Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Behold! I cover up this trail of tears
A moment's weakness left upon my cheek,
And hush my heart a little ere I speak
Lest the false note ring true on other ears;
The music rises and the empty cheers
Proclaim the harlequin, and lo! I stand
The painted fool again and kiss my hand
With jocund air to Folly's worshippers.
So day by day life's bitter bread is earned
With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke,
And frailer grows the soul that once was strong,--
The joyless soul of one whose trade has turned
Life's tragic mantle to a jester's cloak,
Life's diapason to a jester's song.

I.

I dreamed a mighty dream. It seemed mine eyes
Sealed for the moment were to things terrene,
And then there came a strange, great wind that blew
From undiscovered lands, and took my soul
And set it on an uttermost peak of Hell
Amid the gloom and fearful silences.
Slowly the darkness paled, and a weird dawn
Broke on my wondering vision, and there grew
Uncanny phosphorescence in the air
Which seemed to throb with some great vital spell
Of mystery and doom. With aching eyes
I gazed, and lo! the dreadful scene evolved,
Black and chaotic, like an awful birth
To Desolation, of a lifeless world!
My soul in agony cried out to God,
When of a sudden all the place grew calm,
Save for the trembling of the mountain peaks
And the low moaning of the billowy...

Lucifer craved one boon of God
    After his fall, as his own to hold;
So He gave him a mite in heaven's sight,
    But lo! the gift that He gave was--Gold.

And Lucifer wrought with the rugged ore
    Till he fashioned it wondrous fair, and then
He set a price on the precious store,
    And the price was the blood and tears of men.

Blood and tears! and the price was paid;
    Blood was nothing, and tears were free;
And Lucifer smiled at the fools and said:
    "Surely your souls should belong to me!"

So he offered the earth with its golden heart,
    And the seas with their fleets from pole to pole;
And they looked with lust on the world-wide mart,
    And said in their hearts,--"It is worth the soul!"

And kings were they, and they rule...

You are blue, you are blue like the sky,
    Cruel and cold and blue,
And I turn from you, voiceless sea,
    To a sky that is voiceless, too.

Upward the vast blue arch,
    Downward the blue abyss,
With a line of foam where your lips
    Meet in a passionless kiss.

But the silence is breaking my heart,
    And tears cannot comfort me
With God in His cold blue sky,
    And my boy in the cold blue sea.

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;
Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
But here there is naught but silence,--peace, and the wide, wide sky.

Here are the dawn's first footfalls, and the twilight's last farewell,
The benediction of starlight, and the moon's sweet canticle;
Here is one spot as God made it, far from the plainsman's range,
Or the march of the cycling seasons with their everlasting change.

Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die;
But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay,
For God still keeps one playground where He and His whirlwinds play.

You were a red rose then, I know,
    Red as her wine--yea, redder still,--
Say rather her blood; and ages ago
    (You know how destiny hath its will)
I placed you deep in her gorgeous hair,
And left you to wither there.

Wine and blood and a red, red rose,--
    Feast and song and a long, long sleep;--
And which of us dreamed at the drama's close
    That the unforgetful years would keep
Our sin and their vengeance laid away
As a gift to this bitter day?

Now you are white as the mountain snow,
    White as the hand that I fold you in,
And none but the angels of God may know
    That either has once been stained with sin;
It was blood and wine in the old, old years,
But now it is only tears.

And so at the end of our several ways

The poet painted a woman's soul,
    Human, trusting and kind,
And then he drew the soul of a man,
    Brutal and base and blind;

And the woman loved in the old, old way,
    And the man in the way of men,
And the poet christened their lives "A Play,"
    And he sat down to watch it, and then ...

A woman rose with a bitter laugh,
    And her eyes were as dry as stone
As she bowed her head at the poet's stall
    And said in a strange, cold tone:

"He paints the best who has dipped his brush
    In the heart's own blood, they say;
You took my love and you took my life,
    But you gave the world--a play!"

Once in a dream of Babylon
    I sat with Lilith and Cain
At the world-old drama, "From God to God,"
    In the House of Things Profane;
Trumpets and lights, and the players
    Swung to the stage, and then
I saw as I looked in their faces
    A woman, and some men.

Men with the eyes of the psalmist,
    Men with the hearts of Saul,
Strong with the wine of valor,
    But faint with the woman's thrall;
Calm were her eyes as she held them
    Charmed to her soulless sway,
For she had the face of the Magdalene,
    And the heart of Aholiba.

Wine and kisses and gusty words,
    Kisses and wine again,
And her lips and brow were red with stains
    From the hairy mouths of men,
Red as the stain on the brow of Cain
    That burned...

(Written on the exhumation and reburial in Spain of the bones of Christopher Columbus.)


Once more upon the ocean's heaving breast
    He lays his head, not like the lover bold
    Who in the brave, chivalric days of old
Wooed from her lips the secret of the West,
But like a tired man going to his rest,
    No hopes to thrill, no yearnings to inspire,
    No tasks to burden, and no toil to tire,
No morn to waken to a day of quest.
Again upon the trackless deep,--again
    About him as of yore the wild winds play;
Behind him lies the world he gave to men,
    Before a grave in old Castile for aye:
Peace, winds and tides! Be calm, thou guardian sky,--
The lordliest dust of earth is passing by!

As one, a poet of a fairy's train,
    Might sit beside a violet's stem and view
    Its opening petals, watch the wondrous blue
Thrill through their fibers, and their secret gain
Of how the earth and sky and wind and rain
    Had given them life and form and scent and hue,--
    So I have gazed into the eyes of you,
Those rare blue eyes, and have not looked in vain;
For they have told me all that I would know,
    Even as the violets their secret tell
Unto the wistful spirits of the grove--
    Ay, more than this, for, in their tender glow,
I've learned their secret, found their winsome spell,
    The sweet and simple message of their love.

I came your way in the years gone by,
    In the summers that now are old,
And then there was light in your beaming eye,
And love was living and hopes were high
    At the Sign of the Heart of Gold.

I come today and the lights are fled,
    And the trail of the mold and rust
Has saddened the hall where the feast was spread,
And love has vanished and youth is dead
    At the Sign of the Heart of Dust.

I am the outer gate of life where sit
    Faith and Unfaith, those two interpreters
That spell in diverse ways what God has writ
    In symbols on the archway of the years.

Backward I swing for many feet to pass;
    Some come in stormy haste, some grave and slow,
And all like windy shadows on the grass:
    Beyond my pale I know not where they go.

I thought today within the crowded mart
    I saw thee for a moment, friend of mine,
    And all at once my blood leapt fast and fine
And a new light broke on my shadowed heart.
'T was but a moment that my fancy's art
    Moulded another's features into thine,
    For when he passed me by and gave no sign,
The bitter truth came back with sudden start.
Then I remembered how the Merlin spell
    Of waving arms and woven paces bands
Thy dust forever in its four-walled cell,
    Heedless of all except thy Seer's commands--
Holds thee enraptured with the charms that dwell
    In broken paces and in folded hands.

I might have met his anger with a smile
    For so it was that I had set my heart
To mask deception with a wanton's guile,
    And save the tears that now begin to start.

I might have worn my guilty crown of thorn,--
    Yea, even worn it gladly like a prize;
But, oh! more bitter than his rage or scorn,
    He left me with forgiveness in his eyes.

They were three old men with hoary hair
    And beards of wintry gray,
And they digged a grave in the yellow soil,
And they crooned this song as they plied their toil,
    In the fading light of day:

Hither ye bring your workmen,
    Like tools that are broken and bent,
To pay your due to their cunning
    After their skill is spent;
Hither ye bring them and lay them,
    And go when your prayers are said,
Back where the stress of your living
    Makes mock of the peace of your dead.

From the iron-paved roads of traffic,
    From the shell-scarred fields of war,
From the lands of earth's burning girdle
    To the snows of her uttermost star,
Ye bring in your sons and daughters
    From the glare and the din of today,
Giving th...

I.

Mouths have they, but they speak not:
    Yet something in the certainty of faith
    To their disciples saith:
"Believe on me and vengeance I will wreak not."
The word that conquers death--
    The immutable and boundless gift of grace--
    Dwells in that stony face,
And every supplication answereth.
Mouths have they, but they speak not;
    Yet one supernal will that shapes to suit
A great decree that can not be belied
Utters from voiceless lips those creeds that guide
    The tribes that never heard
    The living, saving Word,--
That have their dead gods and are satisfied.


II.

Eyes have they, but they see not:
    Yet the pagan builds his shrine,
    And keeps his fires divine
Forever bright, nor darkly doubt...

The sun must rise, the sun must set,
    Nor ever change in plan may be,
Though dawn to stricken wretch may bring
    The hempen rope and gallows tree,
And eventide to happy bride
    Love's crown of love in Arcady.

Today we are the fruits of yesterday
    And what tomorrow shall of us demand,--
    The helpless tools within the Master's hand
To do His will and never say Him nay.
He blends our souls with iron, fire or clay,
    He shapes our doom according as He planned
    The scheme of life, and who shall understand
The why He gives, or why He takes away?
Somewhere the universal loom shall catch
    These broken, flying threads like thee and me,
And twined with other broken threads to match
    As fly the years' swift shuttles ceaselessly,
So weave them all together one by one,
Till lo! the finished woof is brighter than the sun.