NEANDERTHAL

“Then what is life?” I cried. And with that cry

I woke from deeper slumber — was it sleep?—

And saw a hooded figure standing by

The bed whereon I lay.

“Why do you keep,

O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard

About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep

Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,

As that unearthly shape was veiled to you

At Casa Magni?”

Then the room was starred

With light as I was speaking, and I knew

The god, my brother, from whose face the veil

Melted as mist.

“What mission fair and true,

While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale

Amid this solemn stillness, for your face

Unutterably majestic.”

As when the dale

At midnight echoes for a little space,

The night-bird's cry, the god responded “Come,”

And nothing more. I left my bed apace,

And followed him with wings above the gloom

Of clouds like chariots driven on to war,

Between whose wheels the swift moon raced and swum.

A mile beneath us lay the earth, afar

Were mountains which as swift as thought drew near

As we passed over pines, where many a star

And heaven's light made every frond as clear

As through a glass or in the lightning's flash....

Yet I seemed flying from an olden fear,

A bulk of black that sought to sting or gnash

My breast or side — which was myself, it seemed,

The flesh or thinking part of me grown rash

And violent, a brain soul unredeemed,

Which sometime earlier in the grip of Death

Forgot its terror when my soul which streamed

Like ribbons of silk fire, with quiet breath

Said to the body, as it were a thing

Separate and indifferent: “How uneath

That fellow turns, while I am safe yet cling

Close to him, both another and the same.”

Now was this mood reversed: That self must wing

Its fastest flight to fly him, lest he maim

With fleshly hands my better, stronger part,

As dragon wings my flap and quench a flame....

But as we passed o'er empires and athwart

A bellowing strait, beholding bergs and floes

And running tides which made the sinking heart

Rise up again for breath, I felt how close

The god, my brother, was, who would sustain

My wings whatever dangers might oppose,

And knowing him beside me, like a strain

Of music were his thoughts, though nothing yet

Was spoken by him.

When as out of rain

Suddenly lights may break, the earth was set

Beneath us, and we stood and paused to see

The Düssel river from a parapet

Of earth and rock. Then bending curiously,

As reaching, in a moment with his hand

He scraped the turf and stones, pried up a key

Of harder granite, and at his command,

When he had made an opening, I slid

And sank, down, down through the Devonian land

Until with him I reached a cavern hid

From every eye but ours, and where no light

But from our faces was, a pyramid

Of hills that walled this crypt of soundless night.

Then in a mood, it seemed more fanciful,

He bent again and raked, and to my sight

Upheaved and held the remnant of a skull —

Gorilla's or a man's, I could not guess.

Yet brutal though it was, it was a hull

Too fine and large to house the nakedness

Of a beast's mind.

But as I looked the god

Began these words: “Before the iron stress

Of the north pole's dominion fell, he trod

The wastes of Europe, ere the Nile was made

A granary for the east, or ere the clod

In Babylon or India baked was laid

For hovels, this man lived. Ten thousand years

Before the earliest pyramid cast its shade

Upon the desolate sands this thing of fears,

Lusts, hungers, lived and hunted, woke and slept,

Mated, produced its kind, with hairy ears,

And tiger eyes sensed all that you accept

In terms of thought or vision as the proof

Of immanent Power or Love. But this skull kept

The intangible meaning out. This heavy roof

Of brutish bone above the eyes was dead

Even to lower ethers, no behoof

Of seasons, stars or skies took, though they bred

Suspicions, fears, or nervous glances, thought,

Which silent as a lizard's shadow fled

Before it graved itself, passed over, wrought

No vision, only pain, which he deemed pangs

Of hunger or of thirst.”

As you have sought

The meaning of life's riddle, since it hangs

In waking or in slumber just above

The highest reach of prophecy, and fangs

With poison of despair all moods but love,

Behold its secret lettered on this brow

Placed by your own!

This is the word thereof:

Change and progression from the glazed slough,

Where life creeps and is blind, ascending up

The jungled slopes for prey till spirits bow

On Calvaries with crosses, take the cup

Of martyrdom for truth's sake.

It may be

Men of to-day make monstrous war, sleep, sup,

Traffic, build shrines, as earliest history

Records the earliest day, and that the race

Is what it was in virtue, charity,

And nothing better. But within this face

No light shone from that realm where Hindostan,

Delving in numbers, watching stars took grace

And inspiration to explore the plan

Of heaven and earth. And of the scheme the test

Is not five thousand years, which leave the van

Just where it was, but this change manifest

In fifty thousand years between the mind

Neanderthal's and Shelley's.

Man progressed

Along these years, found eyes where he was blind,

Put instinct under thought, crawled from the cave,

And faced the sun, till somewhere heaven's wind

Mixed with the light of Lights descending, gave

To mind a touch of divinity, making whole

An undeveloped growth.

As ships that brave

Great storms at sea on masts a flaming coal

From heaven catch, bear on, so man was wreathed

Somewhere with lightning and became a soul.

Into his nostrils purer fire was breathed

Than breath of life itself, and by a leap,

As lightning leaps from crag to crag, what seethed

In man from the beginning broke the sleep

That lay on consciousness of self, with eyes

Awakened saw himself, out of the deep

And wonder of the self caught the surmise

Of Power beyond this world, and felt it through

The flow of living.

And so man shall rise

From this illumination, from this clue

To perfect knowledge that this Power exists,

And what man is to this Power, even as you

Have left Neanderthal lost in the mists

And ignorance of centuries untold.

What would you say if learned geologists

Out of the rocks and caverns should unfold

The skulls of greater races, records, books

To shame us for our day, could we behold

Therein our retrogression? Wonder looks

In vain for these, discovers everywhere

Proof of the root which darkly bends and crooks

Far down and far away; a stalk more fair

Upspringing finds its proof, buds on the stalk

The eye may see, at last the flowering flare

Of man to-day!

I see the things which balk,

Retard, divert, draw into sluices small,

But who beholds the stream turned back to mock,

Not just itself, but make equivocal

A Universal Reason, Vision? No.

You find no proof of this, but prodigal

Proof of ascending Life!

So life shall flow

Here on this globe until the final fruit

And harvest. As it were until the glow

Of the great blossom has the attribute

In essence, color of eternal things,

And shows no rim between its hues which suit

The infinite sky's. Then if the dead earth swings

A gleaned and stricken field amid the void

What matters it to you, a soul with wings,

Whether it be replanted or destroyed?

Has it not served you?”

Now his voice was still,

Which in such discourse had been thus employed.

And in that lonely cavern dark and chill

I heard again, “Then what is life?” And woke

To find the moonlight on the window sill

That which had seemed his presence. And a cloak,

Whose hood was perked upon the moonbeams, made

The skull of the Neanderthal. The smoke

Blown from the fireplace formed the cavern's shade.

And roaring winds blew down as they had tuned

The voice which left me calm and unafraid.