II. The Children of the Night   
34. Credo   
     
I CANNOT find my way: there is no star      
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;      
And there is not a whisper in the air      
Of any living voice but one so far      
That I can hear it only as a bar           5   
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair      
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,      
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.      
   
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,      
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,          10   
The black and awful chaos of the night;      
For through it all—above, beyond it all—      
I know the far-sent message of the years,      
I feel the coming glory of the Light.

II. The Children of the Night   
35. On the Night of a Friend’s Wedding   
     
IF ever I am old, and all alone,      
I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;      
For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait      
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.      
The devil only knows what I have done,           5   
But here I am, and here are six or eight      
Good friends, who most ingenuously prate      
About my songs to such and such a one.      
   
But everything is all askew to-night,—      
As if the time were come, or almost come,          10   
For their untenanted mirage of me      
To lose itself and crumble out of sight,      
Like a tall ship that floats above the foam      
A little while, and then breaks utterly.

II. The Children of the Night   
36. Sonnet   
     
THE MASTER and the slave go hand in hand,      
Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave,      
And there be kings do sorrowfully crave      
The joyance that a scullion may command.      
But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand           5   
The mission of his bondage, or the grave      
May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save      
The perfect word that is the poet’s wand.      
   
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes      
Are for Thought’s purest gold the jewel-stones;          10   
But shapes and echoes that are never done      
Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes      
Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones      
The crash of battles that are never won.

II. The Children of the Night   
37. Verlaine   
     
WHY do you dig like long-clawed scavengers      
To touch the covered corpse of him that fled      
The uplands for the fens, and rioted      
Like a sick satyr with doom’s worshippers?      
Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse           5   
To tell the story of the life he led.      
Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,      
And let the worms be its biographers.      
   
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress      
In art’s complete remembrance: nothing clings          10   
For long but laurel to the stricken brow      
That felt the Muse’s finger; nothing less      
Than hell’s fulfilment of the end of things      
Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.

II. The Children of the Night   
38. Sonnet   
     
WHEN we can all so excellently give      
The measure of love’s wisdom with a blow,—      
Why can we not in turn receive it so,      
And end this murmur for the life we live?      
And when we do so frantically strive           5   
To win strange faith, why do we shun to know      
That in love’s elemental over-glow      
God’s wholeness gleams with light superlative?      
   
Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all,      
Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose,          10   
Or anything God ever made that grows,—      
Nor let the smallest vision of it slip,      
Till you may read, as on Belshazzar’s wall,      
The glory of eternal partnership.

II. The Children of the Night   
39. Supremacy   
     
THERE is a drear and lonely tract of hell      
From all the common gloom removed afar:      
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,      
Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.      
I walked among them and I knew them well:           5   
Men I had slandered on life’s little star      
For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar      
Upon their brows of woe ineffable.      
   
But as I went majestic on my way,      
Into the dark they vanished, one by one,          10   
Till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day,      
The dream of all my glory was undone,—      
And, with a fool’s importunate dismay,      
I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

   
II. The Children of the Night   
40. The Chorus of Old Men in “Ægeus”   
     
YE gods that have a home beyond the world,      
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony,      
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,—      
Look with a just regard,      
And with an even grace,           5   
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,      
Here on a suffering world where men grow old      
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,      
Out of the flare of life,      
Out of the whirl of years,          10   
Into the mist they go,      
Into the mist of death.      
   
O shades of you that loved him long before      
The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,      
May loyal arms and ancient welcomings          15   
Receive him once again      
Who now no longer moves      
Here in this flickering dance of changing days,      
Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath,      
And the black master Death is over all          20   
To chill with his approach,      
To level with his touch,      
The reigning strength of youth,      
The fluttered heart of age.      
   
Woe for the fateful day when Delphi’s word was lost—          25   
Woe for the loveless prince of Æthra’s line!      
Woe for a father’s tears and the curse of a king’s release—      
Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom!      
And thou, the saddest wind      
That ever blew from Crete,          30   
Sing the fell tidings back to that thrice unhappy ship!—      
Sing to the western flame,      
Sing to the dying foam.      
A dirge for the sundered years and a dirge for the years to be!      
   
Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day,          35   
Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star,      
Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky,      
To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore:—      
Whether or not there fell      
To the touch of an alien hand          40   
The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem,      
Better his end had been      
To die as an old man dies,—      
But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown is ever a crown.

II. The Children of the Night   
41. The Wilderness   
     
COME away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,      
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;      
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland      
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.      
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn           5   
Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad      
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,      
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.      
   
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,      
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.          10   
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,      
There’s an old song calling us to come!      
   
Come away! come away!—for the scenes we leave behind us      
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever;      
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,          15   
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.      
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,      
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;      
But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us      
In the strangeness of home-coming, and a woman’s waiting eyes.          20   
   
Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us—      
Nothing now to comfort us, but love’s road home:—      
Over there beyond the darkness there’s a window gleams to greet us,      
And a warm hearth waits for us within.      
   
Come away! come away!—or the roving-fiend will hold us,          25   
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:      
There are no men yet may leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,      
There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.      
So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we boast the better      
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:—          30   
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,      
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.      
   
Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us—      
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh      
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,          35   
And the long fall wind on the lake.

II. The Children of the Night   
42. Octaves   
     
I

WE thrill too strangely at the master’s touch;      
We shrink too sadly from the larger self      
Which for its own completeness agitates      
And undetermines us; we do not feel—      
We dare not feel it yet—the splendid shame           5   
Of uncreated failure; we forget,      
The while we groan, that God’s accomplishment      
Is always and unfailingly at hand.      
   
II

TUMULTUOUSLY void of a clean scheme      
Whereon to build, whereof to formulate,          10   
The legion life that riots in mankind      
Goes ever plunging upward, up and down,      
Most like some crazy regiment at arms,      
Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,      
And ever led resourcelessly along          15   
To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.      
   
III

TO me the groaning of world-worshippers      
Rings like a lonely music played in hell      
By one with art enough to cleave the walls      
Of heaven with his cadence, but without          20   
The wisdom or the will to comprehend      
The strangeness of his own perversity,      
And all without the courage to deny      
The profit and the pride of his defeat.      
   
IV

WHILE we are drilled in error, we are lost          25   
Alike to truth and usefulness. We think      
We are great warriors now, and we can brag      
Like Titans; but the world is growing young,      
And we, the fools of time, are growing with it:—      
We do not fight to-day, we only die;          30   
We are too proud of death, and too ashamed      
Of God, to know enough to be alive.      
   
V

THERE is one battle-field whereon we fall      
Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!      
We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves          35   
To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred      
By sorrow, and the ministering wheels      
Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds      
Of human gloom are lost against the gleam      
That shines on Thought’s impenetrable mail.          40   
   
VI

WHEN we shall hear no more the cradle-songs      
Of ages—when the timeless hymns of Love      
Defeat them and outsound them—we shall know      
The rapture of that large release which all      
Right science comprehends; and we shall read,          45   
With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,      
That record of All-Soul whereon God writes      
In everlasting runes the truth of Him.      
   
VII

THE GUERDON of new childhood is repose:—      
Once he has read the primer of right thought,          50   
A man may claim between two smithy strokes      
Beatitude enough to realize      
God’s parallel completeness in the vague      
And incommensurable excellence      
That equitably uncreates itself          55   
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.      
   
VIII

THERE is no loneliness:—no matter where      
We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends      
Forsake us in the seeming, we are all      
At one with a complete companionship;          60   
And though forlornly joyless be the ways      
We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams      
Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,      
Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.      
   
IX

WHEN one that you and I had all but sworn          65   
To be the purest thing God ever made      
Bewilders us until at last it seems      
An angel has come back restigmatized,—      
Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is      
On earth to make us faithful any more,          70   
But never are quite wise enough to know      
The wisdom that is in that wonderment.      
   
X

WHERE does a dead man go?—The dead man dies;      
But the free life that would no longer feed      
On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh          75   
Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance,      
Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;      
And when the dead man goes it seems to me      
’T were better for us all to do away      
With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.          80   
   
XI

STILL through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,      
And unremunerative years we search      
To get where life begins, and still we groan      
Because we do not find the living spark      
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,          85   
Still searching, like poor old astronomers      
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,      
To dream of untriangulated stars.      
   
XII

WITH conscious eyes not yet sincere enough      
To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates          90   
Between me and the glorifying light      
That screens itself with knowledge, I discern      
The searching rays of wisdom that reach through      
The mist of shame’s infirm credulity,      
And infinitely wonder if hard words          95   
Like mine have any message for the dead.      
   
XIII

I GRANT you friendship is a royal thing,      
But none shall ever know that royalty      
For what it is till he has realized      
His best friend in himself. ’T is then, perforce,         100   
That man’s unfettered faith indemnifies      
Of its own conscious freedom the old shame,      
And love’s revealed infinitude supplants      
Of its own wealth and wisdom the old scorn.      
   
XIV

THOUGH the sick beast infect us, we are fraught         105   
Forever with indissoluble Truth,      
Wherein redress reveals itself divine,      
Transitional, transcendent. Grief and loss,      
Disease and desolation, are the dreams      
Of wasted excellence; and every dream         110   
Has in it something of an ageless fact      
That flouts deformity and laughs at years.      
   
XV

WE lack the courage to be where we are:—      
We love too much to travel on old roads,      
To triumph on old fields; we love too much         115   
To consecrate the magic of dead things,      
And yieldingly to linger by long walls      
Of ruin, where the ruinous moonlight      
That sheds a lying glory on old stones      
Befriends us with a wizard’s enmity.         120   
   
XVI

SOMETHING as one with eyes that look below      
The battle-smoke to glimpse the foeman’s charge,      
We through the dust of downward years may scan      
The onslaught that awaits this idiot world      
Where blood pays blood for nothing, and where life         125   
Pays life to madness, till at last the ports      
Of gilded helplessness be battered through      
By the still crash of salvatory steel.      
   
XVII

TO you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,      
And wonder if the night will ever come,         130   
I would say this: The night will never come,      
And sorrow is not always. But my words      
Are not enough; your eyes are not enough;      
The soul itself must insulate the Real,      
Or ever you do cherish in this life—         135   
In this life or in any life—repose.      
   
XVIII

LIKE a white wall whereon forever breaks      
Unsatisfied the tumult of green seas,      
Man’s unconjectured godliness rebukes      
With its imperial silence the lost waves         140   
Of insufficient grief. This mortal surge      
That beats against us now is nothing else      
Than plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakes      
Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.      
   
XIX

NOR jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme         145   
Reverberates aright, or ever shall,      
One cadence of that infinite plain-song      
Which is itself all music. Stronger notes      
Than any that have ever touched the world      
Must ring to tell it—ring like hammer-blows,         150   
Right-echoed of a chime primordial,      
On anvils, in the gleaming of God’s forge.      
   
XX

THE PROPHET of dead words defeats himself:      
Whoever would acknowledge and include      
The foregleam and the glory of the real,         155   
Must work with something else than pen and ink      
And painful preparation: he must work      
With unseen implements that have no names,      
And he must win withal, to do that work,      
Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.         160   
   
XXI

TO curse the chilled insistence of the dawn      
Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud      
The constant opportunity that lives      
Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget      
For this large prodigality of gold         165   
That larger generosity of thought,—      
These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,      
The fundamental blunders of mankind.      
   
XXII

FOREBODINGS are the fiends of Recreance;      
The master of the moment, the clean seer         170   
Of ages, too securely scans what is,      
Ever to be appalled at what is not;      
He sees beyond the groaning borough lines      
Of Hell, God’s highways gleaming, and he knows      
That Love’s complete communion is the end         175   
Of anguish to the liberated man.      
   
XXIII

HERE by the windy docks I stand alone,      
But yet companioned. There the vessel goes,      
And there my friend goes with it; but the wake      
That melts and ebbs between that friend and me         180   
Love’s earnest is of Life’s all-purposeful      
And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships      
Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing      
Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.

II. The Children of the Night   
43. Two Quatrains   
     
I

AS eons of incalculable strife      
Are in the vision of one moment caught,      
So are the common, concrete things of life      
Divinely shadowed on the walls of Thought.      
   
II

  WE shriek to live, but no man ever lives           5   
Till he has rid the ghost of human breath;      
We dream to die, but no man ever dies      
Till he has quit the road that runs to death.