An October Evening

                    

            The woods are haggard and lonely,

                 The skies are hooded for snow,

              The moon is cold in Heaven,

                 And the grasses are sere below.

            The bearded swamps are breathing

                 A mist from meres afar,

            And grimly the Great Bear circles

                  Under the pale Pole Star.

            There is never a voice in Heaven,

                Nor ever a sound on earth,

           Where the spectres of winter are rising

                Over the night's wan girth.

            There is slumber and death in the silence,

                There is hate in the winds so keen;

          And the flash of the north's great sword-blade

                Circles its cruel sheen.

           The world grows agèd and wintry,

                Love's face peakèd and white;

            And death is kind to the tired ones

                 Who sleep in the north to-night
.--William Wilfred Campbell 

Out of Pompeii

             She lay, face downward, on her beaded arm,

                 In this her new, sweet dream of human bliss,

            Her heart within her fearful, fluttering, warm,

                 Her lips yet pained with love's first timorous kiss.

            She did not note the darkening afternoon,

                 She did not mark the lowering of the sky

             O'er that great city. Earth had given its boon

                  Unto her lips, love touched her and passed by.

            In one dread moment all the sky grew dark,

                The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout,

            Where love lost love, and all the world might mark

               The city overwhelmed, blotted out

          Without one cry, so quick oblivion came,

                And life passed to the black where all forget;

           But she,—we know not of her house or name,—

                 In love's sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet.

           The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still,

                And the great city passed to nothingness:

           The ages went and mankind worked its will.

                 Then men stood still amid the centuries' press,

           And in the ash-hid ruins opened bare,

                 As she lay down in her shamed loveliness,

           Sculptured and frozen, late they found her there,

               Image of love 'mid all that hideousness.

            Her head, face downward, on her bended arm,

                 Her single robe that showed her shapely form,

           Her wondrous fate love keeps divinely warm

                 Over the centuries, past the slaying storm,

           The heart can read in writings time hath left,

                That linger still through death's oblivion;

           And in this waste of life and light bereft,

                She brings again a beauty that had gone.

           And if there be a day when all shall wake,

                As dreams the hoping, doubting human heart,

            The dim forgetfulness of death will break

                For her as one who sleeps with lips apart;

            And did God call her suddenly, I know

               She'd wake as morning wakened by the thrush,

          Feel that red kiss across the centuries glow,

                 And make all heaven rosier by her blush.

Pan the Fallen

           He wandered into the market

                With pipes and goatish hoof;

              He wandered in a grotesque shape,

                 And no one stood aloof.

              For the children crowded round him,

                 The wives and greybeards, too,

              To crack their jokes and have their mirth,

                 And see what Pan would do.

             The Pan he was they knew him,

                 Part man, but mostly beast,

           Who drank, and lied, and snatched what bones

               Men threw him from their feast;

           Who seemed in sin so merry,

                So careless in his woe,

           That men despised, scarce pitied him,

                And still would have it so.

           He swelled his pipes and thrilled them,

                And drew the silent tear;

           He made the gravest clack with mirth

                 By his sardonic leer.

            He blew his pipes full sweetly

                 At their amused demands,

            And caught the scornful, earth-flung pence

                 That fell from careless hands.

           He saw the mob's derision,

                 And took it kindly, too,

          And when an epithet was flung,

                 A coarser back he threw;

            But under all the masking

                Of a brute, unseemly part,

            I looked, and saw a wounded soul,

                 And a god-like, breaking heart.

            And back of the elfin music,

                 The burlesque, clownish play,

            I knew a wail that the weird pipes made,

                 A look that was far away,—

           A gaze into some far heaven

                 Whence a soul had fallen down;

          But the mob only saw the grotesque beast

                 And the antics of the clown.

            For scant-flung pence he paid them

                With mirth and elfin play,

          Till, tired for a time of his antics queer,

                 They passed and went their way;

          Then there in the empty market

                He ate his scanty crust,

          And, tired face turned to heaven, down

               He laid him in the dust.

           And over his wild, strange features

                 A softer light there fell,

          And on his worn, earth-driven heart

                 A peace ineffable.

           And the moon rose over the market,

                But Pan the beast was dead;

            While Pan the god lay silent there,

               With his strange, distorted head.

           And the people, when they found him,

               Stood still with awesome fear.

           No more they saw the beast's rude hoof,

                 The furtive, clownish leer;

            But the lightest in that audience

               Went silent from the place,

           For they knew the look of a god released

               That shone from his dead face.
--William Wilfred Campbell

The Politician

            Carven in leathern mask or brazen face,

                 Were I time's sculptor, I would set this man.

                Retreating from the truth, his hawk-eyes scan

            The platforms of all public thought for place.

            There wriggling with insinuating grace,

                He takes poor hope and effort by the hand,

                  And flatters with half-truths and accents bland,

             Till even zeal and earnest love grow base.

            Knowing no right, save power's grim right-of-way;

                No nobleness, save life's ignoble praise;

           No future, save this sordid day to day;

               He is the curse of these material days:

           Juggling with mighty wrongs and mightier lies,

           This worshipper of Dagon and his flies!
--William Wilfred Campbell

The Sky Watcher

          Black rolls the phantom chimney-smoke

           Beneath the wintry moon;

            For miles on miles, by sound unbroke,

            The world lies wrapt in its ermine cloak,

             And the night's icy swoon

            Sways earthward in great brimming wells

            Of luminous, frosty particles.

            Far up the roadway, drifted deep,

             Where frost-etched fences gleam;

           Beneath the sky's wan, shimmering sleep

           My solitary way I keep

           Across the world's white dream;

            The only living moving thing

           In all this mighty slumbering.

           Up in the eastern range of hill,

           The thin wood spectrally

            Stirs in its sleep and then is still

           (Like querulous age) at the wind's will.

          My shadow doggedly

           Follows my footsteps where I go,

           A grotesque giant on the snow.

            Out where the river's arms are wound,

         And icy sedges cling,

            There comes to me as in a swound

           A far-off clear, thin, vibrant sound,--

           The distant hammering

          Of frost-elves as they come and go,

            Forging, in silver chains, his woe.

          I stand upon the hill's bleak crest

          And note the far night world:

          The mighty lake whose passionate breast,

           Manacled into arctic rest,

           In shrouded sleep is furled:

            The steely heavens whose wondrous host

           Wheel white from flaming coast to coast.

            Then down the night's dim luminous ways,

            Me seems they come once more,

           Those great star-watchers of old days

            The lonely, calm-ones, whose still gaze,

           On old-time, orient shore,

           Dreamed in the wheeling sons of light,

           The awful secrets of earth's night.

           They come, those lofty ones of old,

            And take me by the hand,

            And call me brother; ages rolled

           Are but a smoke-mist; kindred-souled,

          They lift me to their band;

           Like lights that from pale starbeams shine,

          Their clear eyes look with peace on mine.

            In language of no common kind

          These watchers speak to me;

           Their thoughts the depths of heaven find

           Like plummets true. It were a kind

           Of immortality

           To spend with them one holy hour,

           And know their love and grasp their power.

          And wrapt around with glad content,

         I learn with soul serene,

          Caught from the beauty that is blent

           In earth, the heaven's luminous tent,

         The frost-lit dreams between,

          And something holier out of sight,

            Glad visions of the infinite.

           Then backward past the sere hill's breast,

           The spectral moaning wood,

           With great peace brooding in my breast,

           I turn me toward the common rest

          Of earth's worn brotherhood;

           But as I pass, a sacred sign,

            Each lays his holy lips on mine:--

            Gives me the golden chrism of song,

          Tips my hushed heart with fire;

           Till high in heaven I hear that throng

           Who march in mystic paths along,

            Great Pleiades, The Lyre,

            The Te-Deum of the ages swell,

            To earth-tuned ear inaudible.
--William Wilfred Campbell

Stella Flammarum: An Ode to Halley'sComet

           Strange wanderer out of the deeps,

              Whence, journeying, come you?

             From what far, unsunned sleeps

            Did fate foredoom you,

           Returning for ever again

            Through the surgings of man,

            A flaming, awesome portent of dread

             Down the centuries' span?

            Riddle! from the dark unwrung

            By all earth's sages;--

            God's fiery torch from His hand outflung,

           To flame through the ages:

         Thou Satan of planets eterne,

            'Mid angry path,

           Chained, in circlings vast, to burn

           Out ancient wrath.

          By what dread hand first loosed

           From fires eternal?

           With majesties dire infused

           Of force supernal,

          Takest thy headlong way

          O'er the highways of space?

           O wonderful, blossoming flower of fear

            On the sky's far face!

           What secret of destiny's will

           In thy wild burning?

           What portent dire of humanity's ill

           In thy returning?

            Or art thou brand of love

          In masking of bale?

            And bringest thou ever some mystical surcease

          For all who wail?

          Perchance, O Visitor dread,

           Thou hast thine appointed

           Task, thou bolt of the vast outsped!

           With God's anointed,

           Performest some endless toil

           In the universe wide,

          Feeding or curing some infinite need

          Where the vast worlds ride.

          Once, only once, thy face

         Will I view in this breathing;

           Just for a space thy majesty trace

          'Mid earth's mad seething;

          Ere I go hence to my place,

           As thou to thy deeps,

           Thou flambent core of a universe dread,

          Where all else sleeps.

           But thou and man's spirit are one,

         Thou poet! thou flaming

           Soul of the dauntless sun,

           Past all reclaiming!

            One in that red unrest,

           That yearning, that surge,

            That mounting surf of the infinite dream,

           O'er eternity's verge.
--William Wilfred Campbell

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. Albert Einstein