Classic Poem

Then, on whom Faith has leaned
Lives not; for it seems
We are whims of some Fiend
That slumbers and dreams!

Unimaginable Demon!
With cosmic fire-storms
In His crazed sleep to dream on
And dream into forms!

Lo, a huge fancy runs
Athwart His vast sleep,
And ten millions of suns
Blaze out in the deep.

His deliriums dim
In meteors flock,
And with whimseys of Him
Wild stars intershock.

All the rocks are one tomb
Of moods of His mind,
Cast away to make room
For us living kind;

Phantoms! dancing and hymning,
While here where we dwell
Is but film overswimming
An ocean of hell!

Smoking peaks burst in thunder
And shower down death,
And the plains gape asunder
With doom in a breath.

Commerce rises and dips
With east and west sun,
As her shuttles, the ships,
Weave states into one;

But the sea, the brute sea,
That swings round the sphere,
Never heeds the wild plea
Of man in his fear:

Him and his its rude surges
Toss, buffet, and drown,
As it yawns in its gurges
And ravens them down.

And the beasts of the deep,
Like phantoms that form
In the nightmares of sleep —
Grim monsters that swarm

In the darkness of waters,
And gorge mouth and maw
With their mutual slaughters
By snout, tooth, and jaw —

How the swift silent beasts
In combat partake
Of the fattening feasts
The mad billows make!

" Lord of life and of death,
Have mercy on me!"
Cry that squanders the breath
On storm, night, and sea.

Cry for God's mercy where,
In maniac bout
With the powers of the air,
The great waters shout?

Where from mountains' pent hollows
Hell bursts out on men?
Where earth opens and swallows
And closes again?

Cry for mercy where thunder
Drops death from the clouds?
Where the ghosts rise from under
And mix with the crowds

Of the living, unheard,
Unseen, and unknown,
Till with mortal plague stirred
The scared cities groan?

Mercy! No, there is none
In whatever force
Wherewithal the Lord Sun
Gives life and death source.

" Fire!" A cry in the night —
One cry, and no more
Ere the streets fill with fright
And clamor and roar.

To the flames all the city!
Stop not now to call
That Almighty have pity —
The water has all.

" O my husband! — my child!"
A mother and wife
In the first terror wild
Has fled for her life

From the room where she kept
Love's wake by dead love,
And her innocent slept
Unfathered above.

" Dead! — dear love!" Off she flings
Whoever delays
Her mad purpose, and springs
Back into the blaze.

Through the flame and the smoke,
Past him lying dead,
Up the stair, scorch and choke,
To find the babe's bed!

Scarce a moment to speak
One vain phrase of prayer
Ere the woman's death-shriek,
And, framed in the glare

Through the window revealed,
A picture that robbed
Men of breath, and down kneeled
The women and sobbed;

Picture, flashed upon flame,
Of two forms in white!
Then picture and frame
One red blur of night!

Was it rage, was it ire
Of some god above?
Or, mad hunger of fire
For woman's mad love?

Woman's love! Love belongs
To Force, and is part
Of the rights and the wrongs
Of dull Nature's heart.

How is Force when it burns
And flares out its breath
Worse than Force when it yearns
And dares unto death?

What is better or worse,
Where all only seems?
What is blessing or curse,
In drama of dreams?

What is saintship or sin?
To climb or to fall,
Or to lose or to win?
The One lives it all.

" All delights and all doles —
Thought, passion, and strife —
Are the Infinite Soul's
Large living of life!"

Is it living of thought
Or living of trance?
And is purpose outwrought
From chance upon chance?

What purpose in killing
My darling, my boy?
What demoniac thrilling
Of infinite joy

From the little life lying
In fever's hot flame
And in last anguish crying
The mother's fond name?

Stricken wife of my youth!
O, how from that day
Didst thou pine for what truth
Death's morrow might say!

In the hope of that morrow,
Thou, patient and brave
With thy burden of sorrow,
Soon went to the grave

In the travail of mother
Of that little-one
Who should follow the brother
Ere one year were done.

O, the faint pulses' warning!
O, loving last words!
In the spring, in the morning,
With songs of the birds!

I explore all the dark,
I search sleep for her;
But there comes not a spark,
Or whisper, or stir

From all hearing, all seeing,
All feeling of Force,
Hinting whether her being
Holds conscious its course,

So that still might be shown
Her dear form and face
And herself still be known
In time and in space.

As the rose, as the lily,
Yield up scent and hue,
Yield their ghosts to the chilly
White death of the dew,

Did my home's living flowers
So fade and exhale?
And have these lives of ours
No other avail

Than to feel, love, and think
One moment of light,
And then suddenly sink
In morningless night?

Is existence too rife
In earth's human hives,
That the Life of all life
Should so lavish lives?

Lives of men, lives of brutes,
They crowd to their tombs,
Like the leaves, like the fruits,
Which fall for new blooms.