have left him as death leaves a child,      
Who sees it all too near;      
And he who knows no young way to forget         125   
May struggle to the tomb unreconciled.      
Whatever suns may rise or set      
There may be nothing kinder for him here      
Than shafts and agonies;      
And under these         130   
He may cry out and stay on horribly;      
Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear,      
He may go forward like a stoic Roman      
Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie,—      
Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman,         135   
Curse God and die.      
   
Or maybe there, like many another one      
Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead,      
Black-drawn against wild red,      
He may have built, unawed by fiery gules         140   
That in him no commotion stirred,      
A living reason out of molecules      
Why molecules occurred,      
And one for smiling when he might have sighed      
Had he seen far enough,         145   
And in the same inevitable stuff      
Discovered an odd reason too for pride      
In being what he must have been by laws      
Infrangible and for no kind of cause.      
Deterred by no confusion or surprise         150   
He may have seen with his mechanic eyes      
A world without a meaning, and had room,      
Alone amid magnificence and doom,      
To build himself an airy monument      
That should, or fail him in his vague intent,         155   
Outlast an accidental universe—      
To call it nothing worse—      
Or, by the burrowing guile      
Of Time disintegrated and effaced,      
Like once-remembered mighty trees go down         160   
To ruin, of which by man may now be traced      
No part sufficient even to be rotten,      
And in the book of things that are forgotten      
Is entered as a thing not quite worth while.      
He may have been so great         165   
That satraps would have shivered at his frown,      
And all he prized alive may rule a state      
No larger than a grave that holds a clown;      
He may have been a master of his fate,      
And of his atoms,—ready as another         170   
In his emergence to exonerate      
His father and his mother;      
He may have been a captain of a host,      
Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies,      
Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees,         175   
And then give up the ghost.      
Nahum’s great grasshoppers were such as these,      
Sun-scattered and soon lost.      
   
Whatever the dark road he may have taken,      
This man who stood on high         180   
And faced alone the sky,      
Whatever drove or lured or guided him,—      
A vision answering a faith unshaken,      
An easy trust assumed of easy trials,      
A sick negation born of weak denials,         185   
A crazed abhorrence of an old condition,      
A blind attendance on a brief ambition,—      
Whatever stayed him or derided him,      
His way was even as ours;      
And we, with all our wounds and all our powers,         190   
Must each await alone at his own height      
Another darkness or another light;      
And there, of our poor self dominion reft,      
If inference and reason shun      
Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion,         195   
May thwarted will (perforce precarious,      
But for our conservation better thus)      
Have no misgiving left      
Of doing yet what here we leave undone?      
Or if unto the last of these we cleave,         200   
Believing or protesting we believe      
In such an idle and ephemeral      
Florescence of the diabolical,—      
If, robbed of two fond old enormities,      
Our being had no onward auguries,         205   
What then were this great love of ours to say      
For launching other lives to voyage again      
A little farther into time and pain,      
A little faster in a futile chase      
For a kingdom and a power and a Race         210   
That would have still in sight      
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?      
Is this the music of the toys we shake      
So loud,—as if there might be no mistake      
Somewhere in our indomitable will?         215   
Are we no greater than the noise we make      
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage      
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go      
Because our brains and bones and cartilage      
Will have it so?         220   
If this we say, then let us all be still      
About our share in it, and live and die      
More quietly thereby.      
   
Where was he going, this man against the sky?      
You know not, nor do I.         225   
But this we know, if we know anything:      
That we may laugh and fight and sing      
And of our transience here make offering      
To an orient Word that will not be erased,      
Or, save in incommunicable gleams         230   
Too permanent for dreams,      
Be found or known.      
No tonic and ambitious irritant      
Of increase or of want      
Has made an otherwise insensate waste         235   
Of ages overthrown      
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste      
Of other ages that are still to be      
Depleted and rewarded variously      
Because a few, by fate’s economy,         240   
Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;      
No soft evangel of equality,      
Safe-cradled in a communal repose      
That huddles into death and may at last      
Be covered well with equatorial snows—         245   
And all for what, the devil only knows—      
Will aggregate an inkling to confirm      
The credit of a sage or of a worm,      
Or tell us why one man in five      
Should have a care to stay alive         250   
While in his heart he feels no violence      
Laid on his humor and intelligence      
When infant Science makes a pleasant face      
And waves again that hollow toy, the Race;      
No planetary trap where souls are wrought         255   
For nothing but the sake of being caught      
And sent again to nothing will attune      
Itself to any key of any reason      
Why man should hunger through another season      
To find out why ’twere better late than soon         260   
To go away and let the sun and moon      
And all the silly stars illuminate      
A place for creeping things,      
And those that root and trumpet and have wings,      
And herd and ruminate,         265   
Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas,      
Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees      
Hang screeching lewd victorious derision      
Of man’s immortal vision.      
Shall we, because Eternity records         270   
Too vast an answer for the time-born words      
We spell, whereof so many are dead that once      
In our capricious lexicons      
Were so alive and final, hear no more      
The Word itself, the living word         275   
That none alive has ever heard      
Or ever spelt,      
And few have ever felt      
Without the fears and old surrenderings      
And terrors that began         280   
When Death let fall a feather from his wings      
And humbled the first man?      
Because the weight of our humility,      
Wherefrom we gain      
A little wisdom and much pain,         285   
Falls here too sore and there too tedious,      
Are we in anguish or complacency,      
Not looking far enough ahead      
To see by what mad couriers we are led      
Along the roads of the ridiculous,         290   
To pity ourselves and laugh at faith      
And while we curse life bear it?      
And if we see the soul’s dead end in death,      
Are we to fear it?      
What folly is here that has not yet a name         295   
Unless we say outright that we are liars?      
What have we seen beyond our sunset fires      
That lights again the way by which we came?      
Why pay we such a price, and one we give      
So clamoringly, for each racked empty day         300   
That leads one more last human hope away,      
As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes      
Our children to an unseen sacrifice?      
If after all that we have lived and thought,      
All comes to Nought,—         305   
If there be nothing after Now,      
And we be nothing anyhow,      
And we know that,—why live?      
’Twere sure but weaklings’ vain distress      
To suffer dungeons where so many doors         310   
Will open on the cold eternal shores      
That look sheer down      
To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness      
Where all who know may drown.

II. The Children of the Night   
1. John Evereldown   
     
“WHERE are you going to-night, to-night,—      
  Where are you going, John Evereldown?      
There’s never the sign of a star in sight,      
  Nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.      
Why do you stare as a dead man might?           5   
Where are you pointing away from the light?      
And where are you going to-night, to-night,—      
  Where are you going, John Evereldown?”      
   
“Right through the forest, where none can see,      
  There’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.          10   
The men are asleep,—or awake, may be,—      
  But the women are calling John Evereldown.      
Ever and ever they call for me,      
And while they call can a man be free?      
So right through the forest, where none can see,          15   
  There’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.”      
   
“But why are you going so late, so late,—      
  Why are you going, John Evereldown?      
Though the road be smooth and the way be straight,      
  There are two long leagues to Tilbury Town.          20   
Come in by the fire, old man, and wait!      
Why do you chatter out there by the gate?      
And why are you going so late, so late,—      
  Why are you going, John Evereldown?”      
   
“I follow the women wherever they call,—          25   
  That’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.      
God knows if I pray to be done with it all,      
  But God is no friend to John Evereldown.      
So the clouds may come and the rain may fall,      
The shadows may creep and the dead men crawl,—          30   
But I follow the women wherever they call,      
  And that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.”

II. The Children of the Night   
2. Luke Havergal   
     
GO to the western gate, Luke Havergal,      
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,      
And in the twilight wait for what will come.      
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,      
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;           5   
But go, and if you listen she will call.      
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal—      
Luke Havergal.      
   
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies      
To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes;          10   
But there, where western glooms are gathering,      
The dark will end the dark, if anything:      
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,      
And hell is more than half of paradise.      
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies—          15   
In eastern skies.      
   
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,      
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss      
That flames upon your forehead with a glow      
That blinds you to the way that you must go.          20   
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,      
Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.      
Out of a grave I come to tell you this—      
To tell you this.      
   
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,          25   
There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.      
Go, for the winds are tearing them away,—      
Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,      
Nor any more to feel them as they fall;      
But go, and if you trust her she will call.          30   
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal—      
Luke Havergal.

II. The Children of the Night   
3. Three Quatrains   
     
I

AS long as Fame’s imperious music rings      
  Will poets mock it with crowned words august;      
And haggard men will clamber to be kings      
  As long as Glory weighs itself in dust.      
   
II

Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled,           5   
  Nor shudder for the revels that are done:      
The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled,      
  The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.      
   
III

We cannot crown ourselves with everything,      
  Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:          10   
No matter what we are, or what we sing,      
  Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.