Edgar Lee Masters

“ I have gone from you, and your face
Comes to me with its grace
Of memory of unfound love:
You seem to me the image of all women
Who dream and keep under smiles the grief thereof,
Or sew, or sit by windows, or read books
[Pg 90] To hide their Secret's looks.
And after a time go out of life and leave
No uttered words but in their silence grieve
For Life and for the things no tongue can tell:
Why Life hurts so, and why Love haunts and hurts
Poor men and women in this demi-hell. ”

“ Well, kiss the crucifix, my son, and pass beneath the rod.
[Pg 121]
THE DOOR
This is the room that thou wast ushered in.
Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win?
Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath?
There is no door but death.
Do shadows crouch within the mocking light?
Stand thou! but if thy terrored heart takes flight
Facing maimed Hope and wide-eyed Nevermore,
There is no less one door.
Dost thou bewail love's end and friendship's doom,
The dying fire, drained cup, and gathering gloom?
Explore the walls, if thy soul ventureth—
There is no door but death. ”

“ You warder and jailer and sealer of fates and decrees,
To use the big keys
With which to reveal and fling wide all the soul and the scheme
Of the Galilee dream,
When you flashed in a trice, as later you smote with the sword:
"Thou art Christ, even Lord!"
We men, Simon Peter, we men also give you the crown
O'er Paul and o'er John.
[Pg 46] We write you in capitals, make you the chief
Word on the leaf.
We know you as one of our flesh, and 'tis well
You are warder of hell,
And heaven's gatekeeper forever to bind and to loose—
Keep the keys if you choose. ”

“ To garner the morrow's gold.
The market at night is as full of fraud
As the market kept by day.
The courtesan buys a soul with a look,
A dinner tempers the truth in a book,
And love is sold till love is a bawd,
And falsehood froths in the play.
And men and women sell their smiles
For friendship's lifeless dregs.
For fear of the morrow we bend and bow
[Pg 64] To moneybags with the slanting brow.
For the heart that knows life's little wiles
Seldom or never begs.
"Poor men," sighed Helios, "how they long
For the ultimate fire of love. ”

“ For thou art woman, thou art love.
Thou art April of the Arcadian moon,
Thou art the swift sun racing through snowy clouds,
Thou art the creative silence of flowering valleys.
Thy face is the apple tree in bloom;
Thine eyes the glimpses of green water
When the tree's blossoms shake
As soft winds fan them.
Thy hair is flame blown against the sea's mist—
Thou art spring.
The fire on the altar burns brightly,
And the sea sparkles in the sun.
Let us murmur a Doric prayer
For the gift of love,
For the gift of life,
Oh Life! Oh Love! We lift our hands to thee! ”

“ Her face is like a light that runs
Beneath the shadow of a bridge.
Her voice is like a woodland cry
Heard in a summer's desolate hour.
Her eyes are dim; her lips are faint,
And tinctured like the cuckoo flower.
Her little breasts are like the buds
Of tulips in a place forlorn.
Her soul is like a mandrake bloom
Standing against the crimson moon.
Her dream is like the fenny snake's,
That warms him in the noonday's fire.
She hath no thought, nor any hope,
Save of herself and her desire.
She is not life; she is not death;
She is not fear, or joy or grief. ”

“ And the books of life are full of the rune,
And this is the truth of the song:
No man can save a woman's soul,
Nor right a woman's wrong.
[Pg 97]
LOVE IS A MADNESS
Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers—
Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam
Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours.
Will the look return to your eyes, the warmth to your hand?
Love is a doubt, an ache, love is a writhing fear.
Love is a potion drunk when the ship puts out from land,
Rudderless, sails at full, and with none to steer. ”

“ You have become a forge of snow white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Or seventy years. ”

“ And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through;
Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white;
And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy.
Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall,
Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea,
Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream.
All of these I have seen—but the face of Harold the bold
Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise.
For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life. ”

“ Sweet lady, I behold the face
Of thy dear son, our Lord,
Nay, saith the Bishop of Canterbury,
The sun shines on your sword.
Sir Galahad outstretcheth hands
And taketh me ere I fail—
Sir Launcelot's body lay in death
As his soul found the Holy Grail.
They laid his body in the quire
Upon a purple pall.
He was the meekest, gentlest knight
That ever ate in hall.
He was the kingliest, goodliest knight
That ever England roved,
The truest lover of sinful man
That ever woman loved. ”

“ This face before me: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness,
Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids
Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes.
Such was your look in a photograph I saw
In a silver frame on a woman's dresser—and such
Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone!
And then
As a soul looks down on the body it leaves—
A body by fever slain—I look on myself
As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read:
I enter a box
Of a theater with Jim, my friend of fifty,
I being twenty-two. ”

“ There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of a deep peace of mind,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished ”

“ Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell
You saw the sequences of thought—You saw
That one would say, "All's matter" and another,
"All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image,
Could not envision it. That even worship
Of what you are would be confused by cries
From India or Palestine. That love
Which sees itself beginning in the seeds,
Which fly and seek each other, maims
The soul at the last in loss of child or friend
Father or mother. ”

“ But women, Julia, of whatever type,
Are still but waiting ovules seeking man,
And man's life to develop, even to live.
And like the praying mantis who's devoured
In the embrace, man is devoured by women
In some way, by some sort. Love is a flame
In man's life where he warms him but to suck
The invisible heat and perish. Life is cramped,
Bound down with many ropes, shut in by gates—
Love is not free which should be wholly free
For Life's sake. ”

“ For this young man's philosophy was more
Than such external ferment, being divine
With secrets so profound no plummet line
Can altogether sound it. It means growth
Of soul by watching,
And the creation of eyes
Over your mind's eyes to supervise
A clear activity and to ward off sloth.
What he had in mind was scotching
And killing the snake of Hatred and stripping the glove
From the hand of Hypocrisy and quenching the fire
Of falsehood and unbrotherly Desire.
What he had in mind was simply Love. ”

“ They crowded you hard in those days.
But you fought like a wounded lion
For yourself I know, but for us, for me.
At last you fell ill, and for months you tottered
Around the streets as thin as death,
Trying to earn our bread, your great eyes glowing
And the silence around you like a shawl!
But something in you kept you up.
You grew well again and rosy with cheeks
Like an Indian peach almost, and eyes
Full of moonlight and sunlight, and a voice
That sang, and a humor that warded
The arrows off. But still between us
There was reticence; you kept me away
With a glittering hardness ”

“ Dame Brisen took Sir Launcelot [Pg 145]
Where lay the maid Elaine.
Sir Launcelot entered the bed chamber
The queen's love for to gain.
Sir Launcelot kissed the maid Elaine,
And her cheeks and brows did burn;
And then they lay in other's arms
Until the morn's underne.
Anon Sir Launcelot arose
And toward the window groped,
And then he saw the maid Elaine
When he the window oped.
"Ah, traitoress," saith Launcelot,
And then he gat his sword,
"That I should live so long and now
Become a knight abhorred."
"False traitoress," saith Launcelot,
And then he shook the steel. ”

“ But when I repeat I love her, love her only,
A cloud of wonder passes over her face,
She veils her eyes. The color comes to her cheeks.
And when she picks some clover blossoms and tears them
Her hand is trembling. And when I tell her again
I love her, love her only, she blots her eyes
With a handkerchief to hide a tear that starts.
And she says to me: "You do not know me at all,
How can you love me? You never saw me before
Last night." "Well, tell me about yourself." ”

“ Your cheeks of olive incarnadines.
A serious wisdom burns and glows
Steadily in your dark-eyed look.
Already a wit and a little stoic—
Perhaps you are going to write a book,
Or paint a picture, or sing or act
The part of Katherine or Juliet.
I believe you were born with the gift of knowing
When to remember and when to forget.
And when to stifle and kill a grief,
And clutch your heart when it beats in vain.
The heart that has most strength for feeling
Must have the strength to conquer the pain. ”

“ Your great brow seemed Beethoven's
And the lust of life in your face Cellini's,
And your riotous fancy like Dumas.
I was nearer you now than ever before,
And finding each other thus I see to-day
How the human soul seeks the human soul
And finds the one it seeks at last. ”

“ How are you crucified, my son, betwixt a thief and thief?
Mother, I feel the terror and the loveliness of life.
Tell me of the children, son, and tell me of the wife.
Mother, your face is but a face among a million more. ”

“ Perfect amid the ashes sleeps a cup of amethyst.
Let us take it and pour the sea from it,
And while the savor of dead lips is washed away,
Let us lift our hands to this sky of hyacinth.
Let us light the altar newly, for lo! it is spring.
Bring from the re-kindled woodland [Pg 136]
Flames of columbine, jewel-weed and trumpet-creeper,
There where the woodman burns the fallen tree,
And scented smoke arises
On azure wings between the branches,
Budding with adolescent life. ”

“ You knew, when the green cell arose, that even
The You which formed it moving on would bring
Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves,
The idiot child, the murderer, the insane—
All springing from the action of one law.
You knew the enmity that lies between
[Pg 128] The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew
How man would rise to vision of himself:
Immortal only in the race's life. ”

“ And let his son be crucified
The son's blood had been put to use
To ease the people's woe."
"He of the pest and the burning bush,
Of locusts, lice, and frogs,
Who made me stand, veiling my light,
While Joshua slaughtered the Amorite,
Who blacked the skin of the sons of Cush,
And builded the synagogues."
"And Jehovah the great is omnipotent,
While Zeus was bound by Fate.
But Athens fell when Peter took Rome,
And Chicago is made His hecatomb.
And since from the hour His son was sent
The hypocrite holds the state." ”

“ And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light,
And faces, faces, yearning for the dance
With wistful eyes that look on our delight.
They live through us again
And we through them, who wish for lips and eyes
Wherewith to feel, not fancy, the old pain
Passed with reluctance through the centuries
To us, who in the maze
Of dancing and hushed music woven afresh
Amid the shifting mirrors of hours and days
Know not our spirit, neither know our flesh ”