Uncharted shores where moons of scarlet spray
Break on a Viking's galley on the sand,
And curtains held by one slim silver band
That float from casements opening on a bay,
And monstrous iron castles, dragon-barred,
And purple cloaks with inlaid gems bestarred.
Long silver tasseled mantles, curious furs,
And camel bells and dawns and golden heat,
And tuneful rattle of the horseman's spurs
Along some sleeping desert city's street.
Time strides and all too soon shall I grow old
With still all earth to see, all life to live:
Then come to me, my silver veil, and sieve,
Seas of illusion beached with magic gold.
Shadows
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A black moon nailed against a sullen dawn
Shakes down dark petals of a sombre rose;
The long lank shadows, sons of solitude,
Slink to the hills that silent, crouch and brood.
Across the East a grisly radiance grows,
And in the West the last grim star is gone.
Sons of the glaring idols of the night,
There still are groves amid the ebon crags,
In silent valleys, far from human sight,
Where horror slinks and doom, and sunlight lags.
There still are caves which know no mortal foot
And crawling rivers, blind and ghastly still,
And rocks that grip the oak tree’s twining root—
The asphodel still blooms beneath the hill.
I know your faces leering through the dark,
Your mumbling lips that fail of human speech.
The winds of night enfold you, swift and stark,
Unhallowed phantoms, whispering each to each.
You thrill with horror subtle, nameless, blind—
But grimmer shadows haunt the human mind.
From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, June 23, 1926:
I am that which was, was never,
Is, is not, shall be and shall not be.
I am unsubstantial existence, vague Being.
I am Unreality, a dreamy fog floating in this abyss
Of Self Beyond Self.
I live but I do not exist.
I have being but I have no form.
Men desire me but they now not what I am
Or from whence I come.
I come from nowhere and I am because I came not
And go not.
I am the essence of Nothing, the heights of
Attainment, the shade of a dim cloud that has no
Existence. I am built out of the fabric of
Unreality and Nonexistence and I am as powerful
As Babel, as unstable as a sea-fog.
Men are my slaves.
Only a free man can be my slave.
If a man be not free, he is no slave;
And being my slave, then only is he free.
Sighs in the Yellow Leaves
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I took an ivory grinning joss,
From a chest of scented sandal wood.
Now where the woven bamboos cross
It stands where a silver idol stood.
We sat beneath the drowsy fronded tree,
From shell-thin cups we sipped our amber tea.
The Mandarin laid his coral button cap
Upon the silken ocean of his lap.
He raised a finger nail with jade ornate
And carved the sky in patterns intricate.
“And so Confucius taught,” it seemed he sighed.
“The man of virtue shuns the paths of pride.
“That joss you boast is evil’s blood relation,
“Begot of demon born abomination.”
The good man sighed and wept and guzzled tea.
I filled his cup with smooth complacency,
Smiled at his measured jests and stroked his cat,
And watched the silk worms fall upon the mat.
And all the time, fanned by the sleepy wind,
The joss looked down and grinned and grinned and grinned.
The Singer in the Mist
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At birth a witch laid on me monstrous spells,
And I have trod strange highroads all my days,
Turning my feet to gray, unholy ways.
I grope for stems of broken asphodels;
HIgh on the rims of bare, fiend-haunted fells,
I follow cloven tracks that lie ablaze;
And ghosts have led me through the moonlight's haze
To talk with demons in the granite hells.
Seas crash upon dragon-guarded shores,
Bursting in crimson moons of burning spray,
And iron castles ope to me their doors,
And serpent-women lure with harp and lay.
The misty waves shake now to phantom oars—
Seek not for me; I sail to meet the day.
The Skull in the Clouds
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The Black Prince scowled above his lance, and wrath in his hot eyes lay,
"I would rather you rode with the spears of France and not at my side today.
"A man may parry an open blow, but I know not where to fend;
"I would that you were an open foe, instead of a sworn friend.
"You came to me in an hour of need, and your heart I thought I saw;
"But you are one of a rebel breed that knows not king or law.
"You -- with your ever smiling face and a black heart under your mail—
"With the haughty strain of the Norman race and the wild, black blood of the Gael.
"Thrice in a night fight's close-locked gloom my shield by merest chance
"Has turned a sword that thrust like doom—I wot 'twas not of France!
"And in a dust-cloud, blind and red, as we charged the Provence line
"An unseen axe struck Fitzjames dead, who gave his life for mine.
"Had I proofs, your head should fall this day or ever I rode to strife.
"Are you but a wolf to rend and slay, with naught to guide your life?
"No gleam of love in a lady's eyes, no honor or faith or fame?"
I raised my faces to the brooding skies and laughed like a roaring flame.
"I followed the sign of the Geraldine from Meath to the western sea
"Till a careless word that I scarcely heard bred hate in the heart of me.
"Then I lent my sword to the Irish chiefs, for half of my blood is Gael,
"And we cut like a sickle through the sheafs as we harried the lines of the Pale.
"But Dermod O'Connor, wild with wine, called me a dog at heel,
"And I cleft his bosom to the spine and fled to the black O'Neil.
"We harried the chieftains of the south; we shattered the Norman bows.