-45_Poems.htm

The Other Earths

An irised multitude of hills and seas,

And glint of brooks in the green wilderness,

And trackless stars, and miracled symphonies

Of hues that float in ethers shadowless,

A dance of fireflies in the fretted gloom,

In a pale midnight the moon’s silver flare,

Fire-importunities of scarlet bloom

And bright suddenness of wings in a golden air,

Strange bird and animal forms like memories cast

On the rapt silence of unearthly woods,

Calm faces of the gods on backgrounds vast

Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes,

Through glimmering veils of wonder and delight

World after world bursts on the awakened sight.

Thought the Paraclete

As some bright archangel in vision flies

Plunged in dream-caught spirit immensities,

Past the long green crests of the seas of life,

Past the orange skies of the mystic mind

Flew my thought self-lost in the vasts of God.

Sleepless wide great glimmering wings of wind

Bore the gold-red seeking of feet that trod

Space and Time’s mute vanishing ends. The face

Lustred, pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff,

Eremite, sole, daring the bourneless ways,

Over world-bare summits of timeless being

Gleamed; the deep twilights of the world-abyss

Failed below. Sun-realms of supernal seeing,

Page – 562

Crimson-white mooned oceans of pauseless bliss

Drew its vague heart-yearning with voices sweet.

Hungering large-souled to surprise the unconned

Secrets white-fire-veiled of the last Beyond,

Crossing power-swept silences rapture-stunned,

Climbing high far ethers eternal-sunned,

Thought the great-winged wanderer paraclete

Disappeared slow-singing a flame-word rune.

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.

Moon of Two Hemispheres

A gold moon-raft floats and swings slowly

And it casts a fire of pale holy blue light

On the dragon tail aglow of the faint night

That glimmers far,  —  swimming,

The illumined shoals of stars skimming,

Overspreading earth and drowning the heart in sight

With the ocean depths and breadths of the Infinite.

A gold moon-ship sails or drifts ever

In our spirit’s skies and halts never, blue-keeled,

And it throws its white-blue fire on this grey field,

Night’s dragon loop,  —  speeding,

The illumined star-thought sloops leading

To the Dawn, their harbour home, to the Light unsealed,

To the sun-face Infinite, the Untimed revealed.

Page – 563

Rose of God

Rose of God, vermilion stain on the sapphires of heaven,

Rose of Bliss, fire-sweet, seven-tinged with the ecstasies seven!

Leap up in our heart of humanhood, O miracle, O flame,

Passion-flower of the Nameless, bud of the mystical Name.

Rose of God, great wisdom-bloom on the summits of being,

Rose of Light, immaculate core of the ultimate seeing!

Live in the mind of our earthhood; O golden Mystery, flower,

Sun on the head of the Timeless, guest of the marvellous Hour.

Rose of God, damask force of Infinity, red icon of might,

Rose of Power with thy diamond halo piercing the night!

Ablaze in the will of the mortal, design the wonder of thy plan,

Image of Immortality, outbreak of the Godhead in man.

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire,

Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colour’s lyre!

Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and magical rhyme;

Bridge our earthhood and heavenhood, make deathless the children of Time.

Rose of God like a blush of rapture on Eternity’s face,

Rose of Love, ruby depth of all being, fire-passion of Grace!

Arise from the heart of the yearning that sobs in Nature’s abyss:

Make earth the home of the Wonderful and life Beatitude’s kiss.

Page – 564

NOTE

In some of these poems, as in others of the Six Poems, a quantitative metrical system has been used which seems to have puzzled some critics, apparently because it does not follow the laws of quantity obtaining in the ancient classical languages. But those laws are quite alien to the rhythm and sound-structure of the English tongue; the attempt to observe them has always ended in deserved and inevitable failure. Another system has been followed here which is in agreement with the native rhythm of English speech. There what determines the metrical length or brevity of syllables is weight, the weight of the voice emphasis or the dwelling of the voice upon the sound. Where there is that emphasis or that dwelling of the voice, the syllable may be considered metrically long; where both are absent there will be, normally, a recognisable shortness which can only be cured by some aid of consonant weight or other lengthening circumstance. All stressed syllables are metrically long in English and cannot be otherwise, however short the vowel may be, for they dominate the verse movement; this is a fact which is ignored in the traditional account of English quantity and which many experimenters in quantitative verse have chosen to disregard with disastrous consequences,  —  all their genius or skill in metrical technique could not save them from failure. On the other hand, a long-vowel syllable can be regarded as metrically long even if there is no stress upon it. In the quantitative system used in these poems this possibility is converted into a law: metrical length is obligatory for all such natural syllabic longs, while a short-vowel syllable unstressed is normally short for metrical purposes unless it is very heavily weighted with consonants. But the mere occurrence of two or more consonants after a short vowel does not by itself make the syllable long as it necessarily does in Greek, Latin or Sanskrit.

The system may then be reduced to the following rules:

1. All stressed syllables are regarded as metrically long, as also all syllables supported on a long vowel.

2. All short-vowel syllables not stressed are regarded as  

Page – 565

short, unless they are heavily weighted with consonants. But on this last point no fixed rule can be given; in each case the ear must be the judge.

3. There are a great number of sounds in English which can be regarded according to circumstances either as longs or as shorts. Here too the ear must decide in each case.

4. English quantity metres cannot be as rigid as the metres of ancient tongues. The rhythm of the language demands a certain variability, free or sparing, without which monotony sets in; accordingly in all English metres modulation is admitted as possible. Even the most regular rhythms do not altogether shut out the substitution of other feet than those fixed in the normal basic arrangement of the line; they admit at least so much as is needed to give the necessary pliancy or variety to the movement. There is sometimes a very free use of such variations; but they ought not to be allowed to break the basic movement or overburden or overlay it. The same rule must apply in quantitative metres; especially in long poems modulations are indispensable.

This system is not only not at discord with the sound-structure of the language, it accords closely with its natural rhythm; it only regulates and intensifies into metrical pitch and tone the cadence that is already there even in prose, even in daily speech. If we take passages from English literature which were written as prose but with some intensity of rhythm, its movement can be at once detected. E.g.

Cŏnsīdĕr | thĕ līlĭĕs | ŏf thĕ fīēld, | hōw thēy grōw; | | thēy tōīl nŏt, |

nēīthĕr dŏ | thēy spīn; | | yĕt Ī | sāy ŭntŏ | yŏu thăt ēvěn | Sōlŏmŏn |

ĭn āll hĭs | glōrў | | wăs nŏt ărrāyed | līke ŭntŏ | ōne ŏf thēse: | |
 

or again,  

Blēssĕd āre | thĕ mēēk; | fŏr thēy shăll | ĭnhērĭt | thĕ ēārth | . . . .

Blēssĕd āre | thĕ pūre ĭn hēārt; | fŏr thēy shăll sēē | Gōd;

Page – 567

or again, from Shakespeare’s prose,

Thĭs gōōdly frāme, | thĕ ēāth, sēēms tŏ | mĕ ă stērīle | prōmŏntŏrў; |

thĭs mōst ēxcĕl|lĕnt cānŏpў, | thĕ āīr, lōōk yoŭ, | thĭs brāve

ō’ērhāng|ĭng fīrmăměnt, | thĭs măjēstĭc|ăl rōōf frēttěd | wĭth gōlděn fīre |

and so on with a constant recurrence of the same quantitative movement all through; or, yet more strikingly,  

Hōw ārt thōū | fāllĕn frŏm | Hēāvěn, Ŏ | Lūcĭfěr, | sōn ŏf thĕ mōrnĭng!  

This last sentence can be read indeed as a very perfect hexameter. The first of these passages could be easily presented as four lines of free quantitative verse, each independent in its arrangement of feet, but all swaying in a single rhythm. Shakespeare’s is most wonderfully balanced in a series of differing four-syllabled, with occasional shorter, feet, as if of deliberate purpose, though it is no intention of the mind but the ear of the poet that has constructed this fine design of rhythmic prose. A free quantitative verse in this kind would be perfectly possible.

A more regular quantitative metre can be of two kinds. There could be lines all with the same metrical arrangement following each other without break or else alternating lines with a different arrangement for each, forming a stanza,  —  as in the practice of accentual metres. But there could also be an arrangement in strophe and antistrophe as in the Greek chorus.

In “Thought the Paraclete” the first rule is followed; all the lines are on the same model. The metre of this poem has a certain rhythmic similarity to the Latin hendecasyllable which runs ¯ ¯ | ¯ ˘ ˘ | ¯ ˘ | ¯ ˘ | ˉ ˘ , e.g.  

Sōlēs | ōccĭdĕr(e) | ēt rĕ|dīrĕ | pōssūnt,

Nōbīs | cūm sĕmĕl | ōccĭd|īt brĕ|vīs lūx

Page – 567

Nōx ēst | pērpĕtŭ(a) | ūnă | dōrmĭ|ēndă.^*  

But here the metre runs ˉ ˘ | ˉ ˉ | ˉ ˘ ˘ | ˉ ˘ | ˉ ;  a trochee is transferred from the closing flow of trochees to the beginning of the line, the spondee and dactyl are pushed into the middle; the last syllable of the closing trochee is most often dropped altogether. Classical metres cannot always with success be taken over just as they are into the English rhythm; often some modifications are needed to make them more malleable.