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Page 7
There is a hand whiter than pearl
That plucks a lute's monotonous strings;
O starlight phantom of a girl
What lyric soul around thee sings,
And what divine companionship
Taught that entwining music to thy fingers,
And that unearthly music to thy lips?
She pauses, and the echo lingers
Hovering like wings upon the air.
I see more clearly now, her hair
Ripples like a black water-fall
About the pallor of her face.
She sits beside a mossy well
Amid some dim marmoreal place,
Some fragrant Moorish hall
Set all about with arabesques of stone
And intricate mosaics of gem and shell.
She sings again, she plays a monotone,
Perpetual rhythm like a far-off bell,
And someone dances, in a dancing river
The white ecstatic limbs flutter and quiver
Against the shadow. In the odorous flowers
That grow about the well, still forms are lying,
A group of statues, an eternal throng,
Watching the dance and listening to the song;
So shall they lie, innumerable hours,
Silent and motionless for ever.
The wind comes up, the flowers shiver,
The dancer vanishes, the songs are dying;
Night sickens into day.
The wind comes up and blows the dust away....
Between two clouds a sullen flame
Expands, and lo, the crescent moon
Rides like a warrior through the sky.
Thus long ago the warning came
When midnight towns lay all in swoon,
That the great gods were coming nigh
To crush the rebellious earth.
Now beneath the crescent moon
No spirits stir, no wind makes mirth,
Only a rhythmic monotone
Of waters dropping in a well....
But who is this so broken with distress
That steals like mist into my loneliness?
Why art thou weeping there, disconsolate child?
Thy tears fall like the waters of a well,
And drip in silver notes upon the sands.
What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell
The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell
Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild
That haunt the spirit of a child?
Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands,
The bloody ruin of decaying realms
That a war overwhelms
And buries deep in the dust of history?
He raises his wet eyes and looks at me,
His boyish face full of a yearning,
An ancient pain,
As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again,
And answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning
To other times shall slumber in the past,
And be a child again, and die at last
In the protecting arms of our great Mother
Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother.
Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief,
Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears,
Thy sorrow rich with the repining years,
My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief."
Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf?
"I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself."
Then falls a darkness on that starless shore.
Afar I hear the closing of a door....
I see on a sharp hill above the Styx,
The bruised Christ upon his crucifix,
And racked in anguish on his either side
Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified.
Their heavy blood falls in a monotone
Like deep well-water dropping on a stone.
None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods
Eternal suffering triumphant broods.
Prometheus from his cliff of wild unrest
Mocks them and draws the vulture to his breast.
Each year upon a darker Calvary
Are hung the pallid victims of the tree,
And none will watch with them, for none can see
As I once saw, unending agony,
Save where Prometheus from his dizzy place
Regards those sufferers with scornful face,
And his loud laughter rings through empty Space....
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