Ode on the Centenary of the Birth of Robert…

As unto lighter strains a boy might turn

From where great altars burn

And Music’s grave archangels tread the night,

So I, in seasons past,

Loved not the bitter might

And merciless control

Of thy bleak trumpets calling to the soul.

Their consummating blast

Held inspirations of affright,

As when a faun

Hears mournful thunders roll

On breathless, wide transparencies of dawn.

Nor would I hear

With thee, superb and clear

The indomitable laughter of the race;

Nor would I face

Clean Truth, with her cold agates of the well,

Nor with thee trace

Her footprints passing upward to the snows,

But sought a phantom rose

And islands where the ghostly siren sings;

Nor would I dwell

Where star-forsaking wings

On mortal thresholds hide their mystery,

Nor watch with thee

The light of Heaven cast on common things.

But now in dreams of day I see thee stand

A grey, great sentry on the encompassed wall

That fronts the Night forever, in thy hand

A consecrated spear

To test the dragons of man's ancient fear

From secret gulfs that crawl—

A captain of that choral band

Whose reverend faces, anxious of the Dark,

Yet undismayed

By rain of ruined worlds against the night,

Turned evermore to hark

The music of God's silence, and were stayed

By something other than the reason’s light.

And I have seen thee as

An eagle, strong to pass

Where tempest-shapen clouds go to and fro

And winds and noons have birth,

But whose regard is on the lands below

And wingless things of earth.

And yet not thine for long

The feignéd passion of the nightingale,

Nor shards of haliotis, nor the song

Of cymballed fountains hidden in the dale,

Nor gardens where the feet of Fragrance steal:

’Twas thine the laying-on to feel

Of tragic hands imperious and cold,

That grasping, led thee from the dreams of old,

Making thee voyager

Of seas within the cosmic solitude,

Whose moons the long-familiar stars occlude,—

Whose living sunsets stir

With visions of the timelessness we crave.

And thou didst ride a wave

That gathered solemn music to its breast,

And breaking, shook our strand with thought’s unrest,

Till men far inland heard its mighty call

Where the young mornings leap the world’s blue wall.

* * *

Nature hath lonely voices at her heart

And some thou heardst, for at thine own

Were chords beyond all Art

That thrill but to the eternal undertone.

But not necessitous to thee

The dreams that were when Arcady began

Or Paphos soared in iris from the sea;

For thou couldst guess

The rainbows hidden in the frustrate slime,

And sawst in crownless Man

A Titan scourged thro’ Time

With pains and raptures of his loneliness.

And thou wast wanderer

In that dim House that is the human heart,

Where thou didst roam apart,

Seeing what pillars were

Between its deep foundations and the sun,

What halls of dream undone,

What seraphs hold compassionate their wings

Between the youth and bitterness of things,

Ere all see clear

The gain in loss, the triumph in the tear.

Time’s whitest loves lie radiant in thy song,

Like starlight on an ocean, for thine own

Was as a deathless lily grown

In Paradise—ethereal and strong.

And to thine eyes

Earth had no earth that held not haughty dust,

And seeds of future harvestings in trust,

And hidden azures of eventual skies.

Yet hadst thou sharper strains,

Even as the Power determines us with pains,

And seeing harvests, sawst as well the chaff,

And seeing Beauty, sawst her shames no less,

Loosing the sweet,

High thunder of thy Jovian laugh

On souls purblind in their self-righteousness.

O vision wide and keen!

Which knew, untaught, that pains to joyance are

As night unto the star

That on the effacing dawn must burn unseen.

And thou didst know what meat

Was torn to give us milk,

What countless worms made possible the silk

That robes the mind, what plan

Drew as a bubble from old infamies

And fen-pools of the past

The shy and many-colored soul of man.

Yea! thou hast seen the lees

In that rich cup we lift against the day,

Seen the man-child at his disastrous play—

His shafts without a mark,

His fountains flowing downward to the dark,

His maiming and his bars,

Then turned to see

His vatic shadow cast athwart the stars,

And his strange challenge to infinity.

But who am I to speak,

Far down the mountain, of its altar-peak,

Or cross on feeble wings,

Adventurous, the oceans in thy mind?

We of a wider day’s bewilderings

For very light seem blind,

And fearful of the gods our hands have formed.

Some lift their eyes and seem

To see at last the lofty human scheme

Fading and topping as a sunset stormed

By wind and evening, with the stars in doubt.

And some cry, “On to Brotherhood!” And some

(Their Dream's high music dumb):

“Nay! let us hide in roses all our chains,

Tho’ all the lamps go out!

Let us accept our lords!

Time’s tensions move not save to subtler pains.”

And over all the Silence is as swords. …

Wherefore be near us in our day of choice,

Lest Hell’s red choirs rejoice;

And may our counsels be

More wise, more kindly, for the thought of thee;

And may our deeds attest

Thy covenant of fame

To men of after-years that see thy name

Held like a flower by Honor to her breast.

Thy station in our hearts long since was won—

Safe from the jealous years—

Thou of whose love, thou of whose thews and tears

We rest most certain when the day is done 

And formless shadows close upon the sun! 

Thou wast a star ere death’s long night shut down,

And for thy brows the crown

Was graven ere the birth-pangs, and thy bed 

Is now of hallowed marble, and a fane 

Among the mightier dead: 

More blameless than thine own what soul hath stood? 

Dost thou lie deaf until another Reign, 

Or hear as music o’er thy head

The ceaseless trumpets of the war for Good?

Ah, thou! ah, thou!

Stills God thy question now?