LITMIR.BIZ

A Look into the Gulf

       Table of Contents

      I looked one night, and there Semiramis,

       With all her mourning doves about her head,

       Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell,

       Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon

       Snatches of song they sang to her of old

       Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh.

       And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh:

       "The bugles! they are crying back again—

       Bugles that broke the nights of Babylon,

       And then went crying on through Nineveh.

      ······

      ​Stand back, ye trembling messengers of ill!

       Women, let go my hair: I am the Queen,

       A whirlwind and a blaze of swords to quell

       Insurgent cities. Let the iron tread

       Of armies shake the earth. Look, lofty towers:

       Assyria goes by upon the wind!"

       And so she babbles by the ancient road,

       While cities turned to dust upon the Earth

       Rise through her whirling brain to live again—

       Babbles all night, and when her voice is dead

       Her weary lips beat on without a sound.

      ​

Brotherhood

       Table of Contents

      The crest and crowning of all good,

      Life's final star, is Brotherhood;

      For it will bring again to Earth

      Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;

      Will send new light on every face,

      A kingly power upon the race.

      And till it come, we men are slaves,

       And travel downward to the dust of graves.

      Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:

      Blind creeds and kings have had their day.

      Break the dead branches from the path:

      Our hope is in the aftermath—

      Our hope is in heroic men,

      Star-led to build the world again.

      To this Event the ages ran.

       Make way for Brotherhood—make way for Man.

      ​

Song of the Followers of Pan

       Table of Contents

      Our bursting bugles blow apart

      The gates of cities as we go;

       We bring the music of the heart

      From secret wells in Lillimo'.

       We break in music on the morns—

      Sing of the flower to stirring roots;

       Apollo's cry is in the horns,

      And Hermes' whisper in the flutes.

       We come with laughter to the Earth,

      And lightly stir the heading wheat:

       Our God is Poesy and Mirth,

      And loves the noise of woodland feet.

       When dancers beat the air to sound,

      After the time of yellow sheaves,

       He stops to watch the merry round,

      His pleased face looking through the leaves.

      ​

Little Brothers of the Ground

       Table of Contents

      Little ants in leafy wood,

       Bound by gentle Brotherhood,

       While ye gaily gather spoil,

       Men are ground by the wheel of toil;

       While ye follow Blessed Fates,

       Men are shriveled up with hates;

       Or they lie with sheeted Lust,

       And they eat the bitter dust.

       Ye are fraters in your hall,

       Gay and chainless, great and small;

       All are toilers in the field,

       ​All are sharers in the yield.

       But we mortals plot and plan

       How to grind the fellow-man;

       Glad to find him in a pit,

       If we get some gain of it.

       So with us, the sons of Time,

       Labor is a kind of crime,

       For the toilers have the least,

       While the idlers lord the feast.

       Yes, our workers they are bound,

       Pallid captives to the ground;

       Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves,

       Till they stumble into graves.

       How appears to tiny eyes

       All this wisdom of the wise?

      ​

Wail of the Wandering Dead

       Table of Contents

      Death, too, is a chimera and betrays,

      And yet they promised we should enter rest;

       Death is as empty as the cup of days,

      And bitter milk is in her wintry breast.

       There is no worth in any world to come,

      Nor any in the world we left behind;

      

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