Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 2, CANTO 1, by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 2, CANTO 1, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: His triple star led on and on
Last Line: The bible, lid to lid, is true!
Alternate Author Name(s): Miller, Joaquin
Subject(s): Creation


I

His triple star led on and on,
Led up blue, bastioned Chilkoot Pass
To clouds, through clouds, above white clouds
That droop with snows like beaded strouds --
Above a world of gleaming glass,
Where loomed such cities of the skies
As only prophets look upon,
As only loving poets see,
With prophet ken of mystery.

II

What lone, white silence, left or right,
What whiteness, something more than white!
Such steel blue whiteness, van or rear --
Such silence as you could but hear
Above the sparkled, frosted rime,
As if the steely stars kept time
And sang their mystic, mighty rune --
. . . And oh, the icy, eerie moon!

III

What temples, towers, tombs of white,
White tombs, white tombstones, left and right,
That pushed the passing night aside
Toward where fallen stars had died --
Toward white tombs where dead stars lay --
White tombs more white, more bright than they;
White tombs high heaped white tombs upon --
White Ossa piled on Pelion!

IV

Pale, steel stars flashed, rose, fell again,
Then paused, leaned low, as pitying,
And leaning so they ceased to sing,
The while the moon, with mother care,
Slow rocked her silver rocking-chair.

V

Night here, mid-year, is as a span;
Thor comes, a gold-clad king of war,
Comes only as the great Thor can.
Thor storms the battlements and Thor,
Far leaping, clinging crowned upon,
Throws battle hammer forth and back
Until the walls blaze in his track
With sparks and it is sudden dawn --
Dawn, sudden, sparkling, as a gem --
A jeweled, frost-set diadem
Of diamond, ruby, radium.

VI

Two tallest, ice-tipt peaks take flame,
Take yellow flame, take crimson, pink,
Then, ere you yet have time to think,
Take hues that never yet had name.
Then turret, minaret, and tower,
As if to mark some mystic hour,
Or ancient, lost Masonic sign,
Take on a darkness like to night,
Deep night below the yellow light
That erstwhile seemed some snow-white tomb.
Then all is set in ghostly gloom,
As some dim-lighted, storied shrine --
As if the stars forget to stay
At court when comes the kingly day.

VII

And now the high-built shafts of brass,
Gate posts that guard the tomb-set pass,
Put off their crowns, rich robes, and all
Their sudden, splendid light let fall;
And tomb and minaret and tower
Again gleam as that midnight hour.
While day, as scorning still to wait,
Drives fiercely through the ice-built gate
That guards the Arctic's outer hem
Of white, high-built Jerusalem.

VIII

To see, to guess the great white throne,
Behold Alaska's ice-built steeps
Where everlasting silence keeps
And white death lives and lords alone:
Go see God's river born full grown --
The gold of this stream it is good:
Here grows the Ark's white gopher wood --
A wide, white land, unnamed, unknown,
A land of mystery and moan.

IX

Tall, trim, slim gopher trees incline,
A leaning, laden, helpless copse,
And moan and creak and intertwine
Their laden, twisted, tossing tops,
And moan all night and moan all day
With winds that walk these steeps alway.

X

The melancholy moose looks down,
A tattered Capuchin in brown,
A gaunt, ungainly, mateless monk,
An elephant without his trunk,
While far, against the gleaming blue,
High up a rock-topt ridge of snow,
Where scarce a dream would care to go,
Climb countless blue-clad caribou,
In endless line till lost to view.

XI

The rent ice surges, grinds and groans,
Then gorges, backs, and climbs the shore,
Then breaks with sudden rage and roar
And plunging, leaping, foams and moans
Swift down the surging, seething stream --
Mad hurdles of some monstrous dream.

XII

To see God's river born full grown,
To see him burst the womb of earth
And leap, a giant at his birth,
Through shoreless whiteness with wild shout --
A shout so sharp, so cold, so dread
You see, feel, hear, his sheeted dead --
'Tis as to know, no longer doubt,
'Tis as to know the eld Unknown,
Aye, bow before the great white throne.

XIII

White-hooded nuns, steeps gleaming white,
Lean o'er his cradle, left and right,
And weep the while he moans and cries
And rends the earth with agonies;
High ice-heaved summits where no thing
Has yet set foot or flashed a wing --
Bare ice-built summits where the white
Wide world is but a sea of white --
White kneeling nuns that kneel and feed
The groaning ice god in his greed,
And feed, forever feed, man's soul.
The full-grown river bounds right on
From out his birthplace tow'rd the Pole;
He knows no limit, no control:
He scarce is here till he is gone --
This sudden, mad, ice-born Yukon.

XIV

Beyond white plunging Chilkoot Pass,
That trackless Pass of stately tombs,
Of midday glories, midnight glooms,
Of morn's great gate posts, girt in brass --
This courtier, born to nature's court,
This comrade, peer of peaks, still kept
Companion with the stars and leapt
And laughed, the gliding sea of glass
Beneath his feet in merry sport.

XV

Then mute red men, the quick canoe,
Then o'er the ice-born surge and on,
Till gleaming snows and steeps were gone,
Till wide, deep waters, swirling, blue,
Received the sudden, swift canoe,
That leapt and laughed and laughing flew.

XVI

Then tall, lean trees, girth scarce a span,
With moss-set, moss-hung banks of gold
Most rich in hue, more gorgeous than
Silk carpetings of Turkestan:
Deep yellow mosses, rich as gold,
More gorgeous than the eye of man
Hath seen save in this wonderland --
Then flashing, tumbling, headlong waves
Below white, ice-bound, ice-built shores --
The river swept a stream of white
Where basalt bluffs made day like night.
And then they heard no sound, the oars
Were idle, still as grassy graves.

XVII

And then the mad, tumultuous moon
Spilt silver seas to plunge upon,
Possessed the land, a sea of white.
That white moon rivaled the red dawn
And slew the very name of night,
And walked the grave of afternoon --
That vast, vehement, stark mad moon!

XVIII

The wide, still waters, sedgy shore,
A lank, brown wolf, a hungry howl,
A lean and hungry midday moon;
And then again the red man's oar --
A wide-winged, mute, white Arctic owl,
A black, red-crested, screeching loon
That knew not night from middle noon,
Nor gold-robed sun from lean, lank moon --
That crazy, black, red-crested loon.

XIX

Swift narrows now, and now and then
A broken boat with drowning men;
The wide, still marshes, dank as death,
Where honked the wild goose long and loud
With unabated, angry breath.
Black swallows twittered in a cloud
Above the broad mosquito marsh,
The wild goose honked, forlorn and harsh;
Honked, fluttered, flew in warlike mood
Above her startled, myriad brood,
The while the melancholy moose,
As if to mock the honking goose,
Forsook his wall, plunged in the wave
And sank, as sinking in a grave,
Sank to his eyes, his great, sad eyes,
And watched, in wonder, mute surprise,
Watched broken barge and drowning men
Drift, swirl, then plunge the gorge again.

XX

Again that great white Arctic owl,
As pitying, it perched the bank
Where swirled a barge and swirling sank --
A drowned man swirling with white face
Low lifting from the swift whirlpool.
That distant, doleful, hilltop howl --
That screaming, crimson-crested fool!
And oh, that eerie, ice-made moon
That hung the cobalt tent of blue
And looked straight down, to look you through,
That dead man swirling in his place,
That honking, honking, huge gray goose,
That solitary, sad-eyed moose,
That owl, that wolf, that human loon,
And oh, that death's head, hideous moon!

XXI

And this the Yukon, night by night,
The yellow Yukon, day by day;
A land of death, vast, voiceless, white,
A graveyard locked in ice-set clay,
A graveyard to the Judgment Day.

XXII

On, on, the swirling pool was gone,
On, on, the boat swept on, swept on,
That moon was as a thousand moons!
Two dead men swirled, one swept, one sank --
Two wolves, two owls, two yelling loons!
And now three loons! How many moons?
How many white owls perch the shore?
Three lank, black wolves along the bank
That watch the drowned men swirl or sink!
Three screeching loons along the brink --
That moon disputing with the dawn
That dared the yellow, dread Yukon!

XXIII

And why so like some lorn graveyard
Where only owls and loons may say
And life goes by the other way?
Aye, why so hideous and so hard,
So deathly hard to look upon?
Because this cold, wild, dread Yukon,
Of gold-sown banks, of sea white waves,
Is but one land, one sea of graves.

XXIV

Behold where bones hang either bank!
Great tusks of beasts before the flood
That floated here and floating sank --
'Mid ice-locked walls and ice-hung steep,
With muck and stone and moss and mud,
Where only death and darkness keep!
Lo, this is death-land! Heap on heap,
By ice-strown strand or rock-built steep,
By moss-brown walls, gray, green or blue,
The Yukon cleaves a graveyard through!
Three thousand miles of tusk and bone,
Strown here, strown there, all heedless strown,
All strown and sown just as they lay
That time the fearful deluge passed,
Safe locked in ices to the last,
Safe locked, as records laid away,
To wait, to wait, the Judgment Day.

XXV

He landed, pierced the ice-locked earth,
He burned it to the very bone --
Burned and laid bare the deep bedstone
Placed at the building, at the birth
Of morn, and here, there, everywhere,
Such bones of bison, mastodon!
Such tusky monsters without name!
Great ice-bound bones with flesh scarce gone,
So fresh the wild dogs nightly came
To fight about and feast upon.
And gold along the bedrock lay
So bounteous below the bones
Men barely need to turn the stones
To fill their skins, within the day,
With rich, red gold and go their way.

XXVI

"The gold of that place it is good."
Lo, here God laid the Paradise!
Lo, here each witness of the flood,
Tight jailed in ice eternal, lies
To wait the bailiff's chorus call:
"Come into court, come one, come all!"
But why so cold, so deathly cold
The battered beasts, the scattered gold,
The pleasant trees of Paradise,
Deep locked in everlasting ice?

XXVII

Oyez! the red man's simple tale;
He says that once, o'er hill and vale
Ripe fruits hung ready all the year;
That man knew neither frost nor fear,
That bison wallowed to the eyes
In grass, that palm trees brushed the skies
Where birds made music all day long.
That then a great chief shaped a spear
Bone-tipt and sharp and long and strong,
And made a deadly moon-shaped bow,
And then a flint-tipt arrow wrought.
Then cunning, snake-like, creeping low,
As creeps a cruel cat, he sought
And in sheer wantonness he shot
A large-eyed, trusting, silly roe.
And then, exultant, crazed, he slew
Ten bison, ten tame bear and, too,
A harmless, long-limbed, shambling moose;
That then the smell of blood let loose
The passions of all men and all
Uprose and slew, or great or small --
Uprose and slew till hot midday
All four-foot creatures in their way;
Then proud, defiant, every one,
Shook his red spear-point at the sun.

XXVIII

Then God said, through a mist of tears,
"What would ye, braves made mad with blood?"
And then they shook their bone-tipt spears
And cried, "The sun it is not good! Too hot the sun, too long the day;
Break off and throw the end away!"

XXIX

Then God, most angered instantly,
Drew down the day from out the sky
And brake the day across his knee
And hurled the fragments hot and high
And far down till they fell upon
The bronzing waves of dread Yukon,
Nor spared the red men one dim ray
Of light to lead them on their way.

XXX

And then the red men filled the lands
With wailing for just one faint ray
Of light to guide them home that they
Might wash and cleanse their blood-red hands.

XXXI

But God said, "Yonder, far away
Down yon Yukon, your broken day!
Go gather it from out the night!
That fitful, fearful Northern Light,
Is all that ye shall ever know
To guide henceforth the way you go.

XXXII

"You shall not see my face again,
But you shall see cold death instead.
This land hath sinned, this land is dead;
You drenched your beauteous land in blood,
And now behold the wild, white rain
Shall fall until a drowning flood
Shall fill all things above, below,
To wash away the smell of blood,
And birds shall die and beasts be dumb,
When cold, the cold of death shall come
And weave a piteous shroud of snow,
In graveyard silence, ever so."

XXXIII

The red men say that then the rain
Drowned all the fires of the world,
Then drowned the fires of the moon;
That then the sun came not again,
Save in the middle summer noon,
When hot, red lances they had hurled
Are hurled at them like fiery rain,
Till Yukon rages like a main.

XXXIV

With bated breath these skin-clad men
Tell why the big-nosed moose foreknew
The flood; how, bandy-legged, he flew
Far up high Saint Elias: how
Down in the slope of his left horn,
The raven rested, night and morn;
How, in the hollow of his right,
The dove-hued moose-bird nestled low
Until they touched the utmost height;
How dove and raven soon took flight
And winged them forth and far away;
But how the moose did stay and stay,
His great sad eyes all wet with tears,
And keep his steeps two thousand years.

XXXV

He heard the half nude red men say,
Close huddled to the flame at night,
How in the hollow of a palm
A woman and a water rat,
That dreadful, darkened, drowning day,
Crept close and nestled in their fright;
And how a bear, tame as a lamb,
Came to them in the tree and sat
The long, long drift-time to the sea,
The while the wooing water rat
Made love to her incessantly;
How then the bear became a priest
And married them at last; how then
To them was born the shortest, least
Of all the children of all men,
And yet most cunning and most brave
Of all who dare the bleak north wave.

XXXVI

What tales of tropic fruit! No tale
But of some soft, sweet sensuous clime,
Of love and lovely maiden's trust --
Some peopled, pleasant, palm-hung vale
Of everlasting summer time --
And, then the deadly sin of lust;
Forbidden fruit, shame and disgust!

XXXVII

And whence the story of it all,
The palm land, love land and the fall?
Was't born of ages of desire
From such sad children of the snows
For something fairer, better, higher?
God knows, God knows, God only knows.
But I should say, hand laid to heart
And head made bare, as I would swear,
These piteous, sad-faced children there
Knew Eden, the expulsion, knew
The deluge, knew the deluge true!

XXXVIII

And what though this be surely so?
Just this: I know, as all men know,
As few before this surely knew --
Just this, and count it great or small,
The best of you or worst of you,
The Bible, lid to lid, is true!





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