* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook * This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems Author: Pratt, E. J. [Edwin John Dove] (1882-1964) Date of first publication: 1937 Edition used as base for this ebook: Toronto: Macmillan, 1937 [first edition] Date first posted: 6 May 2016 Date last updated: 6 May 2016 Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1316 This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg PUBLISHER'S NOTE Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_. As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout. THE FABLE OF THE GOATS AND OTHER POEMS By E. J. PRATT TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED, AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE 1937 _TO MY SISTER CHARLOTTE_ CONTENTS The Fable of the Goats The Baritone Puck Reports Back Silences A Prayer-Medley Fire Seen on the Road The Prize Cat Under the Lens The Seer (To Any Astronomer) The Text of the Oath Like Mother, Like Daughter The Mirage The Old Organon (1225 A.D.) The New (1937 A.D.) The Mystic The Drowning The Weather Glass The Empty Room THE FABLE OF THE GOATS One half a continental span, The Aralasian mountains lay Like a Valkyrian caravan At rest along the Aryan Way. And central to the barrier, Rising in mottled columns, were The limestone ramparts of the heights-- The Carolonian Dolomites. Over those scaffolds nothing passed But navigators of the sky: Those crags were taken only by The sun and moon and the wind's blast, By clouds and by the eagles' wings Out on their furthest venturings. So rooted in geography The natural frontier, it could be A theme for neither god nor beast To argue that one side was east And that the other side was west. Yet with this knowledge manifest, We must record a truth as strange As any fact or myth that can Inflict mortality on man. The middle section of this range For endless centuries had been Earth's most dramatic _mise en scène_ For lawless indeterminate fights. Both avalanche and cataract With Time compounding had attacked The lowest of the Dolomites With spring's recurrent cannonade; Had deepened crater and crevasse, Torn down the gorges and had laid The canyon of Saint Barnabas. Along this canyon's northern edge, One hundred feet in length, a ledge Of schist, known as the Capra Pass, Projected from the mountain wall. This slippery stretch might well appal The tread of cloven-footed things In their most cautious pedallings, But as a ground on which to stage The fortunes of a battle rage, That ledge of Capra might reveal A tale which, for perversity, Could tame the Kyber Route or steal The title from Thermopylae. The country which those peaks divide Was noted for its rich terrains, Its sweeping uplands and its wide Deltas and undulating plains. Millions of hornèd ruminants Roebucks and elks and argalis Upon this vast inheritance Had founded aristocracies, Which ruled the commons till, between Their slaughterous feuds internecine And foreign raids, they lost their lead To a lusty more endurant breed-- A new totalitarian horn Known as the genus Capricorn. The Aralasian country west, Described as Carob, was possessed By a remarkable race of goats With lyrate horns and shaggy coats. Unyielding individualists At first by nature they had learned The folly of obstructionists Within their tribal ranks and turned To federal virtues for the wise Conduct of a state enterprise. And of this wide domain the head Was Cyrus. It was he who led The bucks against the bulls in that Perfidious effort to profane The purity of the racial strain: 'Twas he, the high-born aristocrat, Who rounded up intransigeants, Drove out all civil disputants, And bent the proletariat Under a regimen of drill To his authoritarian will. And on the east there was a spot As fertile as the Carob land, Where goats likewise had won command-- The ancient dynasty of Gott. Straight-horned those tribes, of wiry coat, They had outmatched their canine foes, Then turned upon the yaks and smote The harts and put to shame the does. Inebriated by success, With numbers vastly multiplied, They built a citadel of pride About a national consciousness, Outran their borders to possess Those lush exotic harvest yields Of hitherto unvanquished fields, Until they had from that wild shore Of the Fallopian corridor Down to the grey Ovidian Sea Established their hegemony. Now when the veterans returned Flushed with their foreign victories, The hearts of all the generals burned With personal antipathies. All scrambled for the seats of power, Some wanted this, some wanted that, And some they knew not what--whereat Uprose the leader of the hour, A buck who by right of descent, As by his natural temperament, Had never recognized retreat. A scion of a Caliphate, He knew the strategy to beat The factions by a stroke of state And quell diversity of bleat, For of all lands, the realm of Gott Indubitably was polyglot. This stroke of state, this _coup d'état_ Was nature's oldest formula. It was the leader's bright idea To send them forth to find their grub On fetid moors and desert scrub Where tuber roots of Ipomoea Purga--the standard panacea For disaffections of the mind-- Became their diet, which, combined With seeds of Croton Tiglium, Restored their equilibrium. The mightiest hybrid of his race Was this ballista of the herd; The orient framework of his face Had been through generations blurred By a gigantic Ural trek-- For unlike Cyrus, Prince of Carob, The Gottite leader's stream was stirred By elements from Turk and Arab: Tincture of Tartar, touch of Czech Lay in the great Abimelech. So with the martial banners furled At all the frontiers in debate, It seemed as if the caprine world Might learn so to domesticate The gains imperial to release Their bucking energies for peace Under a wise duumvirate-- Two cousins far removed but loined From the same root, the god-like Pan, Abimelech and Cyrus joined In a world reconstruction plan! But goats like men have never found Much standing room on neutral ground, Once let a point of honour rise And death stalks in on compromise. Those Gottites and the Carobites Stood pat upon their natural rights, And here we must at once admit Three rocks on which a League might split. It seemed that Nature had designed, When first she fixed a Gottite mind, Or pitched the Carob brain, and bent The bony bulwarks round about, Into a three-inch armament, That compromise should never find An alley either in or out. For when in any age was born A freak without a cloven hoof, Or with palmated frontal roof That blossomed points along the horn-- Some civilized concessive goat Who carried democratic stripes Upon his softly textured coat-- The uniformitarian types, Who strove to dominate the breed, Exiled him from the herds. Indeed, Had not one just appeared to show Progressive softening of the brain By urging tolerance towards the foe At the finish of a great campaign? Now, inasmuch as he was not Pure Carob or acknowledged Gott, But some form of a large jerboa Derived from stray spermatozoa, They tore his carcase joint from joint And sheared him to the fourteenth point. That goats were laid down for dissent Was clearly, whether right or wrong, An architectural intent. Those picket horns were three feet long-- What was their purpose but reproof? And what the skull's, if not for shock? As axiomatic as the hoof For stance upon the mountain rock! Moreover, had this quirky dame Implanted in their disposition A sacred but a smoky flame Of uncontrollable ambition. Nomads from zoologic time, The race grew conscious that they must Give to an aimless wanderlust The sublimation of a climb. Valleys and plains were nurseries Which full-grown goats might leave behind For the wild gully routes that wind Up to the mountain crags and screes-- Places of habitation where Ancestral bands of satyrs shook Lascivious lightnings from their hair. They marvelled with exalted look At things that voyaged through the air; They worshipped clouds and glorified The golden eagles as they took The solar orbit in their stride. Joined with this instinct of ambition There was a problem called nutrition, A knotty, vexed consideration Not yet resolved by sublimation. Of all the animals that faced The question of a food supply, The goat had the most catholic taste That crops could ever satisfy. It could be proved by any test He had no rival at a feast. He craved the foliage of the west To vary pastures of the east, New barks and fresher rinds: the sight Of grasses inaccessible Was whetstone to the appetite. The more he had, the more he wanted; A taste unrecognized, a smell Still unappropriated, haunted The rumen like a ghostly spell. The eastern tribes had often stared Up at the peaks and wondered what Those vapours were their nostrils flared, What herbs and blossoms there might be-- Was it goatleaf or bergamot, Red clover or sweet cicely? And likewise when the east wind blew Over the Carolonian summit, The herds from western uplands drew Intoxicating essence from it. Was that bay laurel, was it thyme That floated from the mountain span? Their eyes were fastened on the climb, Their noses quivered with the sniff, Yes, by the beard of the first Khan, There was no error in that whiff, They knew it, every buck and dam, 'Twas lavender and marjoram. On one crisp morning when the heights Were diamond brilliant with their snows, When Dawn had flushed with a deep rose The panels of the Dolomites, And atmospheric odours tart Made tonic impact on the heart, A common inspiration struck Concurrently each monarch buck: _It was the Ledge, the unconquered Ledge, The sanguinary Capra Pass,_ That sent its challenge from the edge Of the canyon of Saint Barnabas. Abimelech and Cyrus led Their troops up the opposing sides, Past fell and scaur and watershed, Over the small and great Divides. The marching bleat from every corps Combined into their battle roar, _Excelsior! Excelsior!_ Such stout morale, such fine _élan_ Was never seen since time began. By noon both tribes became aware Through subtle changes in the air Caused by the sharp reverberant sound Of hoofs upon untimbered ground, And by the Carob-Gottite smell, A mixture indescribable, That they might any moment close With their hereditary foes. They reached the hollow where the green Ledge like a boa lay between The twin peaks of the Dolomites. Massed by prophetic signals, kites And buzzards in a storm of wings Swept up and down the great ravine, Impatient for their scavengings. Upon that very ledge were fought Thousands of battles that had wrought The drama of a racial glory, With nothing in the strife more certain Than that each act of the long story Should close upon a carrion curtain. And yet--was there a goat dismayed In all that spiral cavalcade? No--not a buck, nor could there be From stock designed for battery And built like Carthaginian rams, Although that thousand feet of drop Sheer from the Carolonian top Put curds within the milcher dams. With pawing hoofs and sweating flanks, Each chieftain as the duellist Of his own herd stepped from the ranks To try the quarrel on the schist. Abimelech himself had seen His sires, grandsires, and great-grands fall, Locked with the lyrates, down the wall, Plumb to the crypts in the ravine, Dropping like frenzied bacchanals, Hitting their corrugated globes So bloodily, the frontal lobes Came out through their occipitals. But so intense the patriot fire, And so magnificent the roll, The youth had felt the same desire Kindle the torches of his soul. And had not Cyrus felt as well The potent ritual of the spell, The phobias of his spirit burn In the white heat of discipline, As he had watched his kith and kin In their inexorable turn Perish? How splendidly they fell! And how the witenagemot Would hallow this immortal spot! And had he not gone back to tell The nursing dams who would convey To generations then unborn The story? How they would portray That plunge! And had not Cyrus sworn Upon the blood script of the laws, That on some sacrificial day He would go forth his father's way, Crusading downward to be torn By canyon jags and vulture claws, Maintening to the end The Cause, The exaltation of The Horn? And now the fatal hour had struck. Abimelech, that eastern buck With all the pride of a Mogul, His anger rising in a storm Of snorts, superbly true to form, Moved to the centre, lowered his skull-- The famous Gottite cranium-- To meet the Carobite Defender, The noble Cyrus who had come To die but never to surrender. Come all ye hair-dividers, wise To ways of nature and of art, Who know how to anatomize The fine vagaries of the heart, Come bring your lore and make it plain-- This riddle in the Carob brain. In that weird passage from the dark Matrix that shaped the Carobite And stratified his skull for fight, Up to this present hour, the spark Had never failed the dynamite. Ye cannot say that Cyrus knew Just what he was about to do. For nowhere in his long descent Was there a trace of one rehearsal Which might account for this reversal Of military precedent. Folly it is to speculate Upon the food that Cyrus ate, That inland buds of evergreen With valley shoots could mitigate A million years of feudal hate From Irish Moss and carrageen; Or that the Adriatic weed By working on the thyroid freed The activators in his blood; That something in the morning cud Gentled his lymph towards his foes,-- That steadying digitalis flip To the heart when he paused to nip The foxglove. Tell us he that knows. Or failing every shibboleth Of blood or ductless glands or such, Did reason enter in to touch The senses with the thought of death, And flash across goat-leaden eyes Glimpse of futilitarian skies? The vultures with their ten-foot spread, Their hairless necks and crimson lids, Were at their business half-a-mile Below among the ancient dead Or roosting on the pyramids. And some were mounting the defile To flank the Pass of Capra where They lounged like lizards on the air; And one black wing had come so near The Rock, its tip had brushed the coat Of the Carob leader as it passed. And had that brush, so leisured, cast The only one acknowledged fear Within the history of the goat? Or was it fear? Did Cyrus know That neither courage, strength nor will Behind the battle urge to kill Was proof against a flying foe? That every time when honour wronged Secured revenge upon the peaks, Inevitably the spoils belonged To the swiftest wings and sharpest beaks-- The harpies and the cormorants Who, compensating for their theft Of blood and flesh and fat, had left The glory to the ruminants? But do not reason why the mind Should save the soul or seek to find Within the evolutionary dream An optimistic phagocyte That cleaning up the corporate stream, Had scrubbed a conscience into light, The conscience of a Carobite-- An Aryan working overtime Beating the Tartar to the climb! Ye cannot know what Cyrus felt; Ye only know that Cyrus knelt. Knelt! Hocks and knees! The body lay Prone--lengthwise--on the Capra Pass, As if beside his dam--the way He went to sleep in summer grass. Now let pathologists explain What happened to the other brain. After a close look at the head, A momentary sniff at hoof And beard which gave Abimelech proof That Cyrus was by no means dead, A flash of understanding thrown Like a dagger of apocalypse, Had pierced the Gottite cranial bone And crashed his spiritual eclipse. Was it a glint of chivalry Nurtured under the eastern climes, A throw-back to the Gobi times, When someone in his ancestry Had set a fashion for the race, Made it a stigma of disgrace To foul a fallen enemy? Let him declare it who can tell Whether in Palestinian lands Some new conciliatory cell Had been evolved while roving bands Converged upon the desert sands To share the water from a well. The chieftain saw the road was thrown Wide open: it was his alone To take possession in his stride-- 'Twas his alone, this flush of pride In a great conquest which would place Him as the hero of his race. But all the arrogance and scorn On which his tribal soul was bred, Spurn of the hoof, flaunt of the horn, That was Abimelech's had fled. And in its place a strangely warm Infusion--a considerate care That would not harm a single hair. He sniffed once more the prostrate form Of Cyrus. Then as if he feared He might do violence to the head Or bring pollution to the beard, He stepped so lightly over, cleared Knees, hoofs and rump with that sure tread Which never yet had made him miss His foothold on a precipice. Clean over? Yes, beyond his foe! None could deny the deed was done, The Carolonian summit won, The Capra Pass without a blow! Cyrus looked up and in his eyes Was an incredulous surprise. He could not find his enemy. He shook himself and blinked awhile, Then straightened up and gingerly He made the perilous defile. Reaching the safety of the bend, He stopped and, curious, craned his neck, Only to see Abimelech Watching him at the other end. The eyes of those two hierarchs Were four interrogation marks. No record in the family tree Illumined this epiphany. Five minutes motionless and mute They stood with that hypnotic stare That only puzzled goats could wear; And then in reverent salute As though their eyes had shed their scales, And each had recognized a brother Bidding Good Morning to the other, They waved their beards and stubby tails, And turning took their downward trails, Accompanied by their retinue, Alive to the redemptive clue-- Cyrus to where the wild thyme grew, And where he could at his sweet beck Tread acres of the cistus-tree And lavender; Abimelech To bergamot and barberry, And where he could, up to his neck, Crop billowing leagues of cicely. THE BARITONE He ascended the rostrum after the fashion of the Caesars: His arm, a baton raised oblique, Answering the salute of the thunder, Imposed a silence on the Square. For three hours A wind-theme swept his laryngeal reeds, Pounded on the diaphragm of a microphone, Entered, veered, ran round a coil, Emerged, to storm the passes of the ether, Until, impinging on a hundred million ear-drums, It grew into the fugue of Europe. Nickel, copper and steel rang their quotations to the skies, And down through the diatonic scale The mark hallooed the franc, The franc bayed the lira, With the three in full flight from the pound. And while the diapasons were pulled On the _Marseillaise_, The _Giovinezza_ And the _Deutschlandlied_, A perfect stretto was performed As the _Dead March_ boomed its way Through _God Save The King_ And the _Star Spangled Banner_. Then the codetta of the clerics (Chanting a ritual over the crosses of gold tossed into the crucibles to back the billion credit) Was answered by The clang of the North Sea against the bows of the destroyers, The ripple of surf on the periscopes, The grunt of the Mediterranean shouldering Gibraltar, And the hum of the bombing squadrons in formation under Orion. And the final section issued from the dials, WHEN-- Opposed by contrapuntal blasts From the Federated Polyphonic Leagues Of Gynecologists, Morticians, And the Linen Manufacturers-- The great Baritone, Soaring through the notes of the hymeneal register, Called the brides and the grooms to the altar, To be sent forth by the Recessional Bells To replenish the earth, And in due season to produce Magnificent crops of grass on the battlefields. PUCK REPORTS BACK OBERON Much have I longed for thy return, my sprite: This greenwood, once the stage of elfin pranks And welkin-splitting laughter, has become A desert in thy absence. Now these stories Burrow beneath my ribs and chase away The bile, for they reveal a madder world Than what Lysander knew and Hermia. Poor Bottom in his downiest moments saw No visions such as these that thou relatest-- That fire should burn in water; mortals fly Throughout the empyrean on the backs Of birds; and whales with whirling fins should leave Their native element and take the air Across the land and sea with greater speed Than falcons; and that lovers could exchange Their vows in whispers at the self-same instant, Though separate a thousand ocean leagues-- These tales would tax my own too credulous ears, As though I heard accounts of wrathful capons Tracking Hyrcanian tigers to their lairs. Hast thou another fable in thy scrip? PUCK My Prince of Shadows, these reports I've brought Are more than fantasies that might disturb The reason through the love-juice of a herb. I saw the strangest duel ever fought-- Sir Guy, Knight of the Garter, famous knight, Has challenged valiant Boris, famous count, To settle a reckoning in single fight. Boris not only questioned the amount, The nature and occasion of the debt, But forwarded a diplomatic note To the knightly challenger that, when they met, He would be pleased to take him by the throat, With many a courtly phrase which might imply His general opinion of Sir Guy. So, to collect, a journey was begun, Which, for the distance under broiling sun And pelting rain, had the same pith of sense As if a man might barter pounds for pence. At last when they appeared in mutual sight Upon two neighbouring hills where a ravine That ended in a quagmire lay between, The count began to bellow at the knight With fearful imprecations while Sir Guy Called Boris a bat, a polecat and a kite, A worm, an adder and a wart-hog--Why They should attack each other with such words I know not, but when finished with the birds And all the noxious animals, they hurled The missiles of the vegetable world. And while they cursed they put more armour on Their steeds, beyond all war comparison, And on themselves already over-weight: For every oath they added some new plate To some new part of their anatomy, And when they had their beavers down, no hint Of mortal man escaped captivity Save through the eye-slits where the sovereign glint Of reason peered blasted with ecstasy. OBERON This is the visitation of the moon! But, prithee, how with such accoutrement Climbed they up to the saddles of their coursers? PUCK A dozen robust yeomen by main force Managed to get Sir Guy upon his horse. As many knights accomplished the same feat-- Placing against the withers of the mount A ladder, they pushed up the angry count And got him fastened well astride his seat. Nor was this all: To see through their disguise And find the men, I had to rub my eyes. As though the armour were not yet complete, The henchmen brought another piece of mail Shaped like a conduit or a metal hose And screwed it to each gladiator's nose. Far-off it might have been a dragon's tail, But on a closer view it had the look Of an elephant's trunk, when it recurved On the cuirass--What was the purpose served? The devil knows; so crazed it was I shook With laughing paroxysms, then with fright, For suddenly the day became as night, The curses took on corporal form--so rank The poisonous emanations were, they swept Across the gap and up the hills and stank Like an Irish fen. The squires, they broke and wept; The knights, they choked; while I ran off for cover To an acorn cup and drew a rose-leaf over. OBERON Whither did all this lead, my gentle Puck? Did they sit howling on those hills forever? PUCK I went to sleep within my nest of oak To rinse the portent through a dream, then woke, Uncuddled, and stole forth to banks I knew, Where violets, musk-rose and wild thyme grew: I filched them from their beds and sent them out (With a million glow-worms lighting up the air) To pour their distillation through the rout Of wind and stench. Anon, I looked and there Unmoved, the same infuriated pair-- Sir Guy, rigid, barking his challenge still, And Boris booming, bellowing from the hill. OBERON This story would outwit all tricks of mirth Known to the gullible within my realm. Such folly falling on a broken mirror Could scarce distort its own insane grimaces. How were they loosened from their pedestals? PUCK My lord! I scouted round the clover fields And drove out from their lazy honey yields A furious colony of humble-bees. I fanned them up both hills and bade them squeeze Through rivet cracks and joints, and stick like leeches To the bare lard within the warriors' breeches. I then fled to a pine tree top and heard A pandemonium of oaths and screeches, And by the buckle creakings and the gird Of the loin plates upon their rusty hinges, I knew how well my squads clapped on the twinges. But this, my master, could not get them parted From their incorporate posts, and so I tried A prank that I devised one Hallowtide Which never failed to get two fighters started. Changing myself into a gamecock, I With bristling hackles, and my comb blood-red, Settled upon the helmet of Sir Guy, Until the proud arch of my neck and head Assumed the tartness of a Parthian bow. With such inflammatory mien, I crew Six notes contemptuous at Boris who Stiffened and took the insult like a blow. In half a second, like a meteorite, I landed on the county's helm and shrilled The fiery syllables back at the knight. Thou shouldst have heard my clarion as I drilled Helmet and skull to pierce the globèd brain. Each lusty crow held triumph and disdain: I nearly tore my wattles when I blew it, For my restored ears still feel the pain. Zounds, sir, the way the count and knight went to it! OBERON The impact of those mighty opposites, Spurred to their wrath by such a vent of scorn, Must have, like an Olympian avalanche, Brought terror to the battlements of Jove. PUCK Nay, nay, your Majesty--'twas no such fun. Never indeed was there a tilt begun With heraldry like this, that ended so. The rivals did not strike a single blow. When once they started off, they could not stop. They did not seem to ride so much as drop To the solid earth, then rise, bound through the air, Which angry at their overweening pride Bounced them from knoll to knoll, made them collide With their own saddles, till the exhausted pair-- Pitched from their stallions which, poor jades, were wrecked By the very iron bands meant to protect The fetlocks--took one final somersault Into the miry bottom of the vault. I watched them wallowing like drunken grooms, Pursuing a blind orbit in the mud, Only the gesture of their fighting blood Waving defiance from the bankrupt plumes. Count Boris' nozzle sent a farewell blast, Claiming a fatuous triumph, while a high Blue feather from the proud knob of Sir Guy, Striving to keep erect, gave up the last Frail effort of heroic pantomime, To fall like a snapped water-flag and lie Prone in the sea-green bubbles on the slime. OBERON Enough, my romping elf! I pray, enough! In these reports there's matter to regale Titania through many a sulky moon. Had Nestor heard them, he'd have cracked his sides. The sport that night in the Athenian grove, Compared with this, was but episcopal. There's not a planet left that keeps its course; The distaff cracks; the dizzy earth is run By three inebriated witches--Stay! PUCK Another tale of men I could recite-- Of wing-clipped human eagles living in holes Under the ground in envy of the moles... But I shall leave that for a winter night. OBERON I know not what thou hast in mind to say, But hold! It is not well those jests should come In troops--They have a boding sentry face And smell too strongly of mortality. SILENCES There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence under the sea; No cries announcing birth, No sounds declaring death. There is silence when the milt is laid on the spawn in the weeds and fungus of the rock-clefts; And silence in the growth and struggle for life. The bonitoes pounce upon the mackerel, And are themselves caught by the barracudas, The sharks kill the barracudas And the great molluscs rend the sharks, And all noiselessly-- Though swift be the action and final the conflict, The drama is silent. There is no fury upon the earth like the fury under the sea. For growl and cough and snarl are the tokens of spendthrifts who know not the ultimate economy of rage. Moreover, the pace of the blood is too fast. But under the waves the blood is sluggard and has the same temperature as that of the sea. There is something pre-reptilian about a silent kill. Two men may end their hostilities just with their battle-cries. "The devil take you," says one. "I'll see you in hell first," says the other. And these introductory salutes followed by a hail of gutturals and sibilants are often the beginning of friendship, for who would not prefer to be lustily damned than to be half-heartedly blessed? No one need fear oaths that are properly enunciated, for they belong to the inheritance of just men made perfect, and, for all we know, of such may be the Kingdom of Heaven. But let silent hate be put away for it feeds upon the heart of the hater. Today I watched two pairs of eyes. One pair was black and the other grey. And while the owners thereof, for the space of five seconds, walked past each other, the grey snapped at the black and the black riddled the grey. One looked to say--"The cat," And the other--"The cur." But no words were spoken; Not so much as a hiss or a murmur came through the perfect enamel of the teeth; not so much as a gesture of enmity. If the right upper lip curled over the canine, it went unnoticed. The lashes veiled the eyes not for an instant in the passing. And as between the two in respect to candour of intention or eternity of wish, there was no choice, for the stare was mutual and absolute. A word would have dulled the exquisite edge of the feeling, An oath would have flawed the crystallization of the hate. For only such culture could grow in a climate of silence,-- Away back before the emergence of fur or feather, back to the unvocal sea and down deep where the darkness spills its wash on the threshold of light, where the lids never close upon the eyes, where the inhabitants slay in silence and are as silently slain. A PRAYER-MEDLEY Lord, how wonderful is the power of man; how great his knowledge! We have triumphed over the earth, the sea, the air and the ether. We have made habitable the poisonous wastes of the world and built cities thereon, changed the courses of rivers and caused deserts to bloom. We have explored the hidden lanes under the sea. We have discovered the chemistry of the soil, and can toughen the hardihood of seeds to prevail over climates. We have extracted gold even from dross-heaps, Our aeroplanes over mountains are as beautiful as eagles that bear the Dawn upon their backs. Our whispers, disdaining the carriage of wires, are heard across continents with the instancy of light and are as immediately answered. Our greetings and warnings are exchanged before the smiles and frowns have left the faces of our statesmen. We have weighed suns and stars, made finite thine unbounded Universe, divided the Invisible and watched the race of solar chariots in an atom. We have invaded the lair of the thunder and placed our jockeys upon tides and cataracts. By taking thought, we have added cubits unto our stature. We can tell the signs of the seasons; and as for the winds, we know whence they come and whither they go, for we have pencil-traced the assemblage of storms thousands of miles off. How wonderful is the power of man; how great his knowledge! * * * * * Lord, we praise thee for our Statutes, for our Reform Bills, for our Proclamations; for the march of Progress, for Our Days of Rest, for the shortening of the Hours of Labour. We no longer harness children to the carts in the black routes under the earth, nor whip them at the cotton mills as we did when their advocates were scarce at thy High Courts of Love. For thou didst soften the hearts of thy legislators when they decreed that no child under ten should work more than twelve hours a day in the damp and the dark. And thou didst further soften their hearts when, in their own time, their own good time, they lifted the lower limits of the years and reduced the sunless hours, until the child, the woman and the slave were made free by the Act of the Nation. * * * * * The curse of labour is past. We have thrown the packs from our shoulders, wiped the sweat from our brows, yet multiplied the work which is not of our hands. Times were known when the labourers were heard to sing at their toil, when the spinning-wheel, the reaping-hook and the plough fitted into the measures of the verse, but the songs have died on our lips and the tunes are now sung by the motors and the dynamos. And the music is stern and defiant and absolute, for the machine, in the pride of its precision, answers the hungry discords outside of the doors and windows: Keep out of the shops and our mills, With your unpredictable wills, And your clumsy fingers and thumbs; Out of the cloth we make Out of the bread we bake We fling you the rags and the crumbs. Keep out--for you will never achieve The pattern perfection of weave In the exquisite strength of our steel. Stay out--for you cannot restrain Fatigue of heart and of brain And the wayward blood you conceal. And the song of the machine is answered by the call of the saboteur: Burn, burn, burn, Cotton and coffee and wheat, For the wheels must cease to turn When there's too much food to eat, And the factory doors must shut On the looms with their market glut. And both songs merge in the rugged antiphonal of the individualists: Wait, wait, wait, Till the cycle rings the chime, When Supply begins to abate, And Demand is on the climb; Then brain and iron and brawn, And every man for himself, Will reinstate the Dawn Of Freedom, Power and Pelf. Lord, we no longer torture for the faith, We no longer arrange the faggots around the knees of the heretic, We no longer crucify. We praise thee that the days, long gone, when, as at Ephesus, the saints seized one another by the throats to vindicate the Godhead, were but nursery days when thy children scrambled up their picture-blocks in the vain attempt to puzzle out the features of thy face. But now having become men, we have put away childish things. We still go as pilgrims on our perennial journeys to the Councils, but how orderly and admirable our conduct! We meet with the crossing of hands and wish one another well. We sit at our common tables, partake of burnt offerings of lambs and bullocks, and toast the royal and presidential healths with the blood of grapes; after which each one tells of his desire for peace and amity with his cousins across the boundaries, favouring the stability and prosperity of the world. Then we go into Committees: We adjourn, but we do not dissolve, for thou has not left thy delegates without hope that at some future date, at Geneva or London or maybe at Washington, we shall meet to confer again, to enter the halls full of wisdom, and to depart void of understanding. Meanwhile we return to our homes, some to report progress from the platform, some to suspend judgment, and others to sit in sackcloth and ashes. It is true we live by faith. For, between the sessions, the chemist continues to brood over the gases, the bacteriologist over the microbes, the mechanic over the lathe, the nationalists over tariffs and trenches, boundaries and corridors, and the war secretaries turn the dials of the vaults upon the last design and the newest formula. * * * * * Lord! Our spirits are kindled by the flash of phrases. We are shaken by the cannonade of mottoes. "It is sweet and becoming that one should die for his country." "Come home with your shield or upon it." "Saul hath slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands." "When shall their glory fade." "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon." "I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." "In the multitude of counsellors there is safety." But our cenotaphs bear no testimony to those who moulder ingloriously upon the mattress. O Kali, Mother of Destruction! Ahriman, of Darkness and Strife! Loki, Spirit of Evil! What is sown of Isis shall be reaped of Hecate, and made the bargain of Mammon, Gatherer of Spoil. O Buddha, of the folded hands and silent lips! Confucius, Sage of the Right Way! Christ, Lord of Love, Lord of Life! May the dream not entirely vanish from our sleep. Our physicians can prescribe for the ills of their own families. They can cure individual diseases, and heal the hurt of the body. But they have found no remedy for the deep malaise in the communal heart of the world. Our Father Who art in heaven.... Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses. FIRE Wiser than thought, more intimate than breath, More ancient than the plated rust of Mars, Beyond the light geometry of stars, Yet closer than our web of life and death-- This sergeant of the executing squads Calls night from dawn no less than dawn from night; This groom that teams the wolf and hare for flight Is obstetrician at the birth of gods. Around this crimson source of human fears, Where rites and myths have built their scaffoldings, With smoke of hecatombs upon her wings, And chased by shadows of the coming years, Our planet-moth tries blindly to survive Her spinning vertigo as fugitive. But stronger than its terror is the deep Allurement, primary to our blood, which holds Safety and warmth in unimpassioned folds, Night and the candle-quietness of sleep; With the day's bugles silent, when the will, That feeds the tumult of our natures, rests Along the broken arteries of its quests. So, let the yellowing world revolve until Old Demogorgon's last expatriate On this exotic hearth leans forth to claim Promethean virtue from a dying flame, His fingers tapered--less to mitigate The chilling accident of his sojourn Than to invoke his ultimate return. SEEN ON THE ROAD The pundit lectured that the world was young As ever, frisking like a spring-time colt Around the sun, his mother. The class hung Upon his words. I listened like a dolt. And muttered that I saw the wastrel drawn Along a road with many a pitch and bump By spavined mules--this very day at dawn! And heading for an ammunition dump. The savant claimed I heckled him, but--Hell! I saw the fellow in a tumbril there, Tattered and planet-eyed and far from well, With Winter roosting in his Alpine hair. THE PRIZE CAT Pure blood domestic, guaranteed, Soft-mannered, musical in purr, The ribbon had declared the breed, Gentility was in the fur. Such feline culture in the gads, No anger ever arched her back-- What distance since those velvet pads Departed from the leopard's track! And when I mused how Time had thinned The jungle strains within the cells, How human hands had disciplined Those prowling optic parallels; I saw the generations pass Along the reflex of a spring, A bird had rustled in the grass, The tab had caught it on the wing: Behind the leap so furtive-wild Was such ignition in the gleam, I thought an Abyssinian child Had cried out in the whitethroat's scream. UNDER THE LENS Along the arterial highways, Through the cross-roads and trails of the veins They are ever on the move-- Incarnate strife, Reflecting in victory, deadlock and defeat, The outer campaigns of the world, But without tactics, without strategy. Creatures of primal force, With saurian impact And virus of the hamadryads, The microbes war with the leucocytes. Physicians watch the conflict-- Advance, respite, recession and advance-- They shake their heads and murmur, "Body versus organism," "A question of endurance," "Try out transfusion," "Pour in fresh troops." With flush and pallor alternating, Pulses racing, slowing, flickering, The body sinks, Like a derelict with a mutinous crew, Steamless and rudderless, Taking its final drubbing from the sea. Once it was flood and drought, lightning and storm and earthquake, Those hoary executors of the will of God, That planned the monuments for human faith. Now, rather, it is these silent and invisible ministers, Teasing the ear of Providence And levelling out the hollows of His hands, That pose the queries for His moral government. THE SEER Dream on while your prophetic sight Is still too keen to probe the day, Before the spectrum of your night Is recomposed to faded grey-- Before the riot of your vision Is sobered by our prose derision. Look as you may--horizon-faced! The distant palms are waving now. But do not touch and do not taste The fruit that clusters from the bough. For on those sands no healing wings Are poised above the water springs. And when the horses thunder on, And dust is on the charioteer, Beware the advent of the Dawn, Lest that the eye betray the ear; Sleep on and let the day eclipse The ghosts of your apocalypse. (TO ANY ASTRONOMER) Come, reckon up the eons as you may, And measure out the lag of tide and time, And circumscribe the pace for night and day Within the weave of solar pantomime; Then with a casual shrug dismiss the brief And latest masquerade which started when Blood cells danced red to joy or paled to grief In little ticks called three score years and ten. But chart for me that instant when a pledge Of love was mutualized upon the lips Within a core of flame beyond whose edge All your known planets suffered full eclipse-- When the hoarse clarions of an atavist Called home your Betelgeuze to formless mist. THE TEXT OF THE OATH Upon what Bible will you swear? Before whose altar lift your hand When kettle-drum and trumpet-blare Attest you at the witness-stand? There was another lad I knew, Blue-eyed and trustful and as mild, A life-enthusiast like you, Who scarcely had outgrown the child. There was a virus in the air That put the toxin in his blood, Bugles were blowing everywhere Breathing romance on sleet and mud. He wrote his lesson on a slate, Composed of foreign names to spell-- These to defend and those to hate, And at the barracks learned it well. They pinned a medal on his breast Behind the lines one afternoon: He had from a machine-gun nest Annihilated a platoon. And there were further honours paid One evening when his name was read, For after two crossed slabs were laid, The LAST POST sounded overhead. LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER Helen, Deirdre, Héloïse, Laura, Cleopatra, Eve! The knight-at-arms is on his knees, Still at your altars--by your leave. The magic of your smiles and frowns Had made you goddesses by right, Divorced the monarchs from their crowns, And changed world empires overnight. You caught the _male_ for good or ill, And locked him in a golden cage, Or let him out at your sweet will-- A prince or peasant, lord or page. But do not preen your wings and claim That when you passed away, the keys-- The symbols of your charm and fame-- Were buried with your effigies. For, wild and lovely are your broods That stole from you the ancient arts; In tender or tempestuous moods, They storm the barrens of our hearts. Amy, Hilda, Wilhelmine, Golden Marie and slim Suzette, Viola, Claire and dark Eileen, Brown-eyed Mary, blue-eyed Bett. Daughters are ye of those days When Troy and Rome and Carthage burned: Ye cannot mend your mothers' ways Or play a trick they hadn't learned. But whether joy or whether woe-- Lure of lips or scorn of eyes-- We bless you either way we go, In or out of Paradise. THE MIRAGE Complete from glowing towers to golden base, Without the lineage of toil it stood: A crystal city fashioned out of space, So calm and holy in its Sabbath mood, It might constrain belief that any time The altars would irradiate their fires, And any moment now would start the chime Of matins from the massed Cathedral spires. Then this marmoreal structure of the dawn, Built as by fiat of Apocalypse, Was with the instancy of vision gone; Nor did it die through shadow of eclipse, Through clouds and vulgar effigies of night, But through the darker irony of light. THE OLD ORGANON (1225 A.D.) When Genghis and his captains Built their pyramids of skulls Outside Bokhara and Herat, And sacked Otrar and Samarcand, There was no sophistry between the subject and and the verb; For what the Khan said, he meant. Behind the dust were the hoofs of his cavalry, Behind the smoke was his fire. And when Mohammed and Jehal-ud-Din, In their flight from the Indus to the Caspian, Appealed to Allah for protection, Even the Great God of Islam Could find no escape for the faithful, When he knew the flight was regimented To the paces of a Mongol syllogism. THE NEW (1937 A.D.) Now when the delegates met around the tables And lifted up their voices, The subjects were their civilizing tasks, The fulfilment of historic missions, The redemption of the national honour, And the emancipation of the slaves. But flaws were hidden in the predicates, And in the pips of the adverbials, And the rhetorical adjectives Assumed the protective colouring Of the great cats against the jungle grass-- THEREFORE, In all the wealth of their possessive pronouns, Not a syllable was spared For the oil reported in the foreign shales. THE MYSTIC Where do you bank such fires as can transmute This granite-fact intransigence of life, Such proud irenic faith as can refute The upstart logic of this world of strife-- Its come-and-go of racial dust, its strum Of windy discords from the seven seas, Its scream of fifes and din of kettle-drum That lead the march towards our futurities? The proof, that slays the reason, has no power To stem your will, corrode your soul--though lime Conspire with earth and water to devour The finest cultures from the lust of slime; Though crumbled Tartar hordes break through their sod To blow their grit into the eyes of God. THE DROWNING All patterns of the day were merged in one-- Clouds, wings and faces, dunes and harbour bars-- In a swift blur of vision as the sun Went down at noon upon a drift of spars. In such a lightless hour the sea had cleft A heart, fumbling its way as through a strait, Then passed, bequeathing to the common weft No record but its arid distillate. Though when night comes with sleep there still remains Enough of daylight and of surf to trace The artisan outside the storm-swept panes, Refashioning the pallor of his face To softer lines which thread my nescient mood With the illusion of beatitude. THE WEATHER GLASS There is no refuge from this wind tonight, Though sound the roof and double-latched the door, And though I've trimmed the wick, there is no light, Nor is there warmth although the tamaracks roar; Nor will the battery of those surges keep The hammering pulses silent in my sleep. But one alone might quell this storm tonight, And were he now this moment at the door, His eyes would clear the shadows from this light, His voice put laughter in the billets' roar, And he would clasp me in his arms and keep The wheeling gulls from screaming through my sleep. THE EMPTY ROOM I know that were my soul tonight Strung to the silence of this room, I'd hear remembered footfalls light As wayward drift of lotus bloom. Nor would it just be make-believe, Were I to find her in this chair, Or catch the rustle of her sleeve, Or note the glint upon her hair. Say, would you blame me if I knelt To put faith to its enterprise-- So surely must her touch be felt In liquid coolness on my eyes. Now listen! If the veil should part Within this holy ritual, You'll hear a voice call to my heart More lovely than a madrigal. * * * * * * * * By E. J. PRATT _Newfoundland Verse The Witches' Brew Titans The Iron Door The Roosevelt and the Antinoe Verses of the Sea Many Moods The Titanic_ [End of The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems, by E. J. Pratt]