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


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 2, CANTO 2, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The year waxed weary, gouty, old
Last Line: Lay on the yukon. Night had passed.
Alternate Author Name(s): Miller, Joaquin
Subject(s): Creation


I

The year waxed weary, gouty, old;
The crisp days dwindled to a span,
The dying year it fell as cold
As dead feet of a dying man.
The hard, long, weary work was done,
The dark, deep pits probed to the bone,
And each had just one tale to tell.
Ten thousand argonauts as one,
Agnostic, Christian, infidel,
All said, despite of creed or class,
All said as one, "As surely as
The Bible is, the deluge was,
Whate'er the curse, whate'er the cause!"

II

What merry men these miners were,
And mighty in their pent-up force!
They wrought for her, they fought for her,
For her alone, or night or day,
In tent or camp, their one discourse
The Love three thousand miles away,
The Love who waked to watch and pray.

III

Yet rude were they and brutal they,
Their love a blended love and lust,
Born of this later, loveless day;
You could but love them for their truth,
Their frankness and their fiery youth,
And yet turn from them in disgust,
To loathe, to pity, and mistrust.

IV

The Siege of Troy knew scarce such men,
Such hardy, daring men as they,
The coward had not voyaged then,
The weak had died upon the way.

V

They sang, they sang some like to this,
"I say risk all for one warm kiss;
I say 'twere better risk the fall,
Like Romeo, to venture all
And boldly climb to deadly bliss."

VI

I like that savage, Sabine way;
What mighty minstrels came of it!
Their songs are ringing to this day,
The bravest ever sung or writ;
Their loves the love of Juliet,
Of Portia, Desdemona, yea,
The old true loves are living yet;
And we, we love, we weep, we sigh,
In love with loves that will not die.

VII

Then take her, lover, sword in hand,
Hot-blooded and red-handed, clasp
Her sudden, stormy, tall and grand,
And lift her in your iron grasp
And kiss her, kiss her till she cries
From keen, sweet, happy, killing pain.
Aye, kiss her till she seeming dies;
Aye, kiss her till she dies, and then,
Why kiss her back to life again!

VIII

I love all things that truly love,
I love the low-voiced cooing dove
In wooing time, he woos so true,
His soft notes fall so overfull
Of love they thrill me through and through.
But when the thunder-throated bull
Upheaves his head and shakes the air
With eloquence and battle's blare,
And roars and tears the earth to woo,
I like his warlike wooing too.

IX

Yet best to love that lover is
Who loves all things beneath the sun,
Then finds all fair things in just one,
And finds all fortune in one kiss.

X

How wisely born, how more than wise,
How wisely learned must be that soul
Who loves all earth, all Paradise,
All people, places, pole to pole,
Yet in one kiss includes the whole!

XI

Give me a lover ever bold,
A lover clean, keen, sword in hand,
Like to those white-plumed knights of old
Whose loves held honor in the land;
Those men with hot blood in their veins
And hot, swift, iron hand to kill --
Those women loving well the chains
That bound them fast against their will;
Yet loved and lived -- are living still.

XII

Enough: the bronzed man launched his boat,
A faithful dwarf clutched at the oar,
And Boreas began to roar
As if to break his burly throat.

XIII

Down, down by basalt palisade,
Down, down by bleakest ice-piled isle!
The mute, dwarf water rat afraid?
The water rat it could but smile
To hear the cold, wild waters roar
Against his savage Arctic shore.

XIV

But now he listened, gave a shout,
A startled cry, akin to fear.
The hand of God had reached swift out
And locked, as in an iron vise,
The whole white world in blue-black ice,
And daylight scarce seemed living more.
The day, the year, the world, lay dead.
With star-tipt candles foot and head;
Great stars, that burn a whole half year,
Stood forth, five-horned, and near, so near!

XV

The ghost-white day scarce drew a breath,
The dying day shrank to a span;
There was no life save that of man
And woolly dogs -- man, dogs, and death!
The sun, a mass of molten gold,
Surged feebly up, then sudden rolled
Right back as in a beaten track
And left the white world to the moon
And five-horned stars of gleaming gold;
Such stars as sang in silent rune --
And oh, the cold, such killing cold
As few have felt and none have told!

XVI

And now he knew the last dim light
Lay on yon ice-shaft, steep and far,
Where stood one bold, triumphant star,
And he would dare the gleaming height,
Would see the death-bed of the day,
Whatever fate might make of it.
A foolish thing, yet were it fit
That he who dared to love, to say,
To live, should look the last of Light
Full in the face, then go his way
All silent into lasting night
As he had left her, on her height?

XVII

He climbed, he climbed, he neared at last
The Golden Fleece of flitting Light!
When sudden as an eagle's flight --
An eagle frightened from its nest
That crowns the topmost, rock-reared crest --
It swooped, it drooped, it, dying, passed.

XVIII

As when some sunny, poppy day
The Mariposa scatters gold
The while he takes his happy flight,
Like star dust when the day is old,
So passed his Light and all was night.

XIX

Some star-like scattered flecks of gold
Flashed from the far and fading wings
That kept the sky, like living things --
Then oh, the cold, the cruel cold!
The light, the life of him had past,
The spirit of the day had fled;
The lover of God's first-born, Light,
Descended, mourning for his dead.
The last of light, the very last
He deemed that he should look upon
Until God's everlasting dawn
Beyond this dread half year of night
Had fled forever from his sight.

XX

'Twas death to go, thrice death to stay.
Turn back, go southward, seek the sun?
Yea, better die in search of light,
Die boldly, face set forth for day,
As many dauntless men have done,
Than wail at fate and house with night.

XXI

Some woolly dogs, a low, dwarf-chief --
His trained thews stood him now in stead --
Broad snow-shoes, skins, a laden sled. --
That moon was as a brazen thief
That dares to mock, laugh, and carouse!
It followed, followed everywhere;
He hid his face, that moon was there.
Such painful light, such piteous pain!
It broke into his very brain,
As breaks a burglar in a house.

XXII

Scarce seen, a change came, slow, so slow!
That moon sank slowly out of sight,
The lower world of gleaming white
Took on a somber band of woe,
A wall of umber 'round about,
So dim at first you could but doubt,
That change there was, day after day --
Nay, nay, not day, I can but say
Sleep after sleep, sleep after sleep --
That band grew darker, deep, more deep,
Until there girt a dense dark wall,
A low, black wall of ebon hue,
Oppressive, deathlike as a pall;
It walked with you, close compassed you,
While not one thread of light shot through.
Above the black a gird of brown
Soft blending into amber hue,
And then from out the cobalt blue
Great, massive, golden stars swung down
Like tow'rd lights of mountain town.

XXIII

At last the moon moved gaunt and slow,
Half veiled her hollow, hungry face
In amber, kept unsteady pace
High up her star-set wall of snow,
Nor scarcely deigned to look below.

XXIV

Then far beyond, above the night,
Above the umber, amber hue,
Above the lean moon's blare and blight,
One mighty ice shaft shimmered through;
One gleaming peak, as white, as lone
As you could think the great white throne
Stood up against the cobalt blue,
And kept companion with the stars
Despite dusk walls or umber bars.

XXV

That wall, that hideous prison wall,
That blackness, umber, amber hue,
It cumbers you, encircles you,
It mantles as a hearse's pall.
Your eyes lift to the star-pricked sky,
You lift your frosted face, you pray
That e'en the sickly moon might stay
A time, if but to see you die.
Yet how it blinds you, body, soul!
You can no longer keep control.
Your feebled senses fall astray:
You cannot think, you dare not say.

XXVI

And now such under gleam of light,
Such blazing, flaming, frightful glare;
Such sudden, deadly, lightning gleam,
Some like a monstrous, mad nightmare --
Such hideous light, born of such night!
It burst, with changeful interval,
From out the ice beneath the wall,
From out the groaning, surging stream
That breathed, or tried to breathe, in vain,
That struggled, strangled, shrieked with pain!
'Twas as if he of Patmos read,
Sat by with burning pen and said,
With piteous and prophetic voice,
"The earth shall pass with rustling noise."

XXVII

Swift out the ice-crack, fiery red,
Swift up the umber wall and back,
Then 'round and 'round, up, down and back,
The sudden lightning sped and sped,
Until the walls hung burnished red,
An instant red, then yellow, white,
With something more than earthly light.

XXVIII

It blinds your eyes until they burn,
Until you dare not look or turn,
But think of him who saw and told
The story of, the glory of,
The jasper walls, the streets of gold,
Where trails God's unseen garments' hem
The holy New Jerusalem.

XXIX

Then while he trudged he tried to think --
And then another sudden light,
Or red or yellow, blue or white,
Burst up from out the very brink
Of where he passed and, left or right,
It burnished yet again the walls!
Then up, straight up against the stars
That seemed as jostled, rent with jars!
Then silent night. Where next and when?
Then blank, black interval, and then --
And oh, those blank, dread intervals,
This writing on the umber walls!

XXX

The blazing Borealis passed,
The umber walls fell down at last
And left the great cathedral stars, --
The five-horned stars, blent, burnished bars
Of gold, red, gleaming, blinding gold --
And still the cold, the killing cold!

XXXI

The moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e'er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared
The fearful meaning, the mad pain,
The weary eyes, the poor, dazed brain
That came at last to feel, to see.
The dread, dead touch of lunacy.

XXXII

How loud the silence! Oh, how loud!
How more than beautiful the shroud
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth
Above the black, slow-moving pall
As at some fearful funeral!

XXXIII

The moon blares as mad trumpets blare
To marshaled warriors long and loud:
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud,
But oh, beware that moon, beware
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare!

XXXIV

Beware white silence more than white!
Beware the five-horned starry rune;
Beware the groaning gorge below;
Beware the wide, white world of snow,
Where trees hang white as hooded nun --
No thing not white, not one, not one,
But most beware that mad white moon.

XXXV

All day, all day, all night, all night --
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day.
Just whiteness, whiteness, ghastly white
Made doubly white by that mad moon
And strange stars jangled out of tune!

XXXVI

At last he saw, or seemed to see,
Above, beyond, another world.
Far up the ice-hung path there curled
A red-veined cloud, a canopy
That topt the fearful ice-built peak
That seemed to prop the very porch
Of God's house; then, as if a torch
Burned fierce, there flashed a fiery streak,
A flush, a blush on heaven's cheek!

XXXVII

The dogs sat down, men sat the sled
And watched the flush, the blush of red.
The little woolly dogs they knew,
Yet scarce knew what they were about.
They thrust their noses up and out,
They drank the Light, what else to do?
Their little feet, so worn, so true,
Could scarce keep quiet for delight.
They knew, they knew, how much they knew,
The mighty breaking up of night!
Their bright eyes sparkled with such joy
That they at last should see loved Light!
The tandem sudden broke all rule,
Swung back, each leaping like a boy
Let loose from some dark, ugly school --
Leaped up and tried to lick his hand --
Stood up as happy children stand.

XXXVIII

How tenderly God's finger set
His crimson flower on that height
Above the battered walls of night!
A little space it flourished yet,
And then His angel, His first-born,
Burst through, as on that primal morn!

XXXIX

His right hand held a sword of flame,
His left hand javelins of light;
And swift down, down, right down he came!
His bright wings wide as the wide sky,
And right and left, and hip and thigh,
He smote the marshaled hosts of night
With all his majesty and might.

XL

The scared moon paled and she forgot
Her pomp and pride and turned to fly.
The ice-heaved palisades, the high
Heaved peaks that propped God's house, the stars
That flamed above the prison bars,
As battle stars with fury fraught,
Were burned to ruin and were not.

XLI

Then glad earth shook her raiment wide,
And free and far, and stood up tall,
As some proud woman, satisfied,
Forgets, and yet remembers all.
She stood exultant, till her form,
A queen above some battle storm,
Blazed with the glory, the delight
Of battle with the hosts of night.
And night was broken. Light at last
Lay on the Yukon. Night had passed.





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