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PSALM OF THE WEST.

LAND of the willful gospel, thou worst and thou best ;
Tall Adam of lands, new-made of the dust of the West;
Thou wroughtest alone in the Garden of God, unblest
Till He fashioned lithe Freedom to lie for thine Eve on thy
breast-

Till out of thy heart's dear neighborhood, out of thy side,
He fashioned an intimate Sweet one and brought thee a

Bride.

Cry hail! nor bewail that the wound of her coming was

wide.

Lo, Freedom reached forth where the world as an apple

hung red;

Let us taste the whole radiant round of it, gayly she said:
If we die, at the worst we shall lie as the first of the dead.
Knowledge of Good and of Ill, O Land! she hath given

thee;

Perilous godhoods of choosing have rent thee and riven

thee;

Will's high adoring to Ill's low exploring hath driven thee— Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean

shriven thee!

Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast,
Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest,
Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West.

For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength

with a chain;

And Error, in freedom, will come to lamenting his stain, Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again ;

And Friendship, in freedom, will blot out the bounding of

race;

And straight Law, in freedom, will curve to the rounding of

grace;

And Fashion, in freedom, will die of the lie in her face;

And Desire flame white on the sense as a fire on a height,
And Sex flame white in the soul as a star in the night,
And Marriage plight sense unto soul as the two-colored

light

Of the fire and the star shines one with a duplicate might; And Science be known as the sense making love to the All, And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, And Love be known as the marriage of man with the AllTill Science to knowing the Highest shall lovingly turn, Till Art to loving the Highest shall consciously burn, Till Science to Art as a man to a woman shall yearn, -Then morn!

When Faith from the wedding of Knowing and Loving shall purely be born,

And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to the

East give morn,

And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old regret

ting and scorn,

Yea, the stream of the light shall give off in a shimmer the dream of the night forlorn.

Once on a time a soul

Too full of his dole

In a querulous dream went crying from pole to pole

Went sobbing and crying

For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying,

How life was the dropping and death the drying

Of a Tear that fell in a day when God was sighing.

And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro

As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe

In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow,

Till, lo!
Rest.

And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its nest, And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the west. Then the East came out from the east and the West from

the west,

And, behold! in the gravid deeps of the lower dark,

While, above, the wind was fanning the dawn as a spark, The East and the West took form as the wings of a lark. One wing was feathered with facts of the uttermost Past, And one with the dreams of a prophet; and both sailed

fast

And met where the sorrowful Soul on the earth was cast.
Then a Voice said: Thine, if thou lovest enough to use ;
But another: To fly and to sing is pain: refuse !
Then the Soul said: Come, O my wings! I cannot but
choose.

And the Soul was a-tremble like as a new-born thing,

Till the spark of the dawn wrought a conscience in heart as

in wing,

Saying, Thou art the lark of the dawn; it is time to sing.

Then that artist began in a lark's low circling to pass;
And first he sang at the height of the top of the grass
A song of the herds that are born and die in the mass.
And next he sang a celestial-passionate round

At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground,
How Love was a fair true Lady, and Death a wild hound,
And she called, and he licked her hand and with girdle
was bound.

And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings,
And the sun stretched beams to the worlds as the shining

strings

Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings;

And the sky's blue traction prevailed o'er the earth's in

might,

And the passion of flight grew mad with the glory of

height

And the uttering of song was like to the giving of light; And he learned that hearing and seeing wrought nothing

alone,

And that music on earth much light upon Heaven had thrown,

And he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone;

And the spirals of music e'er higher and higher he wound Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound— Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. Then he paused at the top of his tower of song on high, And the voice of the God of the artist from far in the

sky

Said, Son, look down: I will cause that a Time gone by
Shall pass, and reveal his heart to thy loving eye.

Far spread, below,

The sea that fast hath locked in his loose flow
All secrets of Atlantis' drowned woe

Lay bound about with night on every hand,
Save down the eastern brink a shining band
Of day made out a little way from land.
Then from that shore the wind upbore a cry:
Thou Sea, thou Sea of Darkness! why, oh why
Dost waste thy West in unthrift mystery?

But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill,
And never a wave doth good for man or ill,
And Blank is king, and Nothing hath his will;

And like as grim-beaked pelicans level file
Across the sunset toward their nightly isle
On solemn wings that wave but seldomwhile,
So leanly sails the day behind the day

To where the Past's lone Rock o'erglooms the spray,
And down its mortal fissures sinks away.

Master, Master, break this ban:

The wave lacks Thee.

Oh, is it not to widen man

Stretches the sea?

Oh, must the sea-bird's idle van

Alone be free?

Into the Sea of the Dark doth creep
Björne's pallid sail,

As the face of a walker in his sleep,
Set rigid and most pale,

About the night doth peer and peep
In a dream of an ancient tale.

Lo, here is made a hasty cry :
Land, land, upon the west !—
God save such land! Go by, go by :
Here may no mortal rest,

Where this waste hell of slate doth lie
And grind the glacier's breast.

The sail goeth limp: hey, flap and strain !
Round eastward slanteth the mast;
As the sleep-walker waked with pain,
White-clothed in the midnight blast,
Doth stare and quake, and stride again
To houseward all aghast.

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