Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

George Sylvester Viereck

The Candle and the Flame

THY hands are like cool herbs that bring

Balm to men’s hearts, upon them laid;

Thy lovely-petalled lips are made

As any blossom of the spring.

But in thine eyes there is a thing,

O Love, that makes me half afraid.

For they are old, those eyes … They gleam

Between the waking and the dream

With antique wisdom, like a bright

Lamp strangled by the temple’s veil,

That beckons to the acolyte

Who prays with trembling lips and pale

In the long watches of the night.

They are as old as Life. They were

When proud Gomorrah reared its head

A new-born city. They were there

When in the places of the dead

Men swathed the body of the Lord.

They visioned Pa-wak raise the wall

Of China. They saw Carthage fall

And marked the grim Hun lead his horde.

There is no secret anywhere

Nor any joy or shame that lies

Not writ somehow in those child-eyes

Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise.

Thou art the lad Endymion,

And that great queen with spice and myrrh

From Araby, whom Solomon

Delighted, and the lust of her.

The legions marching from the sea

With Cæsar’s cohorts sang of thee,

How thy fair head was more to him

Than all the land of Italy.

Yea, in the old days thou wast she

Who lured Mark Antony from home

To death and Egypt, seeing he

Lost love when he lost Rome.

Thou saw’st old Tubal strike the lyre,

Yea, first for thee the poet hurled

Defiance at God’s starry choir!

Thou art the romance and the fire,

Thou art the pageant and the strife,

The clamour, mounting high and higher,

From all the lovers in the world

To all the lords of love and life.

Perhaps the passions of mankind

Are but the torches mystical

Lit by some spirit-hand to find

The dwelling of the Master-Mind

That knows the secret of it all,

In the great darkness and the wind.

We are the Candle, Love the Flame,

Each little life-light flickers out,

Love bides, immortally the same:

When of life’s fever we shall tire

He will desert us and the fire

Rekindle new in prince or lout.

Twin-born of knowledge and of lust,

He was before us, he shall be

Indifferent still of thee and me,

When shattered is life’s golden cup,

When thy young limbs are shrivelled up,

And when my heart is turned to dust.

Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last

That thou and I, or knave, or fool,

Are but the involitient tool

Of some world-purpose vague and vast.

No bar to passion’s fury set,

With monstrous poppies spice the wine,

For only drunk are we divine,

And only mad shall we forget!