Mulhern Donation
THE FIRES OF BAAL
By the same Author
THE VENGEANCE OF FIONN
THE FIRES
OF BAAL
AUSTIN CLARKE
MAUNSEL & ROBERTS LTD.
DUBLIN & LONDON. 1921
To A. E.
In Jeep respect
761934
THE FIRES OF BAAL
After the fierce-sunned tribes of Israel,
For generations wandering the desert
Clouded and pillared by the fire of God,
Had marched from Hazeroth, the hill of palms,
And barren lands of brass and wool, they saw
Across the wide unwatered plains of Moab,
The purple mountains of the Promised Land
Against the burning skies; and ancient men
Carried bedridden from the sheepskin tents
Gazed, muttering of clouded mountain-gods
Beyond black cataracts when they were slaves
Hungering in the wheaten land of Nile,
Around them sturdy sons of their male seed,
As lions whelped amid the burning sands,
There grown to lion-like manhood, by their
wives
And suckling children, grimly stared with
spears
Until, out of the sun there came twelve spies
Among the clamorous crowd, with sleek brown
limbs
Dripping, green luscious boughs of pome-
granate
7
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And ripe grapes oozing coolness through the
air,
On their bruised shoulders and with slobbering
breath
Told of white barley, olive-yards, cloyed
children's
Half-eaten honeycombs and of a rabble
Squabbling for a flung sword beneath four
towers
And temple Pyramids of scorching bronze,
Arabian concubines, their childless teats
Cupped with barbaric gold, at languorous
noon
Lying by the fountain trees on cold-veined
marble
Among rich tousled robes, a city's spoil,
The libbard's mottled fell, the pard's swift
skin,
Timbrelled by the soft laughter of satraps.
Three days
The Israelites fought skirmishing wild tribes
While arrowy winds sang in their barbs and
took
Tall kings wine-stained with wrath and
naked slaves
Squatting among the sumptuous camel bales
As wailing women. When the third red sun
Burned down among the blackening mountain-
lands,
8
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Trumpets of hollow triple metal shrilled
And shawms and delicate-stringed psalteries
Silvered the dancing clash of many cymbals.
A blood-red moon peered through the thick-
ening smoke
Of holocausts and the low brooding cloud
Pillared the fiery night whose multitudes
Were huddled round the shadows of the priests.
But in the tabernacle silver candles
Dripped murmurs and the purple woven shade
Of curtains belled with crimson pomegranates,
Hung like soft coiling fumes of frankincense,
Heavy with their own sweetness, from the
rungs
Of sombre bronze. The golden cherubim,
Gazing on their twin browsamong deep wings,
Gleamed beautiful as in the carver's brain
And the gorgeous imbedded fires of jasper,
Jacinth and emerald, around the Ark
Sparkled through graven gloom. Upon the
altar
That once blazed wrath between its mighty
horns
When the unpurified had worshipped there,
Consuming them like drunken myrrh, grey
embers
Crumbled. Beneath the sacred golden steps
Like a dead king among his scarlet robes
Lay Moses.
9
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Thereafter he rose up
Mighty of stature as a mountain shepherd
Against the clouds, majestic and undimmed
By age and spoke among the patriarchs
Gathered around the golden threshold ways :
" O Greatest of Israel who in grievous years
Have known the dragon Nile uncoil, and night
Burning around the brood of heathen gods,
Dagon and the false woman, Ashtoroth,
Whose rites are midnight beds, or Belial
The drunken idol, that gained them crowded
realms
Betwixt the brazen gates of Babylon,
Balbec and darker citied lands, dragging
Kings down though choked with richest
frankincense
And pillaged fire ; how men took barren
swords
To wife, and from the smoke of burning plains
Hissing with floods, Nimrod, the sun-black
king
Came with his snarling chariots to build great
walls
Of brass, and arrogant in his fierce brain
Brandished the towered earth against its sky,
And thought to topple heaven with a curse ;
And how through myriads our jealous God
Has led us from the locust fields of bondage
And hidden on the darkening heights of Sinai
10
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Within a clouded blaze of wings renewed
The covenant in words of shattered stone ;
Forever in the deserts in the wastes
Where great lions fainting in their strength
for hunger
Pestered with flies and vultures die, he led
And in your generations nurtured ye
O Lions of the tribes of Israel !
And barren rocks oozed honey, and the dew
Of morning curdled in white clotted manna.
Ye, as the eagle loves her callow young
Taking them, bearing them on mighty wings
His fierceness has brought forth, his strength
upborne.
Joy such as theirs who in the ancient days
Roamed with their flocks across the lonely
plains,
And wives and children to the far blue pastures,
Hilled water near the skies, and sacrificed
In the white fire of dawn their yearling lambs
Washed in thick dew upon the mountain stones,
And the grey pigeons caught from a twilight
gust,
And crumpled under melting lumps of myrrh,
Until with generations their aged bodies
Craving but drowsy warmth, they slowly
followed
The shadows childing round their gathered
tents
1 1
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Till sundown-, journeying from sleep to sleep,
You, too, shall know when I am dead
And called by songs of other prophets, reach
A land, flowing with milk and lavish honey,
Long promised to Abram, Jacob and their seed."
But a strange voice rose loudly there :
" One cried,
Flying from swifter wrath among the hills,
Of ancient bronze- walled kingdoms where our
tribes
Un girdled their swords and drove the stubborn
plough
Yoked with great oxen through the dawn, and
girls
In time of purple boughs danced into wine
Rich bursting grapes. Yet stranger are these
words
Of death. Too eagerly we dream of joy
Unknown to us for our son's sons unborn,
Daring descent upon unharrassed plains
Thick with the slavish spears, the iron scourges
And chariots of warful kings, O prophet
Of Israel whose hidden brow has flamed
Sunlike among the mountain clouds abandon
Us not, weary and leprosied with years,
O fail not when beleagured battlements
Resound for night shrieks with a woman's
voice
12
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And we are swallowed in a greater darkness
Than many-plagued Aegypt !"
His darkened brows grew angered
As the horns of moon-full altars, and he cried
" O foolish voice that mocks these aged ones
Does not the halting leper know his angel,
Driven beyond doomed gates ? The hewer of
wood ?
The women drawing water at the well
Beneath the palms ? Does not the ancient sun
Nurture tender green things under the rocks
In old grey dew, urging their sweetness out
In gathered honey yet slay the beeless flowers
Flaunting in the high places ? Your serried
swords
Hiked with His commands have vanquished
foes,
And slain their naked concubines by night,
I, too, would hear your nightward trumpets ring
The falling battlements with brazen clangour,
And see the willowed harps by the greenwaters,
But I who faltered long ago must look
Only far-off as the high desolate peaks
Forever gaze upon the Promised Land."
He called forth mighty Josue
Whose pale hands grasped the darkness like a
sword
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And gave him brasslike strength in fire and
doom
To lead great Israel.
Then sadly voiced
He rose and spoke with graver utterance :
" O ye who are now aged in Jeshurun
Following the lonely cloud of God
Across his wilderness, weep not. Rejoice.
O Levites bear the Ark on golden staves
Before the multitudes with bended song,
Timbrels and flowers that maidens gather, rich
With dawn. O bear it as a king, the jewel
In his great shield against the sun ; it gleams
Upon the blinded dwellers of the night
And they flee. Descend among their olive hills
With song and javelin, for your loud joy
Is bitter to them as strewn aloe blossoms,
Or the red fox between their vineyard paths.
Bring in the yellow wheat and bruised green
oil,
Bullocks, the gifts of kings and trembling
doves
Of women that give birth, burned with rich
spices
To build sweet savours for the Lord; Arise
For ye shall eat the wine-bulged grape and
cloud
His praises in frankincense through Israel.
THE FIRES OF BAAL
From the high mountains to the setting sun
In lands whose ancient voices are the sea
Your tribes shall grow as cedars. Mighty
ones
In Reuben, lions of the race of Dan
Rear your maned strength for the new days
are yours,
And the sorrows and exulting of our peoples
Whose wanderings shall pass away like smoke
Of desolated cities."
Through the bronze dusk
Of massive pillars fading in sad clouds
Of frankincense, he went. Only the lepers
Roaming the jackal moonlight with soft
whines,
And drowsy sentinels heard him depart
Into the darkness. But in the tabernacle
Through all the star-long hours the patriarchs
sorrowed.
Round them great Israel in its sleep
Was dreaming : lovers lay in soft warm
darkness,
And aged men trod in their memory
The wide blind sands beneath a fiery sun
Nailed in the scorching air, and heard far-off
From sultry hills the stalking roar of lions
Shaking the brazen silence or in joy
They lay deliciously in lush oases,
'5
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Dreaming through deep grass of some lioness
That suckled whimpering cubs there long ago,
While under wild fig-trees where the locusts
danced
They heard slow camels gulping in the pools,
The crackle of driven whips, and naked
children
Plashing in the green-palmed waters ; but the
sick,
Dreaming they fled through lewd unending
darkness,
And called with stifled voices on the gods
Of Aegypt, woke in sweat while trumpets
blared,
The dawn and multitudes without, were
shouting
" Wail, wail ye, he is gone ! "
And all that day
The lonely tribes watched from the desert
hills
Strange vultures passing through the skies and
storm
Descend among the peaks.
16
II
Meanwhile
Thunder resounded in those desolate mountains
Whose burning peaks like demigods behold
The darker world, down sudden precipices,
Beyond all precipice, tumultuous clouds
Cataracted.
Beneath the high unshattered boulders
So overhanging that a dreadful thought
Might sway them Moses reached the dazzling
heights
Of rocky sunlight. Through scorched hours
he crossed
Wide plateaus, feeling in the lonely sky
The eyes of unseen eagles watching him,
And wearily came into the upper gorges
.Where huddled in the sallow beams of light
Great ancient trees clinging to precipices
Seemed juniper, and down an awful chasm
He saw grey plunging gleams of cataracts
Engulfed in everlasting night. A thing
Brooding upon a dismal crag beyond
.Arose with sudden laughter on harsh wings,
And in startled voices a thousand hid ravines
Sprang up and sank again. He strove as him
B I 7
THE FIRES OF BAAL
That wrestled in the night. No portent came.
Only unfboted precipices towered
Their mockery. But with strange quietude
Even as Noah when the red demigod
Glared from the dazzling waters of the world,
He rose up, comforted.
And vultures winging
The desert, gorged on a long stricken lion
Had spied far-off an aged man that toiled
Along great crags into the stormful clouds
Of Abarim, and in black heavy flight
They croaked. Wandering in the rainy mists
He saw but silver hazes slowly drizzling
Sunward Not as when in thunder hidden
Among the clouds of Sinai, seven days,
He prayed, and on the seventh saw Jehovah,
And in the shadow of that dreadful mountain
The Israelites waxed as the yearling calf
Amid fat grass, and with idolatrous tongues
Murmured among their heathen concubines
" Who is this man ? This Moses ? He has
led us
Into the wilderness by his false gods
Abandoned, from the fleshpots, lotus fruits
And the grey pyramids of rivered Aegypt ? '
Forgotten their sorrow in the night of bondage,
Of Memphis and of darker Thebes, their
gates
18
THE FIRES OF BAAL
The desert. There beneath the Temples,
vast
And drifting* through great clouds of frankin-
cense
The demigods gazed from their massive
columns
Like shadowed kings upon low burning cities.
On brazen pavements wailing multitudes
Of naked women lay with wine-red paps
In lotus flowers and purple garments rent
With pain.
Forgotten the command proud Pharoah gave
Reluctant midwives to slay the Israelites*
Male children with the navel string at birth,
Or strangle them among their swaddling
clothes,
And their own torture when the coiling lash
Scorpioned their blood. " Give us new gods,"
they cried,
" To worship. Gather, O supple climbers,
flowers
From dizzied crannies of the vulture crags,
And ye unmarried maids that have not lain
By man cast from your nimble weaving fingers
Distaffs of purple wool unspun, and wreathe
Cool blossoms culled by the delicious wells
Amid the palms of Marah and of Elim
So all our timbrels may be garlanded."
And as they danced around their golden god
'9
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And sang, Moses descended from the thunder
Bearing the Tables of the Law. His face,
Unclouding, dazzled the anger of Jehovah
On them, and blindly the naked multitudes
Reeking with stale frankincense and sweat
Bellied the trodden sand
His arms outstretched
Solemn among the inner clouds, he called
With a loud voice, strange in that desolation,
On God.
But now the mountain clouds
Rolled into heavy sunlight and high cliffs
Rose from dim floating oceans. Climbing
slowly
With weariness, he crossed the lonely peak
And, silent,gazed from an overwhelming brink.
Far below, yet, where no seedling floats
Nor greenness springs from the grey barren
boulders,
Cataracts leaped in clouds of rising foam
Soundless on crags to chasms overhung
With wraiths of storm-tormented trees far
down
Into the waters of the deep ravines,
And rocky glades where green boughs scatter
down
Their leafy sunlight on thick murmurous
flowers,
20
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And myrtle buds known only to wild bees
Around the forests of their tall red stems.
Upon the middle air great eagles soared,
Bronze specks of ravenous rage, but their loud
screams
Taloned the remote unclutchable air
And sank in feeble wails.
He saw, beyond,
The blackened plateaus, naked mountain peaks
Looming from lower clouds pregnant with
thunder,
Black-shining precipices, sundered scarps
Beetling above the clefts of hanging trees,
Thence ancient cedar forests and green groves
Of fluting olive and wild sycamore
Spreading past shepherd hills and myrtle vales
Across an open plain.
As Scythians
By the black grasses of the lazy streams
Pasture lean herds of cattle in the sun,
And gaze upon their haggard milkless wives,
Dandling peevish babes or eyeing their children
Wearily crawling round the idle tents,
Or troubled in weak noonday slumber, dream
Of lush grass uplands rainily swept with south
winds
21
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Where fat flocks glut, of trees and cool deep
springs
Gurgling through pebbles, dream and turn
away
In sadness, or as Abram built at dawn
Stone altars horned with bullock on Beth-el
Smoking with entrails of yeanling and kid,
And clouded through incense, godful, saw
far-off
The multitudes sprung from his lions possess
The cities and the wine-fields of Canaan.
But in his memory the sad dim land
Where she that lingered by a wayside well
At nightfall long ago, looked up and saw
The servants of her love with wearied camels
Beneath the palms, and of her trembling heart
Gave all to follow whither they would lead,
Though perilous the way ; so from the ledge
He watched with dazzled eyes the lonely sun
Westering swiftly through white mountain
clouds,
Below the richer skies, until the drouth
And hunger of his peoples wandering
For generations through the desert sands
Stormed with fierce unassuagable pangs
Upon his heart, and shaken with the grief
And sudden joy of that far Promised Land,
Shading his eyes, half blind with aged tears
He gazed upon the plnin.
22
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Great branching cedars
And massive walnut burnished by the wind
Of autum time before the swallows haste
Sorrowing from the north, shaded the vales
And from the silver tops of aspen trees
Rose lowly hills speckled with juniper,
Crushed sweetly by the Asian caravans
Jangling bronze bells among their creaking
loads,
When, laden with purple luscious grapes,
green gourds
Still unmatured and ripe red apricots,
Or gorgeous bales of damasked tapestries,
Guarded with spears and moon-edged scimitars,
The desert dromedaries from the glooms
Of mountains slowly wind through starlight
Swamps
Where the winds drearily whistle through the
reeds,
Or wail like phantoms down the colonnades
Of black bitumen carven with dead eagles
Lie far beyond, for there in ancient days
Godless and proud rose Sodom and Gomorrah
Columned in marble grandeur, palaced, throned
Not fabled greater than those satrap cities :
Babylon crimsoned with hanging roseries,
Semiramis had queened by the two waters
Blazoned with golden keels ; high Nineveh
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Whose hawkhead godling, Nisroch, stared in
bronze
From pagan temples gated by stone gryphons.
Upon their carven walls above the purple
rabble,
Mailed kings sceptred with budding lotus,
crowned
With iron spikes among castrated captives,
Their manacled races bent with unstrung bows
And fierce stone eyes around the chariots,
Under colossal wings of eagled bulls
Dewlapped with sacrificial wreaths, lions
Struggling in midward bound, forever chained
In grim reluctant granite ; obelisks
And pyramids of slender flashing gold
Around the triad Temples of the Sun
Within engraven colonnades of gold,
Carried in ancient gallies rowed at sunset
From Ophir's red sea-pillars ; palaces
Panelled with stately cedar hewn in forests,
Long mellowing their resin like rich sunlight
On Lebanon, thence diapered with gold
Or tessellated lapis lazuli ;
Their fragrant rooms enriched with pampered
damasks,
Red-flowered as the mulberries that fed their
silk
Woven on looms tuned gently as a lute
To sweetness, dimly fashioned with sad tales
24
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Of ancient love and the tired hands that pull
Soft fruited boughs of sleep ; piled luxuries
From the world's pilfered ends, unravished
attar
Of roses growing through the purple night
Of Persian gardens where sad bulbuls warble
And silver blossoms of the fountains toss
Uneasy trees, strange ambergris from foam
Beneath the odorous prows and glimmering
growths
Of cold pearls fingered in green watery deeps
Of perilous reefs, Arabian flowers to sweeten,
To bestrew, the beds of pale lascivious queens,
Not more luxurious Sodom and Gomorrah,
Resplendent with loud scarlet harlotries
And purple chariots whirring through sweet
mists
Of myrrh and frankincense burned desecrate
Until God's patient anger broke, angelic,
In burning brimstone, thunder and black
night
That smote the lecherous dim multitudes,
And sought amid the secret golden coils
Of labyrinthine palaces, women
Whose amorous bodies were soaked in spike-
nard,
And rubbed by docile fingers of black slaves
In sweetest ointments crushed from Eastern
herbs,
2 5
THF FIRES OF BAAL
With Nubian eunuchs, their naked paramours
And men, lust-maddened, taken in strange sin.
But the black years await like gathered vultures
Upon the hills and Babylon, too, shall fall,
The proud, the mighty, be abashed and all
Her lofty ones crushed under chariots ;
In ragged purple, as a harlot, she
Shall wail the timbrels, the harps of her dead
love.
For lo ! the warnings of her Gods are heard
At night in rumbling temples, shapes of stone
Upon her daedal walls are terrified,
And in the feverish dreams of men take flight.
The voice of Israel that was despised
Calls through her populous streets in mockery
" Babylon, the mighty, is fallen, fallen, fallen!"
And vaulted echoes cry among themselves
"O fallen, fallen !"
So shall her temples rock,
Her towers, her innumerable pillars, topple
Blackly into the sunset, and all be still
As in the desolate regions of Gomorrah,
Where the white heron makes her lonely nest
By the salt-glittering shores of the Dead Sea
Undesolated and blue, beautiful,
Though there no tangled splash of net is heard
Nor children play. Beyond, the Jordan flows
Through gorges of wild palm : a watered land
Of wine and pasture, saffron slopes of wheat
26
THE FIRES OF BAAL
Ripening into sunlight, airy tracts
Of deep cloud-shadowed grass where grazing
sheep
Fatten their slow thick wool, and quiet cows,
Heavy with great milk-trickling udders, low,
When through the faint blue haze of evening
time
They hear far-off the herdsman's reedy pipe
As the light dew dropping through the olive
leaves
Below.
Amid rich tilth and graperies,
Orchards of crimson pomegranate, of prune
And citron, crouching on the granite hills,
He saw, changing and sullen in the sunlight
Contemptuous with thrice ten thousand towers
And massive battlements of angered bronze
The Cities of the Plain.
Anguished, he gazed
Across the measureless plains where they
recede
Like calm blue seas into the gentle hills
Of Gilead, the purple fading verge
Of the blue sky ; for there are little valleys
Odorous with balsam boughs and fair
As the rugged ravines beneath the lonely pines,
And wild Caucasian cliffs of star-blue ice,
Where the red cliffs of rhododendron seem
Forever sunset milder those and sweet
27
THE FIRES OF BAAL
With olive waters and the silver chime
Of anklets, while the Gentile maidens dance
Rosily through the almond-blossom trees
By starlight, to the lutes of sombre lemans,
Or sadly chant among hushed nightingales
Strange lullabies their mothers sleepily crooned
In ancient tongues of mighty Tubal Cain,
Him that first wrought in smelted iron, brass
And golden ore, and of his mightier brother,
Jubal ; he first had strung the ivoried harp
And wandered, musical, by the flaming walls
Of Paradise at eveningtide.
Blinded
With vision Moses bowed. Far prophecies
Had surged around him and the darkness
burned
Until he saw tremendous forms of doom,
Ranked demigods like their great images
Of hammered brass by men and clouded gods,
The mountain gods, that I, who sing, have
known
In light and sleep ; amid a fiery wheel
Of jealous wings between the terrible horns
Of thunder him, whom men have never
graven,
Him, that pillared his angry might and burned
Amid the clouds of Sinai. Multitudes
Glimmering through the darkness slowly moved
28
THE FIRES OF BAAL
With voices of lamentation and of hate,
Across vast ultimate plains until night passed
And sworded cries of desolating angels
Swept down tumultous light ; and mighty
kingdoms
Unpeopled, dropped in flame and flaming lit
The black abyss. . . .
The mountain sunset rayed
Tempestuous brightness through the hurri-
canes
Of sounding cloud, and down unknown
ravines
Cataracts poured their thunder. Beyond thick
forests
Of slanted gloom, upon the purple-shadowed
plains,
Drowned in red streams of deepening light
wild shepherds
Gazed mountain ward among their bleating
flocks,
The shrill reeds slipping from their agueish
fingers
Unplayed, their lengthened shadows tremulous
On the hushed ground. The saturn cities
smouldered,
Dimmer than bronze among the hammered
glares,
Where in the night are forged the uncubbed
lions
29
THE FIRES OF BAAL
And monstrous shapes of their proud demigods,
Not more blindfully the mouldering sphynx
Amid an immemorial purple gloom
Broods her lost centuries : but in their depths
Chariots swayed through joyous murmuring
crowds
Ravishing jostled melodies from timbrels
Along wide temple steps while dancing girls
With glimmering limbs through laughter and
raining ftowers,
Whirled bacchanal, in the brazen-pillared
sunset
Unseeing the shadow of the wrath of God
Stand among them. . . .
Slowly the great plains sank
In darkness, and their cities vanished as a cry
Of lamentation. Star beyond gleaming star
The heavens glimmered. There the bickering
dogstar
Sultried the skies and ruddy Aldebaran
Like a rich drop of blood hung motionless
Above black chasms. But stranger fires of Baal
Lit terror through the land, and from their
black ravines
Even to the last unhuman peak, the mountains
Loomed, great with darkness and their ancient
woe.
7917.
3
NOTE
The poem is an extension of the following
verse from the Pentateuch :
" And the Lord spake unto Moses that self-
same day, saying: 'Get thee up into this
mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which