Iolaus Part 2

More lonely grew the leaden wave That broke against the leaning sky; The melancholy winds 'gan rave Among the whimpering shrouds on high: Most lonely up the leaden wave Two climbed toward yet a lonelier grave-- Where only one should lie.

We neared a grey and grievous land That thundered by a wintry sea; I touched the sorrow of her hand, But nothing sad said she: She turned from love at death's command To death eternally.

We pa.s.sed the numbly moaning bar; We heard the harbour bell, Its dull fog-m.u.f.fled clang from far Came like a lorn death-knell.

The quay-lights pushed a livid flare Through shrouding mist; and all things there Moved like grim shades in h.e.l.l.

The hammer's clamp on resonant steel; The siren's shriek; the scream and whirr Reverberant from forge and wheel; The fury and the clangorous stir And plunge of traffic; Vulcan's heel Cras.h.i.+ng on iron,--and the reel Of sense at loss of _her_.--

None guessed when, playfully, she said, With smile that brightened toward her dead, "To-day across the world I ride To meet a bridegroom, I the bride."

They thought her mischief lied.

Around us was the deafening roar, A void, a wild and drear eclipse.

A sadder sweetness than before Shook her pale, smiling lips; She waved adieu through vapours h.o.a.r, And vanished in the shadows frore Among the heedless s.h.i.+ps ...

In that dread lapse of all farewell The spirit, listening, plain could tell That devils laughed in drifting h.e.l.l With guile upon their lips ...

The world seemed all a hollow ghost That would dissolve away; And life itself a random boast Of elements at play; And time a swift elusive gleam, And man the mockery of a dream, A foam-bell to a moment's beam Flung from the spray.

I had wors.h.i.+pped her with sacred sighs, Loved with the love that wondereth; My life had found her maiden-wise, And sweeter than the rose's breath; Lit by a soul in paradise The lights within her holy eyes, The lady loved of death ...

Bereft, forlorn, by pa.s.sion driven, And blanched with loss, by suffering riven, With impious heart I fled from Heaven ...

Thought like a frost gripped all the brain: With frozen tears opprest, The conscious blood with sullen pain Lunged at the callous breast, Where hope and love, a pallid twain, Sat with a ghoul for guest.

Over the watery wastes I fled Where'er dim desolation led Beneath sad sun and moon!

For faith was dead, and joy was dead, And love was where the phantoms tread, And bitterness was pa.s.sion's bread: "Grant, jester Death," I, laughing, said, "Thy haggard fool a boon!" ...

And unforgiving, unforgiven, A derelict, by tempest driven, I drave beneath the breadth of heaven ...

Grim sorrow fell on all things fair; To dust was turned the lover's breath.

Ah longing, like a pariah bare, And pa.s.sion, led by lewd despair To kiss the smelling jowl of death!

As in a sunless cavern cold, Like one who flies a crime, Fearful, and old as G.o.d is old, The spirit shrank from time; For a stifled scream was the angry gold Of the weird sunset, and the noonday bold Was the stare on the face of a crime.

I saw as brain-blurred drunkards see; I felt, yet could not feel; I seemed in moving time to be In nerveless immobility As dust upon a wheel.

Some world material moved around, Mazed breadths of spume and brine; Strange voices spake as from a bound Far off, I answered with a sound, Nor knew the answer mine; And sometimes like a weary hound I heard the darkness whine.

In throbbing night 'twixt sleep and sleep My tortured spirit heard A wail that wandered down the deep, A sorrow on the windy deep Wail like a wounded bird; And I wept as a haunted man doth weep Who dare not speak a word.

Sometimes I sensed heaven's bellied gloom, Storm like dumb and pregnant doom Scowl on the waters wild; Or tempest 'neath a plunging sky Down cras.h.i.+ng waves with haunting cry Scream like a tortured child;

A blind thing staggering in the night Strained, groaning, 'gainst a pervious power That flashed and eddied, wild and white, That wheeled and wailed from hour to hour; And, somewhere, strangely burned to sight Dawn like a doom a-flower ...

On ever onward, darkly driven, A soul, unsheltered, and unshriven, With lodestar gone, with raiment riven, Drove in the gale of the wrath of Heaven ...

The monsoon blew; the changing stars Rode by in deeper skies.

At times between the raking spars I felt the blank moon rise; Or heard the chanties of the tars With a sad, sick surprise.

And once a heaven, the sapphire's hue, Flashed o'er the freshening wave; They hurt the heart as laughers do When love stands by a grave.

And now a level ocean grey Would lie along a level day, Unwhipt of wing or wind; Or sunset make a carmine stain That sucked like sadness at the brain, And sank into the mind, And touched me with some wandering pain, Some sentience of mankind again.

... And where was _she_?... Could sorrow fail In aching time ... Ah voice in vain That called for ever ... fading sail On seas forlorn; sad wind and rain Whispering ... all-wandering pain ...

And in the heart the wail-- Never again on earth--never again.

So dimly to a beauteous ghost My being bowed a subject knee, And lived, with love's sad sunset lost, Alone 'mid all the sea.

A leper to a lonely coast, I fled from all I cherished most; And wildly, with a bleeding boast, I clasped my agony ...

Sad nature strained the leash in vain, And flying, fled not; ever the chain Of the Fear that followed; ever again Relentless pity; guardian pain ...

Like torturing dreams the days went by, With all save self denied; And G.o.dward went man's desolate cry, That Christ Himself had cried: Alone each soul upon its tree Cried to its kin,--but over me The darkness that crushed Calvary When G.o.d was crucified.

The present lost, I found, aghast, A dying heart, a deathless past; And, ever nigh, and mocking me, A madness, or a mystery ...

And hour by hour, in peril, pa.s.sed A soul toward judgment through the vast ...

Life, a vague tumult in the blood, Beat on 'gainst flesh and bone; And in its echoing solitude The heart tapped like a stone; Till like some child at dark I stood That stands fear-frozen in a wood,-- Alone--yet not _alone_.--

For mine was ghostly company: Chilled, in the eerie air I felt _myself_ bend over me, And point as with despair; And, horror-thrilled, I turned to see My body selfless there,

And separate,--a house of clay That mourned its tenant gone; Its vacant eyes would fain delay, Its piteous hands implored to stay The soul that in it shone.

Where one had been, in mute dismay Two, merged in mystery, went away-- I and that other One ...

With vision blurred, and bearings lost, Streamed on amid a phantom host The man that was a ghost ...

Apart from human years I stood A naked, probing mind.

Aloof I heard the beating blood, The far-brought voices of the blood, Flow round me like a wind; In an abysmal solitude I staggered like one blind.--

In wastes uncharted, far from bliss, I heard a writhing chaos hiss; And thought, that moved in time no more, Wept on some wild, pre-natal sh.o.r.e.--

Appalled, the boundless vision burst Through yawning gulfs of gloom; To human hunger, human thirst Infinite h.e.l.l did loom; Infinite bale to vision burst In tracts of nebulous bloom; And life through peril, lorn, accurst, Pa.s.sed on from doom to doom.

The depths were full of throes unknown, Weird wastes of vomited fire; Wild mists of thunderous flame were blown Athwart eclipse; I heard the groan Of travailing worlds stupendous thrown Through chaos to expire: My spirit, cowed with vastness dire, Gazed, poised in s.p.a.ce,--alone,-- Alone as a haunted life that lies On the death-brink when a dread past cries, And the live dark burns with eternal eyes.

Rang, terror-wrung from shrivelled pride: "Oh loneliest of the dead, Thou with the deeply riven side, And with the branded head, Lo, I, in blasphemy that died, Do envy all the dead,

"And, fleeing self-hood, fain would die-- But this can never be!

This mortal nevermore can lie To immortality.-- Oh! hearken to my ghostly cry, Lone ghost of Calvary!"-- I was my own infinity; The cry, the echo I ...

Oh brother, with the bone-sealed breast; Brother in hope, in shame, In joy, in sorrow, east and west We know, but man, earth's awful guest, Is vastness with a name,-- Is spirit, hungry in the quest Of spirit whence he came ...

On through the void I shuddering fled, Immortal, seeking to be dead, With G.o.d behind me, G.o.d ahead, Pursued, encompa.s.sed, lost,--and led ...

G.o.d's outcasts only have their ease: But I was not as these.

From deep to deep my soul was blown Like sin toward judgment, ever alone With the Eye unseen, and the Hand unknown.

Sad nature strained the leash in vain, And, flying, fled not; ever the chain Of the Fear that followed; ever again Relentless pity, guardian pain ...

Slow time a sad nepenthe brought, Numb poignance with no sigh, When body, dim with sorrow, sought Day with a dead man's eye.--