HARP OF THE 
HUMAN 



BY JOHN COLLIER 
MCMXIII 



ro^^ 






COrTRIOHT, 191 3» BY JfONN COLLIKR 



^^ 



©C!,A361003 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedication (To D. W.) 

Harp of the Human i 

From the Stars 3 

The Conquerer 11 

Niobe 12 

A Child in the Morning l^ 

Christ in Dream 15 

On Reading James Martineau . . . .16 

The Light of the World 17 

The Beatitude 19 

To Isadora Duncan 2q 

The Dark Weaver 21 

The Utopias of William Morris .... 24 

Junaluska Valley 2*5 

A Memory 26 

The Law of Old 29 

De Profundis 31 

Raindrops On Cambrian Shale . . . -34 



■ A FLOWER IS STRONGER THAN THE WINDS THAT 
WORK THEIR WILL 
OR THE YEARS THAT WING THEIR WAY THROUGH 
DARKNESS TOWARD THEIR AIM." 



ToD, m 

(Died, Jgo6) 

Old Valleytoivn: 1913 

The mountaitis brood around. 

There is no hollow or scarp of those vast and lonely ranges, 
that is not older than the human race. 

YoUy who in life were visibly one with timeless energy, 
who were the triumphal will of Life, are gone. Your 
memory is afiower of loveliness, revealed in lightning or 
seen as bowed and lashed by thunder-rain, when at sun- 
set the last rays fall on the lilies of that garden where 
you are remembered. 

Your moment, though gone already into silence and shadow , 
is not at war with these long ages which wrought in 
fire these hills, and carved them with the water of a 
million years. Though all the oceans of the world have 
poured through Junaluska a thousand thousand times, 
your passage is not as a leaf that floats and is gone. 
There is no separation between your frailty and this 
power of giant time, nor between your defeat and the 
victory or defeat of that labor wherein is eterfiity un- 
folded. Nor does your incandescence of personal soul 
fall chill or waver, now while on these mountains rains 
the invisible light from suns grown dark long ago, in 
universes beyond the Milky Way. 

Your last word with a friend was an impassioned nega- 
tion of the possibility of eternity for the human soul. 
Yet in your eyes then and there, amid seeming wreck 
and gloom, the light of an achieved immortality flamed; 
in your wonderful heart the secular illusion was already 
a mist made translucent by the sun; in your voice was 
the supernal cry of that cosmic miracle. 

The Thought, that mysteriously does the will of Eternity 
in ways of Time; the Yearning, defleBed out of all skies. 



backward toward the kumati race; the Reality, i?i- 
dwelling in thirst and power and form, the irreducible 
reality of experience: these are founded in deeps where 
your will labors yet. With the dead, they say, move- 
ment and change have an end; and sweet is the thought 
of overwearied dust grown still, of silence grown as an 
unapproachable fountain, near at hand and waiting for 
all. But sweeter it is, and more true by all tests than 
any truth beside, that the reachable world is like a 
Ley den jar, where luminous power unseen, with rythm 
fleeter than thought yet stately as the movement of 
worlds, has its ebb and flow perpetually, out of the 
dark, glorified, all-conserving abysm. In that abysm, 
O Friend, it is not that your personal soul is conserved. 
It conserves, our personal soul, yours and ours ; and on 
our way it lies to prove and to know, that souls are in- 
deed The Conserving Abysm. 
Tonight only the stars illumine the far-pointed hemlocks, 
the dwelling so pure and fair and glad which seems an 
Athenian tomb. The far immeasurable starlight limns 
the mountains. You are here, but not only here. And 
this hand that writes is yours, but not yours alone. 
The mystery of interpenetrating lives and times and 
worlds, of the divine infinite paradox, of mutual love 
that outlives the grave — /'/ is your fiower, this mys- 
tery, seen in lightning, in sundown and by the stars, 
in a garden which you remember. 



HARP OF THE HUMAN 

OHARP of Unnumber'd Strings, Harp of the 
Human! 
All, all our music is less than thine undertone. 
Yearning thou art with but symbol in star or woman. 
Pathos in eyes that weep never, being alone. 

Thou art hung within vagueness and dream, within lone 
desire 

In an ancient land, O Harp of Forgotten Strings : 
Deep in unmemoried halls, a remembering Lyre; 

Faint, in Arcadian estrays, a Reed that sings. 

Far in the laboring breast, far on the verges 

Of the inward world, from our passionate quest apart. 
Unknown of our hands whom the earth-war marshalls 
and urges — 
Does thy vigil grow aweary, O Harp of the Exiled 
Heart? 

Harp of the Human ! not ever thus hast thou waited. 
Not always hung dumb while no hand of the mortal 
strove 
On thy mystic strings with compassion and love o'er- 
freighted. 
There are far-off years where they tell how a con- 
quering Love, 

No glow on the night, no voice past a phantom portal. 
But a very Hand from beyond the veil and the deep. 

Was laid on thy hungering chords, O Harp of the Mortal, 
And its promise imbues thee still in our dreams of 
sleep. 



Harp of the Gloaming ! toward thee the symbols cluster 

And thy moan is heard amongst legends and dreams 

of old. 

Till we know not if only in timeless and pensive lustre 

Of the Academe, of Nazareth, thine hidden wonder 

is told — 

If the Rose of the World, Lily of the Infinite Grail, 
Galahads and Deirdres, stars of the ideal sea. 

And the child at play in our door-yard's wistful pale. 
The enshrin'd, the unconscious, alone have knowl- 
edge of thee! 

Harp of the Human ! Long has the chord of an hour, 
Play'd by strong hands lit with the light of day. 

Sung through a world of deed and command and power; 
But ah, thy more shadowy strings, how they yearn 
to play! 

Oh Harp! On war- ways we march to the strident 

thunder 

Of impelling tones pour'd from thy boundary-chord. 

And over our host enough of thine heavenward wonder 

Is echoing, that God and the Ages have still their 

word. 

But Yonder .... on fallow fields are the mists o'er- 
shrouded. 
And the well-springs go dark and unloved from 
source to sea. 
And the gleaming shrines of the mountain are dumb 
and shrouded. 
And our souls are like ghosts, for loss of the throb 
from thee! 



FROM THE STARS 

The low light on the horizon wakes. 

And where that boreal light is led 
In more than dream the impulse wakes 

To call to us the mystic dead. 
Then the etherial, cosmic spark. 

Earth-charged, illumes that nameless Pole, 
That Garden of the freezing dark 

Where blooms the star-fruit of our soul. 

EARTH-SOUL, the keys are strange. The notes 
Of thy dark mind seem blurred with pain. 
Even as the sunbeam drives the motes 
In vain against the wind, I am vain. 
My soul is filled with thine eddying breeze. 

With thy noise of the earth-sea; I am laid with its 
rhume. 
The subtler will is estrayed in thy maze. 

I grope like a soul in the darkling womb, 
.... On thine wavering dream-water a wraith I raise — 
It is ether-borne from the Martian tomb. 

.... Yonder, afar, on an olden shore. 
Our period is done. 

We strive no more 
Even with the cosmic powers, the laws 
Which wrought us of old. 

They bid us pause 
Now, and unstring the aeonian lyre 
Wherethrough our vesper was pour'd like fire: 
Though every battle of ancient dawn. 
Lost even as all was lost, is won 
In us, and every rose of pride 
And every maiden hope that died 
Lives like a crystal fill'd with flame 

3 



In star-dawn of yon far sphere's dream; 
And we, whose dawn-flush' d brows are fann'd 
With airs from an impossible strand. 
Go on o'er homing tides, through spray. 
Wave-jubilant, of a starry way. 

Earth-soul, believe ! Our globe of dew. 
Rounded, gave back the heavenly light 
Of whorl on whorl our fathers knew. 
Who understood the scope of night. 
Cycles beneath their footsteps lay; 

Age-filter' d knowledge, plunging dream 
For aenons fulfilled the Martian day 

Which fades, a taper in infinite gleam. 
Which fades, in sunrise on granary floors 

Where the awful winnowing of cosmic law 
Breathes its blast on the dying Martian shores. 

We are seed for that Sower .... 

We are steeds for that Plow. 

.... Revelation.? 

To thee it were wings of lead 

Or a bridge of mist over unplumb'd seas. 
Or such face as, in midnight unstarr'd and dead. 

Thy wandering dream-hour beholds and flees ; 
Or as vain as dawn-dew, elusive, seen 

In deserts by caravans athirst, astray; 
Incredible as violets where ne'er hath been 

Dew, air or the burgeoning flush of day. 

Only a vague, an assuring moral breath 

Can I bring, or any who speak through dream or death. 

Nothing that I may know is known as thou 

Yearnest for knowing; and knowing, thou would' «t not 

know. 
Thy years do bring such proof as thy brain doth crave 



Of personal destiny to o'erlive the grave. 

But the Promise breath' d in the human heart of old 

Is as flying fire on thy verge till earth grow cold. 

Still .... 

Thou prayest of mc 

What thou cravest of all 
Who are gone on that Sea 

Which thy creed maketh small. 
Which thy brain giveth form 

From thy pools left apart. 
Though they know not the storm 

Nor the hope of its heart. 
Though they know not the home-ways 

Nor the ships of that flood 
Nor the drift of its foam-ways 

Nor the thought of its God. 

Earth-soul, not to breathe 

What thine own kindred gone 
Strive so vainly to wreathe 

Through thy last dreams at dawn — 
Inconceivable plummets. 

Thought-shattering fires 
From the gulfs and the summits 

Of thine enfranchised sires 
Whom the Symbol hath drunken. 

Whom the True hath re- found 
When thy Real hath shrunken 

And thy silence grown Sound: 

Though these mysteries press o'er thee 

Of thy journeying soul 
And the darkness before thee, 

I but speak of the Whole; 



For with this thou art bound. 
And the way of thy Race, 
When all years are unwound. 
Thou shalt know face to face. 
On a positive Morrow, 
Impossible, uncreate. 
And more vast than thy crime or 
thy grace. 

.... Yet out of the deep of stars and the mner deep 

Has the Soul, full many a time of yesterday. 
Drawn thee- ward adown the zones of mist and sleep 

And breath' d vague parables of thy planet's way. 
Never, nor forever in all the days that lie 

In the unimagin'd future, could sage or god 
Reveal that Aiiden whose blooms will pierce the sky 

When unto the end thou bear'st thy racial load. 
Even as the lone way of thy spirit's flight 

Exceeds all revelation and waits in veil 
On thy soul's desire when crack these walls of night. 

So is thy racial road and its Holy Grail. 
Fled is my vision and vain : I may but speak. 

Even of thy human race, words dark to thee. 
Thy race is as a seed in March winds bleak. 

How should it know that far millenial tree. 
Cedar of Lebanon, deep wild-apple bower 

Or vine of the trumpet or wheaten harvest dim? 
I can but say with passionate word, — the flower 

Is in thy seed, thme aching clod, thy rime ! 

.... Haply even God knows not, or wills 
To know not, that which none save He, 

The o'erbrooding Deep where all tide stills. 
Can guess or dream, which waits in thee. 

Not that words fail or symbols break 



Only, or that thou fail' st of might 
To peer where the milleniums slake 
Their thirst in fonts of love and light. 

But more, — that the undetermin' d goal. 

The unshap'd fane, the plan undream' d 
By any uncorporeate soul. 

In thee abides, by thee is deem'd. 
Hath clue or light or life to thee 

Alone; in all the heaven of stars 
Flames for thine only heart to see ; 

In the atom-storms or galaftic wars 

Is thy flying ensign, wrought of thy soul. 

Flung on the immense, yet none may scan 
That banner, or seek that mystic goal. 

Save thee, blind, piteous, transcendent Man! 
Out of the sunset God's breath is blown; 

On Calvary the promise is seal' d in blood ; 
But thou hear' St but a seaward cry, and none 

May precede on thy self-engender' d flood. 

.... Fading, drawn downward through infinite wreath 
on wreath 
Of mist, of memory not mine, and mystic blend 
Of soul with soul m labyrinths of dream and death, 
I am call'd to the secular labor that hath no end; 
And all that I take is a yearning of friend for friend, 
And all that I tell is the watchword thine own heart saith. 
And all I would leave by the watchfire thine heart 
doth tend 
Is a lifeward urging, a more desiring faith ; 

And to those who are wandering, one word out of 
heaven I send: 



I, one Dominion of the multitude 
Who toil or who pause in Holy Rood 
And who see the Milky Way as a star 

In the vaster heaven of the Infinite Home, 
And the soul of Man more resplendent far 

Than all the heaven where his race doth roam : 

O Man, though I cannot teach, I know 
You shall shape your lesson as you go. 

O Man, there is none who would flash light 
From onward worlds into your night 
Wherethrough, by your own law, you climb 
On steps of night toward your Sublime. 

Temper' d your soul; yet where you move. 
On roads your human feet shall wend. 

Are subtle fires you dream not of 

Whose tempering purpose hath no end. 

Living, ineffable it gleams. 

Your hope no viftory can fulfill. 
Memory is not a wraith of dreams ; 

It is potent, central, indomitable: 

Though far on tides no bark may sail 

For long milleniums, it may heave 
Its bird-wing or cloud- mountain pale. 

Through it the ultimate world doth live. 

O Man, on a height more far, more strange 

Than the face of the moon's dead mountain-range. 

And ineffable as silvern or ruddy shore 

Of the dawn-star, thy cosmic fruit hath store, 

Yot it lies where thy looms make thunder, where crowd 

Thy social hosts in dissolving cloud. 

The Keeper of the Hoard — the God, the Whole, 



Thou art glory in His ejres : thou art His gotl. 

Vet he sundcreth ne'er one skein of all 

The web that enwinds thee. King and Thrall ! 

To thee is thy way of virtue known, 
A fourth dimension, thine own alone. 
The terror, the brand, the weight, the flail 
Of consequence is thy billowing sail. 

Though thou abhorr'st thme enemy. 
Blind soul, I can see truth in thee. 
Though infinite duties on thee press 
I do acclaim thy selfishness; 
And though, inveterately blind. 
Thou hatest truth, thou art a wind 
That fans it into life, to be 
Light on new shores that wait for thee. 
Thou art defeated, viftor thou : 

Thou buildest where thou breakest down. 
Thou nervest whom thou strikes low. 

Thou can'st not flee thy mission. 
Yea, though thou bear'st them down, the young. 

The hopeful, and the hungering. 
They welcome thee who mak'st them strong. 

And thou art good in everything: 

And even as thou to life art good. 

Or now, or in the years to be. 
So all the anguish of thy blood 

Mysteriously is good to thee. 

Life's joy thou drinkest: know, O Soul, 
That all thy laughter, smiles of rest 

And passionate renderings, do control 

The arrow of life through boundless quest. 



Darkness .... 

Not mine, even thine the scroll. 
Distance .... 

The deeper Sound is nigh, 
I am gone as where flaming waters roll .... 

Voice of thy dreams am I. 
I am in thee and of thee .... 

Lo, thine the scroll .... 
Yet I live and shall not die. 

Where in Mystery, 
In the blue on mountain-ranges of the waiting soul. 
In the immanent wilderness, yielding yet virgin for- 
ever. 
We are comrades of wandering. What uncreate Pole 
Hath God's own unaccountable wandering, is whis- 
per' d never 
Save, alone — that the love all-human, and ineffable 
Mystery of will, of memory, no death can sever. 

Farewell ! 



THE CONQUERER 

10VE, on a crag of time, with beating breast. 
With quivering wings, there glowing mystically 
Ji In sudden light that lighten' d all the sea 
When life swung heavenward from ancestral rest — 
There in the hallow' d moment that is press' d 
'Gainst the dark heart while earth hath memory, 
Pois'd love. Ah Love, those lovers! Surely we. 
That far-off morning, guardian' d well that nest! 

Love is gone now, down the undying west .... 

O'er solemn verge what vast wings lift and wane. 
There on the journeying deep's o'er-freighted crest, 

Through forests of the wandering wonder-rain. 
In rainbows on an ocean lov'd and blest? 

Plum'd as the sun — Love, Love— the Bird again! 



NIOBE 
(a bronze head by PICASSO: called "a bust") 

O BROTHERS and sisters, come ye and gaze 
with me. 
She is dark and relentless and strange, and 
our Mother she. 
Dark and supreme and dim as a simoon-shade. 
She the Rememberer, the Keeper, the Womb which 
made! 

Ah, the ages of groaning of immemorial slaves 

And the wasted Christs and the lands of remembering 

graves. 
And the Brunos, and the myriads who go a famish' d way 
Since her first Immortal was born to our planet's day! 

She is the Artist, robed in a thunder-tide. 
Who stands by our gates of modernity sunder' d wide 
And forgets not the sterner glories the ages owe 
And forgets not the bale nor the anguish of long ago. 

She of the seed-time, under Attila's storm! 
She of the earth-thrust, formative through ruin'd form! 
She of despair, whose remorseless and onward gaze 
Hath impelled Despair as a hewer of untrod ways ! 

Shall our ocean-daybreak to vaporous glamor pass 
While this Mother remembers the dole and the dream 

that was 
And the deeps of repayment our beauty, our life must hold 
And the art-hope not of perfume nor ease nor gold? 

Oh, She of bitterness, remembering the fiery flail 
And the battle-mound and dungeon and torture-bale: 
No rose- way nor wine nor stringed music Her awfiil art. 
But the wheel of Ixion and the torn Promethian heart. 



Lo, brothers ! In bronzed symbol the Mother-Soul ! 
Her bond is a blood-bond, her indefinable dole 
Is the garnered pain of the baffled splendor of a world, 
A resolvent Purpose more awful than lightning hurled. 

Her chaos a dancing star, but her mournfiil dream 
Is as poignancy of a rainbow in moon-gleam. 
And her debt of forbidden fulfillment shall be paid 
Ere our earth be our home, ere our Human its goal 
hath made ! 



13 



A CHILD IN THE MORNING 



Y 



OU are lit with a magic flame, 

A lightning in space and night. 
Yet you know not the font whence 



That splendor of life and light. 

Where, brooding and gloaming, lay- 
That soul of the aether- zone. 

The light of your melody. 
The spell of your undertone. 

Child, and soul of my soul 

And comrade of morning ways. 

Here is a miracle 

And key of eternities : 

That all your wave and its foam. 

Ineffable under the stars 
And wild with night under gloom 

And radiant with sunrise bars. 

Your wave and its wonder-heart. 
Its passion that breaks the shore. 

Is an immemorial part 

Of the ocean forevermore : 

For the sky sends down its breath 

And the wave leaps, lifted and blown. 

But the ocean is underneath — 
Its life is the ocean's own. 

Ancient, older than day 

Is the glory laid over you. 
Young as your heart at play. 

Young as a globe of dew. 



H 



Young as the sunrise- flame 

On mountains of cloud or snow. 

Old as from whence it came — 
Oh Spirit, how should you know! 



CHRIST IN DREAM 

AH, CHRIST ! Who to my sleep last night came 

X jIl Risen from some earlier dream o'er- worn 
and gone. 
Like a breath exstatic from maiden raiments blown. 
Spray of spring rains on gray eternity 
Of inland hill-rocks, or land-bird's homing cry : 
Passionate, far, unmitigable, unknown. 
Thou Christ, Whose worlds. Whose ages are Thine 
own, 
God of the ice and flame whose breath am I: 

Lo, Thou, arcturian Flower that wilt not die 
From this lone shore, lo, earnest Wizardry 

Of music poignant, awful, from the deep 
Of all wild waters : lo, where my bent oars ply 
In glamor and anguish and battle, still Thy sigh 

Is round me like some romance dreamed in sleep ! 



15 



ON READING JAMES MARTINEAU 

IN THIS our deep of life uncompassed, 
Heav'd by star-sway or drawn by magnet-polci 
By trade-winds in a world-wide motion led. 
The waves of ages and creations roll. 
Deeds brave and far, waves of the ancient soul, 
Mark the long ocean-track remembered. 
Dim battle-ways where earnest worlds have bled. 
Dominion of wan goal on hopeless goal. 

And all around, the ocean-paths are full 

With mournful men who deem one wave the sea. 
The illimitable movement purposeful 

Which knows no fixity nor futility. 
Whose infinite goal is here and beautifiil. 

In whose deep Deed alone life's hope may be. 
Breathes wave on wave, resplendent, bountiful . . . . 

That men may deem one wave Finality ! 



i6 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 



T 



HE dew, the star: these things can be 

Which in the long-enduring year 
Of childlike life's white prophecy 
Have reft our prudence and our fear. 
The sunken stream is living here 
Fed by far hills unagingly. 

Forgotten, myriad, faithful, near. 
Heed we the chUd, that these things be ! 

These things can be : these magic rays 

Of old-world dream-resplendencies 
Whose glamor of forgotten days 

Hath gone with Ys below the seas. 

Renew' d are Merlin's alchemies. 
And Camelot's lambent orioles blaze 

When childhood opes, with golden keys. 
Our prison to the magic rays. 

Lo, they can be : the wildwood eyes 

Of lynx and wolf and lion and bear 
That watch the fire while it dies 

And Man Primordial is there 

Who thrills with passionate pulse the fair 
Frail breast, and lights the infant skies 

With hope and terror, everywhere 
That memory lives in childhood eyes. 

Yes, they can be: these lordlier powers 
Of ultimate fealty, borne like shields 

Above this human race of ours 
On all its myriad battle-fields. 
In vain for aye, Philistia wields 

Its mace, its measure, while like flowers 



17 



The innumerable childhood yields. 
In hosts renew' d, these lordlier powers. 

Ah, they can be: those shining tides 
Where none but sacred bark may go. 

Seen in a vision that abides 

Forever while earth's waters flow. 
Forever while earth's lilies blow 

And while that mystic hour betides 
Dream in its gift of youth may know. 

Now as of old, those star-drawn tides ! 

And they shall be ! Youth of the World, 
Not evermore is laid the spell 

Whereunder is our banner furl'd 
And dry our ancient saintly well 
And dumb our ancient folk-mote bell. 

Evilly o'er our sleep is curl'd 

New smoke of wizardry chill and fell. 

But thou art Wizard of the World. 

O mighty Wizard, Wonder-child, 

Thou hast thine old tempestuousness ! 

O Eater of the honey wild 
And locust in the wilderness. 
Thyself the Life which comes to bless : 

Restore thy sword, thine undefil' d 
Life-passion, to us in world-distress, 

O faithful ChUd, O Wonder- chUd! 



THE BEATITUDE 

FAR on the gloaming wold its wonder is known. 
Beauty, breaking the heart of the toilers here. 
And broken hope, and surcease from the lesser 
fear — 
It is token of these, their light is that wanderer's own. 

Ah, but cloud in the tremulous human sky. 
Cloud, in the infinite river bath'd with fire, 
Vidlorious over the gloaming, mystic Desire — 

Some mightier mercy hath bound thee infinitely. 

Yea, even thee, to the service of the dark plain. 

From sunfire, from moon-way, down through tor- 
rential storm 
Thou art call'd as we where the deep Intentions 
swarm. 
And thy glory is below in a world of transfigur' d pain. 

Far on the plains the departing thunder is loud .... 

It is laden with dews to be shed on marches far; 

It is earth's own bloom, though fring'd with a silver star 
Where it moves in splendor, a fountain of fire and cloud ! 



19 



TO ISADORA DUNCAN 

(in sorrow — APRIL, I913) 

SUCH joy as winds would bring from past the grave 
None living, O Isadora, has brought as thou. 
Thou hast saved us, but thine own thou could' st 
not save. 
Haply no soul is broken as thou art now. 

Thou, like Ayesha, out of holier morn. 

Bathed in a pillar of flame no tongue hath told 

And over stairs by ageless dream unworn. 
Hast brought us life from very Fonts of Old, 

And all thy fountain turns to agony now. 

Because through beateous will and love on wings 
Thou hast led us where eternal amaranths grow. 

Thou liest most crushed of trampled piteous things. 

For this of all things elsa thy mission seemed 
When the breath of Grecian vistas breathed from thee — 

That life shall live even as life's heart hath dreamed. 
That even through love alone shall life be free. 

And through deep passion shall beauty with destmy blend. 
And life is a harp, whereon are fingers laid 

From past Orion, whose passion hath no end. 

And now the Lightning of God its chord hath played ! 

O Isadora, we have no word for thee 

Who hast raised our eyes to the burning eagle on high 
Above the sunset and dawn on a mystic sea. 

Save only .... It gleams, that Eagle against the iky ! 



THE DARK WEAVER 
(a pluralistic universe) 

I 

How Mystery, at her dark and intricate loom. 
Weaves her unnumber'd, her unending 
threads: 
Her shuttle bears our luminous golds and rede 
Of human life; it bears our skeins of gloom. 
The weaving of her shuttle is our doom. 

Or bright, or dark. But follow where it leads! 
Follow, regardless of our personal creeds. 
Till haply some vast tapestry shall bloom 

In glory on some wide and mighty wall. 
O'er subdued splendor of some echoing hall 
Where some grave Race shall tread a cloudy home; 
And on our visionary ear may fall 
Indeed the romance of the Weaver of All, 
The mystic One, risen from an outworn loom! 

II 

The loom, the web, the ^aver! Not as this. 
An ultimate, all-considering, clear romance 

Woven of a Hand mystic and near, is ours. 
Our wills weave ceaselessly, gods of drift and chance. 
Sword-blades and gorgons twine our pattern' d 
flowers. 
A soul's web of the sphinx our life's web is. 

In music and dew, how the enigmal Sower 

Lays the dragon's teeth, prayerflil in hallow' d hills. 

On the wild carton flame they, bitter and dark. 
Angels of consequence. The Sower spUls 

Cold dust on icy headland or war-ways stark. 
And the shuttle gleams: lo, bloom of the tenderest flower ! 



There is no Motive, yet as One it gleams. 

And the gloom of all the weavers engendereth. 

Like a world-deep vineyard or haunt of tropic vine. 
The fruitage of all, the compelling and single Breath 
That on old woven battlefields falls like wine 
On parched lips, lives broken — vintage of dreams ! 

We weave in hope and passion the hooked threads. 
Which need not be save that an Underbreath 
Guides each instinftive finger till it is done. 
We have woven our web and doom; nor ever death 
Retriev'd one skein or wrought our hope through one. 
We are weavers of chance, woven of the Breath that leads. 

Oh beautiful is the web, the tapestry 

Of beauty of wells and heights and tears and stars; 

The web that hides no Answerer; where, untold. 
The weavers weave over the changeless bars 
Of utterless law, ageless and still and cold. 
The empurpl'd tapestry of the Conscript Free! 



Ill 

O ChUd in the sunlight! You cried with lyric soul 
When the storming shadow, hawk-swift, mysteriously. 
Cast its portent along the vale, a wizardry 
Of mountain-terror, with whelming thunder -roll 
Beneath cumulous immensities upbuilded; and Earth 
was whole. 
Thy joy of the elemental seem'd wine to me. 
The enduring mountain was crown' d and ilium' d 
with thee. 
In thy blood seem'd the rythm of all truth from pole 
to pole. 



And there, in thy symbol, thy lightnmg — the Infinite 
Scroll! 
The bewildering years, all arrivals of the journeying 
world. 
All the ineludable, immanent pain, the toll 

Whereof God hath no need yet His far lost dawn is 
impearl'd 
With these irrecoverable sorrows; the resolvent goal 
Of all loves, all loss, one Tapestry, complete, un- 
forl'd .... 

While thy pulse-beat of Pan, of Galahad, O Human 
Child, 

Held in rythm God's dream and the mountains gloom- 
shot and wild! 



THE UTOPIAS OF WILLIAM MORRIS 

("HE NEVER SHOWS HOIV-'^ BIOGRAPHER) 

YET the dawn ie laboring there, and East is East, 
East is East, and the sunrise is winged with 
wonder. 
Beyond the murk and the fell and the toil of the Beast 
Is the sunrise, boundless and blinding, plumed with 

thunder. 
And the Tribe of the Titans gropes and is mean 
thereunder. 
Then praise for the herald- singers, that they have 
ceased 
Not ever, praise for the dreams that defy and sunder ! 

Utopias of the Past ! Though they never were 

More than may rose-trees bloom in the Alpineglow, 

Nor more than may thunder and elemental whir 

Of the star- worlds reside in the tremulous sheen below 
On the waters of night, here where the beech-boughs 
throw 

Their enchantment — yet is all Watling-street astir. 
And the fires of Icelandic heaven shine row on row ! 

Has he told the road, has he traced the defile that clings 
Round the ebon crag of the mountain, that plunges yon 

Into gulfs of the eyeless morrow, the waste that brings 
No hero-wanderer to any Burg-Dale known — 
Has he threaded the labyrinth of age-boundless stone.? 

Nay, — Yet praise to the song-smith who cries the 
Mightier Things 
And the singer who sings a destiny 'neath the sun! 



24 



He has risen, a Creator and Dreamer who dared to dream. 

He has wrought in such glamor, by such a forge of old 
In the roots of tho mountains, as o'er the ancestral stream 

Of our father-races poured an ensanguined gold 

Of hero-hopes that saga and creed have told. 
He has wrought a sword of the ancient Odin-gleam, 

And our eyes shall flash fire to it yet ere our Race 
be cold! 



JUNALUSKA VALLEY 

BLUE is the wave under the unrisen moon. 
Foam is pour'd on the silent crest, whence 
never 
The wave is shed through rune on forgotten rune — 
The wave of the titan mountains, uprear'd forever. 

Blue is the wave's unmeasur'd wall. But gray 
The enormous vale, fill'd with the mist of night. 

Flooded and fann'd with the moon's eternal ray. 
And the world is cold yet aflame with mysterious light. 



25 



A MEMORY 
(tol.w.c.) 

You remember, long ago, on a promontory. 
The prow of France, deep in the Atlantic's pil'd 
Empurpl'd and foam-laid wave, where the Chan- 
nel in glory 
Heav'd from the parent ocean, a Centaur-child, 
Or trampl'd into ultimate ocean laden and hoary. 
Primal and deathless, moon-led, tenebrous, wild — 
How all day long, and through night, and till noon 
was mild 
We dream' d, and were lost in wonder, in mystery and 
story. 

For Finistere was behind, and its memories hover* d 

Like clouds or cloud-flocks of nameless birds in the sky. 
Even as the dream of Celtdom, though undiscover'd 

Forever, in the soul of man is a fluted cry 
Along haunted downs, memorial and unrecover'd 

Yet respir'd from the years unborn, not years that die. 

Brittany was behind; but all night, on high. 
On the brow of a vmged Viftory, Modernity uncover' d ! 

For the silent, immense and horizon-piercing power 
Of deliberate light from that lonely pinnacle flow' d, 

A pulsing foam on the wandering cloud-tower, 

A ghostly revealer where the sheeted schooners rode. 

An unresting marvel on the ocean's flood-tide hour 
When at profound midnight the awfiil cavalry stood 
Unmoving, and all Being was rapt, in air or flood. 

Save that blade-against-darkness of the never-wearying 



26 



How could we tell, who do yet remember, the wonder 
Of that night, that day, wherein as leaves in the blast 
We were borne where rainbows were thridded, where 
ocean's thunder 
In the glowing receiving zenith seem'd a wind that 
pass'd 
Trancendly murmuring! The enormous crags were 
under. 
And yet odorous frail-intimate flowers round our 

knees were cast. 
Our souls were echoing fountains of a terrene past. 
The heart and the world seem'd welded past might to 
sunder. 

Dawn came in splendor. But satiety, groping desire 
And baffled and drowning wings in too-tenuous air 

And dole of the moth confounded through thirst for fire 
And bitter weariness of finite souls, made sere. 

Unlovely, unheavenly, unanswering, the ruddy gyre 
Of illumined cloud, the unwearying world so fair 
Thro' whose dawn and darkness life of its life we wear. 

In such dole be a token for bewilder' d hearts, where 
they tire! 

For our life, and our personal lives, since there rose 
from gloaming 

The visitant, the indwelling Vision of Mystery 
With wings of flame in the shadowy spirit, homing 

In unaccountable ways, to the unheard cry 
Of the Veil'd Desirer — all our estrays, our becoming 

Approve that the Mood of Wonder may never die ; 

That earnest Endurance is its wing in the whelming sky 
And long lone deserts of its migratory roaming ! 



27 



All the defeat was o'ergrown, ere twilight had gilded 
The enchanting billows on a lowly shore where we 
came. 
Day after day, year after year has builded 

Unerringly, divinely, a home as of crystal and flame 
Whose unfearing walls by weariness are wrought and 
shielded. 
Where bafflement and mystery are welcome guests 

at the dream. 
Where creative memories like living passion do gleam 
Whose unaging impulsion a far sea-mountain yielded! 



28 



THE LAW OF OLD 

WHEN the winds of autumn descend on our 
valley _ 
And the glimmering presences sound in 
the trees, 
Lo! the thrilling note of their mystical rally 
Is a cry to our soul, grown one with these. 

It lifts us afar to the purple ranges 

Where the hosts are adrift and the banners glow. 
Till even those weary in the bower' d granges 

Hear the portal sunder, the bugles blow. 

No cycle of earth sees the Powers revel 

As then when the ice is on the crag. 
When the rains are nigh and the storms dishevel 

And reels to the sod the exstatic flag 

And the hosts go wasted and singing nightward 
And the bugle dies in the echoless deep 

And the world's pulse wanes, which anon and lightward 
Shall climb from a death that is not sleep. 



When the winds of autumn descend on our valley 
And the deep Dominions, with iron breath 

Blown in the mighty movement, rally 
Solemn and sure by the gates of death. 

Shall not the joy that from years unnumber' d 
Thrills over forest and field and height 

At dawn of the Dream of Change which slumber' d 
In bough and sky and in splendid night, 

29 



The J07 that is heie, our own and our mother. 
When autumn's death is with gold aflame. 

Be ours, and the light of it, now while another 
September breathes the LnefFable Name? 

We are not more than the leaf, or glory 
Of clouds that forlorn and transient fold. 

We are not less than the world, the hoary 
Years, or the sacred Law of Old. 



3° 



DE PROFUNDIS 

A FRAGMENT 

.... Where our passion 
Is wrought into music haunting the helpless mind. 

Our life hath its flower ; 

Here, where our soul, fed upon hopeless dream. 
In a tragic hour. 

In dust and night, seeks the primeval stream. 

Here is our meaning: 

It bides by the deep channels of our soul 
Where the fountains, raining 

In mystery holy and terrible, dumbly roll. 

White and forever 

From deeps of bitter exstacy and sweet tears. 
Their flood which never 

May know its home through all our possible years. 

Our meaning lingers 

In brooding portent of sudden destiny 
Where they, the bringers 

Of burden and anguish and infinity 

Breathe by our portal 

With brows of the angels and with sockets blind. 
With fierce immortal 

Music, with love, with thirst of the desert wind. 

With flame's own being 

To sunder the adamant floor of this our home 
Till the spirit, fleeing. 

Seeks downward the buried fonts of our life and doom. 



31 



But the mind that ponders. 

It icnows not forever that poignant mystery. 
Nor the eye that wanders 

On landscapes vast and the brooding boundless sky. 

Nor down the unmeasured 

And awful track of the ageless way of man 
Is the meaning treasured; 

Yet it clothes him and crowns the goal of the course 
he ran. 

This is the meaning 

That our soul, which is God, in Whom the stars 
are sown. 
Like a cloud-king leaning 

Out o'er the gulf plumb' d by our love alone. 

Knows and can utter 

Only in silent light on the inner sky 
Or in thunder's mutter 

When men and nations arise to dare and to die. 

Our meaning transcendent 

When the foam of the Fountain crowns our brow at 
the goal — 
That we are defendent 

For that which no eye may behold while the planets 
roll; 

That consecrated 

To a labor our mind may serve but may never know. 
We are doom'd, we are freighted 

With love, with splendor and terror of the fountain's 
flow; 



32 



That sorrow befalls us 

For this, that an Inconceivable may be; 
That a Herdsman calls us 

With voice on our desolate downs like the ancient sea: 

He has laid on the meadows 

Of infinite time His print as on summer grass. 
And the worlds are shadows 

Limn'd upon morning mist as His couriers pass; 

His footsteps are o'er us 

As on shadowy stairs in the royal East of old 
Pass'd the kings before us 

And we were Buddha and kings and stairs of gold .... 

And anew the yearning 

Is wrought into music haunting the helpless brain. 
On the way returning 

Downward forever, where the silent fountains rain ! 



33 



DEC-4ldl3 



RAINDROPS ON CAMBRIAN SHALE 

THE shore its meed of driftwood bears. 
The ancient clifFs their vigil keep. 
On sands more ancient than all years 
Murmurs the homeless wandering deep. 
And here on immemorial stone. 

Where fell the Cambrian rains of yore 
Through rainbows in far worlds forgone. 
Your memory keeps its ageless hour. 

Far and away the deeps were laid 

Where hung the storm-soul cloud on cloud. 
And all the ocean, thunder-stay' d. 

In calm wide fields no besom plough' d. 
Yearn' d for the revelation's breath. 

And swift and drop by drop they came. 
The leaves from out the thunder-wreath 

Of primal sunfire, shot with flame 
Of sunrise no man's eye hath seen. 

In dawn more ancient than all age. 
Then the storm fell. 

O Rainbow-sheen, 

You carv'd our planet's eldest page! 



34 



By the same writer: 

THE INDWELLING 
SPLENDOR 

[VERSES] 

74 pages; bound. Price 50 cents. Address the 
author, John Collier, Sparkill, New York 



PRINTED FOR JOHN COLLIER BY THE 
STONE HOUSE PRESS, AT JOHNSVILLE, 
PENNSYLVANIA, OCTOBER, MCMXIII 



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