The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 30

Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad Grim squatting on a twilight road.

He catcheth all that Circ.u.mstance Hath tossed to him.

He curseth all who upward glance As lost to him.

Once in a whimsey mood he sat And talked of life, in proverbs pat, To Eve in Eden, -- "Death, on Life" -- As if he knew!

And so he toadied Adam's wife There, in the dew.

O dainty dew, O morning dew That gleamed in the world's first dawn, did you And the sweet gra.s.s and manful oaks Give lair and rest To him who toadwise sits and croaks His death-behest?

Who fears the hungry Toad? Not I!

He but unfetters me to fly.

The German still, when one is dead, Cries out "Der Tod!"

But, pilgrims, Christ will walk ahead And clear the road.

____ Macon, Georgia, July, 1867.

Nirvana.

Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies, Through seas of solitudes and vacancies, And through my Self, the deepest of the seas, I strive to thee, Nirvana.

Oh long ago the billow-flow of sense, Aroused by pa.s.sion's windy vehemence, Upbore me out of depths to heights intense, But not to thee, Nirvana.

By waves swept on, I learned to ride the waves.

I served my masters till I made them slaves.

I baffled Death by hiding in his graves, His watery graves, Nirvana.

And once I clomb a mountain's stony crown And stood, and smiled no smile and frowned no frown, Nor ate, nor drank, nor slept, nor faltered down, Five days and nights, Nirvana.

Sunrise and noon and sunset and strange night And shadow of large clouds and faint starlight And lonesome Terror stalking round the height, I minded not, Nirvana.

The silence ground my soul keen like a spear.

My bare thought, whetted as a sword, cut sheer Through time and life and flesh and death, to clear My way unto Nirvana.

I slew gross bodies of old ethnic hates That stirred long race-wars betwixt States and States.

I stood and scorned these foolish dead debates, Calmly, calmly, Nirvana.

I smote away the filmy base of Caste.

I thrust through antique blood and riches vast, And all big claims of the pretentious Past That hindered my Nirvana.

Then all fair types, of form and sound and hue, Up-floated round my sense and charmed anew.

-- I waved them back into the void blue: I love them not, Nirvana.

And all outrageous ugliness of time, Excess and Blasphemy and squinting Crime Beset me, but I kept my calm sublime: I hate them not, Nirvana.

High on the topmost thrilling of the surge I saw, afar, two hosts to battle urge.

The widows of the victors sang a dirge, But I wept not, Nirvana.

I saw two lovers sitting on a star.

He kissed her lip, she kissed his battle-scar.

They quarrelled soon, and went two ways, afar.

O Life! I laughed, Nirvana.

And never a king but had some king above, And never a law to right the wrongs of Love, And ever a fanged snake beneath a dove, Saw I on earth, Nirvana.

But I, with kings.h.i.+p over kings, am free.

I love not, hate not: right and wrong agree: And fangs of snakes and lures of doves to me Are vain, are vain, Nirvana.

So by mine inner contemplation long, By thoughts that need no speech nor oath nor song, My spirit soars above the motley throng Of days and nights, Nirvana.

O Suns, O Rains, O Day and Night, O Chance, O Time besprent with seven-hued circ.u.mstance, I float above ye all into the trance That draws me nigh Nirvana.

G.o.ds of small worlds, ye little Deities Of humble Heavens under my large skies, And Governor-Spirits, all, I rise, I rise, I rise into Nirvana.

The storms of Self below me rage and die.

On the still bosom of mine ecstasy, A lotus on a lake of balm, I lie Forever in Nirvana.

____ Macon, Georgia, 1869.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- The two poems which follow "The Raven Days" have not been included in earlier editions. All three are calls from those desperate years for the South just after the Civil War. The reader of to-day, seeing that forlorn period in the just perspective of half a century, will not wonder at the tone of anguished remonstrance; but, rather, that so few notes of mourning have come from a poet who missed nothing of what the days of Reconstruction brought to his people. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Raven Days.

Our hearths are gone out and our hearts are broken, And but the ghosts of homes to us remain, And ghastly eyes and hollow sighs give token From friend to friend of an unspoken pain.

O Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow, Bring to us in your whetted ivory beaks Some sign out of the far land of To-morrow, Some strip of sea-green dawn, some orange streaks.

Ye float in dusky files, forever croaking.

Ye chill our manhood with your dreary shade.

Dumb in the dark, not even G.o.d invoking, We lie in chains, too weak to be afraid.

O Raven days, dark Raven days of sorrow, Will ever any warm light come again?

Will ever the lit mountains of To-morrow Begin to gleam athwart the mournful plain?

____ Prattville, Alabama, February, 1868.