Poets' Corner - Max Eastman - Colors of Life

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Colors of Life
Max Eastman
(1918)

American Ideals of Poetry, a Preface

Poems

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Max Eastman

Colors of Life
and
Songs and Sonnets

Max Eastman

(1918)

Edited for the Web
by Steve Spanoudis

A Praiseful Complaint

YOU love me not as I love, or when I
Grow listless of the crimson of your lips,
And turn not to your burning finger-tips,
You would show fierce and feverish your eye,
And hotly my numb wilfulness decry,
Holding your virtues over me like whips,
And stinging with the visible eclipse
Of that sweet poise of life I crucify!
How can you pass so proudly from my face,
With all the tendrils of your passion furled,
So adequate and animal in grace,
As one whose mate is only all the world!
I never taste the sweet exceeding thought
That you might love me, though I loved you not!: Max Eastman

Those You Dined With

THEY would have made you like a pageant, bold
And nightly festive, lustre-lit for them,
And round your beauty, like a dusky gem,
Have poured the glamour of the pride of gold;
And you would lie in life as in her bed
The mistress of a pale king, indolent,
Though hot her limbs and strong her languishment,
And her deep spirit is unvisited.
But I would see you like a gypsy, free
As windy morning in the sunny air,
Your wild warm self, your vivid self, to be,
A miracle of nature's liberty,
Giving your gift of being kind and fair,
High, gay and careless-handed everywhere!: Max Eastman

The Passions of a Child

THE passions of a child attend his dreams.
He lives, loves, hopes, remembers, is forlorn
For legendary creatures, whom he deems
Not too unreal--until one golden morn
The gracious, all-awaking sun shines in
Upon his tranquil pillow, and his eyes
Are touched, and opened greatly, and begin
To drink reality with rich surprise.
I loved the impetuous souls of ancient story--
Heroic characters, kings, queens, whose wills
Like empires rose, achieved, and fell, in glory.
I was a child, until the radiant dawn,
Thy beauty, woke me--O thy spirit fills
The stature of those heroes, they are gone!: Max Eastman

As the Crag Eagle

AS THE crag eagle to the zenith's height
Wings his pursuit in his exalted hour
Of her the tempest-reared, whose airy power
Of plume and passion challenges his flight
To that wild altitude, where they unite,
In mutual tumultuous victory
And the swift sting of nature's ecstasy,
Their shuddering pinions and their skyward might--
As they, the strong, to the full height of heaven
Bear up that joy which to the strong is given,
Thus, thus do we, whose stormy spirits quiver
In the bold air of utter liberty,
Clash equal at our highest, I and thee,
Unconquered and unconquering forever!: Max Eastman

To My Father

THE eastern hill hath scarce unveiled his head,
And the deliberate sky hath but begun
To meditate upon a future sun,
When thou dost rise from thy impatient bed.
Thy morning prayer unto the stars is said.
And not unlike a child, the penance done
Of sleep, thou goest to thy serious fun,
Exuberant--yet with a whisper tread.
And when that lord doth to the world appear,
The jovial sun, he leans on his old hill,
And levels forth to thee a golden smile--
Thee in his garden, where each warming year
Thou toilest in all joy with him, to fill
And flood the soil with Summer for a while.: Max Eastman

To Edward S. Martin, from a Professional Hobo

[In an editorial in Life, Mr. Martin had described as "professional hoboes" a number of revolutionary agitators whom he did not like--Pancho Villa, William D. Haywood, Wild Joe O'Carroll--and he did me the honor to include me among them. --Max Eastman]
HOW old, my friend, is that fine-pointed pen
Wherewith in smiling quietude you trace
The maiden maxims of your writing-place,
And on this gripped and mortal-sweating den
And battle-pit of hunger now and then
Dip out, with nice and intellectual grace,
The faultless wisdoms of a nurtured race
Of pale-eyed, pink, and perfect gentlemen!
How long have art and wit and poetry,
With all their power, been content, like you,
To gild the smiling fineness of the few,
To filmy-curtain what they dare not see,
In multitudinous reality,
The rough and bloody soul of what is true !: Max Eastman

Europe--1914

SINCE Athens died, the life that is a light
Has never shone in Europe. Alien moods,
The oriental morbid sanctitudes,
Have darkened on her like the fear of night.
In happy augury we dared to guess
That her pure spirit shot one sunny glance
Of paganry across the fields of France,
Clear startling this dim fog of soulfulness.
But now, with arms and carnage and the cries
Of Holy Murder, rolling to the clouds
Her bloody-shadowed smoke of sacrifice,
The Superstition conquers, and the shrouds
Of sick black wonder lay their murky blight
Where shone of old the immortal-seeming light.: Max Eastman

Isadora Duncan

YOU bring the fire and terror of the wars
Of infidels in thunder-running hordes,
With spears like sun-rays, shields, and wheeling swords
Flame shape, death shape and shaped like scimitars,
With crimson eagles and blue pennantry,
And teeth and armor flashing, and white eyes
Of battle horses, and the silver cries
Of trumpets unto storm and victory!
Who is this naked-footed lovely girl
Of summer meadows dancing on the grass?
So young and tenderly her footsteps pass,
So dreamy-limbed and lightly wild and warm--
The bugles murmur and the banners furl,
And they are lost and vanished like a storm!: Max Eastman

The Sun

NOW autumn, and that sadness as of love
Heroic in immortal solitude;
Those veins of flaming passion through the wood;
But in the blue and infinite above
A shining circle like the light of truth,
Self-poising; deathless his desire sublime,
Whose motion is the measurement of time,
Whose step is morning, and his smile is youth.
No passion burns upon the livid earth
Whose stain can tint that circle, or whose cry
Can rout the tranquilly receiving sky.
All passion, all its crimson stream, from birth
To murder, bloom and pestilential blight,
All flows beneath the sanction of his light.: Max Eastman

The Net

THE net brings up, how long and languidly,
A million vivid quiverings of life,
Keen-finned and gleaming like a steely knife,
All colors, green and silver of the sea,
All forms of skill and eagerness to be--
They die and wither of the very breath
That sounds your pity of their lavish death
While they are leaping, star-like, to be free.
They die and wither, but the agéd sea,
Insane old salty womb of mystery,
Is pregnant with a million million more,
Whom she will suckle in her oozy floor,
Whom she will vomit on a heedless shore,
While onward her immortal currents pour.: Max Eastman

A Dune Sonnet

I WAS so lonely on the dunes to-day;
The shadow of a bird passed o'er the sand,
And I, a driftwood relic in my hand . . .
Sea winds are not more lonely when they stray
A little fitful and bewildered way
In this wan acre, Whose dry billows stand
So pitilessly still of curve, so bland,
And wide, and waiting, infinitely grey.
In hollows I could almost hear them say,
The misty breezes--Run, we will not stay
In this unreal and spiritual land!
Our soul of life is calling from the strand,
Whose blue and breathing bosom leapt or lay
Or laughed to us in shots of silver spray !: Max Eastman

Sea-Shore

THE wind blows in along the sea--
Its salty wet caresses
Impart to all the ships that be
A thrill before it passes.
The tide is never at a stand,
A mountain in its motion,
Forever homing to the land,
And ever to the ocean.
And on its fickle, mighty breast
The waters still are moving,
With love in every running crest
And laughter in the loving--
Light love to touch the prows of ships
That slip along so slenderly.
I would as lightly touch your lips,
And your heart as tenderly,
If you would move with all that move,
The flowing and caressing,
Who have no firmness in their love,
No sorrow in its passing.: Max Eastman

Rainy Song

DOWN the dripping pathway dancing through the rain,
Brown eyes of beauty, laugh to me again!
Eyes full of starlight, moist over fire,
Full of young wonder, touch my desire!
O like a brown bird, like a bird's flight,
Run through the rain drops lithely and light.
Body like a gypsy, like a wild queen,
Slim brown dress to slip through the green--
The little leaves hold you as soft as a child,
The little path loves you, the path that runs wild.
Who would not love you, seeing you move,
Warm-eyed and beautiful through the green grove?
Let the rain kiss you, trickle through your hair,
Laugh if my fingers mingle with it there,
Laugh if my cheek too is misty and drips--
Wetness is tender--laugh on my lips
The happy sweet laughter of love without pain,
Young love, the strong love, burning in the rain.: Max Eastman

A Hymn to God in Time of Stress

LIFT, dark and glorious Wonder,
Once again thy gleaming sword,
Cleave this killing doubt asunder
With one sheer and sacred word!
For my heart is weak and broken,
And the struggle runs too high,
And there is no burning token
In the new immortal sky.
Oh, not curb or courage only
Does my hour demand of me,
It is thought supreme and lonely
And responsible and free!
And I quail before the danger
As a bark before the blast,
When the beacon star's a stranger
In the mountains piling fast,
And there is no light but reason
And the compass of the ship.
God, a word of thine in season!
God, a motion of thy lip!: Max Eastman

Coming Spring

ICE is marching down the river,
Gaily out to sea!
Sunbeams o'er the snow-hills quiver,
Setting torrents free!
Yellow are the water-willows,
Yellow clouds are they,
Rising where the laden billows
Swell along their way!
Arrows of the sun are flying!
Winter flees the light,
And his chilly horn is sighing
All the moisty night!
Lovers of the balmy weather,
Lovers of the sun!
Drifts and duty melt together
Get your labors done!
Ice is marching down the river,
Gaily out to sea!
Sing the healthy-hearted ever,
Spring is liberty!: Max Eastman

Daisies

DAISIES, daisies, all surprise!
Open wide your sunny eyes!
See the linnet on the wing;
See the crimson feather!
See the life in every thing,
Sun, and wind, and weather!
Shadow of the passer-by,
Bare-foot skipping over,
Meadow where the heifers lie,
Butter-cup, and clover!
All is vivid, all is real,
All is high surprising!
Ye are pure to see and feel;
Ye the gift are prizing
Men and gods would perish for--
Gods with all their thunder!--
Could they have the thing ye are,
Everlasting wonder!: Max Eastman

Bobolink

BRIGHT little bird with a downward wing,
How many birds within you sing?
Two or three at the least it seems,
Overflowing golden streams.
If I could warble on a wing so strong,
Filling five acres full of song,
I'd never sit on the grey rail fence,
I'd never utter a word of sense,
I'd float forever in a light blue sky,
Uttering joy to the passers-by!: Max Eastman

Diogenes

A HUT, and a tree,; And a hill for me,
And a piece of a weedy meadow.: I'll ask no thing,; Of God or King,
But to clear away His shadow.: Max Eastman

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