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German and
United States Colonialism
in a Connected World
Entangled Empires
Edited by Janne Lahti
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, UK

Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-
established collection of over 100 volumes focussing on empires in world
history and on the societies and cultures that emerged from, and chal-
lenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative
and connective studies, as well as works addressing the ways in which
particular regions or nations interact with global forces. In its forma-
tive years, the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth,
but there is now no imperial system, period of human history or part of
the world that lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome
the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies
by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong
thematic focus that help to set new research agendas. As well as history,
the series includes work on politics, economics, culture, archaeology, liter-
ature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most
exciting new scholarship on world history and to make this available to
a broad scholarly readership in a timely manner.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13937
 Janne Lahti
Editor

German and United

States Colonialism
in a Connected World
Entangled Empires
Editor
Janne Lahti
Department of Philosophy, History and Art
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland

ISSN 2635-1633 ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic)

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-53205-5 ISBN 978-3-030-53206-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53206-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Chapter 1 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Inter-
national License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see
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 Acknowledgments

As usual, academic gratitude has accumulated during the making of this

book. The period spent as a visiting scholar at Free University Berlin’s
Global History Program certainly proved extremely helpful in deep-
ening my views on German colonialism and contemplating on the forms
and range of historical connections between United States and German
empires. Thanks for having me over and for the exchange of ideas, Sebas-
tian Conrad. I also enjoyed the lattes/beers and the talks with Eriks
Bredovskis, Nicola Camilleri, Minu Haschemi Yekani, Adam Hjorthen,
Valeska Huber, Dörte Lerp, and Ben van Zee. The experience would not
have been as stimulating without my Global Settler Colonialism class.
Thanks to all the wonderful students for engaging my arguments and
challenging me. The same goes to the equally wonderful students at the
University of Helsinki, where I have taught several years on settler colo-
nialism and German and US empires. For enabling this book to come
to life in the first place, I wish to thank the Academy of Finland and
the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Both institutions, together with the
University of Helsinki, have kept my academic career afloat in recent years.
Research fellowships at the Hunting Library, in San Marino, California,
and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyoming, have also
been very helpful in nurturing my ideas on global empires. My magnif-
icent author team deserves a massive thanks. At Palgrave, Molly Beck,
Ashwini Elango, Maeve Sinnott, and Sam Stocker have proven most

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

helpful, patient, and supportive. Finally, my warmest thanks go, as always,

to my family, to my wife Sanna who has put up with me for two decades
already, and our two soon-to-be-adults, Sofia and Juho.
 Praise For German and United States
Colonialism in a Connected World

“Janne Lahti brings together a fine ensemble of international scholars to

look at one of the currently most rewarding fields in imperial history, the
history of transimperial entanglements. The volume specifically engages
with US-German imperial relations and throws new light on their great
historical significance. Lahti’s skillful and gripping introduction immedi-
ately draws the reader into the subject matter. His real feat, however,
lies in the composition of the contributions that covers broad historical
ground and at the same time provides in-depth empirical analysis. A timely
and stimulating book at the interface of imperial and global history.”
—Roland Wenzlhuemer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

“This outstanding collection of essays on the many entanglements of

Germany and the United States in the age of empire showcases a highly
dynamic research field of younger and established scholars that is breaking
down the barriers and stale conventions that have long hindered a full
understanding of global competitive colonialism. By also challenging
the national exceptionalism that has long contained both American and
German history, the essays are sure to spark lively debate that will lead to
productive new avenues of research.”
—Erik Grimmer-Solem, Wesleyan University

vii
viii PRAISE FOR GERMAN AND UNITED STATES COLONIALISM IN A …

“Entangled Empires presents global and transnational scholarship at their

finest. Full of original research, arresting insights, and powerful case
studies, the essays collected here decentre US and German colonialism
in compelling ways. In crisp and elegant prose the authors in this superb
collection show as never before how the United States and German impe-
rial formations were entangled by flows of knowledge, people, and strate-
gies of colonial domination, and developed relationally with one another.
This carefully curated volume showcases how the signature methods of
transnational and global history—connected, comparative, and collabo-
rative—offers vital new understandings on imperial formation and the
imperial origins of contemporary globality.”
—Stephen Tuffnell, St Peter’s College, University of Oxford

“This important collection offers a wealth of thought-provoking essays

that open up a long overdue discussion about the myriad ways that U.S.
and German colonialism interacted with one another across the long nine-
teenth century. After reading German and United States Colonialism in
a Connected World, it will be impossible to think about U.S. or German
history—or, indeed, global history—the same way ever again.”
—Karl Jacoby, Columbia University

“The compelling essays in this rich, wide-ranging volume vividly demon-

strate the value of approaching histories of modern colonialism as globally
entangled. Focusing on the ways Germans’ perceptions of U. S. empire—
as inspiration and model, rival and threat—shaped their understandings
of Germany as nation, empire and world power, the essays reveal myriad
ways that German visions of settler-colonial rule, racialized power and
colonial violence crossed national and imperial boundaries.”
—Paul Kramer, Vanderbilt University
 Contents

1 Introduction: Relational Empires 1

Janne Lahti

Part I Portabilities

2 Seapower and Frontier Settlement: Friedrich List’s

American Vision for Germany 17
Gregor Thum

3 The Fantasy of Open Space on the Frontier: Max

Sering from the Great Plains to Eastern Europe 41
Robert L. Nelson

4 The Role of US Railroads in the German Expansionist

Mindset of Gerhard Rohlfs 63
Tracey Reimann-Dawe

5 Between France, Germany, and the United States:

Raymond Aron as a Critical Theorist of Colonialism
and Empire 83
George Steinmetz

ix
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x CONTENTS

Part II Passages

6 “A Truly Exquisite Little Phrase:” Global Colonialist

Visions vs. The “Drang nach Osten” 109
Jens-Uwe Guettel

7 Ruling Classes and Serving Races: German Policies

on Land, Labor, and Migration in Trans-Imperial
Perspective 129
Dörte Lerp

8 How the Südwest Was Won: Transnational Currents

of American Agriculture and Land Colonization
in German Southwest Africa 153
Jeannette Eileen Jones

9 Practicing Empire: Germany’s Colonial Visions

in the Pacific Northwest 177
Eriks Bredovskis

Part III Parallels

10 Similarity in Appearance—“Chinaman” in German

and American Satire Magazines Around 1900 203
Volker M. Langbehn

11 “I Almost Pulled Her to My Heart, but…”

Competing Masculinities in Karl May’s Wild West
Fictions and Their Modern Theatrical Adaptations 229
A. Dana Weber

12 In Service of Empires: Apaches and Askaris

as Colonial Soldiers 253
Janne Lahti and Michelle R. Moyd
 CONTENTS xi

13 Words and Wars of Conquest: The Rhetoric

of Annihilation in the American West and the Nazi
East 277
Edward B. Westermann

Part IV Afterwords

14 Empires of Comparison 301

Andrew Zimmerman

15 Settler Colonialism and Financial Imperialism: The

German and United States Empires in a Global Age 307
Sebastian Conrad

Index 315
 Notes on Contributors

Eriks Bredovskis is Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at

the University of Toronto and affiliate with the Collaborative Program at
the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Funded by the Canada
Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC, his dissertation examines German
anxiety about US empire from 1878 to 1918, with a particular interest
in Germans in the North Pacific Ocean. His most recent publication is
titled “Sketching America: German Depictions of the United States and
Woodrow Wilson” in the October 2019 issue of German Studies Review.
Sebastian Conrad is Professor of Global History at the Free Univer-
sity of Berlin. He has a background in both modern Western European
and Japanese history and is currently interested primarily in transnational
and global history approaches and their contribution to an understanding
of the interactions and entanglements of the past. His recent publica-
tions include German Colonialism: A Short History (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2012), What is Global History? (Princeton University Press,
2016), and An Emerging Modern World, 1750–1870, eds. with Jürgen
Osterhammel, (A History of the World, vol. 4; The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2018).
Jens-Uwe Guettel is Associate Professor of German Studies and History
at Penn State. His first book, German Expansionism, Imperial Liber-
alism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (Cambridge University Press,
2012), focuses on the domestic ramifications of colonial expansion for

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany and Nazi expansionism.

His current book project, Radical Democracy in Germany, 1871–1918,
takes a broad look at women, socialists, anarchists, and a host of other
individuals and movements interested in radical change in Germany
before 1918. Guettel’s articles have appeared, for instance, in the Journal
of Modern History, Central European History, and Modern Intellectual
History.
Jeannette Eileen Jones is Associate Professor of History and Ethnic
Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research expertise
and interests include Gilded Age and Progressive Era history, transna-
tional history, pre-Colonial Africa, history of science, digital history, Black
European Studies, and the Black American West. She is the author of
In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in Amer-
ican Culture, 1884–1936 (The University of Georgia Press, 2010). She is
currently working on her second monograph, America in Africa: U.S.
Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1821–1919, which is under
advanced contract with Yale University Press.
Janne Lahti works as Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the
University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focuses on global and
transnational histories of settler colonialism, borderlands, the Amer-
ican West, and German and Nordic colonialism. He has authored five
books, including Cinematic Settlers: The Settler Colonial World in Film,
with Rebecca Weaver-Hightower (Routledge, 2020), The American West
and the World: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge,
2019), and Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the South-
west Borderlands (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017). His current book
project is titled Global Settler Colonialism: American West and Imperial
Germany in the World of Empires.
Volker M. Langbehn is Professor in the German Program at San Fran-
cisco State University. His scholarly interests include German Literature
from 1700–1820 and from 1890–present, theory of literature, cultural
criticism, European and American Colonialism, Visual Studies, and Geno-
cide Studies. His main publications include German Colonialism: Race,
Holocaust, and Postwar Germany, with Mohammad Salama (Columbia
University Press, 2011) and German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and
Modern Memory (Routledge, 2010). Langbehn’s current project is titled
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Precursors to Genocide: European and American Imperialism and Mass

Culture from the late 19 th Century to 1933.
Dörte Lerp works as postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of
Berlin. Her research interests include German and European colonial
history, postcolonial memorial culture as well as tourism and development
history. Her first monograph, Imperiale Grenzräume. Bevölkerungspoli-
tiken in Deutsch-Südwestafrika und den östlichen Provinzen Preußens
1884–1914 (Campus, 2016), examined colonial policies in German
Southwest Africa and the eastern Prussian provinces. Her current project,
funded by the German Research Council, investigates how tourism shaped
European-African economic and socio-political relations. Her publica-
tions also include New Perspectives on the History of Gender and Empire.
Comparative and Global Approaches, with Ulrike Lindner (Bloomsbury
2018).
Michelle R. Moyd is Associate Professor of History at Indiana Univer-
sity—Bloomington. She is a historian of eastern Africa, with special inter-
ests in the region’s history of soldiering and warfare. She is also inter-
ested in bringing the experience of nineteenth-century African-American
soldiers into a broader analysis of soldiers of empire. Her book, Violent
Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in
German East Africa, was published by the Ohio University Press in 2014.
Robert L. Nelson is Head of the Department of History at the Univer-
sity of Windsor, Canada. His main areas of research include settler colo-
nial studies, cultural military history, the law of warfare, and food history.
His revised Cambridge dissertation appeared in 2011 as German Soldier
Newspapers of the First World War (Cambridge University Press). Earlier
he published the edited volume Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expan-
sion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (Palgrave, 2009). He is currently
working on the biography of Max Sering.
Tracey Reimann-Dawe is Assistant Professor in German at Durham
University, UK. Her research interests focus on aspects of German
history, literature, and culture from the mid-nineteenth century onwards,
including colonialism, travel writing, nationalism, cultural memory, and
protest movements. Her publications include “Time and the Other in
Nineteenth-Century German Travel Writing,” Transfers: Interdisciplinary
Journal of Mobility Studies [Special section ‘Travel Writing and Knowl-
edge Transfer], 2016 and “The British Other on African soil: the rise
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

of nationalism in colonial German travel writing on Africa”, Patterns of

Prejudice [Special issue ’German Nationalist and Colonial Discourse’],
2011.
George Steinmetz is the Charles Tilly Professor of Sociology at the
University of Michigan and has been a tenured professor at the Univer-
sity of Chicago and the New School in New York. His main areas are
the sociology of empires and states, social theory, and the history and
philosophy of the social sciences. His recent publications include “Sozi-
ologie und Kolonialismus: Die Beziehung zwischen Wissen und –Politik,”
Mittelweg 36 (May 2020), “Scientific Autonomy, Academic Freedom,
and Social Research in the United States,” Critical Historical Studies
(Fall 2018), and “Sociology and Colonialism in the British and French
Empires, 1940–1960s,” Journal of Modern History 89.3 (2017).
Gregor Thum is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Pittsburgh. He is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central
European history with a particular interest in the German borderlands
of east central Europe, the history of forced migration, and politics of
the past. He is the author of Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wrocław
during the Century of Expulsions (Princeton University Press, 2011),
editor of Traumland Osten: Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20.
Jahrhundert (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006) and co-editor of Helpless
Imperialists: Imperial Failure, Fear, and Radicalization (Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2013).
A. Dana Weber is Associate Professor of German in the Department of
Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University in Talla-
hassee. Her interdisciplinary research addresses diverse topics including
performativity, performance and the uncanny, Karl May festivals, the films
of Fritz Lang and Quentin Tarantino, film noir in East Germany, and
the German Romantic novella. Dana is the author of Blood Brothers and
Peace Pipes: Performing the Wild West in German Festivals (University of
Wisconsin Press, 2019), editor of the essay collection Performativity—
Life, Stage Screen. Reflections on a Transdisciplinary Concept (LIT Verlag,
2018), and author of several articles.
Edward B. Westermann is Professor of History at Texas A&M
University-San Antonio. He has published extensively on the Holocaust
and military history, including Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars:
Comparing Genocide and Conquest (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

and Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (Univer-
sity Pres of Kansas, 2005). His newest book, Drunk with Genocide?
Drinking Rituals, Masculinity, and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany will
be published by Cornell University Press in March 2021.
Andrew Zimmerman is Professor of History at the George Washington
University. They is the author of Anthropology and Antihumanism in
Imperial Germany (Chicago University Press, 2001) and Alabama in
Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization
of the New South (Princeton University Press, 2010). They has also edited
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States (Inter-
national Publishers, 2016). Their current project is writing a transnational
history of the American Civil War.
 List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 Campbell’s Soil Culture Manual Cover (1905) (Courtesy

of History Nebraska) 166
Fig. 8.2 Top Left: Oxcart on the Trek. Bottom Left: Rambouillet
Sheep in Rehoboth. Top Right: Grazing Land of His
Majesty’s the Emperor’s Farm. Bottom Right: Cattle
Herd by the Open Water (Source Deutschland als
Kolonialmacht: Dreißig Jahre deustche Kolonialgeschichte
[1914]) 169
Fig. 9.1 Page from Paul Behncke, “Kleiner Kreuzer
“Falke,” Auslandsreisen unter dem Kommando von
Korvettenkapitän Paul Behncke (Fotoalben), Nord-
und Mittelamerika,” Bundesarchiv-Freiburg, BArch N
173/31, Bd. 31 183
Fig. 9.2 Page from Paul Behncke, “Kleiner Kreuzer
“Falke,” Auslandsreisen unter dem Kommando von
Korvettenkapitän Paul Behncke (Fotoalben), Nord-
und Mittelamerika,” Bundesarchiv-Freiburg, BArch N
173/31, Bd. 31 186
Fig. 9.3 Image from Paul Behncke, “Kleiner Kreuzer
‘Falke,’ Auslandsreisen unter dem Kommando von
Korvettenkapitän Paul Behncke (Fotoalben), Nord-
und Mittelamerika,” Bundesarchiv-Freiburg, BArch N
173/31, Bd. 31 193

xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 10.1 Celestial Ladies, from Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 2, no.

53 (January 2, 1858). Held by the Lincoln Financial
Foundation Collection, held in the Lincoln Library,
Allen County Public Library (Image courtesy of Internet
Archive. https://www.archive.org/) 209
Fig. 10.2 Chinese Coolies, from Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 2, no.
53 (January 2, 1858). Held by the Lincoln Financial
Foundation Collection, held in the Lincoln Library,
Allen County Public Library (Image courtesy of Internet
Archive. https://www.archive.org/) 210
Fig. 10.3 “What Shall We Do With Our Boys?,” Oakland Museum
of California (https://www.archive.org/) 212
Fig. 10.4 “Im Hospital der Unheilbaren,” Heidelberg University
Library (https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kla
1900/0324) 219
Fig. 11.1 From left to right: Nscho-tschi (Radost Bokel), Old
Shatterhand (Jochen Bludau, ✝ 2019), Intschu-tschuna
(Wolfgang Kirchhoff), and Winnetou (Jean-Marc
Birkholz), in blood-brotherhood scene, Elspe 2012
(Photograph by A. Dana Weber) 234
Fig. 11.2 From left to right: Nscho-tschi (El’ Dura), Winnetou
(Hans Otto), and Old Shatterhand (Ludwig Körner),
Berlin 1929 (Image available in the public domain) 241
Fig. 11.3 Uschi Behm (right) and a friend as Old Shatterhand
and Winnetou on the shooting location of Winnetou’s
film adaptation in Croatia, 1982 (Used with permission) 247
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Relational Empires

Janne Lahti

Summer 1893. Chicago. While the historian Frederick Jackson Turner

delivered a paper titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American
history,” in the meeting of the American Historical Association, Buffalo
Bill Cody’s Wild West show performed close by, packing audiences twice
a day to an arena of eighteen thousand spectators. However, the main
attraction in town was the World’s Columbian Exposition, a massive cele-
bration of Columbus’ landing some 400 years earlier. The exposition
covered around 600 acres, with nearly 200 new buildings, and drew
millions of visitors. The exposition, Buffalo Bill’s show, and Turner’s
paper were all big hits (in their respective ways), and they all symbolized
and celebrated American exceptionalism. They inserted US history into a
tight national framing. While the exposition lauded and featured exam-
ples of American technological progress, the dynamism of its civic society,
and the prominence of its civilization, Turner’s famous “frontier thesis”
offered an explanation of American identity and history as a westbound
process where Anglo pioneers built civilization on free land. Buffalo Bill’s

J. Lahti (B)
Department of Philosophy, History and Art, University of Helsinki, Helsinki,
Finland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2021 1

J. Lahti (ed.), German and United States Colonialism in a Connected
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Entered according to the Act of the
Parliament of Canada, in the year one
thousand eight hundred and ninety-four,
by William Briggs, Toronto, in the
office of the Minister of Agriculture, at
Ottawa.
 CONTENTS.
PAGE

My Lattice 1
Samson 4
In Via Mortis 9
Thor 14
The Feud 31
The Frenzy of Prometheus 34
Natura Victrix 40
The Abbot 47
Dion 61
Love Slighted 72
Andante 74
Sorrow’s Waking 75
On an Old Venetian Portrait 76
Old Letters 78
Van Elsen 80
In Memoriam 81
The Everlasting Father 82
The Sting of Death 84
Te Judice 86
The Two Mistresses 88
In the Woods 89
Calvary 90
At Lauds 93
In the Churchyard 94
The Cripple 95
A Nocturne 96

SONNETS.

To My Wife 101
A Cypress Wreath 102
Columbus 105
Idols 106
Solomon 107
Out of the Storm 108
M Y L AT T I C E .
MY LATTICE.
My lattice looks upon the North,
The winds are cool that enter;
At night I see the stars come forth,
Arcturus in the centre.

The curtain down my casement drawn

Is dewy mist, which lingers
Until my maid, the rosy dawn,
Uplifts it with her fingers.

The sparrows are my matin-bell,

Each day my heart rejoices,
When, from the trellis where they dwell,
They call me with their voices.

Then, as I dream with half-shut eye,

Without a sound or motion,
To me that little square of sky
Becomes a boundless ocean.

And straight my soul unfurls its sails

That blue sky-sea to sever,
My fancies are the noiseless gales
That waft it on forever.

I sail into the depths of space

And leave the clouds behind me,
I pass the old moon’s hiding-place,
The sun’s rays cannot find me.

I sail beyond the solar light,

Beyond the constellations,
Across the voids where loom in sight
New systems and creations.

I pass great worlds of silent stone,

Wh li ht d lif h ih d
 Whence light and life have vanished,
Which wander on to tracts unknown,
In lonely exile banished.

I meet with spheres of fiery mist

Which warm me as I enter,
Where—ruby, gold and amethyst—
The rainbow lights concentre.

And on I sail into the vast,

New wonders aye discerning,
Until my mind is lost at last,
And, suddenly returning,

I feel the wind which, cool as dew,

Upon my face is falling,
And see again my patch of blue
And hear the sparrows calling.

SAMSON.
Plunged in night, I sit alone
Eyeless on this dungeon stone,
Naked, shaggy and unkempt,
Dreaming dreams no soul hath dreamt.

Rats and vermin round my feet

Play unharmed, companions sweet;
Spiders weave me overhead
Silken curtains for my bed.

Day by day the mould I smell

Of this fungus-blistered cell;
Nightly in my haunted sleep
O’er my face the lizards creep.

Gyves of iron scrape and burn

Wrists and ankles when I turn,
And my collared neck is raw
With the teeth of brass that gnaw.

God of Israel, canst Thou see

All my fierce captivity?
Do Thy sinews feel my pains?
Hearest Thou the clanking chains?

Thou who madest me so fair,

Strong and buoyant as the air,
Tall and noble as a tree,
With the passions of the sea,

Swift as horse upon my feet,

Fierce as lion in my heat,
Rending, like a wisp of hay,
All that dared withstand my way,

Canst Thou see me through the gloom

Of thi bt t b
Of this subterranean tomb,—
Blinded tiger in his den,
Once the lord and prince of men?

Clay was I; the potter Thou

With Thy thumb-nail smooth’dst my brow,
Roll’dst the spittle-moistened sands
Into limbs between Thy hands.

Thou didst pour into my blood

Fury of the fire and flood,
And upon the boundless skies
Thou didst first unclose my eyes.

And my breath of life was flame,

God-like from the source it came,
Whirling round like furious wind,
Thoughts upgathered in the mind.

Strong Thou mad’st me, till at length

All my weakness was my strength;
Tortured am I, blind and wrecked,
For a faulty architect.

From the woman at my side,

Was I woman-like to hide
What she asked me, as if fear
Could my iron heart come near?

Nay, I scorned and scorn again

Cowards who their tongues restrain;
Cared I no more for Thy laws
Than a wind of scattered straws.

When the earth quaked at my name

And my blood was all aflame,
Who was I to lie, and cheat
Her who clung about my feet?
Her who clung about my feet?

From Thy open nostrils blow

Wind and tempest, rain and snow;
Dost Thou curse them on their course,
For the fury of their force?

Tortured am I, wracked and bowed,

But the soul within is proud;
Dungeon fetters cannot still
Forces of the tameless will.

Israel’s God, come down and see

All my fierce captivity;
Let Thy sinews feel my pains,
With Thy fingers lift my chains.

Then, with thunder loud and wild,

Comfort Thou Thy rebel child,
And with lightning split in twain
Loveless heart and sightless brain.

Give me splendour in my death—

Not this sickening dungeon breath,
Creeping down my blood like slime,
Till it wastes me in my prime.

Give me back for one blind hour,

Half my former rage and power,
And some giant crisis send,
Meet to prove a hero’s end.

Then, O God, Thy mercy show—

Crush him in the overthrow
At whose life they scorn and point,
By its greatness out of joint.
IN VIA MORTIS.
O ye great company of dead that sleep
Under the world’s green rind, I come to you,
With warm, soft limbs, with eyes that laugh and weep,
Heart strong to love, and brain pierced through and through
With thoughts whose rapid lightnings make my day—
To you my life-stream courses on its way
Through margin-shallows of the eternal deep.

And naked shall I come among you, shorn

Of all life’s vanities, its light and power,
Its earthly lusts, its petty hate and scorn,
The gifts and gold I treasured for an hour;
And even from this house of flesh laid bare,—
A soul transparent as heat-quivering air,
Into your fellowship I shall be born.

I know you not, great forms of giant kings,

Who held dominion in your iron hands,
Who toyed with battles and all valorous things,
Counting yourselves as gods when on the sands
Ye piled the earth’s rock fragments in an heap
To mark and guard the grandeur of your sleep,
And quaffed the cup which death, our mother, brings.

I know you not, great warriors, who have fought

When blood flowed like a river at your feet,
And each death which your thunderous sword-strokes wrought,
Than love’s wild rain of kisses was more sweet.
I know you not, great minds, who with the pen
Have graven on the fiery hearts of men
Hopes that breed hope and thoughts that kindle thought.

But ye are there, ingathered in the realm

Where tongueless spirits speak from heart to heart,
And eyeless mariners without a helm
Steer down the seas where ever close and part
 p
The windless clouds; and all ye know is this,
Ye are not as ye were in pain or bliss,
But a strange numbness doth all thought o’erwhelm.

And I shall meet you, O ye mighty dead,

Come late into your kingdom through the gates
Of one fierce anguish whitherto I tread,
With heart that now forgets, now meditates
Upon the wide fields stretching far away
Where the dead wander past the bounds of day,
Past life, past death, past every pain and dread.

Oft, when the winter sun slopes down to rest

Across the long, crisp fields of gilded white,
And without sound upon earth’s level breast
The grey tide floods around of drowning night,
A whisper, like a distant battle’s roll
Heard over mountains, creeps into my soul,
And there I entertain it like a guest.

It is the echo of your former pains,

Great dead, who lie so still beneath the ground;
Its voice is as the night wind after rains,
The flight of eagle wings which once were bound,
And as I listen in the starlit air
My spirit waxeth stronger than despair,
Till in your might I break life’s prison chains.

Then mount I swiftly to your dark abodes,

Invisible, beyond sight’s reach, where now ye dwell
In houses wrought of dreams on dusky roads
Which lead in mazes whither none may tell,
For they who thread them faint beside the way.
And ever as they pass through twilight grey
Doubt walks beside them and a terror goads.

And there the great dead welcome me and bring

And there the great dead welcome me and bring
Their cups of tasteless pleasure to my mouth;
Here am I little worth, there am I king,
For pulsing life still slakes my spirit’s drouth,
And he who yet doth hold the gift of life
Is mightier than the heroes of past strife
Who have been mowed in death’s great harvesting.

And here and there along the silent streets

I see some face I knew, perchance I loved;
And as I call it each blank wall repeats
The uttered name, and swift the form hath moved
And heedless of me passes on and on,
Till lo, the vision from my sight hath gone
Softly as night at touch of dawn retreats.

Yet must life’s vision fade and I shall come,

O mighty dead, into your hidden land,
When these eyes see not and these lips are dumb,
And all life’s flowers slip from this nerveless hand;
Then will ye gather round me like a tide
And with your faces the strange scenery hide,
While your weird music doth each sense benumb.

So would I live this life’s brief span, great dead,

As ye once lived it, with an iron will,
A heart of steel to conquer, a mind fed
On richest hopes and purposes, until
Well pleased ye set for me a royal throne,
And welcome as confederate with your own
The soul gone from me on my dying bed.

THOR.
Here stood the great god Thor,
There he planted his foot,
And the whole world shook, from the shore
To the circle of mountains God put
For its crown in the days of yore.

The waves of the sea uprose,

The trees of the wood were uptorn,
Down from the Alps’ crown of snows
The glacial avalanche borne
Thundered at daylight’s close.

But the moon-lady curled at his feet,

Like a smoke which will not stir,
When the summer hills swoon with the heat,
Till his passion was centred on her,
And the shame of his yielding grew sweet.

Empty the moon-lady’s car,

And idly it floated away,
Tipped up as she left it afar,
Pale in the red death of day,
With its nether lip turned to a star.

Fearful the face of the god,

Stubborn with sense of his power,
The seas would roll back at his nod
And the thunder-voiced thunder-clouds lower,
While the lightning he broke as a rod.

Fearful his face was in war,

Iron with fixed look of hate,
Through the battle-smoke thick and the roar
He strode with invincible weight
Till the legions fell back before Thor.
But the white thing that curled at his feet
Rose up slowly beside him like mist,
Indefinite, wan, incomplete,
Till she touched the rope veins on his wrist
And love pulsed to his heart with a beat.

Then he looked, and from under her hair,

As from out of a mist grew her eyes,
And firmer her flesh was and fair
With the tint of the sorrowful skies,
Sun-widowed and veiled with thin air.

She seemed of each lovable thing

The soul that infused it with grace,
Her thoughts were the song the birds sing,
The glory of flowers was her face
And her smile was the smile of the spring.

Madly his blood with a bound

Leaped from his heart to his brain,
Till his thoughts and his senses were drowned
In the ache of a longing like pain,
In a hush that was louder than sound.

Then the god, bending his face,

“Loveliest,” said he, “if death
Mocked me with skulls in this place
And age and spent strength and spent breath,
Yet would I yield to thy grace;
“Yet would I circle thee, love,
With these arms which are smoking from wars,
Though the father up-gathered above,
In his anger, each ocean that roars,
Each boulder the cataracts shove,

“To hurl at me down from his throne,

Though the flood were as wide as the sky.
Yea, love, I am thine, all thine own,
Strong as the ocean to lie
Slave to thy bidding alone.”

Folds of her vesture fell soft,

As she lifted her eyes up to his:
“Nay, love, for a man speaketh oft
In words that are hot as a kiss,
But man’s love may be donned and be doft.”

“Love would have life for its field—

Love would have death for its goal;
And the passion of war must yield
To the passion of love in the soul,
And the eyes that Love kisses are sealed.”

“Wouldst thou love if the scorn of the world

Covered thy head with its briars;
When, soft as an infant curled
In its cradle, thou, chained with desires,
Lay helpless when flags were unfurled?”

Fiercely the god’s anger broke,

Fired with the flames in his blood:
“Who careth what words may be spoke?
For the feet of this love is a flood,
And its finger the weight of a yoke.

“I bow me, sweet, under its power,

I, who have stooped to none;
I bring thee my strength for a dower,
And deeds like the path of the sun;
I am thine for an age or an hour.”

Then the moon-lady softly unwound

The girdle of arms interlaced,
And the gold of her tresses unbound,
 Till it fell from her head to her waist,
And then from her waist to the ground.

“Love, thou art mine, thou art mine,”

Softly she uttered a spell;
“Under the froth is the wine,
Under the ocean is hell,
Over the ocean stars shine.

“Lull him, ye winds of the South,

Charm him, ye rivers that sing,
Flowers be the kiss on his mouth,
Let his heart be the heart of the spring,
And his passion the hot summer drouth.”

Swiftly extending her hands,

She made a gold dome of her hair;
Dumb with amazement he stands,
Till down, without noise in the air,
The moon-car descends to the sands.

He taketh her fingers in his,

Shorn of his strength and his will;
His brave heart trembles with bliss—
Trembles and will not be still,
Mad with the wine of her kiss.

They mount in the car, and its beams

Shoot over the sea and the earth,
And clothe in a net-work of dreams
The mountains where rivers have birth,
And the lakes that are fed by the streams.

Swiftly ascending, the car

Silvers the clouds in its flight,
Piercing the ether afar
Up to a bridge out of sight
That skirteth the path of a star.

One end of the bridge lay on land,

The other hung over the deep;
It was fashioned of ropes of grey sand,
And cemented together with sleep,
With its undergirths formed like a hand.

Pleasant the land to the sight,

Laden with blossoms and trees,
And the grasses to left and to right
Waved in the wind like the seas,
When the blue day is high in the height.

Under the breezy bowers

Cushions of moss were laid,
And ever through sultry hours
Fairy-like fountains played,
Cooling the earth with their showers.

The horizon was crowned with blue hills,

And woodland and meadowland lay
Lit with the glory which thrills
Souls in some dreamland way,
Where the nightingales sing to the rills.

Deer and the white kine feed

On the foam-fretted shores of the lake,
And through many a flowery mead,
And from many a forest and brake,
The gold birds of paradise speed.

The lissome moon-lady led on

Up to a bower on a hill
With the flowers at its door rained upon
By a fountain as constant and still
As the bow in the cloud that has gone.
“O love, thou art weary,” she said,
“Who erst wast so valiant and strong,
And here will I make thee a bed,
And here will I sing thee a song
To the tune of the leaves overhead.

“And here will thy great strength flow,

Melted away in the sweet,
Soft touch of ineffable woe,
Which is heart of the joy made complete,
And the taste of the pleasure we know.”

Where the mosses were piled in a heap,

He laid his giant form down,
And she charmed all his senses to sleep,
With her hands on his head like a crown,
Till the sound of his breathing was deep.

With a noise like a serpent’s hiss,

The moon-lady bent her head,
And she sucked out his breath with a kiss—
A kiss that was subtle and dread,
Like the sorrow which lurks in a bliss.

Then she rose and waved her hands

In circles over the sod,
And her gold hair wove in strands
Round the limbs of the sleeping god,
With the strength of adamant bands.

She opened the great, clenched fist,

And softly the lady withdrew,
Was it only a serpent that hissed?
For her face is transparent as dew,
And her garments are thin as the mist.
Spell-bound on the dreamland floor,
Chained with the golden hair,
Weak as a babe lay Thor,
While the fountain played soft in the air,
And the nightingales sang evermore.

Like a babe in its cradle curled,

He was chained with his chain of desires,
Though they needed his arm in the world,
For the battle-strife raged, and its fires
And the flags of the gods were unfurled.

Then Odin, the father of Heaven,

Called a council of gods on high,
To each was a white cloud given
At the foot of his throne in the sky,
And the steps of his throne were seven.

“Children,” the father cried,

“Lost is the great god Thor,
Lost is the sword at his side,
Lost is his arm in the war,
And the fury which all things defied.

“In the heart of a dreamland bower,

Sleepeth he under a spell,
For he yielded his strength for an hour,
And under the meshes of Hell
He is chained by invincible power.

“None may the meshes unbind;

Strength must return to his will,
And himself must unshackle his mind
From the dreams he is dreaming still,
In the moon-lady’s tresses entwined.

“Over the mountains the road,

 Dismal and drear to return,
Face it he must with his load,
Though the underbrakes crackle and burn,
Though the serpent-bites blister and goad.

“Not a mere shadow is sin,

Clinging like wine to the lip,
To be wiped from the mouth and the chin
After man taketh a sip;
But a poison that lurketh within.

“The forces that hold back the sea,

That grapple the earth from beneath,
Are not older than those which decree
The marriage of sin unto death
In the sinner, whoever he be.

“Who of our numbers will go

Up to the death-tainted land,
Braving the dangers, and so
Reaching the heart and the hand
And the form of the god lying low?”

“Sire,” answered Balder the fair,

“Rugged the journey and long,
Manifold dangers are there,
But my heart and my arms are strong,
And my soul is as pure as the air.

“I will go, for we need him in war,

And without him we struggle and die;
I will put on the armour he bore
And gird on his sword to my thigh;
I will sit by and say, ‘I am Thor.’

“Perchance when he opens his eyes,

Shorn of his own armour-plate,
Smitten with rage and surprise,
Burning with anger and hate,
He will burst from the bed where he lies.

“Swift as the kiss of the fire,

Knowledge shall flash to his brain,
And the thought of his past self inspire
His spirit with valour again,
Till he shatter the bonds of desire.”

So Balder, the fairest of all,

And purest of gods by the throne,
Went from the heavenly hall
Into the darkness alone,
To loosen the god from his thrall.

Black was the charger he rode,

Winged, and its eye-balls of fire;
From mountain to mountain it trode,
Spurning the valleys as mire,
Till it sprang into air with its load.

Then swift, with its neck side-curled,

Half hid in the smoke of its breath,
Upward it bounded, and hurled
Volleys and splinters of death
From the fire of its hoofs on the world.

The moon-lady leaned from her car

And beheld the fierce course of the god,
For, as though with the birth of a star,
A fire track as straight as a rod
Burnt in the heavens afar.

Then she trembled and sickened with fear,

Till her face grew as white as the mist
When at day-dawn the stars disappear,
 And her body did coil and untwist
Like a serpent’s folds caught in a weir.

Her heart was a fire that was spent,

Her lips could not utter a charm,
And she cowered from his sight as he went,
While Balder flew by without harm,
’Neath the shield of a pure intent.

He came to the moon-lady’s bower,

And girded the sword to his thigh,
And put on the cincture of power,
Unbound from the god lying by,
Nor waited a day nor an hour;

For, startled, the sleeper awoke,

Black-visaged, like storm on the skies;
But Balder sat upright, nor spoke,
Till the flames darted out of Thor’s eyes,
And the passionate silence he broke.

“Who is it, when dreaming is o’er,

Mocks me with helm like to mine,
Ungirding the armour I bore,
From the sweet silken nets that entwine?”
Quoth Balder, “Behold! I am Thor.

“I am he that was ‘Thunderer’ called,

And my fame is as wide as the world;
At my anger the rocks were appalled,
And the waves of the sea were up-curled,
But now I am weak and enthralled.

“The battle is fierce on the earth,

While I sit here idle and still;
Unfulfilled are the hopes of my birth,
For the strength of the mind is the will,
And the will is more potent than girth.

“The foes of the gods wax bold,

And they mock at the armies of heaven;
At their banquets the story is told—
‘A weak woman’s heart hath been given
To Thor, the avenger of old.’

“And the wives as they sit by the cot,

Sing, ‘Sleep, for the god cannot come;
Sleep, the avenger is not;
Hush, let his praises be dumb;
Hush, let his name be forgot.’ ”

Then the god, smitten with pain,

Shamèd and stung to the heart,
Knowing a god’s voice again,
Rending his fetters apart,
Sprang from the moon-lady’s chain.

Instantly vanished in night

Fountains and meadows and streams,
Never a glimmer of light
Lit up the palace of dreams,
As the god made his way, without sight,

Back to the heavenly shore,

Over mountain and wild ravine,
Morasses, and seas that roar,
Till the portals of heaven were seen
And he stood in Valhalla once more.

THE FEUD.
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