Ernest McGaffey

COSMOS

ONE

I

Go search the æons an you will

Where withered leaves of Doubt are whirled,

And who hath solved this riddle, Life,

Or Death—that moves with sails unfurled,

Beyond the straining eyes of man

Marooned upon an unknown world.

II

Nor tongue hath told, nor vision caught

That paradox, Primeval Cause;

Each age has had some parable

Each age succeeding marked the flaws;

While shifted, with the calendar,

What men have termed generic laws.

III

Creed after creed behold them now

Like Etna on Vesuvius piled;

Till, scaled to earth by drifting sands

They lie in later days reviled,

And pushed aside by Time's rough hand

As toys are, by a peevish child.

IV

For Priest-made doctrine reads grotesque.

And earthly worship is but dross;

Whether it be your Brahm of Ind

Or squat and hideous Chinese Joss;

Or Jove, aloft on cloud-capped throne

Or the pale Christ upon his cross.

V

Why question still the blindfold graves

Or pluck the veil of Isis dread?

Over Death's icy mystery

A pall immutable is spread;

And never tear-wrung agony

Shall move the lips we loved—once dead.

VI

Why grope in labyrinthian maze?

Why palter thus with doubt and fear?

The Past is but the mollusc print

The Future looms, a barrier sheer;

The Present centers in To-day

The hope for men is Now, and Here.

VII

Believe no scientific cant

That man descended from the ape;

Gorilla-like once beat his breast

And grew at last to human shape,

To watch the flocks, and till the fields,

Harry the seas and bruise the grape.

VIII

For though enrobed in savage skins

And though his forehead backward ran,

The brute was not all-dominant

Some spark revealed a Primal plan;

His brain was coupled with his will

The hairy mammal still was man.

IX

And ever as the cycles waned

He came and went, he rose and fell,

At times transformed, as butterflies

That rise from chrysalis in the cell;

And oft through hate and ignorance

Sunk downward deep as fabled Hell.

X

But through it all, and with it all

How-e'er the upward trending veers,

He fought his fight against great odds

He peopled ice-bound hemispheres,

Endured the sweltering Torrid Zones

And stamped his impress on the years.

TWO

I

What romance hast thy childhood known

Of God-made world in seven days?

Of woven sands and swaying grass

And bird and beast in forest ways,

Of panoramas vast unrolled

Before a stern Creator's gaze?

II

Of rivers ribboning the vales;

Of plains that stretched in smoothness down,

And unborn seasons yet to be

Spring's violet banks, and Autumn's brown;

Bright Summer, mistress of the sun,

And grey-beard Winter's boreal crown.

III

And when at length the scheme complete

Unfolded to the Maker's sight,

How He, Almighty and divine

Said in his power, "Let there be light!"

Gave sun and moon, and sowed the stars

Along the furrows of the night!

IV

Lo! every nation has its tale

And every people, how they be;

Whether where Southern zephyrs loose

The blooms from off the tamarind tree,

Or where the six-month seasons bide

Around the cloistered Polar sea.

V

And Science with unyielding scales

Weighs each and all of varied styles;

And like a Goddess molds decrees

Oblivious both to tears or smiles;

Points out the error, reads the rule

And God with Nature reconciles.

VI

But who shall sift the false and true?

What Oracle the rule enforce?

Not man-made creed, nor man-learned law

Is wise to fathom Nature's course;

No sea is deeper than its bed

No stream is higher than its source.

VII

Vain hope to solve the Infinite!

Mere words to babble, when they say

"Thus Science teaches,"—"thus our God"—

Thus this or that—what of it, pray?

The marvel overlapping all—

Go ask the Sphynx of Yesterday.

VIII

We know the All, and nothing know;

The great we ken as well as least;

But sum it all when we have said

That man is different from the beast;

And spite of all Theology

The Pagan's equal to the Priest.

IX

And globes will lapse, and suns expire;

As stars have fallen, worlds can change;

Forever shall the centuries roll

And roving planets tireless range;

And Life be masked in secrecy

With Death, as ever, passing strange.

X

And trow not, Mortal, in thy pride

That where yon beetling column stands

Rests Permanence; 'twill disappear

To sink in marsh or barren lands,

Where bitterns boom, or sunlight stares

Across the immemorial sands.

THREE

I

Of old when man to being came

He fashioned Gods of brittle bone;

Bowed down to wooden fetiches

Or worshipped idols carved from stone;

And, locked in Superstition's grasp

For sacrifice made lives atone.

II

And Fear was then the Higher Law

And fleshly joys the aftermath;

He knew no screed of Righteousness

And trod no straight and narrow path;

His Deity a terror was

A Demon winged with might and wrath.

III

And then where Nilus dipped his feet

By Egypt sands, rose temples tall

To Isis and Osiris—Ptah—

And many a God foredoomed to fall;

Where sank the shades of Pharaoh's reign?

Whence have they vanished, one and all?

IV

But whiles to other years advanced

And now by cosmic marvels won,

Men sought remote Pelagian shores

Where breeze and spray their tapestry spun,

To wait the coming of the day

And there adore the rising sun.

V

This passed; the Gods of Greece and Rome

In splendor thronged the earth and skies;

Jove, with the thunders in his hand

Apollo of the star-lit eyes,

Aurora, Priestess of the Dawn

And Pan of haunting melodies,—

VI

And countless more; their temples fair

Where reverent Pagans curved the knee,

Mid sweet, perpetual summer stood

While murmured as the murmuring bee,

The lulling sweep of listless brine

Beside the green Ægean sea.

VII

And merged in island-wooded calms

By towering groves of ancient oak,

where Triton's charging cavalry

Against the cliffs of Britain broke,

With horrid rite of human blood

The Celtic Druids moved and spoke.

VIII

Still wheeled the cycles; still did men

With new religions make them wise;

Mahomet rose magnificent

As rainbow in the eastern skies;

With Seven Heavens of Koran taught

And Houris with the sloe-black eyes.

IX

Brahm, Baal, Dagon, Moloch, Thor,

And legions more had long sufficed;

Heavens in turn with bliss diverse

And Hells with ebon glaciers iced;

And latest on celestial scrolls

The prophets wrote the name of Christ.

X

We need them not; No! each and all

Will load Tradition's dusty shelf;

As shattered Idols, put away

To lie forgot like broken delf;

Humanity is over all!

And Man's redemption in himself.

FOUR

I

The morning stars together sang

So runs the story, in that time,

When groves were loud with melody

And ripples danced to liquid rhyme;

Far in the embryonic spheres

Before the earth was in her prime.

II

Then first the feline-padded gales

Unleashed and prowling journeyed free,

To purr amid the cowering grass

Or roar in stormy jubilee,

Or, joining in with Ocean, growl

A hoarse duet of wind and sea.

III

And where by meadowy rushes dank

The yellow sunbeams thick were sown,

And brooks flowed down through April ways

O'er pebbled bar and shingly stone,

There first welled up in gurgling strain

The lisping current's monotone.

IV

And oft was heard, in forest aisles

Where rocking trees of leaves were thinned,

And drear November wandered lorn

With wild wide eyes and hair unpinned,

A wailing harp of minor chords

Struck by the strong hands of the wind.

V

And Man, through imitative art,

With clumsy tool and method crude,

Copied these echoes as he might

To soothe him in his solitude;

And when that other sound was dumb

His reed-notes quavered music rude.

VI

And as the gentler graces came

To vivify barbaric night,

So Poesy, with singing Lyre,

Descended from Parnassian height,

With constellations aureoled

Her raiment wove of flowing light.

VII

And in Man's heart a thrill leaped up;

His eye was lit by prophet gleams;

He sought the truth of When and How

He voiced the lyrics of the streams;

His beard was tossed, his locks were gray

His soul beneath the spell of dreams.

VIII

Thus numbers came; and Poets lived

To chant the glories of the Race;

Their rhyme on limp papyrus roll

Or etched on crumbling pillar's base,

Has long outlived the Kings they sung

And conquered even Time and Space.

IX

Aye! vain the vaunt of Heroes; vain

The deeds that once were thought sublime;

And vain your Monarchs, briefly staged

In tinselled royal pantomime;

Their House was builded on the sands

And they unworth a random rhyme.

X

Vain are the works of man; most vain

His bubbled Glory, Aye! or Fame;

More fragile than a last-year's leaf

Unnoticed of the sunset's flame;

And naught endures unless it stands

Linked with a deathless Poet's name.

FIVE

I

How flourished then the lesser arts

As man to manhood slowly grew?

With blackened stick from ruddy fires

That on his cave reflections threw,

He scrawled the rock which sheltered him

And thus the first rude picture drew.

II

And catching hints from Nature's lore

He squeezed his colors from the clay;

Steeped leaf and bark, and dyed the skins

That round about his dwelling lay;

And, urged by vanity, his cheeks

Were daubed with dash of pigments gay.

III

So, ever as the seasons died

His mind expanded with his will;

He saw the dry leaves touched with gold

And grass grow tawny on the hill;

Found etchings on the ruffled streams

And marked the sunset's hectic thrill.

IV

And dreaming thus, with defter skill

He fast employed his nights and days,

Spun magic webs of chequered lights

And limned October's purple haze;

While women's faces from his brush

Fired, like wine, the se'er's gaze.

V

Until at last was handed down

Beyond the treasure-trove of Greece,

Beyond the strain that Sappho sung

And reveries of the Golden Fleece,

The art of Titian, Rubens, Thal,

And Tintoretto's masterpiece.

VI

Thus, too, as man with curious eye

Had noted outline, curve, and form,

In toppling surge or lofty crag

In woman's bosom beating warm,

In cloudy shapes revealed on high

Intaglios of the wind and storm,—

VII

He modelled from the plastic loam;

On shell and boulder graved a sign;

Chiselled the stately obelisks

With hieroglyphics, line on line;

Colossal wrought his haughty Kings

Or metal-traced the clambering vine.

VIII

And many an image was his work

And many a statuette and bust;

Some that remain, but most that lie

As shards to outer darkness thrust;

These buried under coral sands

Those cloaked beneath forgotten dust.

IX

Upon the lonely washes that stretch

Where the Egyptian rivers croon,

And floats above the Pyramids

On tropic nights the lifeless moon,

The mightiest waits,—the brooding Sphynx—

Half-lion and half Daemon hewn.

X

So Sculpture, pierced in mountain sides

Or dragged from Mythologic seas,

Still holds a sway; and worlds will bow

In homage yet to such as these—

The noble bronze by Phidias wrought,

The marbles of Praxiteles.

SIX

I

To those who for their country bleed

To those who die for freedom's sake,

All Hail! for them the Immortal dawns

In waves of lilied silver break;

For them in dusky-templed night

The eternal stars a halo make.

II

In History's tome their chronicle

An ever-living page shall be;

The souls who flashed like sabers drawn

The men who died to make men free;

Their flag in every land has flown

Their sails have whitened every sea.

III

On gallows high they met their doom

Or breasted straight the serried spears

Of Tyranny; in dungeons damp

Scarred on the stones their name appears;

For them the flower of Memory

Shall blossom, watered by our tears.

IV

But Conquest, Glory, transient Fame,

What baubles these to struggle for,

When draped in sulphurous films uprise

The cannon-throated fiends of War!

What childish trumpery cheap as this—

The trophies of a Conqueror?

V

How many an army marches forth

With bugle-note or battle-hymn,

To drench the soil in human gore

And multiply Golgothas grim;

And all for what? a Ruler's pique

Religion's call, or Harlot's whim.

VI

And ghastliest far among them all

Where torn and stained the thirsty sod

With carnage reeks—where standards fly,

And horses gallop, iron-shod,

Are those remorseless mockeries

The wars they wage in name of God.

VIII

Vague, dim and vague, and noiselessly,

The Warrior's triumphs fade like haze;

And building winds have heaped the sands

O'er monuments of martial days;

While Legend throws a flickering gleam

Where the tall Trojan towers blaze.

VIII

Yea! whether sought for Woman's face

Or, Conquest-seeking, seaward poured,

Or at the beck of Holy Church

War still shall be the thing abhorred;

And they who by the sword would live

Shall surely perish by the sword.

IX

Yet whether at Thermopylæ

Where battled the intrepid Greek,

Or Waterloo—their quarry still

The red-eyed ravening vultures seek;

Where prowl the jackal and the fox

And the swart raven whets his beak.

X

And somewhere, though by Alien seas

The tide of Hate unceasing frets;

For dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn

The red sun rises, no, nor sets,

Save where the wraith of War is seen

Above her glittering bayonets.

SEVEN

I

How fared the body when the soul

In olden days had taken flight?

Had passed as through a shutter slips

A trembling shaft of summer light!

And all that once was Life's warm glow

Had sudden changed to dreadful night!

II

How fared the mourners; how the Priest;

How spoken his funereal theme?

What dirges for the Heroic dead

What flowers to soften death's extreme?

Was Life to them a wayside Inn

Death the beginning of a dream?

III

We cannot know; except by tales

Caught in the traveller's flying loom,

Or carven granite friezes found

Or parchment penned in convent gloom;

Or here and there, defying Time

Some long-dead Emperor's giant tomb.

IV

Where tower the steep Egyptian cones

By couriers of the storm bestrid,

Wrapped in his blackening cerements

Sahura lies in shadow hid,

While billowy sand-curves rise and dash

Like surf, against his Pyramid.

V

And on the bald Norweyan shores

When Odin for the Viking came,

A ship was launched, and on it placed

With solemn state, the Hero's frame;

The torch applied, and sent to sea,

A double burial,—wave and flame.

VI

And when the Hindu Prince lay prone—

In final consecration dire

His Hindu Princess followed on

And climbed the blazing funeral pyre,

To stand in living sacrifice

Transfigured in her robes of fire.

VII

Where the red Indian of the Plains

To the Great Spirit bowed his head,

On pole-built scaffold, Eagle-plumed,

The painted warrior laid his dead;

Beneath, the favorite charger slain

And by the Chief his weapons spread.

VIII

We clothe our dead in modish dress

Dust unto dust the Preacher saith,

The church-bells toll, the organ peals,

And mourners wait with ebbing breath;

Oh! grave, this is thy mockery,

The weird farce-comedy of Death.

IX

Nay! burn the shell with simplest rites;

Scatter its ashes to the skies;

And on the stairways of the clouds

In winding spirals let it rise;

What needs the soul of mortal garb

Whether in Hell or Paradise?

X

Aye! lost and gone; what cares the corse

When Death unfolds his sable wings,

Whether it rest in wind-swept tree

Or where the deep-sea echo rings?

Be laid to sleep in Potter's Field

Or lone Iona's cairn of Kings?

EIGHT

I

Above unsightly city roofs

Where smoky serpents trail the sky,

Broods Commerce; in her factories

A million clacking shuttles fly;

Where, choked with lint, in sickly air

The little children droop and die.

II

The rattling clash of jarring wheels

Against the windows echoing beats;

And when the pallid gas-jets flare

Where sombre night with twilight meets,

Like flotsam on the stream of Fate

The toiler's myriads crowd the streets.

III

With hiving tumult to and fro

Trade's devotees, a hurrying mass,

Through the long corridor of years

In due procession rise and pass;

To earn their wage, to seek their goal

And melt, like dew-drops on the grass.

IV

And here, within the age of Gain

Our forest-masted harbors shine

With shimmering fleets; and we go on

To climes afar of palm and vine,

And in the warp of Traffic weave

A sinister and base design,

V

Of mild and hapless Islanders

Who fall before our soldiers' aim;

Of broken faith—of sophistries—

Of sin, of blood-shed, and of shame;

Oh! Commerce, Commerce, who shall tell

The crimes committed in thy name.

VI

Turn, turn my Fancy, inland borne

Where Nature's solace shall not fail

To ease the heart; view skyey seas

Where cloud armadas, sail on sail,

Manned by the winds go warping down

Below the far horizon's trail.

VII

And as the budding willows blow

When March comes whirling past the lanes,

With bird-note wild, and fifing winds

And undertone of sibilant rains,

On slopes where Winter's garment melts

Blue as the sea are violet stains.

VIII

Where cattle seek the shaded pools

And silence folds the sun-burned lands,

Her auburn tresses backward flung

Mid-Summer, like to Ceres stands,

Beside the fields of waving grain

With harvest-apples in her hands.

IX

And stealthily through winnowing dusk

I see the curling smoke ascend,

Where lie the farms; and evermore

Where hope, and health, and manhood blend;

While stubble shorn and pastures bare

Proclaim the waning season's end.

X

And as beyond the naked hills

The chill November sunset dies,

And cloudward now a phalanx swims

Where guttural honking fills the skies,

Black-sculptured on approaching night

And southward bound, the wild-goose flies.

NINE

I

Behold the kindred human types

Tribe, Sept, and class, Race, Caste, and Clan;

Red, Black and Yellow; White and Brown;

Processions of Primordial Man

That wax apace, and stream across

In one unending caravan.

II

The Fisher-People with their shells

And dwellers of the Age of Stone;

The Kirghiz of the Western Steppes

The Greek, the Turk, the Mongol shown,

The Goth, the Frank,—I see them pass

Like flash-lights by a mirror thrown.

III

So, too, the Arab, burnoose clad

Who braves the stifling Simoon dry,

Adrift upon Saharan tides

His awkward camels lurching high,

Long, lank, uncouth, but staunch as Death,

Ships of the Desert, sailing by.

IV

Note the Caucasian in his pride

Who prates of moldy pedigrees;

A mushroom he, compared in Eld

To the impassive, sly Chinese;

Their records co-extant with Time

And swarming by the sundown seas.

V

Each comes and goes; as came and went

Rameses' millions; in their day

What boast was made of Egypt's Kings

How God-like seemed their valorous play;

But cynic years dispersed their line

Swift hurried with the winds away.

VI

Aye! even as motes they had their grace

For a brief moment, son and sire;

Then passed; as foam that sinks at sea

Or chords which flee the Minstrel's lyre;

Where rot the walls by Sidon raised?

And where the long-lost hulls of Tyre?

VII

And all men listen in their turn

To the same Sirens; greed of Gain—

Love—Hate—Revenge—the lust of Power—

And craze o'er fellow-man to reign—

Ambition's lure—these intertwine

Like links that form an endless chain.

VIII

Since Power is but the instant's clutch

And naught so trivial as a Name,

What crucial proof shall fix men's worth

On lasting tablets write their claim;

So that their memories may fill

A niche within the walls of Fame?

IX

The test is not of Birth nor Race

Since each is worthy of his hire;

It rests in what men do for men

Uplifted by the soul's desire,

To tread Life's fiery furnaces

And save their brothers from the fire.

X

And ranging far and searching deep

However though the annals be,

We find but one nigh faultless man

There was none other such as He;

The Jew who taught and practiced Love

The man who walked by Galilee.

TEN

I

Enough my Muse; thy message cast

As stone from out a sling is hurled,

Let drop to night; or re-appear

Where morning's gathering grey is pearled,

And the bent sun, like Sisyphus,

Toils laboring up the underworld.

II

Let be; thy wisdom knoweth well

The just degrees of right and wrong;

Although mayhap unmarked by men

Shall fall the echoes of thy song;

Unheeded by the pilgrim years

Unrecked of, by the heedless throng.

III

And yet before the highways part

And thou and I in darkness dwell,

Do thou thy swiftest Herald send

And this as final warning tell;

'Banish all hope of gilded Heaven

And laugh to scorn the fires of Hell'.

IV

Phantasmal dance those dual sprites

Mere witch-craft mummeries of the brain;

The lying sorcery of the Priests

A worldly influence to retain;

Where shalt thou go? What quest is thine?

Where falls the single drop of rain?

V

But Courage, Faith, and Constancy,

The cardinal virtues as I deem,

May well be worshipped, as indeed

The lilies of the soul they seem;

Undying in their fragrance rare

And glassed upon a sacred stream.

VI

Know thou, the Ideal Harmony

That fills all space, below, above,

Is not in Creed, nor Form, nor Rite

Nor in those things thou dreamest of;

But holds within its breadth and scope

The sole and only note of Love.

VII

Reject all Creeds; and yet in each

Seek such material as thou can,

With here a tenet, there a thought

Whether it sprang from Christ or Pan;

And make the key-stone of thy arch

The common brotherhood of Man.

VIII

And striving thus, a happier creed

In time to come shall burst its bud,

The pure air cleared of battle-smoke

And war no more by field and flood;

Where men can lift up guiltless hands

Uncrimsoned by a brother's blood.

IX

When nevermore in calm or storm

Shall hawk-like hover on the seas,

The canvas of opposing ships

Their pennants floating to the breeze;

And golden hopes will supersede

The apples of Hesperides.

X

When man-emancipated man

Through loftier purpose wins control;

With Justice as his only God

To reign supreme o'er heart and soul;

And Love, sun-like, illuminates

The one, the true, the perfect whole.

NOTES TO COSMOS

Notes to Cosmos

Certain stanzas once intended for the original are here given. They are set down according to the chapters in which they were to have appeared.

Chapter Two

Of trees that stirred in early Spring

The slow sap moving in their veins;

Of flowers that dyed the woodland slopes

The primrose pale, and daisy-chains;

Sun-kissed betimes, or overmourned

By shimmery tears of sobbing rains.

Chapter Four

And all night long the restless sea

Against its barriers rose and fell,

Till grey-eyed Dawn, by lonely sands

Saw flash and fade the last broad swell,

Before her there the ebb-tide's gleam

And at her feet a murmuring shell.

And then were heard the Elder Bards

In full, Prophetic tone sublime,

Their eyes ablaze with ecstacy

And on their lips the living rhyme;

King-honored in an age of Kings

And on their beards the frosts of Time.

Chapter Eight

And when a-down the bare brown lanes

Pattered the swift, white feet of Spring,

I saw the velvet-golden flash

That marked the yellow-hammer's wing

A-curve on high; and later heard

The robin, and the blue-bird sing.

Far seaward on unnumbered isles

Mid scent of spice and drowsy balm,

The lotos-eating Islanders

Lay soothed to sleep by utter calm;

Low at their feet the pulsing tides

And o'er their heads the tufted palm.

Chapter Nine

Stark warriors of the Age of Stone

With pristine valor all elate,

Who sought and slew the great Cave Bear

And robbed the tigress of her mate;

And, weaponed with the ax and spear,

Defied the towering mammoth's hate.

And slant-eyed Mongols, yellow-skinned,

Who traversed Western Steppes afar,

Drank mare's milk, and observed their flocks

White-clustered 'neath the Morning Star;

Or, sallying forth with lance and bow

Engaged in fierce Nomadic war.

On vine-clad hills was found the Gaul;

Above him glistened Alpine snows:

And lower down where valleys lay

Loved of the lily and the rose,

By moon-light tranced, the nightingale

Sang silvery-sweet adagios.

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COSMOS ***