Happiness

Anteros.


I.

    This is the feast-day of my soul and me,
    For I am half a god and half a man.
    These are the hours in which are heard by sea,
    By land and wave, and in the realms of space,
    The lute-like sounds which sanctify my span,
    And give me power to sway the human race.


II.

    I am the king whom men call Lucifer,
    I am the genius of the nether spheres.
    Give me my Christian name, and I demur.
    Call me a Greek, and straightway I rejoice.
    Yea, I am Anteros, and with my tears
    I salt the earth tha...

When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;<...

She behind yon mountain lives,
Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.
Tell me, mount, how this can be!
Very glass thou seem'st to me,
And I seem to be close by,
For I see her drawing nigh;
Now, because I'm absent, sad,
Now, because she sees me, glad!

Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear

Mills and wheels, the surest token
That a level spot is near,

Plains far-stretching and unbroken.
And so onwards, onwards roam,
To my garden and my home!

But how comes it then to pass?
All this gives no joy, alas!
I was ravish'd by her sight,
By her eyes so fair and bright,
By her footstep soft and light.
How her peerless charms I praised,
When from head to foot I gazed!...

The punctual tide draws up the bay,
With ripple of wave and hiss of spray,
And the great red flower of the light-house tower
Blooms on the headland far away.

Petal by petal its fiery rose
Out of the darkness buds and grows;
A dazzling shape on the dim, far cape,
A beckoning shape as it comes and goes.

A moment of bloom, and then it dies
On the windy cliff 'twixt the sea and skies.
The fog laughs low to see it go,
And the white waves watch it with cruel eyes.

Then suddenly out of the mist-cloud dun,
As touched and wooed by unseen sun,
Again into sight bursts the rose of light
And opens its petals one by one.

Ah, the storm may be wild and the sea be strong,
And man is weak and the darkness long,
But while blossoms the flower on ...

Chorus Sacerdotum. From the temple to your home
May a thousand blessings come!
And a sweet concurring stream
Of all joys to join with them.

Chorus Juvenum. Happy Day,
Make no long stay
        Here
        In thy sphere;
        But give thy place to Night,
        That she,
        As thee,
        May be
Partaker of this sight.
And since it was thy care
To see the younglings wed,
'Tis fit that Night the pair
Should see safe brought to bed.

Chorus Senum. Go to your banquet then, but use delight,
So as to rise still with an appetite.
Love is a thing most nice, and must be fed
To such a height, but never surfeited.
What is beyond the mean is ever ill:
'Tis best to feed Love, but not overfill;...

When some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause.

Stand by the magic of my powerful rhymes
'Gainst all the indignation of the times.
Age shall not wrong thee; or one jot abate
Of thy both great and everlasting fate.
While others perish, here's thy life decreed,
Because begot of my immortal seed.

Here is a banquet-table of delights,
A sumptuous feast of true ambrosial food;
Here is a journey among goodly sights,
In choice society or solitude;
Here is a treasury of gems and gold -
Of purest gold and gems of brightest sheen;
Here is a landscape gloriously unroll'd,
Of heights sublime and pleasant vales between.

Here is the realm of Thought, diverse and wide,
To Genius and her sovereign sons assign'd;
The universal church, o'er which preside
The heaven-anointed hierarchy of mind
And spirit; the imperishable pride
And testament and promise of mankind.

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked,
"I have been favoured so
With cloudless skies, I must expect
This dash of rain or snow."

"Since health has been my lot," you say,
"So many months of late,
I must not chafe that one short day
Of sickness mars my state."

You say, "Such bliss has been my share
From Love's unbroken smile,
It is but reason I should bear
A cross therein awhile."

And thus you do not count upon
Continuance of joy;
But, when at ease, expect anon
A burden of annoy.

But, Sage this Earth why not a place
Where no reprisals reign,
Where never a spell of pleasantness
Makes reasonable a pain?

December 21, 1908.

The year like a ship in the distance
    Comes over life's mystical sea.
We know not what change of existence
    'Tis bringing to you or to me.
But we wave out the ship that is leaving
    And we welcome the ship coming in,
Although it be loaded with grieving,
    With trouble, or losses, or sin.

Old year passing over the border, -
    And fading away from our view;
All idleness, sloth, and disorder,
    All hatred and spite go with you.
All bitterness, gloom, and repining
    Down into your stronghold are cast.
Sail out where the sunsets are shining,
    Sail out with them into the past.

Good reigns over all; and above us,
    As sure as the sun gives us light,
Great forces watch over and love us,
    And lead us along through the ...

I tore this weed from the rank, dark soil
    Where it grew in the monkish time,
I trimmed it close and set it again
    In a border of modern rhyme.

I.
Long years ago, when the Devil was loose
    And faith was sorely tried,
Three monks of Basle went out to walk
    In the quiet eventide.

A breeze as pure as the breath of Heaven
    Blew fresh through the cloister-shades,
A sky as glad as the smile of Heaven
    Blushed rose o'er the minster-glades.

But scorning the lures of summer and sense,
    The monks passed on in their walk;
Their eyes were abased, their senses slept,
    Their souls were in their talk.

In the tough grim talk of the monkish days
    They hammered and slashed about, -
Dry husks of logic, - old scrap...

An artist toiled over his pictures;
    He labored by night and by day.
He struggled for glory and honor,
    But the world, it had nothing to say.
His walls were ablaze with the splendors
    We see in the beautiful skies;
But the world beheld only the colors
    That were made out of chemical dyes.

Time sped. And he lived, loved, and suffered;
    He passed through the valley of grief.
Again he toiled over his canvas,
    Since in labor alone was relief.
It showed not the splendor of colors
    Of those of his earlier years,
But the world? the world bowed down before it,
    Because it was painted with tears.

A poet was gifted with genius,
    And he sang, and he sang all the days.
He wrote for the praise of the people,
    But the...

The burly driver at my side,
We slowly climbed the hill,
Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
Seemed rising, rising still.
At last, our short noon-shadows bid
The top-stone, bare and brown,
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
The rough mass slanted down.

I felt the cool breath of the North;
Between me and the sun,
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
I saw the cloud-shades run.
Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
Lay mountain-girdled Squam;
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
Upon its bosom swam.

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm,
Far as the eye could roam,
Dark billows of an earthquake storm
Beflecked with clouds like foam,
Their vales in misty shadow deep,
Their rugged peaks in shine,
I saw the mo...

O Spring, I know thee!    Seek for sweet surprise
    In the young children's eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
    Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
    The cuckoo's fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
    June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year's procession of the flowers doth pass
    My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
    The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
    Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
    I have it all by heart.

I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
    Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
    Alter his interval.
But n...

I could have painted pictures like that youth’s
Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar
Stayed me, ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!
Never did fate forbid me, star by star,
To outburst on your night, with all my gift
Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk
From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift
And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk
To the centre, of an instant; or around
Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan
The license and the limit, space and bound,
Allowed to Truth made visible in man.
And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,
Over the canvas could my hand have flung,
Each face obedient to its passion’s law,
Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue:
Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,
A tip-to...

From pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant--singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow's song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each, the body correlative attracting!
O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body! O it, more than all else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day;
From native moments--from bashful pains--singing them;
Singing something yet unfound, though I have diligently sought it, many a long year;
Singing the true song of the Soul, fitfu...

Beautiful flowers! with your petals bright,
Ye float on the waves like spirits of light,
Wooing the zephyr that ruffles your leaves
With a gentle sigh, like a lover that grieves,
When his mistress, blushing, turns away
From his pleading voice and impassioned lay.

Beautiful flowers! the sun's westward beam,
Still lingering, plays on the crystal stream,
And ye look like some Naiad's golden shrine,
That is lighted up with a flame divine;
Or a bark in which love might safely glide,
Impelled by the breeze o'er the purple tide.

Beautiful flowers! how I love to gaze
On your glorious hues, in the noon-tide blaze,
And to see them reflected far below
In the azure waves, as they onward flow;
When the spirit who moves them sighing turns
Where his golden c...

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!