Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NEANDERTHAL, by EDGAR LEE MASTERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NEANDERTHAL, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Then what is life?' I cried. And with that cry
Last Line: The voice which left me calm and unafraid.


"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry
I woke from deeper slumber -- was it sleep? --
And saw a hooded figure standing by
The bed whereon I lay.

"Why do you keep,
O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard
About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep
Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,
As that unearthly shape was veiled to you
At Casa Magni?"

Then the room was starred
With light as I was speaking, and I knew
The god, my brother, from whose face the veil
Melted as mist.

"What mission fair and true,
While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale
Amid this solemn stillness, for your face
Unutterably majestic."

As when the dale
At midnight echoes for a little space,
The night-bird's cry, the god responded "Come,"
And nothing more. I left my bed apace,
And followed him with wings above the gloom
Of clouds like chariots driven on to war,
Between whose wheels the swift moon raced and swum.

A mile beneath us lay the earth, afar
Were mountains which as swift as thought drew near
As we passed over pines, where many a star
And heaven's light made every frond as clear
As through a glass or in the lightning's flash ...
Yet I seemed flying from an olden fear,
A bulk of black that sought to sting or gnash
My breast or side -- which was myself, it seemed,
The flesh or thinking part of me grown rash
And violent, a brain soul unredeemed,
Which sometime earlier in the grip of Death
Forgot its terror when my soul which streamed
Like ribbons of silk fire, with quiet breath
Said to the body, as it were a thing
Separate and indifferent: "How uneath
That fellow turns, while I am safe yet cling
Close to him, both another and the same."
Now was this mood reversed: That self must wing
Its fastest flight to fly him, lest he maim
With fleshly hands my better, stronger part,
As dragon wings my flap and quench a flame....
But as we passed o'er empires and athwart
A bellowing strait, beholding bergs and floes
And running tides which made the sinking heart
Rise up again for breath, I felt how close
The god, my brother, was, who would sustain
My wings whatever dangers might oppose,
And knowing him beside me, like a strain
Of music were his thoughts, though nothing yet
Was spoken by him.

When as out of rain
Suddenly lights may break, the earth was set
Beneath us, and we stood and paused to see
The Dussel river from a parapet
Of earth and rock. Then bending curiously,
As reaching, in a moment with his hand
He scraped the turf and stones, pried up a key
Of harder granite, and at his command,
When he had made an opening, I slid
And sank, down, down through the Devonian land
Until with him I reached a cavern hid
From every eye but ours, and where no light
But from our faces was, a pyramid
Of hills that walled this crypt of soundless night.
Then in a mood, it seemed more fanciful,
He bent again and raked, and to my sight
Upheaved and held the remnant of a skull --
Gorilla's or a man's, I could not guess.
Yet brutal though it was, it was a hull
Too fine and large to house the nakedness
Of a beast's mind.

But as I looked the god
Began these words: "Before the iron stress
Of the north pole's dominion fell, he trod
The wastes of Europe, ere the Nile was made
A granary for the east, or ere the clod
In Babylon or India baked was laid
For hovels, this man lived. Ten thousand years
Before the earliest pyramid cast its shade
Upon the desolate sands this thing of fears,
Lusts, hungers, lived and hunted, woke and slept,
Mated, produced its kind, with hairy ears,
And tiger eyes sensed all that you accept
In terms of thought or vision as the proof
Of immanent Power or Love. But this skull kept
The intangible meaning out. This heavy roof
Of brutish bone above the eyes was dead
Even to lower ethers, no behoof
Of seasons, stars or skies took, though they bred
Suspicions, fears, or nervous glances, thought,
Which silent as a lizard's shadow fled
Before it graved itself, passed over, wrought
No vision, only pain, which he deemed pangs
Of hunger or of thirst."

As you have sought
The meaning of life's riddle, since it hangs
In waking or in slumber just above
The highest reach of prophecy, and fangs
With poison of despair all moods but love,
Behold its secret lettered on this brow
Placed by your own!

This is the word thereof:
Change and progression from the glazed slough,
Where life creeps and is blind, ascending up
The jungled slopes for prey till spirits bow
On Calvaries with crosses, take the cup
Of martyrdom for truth's sake.

It may be
Men of to-day make monstrous war, sleep, sup,
Traffic, build shrines, as earliest history
Records the earliest day, and that the race
Is what it was in virtue, charity,
And nothing better. But within this face
No light shone from that realm where Hindostan,
Delving in numbers, watching stars took grace
And inspiration to explore the plan
Of heaven and earth. And of the scheme the test
Is not five thousand years, which leave the van
Just where it was, but this change manifest
In fifty thousand years between the mind
Neanderthal's and Shelley's.

Man progressed
Along these years, found eyes where he was blind,
Put instinct under thought, crawled from the cave,
And faced the sun, till somewhere heaven's wind
Mixed with the light of Lights descending, gave
To mind a touch of divinity, making whole
An undeveloped growth.

As ships that brave
Great storms at sea on masts a flaming coal
From heaven catch, bear on, so man was wreathed
Somewhere with lightning and became a soul.
Into his nostrils purer fire was breathed
Than breath of life itself, and by a leap,
As lightning leaps from crag to crag, what seethed
In man from the beginning broke the sleep
That lay on consciousness of self, with eyes
Awakened saw himself, out of the deep
And wonder of the self caught the surmise
Of Power beyond this world, and felt it through
The flow of living.

And so man shall rise
From this illumination, from this clue
To perfect knowledge that this Power exists,
And what man is to this Power, even as you
Have left Neanderthal lost in the mists
And ignorance of centuries untold.
What would you say if learned geologists
Out of the rocks and caverns should unfold
The skulls of greater races, records, books
To shame us for our day, could we behold
Therein our retrogression? Wonder looks
In vain for these, discovers everywhere
Proof of the root which darkly bends and crooks
Far down and far away; a stalk more fair
Upspringing finds its proof, buds on the stalk
The eye may see, at last the flowering flare
Of man to-day!

I see the things which balk,
Retard, divert, draw into sluices small,
But who beholds the stream turned back to mock,
Not just itself, but make equivocal
A Universal Reason, Vision? No.
You find no proof of this, but prodigal
Proof of ascending Life!

So life shall flow
Here on this globe until the final fruit
And harvest. As it were until the glow
Of the great blossom has the attribute
In essence, color of eternal things,
And shows no rim between its hues which suit
The infinite sky's. Then if the dead earth swings
A gleaned and stricken field amid the void
What matters it to you, a soul with wings,
Whether it be replanted or destroyed?
Has it not served you?"

Now his voice was still,
Which in such discourse had been thus employed.
And in that lonely cavern dark and chill
I heard again, "Then what is life?" And woke
To find the moonlight on the window sill
That which had seemed his presence. And a cloak,
Whose hood was perked upon the moonbeams, made
The skull of the Neanderthal. The smoke
Blown from the fireplace formed the cavern's shade.
And roaring winds blew down as they had tuned
The voice which left me calm and unafraid.





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