The Star-Treader and other poems Part 8

Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen, Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat Found, and each root malevolently fat Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken Upstole, escaping to the world of men, A vapor as of some infernal vat; Against the stars it clomb, and caught thereat As if their bright regard to veil again.

Despite the web, methought they saw, appalled, The stealthier weft in which all sound was still ...

Then sprang, as if the night found breath anew, A wind whereby the stars were disenthralled ...

Far off, I heard the cry of frustrate ill-- A witch that wailed above her curdled brew.

THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES

Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, Crowned with such light as flares upon the dead From pallid skies more death-like than the gloom.

Now fall her beams till slope and plain a.s.sume The whiteness of a land whence life is fled; And shadows that a sepulcher might shed Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom.

O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute, A pallor steals as of a world made still When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute-- An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes That malefice and purposed silence fill, The gaze of that Medusa of the skies.

A DEAD CITY

The twilight reigns above the fallen noon Within an ancient land, whose after-time Lies like a shadow o'er its ruined prime.

Like rising mist the night increases soon Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb, And touch with whiteness of sepulchral rime The desert where a city's bones are strewn.

She comes at last; unburied, thick, they show In all the h.o.a.ry nakedness of stone.

From out a shadow like the lips of Death Issues a wind, that through the stillness blown, Cries like a prophet's ghost with wailing breath The weirds of finished and forgotten woe.

THE SONG OF THE STARS

From the final reach of the upper night To the nether darks where the comets die, From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light To the central gloom of the midmost sky, In our mazeful gyres we fly.

And our flight is a choral chant of flame, That ceaseless fares to the outer void, With the undersong of the peopled spheres, The voices of comet and asteroid, And the wail of the spheres destroyed.

Forever we sing to a G.o.d unseen-- In the dark shall our voices fail?

The void is his robe inviolate, The night is his awful veil-- How our fires grow dim and pale!

From the ordered gyres goes ever afar Our song of flame o'er the void unknown, Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star.

Shall it die ere it reach His throne?

On the sh.o.r.eless deeps of the seas of gloom Sailing, we venture afar and wide, Where ever await the tempests of doom, Where the silent maelstroms lurk and hide, And the darkling reefs abide.

And the change and ruin of stars is a song That rises and ebbs in a tide of fire-- A music whose notes are of dreadful flame, Whose harmonies ever leap high'r Where the suns and the worlds expire.

Is such music not fit for a G.o.d?

Yet ever the deep is a dark, And ever the night is a void, Nor brightens a word nor a mark To show if our G.o.d may hark.

From the gyres of change goes ever afar Our flaming chant o'er the deep unknown, The song of the death of planet and star.

Shall it die ere it reach His throne?

In our shadows of light the planets sweep, And endure for the span of our prime-- Globed atoms that hazard the termless deep With races that bow to the law of Time, And yet cherish a dream sublime.

And they cry to the G.o.d behind the veil.

Yet how should their voices pa.s.s the night, The silence that waits in the rayless void, If he hear not our music of light, And the thundrous song of our might?

And they strive in the gloom for truth-- Yet how should they pierce the veil, When we, with our splendors of flame, In the darkness faint and fail, Our fires how feeble and pale!

From the ordered gyres goes ever afar Our song of flame o'er the void unknown, Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star, Shall it die ere it reach His throne?

COPAN

Around its walls the forests of the west Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale Might lie its multifold exterior veil.

Sculptured with signs and meanings unconfessed, Its lordly fanes and palaces attest A past before whose wall of darkness fail Reason and fancy, finding not the tale Erased by time from history's palimpsest.

Within this place, that from the gloom of Eld Still meets the light, a people came and went Like whirls of dust between its columns blown-- An alien race, whose record, shadow-held, Is sealed with those of others long forespent That died in sunless planets lost and lone.

A SONG OF DREAMS

A voice came to me from the night, and said, What profit hast thou in thy dreaming Of the years that are set And the years yet unrisen?

Hast thou found them tillable lands?

Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein, Or any harvest to be mown?

Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the past, Or trade for merchandise In the years where all is rotten?

Are they a sea that will bring thee to any sh.o.r.e, Or a desert that vergeth upon aught but the waste?

Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied, Or find sustenance in shadows?

What value hath the future given thee?

Is there aught in the days yet dark That thou canst hold with thy hands?

Are they a fortress That will afford thee protection Against the swords of the world?

Is there justice in them To balance the world's inequity, Or benefit to outweigh its loss?

Then spake I in answer, saying, Of my dreams I have made a road, And my soul goeth out thereon To that unto which no eye hath opened, Nor ear become keen to hearken-- To the glories that are shut past all access Of the keys of sense; Whose walls are hidden by the air, And whose doors are concealed with clarity.

And the road is travelled of secret things, Coming to me from far-- Of bodiless powers, And beauties without colour or form Holden by any loveliness seen of earth.

And of my dreams have I builded an inn Wherein these are as guests.

And unto it come the dead For a little rest and refuge From the hollowness of the unharvestable wind, And the burden of too great s.p.a.ce.

The fields of the past are not void to me, Who harvest with the scythe of thought; Nor the orchards of future years unfruitful To the hands of visionings.

I have retrieved from the darkness The years and the things that were lost, And they are held in the light of my dreams, With the spirits of years unborn, And of things yet bodiless.

As in an hospitable house, They shall live while the dreams abide.

THE BALANCE