The Banishment

"Pale marble effigies of Pagan joy,
You have no place above a Christian grave:
Your young Greek rapture doth the dead annoy,
Whom Christ, thorn-crowned, was crucified to save.
Here all is cold. Here faith is frozen calm.
Here hope is sober as a winter cloud.
Love must seem sorrow. But the martyr s palm
Shall mate the willow silver-grey and bowed.
Here sunshine should not dance but to a psalm.
Here winds should never pipe their songs aloud.
For sign of life, the shaven grass alone.
For memory, a labyrinth of stone,
Whence random shafts and broken columns rise,
Or shapes in rigid garments point to distant skies.
"To statues bare like you, the Board,
Both scandalized and wroth, demurs:
Nor place nor plot to you it can afford."
Thus spake the Master of the Sepulchres.
But at night, when the full moon shed
Her blue-green magic among the graves,
And the stars flashed faint in a sky of steel,
While the low wind ruffled the grass as't sped,
The harsh gate-bell rang a shivering peal
That jangled chill o er the harbor waves.
Lo, countless, out of the heaving ground,
Rose mistlike forms with a wavering glow
Pale pulsing where their hearts had been.
And they hovered as knowing not whither to go,
Till, caught and swirled on a breeze terrene,
They streamed and eddied around and around,
And swept down the walks with never a sound
To trouble the calm of moon or star.
And the lovers of old from their stone awoke.
While curled at their feet an altar smoke,
And thither the river of spirits flowed
To the lilt and thrill of an old Greek ode,
With echo of harp and flute from afar.
Then the misty throng from its silence broke.
Some flashed rose-pale and some went gray ;
And ghosts of sighs, and shades of smiles were rife;
And bubbling murmurs seemed to say :
"Joy! this is Love" and "This is Life!"
"Yea, I am Life" said the marble maid,
"I am the Human Soul,
That out of the mists eternal came
To touch the ooze with a breath of flame,
And give it a shape and eyes and feet.
Then man knew the sea from the land,
And rose to behold the day-star shine,
The moon grow small, and the planets roll,
And travailed their ways to understand,
And measure the dateless years ;
But he quivered in being incomplete,
Of teeth and claws and thunder afraid,
With hunger and cold the only dole,
And death the only spring of tears,
Until, in a night by the slumbering sea,
There came on soundless wings to me
A luminous wondrous boy.
He touched my lips, and they spake in song.
He touched my bosom, it heaved in joy.
He filled my heart the whole night long,
And I was his, and he was mine.
The winds blew faintly a deep perfume.
The sea stole light from the skies above,
A rose-dawn laughed through the waning gloom,
The whole world wakened to light and Love,
And the mortal bliss became divine."
"I am Love said the marble boy.
"I came when the earth was young,
From beyond the verge of the outmost stars
In myriad rosaries outflung
A winged ray from the breast of Him,
The Glory and the One,
In whose great light the suns are dim,
In whose wide webs the cycles run.
I came aflame through the heavy air
To life that blindly multiplied,
And in unending struggle wrought.
A gift I bare,
And a balm I brought:
A tender quickening to the heart ;
A lift and glow to human thought,
Until desire was deified;
A glance that flashed from eye to eye, and saw
The marvel of the Beautiful anigh
Where force and need alone had been the law;
A subtle fire that ran the whole earth through,
And leaped the spaces that held men apart,
And gave great heavenly visions to their view
And longings that go roaming thro the sky.
Winging the ether so, mine eyes first fell
On Psyche in a darksome dell;
And once we had met in the first long kiss,
The night around gleamed silvery gray;
The birds fled piping the news to tell;
Delight rose running to meet the day
In bliss,
And the Muses nine and the Graces three,
And the harps of the wind and the drums of the sea
Made Love's own fervid melody
On a sunny morn in Arcady.
My red flag waved in the sinking sun,
And the heart of the world to Love was won;
And since and ever I tell you this:
To every child of the human race,
Some morn, some day I have shown my face"
Mong the dim, white forms, lo a rising glow,
And the sightless faces seemed to know
That a god had spoken from out the stone;
For from lips long cold came warm soft cries:
"I saw your blest face in a city street."
"You laughed on me, Love, from a rose full blown."
"I touched your brow by the riverside."
"I found you under the Spanish moon,"
"You came, Dio mio, from Italy's skies"
"I looked in your eyes, and you smiled, aroon"
"The treasure at foot of my rainbow, you are"
"I heard your call by the Norseland s tide"
"I felt your breath as we gazed on a star."
But down the Maid and the Lover stepped,
And over the seaward path passed on.
The dimmed shades moaned, and the cold dew wept
For Life and Love that were gone.