English

Here let Great Fortunes scroll their pedigrees,
Strange armorings of purple and of gold—
The Lion Rampant … see, I have been bold!—
The Running Fox … I am more swift than these!
How warm with history Great Fortunes are,
How blazonéd with rich heraldic signs,
With emblems of strong cities, ships and mines,
The oil, the corn, and all the pomp of war.
Some bear a crown and some a bloody sword,
Cruelly bright with the cold flash of steel.
Some in their gorgeous quarterings reveal
The penny in the fish-catch of the Lord.

Some old Astrologer might calculate
The movements of the orbs in such a cell—
Ascribing to each star its proper spell
And brooding on its laws, prognosticate.
The great metallic bodies of the night
With magnetisms such as sway and bind
Control great empires and coerce the mind,
Conduct their arbitrations on a height.
Their council chamber is the sky and there
The stars build up their strong immortal towers.
Bearers of unintelligible light
The planets sweep their treasuries through the air.

In such a silence once Hans Glauber bent
All night above his crucible and scales
And with strange formulas dispelled the veils
That are the cloak around the element.
He summoned to his aid an airy power
Compounding essences with measures fine.
With cipher and with cabalistic sign
He crossed the passing of the midnight hour.
At his revolving fire in such a cell
He sought the vapor softer than a petal.
‘Azar and Azoth,’ cried he, ‘hold the spell,
The subtle spirit that lies not in the metal.’
So do great Fortunes curiously hold

In such a cell with compass and with scale
Some quaint geographer might subtly trap
The oceans and the earth into a map,
Painting the sea and sky with colors pale,
Embellished well with many a quaint design,
The elephant, the bullock and the ape,
The apple, the corn, the winepress and the grape,
The battle axe, the frigate and the mine.
Lo, now, we see the tabulated scheme
Of all the earth; its diagram of story;
But not its mysteries of pain and dream,
Its love, its pride, its passion and its glory.

This trivial box seems not the fitting thing
To hide such magic with its black tin lid.
Oh, build it rather like the pyramid
In whose deep crypt is buried some old king;
A crypt adorned with ancient lettering;
Graved with strange shapes and legendary tales
Wherein old riddles spread metallic veils
With many a sacred cross and devil's ring.
Set reasonings here with query and surmise,
And syllogisms from some logician's brain.
Inscribe vague prophecies whose half-closed eyes
Shine like dim jewels set by Tubal-cain.

Here lieth Personal magic in a box.
All that my father had he left to me.
His ghostly properties defy these locks.
His Will still works, although I lose the key.
If here stood Judge and Jury … yet austere, free,
My father's Will, ungovernable, unshaken,
Would point his finger at the Judge—and he
Would say, ‘This woman's wealth shall not be taken.’
So in this box I feel it throbbing still,
That living entity, my father's Will.
And I still see, concealed in this black tin,
His pulsing energy that throbs within.

I, from the clerk, receive my private key,
With curious circumstance and grave parade.
Now my strong box is on the table laid.
There's a stout wall between all folks and me.
The door is locked so that no one shall see.
Here with my fortune I sit down alone—
This glittering skeleton, this golden bone.
With what I do no man can disagree.
And all this pompous opening of locks
And shutting them again that I may look
As if by stealth into a black tin box,
And cut off coupons in a little book!

How nonchalantly I spend with little thrift
His proud sparse earnings which were the frugal pay
Of a man's stout' will and honorable day.
What insolent spending of that sturdy gift!
When I reflect on him he seems like one
Who on a bleak hill set a lonely pine.
He saw the North Star in its branches shine.
His honest valors are by me undone.
Why I should own his box I cannot see.
For his scant legacy I am unfit.
Yet since he's in the yard I have his key,
And somehow I am master over it.
I am like one who decks the Holy Tree

Old Oscar, how feebly thou crawl'st to the door,
Thou who wert all beauty and vigour of yore;
How slow is thy stagger the sunshine to find,
And thy straw-sprinkled pallet—how crippled and blind!
But thy heart is still living—thou hearest my voice—
And thy faint-wagging tail says thou yet canst rejoice;
Ah! how different art thou from the Oscar of old,
The sleek and the gamesome, the swift and the bold!

At sunrise I wakened to hear thy proud bark,
With the coo of the house-dove, the lay of the lark;

Sometimes I catch sweet glimpses of his face,
But that is all.
Sometimes he looks on me and seems to smile,
But that is all.
Sometimes he speaks a passing word of peace,
But that is all.
Sometimes I think I hear his loving voice
Upon me call.

And is this all he meant when thus he spoke,—
“Come unto me?”
Is there no deeper, more enduring rest
In him for thee?
Is there no steadier light for thee in him?
O come and see.

O come and see! O look, and look again;
All shall be right;