Classic Poem

" You find me here, a Brother in the halls
Of St. Stephanos; but my birth was far
In southern islands, where the Cyclades
Lie like a barrier westward from one isle: —
O isle of brightness I shall not know again,
Mykonos, bride of sea-winds and the sea!
My home, amid the windmills on the heights,
Looked out toward Delos and the western waves
Wherein the sun sank down each eventide
With hues that were to me song poured from heaven, —
A wild enchantment, drawing forth my soul
In longing for all beauty. On the hills
Of her, my rocky island, as a boy
I walked in vision; and the ancient tales
Of Homer, and the legends of the shrine
That once was crown of Delos, and the forms
And colors and wild odors which my dreams
Wove from the sunsets and the changing spray,
Wrought in my soul a passion, a desire
Past understanding, for exalted deeds
And life that should be beautiful, like the Gods!
I was a Pagan, with the bards who sang
Once from these isles the praises of the fair
Golden Apollo. From some headland rock,
Looking across the waves, I could have raised
My paean, too, of sacrificial joy
Unto the deities of sun and sea!

I scarce remember in what forms I dreamed;
Yet well I know that dreams by night and day
Moved where I moved, building a world apart
From unregarded casual daily things.
I dwelt among those moments, few and crowning,
Which chronicle and legend garner up
From the lone triumphs of heroic hearts, —
Time's precious harvest, slowly winnowed forth
Out of the lives of thousands who go down
Barren of such a radiant grain. All peaks
Whence man views life as lord: — what Jason saw
With the first hope, and at the final goal;
What Alexander felt when the last gate
Of secret Eastern city fell, and kings
Knelt at his chariot; what Euripides
Knew as the multitude with bated breath
Quivered and was dumb to hear Electra speak: —
Out of such marvelous fragments as these things
I wrought my fair mosaic, that served my faith
As pattern of the world and of man's life.

Ah, I was happy! but no more content
Than ever man is. My enkindled thoughts,
Fed upon visions, whispered that afar
And yet untasted lay that sunlit world
Whereof the pallid moon-dreams of my youth
Were but a shadow and a prophecy.
Glowing, it called me toward the richer days
Of which my hope breathed and the poets sung.
Now must the mystery, long viewed afar, —
Life, Life itself, unbosom unto me
Its beautiful meaning. Wherefore did I stay,
Tarrying in the porch before the shrine?
Nay, I would enter to the inmost hall,
To the close presence of that deity
Who, though remote, with palpitant glowing touch
Had waked divinest madness in my breast,
And the dim promise of sharp loveliness,
And uttermost longing for the clasp of Life.

Therefore, obedient to that stirring call
Heard in lone hours, filled with exalted thought,
I left my rocky island and keen spray
Of salty winds, and unto Athens came,
There to abide and earn my bread and find
The undiscovered marvels of my fate.
And can you picture, — you, with thoughtful eyes, —
How in the city fared that dreaming boy,
Credulous still of all the golden tales
Which from the poets' music and the light
Of sunset-wests he had distilled to drops
Of keener essence? Can your vision pierce
The coarse engulfing crowds of teeming men
Down to the last deep, where in shrinking doubt,
I, child and dreamer, moved, — first whelmed by power; —
Then lost, as, by some spell, the pomp and stress
Crumbled about me, — and I stood alone
In a vast desert? Dust, pitiful dust
Lay that existence in my shrinking hand.
Where was the lofty doom my dreams had sung?
Where were the ecstasies and the hours of flame?
Bewildered grew the promise of my soul,
As the world's business, sordid oft and base,
Seethed by me like a nightmare: all men's thoughts
Seemed rapt in petty matters which like leaves
Floated upon the vortex of the hour
And then were drowned beneath the on-rushing stream,
Forgotten and unmemorable. Those hearts
In whom, I thought, long intercourse of life
Had surely stored some more-revealing sense
Of what our being meant, and what was good,
And where the true goal for our striving lay, —
Those, intricately netted, seemed to dwell
A thousand fathoms deep beneath the tide
Of fragmentary labors toward no end,
Like play of madmen. None, of all I saw,
Felt the great doubts that hem our mortal lot,
Or looked with wonder toward the tranquil stars
Or into the far depths of his own soul.
Unguided conflict, — random ebb and flow
Of days and deeds, — confusion of one force
Smiting against another in its path, —
What could I make of these unreasoned things?
And to my sense, fevered with strange dismay,
Men loomed like brutes who in the forest roved,
Whose history was recorded by gnawed roots
And trampled grasses, — and white bones at last.
\
Another race they seemed; yet as I dwelt
There in the town, and labored at my trade
Shoulder to shoulder with them, slowly passed
That sense of alienage. Into my thought
Slowly there entered, gradual bit by bit,
Some consonance with theirs. By painful steps
I came to know why toiling men put by
The visions that had nurtured them in youth.
I saw the vanity of the rootless joy
Which youth and beauty foster till the hour
When weight of burdens kills the fragile bloom.
The harshness of the actual iron world
Broke in upon my spirit. I beheld
Bitter realities as the ruling force
Upon this pitiful soul of ours, which strains
Heavenward on frail wings. I saw the dream,
Woven of all the past's enchanted gold,
Shattered by those necessities which ride
With vast material dominance through the realm
Of spiritual being. I saw earth, sea,
Time, space, all yield, reluctant, to the toil
Of man who in that desperate flux and press
Battles for barely life. Until at last
I, also, cast all hope and rapture by;
Acknowledged me as servant of cruel powers, —
A pigmy struggling in a tragic world
For mere existence: — I, who late had thought
To choose among the destinies of the Gods
For which should best accord with my desire!
Thereupon I became as other men,
Spending my heart upon each worthless task,
Incurious of the meaning; and, as they,
No longer scrupulous of little things
Like careless wrongs, or other lives awry
By my rough passing: I no longer set
Patterns of beauty for the weary soul;
But as of very need, accepted quite
The creed that was my fellows', half-resigned
Unto a world of chaos ultimate.

So the years passed, as in the city's streets
I moved and had my life, where crowded days
Stifled all pause for thought. Yet in the Spring
Sometimes strange passions would revisit me;
And night-long I have lain awake to watch
The bright processions of my former dreams
Arise again and pitifully lead
Their ranks in holy wars to conquer back
The soul's lost empire from those tyrant powers
Which should have subject station and obey,
Not master, life. And lo! one April noon
As at my task I labored, from lone deeps
Long buried in me, burst a fierce revolt
Against that creature which I had become.
I cried — This life of mine, this dull, misshaped
And vegetable being, shall not be
My final sepulcher! I will arise:
I will go up into the lofty places
Apart from all man's works, and there commune
With God and mine own soul. I will search out
By lonely thought some meaning or accord
Or radiant sanction that may justify
The ways of life. The void and troubled world
Will I renounce, to gain in solitude
What the world gave not, — sense of life's design.

Then fared I toward the mountains of the north,
That land behind us yonder, where the wastes
Of aught but God's own self are tenantless.
And wandering aimless, in the weary mood
Of one who finds the glories of the earth
Glamouries only, to this spot I came, —
A far retreat whose name to me was known
Long as a legend. When I saw these walls
Which from their dizzy height looked calmly down
Upon the distant world, — beheld the blue
Of tranquil heaven around these summits cling,
Where no sound broke the silence of the slopes,
Lo! this, I felt, was my abiding-place,
My spiritual home, where life might be
Once more my own and not the multitude's.
Thereupon, with glad zeal, I sought the gate,
Begging admission to the brotherhood;
Though little holiness was in my soul
Save that which God's omniscient tender eyes
Might find in the wild longing that was mine
For something nobler than my days had found.
And when my rapt novitiate was past,
I with exultant lips assumed the vow
Of life-long service, and irrevocably
Closed the last portals of the world behind.

Peace here I sought, a little peace from life, —
A little time that might pass gently by
Afar from the coarse clamors of the world
And purposeless confusions. I would trace
In silence and seclusion that fine thread
On which are strung, like fair or faded flowers
Along a garland, the successive days:
Which in the city's press become a heap
Of crushed disordered blossoms, and conceal
The filament that joins them. For, I thought
That, as a reveler by cups of wine
Now overcome no longer tastes the grape
But madness only — so where life is swift
And strong and tense and multitudinous
Of forms and deeds, there life annuls itself
Into confusion; and the crowded years
Are filled with living till no life remains.
Hence with great yearning I desired to dwell
Apart from these things, in a place of peace
Where, from the visions of the sunrise hills
And books and musing talk and the low voice
Of my own soul, I might remould the world
Into a pattern beautiful and clear.
My hope was high to reconcile at last
The harsh disorder of the warring earth
With needs and verities that dwelt within. . . .
I try to tell you these things but I think
I cannot pour their meaning into words
Unless you too already somewhat know
Whereof I speak. . . .

Slow passed the tranquil days
Of my first years in St. Stephanos' walls.
Prayer, and long service at the altar-place,
And common speech, and silence much alone,
Were mine as portion. But contentment dwelt
No more with me. Great weariness in its place
Became my fellow, and a sense of foiled
Inaction haunted me, more hard to bear
Than turmoil. For the visions came no more
Which once at Mykonos had filled my soul;
Or if they came, of little worth they seemed
To one who had beheld the toiling world
And the great pulsing streams which in the streets
Of crowded cities meet and part and strain
In dim and purgatorial confluence.
Somberly I beheld, with alien eyes,
My brother-priests serve at the altar-cross,
And with untroubled worship send their souls
Straight through the incense to the blissful seat
Of God the Father. But my lagging thoughts
Tarried behind upon the strong young heads
Of the few shepherds who, amid these heights
Now wandering, knelt at mass within our gates.
Their troubled lives, their toil, their fears and hopes
Stood between me and Heaven. Their life was mine,
Their laboring days were mine. I felt arise
Like a great tide the sense of fleeting things —
Tenderness, joy, labor and hope and strife, —
All ours a little while, then to be gone;
But when departed, treasured in the heart
With clinging light of old remembrances.
I felt that glow, unutterably sweet,
Which makes the love of life haunt all our days
With wonder and desire. My homesick breast
Longed for the eager city and its stress
Of meeting man with man: — things theirs, but now
Not mine for evermore. And then, too late,
In certitude I knew myself one born
A passionate child of life and not of dreams.

As here I dwelt through slow unchanging days,
This knowledge waxed in me. Gone was the hope,
Eternally, I think, of infinite joy
Awaiting in some fortunate golden land.
But the rude fellowship of the eager world
Called me, and calls me still. I am content
With quieter thoughts than those which once transformed
My being, as the sunlight a fair cloud
Transfuses into wonderful wreaths of gold.
No more do I desire upon the hills
To stand at even, and feel through my veins
Pour wild unutterably stirring breath
Of harmony with some transcendent lyre
Singing where sunset faded down the slopes.
For I have passed the magic of that time
And youth's unbodied visions. I have seen
The half-lights of the exquisite morning fade,
And daylight walk the land. And I have taught
The baffled spirit to forego its dreams,
Content within a less imperial space,
Amid the things that are. For now, I think
That nothing in the world is wholly fair
And nothing wholly foul; but all are blent
Of a strange stuff, whose mingled dark and bright
I saw, and still must cherish till I die.

O youths who stand upon the singing hills,
Your bosoms full of singing! Well you know
The sacred light of vision, the unrest
Of pure desire for some immortal goal!
But you have yet to learn the common face
Of life and days and plain realities
And the slow reconcilements of the heart.

But I have learned; and now I long to go. —
I would return unto the city's strife,
And move amid the vast and thrilling crowds,
Those wonderful crowds of living, breathing men;
And feel again the wildly stirring sense
That every passing form might prove to me
A comrade or a brother or a foe,
A lover or a well of fierce desire!
With unsolved powers each one is eloquent.
There in the city moves no single form
So mean or lofty that it may not be
A shuttle in the dizzying gold-shot web
Which, stretching out on all sides round me there,
Inscrutably is woven; and creates,
Out of chance looks and errant turns and stops
And random meetings and unpurposed words,
The infinite woof that is my life and me.
That life I cry for! Here I die of dreams.
I perish, as a breath along the wastes. "