O’er my slanting forehead the mane tumbled down
And my small simian-eyes glowered back with a frown.
Short and swart and mighty, muscles like an ape,
I glowered at the yokels who stared all a-gape.
As day on day I labored with the loud anvil clang
And often with the measure in a roaring voice I sang:
(Deep bass below from a hairy chest,
Timbered with the anvil and the roar of the forge
Making up for rhythm with a red-blood zest
Wild as a hill-wind that roars through a gorge.)
“Brass for a peasant, gold for a king!
“And bronze for a warrior where the broadswords sing!
“Golden hafted, brazen shafted, ho! A kingly sword!
“Fit for a knight to make a stand with such brand in his hand
“’Gainst a horde!
“Then ho and ho again! for the anvils roar!
“For the clamor of the hammer and the metal-workers’ lore!
“A helmet for a chief and a cuirass for a lord!
“For a king’s own hand, a golden hilted sword!
“Ho! And ho! And ha!”
The sun like a gold thing floated on the high
And the green woodlands ran to the blue, dreaming sky.
The hills in the distance loomed up like gods
And the wood-deer scampered in the sun’s red rods.
And a rill down the hill, it danced and it sung,
But I toiled and I cursed where the forge smoke hung.
Then suddenly I turned, and you were standing there,
With a lyre in your fingers and a garland on your hair.
Tall, slim and lithe, like a white limbed god,
Twirling in your fingers a garland’s Dion’s rod.
And you were scarcely steady from your liking of vine,
Your garment was a kirtle and your breath was scented wine.
And you glanced at the forge and you glanced at me,
And you strummed on your lyre and laughed with glee.
Your laughter was like music, your voice like a rhyme,
As you sang, clear and strong, like a far, golden chime;
“Gold morn’s laughing o’er the ocean, dawn’s awhisper on the sea!
“And a silver brook is brawling, with its tiny cat’ract falling,
“From the woodlands Pan is calling, come away, with me!
“Come away! Come away! Where the wood nymphs laugh at play!
“There are trails through sapphire meadows, night times soft with laughing shadows,
“Emerald isles in topaz oceans where the mermaids flash in spray!
“Come away! Pan is prancing! Come away! The fauns are dancing!
“And it’s my good time I’m wasting as I pause to sing this lay!
“Come to the woodlands, away and away!”
You were the wind’s song, (starlight in your hair!)
I harkened to your singing, with wonder all a-stare.
Then to my forge I whirled and I gripped a mighty sledge
And I smashed the mighty anvil and flung it to the hedge.
I whirled on high the hammer and I hurled in the rill,
And the bellows and the forge I tumbled down the hill.
In the gold of the morning, my soul soared free,
And I laughed like a giant, and you laughed with me.
* * *
And your laughter was a chime, was the ripple of the rill,
As through the golden morning, we strode down the hill.
Your lyre was a breath from the far, far seas!
(Ah, your hair in the sunlight as it floated in the breeze!)
On my bow-legs I followed, wonder in my eyes,
All a-gape with wonder at your songs and your lies,
Tales of sea and city, and far, strange lands,
(Music of the gods from your slim, strong hands.)
Poems at your finger tips, jests on all you saw,
And each jest I greeted with uproarious guffaw.
As through the sapphire woodland we strode to meet the dawn
On the roads o’ morning like a satyr and a faun.
* * *
The white roads o’ morning, the ages golden truth.
We walked in green Arcady when the world was wild with youth.
Arkham
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Drowsy and dull with age the houses blink
On aimless streets the rat-gnawed years forget-
But what inhuman figures leer and slink
Down the old alleys when the moon has set?
At The Bazaar
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There breaks in the bazaar of Zanzibar,
red surge of life on life;
At eve there came through the sunset's flame
a man with a dripping knife.
"Eunuchs a score and seven more
I've made today," said he,
"The blood and tears of all my years
I've caused would fill a sea.
"Search far, search far from Zanzibar
for youths of many lands
"For my hungry steel and the glee I feel
when they writhe beneath my hand
He laid him down where the stains lay brown
on the floor of the gelding room,
And his gory blade as it down was laid
clanged like a tone of doom.
In sleep he leered and clawed his beard
with fingers black with gore;
The ghosts of dead men came from Hell
and staked him to the floor.
“Aw Come On And Fight!”
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On my hands and knees in a scarlet pool
I heard the referee toll,
And the crowd roared: "Kill the yellow bum!"
Like the sea along a shoal.
I sprang, I struck, I crushed his skull
With a sudden desperate swing,
He died with his eyes to the glaring lights
And his back to the canvassed ring.
The referee counted above the dead,
I swayed and clung to the ropes,
And the crowd roared: "Yellow! Both of em's bums!"
Like the seas on the beaches slopes.
Babel
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Now in the gloom the pulsing drums repeat,
And all the night is filled with evil sound;
I hear the throbbing on inhuman feet
On marble stairs that silence locks around.
I see black temples loom against the night,
With tentacles like serpents writhed afar,
And waving in a dusky dragon light
Great moths whose wings unholy tapers char.
Red memory on memory, tier on tier,
Builds up a tower, time and space to span;
Through world on world I rise, and sphere on sphere,
To star-shot gulfs of lunacy and fear—
Black screaming ages never dreamed by man.