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IOLAeUS




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

A SON OF CAIN: POEMS. Cr. 8vo. 3/6 net.

IN THE WAKE OF THE PH[OE]NIX: POEMS. F'cap. 8vo. 3/6 net.




IOLAeUS:

THE MAN THAT WAS A GHOST

BY

JAMES A. MACKERETH

  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
  39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
  NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA

1913




  TO THE MEMORY OF
  MY FRIEND
  ARTHUR RANSOM





HAIL AND FAREWELL

To A.R.


    We range the ringing <DW72>s of life; but you
      Scale the last summit, high in lonelier air,
      Whose dizzy pinnacle each soul must dare
    For valedictions born and ventures new.
    From dust to spirit climb, O brave and true!
      Strong in the wisdom that is more than prayer;
      High o'er the mists of pain and of despair,
    Mount to the vision, and the far adieu.

    Merged in the vastness, with a calm surmise
      Mount, lonely climber, brightened from afar;
      Whose soul is secret as the evening-star;
    Whose steps are toward the ultimate surprise:
    No dubious morrow dims those daring eyes--
      Divinely lit whence truth's horizons are.





_The sonnets in this volume have previously appeared in the columns of
"The Academy," "The Eye-Witness," and "The Yorkshire Observer." My
thanks are due to the Editors of these publications for their kind
permission to republish._

J.A.M.

  _Stocka House,
      Cottingley,
          Bingley._





CONTENTS


  Title Poem:              Page

  Iolaeus                   13

  Sonnets:

  The Return               67
  The Soul and the Sea     69
  Nations Estranged        71
  The Passing-Bell         73
  Condemned                75
  To America. I.           77
        "     II.          79
  To Italy. I.             81
       "    II.            83





IOLAeUS:

THE MAN THAT WAS A GHOST


    Gold light across the golden coomb;
      The sun went west with horns of fire;
    Athwart the sweet, sea-breathing room
      The swallows swooped; the village spire
    Glowed red against a gleam of broom;
      While earth its scented secrets told,
      There, silent, sunset-aureoled,
      Sat Iolaeus, mild and old.

    In distance large the moving ships
      Sailed on into the evening skies.
    He gazed, and saw not. In eclipse
    He tensely sat, like one who grips
      Some semblance that his dream descries,
      With such a look of far surprise
    That half-uncanny seemed the man,
    So warped with age, so weirdly wan:
      He had such ghostly eyes.

    Then half to self, and half to me,
      Aloof in passion and lone despair,
    He spoke like one whose secrets flee
      From silence unaware:
    Now plaintively from a grief gone blind,
      Heavy with cumbering care,
    Now, thrilling thought like a white sea-wind,
    His words, the echoes of his mind,
      Haunted the air:

       ... 'Tis gone like the roses of long ago:
      Yet a dawn's impassioned thrill
    Makes blush the blossom's virgin snow
      Far on in a faery hill.
    Two faces there in the glamour glow
      In a place that is strangely still.

    On the rim of the world is a ruined tower
      Sky-poised above wide sea-foam,
    Where a beautiful spirit waits hour by hour,
    Far-eyed 'gainst a dawn like a phantom flower,
      Till a ghostly lover comes home....

    To leeward spread the freshening deep
      Purple beneath a rosy gleam.
    From a high, mist-engirdled steep
      Thin anthems to the orient beam
    Came faint as languid waves of sleep
      That lap the lonely strands of dream.

    We sank our anchor solemnly
    Into that lustrous, splendid sea;
      For we, that chased the summer's smile
      Across the world a wondering while,
      Hailed at the heart the Happy Isle,
    The haunted shores of Faery!

    Beyond a gently-heaving brine
      We broke with oars a trembling bay.
    The swerving water, like rare wine,
      Slid iridescent from our way.
    A lovely hand was laid on mine
      Pensively as to say:
    "Life is divine!"

    The drifting, witching wonder grew.
      From out the burgeoning bounds of space
    It seemed some morn unearthly drew
      To that grave glamourous place,
    Where, fearful of some far adieu,
    I talked with one who never knew
      The peril of her face.

    The joy that lives is mightier far
      Than foretaste of all grief unborn.
    The earth to youth is a silver star
      That glitters on the edge of morn,
    A star! a star! a dancing star.

    The fair, the mystic, happy morn!
      Dawn glimmered on the gladdening sea;
    Each zephyr blew an elfin horn
      To echoes in felicity.
    All sounds to silver rhythm ran:
    Came flutings as from piping Pan
      In purpled hills of Arcady!

    Seaward we heard the breakers roar;
      And the belated nightingales
    Sang all their moonlight raptures o'er,
      Enchanted still in echoing vales.
    We lingered by the brightening shore;
      We leapt upon the roseate strand:
    The joy that in our hearts we bore
      We loved, nor longed to understand.
    Soft siren voices evermore
      Chanted to chimes in Faeryland.

    O, life was like a bird that sings
      At morning on a vernal bough!
    The springtide at the heart of things
      Sang as the spring knows how.
    And fair was she, and both were young;
      We knew not what made time so good;
    Nature with glamour-tutored tongue
      Spread glory in the blood.

    We climbed the dim and dreaming streets:
      We reached a plateau crowned with pine:
    The leaning roses breathed their sweets
      'Mid many a subtle-scented vine.
      We wreathed our brows with ivy-twine.

    In mouldering majesty sublime,
    Misty with eld, the mute of time,
    A castle, dawn-enchanted, there
    Above th' abyss sheer, shimmering fair,
    Hung like a perilous dream in air.
    Poised on a dizzy turret high,
    Enfolded with the gorgeous sky,
    We listened, she and I,
    In wonder,'mazed. Without a word
    A soul had spoken, soul had heard.
    All suddenly came, charged with tears,
    The sweetness of the human years.

    We saw deep forests far away
    Kindle to meet the kiss of day;
    And mists with morn's delight uprise
    Like love thoughts in a maiden's eyes.
    We shared the dream that never dies.

    Our hearts were hushed with vague desire;
      We breathed in kingdoms wildly new,
    Enthralled by Memnon's mystic lyre
      In regions whence the Ph[oe]nix flew;
    Dumb splendour round us blown, and higher
      On heaven's deep dome--the peacock's hue,
    Bright flakes of crimsoning fire!

    Dew-fresh was all the wavering air.
      We heard the reef's far rollers croon
    About the ocean's margent, where
      Loitered the waning moon...
    So fond the hour; the scene so fair;
      And fate came home so soon...
    Some sorrow wept,--I knew not where.
    Some sudden presence made the air
      Chill as the breathless moon.

    Silent, upon a lonelier steep,
    I gazed across a deeper deep,
    Where the pale mists pass from the isles of sleep.--

    Lost voices called in other years:
      Old sweetness like a breaking grief
    Rose in the heart and stung to tears:
      In that clear moment brief
    Life's dearest, dead so long before,
    Returned to bless and die once more.

    The faintly crooning sabbath bells
    At evening in the golden fells
    I heard; the tinkle of the rills
      In haunts where childish fancy fed;
    I saw the orchard daffodils
      About the calm homestead;
    Ah, saddest thought that ever fills
    An errant heart that memory thrills,
    The heath-smell of his homeland hills
      To one whose loves are dead...

    What yearnings burn the human breast;
      What wild desires like prisoned birds
    Impel the heart from east to west;
      What urgings baffling words
    Beat up from nature unexpressed
    Till soul distinct stands manifest,
    On guard for heaven, or, wanton, hurled
    Toward judgment through the world.

    Long following beauty's floating flame
      Beneath the sky from sea to sea
    No isle of rest, no haven could claim
      The lonely, homeless heart in me.
      Sick loneliness no more should be
      Companion to my soul, for She
    To fill the questing vision came,
      Came down the breadths of blossoming foam
    To give to loveliness a name,
      To happiness a home!

    Yet thought toward passion moved with dread,
    Like one who, hurrying to be wed,
    Steps, darkling, on the dead.

    Far down we saw mute wavelets leap
    Feebly as though remembering sleep;
    The wheeling sea-birds proudly sway
    In glory o'er the opal bay;--
    But at the heart the world grew grey;
    Some joy had perished from the day;
    Some love was grieving far away.

    No voice stirred through the haunted hill
      Touched with the morn's inviolate gleam.
    All fearfully wild heart and will
    Drank rapture in the face of ill!
    Our spirits thrilled to answer thrill,
      And trembled in their dream.

    Truth comes, and tears, and glamour goes.
      There's speech within the blood
    More eloquent than language knows,
    And woes make signal unto woes
    While pity breathes and passion blows:
      We looked:----we understood.
    On summer's heart fell winter's snows...
    The death that dissipates the rose
      Was busy in the bud...

    The spectre beckoned: none could save...
    The sundering grave... The sundering grave!...
      Our lonely love in time could be
    But whisper of a broken wave
      Lost in a boundless sea...
    She spoke, so fair, so pale, so brave,----
      Across infinity!

    Ah meekness mute with tragedy!...
      My body stirred as in a grave,
    And looked forth wonderingly...
    The everlasting sea serene
      'Neath everlasting sky
    Shone, and across the morning sheen
      The deathless winds went by.
    And a face was there that I never had seen;
    And a shadow stood where a glory had been;
    The beauty hung at my heart like pain;
    And love was lovely, but life was bane,
    For all should die,--but the wonder remain,
      And the earth, and the sea, and the sky...

    The hills have winds, the fields have flowers;
      Not all alone is the wintry tree;
    The stars that gleam in cloudy bowers
      Have stars for company;
    The waste hath peace of the drifting hours;
      And night brings joy to the hoary sea:

    But the heart of man is a lonely thing;
      And lone the soul of the secret vows,
    With its wasted love and its wounded wing,
    In a withered world that hath no spring,
      No burgeoning boughs:
    The soul of man is the loneliest thing
    In life's eternal wandering
      That God allows...

    O, isle of dreams, and orient shore!
      Ah miracle in sea and sky!
    Ah youth that fleeting love made soar
      To heaven! The glory upon high
    To dusk hath waned, yet comes once more
      A wonder and a cry!...

    The ship's bell tolled off that fair land;
      The sails bulged buoyantly:
    The sun rose mute, and large, and bland;
      The favouring wind swung free.
    We stood from that enchanted strand
      Into the morning sea.

    We rode down swinging winds away,
      Far o'er the moving waters wan,
      Seen low at pale meridan,
    The land was grey.

    The dusk came down; and like a ghost
      Rose the sad moon; the waves 'gan moan:
    There on the deep no kindly coast,--
      The dark alone.

    And in two faces stared, and stared
      The being without blood or breath,
    The stilly spectre, horror-haired,
      That haunteth all he murdereth;
    At noon, at midnight stared, and stared
    When sunrise flashed, when sunset flared,
    The grizzly phantom horror-haired:--

    Stalking frail beauty to her grave
      I saw him moving evermore
    A stealthy wanderer on the wave,
      A shrouded shadow on the shore,
    The worm his bondsman, and the brave
      His victims evermore...

    The Power that drives all mortal things,
    Upbuoys all being's wanderings,
    Moved in the void his urgent wings...

    On down the weltering world we sped;
      Across the lonely, drifting noon;
    Along the wreathed tides we fled
      Beneath the memoried moon.
    Sad love pursued where sorrow led;
    And beauty, waiting to be dead,
      Kissed under the dead moon.

    Love, speechless, yearned in hopeless eyes;
      And hearts that hungered craved in vain.
    Dumb pity heard sad pity's sighs;
      And grief soothed grief again.
    Fond smile to smile sent faint replies,
      And faded back to pain.

    Entangled in the toils of fate,
    Two stood at Eden's open gate--
    Banned, in a world found desolate...
    And love made league with hate...
    All time's long woe since man's wet eyes
    Peered toward a promised paradise
    Pressed home,--the weight of smothered cries,
    Dead dreams, and hopeless pain
    Of souls in silence slain.

    We saw the loathsome waste of death;
      Sad soul at war with sense;
    And suffering doomed to lingering breath;
      And slandered innocence;
    And beauty ravished at the bloom;
      Saw strength flung prostrate; fall
    The brave, life-worsted from the womb;
      White truth made criminal:
      Impotent, passionate, counting all,
    We kissed----across a tomb...

    The lustrous clouds trailed proudly by:
    And through a rift of dazzling sky
    I cursed God with a dreary cry...

    The silence of the starry night;
      The silver of the moonlit sea;
    And loud in secret, stern, and trite,
      The pulse of destiny.
    Ah sadness scourged with doomed delight!
      Ah wondrous misery!

    Pale topsails in the offing shone,
      And faded into foam:
    And down the noontide, one by one,
      The pale, proud ships would roam;
    Each sailor to his love went on;
      Each wanderer to his home.

    And, ceasing not, death's nearing knell
      Tolled in a heart that dreamed no more.
    Our lips shook, sad as lips in hell;
      But, fearful of the rending shore,
    To fill all time with sad farewell
      We would have sailed for evermore!

    For pleasantly a song she'd croon,
      And feign the world a kindly place;
    And tender was the haunting tune
      To match her haunting grace;
    And tenderly the witching moon
      Toyed with her feeling face...

    Our love was like the scent of flowers
      To her who watches by the bed
    Of one that dies in the dark hours,
      The one her youth had wed:
    At dawn she scares her tears away,
    And through the cloud-enamelled day
      Jests bravely for their bread.

    She shared with all the brighter part;
      The witching sallies lightly flew;
    Her thoughts seemed, spilt by subtle art,
      Half tear-drops and half dew.
    They loved her for her gracious heart,
      And the glad winds blew.

    The sunbeam of her fleeting life
      Gladdened the unsuspecting days;
    And all the dusky imps of strife
      Paled in her wisdom's lambent rays.
    Her laugh to _one_ was as a knife:
      But she had pleasure's praise.

    And I who loved that conquering smile,
      And felt the tears in secret shed,
    Who watched her life with kindly guile
      Veiling its darlings dead,
    Held in a choking hush the while
      A heart that feigned--and bled...

    Onward with blind rebellious breast
    I ranged, with love, with bale opprest,
    Piteous, passionate, all unblest,
    The dispossessed,--God-possest...

    More lonely grew the leaden wave
      That broke against the leaning sky;
    The melancholy winds 'gan rave
      Among the whimpering shrouds on high:
    Most lonely up the leaden wave
    Two climbed toward yet a lonelier grave--
      Where only one should lie.

    We neared a grey and grievous land
      That thundered by a wintry sea;
    I touched the sorrow of her hand,
      But nothing sad said she:
    She turned from love at death's command
      To death eternally.

    We passed the numbly moaning bar;
      We heard the harbour bell,
    Its dull fog-muffled clang from far
      Came like a lorn death-knell.
    The quay-lights pushed a livid flare
    Through shrouding mist; and all things there
      Moved like grim shades in hell.

    The hammer's clamp on resonant steel;
      The siren's shriek; the scream and whirr
    Reverberant from forge and wheel;
      The fury and the clangorous stir
    And plunge of traffic; Vulcan's heel
    Crashing on iron,--and the reel
      Of sense at loss of _her_.--

    None guessed when, playfully, she said,
    With smile that brightened toward her dead,
    "To-day across the world I ride
    To meet a bridegroom, I the bride."
    They thought her mischief lied.

    Around us was the deafening roar,
      A void, a wild and drear eclipse.
    A sadder sweetness than before
      Shook her pale, smiling lips;
    She waved adieu through vapours hoar,
    And vanished in the shadows frore
      Among the heedless ships...
    In that dread lapse of all farewell
    The spirit, listening, plain could tell
    That devils laughed in drifting hell
      With guile upon their lips...

    The world seemed all a hollow ghost
      That would dissolve away;
    And life itself a random boast
      Of elements at play;
    And time a swift elusive gleam,
    And man the mockery of a dream,
    A foam-bell to a moment's beam
      Flung from the spray.

    I had worshipped her with sacred sighs,
      Loved with the love that wondereth;
    My life had found her maiden-wise,
      And sweeter than the rose's breath;
    Lit by a soul in paradise
    The lights within her holy eyes,
      The lady loved of death...

    Bereft, forlorn, by passion driven,
    And blanched with loss, by suffering riven,
    With impious heart I fled from Heaven...

    Thought like a frost gripped all the brain:
      With frozen tears opprest,
    The conscious blood with sullen pain
      Lunged at the callous breast,
    Where hope and love, a pallid twain,
      Sat with a ghoul for guest.

    Over the watery wastes I fled
    Where'er dim desolation led
      Beneath sad sun and moon!
    For faith was dead, and joy was dead,
    And love was where the phantoms tread,
    And bitterness was passion's bread:
    "Grant, jester Death," I, laughing, said,
      "Thy haggard fool a boon!"...

    And unforgiving, unforgiven,
    A derelict, by tempest driven,
    I drave beneath the breadth of heaven...

    Grim sorrow fell on all things fair;
      To dust was turned the lover's breath.
    Ah longing, like a pariah bare,
    And passion, led by lewd despair
      To kiss the smelling jowl of death!

    As in a sunless cavern cold,
      Like one who flies a crime,
    Fearful, and old as God is old,
      The spirit shrank from time;
    For a stifled scream was the angry gold
    Of the weird sunset, and the noonday bold
      Was the stare on the face of a crime.

    I saw as brain-blurred drunkards see;
      I felt, yet could not feel;
    I seemed in moving time to be
    In nerveless immobility
      As dust upon a wheel.

    Some world material moved around,
      Mazed breadths of spume and brine;
    Strange voices spake as from a bound
    Far off, I answered with a sound,
      Nor knew the answer mine;
    And sometimes like a weary hound
      I heard the darkness whine.

    In throbbing night 'twixt sleep and sleep
      My tortured spirit heard
    A wail that wandered down the deep,
    A sorrow on the windy deep
      Wail like a wounded bird;
    And I wept as a haunted man doth weep
      Who dare not speak a word.

    Sometimes I sensed heaven's bellied gloom,
    Storm like dumb and pregnant doom
      Scowl on the waters wild;
    Or tempest 'neath a plunging sky
    Down crashing waves with haunting cry
      Scream like a tortured child;

    A blind thing staggering in the night
      Strained, groaning, 'gainst a pervious power
    That flashed and eddied, wild and white,
      That wheeled and wailed from hour to hour;
    And, somewhere, strangely burned to sight
      Dawn like a doom a-flower...

    On ever onward, darkly driven,
    A soul, unsheltered, and unshriven,
    With lodestar gone, with raiment riven,
    Drove in the gale of the wrath of Heaven...

    The monsoon blew; the changing stars
      Rode by in deeper skies.
    At times between the raking spars
      I felt the blank moon rise;
    Or heard the chanties of the tars
      With a sad, sick surprise.

    And once a heaven, the sapphire's hue,
      Flashed o'er the freshening wave;
    They hurt the heart as laughers do
      When love stands by a grave.

    And now a level ocean grey
    Would lie along a level day,
      Unwhipt of wing or wind;
    Or sunset make a carmine stain
    That sucked like sadness at the brain,
      And sank into the mind,
    And touched me with some wandering pain,
      Some sentience of mankind again.

   ... And where was _she_?... Could sorrow fail
      In aching time... Ah voice in vain
    That called for ever... fading sail
      On seas forlorn; sad wind and rain
    Whispering... all-wandering pain...
      And in the heart the wail--
    Never again on earth--never again.

    So dimly to a beauteous ghost
      My being bowed a subject knee,
    And lived, with love's sad sunset lost,
      Alone'mid all the sea.
    A leper to a lonely coast,
    I fled from all I cherished most;
    And wildly, with a bleeding boast,
      I clasped my agony...

    Sad nature strained the leash in vain,
    And flying, fled not; ever the chain
    Of the Fear that followed; ever again
    Relentless pity; guardian pain...

    Like torturing dreams the days went by,
      With all save self denied;
    And Godward went man's desolate cry,
      That Christ Himself had cried:
    Alone each soul upon its tree
    Cried to its kin,--but over me
    The darkness that crushed Calvary
      When God was crucified.

    The present lost, I found, aghast,
    A dying heart, a deathless past;
    And, ever nigh, and mocking me,
    A madness, or a mystery...
    And hour by hour, in peril, passed
    A soul toward judgment through the vast...

    Life, a vague tumult in the blood,
      Beat on 'gainst flesh and bone;
    And in its echoing solitude
      The heart tapped like a stone;
    Till like some child at dark I stood
    That stands fear-frozen in a wood,--
      Alone--yet not _alone_.--

    For mine was ghostly company:
      Chilled, in the eerie air
    I felt _myself_ bend over me,
      And point as with despair;
    And, horror-thrilled, I turned to see
      My body selfless there,

    And separate,--a house of clay
      That mourned its tenant gone;
    Its vacant eyes would fain delay,
    Its piteous hands implored to stay
      The soul that in it shone.
    Where one had been, in mute dismay
    Two, merged in mystery, went away--
      I and that other One...

    With vision blurred, and bearings lost,
    Streamed on amid a phantom host
    The man that was a ghost...

    Apart from human years I stood
    A naked