The Star-Treader and Other Poems

What consummation of the toiling moon

O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet,

Wherein the stars turn grey! The summer's green,

Edgèd and strong by day, is dull and faint

Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood,

That in this absence of the impassioned sun,

Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color

The live and vivid aspect of the world—

Subdued as with the great expectancy

Which blurs beginning features of a dream,

Things and events lost 'neath an omening

Of central and oppressive bulk to come.

Here were the theatre of a miracle,

If such, within a world long alienate

From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years,

Might now befall.

The Huntress rides no more

Across the upturned faces of the stars:

'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world,

Glittering with desolation. Earth's old gods—

The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's youth—

Are fled from years incredulous, and tired

With penetrating of successive masks,

That give but emptiness they served to hide.

Remains not faith enough to bring them back—

Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon,

And all the visions that made populous

An eager world where Time grows weary now.

Yet Youth, that lives, might for a little claim

The pantheon of dream, on such a night,

When 'neath the growing marvel of the moon

The films of time wear perilously thin,

And thought looks backward to the simpler years,

Till all the vision seems but just beyond.

If one have faith, it may be that he shall

Behold the gods—once only, and no more,

Because of Time's inhospitality,

For which they may not stay.

Within the marvel of the light, what flower

Of active wonder from quiescence springs!

Is it a throng of luminous white clouds,

Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans,

That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices

Like the last echoes of a thunder spent?

'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold

About the magic circle which the moon

Draws like some old enchantress round the glade.

I see them not: the vision is addressed

Only to thine acute and eager youth.

All heaven and earth were once my throne;

Now I have but the wind alone

For shifting judgment-seat.

The pillared world supported me:

Yet man's old incredulity

Left nothing for my feet.

Man hath forgotten me:

Yet seems it that my memory

Saddens the wistful voices of the wood;

Within each erst-frequented spot

Echo forgets my music not,

Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have stood.

Time hath grown cold

Toward beauty loved of old.

The gods must quake

When dreams and hopes forsake

The heart of man,

And disillusion's ban

More chill than stone,

Rears till the former throne

Of loveliness

Is dark and tenantless.

Now must I weep—

Homeless within the deep

Where once of old

Mine orbèd chariot rolled,—

And mourn in vain

Man's immemorial pain

Uncomforted

Of light and beauty fled.

Time wearied of my song—

A satiate and capricious king

Who for his pleasure bade me sing,

First of his minstrel throng.

Till, cloyed with melody,

His ear grew faint to voice and lyre;

Forgotten then of Time's desire,

His thought was void of me.

I, born of sound and foam,

Child of the sea and wind,

Was fire upon mankind—

Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome.

Time fanned me with his breath;

Love found new warmth in me,

And Life its ecstasy,

Till I grew deadly with the wind of death.

How can the world be still so beautiful

When beauty's self is fled? Tis like the mute

And marble loveliness of some dead girl;

And we that hover here, are as the spirit

Of former voice and motion, and live color

In that which shall not stir nor speak again.

Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world

Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting

The world which was. Nor have the gods retained

Such power as once informed and rendered vital

The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone,—

That statue which Pygmalion made and loved.

I, who was discord among men,

Alone of all Time's hierarchy

Find that Time hath no need of me,

No lack that I might fill again.

Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed

To fall and flutter among spacial winds,

Finding release nor foothold anywhere—

Debarred from doors of all the suns, like spirits

Whose names are blotted from the lists of Time,

Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed?

Throneless, discrowned, and impotent,

In man's sad disillusionment,

We passed with Earth's returnless youth,

Who were the semblances of truth,

The veils that hid the vacantness

Infinite, naked, meaningless,

The blank and universal Sphinx

Each world beholds at last—and sinks.

New gods protect awhile the gaze

Of man—each one a veil that stays—

Till the new gods, discredited,

Like mist that melts with noon, are fled

That power oppressive, limitless,

The tyranny of nothingness.

Our power is dead upon the earth

With the first dews and dawns of Time;

But in the far and younger clime

Of other worlds, it hath re-birth.

Yea, though we find not entrance here—

Astray like feathers on the wind,

To neither earth nor heaven consigned—

Fresh altars in a distant sphere

Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire,

New hearths to warm us from the night,

Till, banished thence, we pass in flight

While all the flames of dream expire.