English

Over the dead bodies of the dead,
Over the too live minds of the dead,
Prevails the unknown goddess, death itself.
And what indeed is death,
Muffled and mute in the mute thoughts of the dead?
Romanzel, luckless poet of the dead,
Hovers on her, soaring round in word-lust.
He has the wings of a vulture,
The head of a bird vain of its manhood.
His feet are of lost roads and endlessness,
Hollowed up with anger, devil-toed.
And blacker than death, his body —
The black of furious silences.

The Dry Heart

The world where the dead live is a dry heart.
Every world is a heart, a rhythm spherical,
A rhythm of impossible intentions
That yet sings itself, imagining heard music.
The world where the dead live is a silent choir.
It does not hear itself, it sings itself not.
Its will has frozen into memory,
Black as still blood, without flow.
To the painless sorrow of death it throbs.
The world where the dead live is a heart alive
In a body once alive.
The dead move neither into heaven nor hell.

Sickness and Schooling

The later griping, when we suffer mind-woes —
This was once lesser pain of flesh:
" It hurts," we cried, " it seems to hurt.
Some something loves me not,
I am not loved — and where to fly
And what if not myself to be?
Is there a better I than this
Which Teacher Pain would not so pinch?"
We toss in hot self-inquisition.
It is our bed, the sweat and shivering
Are greatly ours, the Doctor's smile
Means that the world expects this very me
To be myself against what others choose:

My Father and My Childhood

As childhood is to fairies, fancies,
Briefness of thought, and of heart
Fast change from hot to cool —
A flickering purpose, wild, then weak,
First passion, then a fear and pouting
On clumsy fingers told, and spent
In clumsy shadows, petulances
Spread in swollen tear-mist:
By such uncertain tides
I lived those doubtful years a child —
When to be live was half-felt sting
Of destiny, and half-stirred sleep of chance.
That was the time of tales —

My Mother and My Birth

My mother was a snake, but warm:
In her a welling heart, spite unfrozen.
Hating, she loved.
Coiling to choke, she kissed.

And men were done then
Slowing in same doom-pause,
Same morrow of old sun.
They were about their deaths then —
They were worn, then, men,
To scant remainders of themselves,
And their kinds were fatal:
As comes the flowering-day
When seedlings take their names
And are the final things —
Which in their labelled promise

" But why did he do it, Grandpa? " I said
to the old man sitting under the cedar,
who had come a long way to that place, and that time
when that younger man lay down in the hay

to arrange himself. And now the old man
lifted his head to stare at me.
" It's one of those things, " he said, and stopped.
" What things? " I said. And he said: " Son —

" son, one of those things you never know. "
" But there must be a why , " I said. Then he
said: " Folks — yes, folks, they up and die. "

CANTO V.

Don Garcia, with advancing age,
For he was living life's last page,
Became more headstrong and more vain,
If to that state he could attain;
More pronounced in his hates and spites,
Less careful, too, of others' rights.
The name of Bondly stirred his ire
As pitch-pine does a smouldering fire,
And, when with Nada's linked — O, shame! —
He like a crazy man became.
'Tis comical, at times, to see
How big a fool a man can be
When he allows his prejudice

CANTO IV.

Among the slaves Garcia did own
Was one in service aged grown,
The trusted mother of the place —
A part of Garcia's ancient race.
Nada she gave her Christian name,
And nursed her beauty into fame;
For she was present when the maid
First to earth's smile her tribute paid —
The baby nursed; she watched at play
The child through many a laggard day.
A mother she had joyed to be
To the sweet baby on her knee,
And to the girl whose winsome smile

CANTO III.

Through all of life there runs a vein
Of mystery — of joy and pain,
Of hope and disappointment, and
Of hate and love. In every land,
In every age, the wise and good —
In cloister cell's dark solitude,
In private homes and college walls,
In humble huts and stately halls —
Have sought this riddle to unmask,
But found it was a hopeless task.
Nothing we do has made it plain —
The why of Joy, the why of Pain.
As 'twas when Father Time began —

CANTO II.

There is no clime beneath the sun
Where man predominance has won,
Can match the women of our clime
In beauty and in virtue prime,
In charms of person and of mind
In one harmonious whole combined!
They are the glory and the pride
Of all the beauteous Southland wide,
The chiefest treasure of the land
O'er which some wizard threw his wand!
Thus thought the lord of Ellerslee
While dreaming of the galaxy
That passed before his mental gaze