From PRISON SONNETS

VISIONS

In prison dreadful visions visit me.
But are they merely visions, for they seem
More vivid and more solid than a dream,
So much of sleepless pain they cause to me?
The sorest pangs and tortures most refined
That ever man inflicted on his kind,
The martyred ones who bore them and who died—
These fill the prison cell where I abide.
They swarm about me, relay on relay:
The saintly heroes, brutal hirelings.
I see the martyrs' wounds as plain as day.

Those wounds resound like thunder in my soul:
"Thou art a part of all our sufferings,
Then let thy song our sufferings console!"

September 22,1889

THE TWO GODDESSES

In sleep two goddesses appeared to me.
The face of one was glorious to see,
Her blue eyes seemed to speak of joys untold,
Her curling tresses had the glint of gold.
The other's face was partly veiled from sight,
But black eyes glittered like the lightning bright
Gainst thunder clouds. Het learning raven hair
Made her like stormy summer morn appear.
"Weep not, O lonely one!" the lovely voice
Of that first goddess said: "Weep not, my child!
I bring a gift to make thy heart rejoice."
She handed me her gift, a sunflower fine;
The other drove a thorn deep in my flesh—
At once I knew that joy and pain were mine.

The first then said: "Behold me! I am love,
The sun of life which never sets above,
And like the flower which always seeks the sun,
So follow me until thy life be done.
Then shalt thou see the brighter side of things,
The world of beauty, all that therein sings.
The sordid and the vile shall scarce appear
As verities to vex thy eye and ear.
My gift will win thee many a noble heart,
The bravest and the worthiest of thy time.
In all that's good and great shalt thou have part.
Therefore,????dnld, guard well that which I give;
Make full Sce for it in thy heart and grow
In love for man as long as thou shalt live."

The other said: "Behold me! I am hate,
Sister to love, her ever-constant mate.
I hate oppression, inhumanity,
Contempt for others' rights and cruelty.
I hate that great injustice whereby men
Have driven their fellows back into the den
Of ignorance, where in its darkness grow
Servility, despair, all mankind's woe.
Man's heart is good, yet evil breeds its powers
In ignorance and in the social state
Which men erect, which also them devours.
Thou'ltfeel my sting until the time comes when
Thy heart shall burn with hate, for only he
Who fights 'gainst evil loves his fellow men.

September 18,1889

THE DOVE

A hermit was sitting by his lonely cell,
Far off in the heart of the primeval woods
Where nothing was heard but the voices of birds,
And murmurs of leaves as the wind rose and fell.
When lo! he looked upwards and there he descried
His sole friend returning, a snowy white dove,
Which he for two days had been mourning as lost.
The dove fluttered down, came to rest at his feet.
The hermit at once to the dove, where it stood,
Extended his hand to caress it, but stopped—
Those snowy white wings bore the stain of men's blood.
The holy man gasped: "What a curse on all things
There must be, when even a dove doth return
From dwellings of men with their blood on its wings!"

September 13,1889

A LEGEND OF PILATE

So Pilate yielded Christ to their demands,
And saying: "I'm not guilty, ye have erred!"
Took water and in public washed his hands,
And then went home as though naught had occurred.
But this took place: as from a serpent dread,
All those who saw him in wild panic fled—
His slaves, his servants, e'en his men of might,
His soldiers fierce, were daunted by the sight.
Up to the roof he went, his wife to seek
Who was awaiting him, but with a shriek,
She jumped, crashed in the street and lay there dead.
His little child lay sleeping in its bed;
He gazed, it woke, its eyes were terrified
By what it saw; it gasped and straightway died.

Thus God marked Pilate with eternal stain,
Cursed him in soul and body, live or dead;
Far worse than Cain, who having Abel slain,
Washed not his hands, but owned his guilt and fled.
For he who had delivered righteousness
To violence, acknowledged not his blame;
Therefore he was deprived of every claim
To human worth, to love or happiness.
His family all vanished without trace,
Great Caesar banished him from pride of place,
In his own city found he no abode.
Infirm and old he sat beside the road
And begged for scraps with sad and piteous moans
Till hostile hands slew him with clods and stones.

Then someone dragged his corpse off by the feet,
And in a pit to bury it they tried.
When morning came it lay again outside;
The grave would not the cursed thing secrete

And then they heaped a pile of wood well tarred,
And cast the corpse thereon and kindled flame.
The wood burned up—the corpse remained the same,
A pile of ashes, but the corpse unmarred.
A millstone then about his neck they tied,
And, binding hands and feet, into the sea
They cast the cursed body carefully.
The ropes, however, burst and came untied,
And now the corpse of Pilate, cursed but free,
Still floats somewhere upon the open sea.

September 9,1889

THE SONNET

In sonnets once did Dante and Petrarch,
Shakespeare, and Spenser, all of beauty sing.
In forms, like goblets of the highest mark,
They poured their love in phrases glittering.
The Germans forged those goblets into swords
When they expressed their patriotism stark.
Their "armored sonnets” like their corporals bark,
The lust of blood and steel is in their words.
But what have peasants with such swords to do?
We need new weapons for our coming strife.
Our people's swords must be reforged anew
Into a plough—to till the future scene,
A sickle—to reap harvests for new life,
A fork—to make Augean stables clean.

September 24,1889.