XII - THE PILGRIMAGE

Beside a deep and mossy well

In the dark starless night I lay;

And dropping water like a bell,

Like a bell ringing far away,

Struck liquid notes in monotone,—

An echo of a distant bell

Tolling the knell of yesterday.

Deep down beneath the mossy ground

The liquid notes in monotone

Kept dropping, dropping endlessly,

And as I listened, over me

Crept like a mist a filmy spell;

My spirit's waving wings were bound,

And dreams came that were not my own.

Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard

The drowsy chirp of a forest bird,

And the wind came up and the grasses stirred

And the curtaining woods that cluster round

That resonantly-echoing well

Shook all their leaves with silver sound

Like voices murmuring in a shell.

Was it the past that lived again

In that nocturnal murmuring,

Waking a hidden voice to sing

Deep in my heart of other times

Whose memory long entombed had lain

Covered with all the dust of the years?...

Falling in splashing tears

The wet notes drop in liquid chimes,

And the white fingers of the breeze

Gather a song from the melodious trees....

There is a hand whiter than pearl

That plucks a lute's monotonous strings;

O starlight phantom of a girl

What lyric soul around thee sings,

And what divine companionship

Taught that entwining music to thy fingers,

And that unearthly music to thy lips?

She pauses, and the echo lingers

Hovering like wings upon the air.

I see more clearly now, her hair

Ripples like a black water-fall

About the pallor of her face.

She sits beside a mossy well

Amid some dim marmoreal place,

Some fragrant Moorish hall

Set all about with arabesques of stone

And intricate mosaics of gem and shell.

She sings again, she plays a monotone,

Perpetual rhythm like a far-off bell,

And someone dances, in a dancing river

The white ecstatic limbs flutter and quiver

Against the shadow. In the odorous flowers

That grow about the well, still forms are lying,

A group of statues, an eternal throng,

Watching the dance and listening to the song;

So shall they lie, innumerable hours,

Silent and motionless for ever.

The wind comes up, the flowers shiver,

The dancer vanishes, the songs are dying;

Night sickens into day.

The wind comes up and blows the dust away....

Between two clouds a sullen flame

Expands, and lo, the crescent moon

Rides like a warrior through the sky.

Thus long ago the warning came

When midnight towns lay all in swoon,

That the great gods were coming nigh

To crush the rebellious earth.

Now beneath the crescent moon

No spirits stir, no wind makes mirth,

Only a rhythmic monotone

Of waters dropping in a well....

But who is this so broken with distress

That steals like mist into my loneliness?

Why art thou weeping there, disconsolate child?

Thy tears fall like the waters of a well,

And drip in silver notes upon the sands.

What is thy sorrow? Ah, what man can tell

The shapeless fancies that unwelcome dwell

Within thy brain, the spectres, dark and wild

That haunt the spirit of a child?

Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands,

The bloody ruin of decaying realms

That a war overwhelms

And buries deep in the dust of history?

He raises his wet eyes and looks at me,

His boyish face full of a yearning,

An ancient pain,

As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again,

And answers, “In myself, thy thoughts returning

To other times shall slumber in the past,

And be a child again, and die at last

In the protecting arms of our great Mother

Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother.

Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief,

Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears,

Thy sorrow rich with the repining years,

My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief.”

Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf?

“I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself.”

Then falls a darkness on that starless shore.

Afar I hear the closing of a door....

I see on a sharp hill above the Styx,

The bruised Christ upon his crucifix,

And racked in anguish on his either side

Hang Buddha and Mohammed crucified.

Their heavy blood falls in a monotone

Like deep well-water dropping on a stone.

None moves, none breaks the silence; on those roods

Eternal suffering triumphant broods.

Prometheus from his cliff of wild unrest

Mocks them and draws the vulture to his breast.

Each year upon a darker Calvary

Are hung the pallid victims of the tree,

And none will watch with them, for none can see

As I once saw, unending agony,

Save where Prometheus from his dizzy place

Regards those sufferers with scornful face,

And his loud laughter rings through empty Space....

I can see nothing now, and only hear

Through the thick atmosphere

A deep perpetual well, that sad and slow,

Intones the knell of ages long ago,

And ages that no man can tell or know,

Whose shadows roll before them on the sky,

Black with forebodings of futurity.

Sweet sounds through midnight, liquid interlude,

Voice of the lonely souls that yearn and brood,

Voice of the unseen Life, the unsubdued,

What wonder that He draweth nigh to taste

Of your cool waters. Hail thou nameless One,

Fair stranger from a realm beyond the Sun,

Knowing that thou art God I do not fear,—

Speak to me, raise me from my life's long dream.

“The whole night through thou liest here

Beside the well that waters Lethe's stream,

And still thou dost not drink; O Man make haste;

Ere long the dawn will pour adown the waste,

And show thee, reft from the embrace of night,

The barren world, barren of revelry.

Happy art thou, O Man, happily free,

Who wilt never see

A thousand ages shed their life and light

As petals fall at eventide.

Thou shalt not see the radiant stars subside

Into the frozen ocean of the Vast,

Nor see thy world absorbed at last

Into a nothingness, an airless void,

Nor see the thoughts that Man has glorified

Swept from the world, and with the world destroyed.

This have I seen a thousand times repeated,

Unhappy as I am, unhappy God!

As many times as thou hast greeted

The rising sun against the broad

And tranquil clouds, so many times have I

Greeted the dawn of a new Universe,

And seen the molten stars rehearse

The lives and passions of the stars gone by.

When worlds are growing old, and there draw nigh

The shadows that shall cover them for ever,

( Shadows like these which doom your ancient sky )

Then to the well that feeds the sacred river

I come, and as the liquid music drips

Far in the ground, I plunge my lips

Deep in forgetfulness, and wash away

All the stains of the old griefs and joys,

That with His lips as smiling as a boy's,

God may rejoice in His created day.”

He stoops and drinks; a moment the cool bell

Pauses its ringing in the well:

A mist flies up against the dawn; the young winds weep;

Is it too late? I too would drink, drink deep,

But weariness is on me and I sleep.