LOVE AND DEATH by CONDE BENOIST PALLEN

Watcher, whose eyes are fever bright
With peering through the dragging night,
See you the coming of the light?

Long have we waited for your word,
The revelation you have heard
From Nature's lips, like voices stirred

In Memnon's image, when the ray
Of morning smites his wakening clay
To music with the coming day.

The message that we hope from thee,
A new evangel, that will be
The death of foolish mystery.

Have you not plumbed the central deep
Of life, and sifted all the heap
In jealous Nature's guarded keep;

And all her labyrinth of dread
Traversed with Ariadne's thread,
Unmindful of the quick or dead?

We wait to hear the secret thing
You've plucked from Saturn's ruby ring,
The stellar message that you bring

From other worlds, communicate
With freedom from this lower state
Heavy with death and black with fate.

Beneath time's leaden mantle bowed,
With slow step creeps the anguished crowd
Under a heaven dark with cloud;

A way of toil, a path of fears
Barren with thorns and salt with tears,
How filmy our short span of years;

A gossamer athwart the face
Of upper and of nether space,
Like smoke to vanish from its place.

Grief in life's cup distills its gall;
The very sweets begin to pall,
And Death awaits to drain it all.

What joyous message yours to tell,
Who stand upon the pinnacle
Of knowledge, like a sentinel

Upon a leaguered city's tower,
Awaiting rescue's golden hour
Against the foe's encircling power:

See you, through shadows of the night,
The first faint flush of dawning light
Gleaming on armour burnished bright,

The van of armies marching down
To rescue of the fainting town
And victory's long awaited crown?

We weep, we suffer and we die;
Dumb is the earth and dumb the sky—
Feed not our hopes upon a lie!

The race you tell us is the flower
Of æons building with blind power
Up to the distant crowning hour:

I look upon the face of Death;
And Sorrow asks with sobbing breath:
What is the foolish thing he saith?

And stricken Love with lowly head
Stands dumb beside the silent dead;—
She heedeth not what he hath said.

What cares my Love for prophecy
Of unborn races; what to me
The ghostly dream of time to-be?

My Love but yesterday was born,
Blossomed a rose upon life's thorn,
And withered now, lies plucked and torn.

Why prate about millennial hours,
The far result of unknown powers,
When Death is scything 'mid the flowers?

Can you restore a single leaf
Once gathered in his crowded sheaf,
Or pluck the poisoned thorn of grief?

My love is more than love of race,
A single love for one dear face,
Now locked in Death's unloved embrace.

Upon the bier in Love's purview
Lies all the race Love ever knew;
There all the sweet in all the rue.

Love ever grows from one sole root,
And blossoms on a single shoot
Upburgeoning to perfect fruit.

Within the heart's red garden blows
The splendour of its queenly rose,
The single blossom that it knows.

Now lies my flower in Death's cold hand,
Its petals scattered on the strand,
And all the garden choked with sand.

I stand before time's ribbèd gate,
And wondering ask: Can love abate,
Is Death the final seal of fate?

Is Love but one sweet moment's bloom,
An instant's flash upon the gloom,
Then sudden ashes of the tomb?

Can you, who scan the secret ways
Of hidden systems through the maze
Of heavenly hieroglyphs ablaze

With myriad suns,—can you not read
Some answer in that luminous screed,
How Love from Death's iron bond is freed?

Or you, who search the rocky girth,
That ribs our ancient mother earth,
For traces of the primal birth;—

What answer to Love's questioning
From her dread wisdom can you wring,
What word to stir Hope's fluttering?

What gain to Love the garnered store
Of all your microscopic lore,
The little less or little more

Of knowledge, if it hold no key
To that abysmal mystery,
Which parteth now my love from me?

Nature you say is wheeling fast
Downward to that chaotic last,
When all the hours shall be but past,

And all time bound within its zone
Upon the void in ashes blown,
With Death sole victor on his throne.

Love turns with blinded eye away,
And gazing on the trestled clay,
Scarce knoweth now what she may say;

Her heart benumbed with some strange fear,
The word's hard meaning, dimly clear,
Sounds strange upon her anguished ear.

I take my love's cold hand and feel
Its icy numbness upward steal
Around my heart, and there congeal

In grief's deep frost, like winter's breath
On some lone pool upon the heath,
When all the ground lies white in death.

The lips are silent whence once came
The softened accents of my name
In discreet praise or loving blame:

There where I plucked the flower of speech,
The crumpled petals ashening bleach,
Though Love in anguish now beseech

One little word, one faintest stir,
Like breath upon a gossamer,
An echo whispered to aver

That out beyond this darkened year
Love lives and rules a nobler sphere,
Though Death stand sceptered tyrant here.

Alas! no hint, no murmured sigh
From those pale lips to make reply,
That Love herself is not to die!

Death only knows the dead are dead,
The body sinks, the life is sped,
And all we knew evanishèd.

O hollow creed and empty boast,
That failest when Love needs thee most,
A shattered wreck on Death's iron coast.

Love craves and seeks a fuller life;
Though all of Nature seems at strife
With her, and all her ways are rife

With signs of death, as broadcast leaves
On barren earth when autumn grieves,
Love heedeth not, but still believes

Beyond the grosser evidence
Of the time-stuffed and halting sense,
She yet shall find full recompense.

And from the ashes of her grief
A hidden hope puts forth a leaf,
That yet may burgeon for the sheaf,

Which Faith shall gather in the grain,
Sown in the furrows of her pain
To ripen for the harvest's gain.

And in that hope Death's stony face
Takes something of a softening grace,
Like light upon a barren place;

For stirring in her frosted heart,
Love feels the sudden pulses start,
New life in quickening throbbings dart

Its joyous anguish through each vein;
And all the winter of her pain
Weeps from her eyes like April rain.

A hope in death! O wondrous thing!
The desert's waste agreen with spring,
Death's very rood enblossoming!

Look up, O trembling Love, and see
The outstretched arms of that great tree,
Which crowns the brow of Calvary.

Here planted in Death's bitter root
Upspringeth the immortal shoot
To bear the glorious after-fruit.

Around the blood-stained Brow entwines
Death's barren coronal of spines,
Plucked from a waste of withered vines;

Lo, bathed within that quickening flood
Each sterile spike bursts into bud
And reddens into lustihood!

And looking now upon the bier,
My love no longer drops a tear,
For Death's vast mystery grows clear.

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