James Oppenheim - Songs For The New Age

SONGS FOR
THE
NEW AGE
JAMES OPPENHEIM
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SONGS FOR THE
NEW AGE
SONGS FOR THE
NEW AGE
BY
JAMES OPPENHEIM
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
Copyright, 19 14, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Published, October, 1914
For the term " polyrhythmical poetry," which exactly
describes the form of these songs, 1 am indebted to my
friend, the poet, Clement Richardson Wood.
For arduous and absorbing help

To the three Gleasons, Leila, Helen and Arthur:
To the two Untermeyers, Jean and Louis :
To Mrs. Anna Glen Stoddard, Douglas Z. Doty and the

devoted Century Co. generally.
For equal help and other help 1 dedicate this volume to
DR. BEATRICE M. HINKLE
INDEX OF TITLES
WE DEAD
PAGE
Before Starting 3
Let Nothing Bind You 5
As to Being Alone 7
Civilization 9
Sin 11
Self 13
When in the Death of Love 15
Where Love Once Was 16
Love and Marriage 17
One Who Loved 19
The Haunted Heart 20
The Clinging Arms 21
Property 22
The Morning Stars 23
The Slave 24
The Laugher 25
Patterns 26
The Paradox 28
Waiting 29
The Descending Hour 30
Sickliness 31
Esthetes 32
tnbcx of XTitles
PAGE
The Pure 33
Abide the Adventure 39
Take Physic, Pomp ! 41
If it Comes to This 42
The Weak 44
The Hag 45
Priests 46
Where Bides Brotherhood? 47
The Rock 48
Action 49
Brotherhood So
Transfigurations 5
The Millennium 53
Funerals 55
At Forty 56
The Blame 57
Crime 58
The Children 59
Too Human 61
Jottings:
New Born 62
Listen 62
The Sea is Itself 63
The Flame 63
The Sea Whispers 64
Breast of Earth 64
Shh! 65
Two Faces 65
Masters 66
To the Perilous Open 67
1fn5ei of Tlitles
PAGE
Bereft 68
Tasting the Earth 70
Renunciation 72
WE DEAD 74
WE LIVING
The Man Speaks 83
The Woman Speaks 85
Beloved 86
Annie 88
The Love-Hour 90
A Woman for the Adventure 92
When a Woman is Wanted 95
Folk-Hunger 97
On the Way to Hell 98
The Bakery Waitress 99
In Talk with a Prostitute 100
The Cup of Dew 101
The Lonely Child 102
Not Overlooked 103
The New Babe 104
Had I the Wings 105
The Body 106
The Sun-Children 107
Sun, with a Million Eyes 109
One Flesh HO
At Home HI
I Could Write the Psalms Again 112
Praise 113
Dancers -
H4
fln&er of Uttles
PAGE
Washington Square llS

Sky-Lover 117
The Flocks 118
The Tree 119
Jottings:
Books 120
Arrival and Departure 120
Exile 121
The Edge of the Possible 121
The Baffled One 122
Renewal 123
The Adored One — I to VI 124
Friends 130
As to Being Made a Fool Of 131
The Writer of Many Books 132
The Mighty Hour 134
WE UNBORN
The Mother 139
Death 141
Looking Down on Earth 143
The Runner in the Skies 145
In the Theater 146
The Surveyor 147
A Handful of Dust 148
Assurance 150
The Risen Ones iSl
The Dreamer in Me l52
WE UNBORN : 1S3
Index of first lines 163
1
WE DEAD
BEFORE STARTING
TT WAS as if myself sat down beside me,

^ And at last I could speak out to my dear friend.
And tell him, day after day, of the things that were re-
shaping me.
He was not afraid to hear my deepest secrets

He was not shocked at my coarseness and trivialities
He was prepared for my hours of weakness, and exal- —
tation.
Neither did he judge me hy any one moment:
He knew it as a fragment of the impulse that bore me for-
ward.
were for myself.

Yes, these songs
But when they were finished, other selves desired them.
Are there still others who will sit close by and listen?
Is it you ? Are you the new friend i

May all be told to you ?
LET NOTHING BIND YOU
LET nothing bind you:

Duty, away with
If it is it.
If it is Law, disobey it.

If it is Opinion, go against it . .
There is only one Divinity Yourself. :
Only one God You : . . .
Beware that you worship no false idols

Take no crust of manners or whimsical desires,
No surface-lusts and frailties.
For the real You hidden down beneath:
But dig . . .
Dig with shovel of will and engine of love and passion.

When the lonely day drags toward the lonelier night.
When betrayal and malice trip you and throw you on
yourself,
Dig down to Self, and set God free . .
Bethink yourself
God is the Life surging forward creatively.
The swimmer in space whipping up a foam of stars:
Clear your little channel for him . .
He is you . .
5Let IRotbing 3Bfn& Jôu
Then, shall a law be greater than God,

Shall an opinion shrink him,
A duty stay him?
Forth! Let nothing bind you!
AS TO BEING ALONE
WHYAnd why did you hate to be by yourself,

were you sick of your own company?
Such the question, and this the answer:
I feared sublimity:
1 was a little afraid of God
Silence and space terrified me, bringing the thought of
what an irritable clod I was and how soon death
would gulp me down . . .
This fear has reared cities

The cowards flock together by the millions lest they
should be left alone for a half hour . . .
With church, theater and school,

With office, mill and motor,
With a thousand cunning devices, and clever calls to
each other.
They escape from themselves to the crowd . . .
Oh, I have loved it all

Snug rooms, the talk, the pleasant feast, the pictures:
The warm bath of humanity in which relaxed and I
soaked myself:
And never, I hope, shall I be without it — at times . . .
Hs Uo Being Hlone
But now myself calls me . .
The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the

morning:
The earth has an appointment with me, not to be
broken . .
I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Sub-

time . .
Imust see what 1 really am, and what I am for.

And what this city is for, and the Earth and the stars
in their hurry . . .
To turn out typewriters,

To invent a new breakfast food.
To devise a dance that was never danced until now.
To urge a new sanitation, and a swifter automobile
Have the life-surging heavens no business but this?
CIVILIZATION
CIVILIZATION
Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up
their seats in the car for the women . . .
What an ideal
How bracing
Is this what we want ?

Have many generations lived and died for this?
so
There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and
majestic arts,
There have been murders and passions and horrors
since man was in the jungle . . .
What was this blood-toll for ?

Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be
well-mannered ?
But let us not fool ourselves:

is mostly varnish
This civilization very thinly laid
on . . .
Take any newspaper any morning: scan through

it. ..
Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing

The mob that tore a negro to pieces, the men that
ravished a young girl
(EipfUsation
The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter

who stole people's savings . . .
Just scan it through : this news of civilization . .
Away then, with soft ideals

Brace yourself with bitterness:
A drink of that biting liquor, the Truth . .
Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves

and confess what we are:
Let us go backward a while that we may go forward:
This is an excellent age for insurrection, revolt,and
the reddest of revolutions . . .
10
SIN
sin! sin!
SIN!
I am sick of your ever worrying what is good
and bad,
What is moral and sinful . . .
Go find what you really are . . .
Are you a cave-man underneath your civilized crust?

Or a sensualist or a glutton ?
Are you a prostitute deep beneath your enforced mon-

ogamy? . . .
What is it really you want ?
Better then to be what you are:

Better that, than to live a lie : to be a sweet conf ormer
on the surface,
A respectable citizen and prompt voter,
And yet ever wallowing in secret shame and in sense of
sinning!
The real sin being divided against yourself:

is in
In wanting one thing and doing another:
For after all you are betraying yourself every moment
Every moment what you really are is leaking through
in some detestable manner . .
11
Stn
Your desire for women becomes a smutty joke

Your desire for power becomes bad temper to your
inferiors
Your desire for freedom comes out in mean irrita-
tions . . .
Perchance, though, you fear the civilized world would

crumble if you let yourself go?
Why, ithas already crumbled so far as you are con-
cerned ....
Do you think that such a dark and oozing creature is
civilized ?
Ican tell you a better way . . .
Be what you are . . .
Then you can take your desires and lift them and har-
ness them . . .
(Men that can harness Niagara can harness gluttony)

The murderer becomes the deft- fingered surgeon:
The child that models smut becomes the sculptor
The luster after women becomes the music-shaping
poet . .
If you are really so anxious to contribute something to

civilization,
Go, and contribute a Man . .
12
SELF
ONCE I freed myself of my duties to tasks and

people and went down to the cleansing sea . . .
The air was like wine to my spirit,

The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,
The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,
—
And the ocean masses of molten surfaces, faintly
gray-blue —sang to my heart . . .
Then I found myself, all here in body and brain, and

all there on the shore:
Content to be myself: and strong, and enlarged:
free,
Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of
space.
And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers
and sisters)
And that by going inward and away from duties, cities,
street-cars and greetings,

I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and
people,
And entering in and possessing them, more than a
brother.
The surge of all life in them and in me . .
13
Sett
So swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)

I
And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but

would take myself as my mate,
Solemn marriage and deep midnights of thought to be
:
Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of

talk,
Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till
death.
14
WHEN IN THE DEATH OF LOVE.
WHENThe in the death of love,

lovers part,
With saddened quiet in their eyes,
And brief low words.
They do not wonder at the autumn's dying,
Nor at the fall of leaves in the late wind,
Nor wooded hills in winter.
A sadness steeps the sky,

A grayness glistens in the air,
And the Earth's bosom is barren, bleak, and brown

When in the death of love
The lovers part.
IS
WHERE LOVE ONCE WAS
WHERE love once was, let there be no hate:

Though they that went as one by night and day
Go now alone,
Where love once was, let there be no hate.
The seeds we planted together

Came to rich harvest,
And our hearts are as bins brimming with the golden
plenty:
Into our lonehness we carry granaries of old love . .
And though the time has come when we cannot sow

our acres together
And our souls need diverse fields,
And a tilling apart.

Let us go separate ways with a blessing each for each,
And gentle parting,
And let there be no hate.
Where love once was.
16
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
T HE LOVE
It is
of man
not often love
for
.
woman
.
and woman for man,
When the married couple kiss do they drink the music

of each other's souls,
Are they moved to unspeakable reverence and adora-
tion.
Would they renounce the world for the good of the
beloved ?
No, kisses are become to them a routine and a duty:

They find each other's bodies at midnight as they find
breakfast in the morning:
And they fill the idle hours with games, shows, rides
and liquor,
All to escape from one another . .
I have thoughts of a love that might be;

Of is the tender caress of forehead and
a love that
cheeks with barely lingering hands
Of a love that opens the skies at midnight for silent
flight,
Flight far, with wings, in one another's arms . . .
17
Xove anb /iDarrfagc
These lovers shall mean as much to each other as they

mean to themselves:
Their tenderness shall melt down irritations:
Their passion shall surcharge tasks with meaning . . .
Not alone shall the man find God in himself,
But in thebeloved shall he find him, and in the sight

of the beloved shall he adore him . .
18
ONE WHO LOVED
1HAVE heard of a great love:
Of a woman who lived behind the partition in a
lawyer's office:
For four years she was hidden with this married man:
She never went out, day or night:
She sat very still, lest a client might overhear her . . .
She sewed and read and translated and waited her

lover . . .
His foot had a running sore: tenderly she bathed it.
He was no longer young: no, she was in love with him-

self . . .
And when he died, and she was discovered, she held

up her head and said to us:
"Had I to do it over again: thus would I do it."
Ah, men and women that I know.

How many of you really love each other?
19
THE HAUNTED HEART
THE haunted my
It
heart beseeches me:
cries to "Winter has come
soul: . . .
With what a withering the wind blows

And the gray twilight is bleak, though the lamplighter
opens blossoms of white in the air . . .
"Wanderer, return! ,
Go to where the hearth is warm and the faces crowd:

Hearken to the calling of the children!"
So the haunted heart beseeches me.

But from my heart I turn my face
And continue my lonely journey into the sombre dark.
20
THE CLINGING ARMS
PUSH oflf the clinging arms!

There is only death in this strangle-hold; even
if we call it love . .
The mother who cares too much for her child,

Or the husband for his wife,
They are keeping sheltered and confined what should
be free and hardy, toughened for battle!
Nay, there is no real love in this binding

It is more often a sense of waste and futility,
And a fierce bickering and quarreling . . .
Shake free!
Know in freedom: know love in separation:
love
Give the soul its own self to support it, and take off
your arms!
Do honor to the divinity of another human being
By trusting its power to go alone.
21
PROPERTY
MY LIFE does not belong

Neither does it
to me:
belong to any other person.
Otherwise this chatter and comfort would be sufficient:

This ingrowing family life would be gracious and
excellent
This ease of the rut would suit for a lifetime.
But no Earth and the heavens are in growth and the

: :
sapis climbing through me:
I must go the way of the skies
I must feel the star-tendencies and give myself to them
My life belongs to creation, as a hand belongs to a

body.
If then, my
day's work done.
Time allowed for gossip and the choke of families,
is
Gladly will I take my ease, and smoke, and talk

But I shall not forget the business of the stars just
above the roof of the room.
22
THE MORNING STARS
OF OLD together,
the psalmist said that the morning stars sing
He said the rocks do sing and that the hills rejoice . . .
There be ten million ears in this little city alone . . .
How many have heard the rocks, the hills and the
stars ?
Not I,not I, as 1 hurried uptown and downtown!

I heard the wheels of the cars, the chatter of many
mouths,
I was in the opera house when it seemed almost to burst
with music,
I heard the laughter of children, and the venom of
mixed malicious tongues.
But neither the stars I heard nor the muted rocks nor
the hills!
David, of Asia, I do hear now . . .
I do hear now the music of the spheres

I have stepped one step into the desert of Loneliness,
I have turned my ear from the world to my own
self . .
I have paused, stood still, listened.
23
THE SLAVE
THEY set the slave free, striking off his chains

Then he was as much of a slave as ever.
He was still chained to servility,

He was still manacled to indolence and sloth,
He was still bound by fear and superstition,
By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery . . .
His slavery was not in the chains.

But in himself . . .
They can only set free men free . .
And there is no need of that

Free men set themselves free.
24
THE LAUGHER
STUCK in the mire of many philosophies,

Quicksands of creeds and codes,
I would have come to nothing if my soul had not
laughed at me . . .
"Stupid!" he said,
"They speak of what they want: but what do you want?
Go and question yourself!
Surely the oak does not put forth apples,
Nor the wild-rose many-eyed excellent potatoes!"
Thanks, laugher!
I'm off now down the long road of myself,
The way is clear I could shout in this wind of freedom,
:
Even as the sun rejoices that it sheds natural sunbeams.

And the sea that it runs down the tides.
25
PATTERNS
WOULD you
ye shall
lay a pattern on
live?
life and say, thus
I tell you that is a denial of life:

I say that thus we pour our spirits in a mould, and they
cake, and die . .
we become the good and the respectable:

Thus, indeed,
Thus we neither lie nor steal, and we commit neither
murder nor adultery:
But truly when I look at the holy ones, the pillars of
society,
I am fain togo and get drunk or go talk with publicans
and sinners . . .
I want to go to the man who quickens me

I want the gift of life; the flame of his spirit eating
along the tinder of my heart:
I want to feel the floodgates within flung open and the
tides pouring through me:
I want to take what 1 am and bring it to fruit.
Quicken me, and I will grow:

Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and
the fruit appear . .
26
patterns
Call forth in me a creator, and the god will an-

swer . . .
And then if I commit what you call a sin,
Better so . . .
It will not be a sin: it will be a mere breaking of your

patterns
For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be
altogether alive and your own authentic self.
27
THE PARADOX
THEThe
wheeling heavens,
self-absorbed crowds
at this
in
moment wheeling:
the street . . .
Gigantic paradox!
If they saw the sublimity of which they are part
They would hurry and hide, like children afraid of the

dark.
28
WAITING
WHYWhy
am I
do
restless?
I feel I cannot wait here ten minutes ?
From what am I fleeing?
I think I am trying to run from myself

For the moment I sit still my mind propounds ques-
tions,
And presents problems . .
What of it?
Let it ask its fiercest question: I will listen patiently.

Let it speak its worst: I can endure it.
Really,I have been fleeing from God:
For as soon as I bide with myself, I find that I am

biding with Nature:
I am at peace with Earth and the Night and the people
around me:
For all life is one
And the nearest jet of it is right here in this body of
mine.
29
THE DESCENDING HOUR
OMYO most bitter mood,

descending hour, plunge in the crater of my-
self,
And steep decline among flames, faces, torments, dark-

ness^.
1had forgotten
1had forgotten the madness of life
The blood-drinker. Time, was forgotten, the love-
parter, Death,
And those gibbering ghosts, my ancestors.
Horror bore us: as if the gorge of Night rose, becom-
ing worlds:
And on the inhospitable shores of the planet we were
born,
And driven before the elements, and whipped, falling,
to death . .
We rear cities, crowding them with lights:

We try to forget with shows and busy toil:
But under it all the tide, the tide bearing us out.
30
SICKLINESS
HERE Is strength, here,

In my own breast:
If I go whining to the Earth and the stars.
And beseech help of a sweet invisible one in the air
about me.
Let me also go where I belong
Among children and invalids.
Off with this habit of sickness

Let me puff out my cheeks and blow away the vapors
of sadness and downheartedness!
The erect pride shall beget a manner of triumph
And the bugle of that manner shall call out the regi-
ments of my tented soul.
31
ESTHETES
THE aesthetes read

thusiastic . .
and wax contemptuous or en-
How many of them live the thing they praise,

And run from the thing they blame?
32
THE PURE
THERE was a man called pure,

Because neither with hand nor tongue nor visible
act
He committed any sin.
His friend took him and peeled him like an onion,

Stripped oflf, not the clothes of the body, but the
clothes of the soul,
And came at last to the dark and secret closet . . .
What did he find?
He found what was and in you and me:

in himself
For the sculptor that thumbed so patiently the clay
of earth until it was this radiant rosy flesh,
This eyed and tongued body of man and woman,
That sculptor. Life, shaped our bodies out of the
bodies of the beasts.
And even so he shaped our souls and hearts out of the
souls and hearts of the beasts . . .
Yea, the babe new-born is, in all save the open mind,
(That curious creator within us)
A little crying animal desiring milk from its
mother . . .
33
Ubc pure
So the friend found in the pure one the deposit of the

dead millenniums:
But alive there: a jungle and swamp of ancestral
beasts and savages . . .
Chaos of the earth at creation the flowing of fires and :
floods, and the smokes of the craters . .
Yea, the bloody black history of man was locked in

that breast.
He found even hell : the nether region of torment

Hot cravings, dark lusts, the maniac and the slayer.
The foul breath of the ravening betrayer of women,
the steaming hand of the persecutor,
And all things named "carnal" . . .
And at the gate of this deep Hell hefound the little

back the immortal Sins,
devil of Fear pushing
And the little devil of Respectability shuddering that
the Burning Ones might escape,
And the devil of Horror barring the way to the con-
victs . . .
So the friend said to him
"Come, man of Purity, scourge of the adulterers!

A word, unblemished One
"I see that you are good through fear,
And not because of your nature . . .
1 see that you are stainless because you want to be

respectable,
34
Zbe pure
And because it is easier to succeed in tlie world if
people think well of you . . .
"You may have fooled the world and you may have
fooled yourself:
But Nature is never fooled . . .
She leaks through in her own mysterious way.

She plagues a liar until the whole spirit itches . . .
Forwhat makes you so smug and dull and such a dead

weight on your friends:
And why do you breathe invisible corruption about
you,
And remind one of slime and dung and detestable
things ?
Why does the hearty sinner send joy upon me, and
quicken my heart.
So that I throw up my hat and applaud the freshness
of life,
While you,O Unspotted One, eat into my day like a

canker of ennui?
You breed a hate of virtue and a loathing of good-
ness . . .
"Ha, it is the hidden hell breathing through you:

It is the smothered beast radiating his foulness through
your flesh:
It is the adultery in the heart which is less honest and
more evil than the adultery in the act . . .
(Did not the same truth-teller speak of the whited

sepulchre ?
35
XTbe pure
"Come, you are not only a sinner, but a coward as well

For the sinner of courage goes honestly and commits
his sin
And so rids himself of this pus, and cleanses the air
for us.
And makes us glad, even as a thunderstorm that puri-
fies a muggy day . . .
"So, a word, friend (I was never so real a friend as
now, flaying you alive!)

The things you damn in others are the things that are
really you:
Go, know yourself: turn your eyes inward: walk hum-
bly into your hell:
Wear every scarlet stripe of those blood-red flames:
And then wait the miracle . . .
"For behold! Sin? Not so: no, but the human . . .
Thus are we all . . .
Shallwe say Nature is foul and corrupt?

Shallwe say the receding road of a million million
years down the past
Was all a mistake, though it is we that emerge from
that road?
Shall we damn our Mother, whose nimble fingers are
ages that tenderly shaped us ?
Shall we curse the cyclone that whirled up from the
sun and in fierce cycles begot Earth and her
children,
36
TLbc ipure
And now sweeps through us, crying out to us to

create ?
Nay, under the crust of our minds lie the weltering
universes
Jetting up power enough to fill the skies with new
stars . . .
"But, lo, on the crust, and over the welter.

Sits a god: the creator: you:
And more than the hills and the seas give you granite
and steam
The self within offers raw powers and materials . . .
Take this desire of women and shape of the passion a

poem or a city,
Take this lusting to kill and conquer the heavens with

wings,
Take these hungering beasts in your breast and beget
civilizations!
What you call Hell, is merely unharnessed power!
And if you touch these red devils with love and hearty
good will
Behold as they lift their eyes, the faces of gods . . .
"Smother not the storm of Life in the soul:

But open the way, and shape it, blowing from your
hands and lips:
Be a god using the storm as your own wings . .
The lifter of your spirit
37
XEbe pure
"Then, indeed, you will cease to condemn them who

have not the guidance to transform their powers,
But live as in nature.
Then, indeed, you will go sit with publicans and sin-
ners,
And understand and enjoy them."
38
ABIDE THE ADVENTURE
NEITHER from the woe,

Nor from the war,
Think ye to escape . . .
It helps nothing that ye shut your eyes, oh, cloistered

cowards and gilded idlers!
For neither shall cushion nor buffet ease the sharp
shock of life.
Neither shall delicate music in hushed hotels drown out
the roar of the battling streets . . .
Neither shall winged wheels carry you away to the

place of peace . .
How can ye go from yourselves, deluded ones?
iVlake but aworld of rest:

Swifter than striking lightning
The Aladdin of the soul builds in the heart
A world of unresting hell . . .
And, oh ye shunners of war, ye are gruelled in a war

of the spirit.
In a battle of nervesand blood-vessels and the ghost-

haunted brain.
And the death of delight . .
39
Hbi&e Ube a&venture
Hence, whip ye to battle

Live ye to the. uttermost
Abide the adventure.
40
TAKE PHYSIC, POMP!
WAS as a sieve for the wind this morning

I I hurried to be out of it:
Zero weather, merciless and gray . . .
Yet there on the pave beside the park rail,

Leaning toward the brown frozen grass,
Stood one so thinly clad,
He bit on a wad of paper between his teeth to cover
his lips and nose,
His jacket was stuffed with newspaper, his shoes with
rags . .
He was all puffy red and bleary and huddled . . .
At the same time he was throwing bits of stale bread

to some sparrows . . .
Curious
Was it the extremity of his suffering made him a
brother of life?
Ran the pain so deep that he felt even for birds?
I think of Lear's cry: "Take physic, pomp!"
41
IF IT COMES TO THIS
BITTER, bitter,
A night that kills with a perishing wind,
The cold soaks the tight houses, fighting the fires . .
The air about the street-lamps is blue with cold,

The moon's a disc of ice frozen to the sky.
The streets are whipped clean of people: the wanderer
blows into the nearest doorway . .
Yet before the concert hall

The chauffeur sat two hours in the rich woman's lim-
ousine
While she fed her soul with delicious music indoors . . .
The policeman passing thought that he slept, and

shook him . . .
He did not sleep he was dead of the eating cold

: . . .
And what is our Art, and our skyscraping Commerce

and Traffic,
And what our steam-heated Civilization,
And what this worry over our tiny Souls,
42
flf lit Comes XEo 'Q;bis
Yea, what this wealth pulled from the Earth by

machines and so great that we waste it,
If it all comes to this ?
Benign Brotherhood, do we really want you?

Or are you an empty word to cover our feeble spirits ?
43
THE WEAK
P VER the same — this love of the weak.
The wind was so bitter that the Italian mother and

child were blown back at the corner . . .
The little boy cried, whimpering against the world . . .
Quickly the mother took her shabby furs from her

neck
And wrapped them about her son . . .
Then they went on, both of them content.
We pity ourselves when we pity the frailties of others,

We see ourselves in the beggar or the murderer sen-
tenced to be killed;
And when we soothe and heal another we are merely
laying gentle hands upon our own dark trouble . . .
That which ye do for the least of these.

Ye do for me . . .
Who cannot say this, loving the weak ?
44
THE HAG
THEteeth:
old hag sat on the park bench, picking her
Her hat was askew over her stiflfened bangs:

Her skirts were bunched together her shoes broken.:
What did Spring mean to her?

What meaning in the new grass blades and the cloudy
blue of the skies ?
How did the slow-rising love-hymn of the Earth sound

in her ears?
What mate in the world for her ?
I passed by, young and in power

But I wished for a moment I could be inside her head,
And see what else the world means.
45
PRIESTS
PRIESTS are in bad odour,

And them
yet there shall be no lack of . .
The skies shall not lack a spokesman,

Nor the spirit of man a voice and a gesture . .
Not garbed nor churched.

Yet, as of old, in loneliness and anguish,
They shall come eating and drinking among us.
With scourge, pity, and prayer.
46
WHERE BIDES BROTHERHOOD?
w
Self is
HERE bides Brotherhood,
Where, but within?
the world-container.
Pyramid of eternity whereof my body is infinitesimal
apex . . .
Whereof all bodies are the apices . . .
But Self is thyself just the same as myself.
So never shall charity avail me.

And never kind words nor the urging of excellent laws.
Nor warring for weighty politics, nor voting with the
oppressed . . .
Only the going to Self is a going to my brothers . . .
Only walking deep in to the heart of love is walking

out to the darkened cities of men . . .
What help to meet the stranger from the outside ?
How mask?
pierce his
No, I dive under him into the stream beneath.
Then rise through him, and dwell in his deep heart.
47
THE ROCK
THEThe
soul an abyss,
crowd a rock.
is
is
Give me then the dive into the bottomless pit,

Thence to draw power and the strength of spacious
life . . .
But let me not drown in those waters where madness

lies,
Let me not drown like Nietzsche, scorner of mobs . .
No, risen again to the surface,

I will go set my feet upon the rock.
48
ACTION
THERE comes a moment when to believe is not

enough,
When to go on merely feeling and thinking is inex-
cusable . . .
There comes a moment when we must out and act.
For at the last

We must pass thought through matter, giving it flesh.
That is the act of creation, that only Life:
That is what the world means with its physical beauty,
And what our bodies mean, projected, solid . . .
Passion has become lips and arms, and the billowing

seas . . .
Many scholars have died of this malady,

Many dreamers have rotted in cloistered safety.
Much of greatness has passed, still-born . . .
49
BROTHERHOOD
you want to find your brothers,
IF
Find yourself . .
You are not a person; you are a race . . .
What we see of you is a ray of light emanating from

the hidden skies within you . . .
In those skies humanity dwells . . .
Enter them; find your brothers . . .
You shall find infinite love:

You shallbe all you see:
Comn:iunion with the grass and the sea-waves shall be
no harder than with human beings . .
St. Francis knew this preaching to the birds.

:
Not alone in division of food and comfort,

Not alone in bare Justice (long needed, the unescapa-
ble duty of our age)
Not in these only shall Brotherhood come . . .
No, not until you go the ancient way;

Way of Buddha, Jesus and Isaiah,
The long long journey, farther than sun from earth,
(So near, such heavens away) to your own Soul,
Shall dawn benign Brotherhood.
SO
TRANSFIGURATIONS
WE SPAT on
Through two thousand years of
the dirt and the flesh
soul-sick-
ness . . .
And so the poor have been with us,

And the good people have been vile lies, holy and
stinking . . .
Enough of this!
Glory is dirt converted, and magic is flesh trans-
figured . . .
Not to the heavens we pray.

And not to a white-bearded God, tottering and old:
From no far world does majesty descend.
But when we pray-.

We pray to our own selves
To no stars outward, but to one heart inward:
The dusty despicable Self on the top
To the sea-vast world-swelling Self underneath . . .
And in that Self what is not ?
There yawn the seven Hells seen of Dante,

There rise the circling Paradises to the sun,
51
XCransflguratfons
There brimstone of lust, and fire of greed, and

in the
stormy passion,
ice of
Purification goes on, and the malcing of all that is
high . . .
Go kneel then in the pit of your flesh, in the darkness

of the dirt
There the wings grow and the desire for the sky,
And the fury creative . . .
Out of the noise of the world the musician shapes his

sun-bursts of music,
Out of the loathsome dirt the sculptor moulds his
shapes, shining, alive.
And out of the raw desire of man for woman arise
Winged love and the dream of brotherhood and cries
of the martyrs . . .
Look to the flesh: go wipe out poverty:

Then hell will be emptier.
52
THE MILLENNIUM
ASKOur
for no mild millennium:
world never be shall nobler than its in-
habitants:
Never be nobler than you and I, blind brother.
What is this world but our secret natures opened and

stamped into cities ?
The smoke of the mills is only the vapor of our soft-

coal hearts:
The slums of the poor and the drab palaces of the rich
are the filth of our spirits:
The curses of the world are but the unleashed beast
in us roaming the streets.
Here and there is one shining among us:

He is not a conqueror of tools, but a conqueror of self:
He strides like a sun in the crowds, and people are glad
of him:
He did not wait for a millennium to perfect him:
He did not see the need of sanitation and pure food to
help him to a soul
He wrestled with the antagonist in his own breast and
emerged victorious.
S3
XCbe /iDiUennium
Give us a hundred million such, and a greater world is

upon us:
But give us only a perfect world, and it shall be a
coat that misfits us.
Stagnation and sin shall be there as surely as they are
deep in our hearts.
54
FUNERALS
ONEnotwould
the
think the dead were burying the living,
living the dead,
The way we hold funerals . . .
Bah! my heart sickens!
Please, when I die, know that I am very well able to

care for myself,
And that the journey is mine, not yours:
Then take the refuse I left behind me
And quickly and quietly burn it up.
55
AT FORTY
IT
WAS you, the glowing youth that went forth
Conquering the world with laughter,
And radiantly running after visions.
Now forty years lie on you like a frost:

Disillusionment is in the very handshake you proffer
me:
And a crust of habits and troubles has overlaid you.
You call death your friend, and think he is long in

coming:
You have lost faith in life and in your own true self:
And the failure of your work enfeebles your ambition
and effort.
See deeper:
The real you is that glowing youth:
Pierce back to him.
56
THE BLAME
YOUYou
blame
writhe
yourself:
with remorse because you make
trouble for your dear ones:
And the love you give them seems but the mother of
tears and sighs.
But are you to blame ?

Or is it the human predicament ?
You are unhappy yourself: who caused it?
Do you not know it is hard for people to live together?
The sun in summer by merely swimming through the

skies
Sends down a scorching heat
Shall the sun therefore go weeping through the heavens,
Remorseful and miserable?
Is it the sun's fault that we cannot bear his rays?
57
CRIME
YOU count
HA! committed, it horrible that the murder was
That the man was killed.
What ails you ?

Is it the thought of what happened to the body,
Or the imagined terror of the victim ?
And yet, much nearer home, and quite invisible.

With sharp knife of words, glances, and even kisses,
A slow still murder is proceeding;
And the victim has, not minutes, but years of torment.
Far more horrible than any murder of the body
Is this murder of the life.
Do you guess whom mean ?

I
Yes, it is you.
58
THE CHILDREN
I S THAT your reason ? The children ? Their future?
Tut! blow off the foam of sentimentality and piffle!

Look through the depths beneath.
Somehow your child had to come and take the risk of

being yours
The risk was real . . .
Perhaps you were poor, and his environment dirty and

dark:
Or you were bad-tempered or lecherous:
Or you were the opposite of his nature and would
oppose his growth.
Now, tell me: what is his future to be?

Builton a father who is a lie and evasion ?
Or strong and true?
Is that last not a risk worth taking?

Is it not part of the risk of his being born your son?
Truly, sparing him pain may be the very way of spoil-
ing his nature:
59
Ubc CbilOren
Give a child credit for being as human as you are

Let him share the great fight:
He will thank you in the end.
60
TOO HUMAN
OW many are strong enough to reject riches?
H Not 1, not 1!
And who can flee from the poisoned breath of flattery?

And who can escape from the friends that shield his
weakness ?
And who can put away slothfulness and the lure of
women ?
Not I, not I!
We are too human, we little ones!

Praised be the hostile world
And the scourge of need.
61
Jottings
NEIV-BORN
jr\EA TH and birth dog us:
'-^ I died only a few days ago:
Now, new-born, I send up a cry of delight at creation:
The world and I are so unstudied fresh . . .
LISTEN
GO GoA little
near
aside from the noise of the world:
to yourself . . .
Listen . . .
Ah, music, pulse-beats of Life, whispers of Death I

They were there all the time like a brook that is under the
ground-
62
jottings
THE SEA IS ITSELF
THEgray sea is itself: it does not fear to be calm or stormy,

or gold, loud or soft-
Why have I feared to be like the sea— myself }
THE FLAME
IVHA T is the tiny flame
so freely that soon

of my match that gives itself
it is consumed and vanishes ?
63
jottings
THE SEA WHISPERS

^TIHE sea whispers to me of women because I am lonely
J- for the love of women.
Now I hear the luring whispers of girls in the rustling
surf-
Now bass of men's voices furious, urgent, and strong.
'BREAST OF EARTH
T)REAST of earth, with all these sea-worn stones,
*-J Tumbled together, gray, purple and brown, red and
green and white.
What beauty within you . . .
64
Sotttngs
SHH!
rjlHE sea put a finger offoam on its lips of waves,
' '
J- Saying, "Shh ! 'saying, "Hush !
I thatwas vexed and unquiet,

Heard, and was soothed.
TWO FACES
I SAW the unwritten face of the child

Reside the mother's trouble-writ face.
65
MASTERS
TAKE as my master, not you nor myself nor the

I past:
But Life.
Every chain I break is for the sake of the eternal irons
I snap the links that bind me to you and you:

I crack away from the chaining appetites of myself:
And surrender to the manacles of the procreant

Power of the world.
Then am I a careful instrument used ruthlessly:

Quickly may
the tool break and be shattered:
The risk enormous:
is
But better to be a brief tool in the hands of Power

Than be a weighty long-lived instrument rusting in
your hands, my human masters.
66
TO THE PERILOUS OPEN
WE, THAT are the very waters of change,

Wearied, seek the unchanging
We want a rock under our feet.
A rock of God, a rock of institutions,

A rock of indissoluble marriage:
The absolute.
And it does not matter if the rock has a nest of snakes

upon it.
And is slimy and slippery, betraying our feet . . .
There will we stand, there will we suffer: our Rock!
But —
I I will to my own, to the kin of my spirit:
I, the waters of change, will give myself to Life, that

sea in flux.
To the vast variety, to the perilous open, to the sting-
ing salt:
Strength must one have to swim: and I shall grow
strong with the sea.
67
BEREFT
WHO can measure the agony of man?

There seem too many of us:
Too many millions: too great a multitude of needy
beings
Too myriad-hearted a need . . .
What sun, what rain shall feed this human grass of the
Earth?
Alas! in the crowd I come and go, confused and

wandering:
I cannot see a meaning in the tumult and disaster
I cannot guess a triumphant purpose in this pinch of
man-dust on this hidden planet . . .
As the street-crowds run from my bereaved spirit,

So crowds of the stars rush past, heedless of our
trouble . . .
Yet it goes on:

Yet we have
clothes on our back and food for our
mouth.
And a thousand creeds pronounce their rival revela-
tions,
And stout-hearted we go forth to fight in the morning
And lay us down at night, spent, spent . . .
68
JBereft
All day they carry out the dead from the city, and all
day the cry of the new-born echoes behind the
walls . . .
Youth broken on the streets and the lovers part and

is
the married hate and long for an ending:

Child against mother, son against father, the strong
at the throats of the weak
And every generation the annihilator of the generation
that brought it to birth . .
Havoc and disaster.

And a going down to graves and a last dissolution:
And the bleak winds of November blowing up from
the seas,
And the Earth dismantled and dying, dying . . .
I that found thee in my soul and in the radiance of the

sun.
Hide now alone, bereft: cut off:
A few pounds of human trouble:
A little wisp of darkness
A fleck of shadow on immensity.
69
TASTING THE EARTH.
T N A DARK hour, tasting the Earth.
As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain

lashed my window,
And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no
pause and no peace.
Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my
bereavement . .
Then 1 said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred,

I will take it unto me utterly,
I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it . . .
What do I fear? Discomfort?

How can it hurt me, this bitterness?
The miracle, then!

Turning toward it, and giving up to it,
I found it deeper than my own self , . .
O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me . . .
It was she with her inexhaustible grief.
Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of

craters, and the roar of tempests.
And moan of the forsaken seas,
70
Uasting Ube ]£artb
It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes

of the dark-hearted animals,
It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to
dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of
man . . .
It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust

of broken hearts.
Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped
mothers,
And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle
overborne.
And the dreams that have no waking . .
My heart became her ancient heart

On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life
itself:
Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love

of ages . .
There was dank soil in my mouth.

And bitter sea on my lips,
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
71
RENUNCIATION
HAVE we given up thy spell, Renunciation ?
Do we dream that we can be born without first
dying ?
That joy comes with no pain?
Once the world heard thy lips crying: "Renounce!

renounce!"
Oh, calm-eyed winged one that hovers near us . . .
But now they preach of the unalloyed pleasures of

the faithful.
And of the gains that fly to the needy soul all effortless
Yet do I know that desiring my dearest friend,

I did not have him till I went from him,
Lonely for his sake through a month of days . . .
Yet do I know how songs are written . . .
The singer moves away from faces.

He goes from blessed comfort to cold agony.
Putting away the man in him to be the poet . .
Yet do I know of a mother (so of all mothers)

Who could not have the child biding in her womb
72
IRenunciation
Till, shrieking, she had given him up.

And from her body the small new life was sundered .
Then in her arms she held him he was hers: . .
IZ
WE DEAD
WHENThefrom the brooding home,

silent immemorial love-house,
The belovdd body of the mother in her travail.
Naked, the little one comes and wails at the world's
bleak weather.
We say that on Earth and to us a child has been
born . : .
But now we move with unhalting pace toward the

dark evening.
And toward the cold lengthening shadow.
And quick we avert our fearful eyes from the strange
event,
The and the bourne
burial . .
That leaving home: the end . . . Death . . .
Are these then birth and death ?

Does the cut of a cord bring life and dust to dust
expunge it ?
if so, what are we then, we dead ?
For, in the cities.
And dark on the lonely farms, and waifs on the ocean.

As a harrying of wind, as an eddying of dust,
74
"me DeaO
We dead, in our soft shining bodies that are combed

and are kissed,
Are ghosts fleeing from the inescapable hell of our-
selves . . .
We are even as beetles skating over the waters of our

own darkness.
Even and restless.
as beetles, darting
But the depths dark and void . . .
We have found no peace, no peace: though our en-

gines are crafty:
What avail wings to the flier in the skies
While his dead soul like an anchor drags on the Earth ?
And what avails lightning darting a man's voice, linking
the cities.
While in the booth he is the same varnished clod,

And his soul flies not after ?
And what avails it that the body of man has waxed

mammoth
Limbed with the lightning and the steam.
While his spirit remains a torment and a trifle,
And gaining the world, profits nothing ?
Self-murdered, self-slain, the dead cumber the Earth . . .
And how did they die?
A boy was born in the pouring radiance of creative

magic
And with pulses of music he was born . . .
75
Me Deab
Of himself he might have been shaping a song-wing6d
poet . . .
But he was afraid . .
He feared the gaunt garret of starvation and the lonely

years in his soul's desert,
And he feared to be a jest and a fool before his
friends . .
Now he clerks, the slave . .
And the magic is slimed with disastrous opiates of the

Night.
A girl was bathed with the lissome beauty- of the seeker

of love,
The call of the animals one to another in the Spring,
The woman in her heart, as she
desire of the captive
ran and leaped on the hills;
But the imprisoned beast's cry terrified her as she
looked out over the love-quiet of the modern
world . . .
Yet she desired to take this man-lure and release it
into loveliness.
Become a dancer, lulling with witchcraft of her young
body the fevered world . . .
But no, her mother spied here a wickedness . . .
Shamefully she submitted, making a smouldering in-

ferno of the hidden Nymph in her soul.
And so died.
A woman was made body and heart for the beautiful

love-life . .
76
Me DeaO
But of the mother-miracle,
How the cry of a troubled child whitens the red pas-
sions,
She did not know . . .
Fear of poverty corrupted her: she chose a fool that

her heart hated.
And now through him no release for her native pas-
sions.
But only a spending of her loathsome fury on adorn-
ment and luxury . . .
Ah, dead glory! and the heart siclc with betrayal!
There is no grace for the dead, save to be born again:
Engines shall not drag us from the grave.

Nor wine nor meat revive us.
For our thirst is a thirst no liquor can reach nor slake,

And our hunger a hunger by no bread filled . . .
The waters we crave bubble up from the springs of life.

And the bread we would break comes down from
invisible hands.
We dead! awake!
Kiss the beloved past goodby.
Go leave the love-house of the betrayed self,
And through the dark of birth go and enter the soul's

bleak weather . . .
And I, I will not stay dead, though the dead cling to me,
I will put away the kisses and the soft embraces and
the walls that encompass me,
Me 2)ea&
And out of this womb I will surely move to the world
of my spirit . .
I will lose my life to find it, as of old,

Yea, I from the
will turn life-lie I lived to the truth 1
was wrought for,

And I will take the creator within, sower of the seed
of the race,
And make him a god, shaper of civilization . . .
Now on my soul's imperious surge,

Taking the risk, as of death, and in deepening twilight,
I ride on the darkening flood and go out on the waters
Till over the tide comes music, till over the tide the
breath
Of the song of my far-off soul is wafted and blown.
Murmuring commandments . .
Storm and darkness! I am drowned in the torrent!

I am moving forth irrevocably from the sheltering
womb!
I am
naked and little
Oh, cold of the world, and lights blinding, and space
terrifying
Now my cry goes up and the wailing of my helpless
soul:
Mother, my mother
Lo, then, the mother eternal!
78
•JKHe BeaS
In my opening soul the footfall of her fleeting tread,

And the song of her voice piercing and sweet with
love of me,
And the enwinding of her arms and adoring of her
breath,
And the milk of her plenty!
Oh, Life, of which I am part; Life, from the depths of
the heavens,
That ascended like a water-spring into David of Asia
on the eastern hills in the night,
That came like a noose of golden shadow on Joan in
the orchard,
That gathers all life: the binding of brothers into
sheaves
That of old, kneelers in the dust
Named, glorying: Allah, Jehovah, God.
79
II
WE LIVING
THE MAN SPEAKS
From "The Beloved"
YOUYou
and
and
I in the night, spied
I in the
on by
beloved night .
stars
. .
. . .
You and I within these walls.
A breath from the sea is kissing the housetops of the

city,
Kissing the roofs,
And dying into silence.
Earth and stars are in a trance,

They dream of passion, but cannot brealc their sleep.
They pass into us, and we are their passion, we are
theirmadness.
So shaped that we can Iciss and clasp . . .
One kiss, then death, the miracle being spent.
Watchman, what of the night?

Sleep and birth! Toil and death!
jNow the light of the topmost tower winks red and
ceases:
Now the lonely car echoes afar off . . .
Helen looked over the wine-dark seas of Greece, and

she was young.
83
tibe /Dian Speafts
But not younger than we, touching each other, while

dawn delays . .
Dare we betray this moment?

Dare we die, missing this fire ?
Whither goes massive Earth tonight, flying with the
stars down eternity?
We are alive we are for each
: other.
84
THE WOMAN SPEAKS
From "The Beloved"
MY
o
What
H,
Where
being, opening into the dazzle of sunrise!
blast of music
are you blowing me, trumpets ?
am I, striding the wind ?
I took the hand of my beloved, and I was satisfied.

1 kissed his lips, and the stone of my heart became
a song.
I kissed his lips, and was born again.
Love, now I know thee!

I have looked into thine eyes, Splendor:
1 have kissed thy lips, golden boy ...
Bear me to the ends of the earth,

Drown me in oceans.
Crush me beneath granite mountains
I give all, I render myself up,
O thou, that art the breath of life: the whisper on the

deeps.
85
BELOVED
T OVE:
L To approach you with the touch the sculptor
gives his clay,
Subdued, inspired:
To catch in the radiance of my heart the purity of yours,
White breathless fires:
To let the still sea of song in my spirit move toward its
shore, your soul.

With dying music: (Oh, hear me, adored one!)
Love:
To watch as one watches the face of the beloved
coming out of death,
Every wavering of your lashes:
To feel each fluctuation of your yearning and your
desire,
And meet it with caresses:
To enfold you gently until your whole soul slides into
mine.
Conquering me with submission: (Adored one, hear
me!)
Love:
To meet the dawn together and the widening light,
86
aSeloveJ)
Seas in our hearts sounding,

To taice from a kiss the glory of a dawn in our spirits,
And the arousal to living:
To rise from each other's arms magnified and mighty,
Heroic and human: (Adored one, hear me!)
Such may our love be: such be our passion, beloved.
87
ANNIE
THE fragrance of her simple heart I still bathe my-

IN self:
For Annie was a girl of the people,
With eyes of the clearest brown,
And a voice low and sweet.
Her blushes were quick as her tears:

And the caress of her hand, and the "ah!" as she
sighed,
Thinking she had offended.
Were as echoes of moonlit waters on a far shore . .
Something breathed from her as deep of the \<ômanly

as the Earth itself:
I dreamt of hay in the barn, and slopes of daisies
beside the road.
And the kitchen scoured and shining, and the hearth
gleaming in the night:
Something so old and new, so common and magic:
For Annie was a girl of the people,
A darling of the Earth.
She said: "I am lonely, too . .
I live in a room by myself and work in the day . .
Hnnte
Three months back my mother died, leaving me

lonely . .
."
"Ah," she said, "your brown eyes now!" And she

laughed, and we Icissed . .
And over her face came a glow as her eyes met mine.
And her deep glance pierced me . .
"Soon as you're gone," she said, "you'll be forgetting

me:
And you'll take to the next woman you ever meet.
And you'll kiss her like you kiss me . .
But not be forgetting you ever in my life:

I'll
And how we met, and came up the stoop, and kissed

behind the door . .
."
"So," she sighed, holding me close by the hand,

"Go now: what'U I think of myself letting you kiss me?
It's my fault, sure: I'd never be blaming you . . .
Goodnight," she sighed, and we kissed, and she

watched me go.
Out of the Earth spring natural simple flowers

Out of the people come simple natural women:
Annie, one of the sweetest.
89
THE LOVE-HOUR
WHERE may she of the hall bedroom hold the

love-hour?
In what sweet privacy find her soul before the face of
the beloved?
And the kiss that lifts her from the noise of the shop,
And the bitter carelessness of the streets?
Neither is there garden nor secret parlor for her
And cruel winter has spoiled the shores of the sea;
The benches in the park are laden with melting snow,
And the bedroom forbidden . .
woman She will not be cheated

But ah, the love of a !
Up the stoop she went to the vestibule of the house,

And beckoned to me to come to that darkness of
doors:
Here in a crevice of the public city the love-hour was
spent . . .
Outside rumbled the cars between drifts of the gas-lit

snow,
And the footsteps fell of the wanderers in the night . . .
Within, the dark house slept . . .
90
tCbe Xov>e=Mour
But we, in our little cave, stood, and saw in the gleam-
ing darlc
Shine of each other's eyes, and the flutter of wisps of
hair.
And our words were breathlessly sweet, and our kisses
silent . . .
Where is there rose-garden,

Where is there balcony among the cedars and pines,
Where is there moonlit clearing in the dumb wilderness.
Enchanted as this doorway, dark in the glare of the
city?
91
A WOMAN FOR THE ADVENTURE
WANT a woman for the adventure:

I And my demands are monstrous, never to be
met . .
For I want first the body that slopes like a wave of the
sea toward my senses:
And whose desire is for me, my least kiss fetching the
answering glow:
And whose face, pensive in the twilight, sends my mind
back to the legend of women.
And whose coming and going is as the footfall of the
wind on a summer's night,
And whose words drop between pauses of music gentle
and piercing.
And who gives herself in the wish of children.
But that is not all: oh, not more than a fragment of
what I demand:
1 want her to be the mother of my hours of weakness
Quick will be the intuition searching to my need and

my cry:
Gentle the healing of those caressing hands, breath of
that soothing voice:
Deep will be the love that makes me whole again.
92
H Moman jfor tlbe H&yenture
And yet more I ask insatiate man that I am
:
I want the comrade free and supple-hearted as a man,

Who puts on her boots and her khaki and goes out
with me on the holiday morning,
And away we tramp on a lark, young vagrants both:
And she will swim, and sleep on the ground, and climb
up the mountains,
Yea, she will up, at a moment's notice, and be off to
strange cities.
And take the peril and the joy of strange lands and
strange people.
And she will be willing to live without me when she
sends me off on some journey.
Yet demand worst of all: and paradox quaint:

As I stand father to the children of her body,
I want the woman who stands father to the children
of my spirit:
Yea, she who comes to her fulfillment through my

vision and
works:my
She who impregnates my soul with seed of her spirit.
Until there grows the life that through mighty travail
is born:
Our works our child

:
Ah, you will say: not a woman, but a goddess I
demand:
Ah, you will tell me I am monstrous, and so will not
find her:
93
a Moman jfor XCbe H&venture
Yet, out with the truth of it ! Such are the cravings of
men:
Such the woman I want for the adventure!
94
WHEN A WOMAN IS WANTED
WHENWhatwoman a
is
is wanted,
the printed page, that 1 can idle over
it,
And what the street, that I can wander it through?
The Itiss in imagination is but whiskey . . .
It makes the thirst rage . . .
The dream of caresses and whispering love is but a

beckoner forth from the prison-cell . .
I want, not an image, but flesh and blood.

Not words in a book, but words that come living from
human lips,
Not an exquisite description, but a raw sight actual

and near . . .
Not an aching armful of air, but a crowded armful of

resisting and surrendering woman . . .
Lips that my own can be pressed against in strong kisses,

Hair to fall down on my shoulders and tease me with
odour of sun-warmed pine-needles,
its
Eyes that can light and dim, fluctuating to the words

and glances I send her . . .
Oh, one here, now, close to me, mine, as 1 hers.
95
Mben a Woman ITs TDiIlante^
How can I conjure you up from the millions in this
city?
Somewhere you sit, dreaming, and empty, and sad . . .
Oh, how many thousands like myself brood in their

lonely rooms and wish ?
Girls and youths parted by narrow walls ?
And who shall go seeking and who shall be found
tonight ?
96
FOLK-HUNGER
FIERCE hunger has come upon me,

And meat nor wine can stay
neither me . .
I am starved for men and women.
I want to go where the crowd is thickest,

Where the spot-light man colors the graceful favorite
on the stage with green, then gold, then violet . .
Where the audience roars at the jocose comedian and

the strong stout woman . . .
Where I will be accepted, not by the Earth, but by my

fellows.
Sinking back into rough good commonness, just a
laugher and idler myself.
Warming the hands and heart of my soul at the
blazing hearth of the people . .
Tomorrow, business with the lordly Earth,

Sessions with my Self in aching privacy . .
Tonight, crowds, lights, gayety.

The cockles of my heart roasted as crisp as nuts,
And my lung-bellows roaring in the jolly brotherhood
of the world.
97
p
ON THE WAY TO HELL

AM so happy these days
I That beyond a doubt I shall soon be booted out of
heaven
Long was the fall of Satan

And the landing dull and unpleasant.
Yet:
I lie and laugh at life:
I cannot get out of bed, for very delight:

And I say: Though you wait for me, Hell,
I shall laugh all the way to your gates.
98
THE BAKERY WAITRESS
WHATWho face lifts, so perfect in profile?

speaks to the young men at the table?
Is it Minerva slipped from her marble?
But what do the young men see?

One calls: "Hey! kid! butter-cakes and coffee!"
Curious, how very blind these eaters can be!
99
IN TALK WITH A PROSTITUTE
AM no sorrier for you than am I for myself:

I We are both human beings . .
Alas! both of us have come through the gates of the

dark
And thither return . . .
Why should we pity each other here In the night ?
100
THE CUP Of DEW
LATE, and lonely, and faint for sleep,

I yet will pause and have silence.
That the thirsty one, my soul,
May open to the night
And drink the dew . . .
1 know day was wasted, many-tongued.

that the
and dust I stifled:
In noise
Over me passed a wind of words, and the world reeled.
But now I am alone . . .
Now space, and silence, and my body and I
Bathed in beloved night . . .
Dew of the stars and of the ether and earth.

Dew of my soul.
Fall into the cup of my beseeching hands,
That I may put thee to my lips
And drink the waters of great healing.
101
THE LONELY CHILD
DO YOU think, my boy, that when I put my arms

around you.
To still your fears,
That it is I that conquer the dark and the lonely night ?
My arms seem to wrap love about you.

As your little heart fluttering at my breast
Throbs love through me . . .
But, dear one, it is not your father

Other arms are about you, drawing you near.
And drawing the Earth near, and the Night near,
And your father near . . .
Some day you shall lie alone at nights,

As now your father lies:
And in those arms, as a leaf fallen on a tranquil stream,

Drift into dreams and healing sleep.
102
NOT OVERLOOKED
THOUGH I am little as all little things,

Though the stars that pass over my tininess are
as the sands of the sea,
Though the garment of the night was made for a sky-
giant and does not fit me,
Though even in a city of men I am as nothing,
Yet at times the gift of life is almost more than I can
bear . .
I laugh with joyousness: the morning is a blithe holiday:
And in the overrunning of my hardy bliss praise rises

for the very breath 1 breathe.
How soaked the universe is with life:
Not a cranny but is drenched:

Ah, not even I was overlooked!
103
THE NEW BABE
BABE the beautifully cunning dust that desires

THEand is
breathes,
And through the soft pink of his body sing limpid sweet
tides of life,
And at the light he is staring with wide blue eyes,

unquestioning.
Oh, unawakened wonder! unopened blossom!

There I leaned, even so in my marvelous flesh.
But I and this body of mine were also as a pellet of dust
Dropped into gulfs of bathing light;
I, flower, drenched in the sunlight of the spirit,
In the spacious morning of the soul . . .
Divine is the unfolding and wonderful the opening

petals
Of the babe in the storm and sun of the nourishing
years.
104
HAD I THE WINGS
HAD the wings now,

AH, Wings I
of the mounting condor to clear the

clouds.
Clear the heavy clouds and soar to the day-dying sun.
To the sun, beyond these streets,
To the sun, beyond this lash of the winter rains . .
But the day lags, binding me

The day lags and my pent-up heart beats at its bars.
At its prison-bars beats, captive and dark.
Ah, had I the fire now, had I the joy now, had 1 the
wings now
To clear the clouds of my rain-swept soul.
And soar in the heavens, sun-bathed.
105
THE BODY
ODY, whence come mind and soul?

B
"Ah," said the Body, "from me:
I am a tree, and mind and soul are the fruit . .
Ages of fecund weather and nourishing dark experience.

And the strong sun of love and hate,
And rain of gray adversity,
Have begotten at last, you, loved wonder immortal!"
If this be so, my body,

I shall despise you no longer but revere you and watch
:
over you:
Flood-gate of the race: and shores of my sea of spirit.
106
THE SUN-CHILDREN
FARthefrom
sky,
the sun over the ages and the spaces of
We children have come . . .
Far from the sun by strange spirals, and long trances

and struggles.
When we lay a seed in the mud of a steaming Earth,
When we swam in the waters of hushed creation.
When we crawled out and dwelt on the land, in the
grasses and thickets.
When we swung from the trees of the jungle,
When at last we arose and stepped forth on the
immense pilgrimage of man . . .
None may count even by millions the ages

Since far from the sun
And over the spaces and whirled in the skies.
We children have come.
Whence, our yearning back.

Our yearning for the sun that at dusk sinks into the
womb of the waters.
And at morn is born from the bath of the eastern
sea . .
107
XTbe Sun«fl;btl5ren
Our yearning for the peace and stillness of the sky

before the Earth was conceived,
Our yearning for the mother in the heavens and we but
a flake of her living fires.
108
SUN, WITH A MILLION EYES
SUN, with a million eyes: spyer of every window

toward the east.
Sun, that scorches our faces.
Sun : light and fire . . .
The flame you jet begets life:

All has risen from sun-fire . . .
I too was sun-fire . . .
The sun is in me: I jet him forth into a new genera-

tion: into speech, love, labor.
The sun rises and sets, and then arises again.

1 rise and set, and my child rises again.
Thy fires in a woman and in a man draw one to the

other
In thy radiance we behold each other.
Or when the moon snatches handfuls of thy glory
across the night
And spills thy stolen beams upon the city.
There do we see but wanly one another.
109
ONE FLESH
MARRIAGE is to be one flesh, this twain made one,
IF
Then I am married to the multitudinous world:
I have passed through the hills and the sea, and they
through me:
Star-light and sun-light have drenched me, nestling
under my skin:
Yea, I have eaten of the sun when I have eaten of the
fruits of the field:
And I have drunk deep of the ocean . .
All parts of my body have been elsewhere:

In other people: or in the grasses: or in the cow and
tiger
Continually the stars rain their rays into the meadows
whereof I taste:
I am a meeting place for the tides of the waters of the
world . .
No wonder then I feel so at home:

That love goes from me to all creation:
I am only loving myself.
110
AT HOME
THE And
world is wild,
a stormy world —how
it is the stars burn
How the sea rages!
Every atom is fighting for itself: in tempest and fire!

Tameless and wild!
But I too am wild: real child of this gypsy Mother . .
And so at home, at home in the blast of the embattled

hours . . .
111-
I COULD WRITE THE PSALMS AGAIN
COULD write the psalms again,
I I could raise on high a voice of thanksgiving,
Icould pace the eastern hills and bid the gates lift.
Bid the gates lift that usher the dawn of the spirit . .
For my joy is the joy unbidden, welling from the heart.

The joy of the Life that springs of itself from the
inmost recesses
When in still loneliness self meets with self.
112
PRAISE
WHATMy song shall I sing to the heavens?

heart is bounding with music:
I want to pour out my praise to the everlasting heights:
For the gift of life is apparent: as with wings I am lifted:

And the love of my heart goes forth to the ends of the
Earth,
And I gather the folk in my arms, and for marvel of
life
Want to chant to the heavens praise for the gift and

the glory.
113
DANCERS
HAVE a notion tonight, that the Earth and I, locked

I in each other's arms,
Are dancing madly through the skies
Overcome with the sublimity of life,
While those whirling dervishes, the speedy suns,

Pause to behold us . .
114
WASHINGTON SQUARE
STARLESS and still . . .
Who stopped this heart?

Who bound this city in a trance?
With open eyes the sleeping houses stare at the Park:

And among nude boughs the slumbering hanging
moons are gazing:
And somnambulant drops of melting snow glide from
the roofs and patter on the pave . . .
I in a dream draw the echoes of my footfall silvery

sharp . . .
Sleep-walking city!
Who are the wide-eyed prowlers in the night?
What nightmare-ridden cars move through their own
far thunder?
What living death of the wind rises, crackling the
drowsy twigs?
In the enchantment of the ebb of life,
In the miracle of millions stretched in their rooms

unconscious and breathing,
In the sleep of the broadcast people,
lis
Xiaiasbtngton Square
In the multitude of dreams rising from tlie houses,

1 pause, frozen in a spell.
We sleep in the eternal arms of night

We give ourselves, in the heart of peril.
To sheer unconsciousness:
Silently sliding through space, the huge globe turns.
I cannot go
I dream that behind a window one wakes, a woman:
She is thinking of me.
116
SKY-LOVER
SKY-LOVER!
Embracer of the hiving stars
The swarms of golden bees
I feel the strength of thine ancient arms
And the power of thy going forth through endless
night.
In the gross darkness thou hast spun a widening spiral

of light,
Moons, stars and glowing suns:
But through these thou goest forth into the unadven-
tured abysses,
Chaos unconquered.
We going with thee.
117
THE FLOCKS
N A DOWNY feather
o The bird is flying
of the dove, Earth,
down eternity.
I He:
Far out, and far under and over, the flocks of stars are
flying as in the autumn winds . . .
Whither are they winging? to what nests in what

radiant South?
And what echoes of their songs come to me.
And who is the gentle master of the homing birds ?
118
THE TREE
E SANG as the heavens held only two things:

H God and
if
himself.
Was his voice heard as the roving Spirit leaned toward

the Tree of the Skies
And parted the leaves of the stars,
And peered through at the tiny green blossom, the
Earth,
And on Earth, the little singer, standing and praising
the Lord?
Yet here I am: the petal of earth swaying in an ocean

of far star-leaves:
Yet here I am, living, aware, and singing with loud full
voice.
119
Jottings
BOOKS
ONLDoY on the days when my
has ebbed
renew me
I feel the need of books to
life
. . .
But on the days when I am quick and pouring with life,

I turn to the book of the world at whatever page I happen
toopen it,
And read what never yet was told in ink. \
ARR/lÂL AND DEPARTURE
PV 'hen I get there, once I told myself.

The fight will be over.
'But when I got there, to my amazement.

The fight was not orver . . .
And I see now it will never he over, even in death.
120
Jottings
EXILE
rouWherever
cannot meexile :
you send me, my dear old self goes along.

Carrying on hisback the bag in which all the ages since
creation have thrown their winnings,
So that he staggers under riches . . .
How then can you exile me?
THE EDGE OF THE POSSFBLE

TTast is the city, concealing fires behind its walls, its
y streets and its faces

So for the adventure I choose the spacious night.
And go forth marvelling at what may happen :
Tripping along, breathless, on the edge of the possible.
121
Jottings
THE "BAFFLED ONE
\TOT until you find a meaning in yourself, will you

* » find a meaning in the world.
That is what ails you . . .
Your inner confusion you perceive all about you.

Once you get purpose into your life, and you will see it in
all life.
\22
RENEWAL
RENEWED some forgotten friendships:
I My old friend, the sky, and my comrade, the
open air:
My dear cronies, the hills, and my lover, the sea:
I went out and we had an afternoon of it together.
They gave me tokens:

You may taste the sea on my cheeks, and the fragrance
of the hills is in my hair:
And the tan on my face is a memento of the friendly
sky.
123
THE ADORED ONE
I
(To Her of the Many

Films)
YOUR smile is very sweet: yet it baffles me:

Your brown eyes are large and clear: yet the
woman who peers through them is mys-
terious.
Though your talk flows in melody, winged with thought,

Though you seem so young, yet so quaintly wise.
You are deep, you are subtle, girl-faced woman!
Dove and serpent, .is it?
JVluch am I baffled!
124
THE ADORED ONE
II
BE WHAT
Be
you are: all
the coarse fool,
women in one:
and the mean and petty
complainer
Be the slave, be the courtesan!
Be the haughty ruler of hearts, and the cruel strong
empress
Be also sweet, gentle, gracious:

The lovely child, and the wistful seeker after affection
The calm woman, deep in brooding wisdom:
The healthy comrade, free and fleet-footed:
The watchful mother, with wings spread out for the
loved one!
All that you hide mars what you reveal

Be what you are, sure, various, strong:
Baffle us no longer: you are only baffling yourself.
125
THE ADORED ONE
III
YOUButaredoproud and lion-hearted

you know what love
strong,
is?
girl:
You are quick with the colors of beauty, star-gleaming

girl
But do you know what passion is?
Oh, the skies of Spring are here:

Where is a mate for the moon-warm darkness?
Crickets shall shrill in the grass as you walk alone.
What is the beauty of the lilies when no sun floods

them?
They die, adorable one, they die in the grasses
Do not turn away from the splendid shining of love:
But take your pride and your strength and with your
two hands cast them in the dust:
Give up to love, as in death, to be born again
You will come back radiant, you will come back bear'
ing the sunrise.
Filling the light of the world with the light of your eyes.
126
THE ADORED ONE
IV
YOUButplayremember
the queen
I a simple girl singing in the dairy:
Men were tamed by her sweetness.
You crown your hair with paste:

Have you forgotten the radiance of your undrugged
eyes,
And the quickness of your smile ?
I only say: Be yourself . .
What your play has reached down into the crater

in
of your human heart,
Or walked the sun-clear peaks of your spirit?
Be demon: be angel: oh, be woman!
Queenship is but a garment hiding your glory:
Crowns but muffle the night-dream of your hair.
127
THE ADORED ONE
V
HAVE you kissed that kiss that draws open the
door of life,
Loosening the floods, till your body sings with strong
joy?
Do you know the tremor of the spirit that rises on a

glance and a touch
And braids the stars in your hair ?
Do you come shining to work in the gray morning

Because your lips are dewy with the imprint of a kiss ?
Oh, glowing one, you walk in emptiness:

You distrust and despise yourself and the world of men
In your triumph you taste defeat: and in your glory
vanity
Go aiid know love, the giver of victories.
128
THE ADORED ONE
VI
WHOSE adored one ? For her beauty walks

is this
on ends of the Earth:
light to the
The Australian and Spaniard must sigh at a glance
of her face.
Many bring gifts to you, kneeling in the dust before

your loveliness:
Must I come, too?
Ah, no! ah, no!
I will stand before you: my eyes a little higher than

your eyes:
I will demand tribute of you.
Even the tribute I bring:
Yourself for myself: equal and free.
If you want worshippers, take these secret thirsters

your beauty
after . . .
The honey they bring is bitter . . .
But if you want love, you can only get what you give
You too must adore the beloved, and kneel down your-
self when he kneels.
-
129
FRIENDS
NOW the day dies, and the workers trudge

ward:
home-
They pass my window:

1 see a few lights twinkling in the tall buildings, as if the
evening star were reflected . . .
What hands are emptying the glowing urn of peace on

the dark-wayed city?
My friend and I sat smoking in the little room:

Lightly we took the ball of the Earth and tossed it in
talk to one another:

Unwitting the generation about us was held up to our
probing:
Our hearts and minds were glowing urns of unthink-
able riches which we poured for each other.
Is the evening so calm and tender because it has let go

its full floods, giving love in its radiance?
As the evening were my friend and 1
We parted sure of 'each other: peace was upon us and

serene love.
130
AS TO BEING MADE A FOOL OF
THAT bothered you, didn't it
That prevented you from entering into strange

adventures,
Especially with women . .
After all, however, it is not so bad:

If that be the price of experience
Then I must pay it:
For to be laughed at, and to play the fool

Is cheap, by all odds, in exchange for the gift of life.
131
THE WRITER OF MANY BOOKS
WRITER of many books was weary:

THE"Enough of ink!" "Enough of words! said he,
Would I were a builder of bridges or a breaker of
stones . . .
Then at least something real were done ..."
Out on a lonely farm in Montana, at the close of day.

The woman brooding toward insanity,
Lit a lamp, and looked in his book: and the tears came:
And the ice-pack round her heart melted down in a
torrent . ,
Blessed release!
Far in Tex£ls a tubercular boy was plotting a marriage,

But he read the tale, and his heart broke in his
breast . . .
not send my blight on the unborn babe,"

"I shall
So he wrote the author,
"No: I am off to Arizona tomorrow."
In a New York room

a girl was dreaming of suicide.
hall
She read and as to a call of trumpets her
his words,
soul rose and went forth . . .
132
Ube Mriter ®f /iDani? Boofts
A seed so small that the eye misses it
Starts in the womb the growth of a human child . .
Ye that scatter the seed of words, scorn not the sowing,

Nor the Master that sent ye out in the barren fields.
133
THE MIGHTY HOUR
THESE ARE the days of immense and solitary

strength
When to be alone i? no hardship
And to go forth among men is a satisfying joy . . .
For I have found myself

1 have ceased to be ashamed of the things 1 cannot do
And have become proud of the things I can do

I have accepted simple living and endless labor:
I have accepted peril and risk all around me,
And I have become patient with the world and with

my own faltering.
I live with this moment, and suck out its particular

essence.
Whether it be the bakery lunchroom and the shopgirls
about me.
Whether it be some poor dull person stuffed with rich
eating,
Whether it be stars over the snow and the sharp winds
of winter,
Or whether it be my narrow room, and unbusied
loneliness . .
134
TLbc /iDigbts iWour
So living, I give myself to the purpose of the Earth . .
I let the Mother put forth through me as she puts forth

thrpugh the least bud on her breast,
Iopen the way for the rise of that sap and shape it for
men and women . . .
And so I am what I was born for and peace comes in :
so being:
And strength . . .
For so Earth herself is for me, and even the stars in

their courses . . .
Is this egotism?
Shall tomorrow break me in the dust till my cry goes up
to the heavens?
Shall a bitter cup come to my lips after this splendor?
Even so . . .
I yet shall know what is possible in the mighty hour,

I yet shall know that a gaint sleeps in my heart,
And that after the despoiled days have gone over
Again I shall be myself and live in that victory.
135
Ill
WE UNBORN
THE^ MOTHER
w HAT DOES
under her heart?
the woman sing to the love-seed
"Oh, my beloved, unborn,

Oh, lips in the darkness that yet shall be kissing my
breast
1 send my life-blood into you,
And great love upon you:
Hushed in the pool of the dark you blossom in me!
"Beloved! 1 make this charge upon you:

When ojit of my littleness you come to the sudden
vastness.
And faces are about you, and cities, and the winds of
the deep:
Fear nothing, baby:
My arms are there: my breasts: your mother meets
you!"
Thus sings the woman: this is the song of all women:

So sang a woman to me.
139
Ube /iDotber
Tides of the darkness ! Cave of the midnight 1

Am I still seed }
What life-blood flows through the Earth to me:
What great love isupon me :
Who sings ? . . . What Mother?
140
DEATH
HIS starry world, and in
T How can I get out of

I
it?
it
I go to sleep, but when I wake I am still here . .
All night my blood-drops circled through my body as

the stars circle through the body of the world . . .
All night the flame of life burned in my breast and

brain as the stars burn in the breast and brain of
the world . . .
And what is Death ?

It is a swing-door. I push through, coming out on the
other side . .
But the other side is the world, just as this side is the
world . . .
There is no escape . . .
So 1 had best do my work now, lest 1 shall have to do it
later . . .
I had best be myself now, lest later I shall have to battle

with the crusts upon myself.
Lest later I shall have to begin again at the beginning,
unlearning all my faults . . .
141
2>eatb
This was as true a hundred million years ago,

This will be as true a hundred million years from now,
As it is now, at this moment.
142
LOOKING DOWN ON EARTH
LOOKING down on Earth,

As from some distant heaven,
And seeing body after body drop and the life fly from it,
All day long and all night a host of the dead arising:
It seemed indeed a curious life, that life
It seemed indeed a curious end, that death . .
Then, here on Earth,

I sitting at this desk in this small room,
So thrillingly alive.
Yet soon to meet that fine decisive moment.
Pause in strange awe to think that what these others.
These hosts of dead, have passed through,
I too shall soon experience, down to the last gray detail:
Darkness, with secret gleams of a rising twilight

beyond . . .
Not only these others (ah, that is strange enough!)

But I myself: all that I am.
To pass through the black process,
Turning away in agony from the sweetness of the sun
and the crowds.
Renouncing all, with bitter dread and loathing:
143 ,
Xooftfng S)own ©n lEartb
Even as the babe in the womb, could it be conscious,

Would pass into the mystery of the world . .
Ah, world, art then a womb?

Are we, the living, but the unborn children,
And is death birth?
144
THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES
WHO is the runner in the skies,

With her blowing scarf of stars,
And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her
blossoming heart?
Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep.
Her eyes are nebulous and veiled,
She hurries through the night to a far lover.
145
IN THE THEATER
LAST NIGHT in the theater

The fleet-footed dancers bowed in the spotlight:
Then they clasped, and invisible hands shaped them
like waters that never spilled:
And at once through me rose the mists of creation:
And I saw that chaos, the illimitable nebula of the
universe
Had jetted forth this pair: the eternal pair:
Sex: the dancers: the light-footed trippers on the Earth.
146
THE SURVEYOR
FANCY teases my brain:

A From the North Star the Surveyor drops his
plumb-hne,
It down to the Earth, and beyond the Earth
unravels
through the spacious gulfs beneath . . .
He measures the heights and depths of the heavens:

Who shall measure the width?
147
A HANDFUL OF DUST
STOOPED to the silent Earth and lifted a handful

I of her dust . . .
Was it a handful of humanity I held?

Was it the crumbled and blown beauty of a woman or
a babe?
For over the hills of Earth blows the dust of the
withered generations:
And not a water-drop in the sea but was once a blood-
drop or a tear:
And not an atom of sap in leaf or bud but was once the
love-sap in a human being:
And not a lump of soil but was once the rosy curve of
lip or breast or cheek , .
Handful of dust, you stagger me . .
I did not dream the world was so full of the dead:

And the air 1 breathe so rich with the bewildering past:
Kiss of what girls is on the wind?
Whisper of what lips is in the cup of my hand?
Cry of what deaths is in the break of the wave tossed
by the sea?
I am enfolded in an air of rushing wings:
I am engulfed in clouds of love-lives gone . .
148
H ManOtul of Dust
Who leans yonder? Helen of Greece?
Who walks with me? Isolde?
The trees are shaking down the blossoms from Juliet's
breast
And the bee drinks honey from the lips of David . . .
Come, girl, my comrade:
Stand close, sun-tanned one, with your bright eyes

lifted:
Behold this dust . . .
This you this of the Earth under our feet is you

is :
Raised by what miracle ? shaped by what magic ?

Breathed into by what god?
And a hundred years hence, one like myself may come.

And stoop, and take a handful of the yielding Earth,
And never dream that in his palm
Lies she that laughed and ran and lived beside this sea
On an afternoon a hundred years before . .
Listen to the dust in this hand

Who is trying to speak to us?
149
ASSURANCE
YEA, THERE are as many stars under the Earth as

over the Earth . .
Plenty of room to roll around in has our planet . . .
And I, at the edge of the porch,

Hearing the crickets shrill in the star-thick armies of
grass.
And beholding over the spread of Earth the spread of
the heavens . .
Drink this deep moment in my pilgrimage,

With a sense of how forever I have been alive,
With a conviction that I shall go on, ever safe, ever
growing.
The stars to be included in my travels.
And the future sure before me.
150
THE RISEN ONES
BEGINNING millenniums back

We were given of the cup of the Earth to drink
A cup of the blood of torment and love:
A cup set to our emerging and vanishing lips again and
again through a million years:
And we have waxed on agony: seed has become man.
But behold now from the rivers of blood the prophets

!
of peace lift up,

Out of the pain rises a running and winged joy,
And out of the lamentation springs a laughter!
151
THE DREAMER IN ME
THEmyDREAMER me keeps on dreaming though

in
are babbling and my eyes are watchful
lips . .
I may
be in the railroad terminal speaking to a friend.
The dreamer is on a warm moist hill under the cloud-
soft skies,
He feels the Earth moving and smells the flowers down
to their roots,
He pierces the blue heavens with his wings.
Then I look round and think, how strange:
Stone walls crowds my friend and I
: : . .
Yet all of us seen by the dreamer as a little blur in the

skies,
As a patter in immensity . .
Where are we? where is Earth? where are the skies?

The dreamer shivers and laughs:
It is so miraculous, visionary and grotesque.
Such nonsense, this reality . . .
Yet my friend and I go on talking as if there were

nothing strange in it at all.
152
WE UNBORN
I
AWAKE:
I Midnight, star-shouldered, is leaning over me.
I must to my desk, and light the lamp, and stare at the

flesh of my
hands and legs:
Marveling to breathe and be alive.
I open the window : 1 lean out in the dark.
Stars! shall you answer my cry tonight?

Earth ! shall you turn to the call of your son ?
Where is the answerer? Where are the lips of the
midnight?
Oh, world, my beloved, whisper to me
Surely my love for you has been welcome in the dark-

ness of the night:
Surely, Mother, the asking child shall be taught:
Though I am little in the flesh, am I not large in the
love of my heart?
153
Me mnljorn
II
I sit at my desk:
I take the eye of Science and spy out the endless ether
floating with worlds,
But of all those stars, those numberless millions beneath
and above,
Only the little hasty Earth under my feet.
Millions of the sprawling bodies of men clothe like

a sea the slopes of this planet,
But from all that naked flesh lying on the globe.
Here do I rise, not one of them but : I,
Myself . . .
Ill
I take the wings of thought.

Up from the Earth I soar, I scale the skies quicker than
light.
And the planet whirls to a moon beneath my feet.
And drops through the gulfs, a stone.
And dwindles to a star . .
Still spreads the Milky Way ages above the reach of

my fingers,
And all the sides of the amphitheatre of Eternity hold
tiers on tiers of the far stars,
And the monstrous abyss is scattered with a sowing
of stars,
1S4
Me xanbotn
And looping its twinkling sun, the grain of the Earth
is shining . . .
But there is the body I left: sitting in the narrow room:

Writing at the desk:
it pauses: the face lifts: the eyes stare in the lamp-
light:
It questions ... it questions
I drop:
I am back in my room: am at this desk: 1
Tut! skies? A picture hanging on the immense walls

of my mind:
The Earth is a curious nugget in the palm of my hand:
I am the sustaining and enfolding ether of the universe
IV
I gaze at the ash of my cigar

I become smaller than a pin-point: I climb inside the
ash:
Lo, a world immense and miraculous as the star-sown
universe
I am standing in the spinning of atom-worlds,
I am pausing in the rising and setting of innumerable
suns,
I am lost in the fleeing of dead gray moons in the
dark . . .
I laugh: I fleck off the ash: it scatters:
And lo, I am still here, face to face with Self.
155
TKae TDlnborn
Ah, not that one thing is more miraculous than another,

But that somehow, struck from this mass and motion,
not you nor the sun.
But I, I am here, in the center and thick of it
This torch of a body with a brain shedding invisible
light:
This Self, this secret cave I may retire to
This paradox of outer appearance and inner perception:
This net that catches stars and people as if they were
fish in the infinite sea:
This strainer wherethrough all tides of life pass, leaving
deposits
This tool working on the world: this flame burning
into the beings of others:
This lover and hater casting light and shadow
This creature this creator
:
This dwarf: this god:

This is the dumb-mouthed miracle my questions are
shattered on
VI
With all the heavens to choose from:

1 that may have dropped once through the Milky Way,
Sky to sky falling,
How did I ever pick, not only the Earth,
Poor little brown ball, ever half-dark and half-wintry,
156
XRfle mnborn
But that infinitesimal pair, tliat woman and man,

In the quaint hill-house at the head of the rambling
street,
And take on — I that had measured the heavens
This form that now is bowed at this desk, writing this
song of questionings?
VII
The room swims out on space:

And I see that the finger of greatness touches my fore-
head:
And that size is nothing : experience is all.
For the kiss of my beloved shrinks night to the rift of

her lips,
And the death of my child darkens sun and moon in the

firmament,
And my heart's song turns to an echo the large music
of the spheres,
And my spirit's dream makes the heavens the shadow
of my gliding feet.
VIII
I am as a wave fleeing before the flood of the ages:

The rush of the ocean-river pushes me on : it lifts crea-
tively through me:
It yet shall sweep me out into the night.
157
Me TDlnborn
Oh, Ocean, eddying with spindrift of stars and moons,
Oh, Mother-Ocean, how did you beget me?
And now the voice of the Ocean rolls into song in the
channels of my heart:
IX
"Iam the Mother:
1am the Ocean shaped of the waters of life:
My body is the spiraling torrents of Life across Eternity:
Out of the mouth of darlcness I came pouring.
And down through night descended, a child of waters,
I
A singing girl whose body grew hollow -with the drifts

of the suns . . .
For the nebula of my childishness was shot with dreams.

And I eddied toward the light that opens in your mind,
And I shaped toward the love that lies in your heart.
And I groped toward division into millions of gods,
The one made many . . .
"In a fury I have grown: ages but the crusts I have

broken through
Skies but the hollowness in the depths of my waters
wherethrough I have sent my strength.
Suns but pods I have burst, scattering seeds of planets:
Earth but a bud of mist that opened before my yearning
into hills:
And the hills, mating with my love, opened out into
seeds,
158
Me 'dnborn
And the seeds unfolded into animals,
And the vague-brained animals blossomed into man:
And still I grow through you, I grow
:
You in your little room somewhere suspended in the

sky-egg of the stars
That egg, the womb of your iVlother
"Son: my belovdd!
I am the Mother:
And though your body is hidden within me, I lift
through you, you lift through me:

For I am the Ocean of life dividing into millions of
channels
You are one of the channels:
Together we innumerable waters pour through the
heavens,
And there shall be many minglings until we grow into
gods:
Growing forever through torment, travail and love:
Reaching toward the deaths that are births
And you are that part of me that is creative as I
Your will is on the reins of the stars even as mine is
upon them:
Created, you have become a creator.
"Son: my beloved!
Love death, the releaser
Give yourself grown to the outward-opening gates:
159
XlBle "Clnborn
Pass from the sun-woven littleness of the heavens

To the spaces of my arms:
Be born! be born! Many and many await you!"
Star-shouldered midnig^ht! Room solid about me!

Flesh of my hand holding the pausing pen .'
How here, cooped in, shall I realize the vision?
Lo, I will bag the stars, clapping the far millions of

them in
This scoop is the little womb of the Mother.
I will recede in phantasy a million years back.

And stand in the sun-fire from which I sprang,
And swim the dark river of my life up the ages
That river is the flowing blood of the Mother.
1 will take a string and hold one end of it on the Earth

And one end touching the seven high Pleiades,
And 1 will describe a circle around the Earth:
This huge sphere of skies is but an egg in the body of
the Mother.
XI
Mother:
Oh, thou reaching me through thy body with life-blood
and love:
160
Me xanborn
So deep within tliee I bide so thorouglily thou growest
:
through me:
So thoroughly I grow through thee:
That though the slant of infinity finds me as a mote of
flesh on the mote of a world,
The heavens are but feeders of my growth and the
Earth is my supper before the night of death:
The ages of thine agony and mine are the pains of my
growing:
They that love me and they that hate me are thy hands
shaping me:
And the streets are the running track of my soul.
Yea, these people are thyself and myself, Mother:

Through a million years we have been poured through
each other:
Through gate after gate of the human Mothers I have
come
Up the alley of the ages: often a mother myself . . .
Oh, generations, we have passed through each other!

Oh, houses of the flesh, we have dwelt in each other,
heart within heart
Oh, people, it is for this I am drawn to you with such
unsearchable love!
This is the mass of blended life the Mother is growing
through.
XII
Mother, may I not well sing the amazing song of life ?
161
Me IHnborn
Oh, may I lift the song of my adoration?
not well
This too great for the heart of me so tiny and
gift is
throbbing:
Bear me on thy tides and pour through me into great
and unwithheld creations and love:
Let my lips in the darkness bear witness to thee:
Let my works be thy works through the toil of my
hands
Let me go forth in the day dawning, dropping the stars
of thy heavens on the darkened streets:
I am thy son, and I would have thee take joy in me:
1 am thy unborn, Mother, moving toward the morn

of my nativity.
162
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
FACE
A fancy teases my brain 147
Ah, had I the wings now 105
Ask for no mild millennium S3
Beginning millenniums back 151

Be what you are : all women in one 125
Bitter, bitter 42
Body, whence come mind and soul 106
Breast of Earth, with all these sea-worn stones 64
Civilization I j 9
Death and birth dog us 62

Do you think, my boy, that when I put my arms about you. 102
Ever the same —this love of the weak 44
Far from the sun over the ages and spaces of the sky 107
Fierce hunger has come upon me 97
Go a little aside from the noise of the world 62
Have we given up thy spell. Renunciation? 72

Have you kissed that kiss that draws open the doors of life? 128
Hal you count it horrible that the murder was committed. 58
Here is strength, here 31
He sang as if the heavens held only two things God :
and himself 119

How many are strong enough to reject riches?
'
6i
I am no sorrier for you than I am for myself 100

I am so happy these days 98
I awake 153
I could write the psalms again. 112
If marriage is to be one flesh, this twain made one no
If you want to find your brothers 50
llnSex of ffirst Xines
PAGE
I have a notion to-night that the Earth and I, locked in
each other's arms 114
I have heard of a great love 19
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth 7o
In the fragrance of her simple heart I still bathe myself.. 88
I renewed some forgotten friendships 123
I saw the unwritten face of the child 65
Is that your reason ? The Children ? Their future ? 59
I stooped to the silent Earth and lifted a handful of her
dust 148
I take as my master, not you nor myself nor the past 66
It was as if myself sat down beside me. 3
It was you, the glowing youth that went forth 56
I want a woman for the adventure _. 92
I was as a sieve for the wind this morning 41
Last night in the theater 146

Late, and lonelyand faint for sleep loi
Let nothing bind you S
Looking down on Earth 143
Love 86
My life does not belong to me 22
Neither from the woe 39

Not until you find a meaning in yourself 122
Now the day dies and the workers trudge homeward.... 130
Of old, the psalmist said that the morning stars sing together 23
Oh, my being, opening into the dazzle of sunrise 85
O my most bitter mood 30
On a downy feather of the dove. Earth, I lie 118
Once I freed myself from my duties to tasks and people
and went down to the cleansing sea 13
One would think the dead were burying the living, not
the living the dead 55
Only on the days when my life has ebbed 120
Priests are in bad odour 46

Push off the clinging arms 21
Sin! sinl sint 11

Sky-lover 117
ITn&ex of first Xines
PAGE
Starless and still iiS
Stuck in the mire of many philosophies 2$
Sun, with a million eyes 109
That bothered you, didn't it ? 131

The aesthetes read and wax contemptuous or enthusiastic. 32
The babe is the beautifully cunning dust that desires and
breathes 104
The dreamer in me keeps on dreaming 152
The haunted heart beseeches me 20
The love of man for woman and woman for man 17
The old hag sat on the park bench, picking her teeth 45
There comes a moment when to believe is not enough... 49
There was a man called pure 33
The sea is itself: it does not fear to be calm or stormy.. 03
The sea put a finger of foam on its lips of waves 65
These are the days of immense and solitary strength 134
The sea whispers to me of women 64
The soul is an abyss 48
The wheeling heavens, at this moment wheeling 28
The world is wild iii
The writer of many books was weary 132
They set the slave free, striking off his chains 24
This starry world and I in it 141
Though I am little as all little things 103
Vast is this city, concealing fires behind its walls, its

streets and its faces 121
We spat on the dirt and the flesh Si

We, that are the very waters of change 67
What does the woman sing to the love-seed under her heart ? 139
What face lifts, so perfect in profile? 99
What is the tiny flame of my match 63
What song shall I sing to the heavens? 113
When a woman is wanted 95
When from the brooding home 74
When I get there, so I told myself 120
When in the death of love iS
Where bides brotherhood 47
Where love once was, let there be no hate 16
Where may she of the hall-bedroom spend the love-hour? 90
Who can measure the agony of man ? 68
Who is the runner in the skies 145
irn&ex of jfirst Xtnes
PAGE
Whose adored one is this? For her beauty walks on light
to the ends of the Earth 129
Why am I restless ? 29
Why did you hate to be by yourself 7
Would you lay a pattern on life, and say, Thus shall ye live ? 26
Yea, there are as many stars under the Earth as ,over

the Earth 150
You and I in the night, spied on by stars 83
You are proud and strong, lion-hearted girl 126
You blame yourself 57
You cannot exile me 121
You play the queen 127
Your smile is very sweet: yet it baffles me 124
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SONGS FOR

Q[atntU Unioetattg Siibrarg

BOUGHT W[TH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

Cornell University Library

Songs for the new age,

3 1924 021 654 862

cooperation with Corneii University Libraries, 2007.

You may use and print this copy in iimited quantity

for your personai purposes, but may not distribute or

provide access to it (or modified or partiai versions of it)

for revenue-generating or other commerciai purposes.

The original of tliis book is in

tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in

the United States on the use of the text.

Published, October, 1914

For arduous and absorbing help

To Mrs. Anna Glen Stoddard, Douglas Z. Doty and the

For equal help and other help 1 dedicate this volume to

DR. BEATRICE M. HINKLE

Washington Square llS

TT WAS as if myself sat down beside me,

He was not afraid to hear my deepest secrets

were for myself.

Is it you ? Are you the new friend i

LET nothing bind you:

If it is Law, disobey it.

There is only one Divinity Yourself. :

Only one God You : . . .

Beware that you worship no false idols

Dig with shovel of will and engine of love and passion.

Then, shall a law be greater than God,

Forth! Let nothing bind you!

WHYAnd why did you hate to be by yourself,

Such the question, and this the answer:

This fear has reared cities

With church, theater and school,

Oh, I have loved it all

The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the

I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Sub-

Imust see what 1 really am, and what I am for.

To turn out typewriters,

Is this what we want ?

What was this blood-toll for ?

But let us not fool ourselves:

Take any newspaper any morning: scan through

Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing

The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter

Just scan it through : this news of civilization . .

Away then, with soft ideals

Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves

Go find what you really are . . .

Are you a cave-man underneath your civilized crust?

Are you a prostitute deep beneath your enforced mon-

What is it really you want ?

Better then to be what you are:

The real sin being divided against yourself:

Your desire for women becomes a smutty joke