THE HEADLAND by ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE

At the cliff's base he looked up, and there saw her
High on a headland, like a Venus risen
Above the earth to front the eternal skies;
And madness came upon him . . .

For this land
Was to him wholly alien; he had come
Wandering hither as to the world's last edge
In search of doubtful peace. Here where the coast
Jutted in cliffs and granite promontories
Over the seas, and took the flooding waters
Into the depths of labyrinthine caves
And weeded estuaries, here he walked
Day after day, a pilgrim whom no shrine
Yet had sufficed. But in the hardy bloom
Of heather on these hilltops, and in the bleak
Iron frugality of the huts that raised
Their thatches here and there, and in the gleam
Of rigor and resistance in the eyes
Of the few peasants, he caught sometimes sense
Of a strong bitterness that might save his soul.

Today with knapsack and half-blunted staff
He had once more set out along the shore,
Traversing sometimes the wide sand of bays
And sometimes scaling boulders where the crags
Had cast their wild detritus down to sea.
"Down from the heights," he thought, "the great crags moulder
In the assault of each indifferent year --
Heights like the ones that once within my spirit
Lifted their splendid precipice to confront
All stars and seas -- where now the incessant years
Gnaw them to drifting sand. What now remains
Is shamed by loftiness of these strong walls --
Walls strong as yet, though even while I watch
I know them mouldering seaward as do I.

"So speaks this land to me, -- this granite and iron, --
Of tragic fortune; yet in its defeat
Braced to resistance, nerved to high disaster
And an eternal sternness. Thus alone
With stoic hardness must the hills confront
Sky and the stars when all their flowers are gone
Under the sea-wind.

"Vanishing flower-world! . . .
Men toil and fight, love and contrive and dream,
And for a little while the mad illusion
Holds them. And then the beauty sickens away
Beneath the irony of the mortal fate,
Today's fate and tomorrow's. Till in the end
They must go down to the edge of the waste sea
And walk alone as I now walk alone . . ."

Then at the cliff's base, suddenly looking up
He saw upon the headland high above him
A woman's form. Her clear and upturned head
Fronted the ocean-plain; her streaming hair
Tossed in the sea-wind; in one drooping hand
Some snowy garment fluttered as she stood
Naked, sublime, exultant in the sun,
Drinking the lonely spaces. To her feet
Rose up the tawny bastion of the rock,
Scarred as by fires of ancient conflagration,
Higher than any sea-gull's questing flight
Above the low shore-levels; and beyond her
Trembled the deep blue of the summer sky.

And he at this mirage stood staring up
Incredulous. Then as her beauty mixed
With the sky's beauty and the rocks' and sea's
Within his heart, a swift tumultuous sense
Of joyfulness swept through him; he remembered
Suddenly songs that he had long forgotten,
And youthful dreams in moonlight-haunted fields,
And vague unrests that once had mastered him
In Autumn dusks. Out of these buried deeps
Now to the light stormed phantoms long-imprisoned
By bitter walls, -- a flash of the world's beauty
And a wild cry for happiness. There she stood,
Image of joy, a shout and a revelation.
Glory! Glory! Glory! Youth and the sun,
Life in its royal hour, there lifted up
Their pinnacle toward the sky; doubting and dust
Fell from him, as the triumphant leap of Summer
Here touched fulfillment.

Well he knew that she
Also, like the great cliffs, would crumble down
Slowly to formless clay: her proud young splendor
Would some day too yield to the lapping waves
Of time around her feet. But for this hour
She faced the sun, lordliest being of earth,
White and all-conquering. And her call rang out
Across the waves like the note of a silver trumpet
Fierce in his ears. He lifted his head in pride,
Once more awakened to the stirring charge
Of desperate living, -- once more marching forth
In the human army to assault the dark
Of chaos with its banner of dreams and beauty
And limitless desire.

Then from its shadows
His spirit toward the sun-lands sent its cry, --
"There is a wonder, still, keen in the world --
There is a splendor still: -- and on that height
I shall achieve it. There, with the wind and sea
Sending their mighty pulses up to us,
We shall know each other like gods meeting on peaks
Of some lost star, -- know the appointed hour
Toward which our lives have groped, -- and be at last
Victorious and transfigured. Where the abyss
Yawns down to death, there shall we meet and clasp
In one wild moment of ecstasy, -- rush together
Like grappling planets in the void, and be
For one hour, bloom of the world, -- for one hour, crown
Of the dim years of failure."

And thereafter,
As though he were lifted by the winds of the sea
Or the winds of his own spirit, he sprang up
toward the great cliff's base, and with quivering steps
Clambered from rock to rock. The iron front
Of the sheer wall obeyed him, as his dream
Drove him upward and upward. Dizzily below
Grew the long space; but never looking back
He set his passion toward the brow of the cliff.
The sharp-edged granite gnawed his clawing fingers;
And as his feet slipped, he more fiercely clung
And climbed and strove on irresistibly.
His heart beat riotously; his soul with song
Seemed shouting out its triumph, lost and shaken
With winds of heroic battle, -- mad and crying
Its flaming hymn of gratitude to have found
A wonder worth its passion of desire.

And slowly came the cliff's edge into view
High over him; then nearer; then he paused,
And with the deep breath of a swimmer plunging
Through a vast wave, he slowly raised himself
Up the last height, -- and there, across the edge
Of the brink, grew into sight the woman he sought.

Unconscious on the windy brink she stood,
Her head poised motionless, fronting up and out
Over the winds and waters. Her loosed hair
Would have been dark in cities, but here burned
Into a flame of deep dull-surfaced gold
Like dagger-handles from Etruscan tombs
Or smoldering poppies. A wide generous light
Across her brows swept, -- light that grandly spreads
Down lands of gradual valleys where the corn
And wine of the rich year ripen in silence.
Her eyes looked out wonderfully over-sea,
Quiet, emptied of meaning, now made one
With the vastness that they gazed on; and her lips
Stirred not but waited, parting as though a smile
Of mighty gladness sometime there should come.

Then he, a little rising, step by step,
Beheld her throat, columned in slender strength,
Blend with the powerful benignant shoulders
Of ancient statues, and the generous arms
Fitted for work of days or for the shelter
Of man's exhausted sleep. And from her throat
Slowly sloped the forward-swelling arc
In a proud dominance, smoothly, tranquilly,
Until its even mastery changed and broke
Into less perfect rondure, -- and reluctant
Trembled into new drooping curves of song.
And the long lines in echoing course swept downward
To meet the passionate strong springing contours
Of the carved thighs, that might have frozen to marble
Save for the quivering light that played across them.
And over the quiet valleys of her body
The living shadow slept as hurricanes sleep.

He poised in dreaming madness . . .

Then she turned
Slowly, unconsciously -- till her sudden eyes
Flashed into knowledge -- and a wild terror
Flickered like lightning on her face: she cowered
And clutched her arms to her body, dumb and panting, --
Shrank, -- faced him, -- turned, -- and shrank, -- and faced him again.
And he, poising upon that perilous edge,
Drunk with the dream of an immortal beauty
And a brief splendor of deathless joy, cried out --
"I too have heard the wind-call; I too am here,
Beautiful lover! We on the heights of the world
Meet, that the earth may blossom! this is the hour!"

And the bewildered fear grew in her face
From which the timeless womanhood had fallen
Leaving her but a girl, -- young, desperate, lost
In lonely agony. The triumphant head
Seemed drooping down now to the shaken breast --
The tremulous body paled; the light went out
That had filled her eyes. And he cried -- "Beautiful one!
Laugh! It has come."

She sank to the brown rock
And with a last look of deserted terror
And dim uncomprehending shame and cold
And weakness, hid her face in her quivering hands.

He saw the light go out, -- saw the proud form
Crumble into a sobbing heap, -- aware
That the sky darkened suddenly and the glow
Of the golden sun was vanished from the world.
Then his numbed fingers on the granite boulders
Slipped with a dull reluctance; and as they slipped
His heaven-soaring mind evoked once more
The wild and windy vision of the white woman
Against the fathomless blue of the blue sky, --
The light, the dream, the earth's transfiguration, --
As his frail body dashed from rock to rock.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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