Collected Works (Vol. I)

40 SONGS OF THI SPIRIT Amazed, a shape seems always at my back To whisper wickedness, o’erheard none, And stealthily to follow on my track, And cloke my lifted eyes with suffocating black. of Vainly I turn to seek him, for my eyes Are dimmed with saltness never born of brine ; Vainly I fight the air ; he sneers, and lies. He laughs at all this agony of mine. IIe chills my heart, and desecrates th: shrine Where Love his holy incense used to burn. He mocks those thoughts, those songs, those looks divine While his lewd visage no man may dis- cern, And baffling darkness hides his terror if I turn. Fighting and falling ever, wearicst Even of beating off the tempter’s blows, Struggling in vain to what one hopes the best, A distant river over many snows, On whose green bank the purple iris glows, And the anemone in some wild cleft, With the white violet, and the briar rose, And the blue gentian from the heavens reft— Lo! ’Twas that golden bank but yester morn I left. O river where wedwelt! Yonsummersward Whereon we lay, two kings of earth and air5 Kor whom ten thousand angels had drawn sword At our light bidding. Surely, surely, there We might float ever to the sea, and spare The dainty plumage of that perfect place. O God! O Life! O Death, thou would’st not wear Such evil mask upon thy golden face— O Mary, pity me of thine abounding grace. Those days are dead, and hope no newer birth. I Jeft thy shores, blue stream, at His com- mand Who reared the mountains from the shaken earth ; Who holds the lightning in His holy hand, And binds the stars in adamantine band, And yearns towards the children of His mind. I left their summer and their dewy strand To pass a life of work, alone, unkind, To fight a way toward heaven, mute, deso- late, and blind. The dusty desert glimmers in the night ; A solitary palm-tree shades the well ; I am alone, a weary eremite Striving the secrets of the stars to tell, And every blade of grass that makes the dell Is counted and divined by me, who stare With eyes half blinded by the fires of Hell That my wild brain imagines everywhere, Roaring and raging round with red infernal glare. The yellow sand toward the deep sky extends: A dusky mirage would confuse my view ; Far, far away, where desolation ends, There is a water of serenest blue ; And by it stands, as patient and as true As in the past, his form to whom I turn, And break my bondage and would touch anew His holy lips; my body and spirit yearn ; Te fades away, and fires of Hell within me burn. Sull, as I journey through the waste, I see A silver figure more divine arise ; The Christ usurps the horizon for me, And He requickens the forgotten skies ; His golden locks are burning on my eyes, And He with rosy finger points the way, The blood-wrought mystic path of Paradise That leads at last through yonder icy spray Of Death to the blue vaults of the undying day.