tortured brain? Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain?
She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air, The highest, the purest, the holiest; Peace—was the shade of her beautiful hair, Love—was all that I knew on her breast!
Would you have me forget? Or remembering Say that her love had bloomed from Hell? Then Blessed be Hell! And let Heaven sing “Te Deum laudamus,” until it swell
And ring and roll to the utterest earth, That the damned are free—since out of sin Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth Till God opened the gates, saying “Enter in!”
What! In the face of the witness I bear To her measureless love and her purity, Still of your hate would you make me to share, Despising that she gave life to me?
You would have me stand at her helpless grave, To dig through its earth with a venomed dart! This is Honor! and Right! and Brave! To fling a stone at her pulseless heart!
This is Virtue! To blast the lips Speechless beneath the Silence dread! To lash with Slander’s scorpion whips The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead!
God! I turn to an adder now! Back upon you I hurl your scorn! Bind the scarlet upon your brow! Ye it is, who are “bastard born”!
Touch me not! These hands of mine Despise your fairness—the leper’s white! Tanned and hardened and black with grime, They are clean beside your souls to-night!
Basely born! ’Tis ye are base! Ye who would guerdon holy trust With slavish law to a tyrant race, To sow the earth with the seed of lust.
Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace, When your garments are red with the stain of wars. Reeling with passion’s mad release By your sickly gaslight damn the stars!
Blurred with wine ye behold the snow Smirched with the foulness that blots within! What of purity can ye know, Ye tenfold children of Hell and Sin?
Ye to judge her! Ye to cast The stone of wrath from your house of glass! Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast The bell of gold with your clanging brass?
Know ye the harvest the reapers reap Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn? Out of this anguish ye harrow deep, Ripens the sentence: “Ye, bastard born!”
Ay, sin-begotten, hear the curse; Not mine—not hers—but the fatal Law! “Who bids one suffer, shall suffer worse; Who scourges, himself shall be scourgèd raw!
“For the thoughts ye think, and the deeds ye do, Move on, and on, till the flood is high, And the dread dam bursts, and the waves roar through, Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky!
“To-night ye are deaf to the beggar’s prayer; To-morrow the thieves shall batter your wall! Ye shall feel the weight of a starved child’s care When your warders under the Mob’s feet fall!
“ ’Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke When ye scatter the wind of your brother’s moans; ’Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke, When the blood of the murdered spatters the stones!
“Hark ye! Out of the reeking slums, Thick with the fetid stench of crime, Boiling up through their sickening scums, Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine,
“Voices burst—with terrible sound, Crying the truth your dull souls ne’er saw! We are your sentence! The wheel turns round! The bastard spawn of your bastard law!”
This is bastard: That Man should say How Love shall love, and how Life shall live! Setting a tablet to groove God’s way, Measuring how the divine shall give!
O, Evil Hearts! Ye have maddened me, That I should interpret the voice of God! Quiet! Quiet! O angered Sea! Quiet! I go to her blessed sod!
Mother, Mother, I come to you! Down in your grasses I press my face! Under the kiss of their cold, pure dew, I may dream that I lie in the dear old place!
Mother, sweet Mother, take me back, Into the bosom from whence I came! Take me away from the cruel rack, Take me out of the parching flame!
Fold me again with your beautiful hair, Speak to this terrible heaving Sea! Over me pour the soothing of prayer, The words of the Love-child of Galilee:
“Peace—be still!” Still—could I but hear! Softly—I listen.—O fierce heart, cease! Softly—I breathe not—low—in my ear— Mother, Mother—I heard you!—Peace!
I Am
I am! The ages on the ages roll; And what I am, I was, and I shall be: By slow growth filling higher Destiny, And widening, ever, to the widening Goal. I am the Stone that slept; down deep in me That old, old sleep has left its centurine trace; I am the Plant that dreamed; and lo! still see That dream-life dwelling on the Human Face. I slept, I dreamed, I wakened: I am Man! The hut grows Palaces; the depths breed light; Still on! Forms pass; but Form yields kinglier Might! The singer, dying where his song began, In Me yet lives; and yet again shall he Unseal the lips of greater songs To Be; For mine the thousand tongues of Immortality.
Life or Death
A Soul, half through the Gate, said unto Life: “What dost thou offer me?” And Life replied: “Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment; after these Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death: “What dost thou offer me?” And Death replied: “In the beginning what Life gives at last.” Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?” “Others shall live and struggle after thee Counting it easier where thou hast passed.” “And by their struggles?” “Easier place shall be For others, still to rise to keener pain Of conquering Agony!”—“And what have I To do with all these others? Who are they?” “Yourself!”—“And all who went before?”—“Yourself.” “The darkness and the silence, too, have end?” “They end in light and sound; peace ends in pain, Death ends in Me, and thou must glide from Self To Self, as light to shade and shade to light again. Choose!” The Soul, sighing, answered: “I will live.”
Hymn
(This hymn was written at the request of a Christian Science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or
