THE PALACE OF PAIN

A soul was once incarnate in a man;

And this unseen, incarnate thing was mine;

And, as my body grew, the soul began

To sip more fondly of the scented wine

And sugared blisses life can give at call.

It languished amid luxuries divine

Showering richly like the leaves that fall

Upon the sensuous-silent autumn air.

Pale, fleeting Pleasure took my thoughtless all;

For love, unselfish, passion-fervid, rare,

Vibrated through the discords of dull time,

Blending them into harmony; for where

Life jangled harsh, a mother's care would chime

More blissful chords than can be told in rime.

The gentle harmonies of love declined,

And swooned into a dull, funereal moan,

And faintly floated onward with the wind.

The symphony was gone; I stayed alone

In all-enshrouding, opiate sadness bound.

I did not scream; I did not weep nor groan.

My soul was locked in stupor whence it found

Only barred gates across dim vaults; and jangling,

Discordant chaos stung me like a wound.

I could not think; I could not hope; the wrangling

Of jarring sounds oppressed me till my brain

Was lost within a labyrinth, all-entangling —

But this I learned although my powers did wane;

That Love through Death transmutes itself to pain.

I sank my soul upon a sea of dreams;

I floated through aerial heights divine

Where saffron clouds a-glint with amber beams

Shimmering strangely, stretched in shining line.

I winged my way to Heaven's very dome,

And on Hell's portal read the horrid sign;

I danced upon the wavelet's crested foam,

And swept tempestuous on the stormy wind.

On earth like some vague terror, did I roam

While moaning misery pursued behind.

Whene'er I sang, my song had one refrain

With anxious care and artifice refined,

Until my soul's accompaniment would wane

And wax to one motiv: unending pain.

I broke my dungeon-sepulchre of dreams;

I climbed the winding stair to palace halls

Where all the air was soothed by incense-streams;

And every sight within those magic walls

Was bright with radiant, opalescent sheen

While lulling on the ear, light music falls

Of such a melody as ne'er has been

Unless by fays on fairy lyres played.

There Pleasure gowned in iridescent green,

Reclines upon her couch with gems inlaid,

And gently beckons with a sinuous arm —

But all the sumptuous excesses fade;

The walls seem dim; the music has no charm,

For Pleasure's Palace is a place of harm.

I plunged through rooms of deepest Tyrian dye;

I tore the veils from mysteries aside;

But grinning pleasure ever met mine eye.

In anguished ecstasy of bliss, I cried;

And through the halls, I heard the echo wane

Until the last, most distant answer sighed:

“The spirit of the world is pain, pain, pain —”

Then from the drowsy distance, there did well

A voice as of a witch before her fane,

Soft-muttering, some Heaven-blasting spell:

“The world is all in vain, the merest tool

Of accident, an anteroom to Hell,

A counterfeit but fairly glinting pool —

Snatch all the joy thou canst, thou human fool!”

And then I searched within myself to find

The how and why of all I heard and saw.

I found but silent Nothing. Wearied, blind,

I strove to learn the omnipresent Law

On whose foundation all these chambers lean.

I found within the artifice no flaw;

And not the slightest secret could I glean.

I searched the winding, labyrinthine halls,

And scanned colossal colonnades between

Whose rows unending space is seen that palls

The straining sight, yet thither lures the eye

With fairy sheen. Through all the outer walls,

No doorway pierced to water, earth or sky:

Is there an answer to the how and why?

And yet I am condemned to live, to be.

What horrid Fate decreed it? Life is blind,

And cannot see the Truth. Oh, but for me

To know, to solve this riddle of the mind!

And yet no whisper through the age's gloom

Has taught the latent answer that I pined;

And finally in a sombre-tinted room,

I sank in languor on the marble floor,

And faintly wondered at my destined doom.

Upon my weary spirit, came once more

A faint remembrance of a former time,

A faint remembrance, I had known before,

That clung about me like an ancient rime:

Death is to the soul but a change of clime.

Then from the body tear this soul away!

Let me seek death; I'll force the hand of Fate!

I will not suffer more. The game I play

Is held against Creation, and the weight

Of all the ages hangs with Fate. Serene,

Stands Death in sable gossamer bedight,

And with maternal arms would intervene,

And seeks to press me silent to her breast.

Quick, let me free my soul from pain! The scene

Is fair — Oh, let this weariness be blest!

But hold — I still may keep this bitter strain

Of self-tormenting torment e'en in rest —

Death summons up the things of life again;

And pain of life transmutes all death to pain.

Oh, but to float away upon the night,

To lose my soul upon her silent dark,

To feel myself a Nothing, a frail, light,

Aerial Emptiness, a fleeing spark

Of sunshine seeking on the endless void,

Some rest, some painless silence as its mark.

Like an oblivion-destined asteroid,

So would I that my soul should haste away

From all the ordinary, earthly, cloyed,

From all the tawdriness of living day;

But still I know I cannot cease to be,

Though I condemn my body back to clay —

O thrice accursed immortality

That dooms me life through all Eternity!

O maddening horror in a smiling guise!

Alive or dead, I am a slave to life.

The later torment with the former vies

To wring my still-undying soul with strife.

I have a debt; the creditor is Time:

“My bond, my bond,” he cries, and holds the knife

To wound yet never kill. But what my crime?

I fled those pleasure-haunted halls where vile,

Sweet-scented blisses soothed to pain. A clime

More active came within my ken. The dial

Of hours hurried round. The rich, new wine

Of busy life, I found. A steady file

Swept past of mortal things with souls like mine —

Yet what the purpose of their streaming line?

With nervous yearning, haste they on their way:

A few direct and rule the work of all;

But most are bringing mortar, stone and clay —

( And some there are that rise, and others fall;

And they are seen no more — we know not why. )

But all are working on the palace wall;

And some invent designs to please the eye;

And some would fain extend the rooms to win

New-fashioned blisses. A soft-moaning cry

Is vibrant in the air. High-pitched and thin,

It quavers dimly, then descends again,

And echoes aimless through the busy din:

Mankind would add to pleasure, but in vain —

For Pleasure's Palace is a house of pain.

They strive; they strive, heap luxury on bliss,

And worship Pleasure as their goddess-queen.

Ah, take who will the subtle harlot's kiss!

Yes, seize thy moment's sweetness — then, I ween,

A pageantry of pain, such throbbing throes

As rive the soul, and cut the quick with keen,

Imprisoned edges till the life-blood flows.

Man little knows it; but two aims has he:

By present anguish, store up future woes,

By present anguish, pain posterity.

The quest for pleasure is a quest in vain;

Pleasure is Nothing in Eternity.

Men rather act than think, for thought is pain,

And action is the opiate of the brain.

Shall I play Roman, face and fight these ills,

Pretend that I can fight and still may win?

A child his dozen mimic soldiers drills,

And six with six, the battle they begin.

Some victors, and some vanquished; some he slays —

But then the soldiers are mere toys of tin —

And carelessly upon the ground, he lays

Vanquished and victors on one common plane;

And takes some other toy and laughs and plays —

Yes, like that soldier, may I fight, and gain

Great victories. Oh, I may stare my Fate

Between the eyes, and drink whole draughts of pain;

With Stoic-strength, may struggle, and may hate;

But where's the payment that I vainly wait?

I dare not ponder on humanity;

Myself, I dare not ponder, nor my goal.

Oh, would that I were lost upon that sea

Into whose silence, Lethe's currents roll.

Upon its bosom, would that I pressed mine,

Then might some kindly power transform this soul

Into forgetfulness. Or would some wine

Were brewed with musk or attar of the rose

And colored with a tint incarnadine,

And so compounded that a dreamless doze

Would come from one red, richly-scented draught.

Or would that some unmoving glacier froze

My soul within its crystal mine.— No craft

Can save me from this cup of pain unquaffed.

Oh, every soul is only pain embalmed;

And every torment is but bliss's sting.

Humanity lies gasping and becalmed

Upon a torrid ocean; and no wing

Of albatross is seen — nor e'er was seen —

Our worldly hope is dead — yet rules as king.

Dust, ashes, ashes, dust, upon these lean

All of the upward struggle of mankind;

And pain, unending pain, is all they glean.

Goddess of pain, O mistress of the mind,

Art thou the Soul of life? Or hast thou palmed

Thyself on men once happy? Have we pined

Forever? Can our spirits e'er be calmed;

Or is the spirit only pain embalmed?

But what of art? Can art no solace hold,

No soothing spikenard, soporose drug or wine

To woo the wounded soul? Must men grow old

In agony? Or has some thought divine

Slipped down upon us, cool, compassionate?

But what of art? Can art's frail power refine

Our souls into that Oversoul, and mate

The each with All in one, sublime design?

Art is the vision of that Truth innate

In man. A soul, prismatic, crystalline,

May show each glow of being with each strife

At once reflected and becalmed, and twine

Then into some new, inward world all rife

With spirit blisses of a spirit life.

Eternal art can triumph over pain;

And once we breathe the lotus-fragrance deep,

The world may scream with iron tongue in vain,

For all the argosy is soothed to sleep.

The ships may rot forever on the sand;

And far off Greece may wait and faintly weep.

More rare than spice from silken Samarkand,

More sorrow-sweet than young Francesca's tears,

More fair than yearning night upon the strand,

And more majestic than Anchises’ years:

Beauty's the image, not the thing.‘ Tis shod

With rainbow lightnings of the hopes and fears,

And knows each step humanity may plod.

Art is the Beauty of the face of God.

But still I live within this place of pain;

And still I seek for an eternal aim,

For, after death, mere Beauty is in vain.

What is there deeper flowing from this same

Unceasing spring? Quick, let me tear the veil!

There sat a statue on an ebon frame —

A statue in that house of pain. So pale

The brow and still the nostrils, Death it seemed;

But in the face, I read that holy tale

That lay on the Madonna's face where gleamed

The Heavenly light from the young Christ's aureole.

Through all the halls of pain, the brilliance beamed;

And every discord out of chaos stole

To swell the throbbing organ's thunderous roll.

Faith is the master-spirit of the mind.

All else is vanity, the preacher saith;

And worldly knowledge painful is and blind.

Oh, be thyself, and trust thyself. The breath

Of God is breathed on thee. Believe, and will;

And all that thou wouldst have in life, in death,

Is thine. I heard a rustling like a rill

Upon its leafy bed — just such a sound

As tincts the shadow of a song with skill

More intricate than arabesques, and bound

With tender, faintly-flowing melodies —

But whence the choir sang, I never found.

Mayhap at last, myself may learn the ties

Wherewith are bound those lingering harmonies.

And when the soul has torn the fleshly veil,

And moves majestic to that monotone,

When echo-like upon the air I sail

Whither the winged skylark, Faith, has flown,

And borne me fainting upward; then my soul

May seek the God of art which silent, lone,

Broods on a crystal-argent sea, the goal

Of all humanity. Incarnate pain

Is calmed to everlasting peace. There roll

No waves upon the sea. Charmed has it lain

Through incommensurate time; charmed will it lie

Through all eternity; and there again

Upon my soul in silence wrapped, shall sigh,

Most beautiful — a mother's lullaby.