O you poets, ever pretending
Love is immortal, pipe the truth!
Empty your books of lies, the ending
Of no passion can be – Youth.
"Heaven," you breathe, "will join the broken?"
Come, was the Infinite e'er wed,
That He must evermore be thinking
Of your wedding bed?

II

Pipe the truth! tho it clip the glamour
Out of your rhymes and rip your dream.
Do you believe words can enamour
Death and dry up Lethe's stream?
Death? it is but a Sponge that passes,
One the Appeaseless e'er will squeeze
Back into Lethe's flood – whose lasting
Is eternities.

III

"False!" cry you, "and an unbeseeming
Blasphemy!" – Well, look around.
Is it not only in blaspheming
Truth is ever to be found?
Whether it be, one thing I ask you,
Lovers and poets, tell, I pray,
Was there ever a love-oath ended
Ere the Judgment Day?

IV

"O," you answer, "ill is in all things."
But in an ancient lie what's good?
Is it not better just to call things
What they are – not what we would?
When you are clinging to your mistress,
Love has the face of Eternity.
Cling to her then, but know that Wanting
Fools the best that be.

V

"Yet her brows and her eyes that murmur
All the music," you say, "of God!"
Press her lips but a little firmer —
You will feel that they are – sod.
"But there is living soul beyond them,
And it is love's till all things end?"
Children alone build Paradises
With but pence to spend.

VI

"Ai-ho now! that is like the cynic,"
Pitying runs your poet-smile,
"He has sat at the Devil's clinic
With some dead love up the while."
Dead or alive are one with passions,
Under the potent knife of Truth
They will be seen composed of craving —
And a little ruth.

VII

"Then the world on a lie is living?"
Many a lie has filled its maw!
"Better illusion tho than giving
Faith to a fatal loveless Law?"
There is a certain Socratean
Saying that swine of their ditch are sure;
Yet do they prove by their contentment
That it will endure?

VIII

Clasp her close! But the truth is in you,
Tho you have rhymed and rammed it down,
Hid it with honey-words that win you
Wreaths that you know bedeck the clown.
Kings they will call you and uplifters
Of your kind? Lord save the mark,
That we are still for fire dependent
On so false a spark.

IX

And so fond! for you hold immortal
What has been born a day or two!
"But it was destined?" Ay, your portal
Only has God to heed – and you!
He with his thrice three million thirsting
Worlds in the throes of death and life
Surely has time to spare for choosing
Your behooven wife!

X

By my faith, there is not a creature
Mad as a poet, pants the breeze!
Give him a mistress and he'll preach her
As creation's Masterpiece.
Let him but lean for half an hour
Over her lips and he will swear
That he would dive thro death unfathomed
To regain her there.

XI

And believe that his oath is able!
That there is not in all the sea
Water enough to quench the fable
Of his soul's intensity.
Yet there was never a rose that blossomed
And endured beyond its day.
There was never a fire enkindled
But the great Cold had its way.

XII

"Pessimist," is your mortal answer,
"Wait till the love-wind pierces you!"
Wait? I have been the veriest dancer
To it, and, dupe still, would do
Truth to the death – shall I confess it? —
For but a moment on one breast.
Wherefore I add – and Adam bless it! —
Who loves once is like the rest.

IN A TROPICAL GARDEN

(Peradeniya, Ceylon)

I

The sun moves here as a master-mage of nature all day long,
With fingers of heat and light that touch to a mystical growth all things.
The spell of him puts pale Time to sleep, as an opiate strange and strong,
And a waft of his wand, the wind, enchantment brings.

II

The python roots of the rubber-tree where the cobra slips in peace
Are wonders that he has waved from the earth as a presage of his power.
And the giant stems of the bamboo-grass, the pool astounded, sees,
Are a marvel to keep it still hour after hour.

III

The long lianas that reach in dreamy rout from tree to tree
Are dazed with the sense of sap that he calls to the tangle of their sprays.
The scarlet-hearted hibiscus stands entranced and the torrid bee
Is husht upon its rim, as in amaze

IV

And there the palms, the talipot with its lofty blossom-spire,
The cocoanut and the slim areca listening await
What sorceries of his trembling rays of equatorial fire
Will next be laid upon some lesser mate.

V

The river, too, that he winds as a magic circle round the wealth
He has here engendered, has the glide of a serpent lost in trance;
And scents of clove and cinnamon that sip cool from it, in stealth
Pour it upon the air like necromance.

VI

And down where the rain-tree and the rife breadfruit together lean
Over its flow, and the flying-foxes hanging head to earth
Suddenly drop then flap aloft on large bat-wing, is seen
More of his mazing wizardry in birth.

VII

All day long it is so that his hot hypnotic eye commands
With steady ray; and the earth obedient brings enchantment forth.
All night long in the humid dark the high-voiced hyla-bands
Chant of it in chill strain from South to North.

VIII

A wondrous mage, in a land whose dreams are made reality
As swift as clouds are made when the young Monsoon is in the South.
A land that is born of the sea and by it destined e'er to be
Beyond all fear of famishing and drouth.

THE WIND'S WORD

A star that I love,
The sea, and I,
Spake together across the night.
"Have peace," said the star,
"Have power," said the sea,
"Yea!" I answered, "and Fame's delight!"

The wind on his way
To Araby
Paused and listened and sighed and said,
"I passed on the sands
A Pharaoh's tomb:
All these did he have – and he is dead."

THE SHRINE OF SHRINES

There is in Egypt by the ancient Nile
A temple of imperishable stone,
Stupendous, columned, hieroglyphed, and known
To all the world as Faith's supremest shrine.
Half in debris it stands, a granite pile
Gigantic, stayed midway in resurrection,
An awe, an inspiration, a dejection
To all who would the cryptic past divine.
The god of it was Ammon, and a throng
Of worshippers from Thebes the royal-gated
Forever at its fervid pylons waited
While priests poured ever a prophetic song.
And yet this Ammon, who gave Egypt laws,
Is not – and is forgot – and never was!