Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses

Zyps of Zirl

 
The Alps of the Tyrol are dark with pines,
Where, foaming under the mountain spines,
The Inn's long water sounds and shines.
 
 
Beyond, are peaks where the morning weaves
An icy rose; and the evening leaves
The glittering gold of a thousand sheaves.
 
 
Deep vines and torrents and glimmering haze,
And sheep-bells tinkling on mountain ways,
And fluting shepherds make sweet the days.
 
 
The rolling mist, like a wandering fleece,
The great round moon in a mountain crease,
And a song of love make the nights all peace.
 
 
Beneath the blue Tyrolean skies
On the banks of the Inn, that foams and flies,
The storied city of Innsbruck lies.
 
 
With its mediæval streets, that crook,
And its gabled houses, it has the look
Of a belfried town in a fairy-book.
 
 
So wild the Tyrol that oft, 'tis said,
When the storm is out and the town in bed,
The howling of wolves sweeps overhead.
 
 
And oft the burgher, sitting here
In his walled rose-garden, hears the clear
Shrill scream of the eagle circling near.
 
 
And this is the tale that the burghers tell:—
The Abbot of Wiltau stood at his cell
Where the Solstein lifts its pinnacle.
 
 
A mighty summit of bluffs and crags
That frowns on the Inn; where the forest stags
Have worn a path to the water-flags.
 
 
The Abbot of Wiltau stood below;
And he was aware of a plume and bow
On the precipice there in the morning's glow.
 
 
A chamois, he saw, from span to span
Had leapt; and after it leapt a man;
And he knew 't was the Kaiser Maxmilian.
 
 
But, see! though rash as the chamois he,
His foot less sure. And verily
If the King should miss … "Jesu, Marie!
 
 
"The King hath missed!"—And, look, he falls!
Rolls headlong out to the headlong walls.
What saint shall save him on whom he calls?
 
 
What saint shall save him, who struggles there
On the narrow ledge by the eagle's lair,
With hooked hands clinging 'twixt earth and air?
 
 
The Abbot, he crosses himself in dread—
"Let prayers go up for the nearly dead,
And the passing-bell be tolled," he said.
 
 
"For the House of Hapsburg totters; see,
How raveled the thread of its destiny,
Sheer hung between cloud and rock!" quoth he.
 
 
But hark! where the steeps of the peak reply,
Is it an eagle's echoing cry?
And the flitting shadow, its plumes on high?
 
 
No voice of the eagle is that which rings!
And the shadow, a wiry man who swings
Down, down where the desperate Kaiser clings.
 
 
The crampons bound to his feet, he leaps
Like a chamois now; and again he creeps
Or twists, like a snake, o'er the fearful deeps.
 
 
"By his cross-bow, baldrick, and cap's black curl,"
Quoth the Abbot below, "I know the churl!
'T is the hunted outlaw Zyps of Zirl.
 
 
"Upon whose head, or dead or alive,
The Kaiser hath posted a price.—Saints shrive
The King!" quoth Wiltau. "Who may contrive
 
 
"To save him now that his foe is there?"—
But, listen! again through the breathless air
What words are those that the echoes bear?
 
 
"Courage, my King!—To the rescue, ho!"
The wild voice rings like a twanging bow,
And the staring Abbot stands mute below.
 
 
And, lo! the hand of the outlaw grasps
The arm of the King—and death unclasps
Its fleshless fingers from him who gasps.
 
 
And how he guides! where the clean cliffs wedge
Them flat to their faces; by chasm and ledge
He helps the King from the merciless edge.
 
 
Then up and up, past bluffs that shun
The rashest chamois; where eagles sun
Fierce wings and brood; where the mists are spun.
 
 
And safe at last stand Kaiser and churl
On the mountain path where the mosses curl—
And this the revenge of Zyps of Zirl.
 

The Glowworm

 
How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!…
 
 
The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.
 
 
And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.
 
 
And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.
 
 
And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear.
 
 
Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:
 
 
Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,
 
 
Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the winds are: now suddenly drew,
 
 
My soul to abysses of nothingness where
All light was a shadow, all hope, a despair:
 
 
Where truth, that religion had set upon high,
The darkness distorted and changed to a lie:
 
 
And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed
Like leaves of the autumn fell blighted and dead.
 
 
And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom,
And cried, "O my God, had I died in the womb!
 
 
"Than born into night, with no hope of the morn,
An heir unto shadows, to live so forlorn!
 
 
"All effort is vain; and the planet called Faith
Sinks down; and no power is real but death.
 
 
"Oh, light me a torch in the deepening dark
So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark!"—
 
 
And then in the darkness the answer!—It came
From Earth not from Heaven—a glimmering flame,
 
 
Behold, at my feet! In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone:
 
 
An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower:
 
 
As goldenly green as the phosphorus star
A fairy may wear in her diadem's bar:
 
 
An element essence of moonlight and dawn
That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on.
 
 
And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night:
 
 
Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.
 

Ghosts

 
Was it the strain of the waltz that, repeating
"Love," so bewitched me? or only the gleam
There of the lustres, that set my heart beating,
Feeling your presence as one feels a dream?
 
 
For, on a sudden, the woman of fashion,
Soft at my side in her diamonds and lace,
Vanished, and pale with reproach or with passion,
You, my dead sweetheart, smiled up in my face.
 
 
Music, the nebulous lights, and the sifting
Fragrance of women made amorous the air;
Born of these three and my thoughts you came drifting,
Clad in dim muslin, a rose in your hair.
 
 
There in the waltz, that followed the lancers,
Hard to my breast did I crush you and hold;
Far through the stir and the throng of the dancers
Onward I bore you as often of old.
 
 
Pale were your looks; and the rose in your tresses
Paler of hue than the dreams we have lost;—
"Who," then I said, "is it sees or who guesses,
Here in the hall, that I dance with a ghost?"
 
 
Gone! And the dance and the music are ended.
Gone! And the rapture dies out of the skies.
And, on my arm, in her elegance splendid,
The woman of fashion smiles up in my eyes.
 
 
Had I forgotten? and did you remember?—
You, who are dead, whom I cannot forget;
You, for whose sake all my heart is an ember
Covered with ashes of dreams and regret.
 

The Purple Valleys

 
Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips, sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh.—O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul forever!
 
 
Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendors,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium,—night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.
 
 
Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrifice erected
Within the heart's high sanctuary. Strangely
Again I know the horror and the rapture,
The utterless awe, the joy akin to anguish,
The terror and the worship of the spirit.
 
 
Again I feel her eyes pierce through and through me;
Her deep eyes, lovelier than imperial pansies,
Velvet and flame, through which her fierce will holds me,
Powerless and tame, and draws me on and onward
To sad, unsatisfied and animal yearnings,
Wild, unrestrained—the brute within the human—
To fling me panting on her mouth and bosom.
 
 
Again I feel her lips like ice and fire,
Her red lips, odorous as Arabian storax,
Fragrance and fire, within whose kiss destruction
Lies serpent-like. Intoxicating languors
Resistlessly embrace me, soul and body;
And we go drifting, drifting—she is laughing—
Outcasts of God, into the deep's abysm.
 

The Land
of Illusion

I

 
So we had come at last, my soul and I,
Into that land of shadowy plain and peak,
On which the dawn seemed ever about to break
On which the day seemed ever about to die.
 

II

 
Long had we sought fulfillment of our dreams,
The everlasting wells of Joy and Youth;
Long had we sought the snow-white flow'r of Truth,
That blooms eternal by eternal streams.
 

III

 
And, fonder still, we hoped to find the sweet
Immortal presence, Love; the bird Delight
Beside her; and, eyed with sidereal night,
Faith, like a lion, fawning at her feet.
 

IV

 
But, scorched and barren, in its arid well,
We found our dreams' forgotten fountain-head;
And by black, bitter waters, crushed and dead,
Among wild weeds, Truth's trampled asphodel.
 

V

 
And side by side with pallid Doubt and Pain,
Not Love, but Grief did meet us there: afar
We saw her, like a melancholy star,
Or pensive moon, move towards us o'er the plain.
 

VI

 
Sweet was her face as song that sings of home;
And filled our hearts with vague, suggestive spells
Of pathos, as sad ocean fills its shells
With sympathetic moanings of its foam.
 

VII

 
She raised one hand and pointed silently,
Then passed; her eyes, gaunt with a thirst unslaked,
Were worlds of woe, where tears in torrents ached,
Yet never fell. And like a winter sea,—
 

VIII

 
Whose caverned crags are haunts of wreck and wrath,
That house the condor pinions of the storm,—
My soul replied; and, weeping, arm in arm,
To'ards those dim hills, by that appointed path,
 

IX

 
We turned and went. Arrived, we did discern
How Beauty beckoned, white 'mid miles of flowers,
Through which, behold, the amaranthine Hours
Like maidens went each holding up an urn;
 

X

 
Wherein, it seemed—drained from long chalices
Of those slim flow'rs—they bore mysterious wine;
A poppied vintage, full of sleep divine
And pale forgetting of all miseries.
 

XI

 
Then to my soul I said, "No longer weep.
Come, let us drink; for hateful is the sky,
And earth is full of care, and life's a lie.
So let us drink; yea, let us drink and sleep."
 

XII

 
Then from their brimming urns we drank sweet must,
While, all around us, rose-crowned faces laughed
Into our eyes; but hardly had we quaffed
When, one by one, these crumbled into dust.
 

XIII

 
And league on league the eminence of blooms,
That flashed and billowed like a summer sea,
Rolled out a waste of thorns and tombs; where bee
And butterfly and bird hung dead in looms
 

XIV

 
Of worm and spider. And through tomb and brier,
A thin wind, parched with thirsty dust and sand,
Went wailing as if mourning some lost land
Of perished empire, Babylon or Tyre.
 

XV

 
Long, long with blistered feet we wandered in
That land of ruins, through whose sky of brass
Hate's Harpy shrieked; and in whose iron grass
The Hydra hissed of undestroyable Sin.
 

XVI

 
And there at last, behold, the House of Doom,—
Red, as if Hell had glared it into life,
Blood-red, and howling with incessant strife,—
With burning battlements, towered in the gloom.
 

XVII

 
And throned within sat Darkness.—Who might gaze
Upon that form, that threatening presence there,
Crowned with the flickering corpse-lights of Despair,
And yet escape sans madness and amaze?
 

XVIII

 
And we had hoped to find among these hills
The House of Beauty!—Curst, yea, thrice accurst,
The hope that lures one on from last to first
With vain illusions that no time fulfills!
 

XIX

 
Why will we struggle to attain, and strive,
When all we gain is but an empty dream?—
Better, unto my thinking, doth it seem
To end it all and let who will survive;
 

XX

 
To find at last all beauty is but dust;
That love and sorrow are the very same;
That joy is only suffering's sweeter name;
And sense is but the synonym of lust.
 

XXI

 
Far better, yea, to me it seems to die;
To set glad lips against the lips of Death—
The only thing God gives that comforteth,
The only thing we do not find a lie.