Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 4, CANTO 1, by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 4, CANTO 1, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: And which of all hawaii's isles
Last Line: "a house of murders manifold!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Miller, Joaquin
Subject(s): Creation


I

And which of all Hawaii's isles
Of sandalwood and singing wilds
Received and housed this maiden rare --
This bravest, best, since Eve's despair?
It matters not; enough to know
Night-blooming trumpets ever blow
Love's tuneful banner to the breeze
In chorus with the ardent seas;
That Juno walks her mountain wall
In peacock plumes the whole year through.
You hear her gaudy lover call
From dawn till dusk, then see them fall
From out the clouds far, far below,
And droop and drift slow to and fro --
Dusk rainbows blending with the dew.

II

And had he won her? He had wed,
But now it was that he must woo,
Must keep alone his widowed bed
Or sit and woo the whole night through.
He plead. He could not touch her hand;
Her eyes held anger and command
And memories of a trustful time
He would have made her muck and slime.

III

He plead his perfect life, still plead;
But spurning him she mocking said:
"You would have trailed me in the dust
In very drunkenness of lust --
And now you dare to meekly plead
Your love of Light, your studious youth,
Your strenuous toil, your quest of truth,
Your perfect life! Indeed! Indeed!

IV

"Behold the pale, wan, outworn wife
Of him who pleads his perfect life!
Her step is slow, she waits for death;
Hear, hear her wan babe's hollow cry!
He scarce can cry above a breath.
Poor babe! begotten but to die,
Or, harder fate, live feebly on,
The shame of mother, curse of state --
Half-witted, worthless, jest of fate.

V

"Behold God's image, fashioned tall
As heaven, stooping down to crawl
Upon his belly as a snake,
Ere yet his sense is well awake,
Ere yet his force has come, ere yet
The child-wife knows but to regret.
And lo! the greatest is the least;
For man lies lower than the beast.

VI

"Such pity that sweet love should lie
Prone, strangled in its bed of shame,
And no man dare to publish why!
Such pity that in slain Love's name
The weak bring forth the weaker, bring
The leper, idiot, anything
That lawless passion can beget!
Sweet pity, pity for them all --
The child that cries, child-wife that dies,
The weakling that may linger yet
A feeble day to feebly fall --
As food for sword or cannon ball,
For prison wall or charity
Or fruit of gruesome gallows tree!

VII

"But pity most poor man, blind man,
Whose passions stoop him to a span.
Why, man, each well-born man was born
To dwell in everlasting morn,
To top the mountain as a tower,
A thousand years of pride and power;
To face the four winds with the face
Of youth until full length he lies --
Still God-like, even as he dies.

VIII

"Could I but teach lorn man to live,
But teach low man to truly love,
Could I but teach blind man to see,
How gladly he would turn to me
And give great thanks, and ever give
Glad heed, as to some soft-voiced dove.

IX

"The burning cities of the plain,
The high-built harlot, Babylon,
The bannered mur'ls of Rome un done,
That rose again and fell again
To ashes and to heaps of dust,
All died because man lived in vain,
Because man sold his soul to lust.

X

"And count what crimes have come of it!
I say all sins, or said or writ,
Lie gathered here in this dark pit
Of man's licentious, mad desire,
Where woman's form is ruthless thrown,
As on some sacrificial stone,
And burned as in a living fire,
To leave but ashes, rue, and ire.

XI

"Aye, even crimes as yet unnamed
Are born of man's degrading lust.
The wildest beast man ever tamed,
Or ever yet has come to know --
The vilest beast would feel disgust
Could it but know how low, how low
God's image sinks in muck and slime,
In crimes so deeper than all crime,
In slime that hath not yet a name,
And yet man knows no whit of shame!

XII

"Poor, weak, mad man, so halt, so blind!
Poor, weak, mad man that must carouse
And prostitute what he should house
And husband for his coming kind!
Behold the dumb beasts at glad morn,
Clean beasts that hold them well in hand!
How nobler thus to lord the land,
How nobler thus to love your race,
To house its health and strength and grace,
Than rob the races yet unborn
And build new Babylon to scorn!

XIII

"I say that each man has a right,
The right the beast has to be born
Full-flowered, beauteous, free and fair
As wide-winged bird that rides the air;
Not as a babe that cries all night,
Cries, cries in darkness for such Light
As man should give it at its birth.
I say that poor babe has a right,
The right, at least, of each wild beast --
Aye, red babe, black, white, west or east,

To rise at birth and lord the earth,
Strong-limbed, long-limbed, robust and free
As supple beast or towering tree.

XIV

"God's pity for the breasts that bear
A little babe, then banish it
To stranger hands, to alien care,
To live or die as chance sees fit.
Poor, helpless hands, reached anywhere,
As God gave them to reach and reach,
With only helplessness in each!
Poor little hands, pushed here, pushed there,
And all night long for mother's breast:
Poor, restless hands that will not rest
And gather strength to reach out strong
To mother in the rosy morn!
Nay, nay, they gather scorn for scorn
And hate for hate the lorn night long --
Poor, dying babe! to reach about
In blackness, as a thing cast out!

XV

"God's pity for the thing of lust
Who bears a frail babe to be thrust
Forth from her arms to alien thrall,
As shutting out the light of day,
As shutting off God's very breath!
But thrice God's pity, let us pray,
For her who bears no babe at all,
But, grinning, leads the dance of death.
That sexless, steel-braced breast of bone
Is like to some assassin cell,
A whited sepulchre of stone,
A graveyard at the gates of hell,
A mart where motherhood is sold,
A house of murders manifold!"





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