Dreams and Dust Part 8

THE WAGES

EARTH loves to gibber o'er her dross, Her golden souls, to waste; The cup she fills for her G.o.d-men Is a bitter cup to taste.

Who sees the gyves that bind mankind And strives to strike them off Shall gain the hissing hate of fools, Thorns, and the ingrate's scoff.

Who storms the moss-grown walls of eld And beats some falsehood down Shall pa.s.s the pallid gates of death _Sans_ laurel, love or crown;

For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee-- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane.

IN MARS, WHAT AVATAR?

"In Vishnu-land, what avatar?"

--BROWNING.

PERCHANCE the dying G.o.ds of Earth Are destined to another birth, And worn-out creeds regain their worth In the kindly air of other stars-- What lords of life and light hold sway In the myriad worlds of the Milky Way?

What avatars in Mars?

What Aphrodites from the seas That lap the plunging Pleiades Arise to spread afar The dream that was the soul of Greece?

In Mars, what avatar?

Which hundred moons are wan with love For dull Endymions?

Which hundred moons hang tranced above Audacious Ajalons?

What Holy Grail lures errants pale Through the wastes of yonder star?

What fables sway the Milky Way?

In Mars, what avatar?

When morning skims with crimson wings Across the meres of Mercury, What dreaming Memnon wakes and sings Of miracles on Mercury?

What Christs, what avatars, Claim Mars?

THE G.o.d-MAKER, MAN

NEVERMORE Shall the shepherds of Arcady follow Pan's moods as he lolls by the sh.o.r.e Of the mere, or lies hid in the hollow; Nevermore Shall they start at the sound of his reed-fas.h.i.+oned flute;

Fallen mute Are the strings of Apollo, His lyre and his lute; And the lips of the Memnons are mute Evermore; And the G.o.ds of the North,--are they dead or forgetful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

Are they drunk, or grown weary of wors.h.i.+p and fretful, Our Odin and Baldur and Thor?

And into what night have the Orient dieties strayed?

Swart G.o.ds of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged you eternal!) decayed.

The avatars But illumine their limited evens And vanish like plunging stars; They are fixed in the whirling heavens No firmer than falling stars; Brief lords of the changing soul, they pa.s.s Like a breath from the face of a gla.s.s, Or a blossom of summer blown shallop-like over The clover And tossed tides of gra.s.s.

Sink to silence the psalms and the paeans The s.h.i.+bboleths s.h.i.+ft, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the aeons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The wors.h.i.+ps grow senseless and strange,

And the mockers ask, _"Where be thy altars?"_ Crying, _"Nothing is changeless--but Change!"_

Yes, nothing seems changeless, but Change.

And yet, through the creed-wrecking years, One story for ever appears; The tale of a City Supernal-- The whisper of Something eternal-- A pa.s.sion, a hope, and a vision That peoples the silence with Powers; A fable of meadows Elysian Where Time enters not with his Hours;-- Manifold are the tale's variations, Race and clime ever tinting the dreams, Yet its essence, through endless mutations, Immutable gleams.

Deathless, though G.o.dheads be dying, Surviving the creeds that expire, Illogical, reason-defying, Lives that pa.s.sionate, primal desire; Insistent, persistent, forever Man cries to the silences, _Never_

_Shall Death reign the lord of the soul, Shall the dust be the ultimate goal-- I will storm the black bastions of Night!

I will tread where my vision has trod, I will set in the darkness a light, In the vastness, a G.o.d!"_

As the forehead of Man grows broader, so do his creeds; And his G.o.ds they are shaped in his image, and mirror his needs; And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, he clothes them with music and fire; Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, that he wors.h.i.+ps his own desire; And mixed with his trust there is terror, and mixed with his madness is ruth, And every man grovels in error, yet every man glimpses a truth.

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow, too;

For no form of a G.o.d, and no fas.h.i.+on Man has made in his desperate pa.s.sion But is worthy some wors.h.i.+p of mine;-- Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble--but open-eyed!

UNREST

A FIERCE unrest seethes at the core Of all existing things: It was the eager wish to soar That gave the G.o.ds their wings.

From what flat wastes of cosmic slime, And stung by what quick fire, Sunward the restless races climb!-- Men risen out of mire!

There throbs through all the worlds that are This heart-beat hot and strong, And shaken systems, star by star, Awake and glow in song.

But for the urge of this unrest These joyous spheres were mute; But for the rebel in his breast Had man remained a brute.

When baffled lips demanded speech, Speech trembled into birth-- (One day the lyric word shall reach From earth to laughing earth)--

When man's dim eyes demanded light The light he sought was born-- His wish, a t.i.tan, scaled the height And flung him back the morn!

From deed to dream, from dream to deed, From daring hope to hope, The restless wish, the instant need, Still lashed him up the slope!

I sing no governed firmament, Cold, ordered, regular-- I sing the stinging discontent That leaps from star to star!

THE PILTDOWN SKULL

WHAT was his life, back yonder In the dusk where time began, This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape And the eye and brain of a man?-- Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the l.u.s.t of fight, Play, and the blind beginnings Of an Art that groped for light?--

In the wonder of redder mornings, By the beauty of brighter seas, Did he stand, the world's first thinker, Scorning his clan's decrees?-- Seeking, with baffled eyes, In the dumb, inscrutable skies, A name for the greater glory That only the dreamer sees?

One day, when the afterglows, Like quick and sentient things,

With a rush of their vast, wild wings, Rose out of the shaken ocean As great birds rise from the sod, Did the shock of their sudden splendor Stir him and startle and thrill him, Grip him and shake him and fill him With a sense as of heights untrod?-- Did he tremble with hope and vision, And grasp at a hint of G.o.d?

London stands where the mammoth Caked s.h.a.g flanks with slime-- And what are our lives that inherit The treasures of all time?

Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the l.u.s.t of fight, A little play (and too much toil!) With an Art that gropes for light; And now and then a dreamer, Rapt, from his lonely sod Looks up and is thrilled and startled With a fleeting sense of G.o.d!