Ultimate Collection

Trade wind is hurled?

Or bide in the market place while the beard of a king is hurled?

Oh, follow the shadows

Across the high meadows,

To dreaming green uplands where walls of the mountains

Like purple tall towers

Encastle the hours,

And showers of flowers discover the fountains.

Follow the river

Where wild willows part,

Where shadow trees shiver

And winds start and dart—

The whiter the soul is,

The brighter the goal is,

The blacker the troll is

That eats at the heart.

Leave men to their labor with lust for a neighbor,

Leave minstrel to tabor, the king to the crown,

Great blossoms still quiver along the dim river,

And winds out of silence steal over the down.

There are Beings of twilight

As thin as the mist,

They seek not the highlight,

The stars they have kissed.

They rape not the grape,

Nor douse to carouse

With the shape of the ape

In the house of the mouse.

On amaranth mountains their pleasure is taken,

By rainbow fountains, by ghost winds shaken,

On the frosty cold nectar of stars their thirst is enraptured and slaken.

Leave life for men and follow with me

To the winds of the fen and the song of the sea.

Repenctance

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How is it that I am what I am

How did I come to fall?

Who was the man my soul to damn

Black in the sight of all?

Who was it came in my virgin hood

And in some evil hour

Turned all my life to bad from good

Bruising the tender flower?

I cannot remember the fellow's name

I had long ago forgot;

I was young and my blood was flame

The person mattered not.

I was hot as a blazing brand

Blood and body and nerve

Ripe to be plucked by the first man's hand

And any man would serve.

I have had my day, I have had my fling

Men have bowed at my knee.

I sit in the bars where the harlots sing

To sailors hot from the sea.

Sallow my cheeks and my lips have faded

Life's roses slip my clutch

But my blood is still hot and still unjaded

I can thrill to the deck-hand's touch.

Still I thrill to the hands of men

I love the contact yet

The breath that is laden with wharfside gin

The scent of tobacco and sweat.

Bristly jowls on my painted cheek

The obscene, whispered jest,

Calloused hands that lustfully seek

My out-worn charms to quest.

My by-gone life is dim and far;

I am content with gin,

A slug of wine, sometimes at the bar,

A room for the sailormen.

The Ride of Falume

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Falume of Spain rode forth amain when twilight's crimson fell

To drink a toast with Bahram's ghost in the scarlet land of Hell.

His rowels clashed as swift he dashed along the flaming skies;

The sunset rode at his bridle braid and the moon was in his eyes.

The waves were green with an eerie sheen over the hills of Thule

And the ripples beat to his horse's feet like a serpent in a pool.

On vampire wings the shadow things wheeled round and round his head,

Till he came at last to a kingdom vast in the Land of the Restless Dead.

They thronged about in a grisly rout, they caught at his silver rein;

”Avaunt, foul host! Tell Bahram's ghost Falume has come from Spain!”

Then flame-arrayed rose Bahram's shade: “What would ye have, Falume?”

”Ho, Bahram who on earth I slew where Tagus' waters boom,

Now though I shore your life of yore amid the burning West,

I ride to Hell to bid ye tell where I might ride to rest.

My beard is white and dim my sight and I would fain be gone.

Speak without guile: where lies the isle of mystic Avalon?”

”A league beyond the western wind, a mile beyond the moon,

Where the dim seas roar on an unknown shore and the drifting stars lie strewn;

The lotus buds there scent the woods where the quiet rivers gleam,

And king and knight in the mystic light the ages drowse and dream.”

With sudden bound Falume wheeled round, he fled through the flying wrack

Till he came again to the land of Spain with the sunset at his back.

”No dreams for me, but living free, red wine and battle's roar;

I breast the gales and I ride the trails until I ride no more.”

The Riders of Babylon

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The riders of Babylon clatter forth

Like the hawk-winged scourgers of Azrael

To the meadow-lands of the South and North

And the strong-walled cities of Israel.

They harry the men of the caravans,

They bring rare plunder across the sands

To deck the throne of the great god Baal.

But Babylon's king is a broken shell

And Babylon's queen is a sprite from Hell;

And men shall say, "Here Babylon fell,"

Ere Time has forgot the tale.

The riders of Babylon come and go

From Gaza's halls to the shores of Tyre;

They shake the world from the lands of snow

To the deserts, red in the sunset's fire;

Their horses swim in a sea of gore

And the tribes of the earth bow down before;

They have chained the seas where the Cretans sail.

But Babylon's sun shall set in blood;

Her towers shall sink in a crimson flood;

And men shall say, "Here Babylon stood,"

Ere Time forgot the tale.

The Road To Hell

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Along the road that leads to Hell

We strode, a merry band,

Sargon and Nero, Jezabel

Cain with his bloody hand

We shuffled through the scarlet dust,

A roaring, careless throng;