Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HAECKEL OF JENA, by WILSON PUGSLEY MACDONALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HAECKEL OF JENA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who would dispute with thee? Virchow applauds thee
Last Line: What know the masons or haeckel beyond this?
Subject(s): Haeckel, Ernst (1834-1919)


WHO would dispute with thee? Virchow applauds thee
With no more vigorous hands than mine own.
Man is a vertebrate, primate, placental:
Galen to Lavoisier knew no analysis
Keener than that of magnificent Haeckel.
Who in the embryo now shall out-atom,
In the to-morrow of further divisions,
Haeckel the learned and Haeckel the daring!

Now that I've granted the greatness of Haeckel,
Calling him splendid -- a monarch of reason --
Let me proceed with a thrust at his bosom.
Surely a poet may ride against Haeckel
Since Haeckel dared ride in the face of the gods.

Master of atoms and master of reason,
Haeckel the proud and Haeckel the daring,
Here I propound to your wisdom a fable
Whispered to me by the gods you have banished.

Lived in the Kingdom of Jena a mason
Who could go up to the oldest of castles,
Place his hard fingers on stone and in crevice,
And in a trice tell whence was the quarry.
Better than this -- his hands could discover,
From the hard mortar that held all together,
Just in what period did the proud structure

Mount to the heavens and lean on the moon.
Many times men did behold the great mason,
Many times heard him declaim on the ruins;
Always however he spoke of the substance,
Always the mortar and always the granite,
Always the breadth and the depth of the towers.

Under the battlements stood a young poet,
Purpling his lips in the vineyard of beauty;
Blind was his soul to the age of the mortar,
Blind to the girth of the moat and the wall.
Drenched in cold moonbeams he burst into music:

"Mystical castle, that rose when the builders
All were asleep,
Thou art a shepherd and up in the cloudlands
Are grazing thy sheep.
The tower is thy vigil, the wind is thy horn --
There is peace in its rune --
And there's peace in the way thou dost lean through the night
On the brow of the moon.
Mystical castle, I know all thy story,
I know all thy pain,
And I know why the soft showers have left on thy battlements hoary
Their piteous stain.
I know why the winds that caress thee so gently
Seem ever to weep;
And I know why the silver-hued ivy is touched
With so restless a sleep.
Names do not matter, mon cheri --
Call her Yvonne for the sound;
Seer in mine eyes doth behold her,
With hair to the ground:
Velvet to velvet her foot doth press soft on the lawn,
And a voice cries, 'Yvonne!'
And the breath of the great guard, Marcella,
Is heavy and deep,
And his brow's purple-veined --
And up in the tower are the lords and the ladies asleep
And the mastiffs are chained.

And soon is she safe through the gateway, soon is she far
On the echoing road
With her lover, the brave and the gentle. The cool morning star
From its lordly abode
Illumes them well over the border, where none can pursue,
From the great to the least;
Wet high to the knees by the opulent orbs of the dew,
They seek out a priest --
And he joins their young souls with a word and a prayer
And the amber-white round of a ring,
And their blessing is chanted high up in the air
Where the birds are a-wing.
O mystical castle! more real than the brick and the stone and the mortar,
More real than the girth of the wall,
Down the cool aisles of the years you are calling, are calling,
And sweet is your call.
My hands are as sure as yours, O ye masons who finger the stone,
But your task is not mine!
I measure the tears and the sighs and the joy and the laughter
That poured like rich wine.
The lovers are dead but I know where they passed
For the leaves are fairer in places;
And the more fragrant boughs are the boughs that caressingly
Fondled their faces --
Yea, I know they are dead from the mournful,
Long sweep of the grasses,
And I know they still live from the calm of the cloud
As it passes."

Whom then shall ye follow: the craftsmen of science
Who move ever inward with knife and with lens,
Or bards of the ages who move ever outward,
Ever outward and upward with the spirit of song?
Who but a poet may answer those secrets
Kept from proud Haeckel by mountains of atoms!
Hear then his song of this flesh habitation:

"Mystical castle of rose-tinted beauty
Lodging my soul,
The weave of thy fabric I know nat, nor care I
For aught save thy goal.
I know thou hast harbored the wandering spirits
Of clods and of seers;
And I know thou hast power everlasting to mount
From the ruins of years.
Down through the atoms he goes, carefully, slowly,
Haeckel the daring;
Up through the atoms I rise, swiftly and surely,
Never despairing.
Who goes in shall lose God at the end --
Who goes out
Shall burn in the fury of sunlight, the coldness of starlight
His evil of doubt.
This is the secret no mason shall know
And all poets shall gain --
It knows the invisible weave of the wind,
The staccato of rain.
Away with the lenses! Up with the telescopes!
Fling outward your reason!
To see one pale star, at the dawn, without love
Is the summit of treason.
Immortal am I, for my dreams are immortal,
Although, in their gleaming,
They hold but a hint of the plan of Jehovah's
Magnificent dreaming."

Science has slain all the gods; but the poets
Have lifted them back to their thrones in the heavens.
Man is a vertebrate, primate, placental:
What know the masons or Haeckel beyond this?





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