English

I remember an ancient Chinese picture kept over there in Daitokuji,
That long low pair of roofs to the North that cut the brocaded green of the rice-fields, like gray scissors.
No one but him of the Dragon's Brightness could have designed it.
Once it was exhibited to the blind, borrowed for the Art Museum of Boston.
It was a world of clouds, as should befit a mystic soul-drama;
Far up peered out the wrinkled and unkempt gray face of a dead saint.
Awakened by the prayers of floating spirits to behold the wonder of his own immediate re-incarnation,

Here let me sit, in this empty, cool, terraced hall.
The soft breeze wafts into beautiful curve the thick line of incense smoke;
The great boom of Chionin's bell seems to pulse its length.
The great truth flashes on me of sitting just so before! —
Was it when Nobunaga built new towers in the West?
Was she the Lady O-tsu who sang poems at my side?
Or was I some noble believer of the Fujiwara court,
And did Komachi flash for me her matchless songs?

I had a dream: Columbia the Great,
The Arbitress of Nations had prevailed.
From Europe trains crossed bridge-spanned Behrings's Strait
And ships through Panama from South Seas sailed.
Through atmospheric tubes the mail and freight
Skimmed hill and dale and loftiest mountains scaled;
Threading the richest cities, on they went,
And in a few hours crossed the continent.

I saw our fleets guarding a hundred seas,
All with unshotted guns ride proudly home;
I saw the hosts that watch our liberties

VIII. The End of the Song.

What dainty note of long-drawn melody
Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear,
Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by,

And with awakened consciousness we hear
The pipe of birds? Look forth! The sane, white day
Blesses the hilltops, and the sun is near.

All misty phantoms slowly roll away
With the night's vapors toward the western sky.
The Real enchants us, the fresh breath of hay

Blows toward us; soft the meadow-grasses lie,

VII. Confused Dreams.

O strange, dim other-world revealed to us,
Beginning there where ends reality,
Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous

With souls from either sphere! now enter we
Thy twisted paths. Barred is the silver gate,
But the wild-carven doors of ivory

Spring noiselessly apart: between them straight
Flies forth a cloud of nameless shadowy things,
With harpies, imps, and monsters, small and great,

Blurring the thick air with darkening wings.

VI. Faerie.

From the oped lattice glance once more abroad
While the ethereal moontide bathes with light
Hill, stream, and garden, and white-winding road.

All gracious myths born of the shadowy night
Recur, and hover in fantastic guise,
Airy and vague, before the drowsy sight.

On yonder soft gray hill Endymion lies
In rosy slumber, and the moonlit air
Breathes kisses on his cheeks and lips and eyes.

'Twixt bush and bush gleam flower-white limbs, left bare,

V. In the Night.

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.

This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery

Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.

Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway

IV. Fancies.

The ceaseless whirr of crickets fills the ear
From underneath each hedge and bush and tree,
Deep in the dew-drenched grasses everywhere.

The simple sound dispels the fantasy
Of gloom and terror gathering round the mind.
It seems a pleasant thing to breathe, to be,

To hear the many-voiced, soft summer wind
Lisp through the dark thick leafage overhead —
To see the rosy half-moon soar behind

The black slim-branching elms. Sad thoughts have fled,

III. Wherefore?

Deep languor overcometh mind and frame:
A listless, drowsy, utter weariness,
A trance wherein no thought finds speech or name,

The overstrained spirit doth possess.
She sinks with drooping wing — poor unfledged bird,
That fain had flown! — in fluttering breathlessness.

To what end those high hopes that wildly stirred
The beating heart with aspirations vain?
Why proffer prayers unanswered and unheard

To blank, deaf heavens that will not heed her pain?

II. Aspiration.

Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky:
That soft, large, lustrous star, that first outshone,
Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery.

Dilating, shrinking, lightening, it hath won
Our spirit with its strange strong influence,
And sways it as the tides beneath the moon.

What impulse this, o'ermastering heart and sense?
Exalted, thrilled, the freed soul fain would soar
Unto that point of shining prominence,