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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24364-8.txt b/24364-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d985297 --- /dev/null +++ b/24364-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2216 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, by Aldous Huxley + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: January 20, 2008 [EBook #24364] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH AND + OTHER POEMS + + BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, + AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL." + + + CONTENTS + + Page + + The Defeat of Youth 5 + Song of Poplars 16 + The Reef 17 + Winter Dream 19 + The Flowers 20 + The Elms 21 + Out of the Window 21 + Inspiration 22 + Summer Stillness 23 + Anniversaries 23 + Italy 25 + The Alien 26 + A Little Memory 27 + Waking 28 + By the Fire 29 + Valedictory 31 + Love Song 32 + Private Property 33 + Revelation 34 + Minoan Porcelain 34 + The Decameron 35 + In Uncertainty to a Lady 35 + Crapulous Impression 36 + The Life Theoretic 37 + Complaint of a Poet Manqué 37 + Social Amenities 38 + Topiary 38 + On the Bus 39 + Points and Lines 39 + Panic 40 + Return from Business 40 + Stanzas 41 + Poem 42 + Scenes of the Mind 43 + L'Après-Midi D'un Faune 44 + The Louse-Hunters 48 + + + + + THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH + + + I. UNDER THE TREES. + + There had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes + Of this and this occasion, sisterly + In their resemblances, each effigy + Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape's + White rounded firmness, and each body alert + With such swift loveliness, that very rest + Seemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressed + But a faint influence and could bless or hurt + No more than dreams. And these ghost things were she; + For formless still, without identity, + Not one she seemed, not clear, but many and dim. + One face among the legions of the street, + Indifferent mystery, she was for him + Something still uncreated, incomplete. + + + II. + + Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud + Quicken the heavy summer to new birth + Of life and motion on the drowsing earth; + The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud + With their awakening from the muffled sleep + Of long hot days. And on the wavering line + That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine, + Under the trees, a little group is deep + In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows + Across them dims the lustre of a rose, + Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green + Of a girl's dress, and life seems faint. The light + Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen, + Gold hair's aflame and green grows emerald bright. + + + III. + + She leans, and there is laughter in the face + She turns towards him; and it seems a door + Suddenly opened on some desolate place + With a burst of light and music. What before + Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed. + Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows + That he must love her; and the doom is sealed + Of all his happiness and all the woes + That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter. + The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter-- + And love flows in on him, its vastness pent + Within his narrow life: the pain it brings, + Boundless; for love is infinite discontent + With the poor lonely life of transient things. + + + IV. + + Men see their god, an immanence divine, + Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay, + In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away + To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line. + Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy + They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born + And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn + Germ and create new life and endlessly + Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds + Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds + Through change, the same in body and in soul-- + The spirit of life and love that triumphs still + In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal + Through lust and death and the bitterness of will. + + + V. + + One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep + Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm, + That sings in passionate music, or on warm + Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep + Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind. + One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought + And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought + Of one stuff with the body--matter and mind + Woven together in so close a mesh + That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh + May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things + To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth + Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs + From the dear bosom of material earth. + + + VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT. + + The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm + With the stored hay ... darkness intensified + By one bright shaft that enters through the wide + Tall doors from under fringes of a storm + Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay, + Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently + Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky + And mark how heartbreakingly far away + And yet how close and clear the distance seems, + While all at hand is cloud--brightness of dreams + Unrealisable, yet seen so clear, + So only just beyond the dark. They wait, + Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear; + Expectance draws the curtain from their fate. + + + VII. + + The silence of the storm weighs heavily + On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say + Some trivial thing as though to ward away + Mysterious powers, that imminently lie + In wait, with the strong exorcising grace + Of everyday's futility. Desire + Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire, + Defined and hard:--If he could kiss her face, + Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand + Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand? + Or is she pedestalled above the touch + Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek + From her that little, that infinitely much? + And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. + + + VIII. MOUNTAINS. + + A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists + A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart, + A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart, + Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists + Shut down again; a white uneasy sea + Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet. + He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet, + Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously + Lifting his weight. And if he should let go, + What would he find down there, down there below + The curtain of the mist? What would he find + Beyond the dim and stifling now and here, + Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind? + Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear. + + + IX. + + The hills more glorious in their coat of snow + Rise all around him, in the valleys run + Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun, + And sunlit fields of emerald far below + That seem alive with inward light. In smoke + The far horizons fade; and there is peace + On everything, a sense of blessed release + From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak + The spirit of the mountains has descended + On all the world, and its unrest is ended. + Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still, + Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife. + Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will, + You hold the promise of the freer life. + + + X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM. + + London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk + Before the panes, rich but a while ago + With the charred gold and the red ember-glow + Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk + Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns + A blank to all enquiry: but at nights + The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites + The darkness inward, curious of what burns + With such a coloured life when all is dead-- + The daylight world outside, with overhead + White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze + Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream + Of glittering traffic--all that the nights erase, + Colour and speed, surviving but in dream. + + + XI. + + Outside the dusk, but in the little room + All is alive with light, which brightly glints + On curving cup or the stiff folds of chintz, + Evoking its own whiteness. Shadows loom, + Bulging and black, upon the walls, where hang + Rich coloured plates of beauties that appeal + Less to the sense of sight than to the feel, + So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang, + Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees + Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these, + The silken breastplate of a mandarin, + Centuries dead, which he had given her. + Exquisite miracle, when men could spin + Jay's wing and belly of the kingfisher! + + + XII. + + In silence and as though expectantly + She crouches at his feet, while he caresses + His light-drawn fingers with the touch of tresses + Sleeked round her head, close-banded lustrously, + Save where at nape and temple the smooth brown + Sleaves out into a pale transparent mist + Of hair and tangled light. So to exist, + Poised 'twixt the deep of thought where spirits drown + Life in a void impalpable nothingness, + And, on the other side, the pain and stress + Of clamorous action and the gnawing fire + Of will, focal upon a point of earth--even thus + To sit, eternally without desire + And yet self-known, were happiness for us. + + + XIII. + + She turns her head and in a flash of laughter + Looks up at him: and helplessly he feels + That life has circled with returning wheels + Back to a starting-point. Before and after + Merge in this instant, momently the same: + For it was thus she leaned and laughing turned + When, manifest, the spirit of beauty burned + In her young body with an inward flame, + And first he knew and loved her. In full tide + Life halts within him, suddenly stupefied. + Sight blackness, lightning-struck; but blindly tender + He draws her up to meet him, and she lies + Close folded by his arms in glad surrender, + Smiling, and with drooped head and half closed eyes. + + + XIV. + + "I give you all; would that I might give more." + He sees the colour dawn across her cheeks + And die again to white; marks as she speaks + The trembling of her lips, as though she bore + Some sudden pain and hardly mastered it. + Within his arms he feels her shuddering, + Piteously trembling like some wild wood-thing + Caught unawares. Compassion infinite + Mounts up within him. Thus to hold and keep + And comfort her distressed, lull her to sleep + And gently kiss her brow and hair and eyes + Seems love perfected--templed high and white + Against the calm of golden autumn skies, + And shining quenchlessly with vestal light. + + + XV. + + But passion ambushed by the aerial shrine + Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity, + His satyr's dance, with laughter in his eye, + And cruelty along the scarlet line + Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled, + Love's rebel servant, he delights to beat + The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet + Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold + To mime himself the godhead of the place. + He turns in terror from her trance-calmed face, + From the white-lidded languor of her eyes, + From lips that passion never shook before, + But glad in the promise of her sacrifice: + "I give you all; would that I might give more." + + + XVI. + + He is afraid, seeing her lie so still, + So utterly his own; afraid lest she + Should open wide her eyes and let him see + The passionate conquest of her virgin will + Shine there in triumph, starry-bright with tears. + He thrusts her from him: face and hair and breast, + Hands he had touched, lips that his lips had pressed, + Seem things deadly to be desired. He fears + Lest she should body forth in palpable shame + Those dreams and longings that his blood, aflame + Through the hot dark of summer nights, had dreamed + And longed. Must all his love, then, turn to this? + Was lust the end of what so pure had seemed? + He must escape, ah God! her touch, her kiss. + + + XVII. IN THE PARK. + + Laughing, "To-night," I said to him, "the Park + Has turned the garden of a symbolist. + Those old great trees that rise above the mist, + Gold with the light of evening, and the dark + Still water, where the dying sun evokes + An echoed glory--here I recognize + Those ancient gardens mirrored by the eyes + Of poets that hate the world of common folks, + Like you and me and that thin pious crowd, + Which yonder sings its hymns, so humbly proud + Of holiness. The garden of escape + Lies here; a small green world, and still the bride + Of quietness, although an imminent rape + Roars ceaselessly about on every side." + + + XVIII. + + I had forgotten what I had lightly said, + And without speech, without a thought I went, + Steeped in that golden quiet, all content + To drink the transient beauty as it sped + Out of eternal darkness into time + To light and burn and know itself a fire; + Yet doomed--ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!-- + To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime + Of living glorious in the denser air + Of our material earth. A strange despair, + An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet + And tender as an unpassionate caress, + Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit + Grown almost conscious of youth's feebleness! + + + XIX. + + He spoke abrupt across my dream: "Dear Garden, + A stranger to your magic peace, I stand + Beyond your walls, lost in a fevered land + Of stones and fire. Would that the gods would harden + My soul against its torment, or would blind + Those yearning glimpses of a life at rest + In perfect beauty--glimpses at the best + Through unpassed bars. And here, without, the wind + Of scattering passion blows: and women pass + Glitter-eyed down putrid alleys where the glass + Of some grimed window suddenly parades-- + Ah, sickening heart-beat of desire!--the grace + Of bare and milk-warm flesh: the vision fades, + And at the pane shows a blind tortured face." + + + XX. SELF-TORMENT. + + The days pass by, empty of thought and will: + His thought grows stagnant at its very springs, + With every channel on the world of things + Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still, + Poisons itself and sickens to decay. + All his high love for her, his fair desire, + Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire, + Burning darkness and bitterness that prey + Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns + Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns + To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate, + Till he is weary wrestling with its force: + And evermore she haunts him, early and late, + As pitilessly as an old remorse. + + + XXI. + + Streets and the solitude of country places + Were once his friends. But as a man born blind, + Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find + The world a desert and men's larval faces + So hateful, he would wish to seek again + The darkness and his old chimeric sight + Of beauties inward--so, that fresh delight, + Vision of bright fields and angelic men, + That love which made him all the world, is gone. + Hating and hated now, he stands alone, + An island-point, measureless gulfs apart + From other lives, from the old happiness + Of being more than self, when heart to heart + Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less. + + + XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD. + + Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place. + A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun: + Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run + Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face, + The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist + He sees a world that wavers like the flame + Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame, + And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed + Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath! + The world a candle shuddering to its death, + And life a darkness, blind and utterly void + Of any love or goodness: all deceit, + This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed, + And truth seen now. + Earth fails beneath his feet. + + + + + SONG OF POPLARS + + + Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: + Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, + The slow blue rumour of the hill; + Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, + And the great sky be mute. + + Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold + Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, + In airy leafage of the mind, + Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales + That fade not nor grow old. + + "Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires + Springing in dark and rusty flame, + Seek you aught that hath a name? + Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony + Of undefined desires? + + "Say, are you happy in the golden march + Of sunlight all across the day? + Or do you watch the uncertain way + That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs + Over the heaven's wide arch? + + "Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift + The sharpness of your trembling spears? + Or do you seek, through the grey tears + That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, + A deeper, calmer rift?" + + So; I have tuned my music to the trees, + And there were voices, dim below + Their shrillness, voices swelling slow + In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry + And then vast silences. + + + + + THE REEF + + + My green aquarium of phantom fish, + Goggling in on me through the misty panes; + My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; + My few clear quiet autumn days--I wish + + I could leave all, clearness and mistiness; + Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still. + Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill + The hollows in the woods; I am grown less + + Than human, listless, aimless as the green + Idiot fishes of my aquarium, + Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come + And look at me and drift away, nought seen + + Or understood, but only glazedly + Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, + Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows + Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply + + Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find + Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight + Scattered largely by the profuse wind, + And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight. + + Free, newly born, on roads of music and air + Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place + Where all the shining threads of water race, + Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There, + + On the red fretted ramparts of a tower + Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break + An endless sequence of joy and speed and power: + Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake + + Shall create an instant's shining constellation + Upon the blue; and all the air shall be + Full of a million wings that swift and free + Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation. + + Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond + All isles however magically sleeping + In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned + Save by blind eyes; beyond the laughter and weeping + + That brood like a cloud over the lands of men. + Movement, passion of colour and pure wings, + Curving to cut like knives--these are the things + I search for:--passion beyond the ken + + Of our foiled violences, and, more swift + Than any blow which man aims against time, + The invulnerable, motion that shall rift + All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme, + + Or note, or colour. And the body shall be + Quick as the mind; and will shall find release + From bondage to brute things; and joyously + Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace, + + Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted. + And love consummate, marvellously blending + Passion and reverence in a single spring + Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted, + + But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown + The new life with its ageless starry fire. + I go to seek that reef, far down, far down + Below the edge of everyday's desire, + + Beyond the magical islands, where of old + I was content, dreaming, to give the lie + To misery. They were all strong and bold + That thither came; and shall I dare to try? + + + + + WINTER DREAM + + + Oh wind-swept towers, + Oh endlessly blossoming trees, + White clouds and lucid eyes, + And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant + With who knows what of subtlety + And magical curves and limbs-- + White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts + Mother-of-pearled with light. + + And oh the April, April of straight soft hair, + Falling smooth as the mountain water and brown; + The April of little leaves unblinded, + Of rosy nipples and innocence + And the blue languor of weary eyelids. + + Across a huge gulf I fling my voice + And my desires together: + Across a huge gulf ... on the other bank + Crouches April with her hair as smooth and straight and brown + As falling waters. + Oh brave curve upwards and outwards. + Oh despair of the downward tilting-- + Despair still beautiful + As a great star one has watched all night + Wheeling down under the hills. + Silence widens and darkens; + Voice and desires have dropped out of sight. + I am all alone, dreaming she would come and kiss me. + + + + + THE FLOWERS + + + Day after day, + At spring's return, + I watch my flowers, how they burn + Their lives away. + + The candle crocus + And daffodil gold + Drink fire of the sunshine-- + Quickly cold. + + And the proud tulip-- + How red he glows!-- + Is quenched ere summer + Can kindle the rose. + + Purple as the innermost + Core of a sinking flame, + Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder + To the dust whence they came. + + Day after day + At spring's return, + I watch my flowers, how they burn + Their lives away, + Day after day ... + + + + + THE ELMS + + + Fine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing + Across the lanterns of a revelling night, + The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing + Powder the trees--so vaporously light, + They seem to float, billows of emerald foam + Blown by the South on its bright airy tide, + Seeming less trees than things beatified, + Come from the world of thought which was their home. + + For a while only. Rooted strong and fast, + Soon will they lift towards the summer sky + Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery. + Their immaterial season quickly past, + They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die, + Since every earth to earth returns at last. + + + + + OUT OF THE WINDOW + + + In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea, + Are the little places one passes by in trains + And never stops at; where the skies extend + Uninterrupted, and the level plains + Stretch green and yellow and green without an end. + And behind the glass of their Grand Express + Folk yawn away a province through, + With nothing to think of, nothing to do, + Nothing even to look at--never a "view" + In this damned wilderness. + But I look out of the window and find + Much to satisfy the mind. + Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled + In a motion orderly and staid, + Sweep, as we pass, across the field + Like a drilled army on parade. + And here's a market-garden, barred + With stripe on stripe of varied greens ... + Bright potatoes, flower starred, + And the opacous colour of beans. + Each line deliberately swings + Towards me, till I see a straight + Green avenue to the heart of things, + The glimpse of a sudden opened gate + Piercing the adverse walls of fate ... + A moment only, and then, fast, fast, + The gate swings to, the avenue closes; + Fate laughs, and once more interposes + Its barriers. + The train has passed. + + + + + INSPIRATION + + + Noonday upon the Alpine meadows + Pours its avalanche of Light + And blazing flowers: the very shadows + Translucent are and bright. + It seems a glory that nought surpasses-- + Passion of angels in form and hue-- + When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses + Leaps a lightning of sudden blue. + Dimming the sun-drunk petals, + Bright even unto pain, + The grasshopper flashes, settles, + And then is quenched again. + + + + + SUMMER STILLNESS + + + The stars are golden instants in the deep + Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set: + The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep + Seeming so motionless that I forget + The hollow booming bridges, where it slides, + Dark with the sad looks that it bears along, + Towards a sea whose unreturning tides + Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song. + + + + + ANNIVERSARIES + + + Once more the windless days are here, + Quiet of autumn, when the year + Halts and looks backward and draws breath + Before it plunges into death. + Silver of mist and gossamers, + Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold, + Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs + Save one blanched leaf, weary and old, + That over and over slowly falls + From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air + Like tattered flags along the walls + Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer. + Once more ... Within its flawless glass + To-day reflects that other day, + When, under the bracken, on the grass, + We who were lovers happily lay + And hardly spoke, or framed a thought + That was not one with the calm hills + And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought, + Our gusty passions, our burning wills + Dissolved in boundlessness, and we + Were almost bodiless, almost free. + + The wind has shattered silver and gold. + Night after night of sparkling cold, + Orion lifts his tangled feet + From where the tossing branches beat + In a fine surf against the sky. + So the trance ended, and we grew + Restless, we knew not how or why; + And there were sudden gusts that blew + Our dreaming banners into storm; + We wore the uncertain crumbling form + Of a brown swirl of windy leaves, + A phantom shape that stirs and heaves + Shuddering from earth, to fall again + With a dry whisper of withered rain. + + Last, from the dead and shrunken days + We conjured spring, lighting the blaze + Of burnished tulips in the dark; + And from black frost we struck a spark + Of blue delight and fragrance new, + A little world of flowers and dew. + Winter for us was over and done: + The drought of fluttering leaves had grown + Emerald shining in the sun, + As light as glass, as firm as stone. + Real once more: for we had passed + Through passion into thought again; + Shaped our desires and made that fast + Which was before a cloudy pain; + Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined + In a fair statue, strong and free, + Twin bodies flaming into mind, + Poised on the brink of ecstasy. + + + + + ITALY + + + There is a country in my mind, + Lovelier than a poet blind + Could dream of, who had never known + This world of drought and dust and stone + In all its ugliness: a place + Full of an all but human grace; + Whose dells retain the printed form + Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm + From some pure body newly risen; + Where matter is no more a prison, + But freedom for the soul to know + Its native beauty. For things glow + There with an inward truth and are + All fire and colour like a star. + And in that land are domes and towers + That hang as light and bright as flowers + Upon the sky, and seem a birth + Rather of air than solid earth. + + Sometimes I dream that walking there + In the green shade, all unaware + At a new turn of the golden glade, + I shall see her, and as though afraid + Shall halt a moment and almost fall + For passing faintness, like a man + Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan + Brimming his narrow soul with all + The illimitable world. And she, + Turning her head, will let me see + The first sharp dawn of her surprise + Turning to welcome in her eyes. + And I shall come and take my lover + And looking on her re-discover + All her beauty:--her dark hair + And the little ears beneath it, where + Roses of lucid shadow sleep; + Her brooding mouth, and in the deep + Wells of her eyes reflected stars ... + + Oh, the imperishable things + That hands and lips as well as words + Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings, + Oh wheeling galaxies of birds ...! + + + + + THE ALIEN + + + A petal drifted loose + From a great magnolia bloom, + Your face hung in the gloom, + Floating, white and close. + + We seemed alone: but another + Bent o'er you with lips of flame, + Unknown, without a name, + Hated, and yet my brother. + + Your one short moan of pain + Was an exorcising spell: + The devil flew back to hell; + We were alone again. + + + + + A LITTLE MEMORY + + + White in the moonlight, + Wet with dew, + We have known the languor + Of being two. + + We have been weary + As children are, + When over them, radiant, + A stooping star, + + Bends their Good-Night, + Kissed and smiled:-- + Each was mother, + Each was child. + + Child, from your forehead + I kissed the hair, + Gently, ah, gently: + And you were + + Mistress and mother + When on your breast + I lay so safely + And could rest. + + + + + WAKING + + + Darkness had stretched its colour, + Deep blue across the pane: + No cloud to make night duller, + No moon with its tarnish stain; + But only here and there a star, + One sharp point of frosty fire, + Hanging infinitely far + In mockery of our life and death + And all our small desire. + + Now in this hour of waking + From under brows of stone, + A new pale day is breaking + And the deep night is gone. + Sordid now, and mean and small + The daylight world is seen again, + With only the veils of mist that fall + Deaf and muffling over all + To hide its ugliness and pain. + + But to-day this dawn of meanness + Shines in my eyes, as when + The new world's brightness and cleanness + Broke on the first of men. + For the light that shows the huddled things + Of this close-pressing earth, + Shines also on your face and brings + All its dear beauty back to me + In a new miracle of birth. + + I see you asleep and unpassioned, + White-faced in the dusk of your hair-- + Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned + That it filled me once with despair + To look on its exquisite transience + And think that our love and thought and laughter + Puff out with the death of our flickering sense, + While we pass ever on and away + Towards some blank hereafter. + + But now I am happy, knowing + That swift time is our friend, + And that our love's passionate glowing, + Though it turn ash in the end, + Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way + Through temporal stuff, nor else could be + More than a nothing. Into day + The boundless spaces of night contract + And in your opening eyes I see + Night born in day, in time eternity. + + + + + BY THE FIRE + + + We who are lovers sit by the fire, + Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will, + Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs + In the equipoise of all desire, + Sit and listen to the still + Small hiss and whisper of green logs + That burn away, that burn away + With the sound of a far-off falling stream + Of threaded water blown to steam, + Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey. + Vapours blue as distance rise + Between the hissing logs that show + A glimpse of rosy heat below; + And candles watch with tireless eyes + While we sit drowsing here. I know, + Dimly, that there exists a world, + That there is time perhaps, and space + Other and wider than this place, + Where at the fireside drowsily curled + We hear the whisper and watch the flame + Burn blinkless and inscrutable. + And then I know those other names + That through my brain from cell to cell + Echo--reverberated shout + Of waiters mournful along corridors: + But nobody carries the orders out, + And the names (dear friends, your name and yours) + Evoke no sign. But here I sit + On the wide hearth, and there are you: + That is enough and only true. + The world and the friends that lived in it + Are shadows: you alone remain + Real in this drowsing room, + Full of the whispers of distant rain + And candles staring into the gloom. + + + + + VALEDICTORY + + + I had remarked--how sharply one observes + When life is disappearing round the curves + Of yet another corner, out of sight!-- + I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night" + And "a good journey to you," on her face + Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs + Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace + Of clouded thought in those brown eyes, + Always so happily clear of hows and ifs-- + My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys. + + There I stood, holding her farewell hand, + (Pressing my life and soul and all + The world to one good-bye, till, small + And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand + Dead when they vanished with the sight of her). + And I saw that she had grown aware, + Queer puzzled face! of other things + Beyond the present and her own young speed, + Of yesterday and what new days might breed + Monstrously when the future brings + A charger with your late-lamented head: + Aware of other people's lives and will, + Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ... + The joyous hope of it! But still + I pitied her; for it was sad to see + A goddess shorn of her divinity. + In the midst of her speed she had made pause, + And doubts with all their threat of claws, + Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness, + Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. + "Live, only live! For you were meant + Never to know a thought's distress, + But a long glad astonishment + At the world's beauty and your own. + The pity of you, goddess, grown + Perplexed and mortal." + Yet ... yet ... can it be + That she is aware, perhaps, even of me? + + And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare, + My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air; + And the question rumbles in the void: + Was she aware, was she after all aware? + + + + + LOVE SONG + + + Dear absurd child--too dear to my cost I've found-- + God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: + It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, + Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound + Full upon life, and on the rind of things + Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore + And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings, + Content with that, nor wishes anything more. + + A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice + Of peaches that flush bloody at the core, + Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore, + While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose. + + The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round + With the song of wheeling planetary rings: + You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings + Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound. + + You taste and smile, then this for the next pass over; + And there's no future for you and no past, + And when, absurdly, death arrives at last, + 'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover. + + + + + PRIVATE PROPERTY + + + All fly--yet who is misanthrope?-- + The actual men and things that pass + Jostling, to wither as the grass + So soon: and (be it heaven's hope, + Or poetry's kaleidoscope, + Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) + Each owns a paradise of glass + Where never a yearning heliotrope + Pursues the sun's ascent or slope; + For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was. + + Like fauns embossed in our domain, + We look abroad, and our calm eyes + Mark how the goatish gods of pain + Revel; and if by grim surprise + They break into our paradise, + Patient we build its beauty up again. + + + + + REVELATION + + + At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, + I taste a strange apocalypse: + Your subtle taper finger-tips + Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, + I know the wiles and each iynx + That brought me passionate to your lips: + I know you bare as laughter strips + Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks + + Pure knowledge from this tainted well, + And now hears voices yet unheard + Within it, and without it sees + That world of which the poets tell + Their vision in the stammered word + Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies. + + + + + MINOAN PORCELAIN + + + Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze + All imperturbable do not + Even make pretences to regard + The justing absence of her stays, + Where many a Tyrian gallipot + Excites desire with spilth of nard. + The bistred rims above the fard + Of cheeks as red as bergamot + Attest that no shamefaced delays + Will clog fulfilment, nor retard + Full payment of the Cyprian's praise + Down to the last remorseful jot. + Hail priestess of we know not what + Strange cult of Mycenean days! + + + + + THE DECAMERON + + + Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the trees + Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: + Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits + Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine + Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: + Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots, + Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots + Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline. + + Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry, + Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound; + Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly, + Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground + Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found + Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die. + + + + + IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY + + + I am not one of those who sip, + Like a quotidian bock, + Cheap idylls from a languid lip + Prepared to yawn or mock. + + I wait the indubitable word, + The great Unconscious Cue. + Has it been spoken and unheard? + Spoken, perhaps, by you ...? + + + + + CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION + + (To J.S.) + + + Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine + Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine + Stands firmly solid in the glasses, + Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes + The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light. + The fruits metallically gleam, + Globey in their heaped-up bowl, + And there are faces against the night + Of the outer room--faces that seem + Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul. + + And amongst these frozen faces you smiled, + Surprised, surprisingly, like a child: + And out of the frozen welter of sound + Your voice came quietly, quietly. + "What about God?" you said. "I have found + Much to be said for Totality. + All, I take it, is God: God's all-- + This bottle, for instance ..." I recall, + Dimly, that you took God by the neck-- + God-in-the-bottle--and pushed Him across: + But I, without a moment's loss + Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!" + + + + + THE LIFE THEORETIC + + + While I have been fumbling over books + And thinking about God and the Devil and all, + Other young men have been battling with the days + And others have been kissing the beautiful women. + They have brazen faces like battering-rams. + But I who think about books and such-- + I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling, + And the women palsy me with fear. + But when it comes to fumbling over books + And thinking about God and the Devil and all, + Why, there I am. + But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it, + Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows. + + + + + COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ + + + We judge by appearance merely: + If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly. + So I grew the hair so long on my head + That my mother wouldn't know me, + Till a woman in a night-club said, + As I was passing by, + "Hullo, here comes Salome ..." + + I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass, + And, oh Salome; there I was-- + Positively jewelled, half a vampire, + With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily + Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire + Over the brink of the crag of sense, + Looking down from perilous eminence + Into a gulf of windy night. + And there's straw in my tempestuous hair, + And I'm not a poet: but never despair! + I'll madly live the poems I shall never write. + + + + + SOCIAL AMENITIES + + + I am getting on well with this anecdote, + When suddenly I recall + The many times I have told it of old, + And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall + Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note + Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck-- + The whole thing sticks in my throat, + And my face all tingles and pricks with shame + For myself and my hearers. + These are the social pleasures, my God! + But I finish the story triumphantly all the same. + + + + + TOPIARY + + + Failing sometimes to understand + Why there are folk whose flesh should seem + Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, + Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, + Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; + Why there are men without any legs, + Whizzing along on little trollies + With long long arms like apes': + Failing to see why God the Topiarist + Should train and carve and twist + Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: + Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish + That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, + Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, + Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish. + + + + + ON THE BUS + + + Sitting on the top of the 'bus, + I bite my pipe and look at the sky. + Over my shoulder the smoke streams out + And my life with it. + "Conservation of energy," you say. + But I burn, I tell you, I burn; + And the smoke of me streams out + In a vanishing skein of grey. + Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! + I am a harp of twittering strings, + An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, + And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident. + Droll phenomena! + + + + + POINTS AND LINES + + + Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, + Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed + Baffles even the grasp of time. + Oh that I might reflect them + As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. + But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, + And the stars are mirrored across me; + Those stabbing points of the sky + Turned to a thread of shaken silver, + A long fine thread. + + + + + PANIC + + + The eyes of the portraits on the wall + Look at me, follow me, + Stare incessantly: + I take it their glance means nothing at all? + --Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ... + + Out in the gardens by the lake + The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; + Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, + Each of them sounds his mournful horn: + Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. + What can have made the peacocks wake? + + + + + RETURN FROM BUSINESS + + + Evenings in trains, + When the little black twittering ghosts + Along the brims of cuttings, + Against the luminous sky, + Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought + Save that one is young and setting, + Headlong westering, + And there is no recapture. + + + + + STANZAS + + + Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind + Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: + Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind + New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: + And action bears us onward like a stream + Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course; + Glorious--and yet its headlong currents seem + Backwaters of some nobler purer force. + + There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought, + That stoop to carry the grace of a girl's breast; + And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought + In airy metal, that they seem possessed + Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift + The shoulder of a goddess towards the light; + And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift, + Piercing the spirit deeply with delight. + + Would I might make these miracles my own! + Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form, + Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone, + Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm + On noonday flowers, speaking the song of birds + Among the branches, whispering the fall of rain, + Beyond all thought, past action and past words, + I would live in beauty, free from self and pain. + + + + + POEM + + + Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; + And magic words lay ripening in my soul + Till their much-whispered music turned a wine + Whose subtlest power was all in my control. + + These things were mine, and they were real for me + As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast: + For I could love a phrase, a melody, + Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed. + + I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes + Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid; + Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise + Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed. + + But a time came when, turning full of hate + And weariness from my remembered themes, + I wished my poet's pipe could modulate + Beauty more palpable than words and dreams. + + All loveliness with which an act informs + The dim uncertain chaos of desire + Is mine to-day; it touches me, it warms + Body and spirit with its outward fire. + + I am mine no more: I have become a part + Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs + To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart + Were still a winter of frosty gossamers. + + + + + SCENES OF THE MIND + + + I have run where festival was loud + With drum and brass among the crowd + Of panic revellers, whose cries + Affront the quiet of the skies; + Whose dancing lights contract the deep + Infinity of night and sleep + To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. + And I have found my heart's desire + In beechen caverns that autumn fills + With the blue shadowiness of distant hills; + Whose luminous grey pillars bear + The stooping sky: calm is the air, + Nor any sound is heard to mar + That crystal silence--as from far, + Far off a man may see + The busy world all utterly + Hushed as an old memorial scene. + Long evenings I have sat and been + Strangely content, while in my hands + I held a wealth of coloured strands, + Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins + Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains + New life at the lamp's round pool of gold; + Each sinks again when I withhold + The quickening radiance, to a wan + And shadowy oblivion + Of what it was. And in my mind + Beauty or sudden love has shined + And wakened colour in what was dead + And turned to gold the sullen lead + Of mean desires and everyday's + Poor thoughts and customary ways. + Sometimes in lands where mountains throw + Their silent spell on all below, + Drawing a magic circle wide + About their feet on every side, + Robbed of all speech and thought and act, + I have seen God in the cataract. + In falling water and in flame, + Never at rest, yet still the same, + God shows himself. And I have known + The swift fire frozen into stone, + And water frozen changelessly + Into the death of gems. And I + Long sitting by the thunderous mill + Have seen the headlong wheel made still, + And in the silence that ensued + Have known the endless solitude + Of being dead and utterly nought. + Inhabitant of mine own thought, + I look abroad, and all I see + Is my creation, made for me: + Along my thread of life are pearled + The moments that make up the world. + + + + + L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE + + (From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.) + + + I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright + Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, + It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? + My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem + A subtle tracery of branches grown + The tree's true self--proving that I have known + No triumph, but the shadow of a rose. + But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose + They bodied forth your senses' fabulous thirst? + Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, + As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, + Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, + Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? + No, through this quiet, when a weary swoon + Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay + Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, + There is no murmuring water, save the gush + Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush + Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed + Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed + Upon the air, with that calm breath of art + That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, + Where inspiration seeks its native sky. + You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, + The sun's own mirror which I love to take, + Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell + _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well + Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold + Of distant lawns about their fountain cold + A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave; + And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave + These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly + Or dive._ Noon burns inert and tawny dry, + Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away + From me who seek in song the real A. + Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight, + O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, + With, lilies, one of you for innocence. + Other than their lips' delicate pretence, + The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, + My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers + The bitten print of some immortal's kiss. + But hush! a mystery so great as this + I dare not tell, save to my double reed, + Which, sharer of my every joy and need, + Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we + Falsely confuse the beauties that we see + With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: + My flute, as loud as passion modulates, + Purges the common dream of flank and breast, + Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, + Of every empty and monotonous line. + + Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, + A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. + Proud of my music, let me often make + A song of goddesses and see their rape + Profanely done on many a painted shape. + So when the grape's transparent juice I drain, + I quell regret for pleasures past and feign + A new real grape. For holding towards the sky + The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie + Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. + Tell o'er + Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. + _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam + Who cool no mortal fever in the stream + Crying to the woods the rage of their desire: + And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire + Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly. + I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie, + Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet, + Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet. + I seize and run with them, nor part the pair, + Breaking this covert of frail petals, where + Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play + 'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ + I love that virginal fury--ah, the wild + Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, + Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear + Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! + Contagiously through my linked pair it flies + Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, + Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. + _Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew + So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide + Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. + For as I leaned to stifle in the hair + Of one my passionate laughter (taking care + With a stretched finger, that her innocence + Might stain with her companion's kindling sense + To touch the younger little one, who lay + Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey + Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death, + Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._ + + Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist + A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. + See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red + To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; + So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, + Flows for the swarming legions of desire. + At evening, when the woodland green turns gold + And ashen grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold! + Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, + Walking the lava with her snowy tread + Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die. + I hold the goddess! + Ah, sure penalty! + + But the unthinking soul and body swoon + At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. + Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth + Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth + Dream planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star. + + Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are. + + + + + THE LOUSE-HUNTERS + + (From the French of Rimbaud). + + + When the child's forehead, full of torments red, + Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams, + His two big sisters come unto his bed, + Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams. + + They set him at a casement, open wide + On seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs, + And through his curls, all wet with dew, they slide + Those terrible searching finger-tips of theirs. + + He hears them breathing, softly, fearfully, + Honey-sweet ruminations, slow respired: + Then a sharp hiss breaks time and melody-- + Spittle indrawn, old kisses new-desired. + + Down through the perfumed silences he hears + Their eyelids fluttering: long fingers thrill, + Probing a lassitude bedimmed with tears, + While the nails crunch at every louse they kill. + + He is drunk with Languor--soft accordion-sigh, + Delirious wine of Love in Idleness; + Longings for tears come welling up and die, + As slow or swift he feels their magical caress. + + + + + B. H. Blackwell, + Oxford. + + + + + THIS THIRD OF THE INITIATES SERIES OF + POETRY BY PROVED HANDS, WAS PRINTED + IN OXFORD AT THE VINCENT WORKS, + AND FINISHED IN JUNE, MCMXVIII. + + PUBLISHED BY B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD + STREET, OXFORD, AND SOLD IN AMERICA + BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK. + + + + + INITIATES + A SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS + UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE ART, BOARDS, THREE SHILLINGS + NET. + + + _NOW READY_ + + I. IN THE VALLEY OF VISION + BY GEOFFREY FABER, AUTHOR OF "INTERFLOW." + + II. SONNETS AND POEMS + BY ELEANOR FARJEON, AUTHOR OF "NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN." + + III. THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, AND OTHER POEMS + BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL." + + _IN PREPARATION_ + + IV. SONGS FOR SALE + AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE, EDITED BY E. B. C. JONES FROM BOOKS ISSUED + RECENTLY BY B. H. BLACKWELL. + + V. CLOWNS' HOUSES + BY EDITH SITWELL, EDITOR OF "WHEELS." + + + + + THE SHELDONIAN SERIES OF REPRINTS AND RENDERINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN ALL + LANGUAGES EDITED BY REGINALD HEWITT, M.A. + + + _FIRST THREE BOOKS_ + + I. SONGS AND SAYINGS OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, MINNESAENGER + ENGLISHED BY FRANK BETTS. + + II. THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES + ENGLISHED BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY. + + III. BALLADES OF FRANCOIS VILLON + INTERPRETED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY PAUL HOOKHAM. + + ¶ The series is limited in the case of each volume to an edition + of five hundred copies on hand-made paper, printed in two + colours in Dolphin old style type, and published at two shillings + and sixpence net. + + + OXFORD + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST. + + + + + ADVENTURERS ALL + A SERIES OF YOUNG POETS UNKNOWN TO FAME + UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE IN ART WRAPPERS + TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET EACH. + + + ¶ "Beautiful little books ... containing poetry, real poetry."-- + _The New Witness._ + + I., II., III. and IV. [_Out of print._] + + V. THE IRON AGE + BY FRANK BETTS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILBERT MURRAY. + + VI. THE TWO WORLDS + BY SHERARD VINES. + + VII. THE BURNING WHEEL + BY A. L. HUXLEY. + + VIII. A VAGABOND'S WALLET + BY STEPHEN REID-HEYMAN. + + IX. OP. I. + BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS. [_Out of print._] + + X. LYRICAL POEMS + BY DOROTHY PLOWMAN. + + XI. THE WITCHES' SABBATH + BY E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN. + + XII. A SCALLOP SHELL OF QUIET + POEMS BY FOUR WOMEN. INTRODUCED BY MARGARET L. WOODS. + + XIII. AT A VENTURE + POEMS BY EIGHT YOUNG WRITERS. + + XIV. ALDEBARAN + BY M. ST. CLARE BYRNE. + + XV. LIADAIN AND CURITHIR + BY MOIREEN FOX. + + XVI. LINNETS IN THE SLUMS + BY MARION PRYCE. + + XVII. OUT OF THE EAST + BY VERA AND MARGARET LARMINIE. + + XVIII. DUNCH + BY SUSAN MILES. + + XIX. DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS + BY ELEANOR HILL. + + XX. CARGO + BY S. BARRINGTON GATES. + + XXI. DREAMS AND JOURNEYS + BY FREDEGOND SHOVE. + + XXII. THE PEOPLE'S PALACE + BY SACHEVERELL SITWELL. + + XXIII. GALLEYS LADEN + POEMS BY FOUR WRITERS. + + + OXFORD + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, by +Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 24364-8.txt or 24364-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/3/6/24364/ + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Defeat of Youth and Other Peoms + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: January 20, 2008 [EBook #24364] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1><img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +HE DEFEAT OF YOUTH AND +OTHER POEMS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, +AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL."</h1> + +<h2>CONTENTS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<table summary="Table of Contents"> +<tr> +<td class="right" colspan="2">Page</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Defeat of Youth</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#defeat">5</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Song of Poplars</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#song">16</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Reef</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#reef">17</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Winter Dream</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#winter">19</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Flowers</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#flowers">20</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Elms</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#elms">21</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Out of the Window</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#out">21</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Inspiration</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#inspiration">22</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Summer Stillness</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#summer">23</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Anniversaries</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#anniversaries">23</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Italy</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#italy">25</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Alien</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#alien">26</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>A Little Memory</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#little">27</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Waking</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#waking">28</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>By the Fire</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#fire">29</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Valedictory</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#valedictory">31</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Love Song</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#love">32</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Private Property</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#private">33</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Revelation</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#revelation">34</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Minoan Porcelain</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#minoan">34</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Decameron</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#decameron">35</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>In Uncertainty to a Lady</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#uncertainty">35</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Crapulous Impression</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#crapulous">36</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Life Theoretic</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#life">37</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Complaint of a Poet Manqué</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#complaint">37</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Social Amenities</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#social">38</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Topiary</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#topiary">38</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>On the Bus</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#bus">39</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Points and Lines</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#points">39</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Panic</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#panic">40</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Return from Business</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#return">40</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Stanzas</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#stanzas">41</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Poem</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#poem">42</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>Scenes of the Mind</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#scenes">43</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>L'Après-Midi D'un Faune</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#faune">44</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td>The Louse-Hunters</td> +<td class="right"><a href="#louse">48</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="defeat">THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> +<h3>I. UNDER THE TREES.</h3> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +<span class="smcap">here</span> had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes<br /> +Of this and this occasion, sisterly<br /> +In their resemblances, each effigy<br /> +Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape's<br /> +White rounded firmness, and each body alert<br /> +With such swift loveliness, that very rest<br /> +Seemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressed<br /> +But a faint influence and could bless or hurt<br /> +No more than dreams. And these ghost things were she;<br /> +For formless still, without identity,<br /> +Not one she seemed, not clear, but many and dim.<br /> +One face among the legions of the street,<br /> +Indifferent mystery, she was for him<br /> +Something still uncreated, incomplete.</p> + +<h3>II.</h3> + +<p class="poem"> +Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud<br /> +Quicken the heavy summer to new birth<br /> +Of life and motion on the drowsing earth;<br /> +The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud<br /> +With their awakening from the muffled sleep<br /> +Of long hot days. And on the wavering line<br /> +That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine,<br /> +Under the trees, a little group is deep<br /> +In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows<br /> +Across them dims the lustre of a rose,<br /> +Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green<br /> +Of a girl's dress, and life seems faint. The light<br /> +Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen,<br /> +Gold hair's aflame and green grows emerald bright.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> + +<h3>III.</h3> + +<p class="poem">She leans, and there is laughter in the face<br /> +She turns towards him; and it seems a door<br /> +Suddenly opened on some desolate place<br /> +With a burst of light and music. What before<br /> +Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed.<br /> +Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows<br /> +That he must love her; and the doom is sealed<br /> +Of all his happiness and all the woes<br /> +That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter.<br /> +The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter—<br /> +And love flows in on him, its vastness pent<br /> +Within his narrow life: the pain it brings,<br /> +Boundless; for love is infinite discontent<br /> +With the poor lonely life of transient things.</p> + +<h3>IV.</h3> + +<p class="poem">Men see their god, an immanence divine,<br /> +Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay,<br /> +In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away<br /> +To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line.<br /> +Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy<br /> +They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born<br /> +And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn<br /> +Germ and create new life and endlessly<br /> +Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds<br /> +Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds<br /> +Through change, the same in body and in soul—<br /> +The spirit of life and love that triumphs still<br /> +In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal<br /> +Through lust and death and the bitterness of will.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + +<h3>V.</h3> + +<p class="poem">One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep<br /> +Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm,<br /> +That sings in passionate music, or on warm<br /> +Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep<br /> +Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind.<br /> +One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought<br /> +And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought<br /> +Of one stuff with the body—matter and mind<br /> +Woven together in so close a mesh<br /> +That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh<br /> +May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things<br /> +To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth<br /> +Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs<br /> +From the dear bosom of material earth.</p> + +<h3>VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT.</h3> + +<p class="poem">The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm<br /> +With the stored hay ... darkness intensified<br /> +By one bright shaft that enters through the wide<br /> +Tall doors from under fringes of a storm<br /> +Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay,<br /> +Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently<br /> +Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky<br /> +And mark how heartbreakingly far away<br /> +And yet how close and clear the distance seems,<br /> +While all at hand is cloud—brightness of dreams<br /> +Unrealisable, yet seen so clear,<br /> +So only just beyond the dark. They wait,<br /> +Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear;<br /> +Expectance draws the curtain from their fate.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> + +<h3>VII.</h3> + +<p class="poem">The silence of the storm weighs heavily<br /> +On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say<br /> +Some trivial thing as though to ward away<br /> +Mysterious powers, that imminently lie<br /> +In wait, with the strong exorcising grace<br /> +Of everyday's futility. Desire<br /> +Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire,<br /> +Defined and hard:—If he could kiss her face,<br /> +Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand<br /> +Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand?<br /> +Or is she pedestalled above the touch<br /> +Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek<br /> +From her that little, that infinitely much?<br /> +And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek.</p> + +<h3>VIII. MOUNTAINS.</h3> + +<p class="poem">A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists<br /> +A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart,<br /> +A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart,<br /> +Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists<br /> +Shut down again; a white uneasy sea<br /> +Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet.<br /> +He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet,<br /> +Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously<br /> +Lifting his weight. And if he should let go,<br /> +What would he find down there, down there below<br /> +The curtain of the mist? What would he find<br /> +Beyond the dim and stifling now and here,<br /> +Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind?<br /> +Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> + +<h3>IX.</h3> + +<p class="poem">The hills more glorious in their coat of snow<br /> +Rise all around him, in the valleys run<br /> +Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun,<br /> +And sunlit fields of emerald far below<br /> +That seem alive with inward light. In smoke<br /> +The far horizons fade; and there is peace<br /> +On everything, a sense of blessed release<br /> +From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak<br /> +The spirit of the mountains has descended<br /> +On all the world, and its unrest is ended.<br /> +Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still,<br /> +Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife.<br /> +Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will,<br /> +You hold the promise of the freer life.</p> + +<h3>X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.</h3> + +<p class="poem">London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk<br /> +Before the panes, rich but a while ago<br /> +With the charred gold and the red ember-glow<br /> +Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk<br /> +Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns<br /> +A blank to all enquiry: but at nights<br /> +The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites<br /> +The darkness inward, curious of what burns<br /> +With such a coloured life when all is dead—<br /> +The daylight world outside, with overhead<br /> +White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze<br /> +Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream<br /> +Of glittering traffic—all that the nights erase,<br /> +Colour and speed, surviving but in dream.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XI.</h3> + +<p class="poem">Outside the dusk, but in the little room<br /> +All is alive with light, which brightly glints<br /> +On curving cup or the stiff folds of chintz,<br /> +Evoking its own whiteness. Shadows loom,<br /> +Bulging and black, upon the walls, where hang<br /> +Rich coloured plates of beauties that appeal<br /> +Less to the sense of sight than to the feel,<br /> +So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang,<br /> +Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees<br /> +Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these,<br /> +The silken breastplate of a mandarin,<br /> +Centuries dead, which he had given her.<br /> +Exquisite miracle, when men could spin<br /> +Jay's wing and belly of the kingfisher!</p> + +<h3>XII.</h3> + +<p class="poem">In silence and as though expectantly<br /> +She crouches at his feet, while he caresses<br /> +His light-drawn fingers with the touch of tresses<br /> +Sleeked round her head, close-banded lustrously,<br /> +Save where at nape and temple the smooth brown<br /> +Sleaves out into a pale transparent mist<br /> +Of hair and tangled light. So to exist,<br /> +Poised 'twixt the deep of thought where spirits drown<br /> +Life in a void impalpable nothingness,<br /> +And, on the other side, the pain and stress<br /> +Of clamorous action and the gnawing fire<br /> +Of will, focal upon a point of earth—even thus<br /> +To sit, eternally without desire<br /> +And yet self-known, were happiness for us.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XIII.</h3> + +<p class="poem">She turns her head and in a flash of laughter<br /> +Looks up at him: and helplessly he feels<br /> +That life has circled with returning wheels<br /> +Back to a starting-point. Before and after<br /> +Merge in this instant, momently the same:<br /> +For it was thus she leaned and laughing turned<br /> +When, manifest, the spirit of beauty burned<br /> +In her young body with an inward flame,<br /> +And first he knew and loved her. In full tide<br /> +Life halts within him, suddenly stupefied.<br /> +Sight blackness, lightning-struck; but blindly tender<br /> +He draws her up to meet him, and she lies<br /> +Close folded by his arms in glad surrender,<br /> +Smiling, and with drooped head and half closed eyes.</p> + +<h3>XIV.</h3> + +<p class="poem">"I give you all; would that I might give more."<br /> +He sees the colour dawn across her cheeks<br /> +And die again to white; marks as she speaks<br /> +The trembling of her lips, as though she bore<br /> +Some sudden pain and hardly mastered it.<br /> +Within his arms he feels her shuddering,<br /> +Piteously trembling like some wild wood-thing<br /> +Caught unawares. Compassion infinite<br /> +Mounts up within him. Thus to hold and keep<br /> +And comfort her distressed, lull her to sleep<br /> +And gently kiss her brow and hair and eyes<br /> +Seems love perfected—templed high and white<br /> +Against the calm of golden autumn skies,<br /> +And shining quenchlessly with vestal light.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XV.</h3> + +<p class="poem">But passion ambushed by the aerial shrine<br /> +Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity,<br /> +His satyr's dance, with laughter in his eye,<br /> +And cruelty along the scarlet line<br /> +Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled,<br /> +Love's rebel servant, he delights to beat<br /> +The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet<br /> +Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold<br /> +To mime himself the godhead of the place.<br /> +He turns in terror from her trance-calmed face,<br /> +From the white-lidded languor of her eyes,<br /> +From lips that passion never shook before,<br /> +But glad in the promise of her sacrifice:<br /> +"I give you all; would that I might give more."</p> + +<h3>XVI.</h3> + +<p class="poem">He is afraid, seeing her lie so still,<br /> +So utterly his own; afraid lest she<br /> +Should open wide her eyes and let him see<br /> +The passionate conquest of her virgin will<br /> +Shine there in triumph, starry-bright with tears.<br /> +He thrusts her from him: face and hair and breast,<br /> +Hands he had touched, lips that his lips had pressed,<br /> +Seem things deadly to be desired. He fears<br /> +Lest she should body forth in palpable shame<br /> +Those dreams and longings that his blood, aflame<br /> +Through the hot dark of summer nights, had dreamed<br /> +And longed. Must all his love, then, turn to this?<br /> +Was lust the end of what so pure had seemed?<br /> +He must escape, ah God! her touch, her kiss.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XVII. IN THE PARK.</h3> + +<p class="poem">Laughing, "To-night," I said to him, "the Park<br /> +Has turned the garden of a symbolist.<br /> +Those old great trees that rise above the mist,<br /> +Gold with the light of evening, and the dark<br /> +Still water, where the dying sun evokes<br /> +An echoed glory—here I recognize<br /> +Those ancient gardens mirrored by the eyes<br /> +Of poets that hate the world of common folks,<br /> +Like you and me and that thin pious crowd,<br /> +Which yonder sings its hymns, so humbly proud<br /> +Of holiness. The garden of escape<br /> +Lies here; a small green world, and still the bride<br /> +Of quietness, although an imminent rape<br /> +Roars ceaselessly about on every side."</p> + +<h3>XVIII.</h3> + +<p class="poem">I had forgotten what I had lightly said,<br /> +And without speech, without a thought I went,<br /> +Steeped in that golden quiet, all content<br /> +To drink the transient beauty as it sped<br /> +Out of eternal darkness into time<br /> +To light and burn and know itself a fire;<br /> +Yet doomed—ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!—<br /> +To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime<br /> +Of living glorious in the denser air<br /> +Of our material earth. A strange despair,<br /> +An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet<br /> +And tender as an unpassionate caress,<br /> +Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit<br /> +Grown almost conscious of youth's feebleness!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XIX.</h3> + +<p class="poem">He spoke abrupt across my dream: "Dear Garden,<br /> +A stranger to your magic peace, I stand<br /> +Beyond your walls, lost in a fevered land<br /> +Of stones and fire. Would that the gods would harden<br /> +My soul against its torment, or would blind<br /> +Those yearning glimpses of a life at rest<br /> +In perfect beauty—glimpses at the best<br /> +Through unpassed bars. And here, without, the wind<br /> +Of scattering passion blows: and women pass<br /> +Glitter-eyed down putrid alleys where the glass<br /> +Of some grimed window suddenly parades—<br /> +Ah, sickening heart-beat of desire!—the grace<br /> +Of bare and milk-warm flesh: the vision fades,<br /> +And at the pane shows a blind tortured face."</p> + +<h3>XX. SELF-TORMENT.</h3> + +<p class="poem">The days pass by, empty of thought and will:<br /> +His thought grows stagnant at its very springs,<br /> +With every channel on the world of things<br /> +Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still,<br /> +Poisons itself and sickens to decay.<br /> +All his high love for her, his fair desire,<br /> +Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire,<br /> +Burning darkness and bitterness that prey<br /> +Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns<br /> +Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns<br /> +To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate,<br /> +Till he is weary wrestling with its force:<br /> +And evermore she haunts him, early and late,<br /> +As pitilessly as an old remorse.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> + +<h3>XXI.</h3> + +<p class="poem">Streets and the solitude of country places<br /> +Were once his friends. But as a man born blind,<br /> +Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find<br /> +The world a desert and men's larval faces<br /> +So hateful, he would wish to seek again<br /> +The darkness and his old chimeric sight<br /> +Of beauties inward—so, that fresh delight,<br /> +Vision of bright fields and angelic men,<br /> +That love which made him all the world, is gone.<br /> +Hating and hated now, he stands alone,<br /> +An island-point, measureless gulfs apart<br /> +From other lives, from the old happiness<br /> +Of being more than self, when heart to heart<br /> +Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less.</p> + +<h3>XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD.</h3> + +<p class="poem">Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place.<br /> +A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun:<br /> +Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run<br /> +Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face,<br /> +The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist<br /> +He sees a world that wavers like the flame<br /> +Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame,<br /> +And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed<br /> +Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath!<br /> +The world a candle shuddering to its death,<br /> +And life a darkness, blind and utterly void<br /> +Of any love or goodness: all deceit,<br /> +This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed,<br /> +And truth seen now.<br /> +<span class="poem1">Earth fails beneath his feet.</span></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="song">SONG OF POPLARS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="S" /> +<span class="smcap">hepherd</span>, to yon tall poplars tune your flute:<br /> +Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill,<br /> +The slow blue rumour of the hill;<br /> +Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold,<br /> +And the great sky be mute.</p> + +<p class="poem">Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold<br /> +Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind,<br /> +In airy leafage of the mind,<br /> +Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales<br /> +That fade not nor grow old.</p> + +<p class="poem">"Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires<br /> +Springing in dark and rusty flame,<br /> +Seek you aught that hath a name?<br /> +Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony<br /> +Of undefined desires?</p> + +<p class="poem">"Say, are you happy in the golden march<br /> +Of sunlight all across the day?<br /> +Or do you watch the uncertain way<br /> +That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs<br /> +Over the heaven's wide arch?</p> + +<p class="poem">"Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift<br /> +The sharpness of your trembling spears?<br /> +Or do you seek, through the grey tears<br /> +That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue,<br /> +A deeper, calmer rift?"</p> + +<p class="poem">So; I have tuned my music to the trees,<br /> +And there were voices, dim below<br /> +Their shrillness, voices swelling slow<br /> +In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry<br /> +And then vast silences.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="reef">THE REEF <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/m.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="M" /> +<span class="smcap">y</span> green aquarium of phantom fish,<br /> +Goggling in on me through the misty panes;<br /> +My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains;<br /> +My few clear quiet autumn days—I wish</p> + +<p class="poem">I could leave all, clearness and mistiness;<br /> +Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still.<br /> +Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill<br /> +The hollows in the woods; I am grown less</p> + +<p class="poem">Than human, listless, aimless as the green<br /> +Idiot fishes of my aquarium,<br /> +Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come<br /> +And look at me and drift away, nought seen</p> + +<p class="poem">Or understood, but only glazedly<br /> +Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows,<br /> +Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows<br /> +Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply</p> + +<p class="poem">Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find<br /> +Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight<br /> +Scattered largely by the profuse wind,<br /> +And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight.</p> + +<p class="poem">Free, newly born, on roads of music and air<br /> +Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place<br /> +Where all the shining threads of water race,<br /> +Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There,</p> + +<p class="poem">On the red fretted ramparts of a tower<br /> +Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break<br /> +An endless sequence of joy and speed and power:<br /> +Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">Shall create an instant's shining constellation<br /> +Upon the blue; and all the air shall be<br /> +Full of a million wings that swift and free<br /> +Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation.</p> + +<p class="poem">Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond<br /> +All isles however magically sleeping<br /> +In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned<br /> +Save by blind eyes; beyond the laughter and weeping</p> + +<p class="poem">That brood like a cloud over the lands of men.<br /> +Movement, passion of colour and pure wings,<br /> +Curving to cut like knives—these are the things<br /> +I search for:—passion beyond the ken</p> + +<p class="poem">Of our foiled violences, and, more swift<br /> +Than any blow which man aims against time,<br /> +The invulnerable, motion that shall rift<br /> +All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme,</p> + +<p class="poem">Or note, or colour. And the body shall be<br /> +Quick as the mind; and will shall find release<br /> +From bondage to brute things; and joyously<br /> +Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace,</p> + +<p class="poem">Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted.<br /> +And love consummate, marvellously blending<br /> +Passion and reverence in a single spring<br /> +Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted,</p> + +<p class="poem">But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown<br /> +The new life with its ageless starry fire.<br /> +I go to seek that reef, far down, far down<br /> +Below the edge of everyday's desire,</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">Beyond the magical islands, where of old<br /> +I was content, dreaming, to give the lie<br /> +To misery. They were all strong and bold<br /> +That thither came; and shall I dare to try?</p> + +<h2 id="winter">WINTER DREAM <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/o.gif" width="100" height="100" alt="O" /> +<span class="smcap">h</span> wind-swept towers,<br /> +Oh endlessly blossoming trees,<br /> +White clouds and lucid eyes,<br /> +And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant<br /> +With who knows what of subtlety<br /> +And magical curves and limbs—<br /> +White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts<br /> +Mother-of-pearled with light.</p> + +<p class="poem">And oh the April, April of straight soft hair,<br /> +Falling smooth as the mountain water and brown;<br /> +The April of little leaves unblinded,<br /> +Of rosy nipples and innocence<br /> +And the blue languor of weary eyelids.</p> + +<p class="poem">Across a huge gulf I fling my voice<br /> +And my desires together:<br /> +Across a huge gulf ... on the other bank<br /> +Crouches April with her hair as smooth and straight and brown<br /> +As falling waters.<br /> +Oh brave curve upwards and outwards.<br /> +Oh despair of the downward tilting—<br /> +Despair still beautiful<br /> +As a great star one has watched all night<br /> +Wheeling down under the hills.<br /> +Silence widens and darkens;<br /> +Voice and desires have dropped out of sight.<br /> +I am all alone, dreaming she would come and kiss me.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="flowers">THE FLOWERS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="D" /> +<span class="smcap">ay</span> after day,<br /> +At spring's return,<br /> +I watch my flowers, how they burn<br /> +Their lives away.</p> + +<p class="poem">The candle crocus<br /> +And daffodil gold<br /> +Drink fire of the sunshine—<br /> +Quickly cold.</p> + +<p class="poem">And the proud tulip—<br /> +How red he glows!—<br /> +Is quenched ere summer<br /> +Can kindle the rose.</p> + +<p class="poem">Purple as the innermost<br /> +Core of a sinking flame,<br /> +Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder<br /> +To the dust whence they came.</p> + +<p class="poem">Day after day<br /> +At spring's return,<br /> +I watch my flowers, how they burn<br /> +Their lives away,<br /> +Day after day ...</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="elms">THE ELMS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/f.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="F" /> +<span class="smcap">ine</span> as the dust of plumy fountains blowing<br /> +Across the lanterns of a revelling night,<br /> +The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing<br /> +Powder the trees—so vaporously light,<br /> +They seem to float, billows of emerald foam<br /> +Blown by the South on its bright airy tide,<br /> +Seeming less trees than things beatified,<br /> +Come from the world of thought which was their home.</p> + +<p class="poem">For a while only. Rooted strong and fast,<br /> +Soon will they lift towards the summer sky<br /> +Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery.<br /> +Their immaterial season quickly past,<br /> +They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die,<br /> +Since every earth to earth returns at last.</p> + +<h2 id="out">OUT OF THE WINDOW <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> +<span class="smcap">n</span> the middle of countries, far from hills and sea,<br /> +Are the little places one passes by in trains<br /> +And never stops at; where the skies extend<br /> +Uninterrupted, and the level plains<br /> +Stretch green and yellow and green without an end.<br /> +And behind the glass of their Grand Express<br /> +Folk yawn away a province through,<br /> +With nothing to think of, nothing to do,<br /> +Nothing even to look at—never a "view"<br /> +In this damned wilderness.<br /> +But I look out of the window and find<br /> +Much to satisfy the mind. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span><br /> +Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled<br /> +In a motion orderly and staid,<br /> +Sweep, as we pass, across the field<br /> +Like a drilled army on parade.<br /> +And here's a market-garden, barred<br /> +With stripe on stripe of varied greens ...<br /> +Bright potatoes, flower starred,<br /> +And the opacous colour of beans.<br /> +Each line deliberately swings<br /> +Towards me, till I see a straight<br /> +Green avenue to the heart of things,<br /> +The glimpse of a sudden opened gate<br /> +Piercing the adverse walls of fate ...<br /> +A moment only, and then, fast, fast,<br /> +The gate swings to, the avenue closes;<br /> +Fate laughs, and once more interposes<br /> +Its barriers.<br /> +<span class="poem1">The train has passed.</span></p> + +<h2 id="inspiration">INSPIRATION <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/n.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="N" /> +<span class="smcap">oonday</span> upon the Alpine meadows<br /> +Pours its avalanche of Light<br /> +And blazing flowers: the very shadows<br /> +Translucent are and bright.<br /> +It seems a glory that nought surpasses—<br /> +Passion of angels in form and hue—<br /> +When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses<br /> +Leaps a lightning of sudden blue.<br /> +Dimming the sun-drunk petals,<br /> +Bright even unto pain,<br /> +The grasshopper flashes, settles,<br /> +And then is quenched again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="summer">SUMMER STILLNESS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +<span class="smcap">he</span> stars are golden instants in the deep<br /> +Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set:<br /> +The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep<br /> +Seeming so motionless that I forget<br /> +The hollow booming bridges, where it slides,<br /> +Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,<br /> +Towards a sea whose unreturning tides<br /> +Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song.</p> + +<h2 id="anniversaries">ANNIVERSARIES <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/o.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="O" /> +<span class="smcap">nce</span> more the windless days are here,<br /> +Quiet of autumn, when the year<br /> +Halts and looks backward and draws breath<br /> +Before it plunges into death.<br /> +Silver of mist and gossamers,<br /> +Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold,<br /> +Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs<br /> +Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,<br /> +That over and over slowly falls<br /> +From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air<br /> +Like tattered flags along the walls<br /> +Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.<br /> +Once more ... Within its flawless glass<br /> +To-day reflects that other day,<br /> +When, under the bracken, on the grass,<br /> +We who were lovers happily lay<br /> +And hardly spoke, or framed a thought <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span><br /> +That was not one with the calm hills<br /> +And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,<br /> +Our gusty passions, our burning wills<br /> +Dissolved in boundlessness, and we<br /> +Were almost bodiless, almost free.</p> + +<p class="poem">The wind has shattered silver and gold.<br /> +Night after night of sparkling cold,<br /> +Orion lifts his tangled feet<br /> +From where the tossing branches beat<br /> +In a fine surf against the sky.<br /> +So the trance ended, and we grew<br /> +Restless, we knew not how or why;<br /> +And there were sudden gusts that blew<br /> +Our dreaming banners into storm;<br /> +We wore the uncertain crumbling form<br /> +Of a brown swirl of windy leaves,<br /> +A phantom shape that stirs and heaves<br /> +Shuddering from earth, to fall again<br /> +With a dry whisper of withered rain.</p> + +<p class="poem">Last, from the dead and shrunken days<br /> +We conjured spring, lighting the blaze<br /> +Of burnished tulips in the dark;<br /> +And from black frost we struck a spark<br /> +Of blue delight and fragrance new,<br /> +A little world of flowers and dew.<br /> +Winter for us was over and done:<br /> +The drought of fluttering leaves had grown<br /> +Emerald shining in the sun,<br /> +As light as glass, as firm as stone.<br /> +Real once more: for we had passed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span><br /> +Through passion into thought again;<br /> +Shaped our desires and made that fast<br /> +Which was before a cloudy pain;<br /> +Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined<br /> +In a fair statue, strong and free,<br /> +Twin bodies flaming into mind,<br /> +Poised on the brink of ecstasy.</p> + +<h2 id="italy">ITALY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +<span class="smcap">here</span> is a country in my mind,<br /> +Lovelier than a poet blind<br /> +Could dream of, who had never known<br /> +This world of drought and dust and stone<br /> +In all its ugliness: a place<br /> +Full of an all but human grace;<br /> +Whose dells retain the printed form<br /> +Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm<br /> +From some pure body newly risen;<br /> +Where matter is no more a prison,<br /> +But freedom for the soul to know<br /> +Its native beauty. For things glow<br /> +There with an inward truth and are<br /> +All fire and colour like a star.<br /> +And in that land are domes and towers<br /> +That hang as light and bright as flowers<br /> +Upon the sky, and seem a birth<br /> +Rather of air than solid earth.</p> + +<p class="poem">Sometimes I dream that walking there<br /> +In the green shade, all unaware<br /> +At a new turn of the golden glade,<br /> +I shall see her, and as though afraid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span><br /> +Shall halt a moment and almost fall<br /> +For passing faintness, like a man<br /> +Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan<br /> +Brimming his narrow soul with all<br /> +The illimitable world. And she,<br /> +Turning her head, will let me see<br /> +The first sharp dawn of her surprise<br /> +Turning to welcome in her eyes.<br /> +And I shall come and take my lover<br /> +And looking on her re-discover<br /> +All her beauty:—her dark hair<br /> +And the little ears beneath it, where<br /> +Roses of lucid shadow sleep;<br /> +Her brooding mouth, and in the deep<br /> +Wells of her eyes reflected stars ...</p> + +<p class="poem">Oh, the imperishable things<br /> +That hands and lips as well as words<br /> +Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings,<br /> +Oh wheeling galaxies of birds ...!</p> + +<h2 id="alien">THE ALIEN <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="A" /> + <span class="smcap">petal</span> drifted loose<br /> +From a great magnolia bloom,<br /> +Your face hung in the gloom,<br /> +Floating, white and close.</p> + +<p class="poem">We seemed alone: but another<br /> +Bent o'er you with lips of flame,<br /> +Unknown, without a name,<br /> +Hated, and yet my brother.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">Your one short moan of pain<br /> +Was an exorcising spell:<br /> +The devil flew back to hell;<br /> +We were alone again.</p> + +<h2 id="little">A LITTLE MEMORY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="W" /> +<span class="smcap">hite</span> in the moonlight,<br /> +Wet with dew,<br /> +We have known the languor<br /> +Of being two.</p> + +<p class="poem">We have been weary<br /> +As children are,<br /> +When over them, radiant,<br /> +A stooping star,</p> + +<p class="poem">Bends their Good-Night,<br /> +Kissed and smiled:—<br /> +Each was mother,<br /> +Each was child.</p> + +<p class="poem">Child, from your forehead<br /> +I kissed the hair,<br /> +Gently, ah, gently:<br /> +And you were</p> + +<p class="poem">Mistress and mother<br /> +When on your breast<br /> +I lay so safely<br /> +And could rest.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="waking">WAKING <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="D" /> +<span class="smcap">arkness</span> had stretched its colour,<br /> +Deep blue across the pane:<br /> +No cloud to make night duller,<br /> +No moon with its tarnish stain;<br /> +But only here and there a star,<br /> +One sharp point of frosty fire,<br /> +Hanging infinitely far<br /> +In mockery of our life and death<br /> +And all our small desire.</p> + +<p class="poem">Now in this hour of waking<br /> +From under brows of stone,<br /> +A new pale day is breaking<br /> +And the deep night is gone.<br /> +Sordid now, and mean and small<br /> +The daylight world is seen again,<br /> +With only the veils of mist that fall<br /> +Deaf and muffling over all<br /> +To hide its ugliness and pain.</p> + +<p class="poem">But to-day this dawn of meanness<br /> +Shines in my eyes, as when<br /> +The new world's brightness and cleanness<br /> +Broke on the first of men.<br /> +For the light that shows the huddled things<br /> +Of this close-pressing earth,<br /> +Shines also on your face and brings<br /> +All its dear beauty back to me<br /> +In a new miracle of birth.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">I see you asleep and unpassioned,<br /> +White-faced in the dusk of your hair—<br /> +Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned<br /> +That it filled me once with despair<br /> +To look on its exquisite transience<br /> +And think that our love and thought and laughter<br /> +Puff out with the death of our flickering sense,<br /> +While we pass ever on and away<br /> +Towards some blank hereafter.</p> + +<p class="poem">But now I am happy, knowing<br /> +That swift time is our friend,<br /> +And that our love's passionate glowing,<br /> +Though it turn ash in the end,<br /> +Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way<br /> +Through temporal stuff, nor else could be<br /> +More than a nothing. Into day<br /> +The boundless spaces of night contract<br /> +And in your opening eyes I see<br /> +Night born in day, in time eternity.</p> + +<h2 id="fire">BY THE FIRE <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="W" /> +<span class="smcap">e</span> who are lovers sit by the fire,<br /> +Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will,<br /> +Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs<br /> +In the equipoise of all desire,<br /> +Sit and listen to the still<br /> +Small hiss and whisper of green logs<br /> +That burn away, that burn away<br /> +With the sound of a far-off falling stream<br /> +Of threaded water blown to steam,<br /> +Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey.<br /> +Vapours blue as distance rise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span><br /> +Between the hissing logs that show<br /> +A glimpse of rosy heat below;<br /> +And candles watch with tireless eyes<br /> +While we sit drowsing here. I know,<br /> +Dimly, that there exists a world,<br /> +That there is time perhaps, and space<br /> +Other and wider than this place,<br /> +Where at the fireside drowsily curled<br /> +We hear the whisper and watch the flame<br /> +Burn blinkless and inscrutable.<br /> +And then I know those other names<br /> +That through my brain from cell to cell<br /> +Echo—reverberated shout<br /> +Of waiters mournful along corridors:<br /> +But nobody carries the orders out,<br /> +And the names (dear friends, your name and yours)<br /> +Evoke no sign. But here I sit<br /> +On the wide hearth, and there are you:<br /> +That is enough and only true.<br /> +The world and the friends that lived in it<br /> +Are shadows: you alone remain<br /> +Real in this drowsing room,<br /> +Full of the whispers of distant rain<br /> +And candles staring into the gloom.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="valedictory">VALEDICTORY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> + <span class="smcap">had</span> remarked—how sharply one observes<br /> +When life is disappearing round the curves<br /> +Of yet another corner, out of sight!—<br /> +I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night"<br /> +And "a good journey to you," on her face<br /> +Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs<br /> +Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace<br /> +Of clouded thought in those brown eyes,<br /> +Always so happily clear of hows and ifs—<br /> +My poor bleared mind!—and haunting whys.</p> + +<p class="poem">There I stood, holding her farewell hand,<br /> +(Pressing my life and soul and all<br /> +The world to one good-bye, till, small<br /> +And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand<br /> +Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).<br /> +And I saw that she had grown aware,<br /> +Queer puzzled face! of other things<br /> +Beyond the present and her own young speed,<br /> +Of yesterday and what new days might breed<br /> +Monstrously when the future brings<br /> +A charger with your late-lamented head:<br /> +Aware of other people's lives and will,<br /> +Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ...<br /> +The joyous hope of it! But still<br /> +I pitied her; for it was sad to see<br /> +A goddess shorn of her divinity.<br /> +In the midst of her speed she had made pause,<br /> +And doubts with all their threat of claws,<br /> +Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness,<br /> +Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span><br /> +"Live, only live! For you were meant<br /> +Never to know a thought's distress,<br /> +But a long glad astonishment<br /> +At the world's beauty and your own.<br /> +The pity of you, goddess, grown<br /> +Perplexed and mortal."<br /> +<span class="poem1">Yet ... yet ... can it be</span><br /> +That she is aware, perhaps, even of me?</p> + +<p class="poem">And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare,<br /> +My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air;<br /> +And the question rumbles in the void:<br /> +Was she aware, was she after all aware?</p> + +<h2 id="love">LOVE SONG <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="D" /> +<span class="smcap">ear</span> absurd child—too dear to my cost I've found—<br /> +God made your soul for pleasure, not for use:<br /> +It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse,<br /> +Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound<br /> +Full upon life, and on the rind of things<br /> +Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore<br /> +And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings,<br /> +Content with that, nor wishes anything more.</p> + +<p class="poem">A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice<br /> +Of peaches that flush bloody at the core,<br /> +Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore,<br /> +While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round<br /> +With the song of wheeling planetary rings:<br /> +You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings<br /> +Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound.</p> + +<p class="poem">You taste and smile, then this for the next pass over;<br /> +And there's no future for you and no past,<br /> +And when, absurdly, death arrives at last,<br /> +'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover.</p> + +<h2 id="private">PRIVATE PROPERTY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="A" /> +<span class="smcap">ll</span> fly—yet who is misanthrope?—<br /> +The actual men and things that pass<br /> +Jostling, to wither as the grass<br /> +So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,<br /> +Or poetry's kaleidoscope,<br /> +Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)<br /> +Each owns a paradise of glass<br /> +Where never a yearning heliotrope<br /> +Pursues the sun's ascent or slope;<br /> +For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.</p> + +<p class="poem">Like fauns embossed in our domain,<br /> +We look abroad, and our calm eyes<br /> +Mark how the goatish gods of pain<br /> +Revel; and if by grim surprise<br /> +They break into our paradise,<br /> +Patient we build its beauty up again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="revelation">REVELATION <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="A" /> +<span class="smcap">t</span> your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx,<br /> +I taste a strange apocalypse:<br /> +Your subtle taper finger-tips<br /> +Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks,<br /> +I know the wiles and each iynx<br /> +That brought me passionate to your lips:<br /> +I know you bare as laughter strips<br /> +Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks</p> + +<p class="poem">Pure knowledge from this tainted well,<br /> +And now hears voices yet unheard<br /> +Within it, and without it sees<br /> +That world of which the poets tell<br /> +Their vision in the stammered word<br /> +Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies.</p> + +<h2 id="minoan">MINOAN PORCELAIN <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/h.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="H" /> +<span class="smcap">er</span> eyes of bright unwinking glaze<br /> +All imperturbable do not<br /> +Even make pretences to regard<br /> +The justing absence of her stays,<br /> +Where many a Tyrian gallipot<br /> +Excites desire with spilth of nard.<br /> +The bistred rims above the fard<br /> +Of cheeks as red as bergamot<br /> +Attest that no shamefaced delays<br /> +Will clog fulfilment, nor retard<br /> +Full payment of the Cyprian's praise<br /> +Down to the last remorseful jot.<br /> +Hail priestess of we know not what<br /> +Strange cult of Mycenean days!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="decameron">THE DECAMERON <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/n.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="N" /> +<span class="smcap">oon</span> with a depth of shadow beneath the trees<br /> +Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes:<br /> +Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits<br /> +Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine<br /> +Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine:<br /> +Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots,<br /> +Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots<br /> +Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline.</p> + +<p class="poem">Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry,<br /> +Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound;<br /> +Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly,<br /> +Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground<br /> +Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found<br /> +Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die.</p> + +<h2 id="uncertainty">IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> + <span class="smcap">am</span> not one of those who sip,<br /> +Like a quotidian bock,<br /> +Cheap idylls from a languid lip<br /> +Prepared to yawn or mock.</p> + +<p class="poem">I wait the indubitable word,<br /> +The great Unconscious Cue.<br /> +Has it been spoken and unheard?<br /> +Spoken, perhaps, by you ...?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="crapulous">CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /><br /> +<span class="smaller">(To J.S.)</span></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="S" /> +<span class="smcap">till</span> life, still life ... the high-lights shine<br /> +Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine<br /> +Stands firmly solid in the glasses,<br /> +Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes<br /> +The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light.<br /> +The fruits metallically gleam,<br /> +Globey in their heaped-up bowl,<br /> +And there are faces against the night<br /> +Of the outer room—faces that seem<br /> +Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul.</p> + +<p class="poem">And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,<br /> +Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:<br /> +And out of the frozen welter of sound<br /> +Your voice came quietly, quietly.<br /> +"What about God?" you said. "I have found<br /> +Much to be said for Totality.<br /> +All, I take it, is God: God's all—<br /> +This bottle, for instance ..." I recall,<br /> +Dimly, that you took God by the neck—<br /> +God-in-the-bottle—and pushed Him across:<br /> +But I, without a moment's loss<br /> +Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="life">THE LIFE THEORETIC <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="W" /> +<span class="smcap">hile</span> I have been fumbling over books<br /> +And thinking about God and the Devil and all,<br /> +Other young men have been battling with the days<br /> +And others have been kissing the beautiful women.<br /> +They have brazen faces like battering-rams.<br /> +But I who think about books and such—<br /> +I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,<br /> +And the women palsy me with fear.<br /> +But when it comes to fumbling over books<br /> +And thinking about God and the Devil and all,<br /> +Why, there I am.<br /> +But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,<br /> +Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.</p> + +<h2 id="complaint">COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="W" /> +<span class="smcap">e</span> judge by appearance merely:<br /> +If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.<br /> +So I grew the hair so long on my head<br /> +That my mother wouldn't know me,<br /> +Till a woman in a night-club said,<br /> +As I was passing by,<br /> +"Hullo, here comes Salome ..."</p> + +<p class="poem">I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,<br /> +And, oh Salome; there I was—<br /> +Positively jewelled, half a vampire,<br /> +With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily<br /> +Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire<br /> +Over the brink of the crag of sense,<br /> +Looking down from perilous eminence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span><br /> +Into a gulf of windy night.<br /> +And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,<br /> +And I'm not a poet: but never despair!<br /> +I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.</p> + +<h2 id="social">SOCIAL AMENITIES <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> + <span class="smcap">am</span> getting on well with this anecdote,<br /> +When suddenly I recall<br /> +The many times I have told it of old,<br /> +And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall<br /> +Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note<br /> +Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck—<br /> +The whole thing sticks in my throat,<br /> +And my face all tingles and pricks with shame<br /> +For myself and my hearers.<br /> +These are the social pleasures, my God!<br /> +But I finish the story triumphantly all the same.</p> + +<h2 id="topiary">TOPIARY <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/f.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="F" /> +<span class="smcap">ailing</span> sometimes to understand<br /> +Why there are folk whose flesh should seem<br /> +Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,<br /> +Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,<br /> +Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;<br /> +Why there are men without any legs,<br /> +Whizzing along on little trollies<br /> +With long long arms like apes':<br /> +Failing to see why God the Topiarist<br /> +Should train and carve and twist<br /> +Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes:<br /> +Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span><br /> +That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind,<br /> +Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind,<br /> +Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.</p> + +<h2 id="bus">ON THE BUS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="S" /> +<span class="smcap">itting</span> on the top of the 'bus,<br /> +I bite my pipe and look at the sky.<br /> +Over my shoulder the smoke streams out<br /> +And my life with it.<br /> +"Conservation of energy," you say.<br /> +But I burn, I tell you, I burn;<br /> +And the smoke of me streams out<br /> +In a vanishing skein of grey.<br /> +Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body!<br /> +I am a harp of twittering strings,<br /> +An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand,<br /> +And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident.<br /> +Droll phenomena!</p> + +<h2 id="points">POINTS AND LINES <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> +<span class="smcap">nstants</span> in the quiet, small sharp stars,<br /> +Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed<br /> +Baffles even the grasp of time.<br /> +Oh that I might reflect them<br /> +As swiftly, as keenly as they shine.<br /> +But I am a pool of waters, summer-still,<br /> +And the stars are mirrored across me;<br /> +Those stabbing points of the sky<br /> +Turned to a thread of shaken silver,<br /> +A long fine thread.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="panic">PANIC <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +<span class="smcap">he</span> eyes of the portraits on the wall<br /> +Look at me, follow me,<br /> +Stare incessantly:<br /> +I take it their glance means nothing at all?<br /> +—Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ...</p> + +<p class="poem">Out in the gardens by the lake<br /> +The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake;<br /> +Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn,<br /> +Each of them sounds his mournful horn:<br /> +Shrill peals that waver and crack and break.<br /> +What can have made the peacocks wake?</p> + +<h2 id="return">RETURN FROM BUSINESS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/e.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="E" /> +<span class="smcap">venings</span> in trains,<br /> +When the little black twittering ghosts<br /> +Along the brims of cuttings,<br /> +Against the luminous sky,<br /> +Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought<br /> +Save that one is young and setting,<br /> +Headlong westering,<br /> +And there is no recapture.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="stanzas">STANZAS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="T" /> +<span class="smcap">hought</span> is an unseen net wherein our mind<br /> +Is taken and vainly struggles to be free:<br /> +Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind<br /> +New fetters on our hoped-for liberty:<br /> +And action bears us onward like a stream<br /> +Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course;<br /> +Glorious—and yet its headlong currents seem<br /> +Backwaters of some nobler purer force.</p> + +<p class="poem">There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought,<br /> +That stoop to carry the grace of a girl's breast;<br /> +And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought<br /> +In airy metal, that they seem possessed<br /> +Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift<br /> +The shoulder of a goddess towards the light;<br /> +And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift,<br /> +Piercing the spirit deeply with delight.</p> + +<p class="poem">Would I might make these miracles my own!<br /> +Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form,<br /> +Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone,<br /> +Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm<br /> +On noonday flowers, speaking the song of birds<br /> +Among the branches, whispering the fall of rain,<br /> +Beyond all thought, past action and past words,<br /> +I would live in beauty, free from self and pain.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="poem">POEM <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/b.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="B" /> +<span class="smcap">ooks</span> and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;<br /> +And magic words lay ripening in my soul<br /> +Till their much-whispered music turned a wine<br /> +Whose subtlest power was all in my control.</p> + +<p class="poem">These things were mine, and they were real for me<br /> +As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast:<br /> +For I could love a phrase, a melody,<br /> +Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed.</p> + +<p class="poem">I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes<br /> +Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid;<br /> +Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise<br /> +Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed.</p> + +<p class="poem">But a time came when, turning full of hate<br /> +And weariness from my remembered themes,<br /> +I wished my poet's pipe could modulate<br /> +Beauty more palpable than words and dreams.</p> + +<p class="poem">All loveliness with which an act informs<br /> +The dim uncertain chaos of desire<br /> +Is mine to-day; it touches me, it warms<br /> +Body and spirit with its outward fire.</p> + +<p class="poem">I am mine no more: I have become a part<br /> +Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs<br /> +To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart<br /> +Were still a winter of frosty gossamers.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> + +<h2 id="scenes">SCENES OF THE MIND <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> + <span class="smcap">have</span> run where festival was loud<br /> +With drum and brass among the crowd<br /> +Of panic revellers, whose cries<br /> +Affront the quiet of the skies;<br /> +Whose dancing lights contract the deep<br /> +Infinity of night and sleep<br /> +To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire.<br /> +And I have found my heart's desire<br /> +In beechen caverns that autumn fills<br /> +With the blue shadowiness of distant hills;<br /> +Whose luminous grey pillars bear<br /> +The stooping sky: calm is the air,<br /> +Nor any sound is heard to mar<br /> +That crystal silence—as from far,<br /> +Far off a man may see<br /> +The busy world all utterly<br /> +Hushed as an old memorial scene.<br /> +Long evenings I have sat and been<br /> +Strangely content, while in my hands<br /> +I held a wealth of coloured strands,<br /> +Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins<br /> +Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains<br /> +New life at the lamp's round pool of gold;<br /> +Each sinks again when I withhold<br /> +The quickening radiance, to a wan<br /> +And shadowy oblivion<br /> +Of what it was. And in my mind<br /> +Beauty or sudden love has shined<br /> +And wakened colour in what was dead<br /> +And turned to gold the sullen lead<br /> +Of mean desires and everyday's<br /> +Poor thoughts and customary ways. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span><br /> +Sometimes in lands where mountains throw<br /> +Their silent spell on all below,<br /> +Drawing a magic circle wide<br /> +About their feet on every side,<br /> +Robbed of all speech and thought and act,<br /> +I have seen God in the cataract.<br /> +In falling water and in flame,<br /> +Never at rest, yet still the same,<br /> +God shows himself. And I have known<br /> +The swift fire frozen into stone,<br /> +And water frozen changelessly<br /> +Into the death of gems. And I<br /> +Long sitting by the thunderous mill<br /> +Have seen the headlong wheel made still,<br /> +And in the silence that ensued<br /> +Have known the endless solitude<br /> +Of being dead and utterly nought.<br /> +Inhabitant of mine own thought,<br /> +I look abroad, and all I see<br /> +Is my creation, made for me:<br /> +Along my thread of life are pearled<br /> +The moments that make up the world.</p> + +<h2 id="faune">L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /><br /> +<span class="smaller">(From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.)</span></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="I" /> + <span class="smcap">would</span> immortalize these nymphs: so bright<br /> +Their sunlit colouring, so airy light,<br /> +It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream?<br /> +My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem<br /> +A subtle tracery of branches grown<br /> +The tree's true self—proving that I have known <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span><br /> +No triumph, but the shadow of a rose.<br /> +But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose<br /> +They bodied forth your senses' fabulous thirst?<br /> +Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first,<br /> +As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring,<br /> +Beget: the other, sighing, passioning,<br /> +Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon?<br /> +No, through this quiet, when a weary swoon<br /> +Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay<br /> +Of morning, cool against the encroaching day,<br /> +There is no murmuring water, save the gush<br /> +Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush<br /> +Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed<br /> +Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed<br /> +Upon the air, with that calm breath of art<br /> +That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly,<br /> +Where inspiration seeks its native sky.<br /> +You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake,<br /> +The sun's own mirror which I love to take,<br /> +Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell<br /> +<i>How here I cut the hollow rushes, well<br /> +Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold<br /> +Of distant lawns about their fountain cold<br /> +A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave;<br /> +And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave<br /> +These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly<br /> +Or dive.</i> Noon burns inert and tawny dry,<br /> +Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away<br /> +From me who seek in song the real A.<br /> +Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight,<br /> +O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light,<br /> +With, lilies, one of you for innocence.<br /> +Other than their lips' delicate pretence, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span><br /> +The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers,<br /> +My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers<br /> +The bitten print of some immortal's kiss.<br /> +But hush! a mystery so great as this<br /> +I dare not tell, save to my double reed,<br /> +Which, sharer of my every joy and need,<br /> +Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we<br /> +Falsely confuse the beauties that we see<br /> +With the bright palpable shapes our song creates:<br /> +My flute, as loud as passion modulates,<br /> +Purges the common dream of flank and breast,<br /> +Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed,<br /> +Of every empty and monotonous line.</p> + +<p class="poem">Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign,<br /> +A reed once more beside our trysting-lake.<br /> +Proud of my music, let me often make<br /> +A song of goddesses and see their rape<br /> +Profanely done on many a painted shape.<br /> +So when the grape's transparent juice I drain,<br /> +I quell regret for pleasures past and feign<br /> +A new real grape. For holding towards the sky<br /> +The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie<br /> +Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it.<br /> +<span class="poem2">Tell o'er</span><br /> +Remembered joys and plump the grape once more.<br /> +<i>Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam<br /> +Who cool no mortal fever in the stream<br /> +Crying to the woods the rage of their desire:<br /> +And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire<br /> +Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly.<br /> +I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie, </i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span><br /><i> +Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet,<br /> +Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet.<br /> +I seize and run with them, nor part the pair,<br /> +Breaking this covert of frail petals, where<br /> +Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play<br /> +'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day.</i><br /> +I love that virginal fury—ah, the wild<br /> +Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled,<br /> +Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear<br /> +Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear!<br /> +Contagiously through my linked pair it flies<br /> +Where innocence in either, struggling, dies,<br /> +Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew.<br /> +<i>Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew<br /> +So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide<br /> +Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied.<br /> +For as I leaned to stifle in the hair<br /> +Of one my passionate laughter (taking care<br /> +With a stretched finger, that her innocence<br /> +Might stain with her companion's kindling sense<br /> +To touch the younger little one, who lay<br /> +Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey<br /> +Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death,<br /> +Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath.</i></p> + +<p class="poem">Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist<br /> +A rope to drag me to those joys I missed.<br /> +See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red<br /> +To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled;<br /> +So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire,<br /> +Flows for the swarming legions of desire.<br /> +At evening, when the woodland green turns gold <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><br /> +And ashen grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold!<br /> +Red Etna glows, by Venus visited,<br /> +Walking the lava with her snowy tread<br /> +Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die.<br /> +I hold the goddess!<br /> +<span class="poem1">Ah, sure penalty!</span></p> + +<p class="poem">But the unthinking soul and body swoon<br /> +At last beneath the heavy hush of noon.<br /> +Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth<br /> +Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth<br /> +Dream planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star.</p> + +<p class="poem">Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.</p> + +<h2 id="louse">THE LOUSE-HUNTERS <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /><br /> +<span class="smaller">(From the French of Rimbaud).</span></h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<img class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height="100" width="100" alt="W" /> +<span class="smcap">hen</span> the child's forehead, full of torments red,<br /> +Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams,<br /> +His two big sisters come unto his bed,<br /> +Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams.</p> + +<p class="poem">They set him at a casement, open wide<br /> +On seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs,<br /> +And through his curls, all wet with dew, they slide<br /> +Those terrible searching finger-tips of theirs.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> + +<p class="poem">He hears them breathing, softly, fearfully,<br /> +Honey-sweet ruminations, slow respired:<br /> +Then a sharp hiss breaks time and melody—<br /> +Spittle indrawn, old kisses new-desired.</p> + +<p class="poem">Down through the perfumed silences he hears<br /> +Their eyelids fluttering: long fingers thrill,<br /> +Probing a lassitude bedimmed with tears,<br /> +While the nails crunch at every louse they kill.</p> + +<p class="poem">He is drunk with Languor—soft accordion-sigh,<br /> +Delirious wine of Love in Idleness;<br /> +Longings for tears come welling up and die,<br /> +As slow or swift he feels their magical caress.</p> + +<p><img class="spaced" src="images/blackwell.gif" width="400" height="273" alt="B. H. Blackwell, +Oxford." /></p> + +<h2 class="end">THIS THIRD OF THE INITIATES SERIES OF +POETRY BY PROVED HANDS, WAS PRINTED +IN OXFORD AT THE VINCENT WORKS, +AND FINISHED IN JUNE, MCMXVIII. <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> +PUBLISHED BY B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD +STREET, OXFORD, AND SOLD IN AMERICA +BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK.</h2> + +<h2 class="end"> +<img class="floatl" height="100" width="100" src="images/i.gif" alt="I" /> +NITIATES <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> +A SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS <img src="images/leaf2.gif" height="16" width="18" alt="" /> +UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE ART, BOARDS, THREE SHILLINGS +NET.</h2> + +<div class="ads"> + +<p><i>NOW READY</i></p> + +<ol> +<li>IN THE VALLEY OF VISION + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> BY GEOFFREY +FABER, AUTHOR OF "INTERFLOW."</li> +<li>SONNETS AND POEMS + <img src="images/leaf4.gif" height="16" width="13" alt="" /> BY ELEANOR +FARJEON, AUTHOR OF "NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN."</li> +<li>THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, AND OTHER POEMS + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> BY ALDOUS +HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL."</li> +</ol> + +<p><i>IN PREPARATION</i></p> + +<ol> +<li value="4">SONGS FOR SALE + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> AN ANTHOLOGY +OF VERSE, EDITED BY E. B. C. JONES FROM BOOKS ISSUED RECENTLY BY B. H. +BLACKWELL.</li> +<li>CLOWNS' HOUSES + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> BY EDITH +SITWELL, EDITOR OF "WHEELS."</li> +</ol> + +</div> + +<h2 class="end"> +<img class="floatl" height="100" width="100" src="images/t.gif" alt="T" /> +HE SHELDONIAN SERIES OF REPRINTS AND RENDERINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN ALL +LANGUAGES <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> EDITED +BY REGINALD HEWITT, M.A.</h2> + +<p><i>FIRST THREE BOOKS</i></p> + +<div class="ads"> + +<ol> +<li>SONGS AND SAYINGS OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, MINNESAENGER + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> ENGLISHED +BY FRANK BETTS.</li> +<li>THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> ENGLISHED +BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY.</li> +<li>BALLADES OF FRANCOIS VILLON + <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> INTERPRETED +INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY PAUL HOOKHAM.</li> +</ol> + +</div> + +<p class="end">¶ The series is limited in the case of each volume to an edition +of five hundred copies on hand-made paper, printed in two +colours in Dolphin old style type, and published at two shillings +and sixpence net.</p> + +<p class="big">OXFORD <img src="images/leaf5.gif" height="16" width="16" alt="" /> + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.</p> + +<h2 class="end"> +<img class="floatl" height="100" width="100" src="images/a.gif" alt="A" /> +DVENTURERS ALL <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> + A SERIES OF YOUNG POETS UNKNOWN TO FAME <img src="images/leaf.gif" height="13" width="30" alt="" /> + UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE IN ART WRAPPERS <img src="images/leaf2.gif" height="16" width="18" alt="" /> + TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET EACH.</h2> + +<p class="end">¶ "Beautiful little books ... containing poetry, real poetry."—<i>The New Witness.</i></p> + +<p class="end">I., II., III. and IV. [<i>Out of print.</i>]</p> + +<div class="ads"> + +<ol> +<li value="5">THE IRON AGE <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY FRANK BETTS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILBERT MURRAY.</li> +<li>THE TWO WORLDS <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY SHERARD VINES.</li> +<li>THE BURNING WHEEL <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY A. L. HUXLEY.</li> +<li>A VAGABOND'S WALLET <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY STEPHEN REID-HEYMAN.</li> +<li>OP. I. <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS. [<i>Out of print.</i>]</li> +<li>LYRICAL POEMS <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY DOROTHY PLOWMAN.</li> +<li>THE WITCHES' SABBATH <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN.</li> +<li>A SCALLOP SHELL OF QUIET <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + POEMS BY FOUR WOMEN. INTRODUCED BY MARGARET L. WOODS.</li> +<li>AT A VENTURE <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + POEMS BY EIGHT YOUNG WRITERS.</li> +<li>ALDEBARAN <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY M. ST. CLARE BYRNE.</li> +<li>LIADAIN AND CURITHIR <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY MOIREEN FOX.</li> +<li>LINNETS IN THE SLUMS <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY MARION PRYCE.</li> +<li>OUT OF THE EAST <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY VERA AND MARGARET LARMINIE.</li> +<li>DUNCH <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY SUSAN MILES.</li> +<li>DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY ELEANOR HILL.</li> +<li>CARGO <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY S. BARRINGTON GATES.</li> +<li>DREAMS AND JOURNEYS <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY FREDEGOND SHOVE.</li> +<li>THE PEOPLE'S PALACE <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + BY SACHEVERELL SITWELL.</li> +<li>GALLEYS LADEN <img src="images/leaf3.gif" height="13" width="18" alt="" /> + POEMS BY FOUR WRITERS.</li> +</ol> + +</div> + +<p class="big">OXFORD <img src="images/leaf2.gif" height="16" width="18" alt="" /> + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Defeat of Youth and Other Peoms, by +Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 24364-h.htm or 24364-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/3/6/24364/ + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems + +Author: Aldous Huxley + +Release Date: January 20, 2008 [EBook #24364] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + + + + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH AND + OTHER POEMS + + BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, + AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL." + + + CONTENTS + + Page + + The Defeat of Youth 5 + Song of Poplars 16 + The Reef 17 + Winter Dream 19 + The Flowers 20 + The Elms 21 + Out of the Window 21 + Inspiration 22 + Summer Stillness 23 + Anniversaries 23 + Italy 25 + The Alien 26 + A Little Memory 27 + Waking 28 + By the Fire 29 + Valedictory 31 + Love Song 32 + Private Property 33 + Revelation 34 + Minoan Porcelain 34 + The Decameron 35 + In Uncertainty to a Lady 35 + Crapulous Impression 36 + The Life Theoretic 37 + Complaint of a Poet Manque 37 + Social Amenities 38 + Topiary 38 + On the Bus 39 + Points and Lines 39 + Panic 40 + Return from Business 40 + Stanzas 41 + Poem 42 + Scenes of the Mind 43 + L'Apres-Midi D'un Faune 44 + The Louse-Hunters 48 + + + + + THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH + + + I. UNDER THE TREES. + + There had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes + Of this and this occasion, sisterly + In their resemblances, each effigy + Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape's + White rounded firmness, and each body alert + With such swift loveliness, that very rest + Seemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressed + But a faint influence and could bless or hurt + No more than dreams. And these ghost things were she; + For formless still, without identity, + Not one she seemed, not clear, but many and dim. + One face among the legions of the street, + Indifferent mystery, she was for him + Something still uncreated, incomplete. + + + II. + + Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud + Quicken the heavy summer to new birth + Of life and motion on the drowsing earth; + The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud + With their awakening from the muffled sleep + Of long hot days. And on the wavering line + That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine, + Under the trees, a little group is deep + In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows + Across them dims the lustre of a rose, + Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green + Of a girl's dress, and life seems faint. The light + Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen, + Gold hair's aflame and green grows emerald bright. + + + III. + + She leans, and there is laughter in the face + She turns towards him; and it seems a door + Suddenly opened on some desolate place + With a burst of light and music. What before + Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed. + Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows + That he must love her; and the doom is sealed + Of all his happiness and all the woes + That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter. + The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter-- + And love flows in on him, its vastness pent + Within his narrow life: the pain it brings, + Boundless; for love is infinite discontent + With the poor lonely life of transient things. + + + IV. + + Men see their god, an immanence divine, + Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay, + In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away + To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line. + Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy + They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born + And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn + Germ and create new life and endlessly + Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds + Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds + Through change, the same in body and in soul-- + The spirit of life and love that triumphs still + In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal + Through lust and death and the bitterness of will. + + + V. + + One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep + Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm, + That sings in passionate music, or on warm + Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep + Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind. + One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought + And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought + Of one stuff with the body--matter and mind + Woven together in so close a mesh + That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh + May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things + To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth + Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs + From the dear bosom of material earth. + + + VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT. + + The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm + With the stored hay ... darkness intensified + By one bright shaft that enters through the wide + Tall doors from under fringes of a storm + Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay, + Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently + Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky + And mark how heartbreakingly far away + And yet how close and clear the distance seems, + While all at hand is cloud--brightness of dreams + Unrealisable, yet seen so clear, + So only just beyond the dark. They wait, + Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear; + Expectance draws the curtain from their fate. + + + VII. + + The silence of the storm weighs heavily + On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say + Some trivial thing as though to ward away + Mysterious powers, that imminently lie + In wait, with the strong exorcising grace + Of everyday's futility. Desire + Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire, + Defined and hard:--If he could kiss her face, + Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand + Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand? + Or is she pedestalled above the touch + Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek + From her that little, that infinitely much? + And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. + + + VIII. MOUNTAINS. + + A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists + A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart, + A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart, + Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists + Shut down again; a white uneasy sea + Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet. + He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet, + Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously + Lifting his weight. And if he should let go, + What would he find down there, down there below + The curtain of the mist? What would he find + Beyond the dim and stifling now and here, + Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind? + Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear. + + + IX. + + The hills more glorious in their coat of snow + Rise all around him, in the valleys run + Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun, + And sunlit fields of emerald far below + That seem alive with inward light. In smoke + The far horizons fade; and there is peace + On everything, a sense of blessed release + From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak + The spirit of the mountains has descended + On all the world, and its unrest is ended. + Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still, + Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife. + Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will, + You hold the promise of the freer life. + + + X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM. + + London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk + Before the panes, rich but a while ago + With the charred gold and the red ember-glow + Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk + Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns + A blank to all enquiry: but at nights + The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites + The darkness inward, curious of what burns + With such a coloured life when all is dead-- + The daylight world outside, with overhead + White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze + Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream + Of glittering traffic--all that the nights erase, + Colour and speed, surviving but in dream. + + + XI. + + Outside the dusk, but in the little room + All is alive with light, which brightly glints + On curving cup or the stiff folds of chintz, + Evoking its own whiteness. Shadows loom, + Bulging and black, upon the walls, where hang + Rich coloured plates of beauties that appeal + Less to the sense of sight than to the feel, + So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang, + Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees + Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these, + The silken breastplate of a mandarin, + Centuries dead, which he had given her. + Exquisite miracle, when men could spin + Jay's wing and belly of the kingfisher! + + + XII. + + In silence and as though expectantly + She crouches at his feet, while he caresses + His light-drawn fingers with the touch of tresses + Sleeked round her head, close-banded lustrously, + Save where at nape and temple the smooth brown + Sleaves out into a pale transparent mist + Of hair and tangled light. So to exist, + Poised 'twixt the deep of thought where spirits drown + Life in a void impalpable nothingness, + And, on the other side, the pain and stress + Of clamorous action and the gnawing fire + Of will, focal upon a point of earth--even thus + To sit, eternally without desire + And yet self-known, were happiness for us. + + + XIII. + + She turns her head and in a flash of laughter + Looks up at him: and helplessly he feels + That life has circled with returning wheels + Back to a starting-point. Before and after + Merge in this instant, momently the same: + For it was thus she leaned and laughing turned + When, manifest, the spirit of beauty burned + In her young body with an inward flame, + And first he knew and loved her. In full tide + Life halts within him, suddenly stupefied. + Sight blackness, lightning-struck; but blindly tender + He draws her up to meet him, and she lies + Close folded by his arms in glad surrender, + Smiling, and with drooped head and half closed eyes. + + + XIV. + + "I give you all; would that I might give more." + He sees the colour dawn across her cheeks + And die again to white; marks as she speaks + The trembling of her lips, as though she bore + Some sudden pain and hardly mastered it. + Within his arms he feels her shuddering, + Piteously trembling like some wild wood-thing + Caught unawares. Compassion infinite + Mounts up within him. Thus to hold and keep + And comfort her distressed, lull her to sleep + And gently kiss her brow and hair and eyes + Seems love perfected--templed high and white + Against the calm of golden autumn skies, + And shining quenchlessly with vestal light. + + + XV. + + But passion ambushed by the aerial shrine + Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity, + His satyr's dance, with laughter in his eye, + And cruelty along the scarlet line + Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled, + Love's rebel servant, he delights to beat + The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet + Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold + To mime himself the godhead of the place. + He turns in terror from her trance-calmed face, + From the white-lidded languor of her eyes, + From lips that passion never shook before, + But glad in the promise of her sacrifice: + "I give you all; would that I might give more." + + + XVI. + + He is afraid, seeing her lie so still, + So utterly his own; afraid lest she + Should open wide her eyes and let him see + The passionate conquest of her virgin will + Shine there in triumph, starry-bright with tears. + He thrusts her from him: face and hair and breast, + Hands he had touched, lips that his lips had pressed, + Seem things deadly to be desired. He fears + Lest she should body forth in palpable shame + Those dreams and longings that his blood, aflame + Through the hot dark of summer nights, had dreamed + And longed. Must all his love, then, turn to this? + Was lust the end of what so pure had seemed? + He must escape, ah God! her touch, her kiss. + + + XVII. IN THE PARK. + + Laughing, "To-night," I said to him, "the Park + Has turned the garden of a symbolist. + Those old great trees that rise above the mist, + Gold with the light of evening, and the dark + Still water, where the dying sun evokes + An echoed glory--here I recognize + Those ancient gardens mirrored by the eyes + Of poets that hate the world of common folks, + Like you and me and that thin pious crowd, + Which yonder sings its hymns, so humbly proud + Of holiness. The garden of escape + Lies here; a small green world, and still the bride + Of quietness, although an imminent rape + Roars ceaselessly about on every side." + + + XVIII. + + I had forgotten what I had lightly said, + And without speech, without a thought I went, + Steeped in that golden quiet, all content + To drink the transient beauty as it sped + Out of eternal darkness into time + To light and burn and know itself a fire; + Yet doomed--ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!-- + To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime + Of living glorious in the denser air + Of our material earth. A strange despair, + An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet + And tender as an unpassionate caress, + Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit + Grown almost conscious of youth's feebleness! + + + XIX. + + He spoke abrupt across my dream: "Dear Garden, + A stranger to your magic peace, I stand + Beyond your walls, lost in a fevered land + Of stones and fire. Would that the gods would harden + My soul against its torment, or would blind + Those yearning glimpses of a life at rest + In perfect beauty--glimpses at the best + Through unpassed bars. And here, without, the wind + Of scattering passion blows: and women pass + Glitter-eyed down putrid alleys where the glass + Of some grimed window suddenly parades-- + Ah, sickening heart-beat of desire!--the grace + Of bare and milk-warm flesh: the vision fades, + And at the pane shows a blind tortured face." + + + XX. SELF-TORMENT. + + The days pass by, empty of thought and will: + His thought grows stagnant at its very springs, + With every channel on the world of things + Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still, + Poisons itself and sickens to decay. + All his high love for her, his fair desire, + Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire, + Burning darkness and bitterness that prey + Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns + Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns + To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate, + Till he is weary wrestling with its force: + And evermore she haunts him, early and late, + As pitilessly as an old remorse. + + + XXI. + + Streets and the solitude of country places + Were once his friends. But as a man born blind, + Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find + The world a desert and men's larval faces + So hateful, he would wish to seek again + The darkness and his old chimeric sight + Of beauties inward--so, that fresh delight, + Vision of bright fields and angelic men, + That love which made him all the world, is gone. + Hating and hated now, he stands alone, + An island-point, measureless gulfs apart + From other lives, from the old happiness + Of being more than self, when heart to heart + Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less. + + + XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD. + + Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place. + A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun: + Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run + Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face, + The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist + He sees a world that wavers like the flame + Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame, + And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed + Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath! + The world a candle shuddering to its death, + And life a darkness, blind and utterly void + Of any love or goodness: all deceit, + This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed, + And truth seen now. + Earth fails beneath his feet. + + + + + SONG OF POPLARS + + + Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: + Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, + The slow blue rumour of the hill; + Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, + And the great sky be mute. + + Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold + Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, + In airy leafage of the mind, + Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales + That fade not nor grow old. + + "Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires + Springing in dark and rusty flame, + Seek you aught that hath a name? + Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony + Of undefined desires? + + "Say, are you happy in the golden march + Of sunlight all across the day? + Or do you watch the uncertain way + That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs + Over the heaven's wide arch? + + "Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift + The sharpness of your trembling spears? + Or do you seek, through the grey tears + That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, + A deeper, calmer rift?" + + So; I have tuned my music to the trees, + And there were voices, dim below + Their shrillness, voices swelling slow + In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry + And then vast silences. + + + + + THE REEF + + + My green aquarium of phantom fish, + Goggling in on me through the misty panes; + My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; + My few clear quiet autumn days--I wish + + I could leave all, clearness and mistiness; + Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still. + Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill + The hollows in the woods; I am grown less + + Than human, listless, aimless as the green + Idiot fishes of my aquarium, + Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come + And look at me and drift away, nought seen + + Or understood, but only glazedly + Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, + Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows + Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply + + Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find + Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight + Scattered largely by the profuse wind, + And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight. + + Free, newly born, on roads of music and air + Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place + Where all the shining threads of water race, + Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There, + + On the red fretted ramparts of a tower + Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break + An endless sequence of joy and speed and power: + Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake + + Shall create an instant's shining constellation + Upon the blue; and all the air shall be + Full of a million wings that swift and free + Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation. + + Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond + All isles however magically sleeping + In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned + Save by blind eyes; beyond the laughter and weeping + + That brood like a cloud over the lands of men. + Movement, passion of colour and pure wings, + Curving to cut like knives--these are the things + I search for:--passion beyond the ken + + Of our foiled violences, and, more swift + Than any blow which man aims against time, + The invulnerable, motion that shall rift + All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme, + + Or note, or colour. And the body shall be + Quick as the mind; and will shall find release + From bondage to brute things; and joyously + Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace, + + Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted. + And love consummate, marvellously blending + Passion and reverence in a single spring + Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted, + + But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown + The new life with its ageless starry fire. + I go to seek that reef, far down, far down + Below the edge of everyday's desire, + + Beyond the magical islands, where of old + I was content, dreaming, to give the lie + To misery. They were all strong and bold + That thither came; and shall I dare to try? + + + + + WINTER DREAM + + + Oh wind-swept towers, + Oh endlessly blossoming trees, + White clouds and lucid eyes, + And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant + With who knows what of subtlety + And magical curves and limbs-- + White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts + Mother-of-pearled with light. + + And oh the April, April of straight soft hair, + Falling smooth as the mountain water and brown; + The April of little leaves unblinded, + Of rosy nipples and innocence + And the blue languor of weary eyelids. + + Across a huge gulf I fling my voice + And my desires together: + Across a huge gulf ... on the other bank + Crouches April with her hair as smooth and straight and brown + As falling waters. + Oh brave curve upwards and outwards. + Oh despair of the downward tilting-- + Despair still beautiful + As a great star one has watched all night + Wheeling down under the hills. + Silence widens and darkens; + Voice and desires have dropped out of sight. + I am all alone, dreaming she would come and kiss me. + + + + + THE FLOWERS + + + Day after day, + At spring's return, + I watch my flowers, how they burn + Their lives away. + + The candle crocus + And daffodil gold + Drink fire of the sunshine-- + Quickly cold. + + And the proud tulip-- + How red he glows!-- + Is quenched ere summer + Can kindle the rose. + + Purple as the innermost + Core of a sinking flame, + Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder + To the dust whence they came. + + Day after day + At spring's return, + I watch my flowers, how they burn + Their lives away, + Day after day ... + + + + + THE ELMS + + + Fine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing + Across the lanterns of a revelling night, + The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing + Powder the trees--so vaporously light, + They seem to float, billows of emerald foam + Blown by the South on its bright airy tide, + Seeming less trees than things beatified, + Come from the world of thought which was their home. + + For a while only. Rooted strong and fast, + Soon will they lift towards the summer sky + Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery. + Their immaterial season quickly past, + They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die, + Since every earth to earth returns at last. + + + + + OUT OF THE WINDOW + + + In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea, + Are the little places one passes by in trains + And never stops at; where the skies extend + Uninterrupted, and the level plains + Stretch green and yellow and green without an end. + And behind the glass of their Grand Express + Folk yawn away a province through, + With nothing to think of, nothing to do, + Nothing even to look at--never a "view" + In this damned wilderness. + But I look out of the window and find + Much to satisfy the mind. + Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled + In a motion orderly and staid, + Sweep, as we pass, across the field + Like a drilled army on parade. + And here's a market-garden, barred + With stripe on stripe of varied greens ... + Bright potatoes, flower starred, + And the opacous colour of beans. + Each line deliberately swings + Towards me, till I see a straight + Green avenue to the heart of things, + The glimpse of a sudden opened gate + Piercing the adverse walls of fate ... + A moment only, and then, fast, fast, + The gate swings to, the avenue closes; + Fate laughs, and once more interposes + Its barriers. + The train has passed. + + + + + INSPIRATION + + + Noonday upon the Alpine meadows + Pours its avalanche of Light + And blazing flowers: the very shadows + Translucent are and bright. + It seems a glory that nought surpasses-- + Passion of angels in form and hue-- + When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses + Leaps a lightning of sudden blue. + Dimming the sun-drunk petals, + Bright even unto pain, + The grasshopper flashes, settles, + And then is quenched again. + + + + + SUMMER STILLNESS + + + The stars are golden instants in the deep + Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set: + The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep + Seeming so motionless that I forget + The hollow booming bridges, where it slides, + Dark with the sad looks that it bears along, + Towards a sea whose unreturning tides + Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song. + + + + + ANNIVERSARIES + + + Once more the windless days are here, + Quiet of autumn, when the year + Halts and looks backward and draws breath + Before it plunges into death. + Silver of mist and gossamers, + Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold, + Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs + Save one blanched leaf, weary and old, + That over and over slowly falls + From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air + Like tattered flags along the walls + Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer. + Once more ... Within its flawless glass + To-day reflects that other day, + When, under the bracken, on the grass, + We who were lovers happily lay + And hardly spoke, or framed a thought + That was not one with the calm hills + And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought, + Our gusty passions, our burning wills + Dissolved in boundlessness, and we + Were almost bodiless, almost free. + + The wind has shattered silver and gold. + Night after night of sparkling cold, + Orion lifts his tangled feet + From where the tossing branches beat + In a fine surf against the sky. + So the trance ended, and we grew + Restless, we knew not how or why; + And there were sudden gusts that blew + Our dreaming banners into storm; + We wore the uncertain crumbling form + Of a brown swirl of windy leaves, + A phantom shape that stirs and heaves + Shuddering from earth, to fall again + With a dry whisper of withered rain. + + Last, from the dead and shrunken days + We conjured spring, lighting the blaze + Of burnished tulips in the dark; + And from black frost we struck a spark + Of blue delight and fragrance new, + A little world of flowers and dew. + Winter for us was over and done: + The drought of fluttering leaves had grown + Emerald shining in the sun, + As light as glass, as firm as stone. + Real once more: for we had passed + Through passion into thought again; + Shaped our desires and made that fast + Which was before a cloudy pain; + Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined + In a fair statue, strong and free, + Twin bodies flaming into mind, + Poised on the brink of ecstasy. + + + + + ITALY + + + There is a country in my mind, + Lovelier than a poet blind + Could dream of, who had never known + This world of drought and dust and stone + In all its ugliness: a place + Full of an all but human grace; + Whose dells retain the printed form + Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm + From some pure body newly risen; + Where matter is no more a prison, + But freedom for the soul to know + Its native beauty. For things glow + There with an inward truth and are + All fire and colour like a star. + And in that land are domes and towers + That hang as light and bright as flowers + Upon the sky, and seem a birth + Rather of air than solid earth. + + Sometimes I dream that walking there + In the green shade, all unaware + At a new turn of the golden glade, + I shall see her, and as though afraid + Shall halt a moment and almost fall + For passing faintness, like a man + Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan + Brimming his narrow soul with all + The illimitable world. And she, + Turning her head, will let me see + The first sharp dawn of her surprise + Turning to welcome in her eyes. + And I shall come and take my lover + And looking on her re-discover + All her beauty:--her dark hair + And the little ears beneath it, where + Roses of lucid shadow sleep; + Her brooding mouth, and in the deep + Wells of her eyes reflected stars ... + + Oh, the imperishable things + That hands and lips as well as words + Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings, + Oh wheeling galaxies of birds ...! + + + + + THE ALIEN + + + A petal drifted loose + From a great magnolia bloom, + Your face hung in the gloom, + Floating, white and close. + + We seemed alone: but another + Bent o'er you with lips of flame, + Unknown, without a name, + Hated, and yet my brother. + + Your one short moan of pain + Was an exorcising spell: + The devil flew back to hell; + We were alone again. + + + + + A LITTLE MEMORY + + + White in the moonlight, + Wet with dew, + We have known the languor + Of being two. + + We have been weary + As children are, + When over them, radiant, + A stooping star, + + Bends their Good-Night, + Kissed and smiled:-- + Each was mother, + Each was child. + + Child, from your forehead + I kissed the hair, + Gently, ah, gently: + And you were + + Mistress and mother + When on your breast + I lay so safely + And could rest. + + + + + WAKING + + + Darkness had stretched its colour, + Deep blue across the pane: + No cloud to make night duller, + No moon with its tarnish stain; + But only here and there a star, + One sharp point of frosty fire, + Hanging infinitely far + In mockery of our life and death + And all our small desire. + + Now in this hour of waking + From under brows of stone, + A new pale day is breaking + And the deep night is gone. + Sordid now, and mean and small + The daylight world is seen again, + With only the veils of mist that fall + Deaf and muffling over all + To hide its ugliness and pain. + + But to-day this dawn of meanness + Shines in my eyes, as when + The new world's brightness and cleanness + Broke on the first of men. + For the light that shows the huddled things + Of this close-pressing earth, + Shines also on your face and brings + All its dear beauty back to me + In a new miracle of birth. + + I see you asleep and unpassioned, + White-faced in the dusk of your hair-- + Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned + That it filled me once with despair + To look on its exquisite transience + And think that our love and thought and laughter + Puff out with the death of our flickering sense, + While we pass ever on and away + Towards some blank hereafter. + + But now I am happy, knowing + That swift time is our friend, + And that our love's passionate glowing, + Though it turn ash in the end, + Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way + Through temporal stuff, nor else could be + More than a nothing. Into day + The boundless spaces of night contract + And in your opening eyes I see + Night born in day, in time eternity. + + + + + BY THE FIRE + + + We who are lovers sit by the fire, + Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will, + Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs + In the equipoise of all desire, + Sit and listen to the still + Small hiss and whisper of green logs + That burn away, that burn away + With the sound of a far-off falling stream + Of threaded water blown to steam, + Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey. + Vapours blue as distance rise + Between the hissing logs that show + A glimpse of rosy heat below; + And candles watch with tireless eyes + While we sit drowsing here. I know, + Dimly, that there exists a world, + That there is time perhaps, and space + Other and wider than this place, + Where at the fireside drowsily curled + We hear the whisper and watch the flame + Burn blinkless and inscrutable. + And then I know those other names + That through my brain from cell to cell + Echo--reverberated shout + Of waiters mournful along corridors: + But nobody carries the orders out, + And the names (dear friends, your name and yours) + Evoke no sign. But here I sit + On the wide hearth, and there are you: + That is enough and only true. + The world and the friends that lived in it + Are shadows: you alone remain + Real in this drowsing room, + Full of the whispers of distant rain + And candles staring into the gloom. + + + + + VALEDICTORY + + + I had remarked--how sharply one observes + When life is disappearing round the curves + Of yet another corner, out of sight!-- + I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night" + And "a good journey to you," on her face + Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs + Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace + Of clouded thought in those brown eyes, + Always so happily clear of hows and ifs-- + My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys. + + There I stood, holding her farewell hand, + (Pressing my life and soul and all + The world to one good-bye, till, small + And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand + Dead when they vanished with the sight of her). + And I saw that she had grown aware, + Queer puzzled face! of other things + Beyond the present and her own young speed, + Of yesterday and what new days might breed + Monstrously when the future brings + A charger with your late-lamented head: + Aware of other people's lives and will, + Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ... + The joyous hope of it! But still + I pitied her; for it was sad to see + A goddess shorn of her divinity. + In the midst of her speed she had made pause, + And doubts with all their threat of claws, + Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness, + Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. + "Live, only live! For you were meant + Never to know a thought's distress, + But a long glad astonishment + At the world's beauty and your own. + The pity of you, goddess, grown + Perplexed and mortal." + Yet ... yet ... can it be + That she is aware, perhaps, even of me? + + And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare, + My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air; + And the question rumbles in the void: + Was she aware, was she after all aware? + + + + + LOVE SONG + + + Dear absurd child--too dear to my cost I've found-- + God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: + It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, + Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound + Full upon life, and on the rind of things + Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore + And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings, + Content with that, nor wishes anything more. + + A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice + Of peaches that flush bloody at the core, + Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore, + While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose. + + The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round + With the song of wheeling planetary rings: + You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings + Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound. + + You taste and smile, then this for the next pass over; + And there's no future for you and no past, + And when, absurdly, death arrives at last, + 'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover. + + + + + PRIVATE PROPERTY + + + All fly--yet who is misanthrope?-- + The actual men and things that pass + Jostling, to wither as the grass + So soon: and (be it heaven's hope, + Or poetry's kaleidoscope, + Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) + Each owns a paradise of glass + Where never a yearning heliotrope + Pursues the sun's ascent or slope; + For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was. + + Like fauns embossed in our domain, + We look abroad, and our calm eyes + Mark how the goatish gods of pain + Revel; and if by grim surprise + They break into our paradise, + Patient we build its beauty up again. + + + + + REVELATION + + + At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, + I taste a strange apocalypse: + Your subtle taper finger-tips + Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, + I know the wiles and each iynx + That brought me passionate to your lips: + I know you bare as laughter strips + Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks + + Pure knowledge from this tainted well, + And now hears voices yet unheard + Within it, and without it sees + That world of which the poets tell + Their vision in the stammered word + Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies. + + + + + MINOAN PORCELAIN + + + Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze + All imperturbable do not + Even make pretences to regard + The justing absence of her stays, + Where many a Tyrian gallipot + Excites desire with spilth of nard. + The bistred rims above the fard + Of cheeks as red as bergamot + Attest that no shamefaced delays + Will clog fulfilment, nor retard + Full payment of the Cyprian's praise + Down to the last remorseful jot. + Hail priestess of we know not what + Strange cult of Mycenean days! + + + + + THE DECAMERON + + + Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the trees + Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: + Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits + Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine + Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: + Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots, + Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots + Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline. + + Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry, + Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound; + Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly, + Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground + Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found + Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die. + + + + + IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY + + + I am not one of those who sip, + Like a quotidian bock, + Cheap idylls from a languid lip + Prepared to yawn or mock. + + I wait the indubitable word, + The great Unconscious Cue. + Has it been spoken and unheard? + Spoken, perhaps, by you ...? + + + + + CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION + + (To J.S.) + + + Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine + Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine + Stands firmly solid in the glasses, + Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes + The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light. + The fruits metallically gleam, + Globey in their heaped-up bowl, + And there are faces against the night + Of the outer room--faces that seem + Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul. + + And amongst these frozen faces you smiled, + Surprised, surprisingly, like a child: + And out of the frozen welter of sound + Your voice came quietly, quietly. + "What about God?" you said. "I have found + Much to be said for Totality. + All, I take it, is God: God's all-- + This bottle, for instance ..." I recall, + Dimly, that you took God by the neck-- + God-in-the-bottle--and pushed Him across: + But I, without a moment's loss + Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!" + + + + + THE LIFE THEORETIC + + + While I have been fumbling over books + And thinking about God and the Devil and all, + Other young men have been battling with the days + And others have been kissing the beautiful women. + They have brazen faces like battering-rams. + But I who think about books and such-- + I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling, + And the women palsy me with fear. + But when it comes to fumbling over books + And thinking about God and the Devil and all, + Why, there I am. + But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it, + Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows. + + + + + COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUE + + + We judge by appearance merely: + If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly. + So I grew the hair so long on my head + That my mother wouldn't know me, + Till a woman in a night-club said, + As I was passing by, + "Hullo, here comes Salome ..." + + I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass, + And, oh Salome; there I was-- + Positively jewelled, half a vampire, + With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily + Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire + Over the brink of the crag of sense, + Looking down from perilous eminence + Into a gulf of windy night. + And there's straw in my tempestuous hair, + And I'm not a poet: but never despair! + I'll madly live the poems I shall never write. + + + + + SOCIAL AMENITIES + + + I am getting on well with this anecdote, + When suddenly I recall + The many times I have told it of old, + And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall + Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note + Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck-- + The whole thing sticks in my throat, + And my face all tingles and pricks with shame + For myself and my hearers. + These are the social pleasures, my God! + But I finish the story triumphantly all the same. + + + + + TOPIARY + + + Failing sometimes to understand + Why there are folk whose flesh should seem + Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, + Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, + Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; + Why there are men without any legs, + Whizzing along on little trollies + With long long arms like apes': + Failing to see why God the Topiarist + Should train and carve and twist + Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: + Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish + That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, + Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, + Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish. + + + + + ON THE BUS + + + Sitting on the top of the 'bus, + I bite my pipe and look at the sky. + Over my shoulder the smoke streams out + And my life with it. + "Conservation of energy," you say. + But I burn, I tell you, I burn; + And the smoke of me streams out + In a vanishing skein of grey. + Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! + I am a harp of twittering strings, + An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, + And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident. + Droll phenomena! + + + + + POINTS AND LINES + + + Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, + Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed + Baffles even the grasp of time. + Oh that I might reflect them + As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. + But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, + And the stars are mirrored across me; + Those stabbing points of the sky + Turned to a thread of shaken silver, + A long fine thread. + + + + + PANIC + + + The eyes of the portraits on the wall + Look at me, follow me, + Stare incessantly: + I take it their glance means nothing at all? + --Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ... + + Out in the gardens by the lake + The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; + Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, + Each of them sounds his mournful horn: + Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. + What can have made the peacocks wake? + + + + + RETURN FROM BUSINESS + + + Evenings in trains, + When the little black twittering ghosts + Along the brims of cuttings, + Against the luminous sky, + Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought + Save that one is young and setting, + Headlong westering, + And there is no recapture. + + + + + STANZAS + + + Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind + Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: + Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind + New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: + And action bears us onward like a stream + Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course; + Glorious--and yet its headlong currents seem + Backwaters of some nobler purer force. + + There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought, + That stoop to carry the grace of a girl's breast; + And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought + In airy metal, that they seem possessed + Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift + The shoulder of a goddess towards the light; + And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift, + Piercing the spirit deeply with delight. + + Would I might make these miracles my own! + Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form, + Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone, + Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm + On noonday flowers, speaking the song of birds + Among the branches, whispering the fall of rain, + Beyond all thought, past action and past words, + I would live in beauty, free from self and pain. + + + + + POEM + + + Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; + And magic words lay ripening in my soul + Till their much-whispered music turned a wine + Whose subtlest power was all in my control. + + These things were mine, and they were real for me + As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast: + For I could love a phrase, a melody, + Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed. + + I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes + Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid; + Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise + Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed. + + But a time came when, turning full of hate + And weariness from my remembered themes, + I wished my poet's pipe could modulate + Beauty more palpable than words and dreams. + + All loveliness with which an act informs + The dim uncertain chaos of desire + Is mine to-day; it touches me, it warms + Body and spirit with its outward fire. + + I am mine no more: I have become a part + Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs + To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart + Were still a winter of frosty gossamers. + + + + + SCENES OF THE MIND + + + I have run where festival was loud + With drum and brass among the crowd + Of panic revellers, whose cries + Affront the quiet of the skies; + Whose dancing lights contract the deep + Infinity of night and sleep + To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. + And I have found my heart's desire + In beechen caverns that autumn fills + With the blue shadowiness of distant hills; + Whose luminous grey pillars bear + The stooping sky: calm is the air, + Nor any sound is heard to mar + That crystal silence--as from far, + Far off a man may see + The busy world all utterly + Hushed as an old memorial scene. + Long evenings I have sat and been + Strangely content, while in my hands + I held a wealth of coloured strands, + Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins + Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains + New life at the lamp's round pool of gold; + Each sinks again when I withhold + The quickening radiance, to a wan + And shadowy oblivion + Of what it was. And in my mind + Beauty or sudden love has shined + And wakened colour in what was dead + And turned to gold the sullen lead + Of mean desires and everyday's + Poor thoughts and customary ways. + Sometimes in lands where mountains throw + Their silent spell on all below, + Drawing a magic circle wide + About their feet on every side, + Robbed of all speech and thought and act, + I have seen God in the cataract. + In falling water and in flame, + Never at rest, yet still the same, + God shows himself. And I have known + The swift fire frozen into stone, + And water frozen changelessly + Into the death of gems. And I + Long sitting by the thunderous mill + Have seen the headlong wheel made still, + And in the silence that ensued + Have known the endless solitude + Of being dead and utterly nought. + Inhabitant of mine own thought, + I look abroad, and all I see + Is my creation, made for me: + Along my thread of life are pearled + The moments that make up the world. + + + + + L'APRES-MIDI D'UN FAUNE + + (From the French of Stephane Mallarme.) + + + I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright + Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, + It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? + My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem + A subtle tracery of branches grown + The tree's true self--proving that I have known + No triumph, but the shadow of a rose. + But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose + They bodied forth your senses' fabulous thirst? + Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, + As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, + Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, + Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? + No, through this quiet, when a weary swoon + Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay + Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, + There is no murmuring water, save the gush + Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush + Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed + Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed + Upon the air, with that calm breath of art + That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, + Where inspiration seeks its native sky. + You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, + The sun's own mirror which I love to take, + Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell + _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well + Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold + Of distant lawns about their fountain cold + A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave; + And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave + These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly + Or dive._ Noon burns inert and tawny dry, + Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away + From me who seek in song the real A. + Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight, + O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, + With, lilies, one of you for innocence. + Other than their lips' delicate pretence, + The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, + My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers + The bitten print of some immortal's kiss. + But hush! a mystery so great as this + I dare not tell, save to my double reed, + Which, sharer of my every joy and need, + Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we + Falsely confuse the beauties that we see + With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: + My flute, as loud as passion modulates, + Purges the common dream of flank and breast, + Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, + Of every empty and monotonous line. + + Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, + A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. + Proud of my music, let me often make + A song of goddesses and see their rape + Profanely done on many a painted shape. + So when the grape's transparent juice I drain, + I quell regret for pleasures past and feign + A new real grape. For holding towards the sky + The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie + Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. + Tell o'er + Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. + _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam + Who cool no mortal fever in the stream + Crying to the woods the rage of their desire: + And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire + Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly. + I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie, + Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet, + Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet. + I seize and run with them, nor part the pair, + Breaking this covert of frail petals, where + Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play + 'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ + I love that virginal fury--ah, the wild + Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, + Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear + Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! + Contagiously through my linked pair it flies + Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, + Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. + _Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew + So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide + Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. + For as I leaned to stifle in the hair + Of one my passionate laughter (taking care + With a stretched finger, that her innocence + Might stain with her companion's kindling sense + To touch the younger little one, who lay + Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey + Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death, + Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._ + + Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist + A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. + See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red + To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; + So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, + Flows for the swarming legions of desire. + At evening, when the woodland green turns gold + And ashen grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold! + Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, + Walking the lava with her snowy tread + Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die. + I hold the goddess! + Ah, sure penalty! + + But the unthinking soul and body swoon + At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. + Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth + Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth + Dream planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star. + + Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are. + + + + + THE LOUSE-HUNTERS + + (From the French of Rimbaud). + + + When the child's forehead, full of torments red, + Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams, + His two big sisters come unto his bed, + Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams. + + They set him at a casement, open wide + On seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs, + And through his curls, all wet with dew, they slide + Those terrible searching finger-tips of theirs. + + He hears them breathing, softly, fearfully, + Honey-sweet ruminations, slow respired: + Then a sharp hiss breaks time and melody-- + Spittle indrawn, old kisses new-desired. + + Down through the perfumed silences he hears + Their eyelids fluttering: long fingers thrill, + Probing a lassitude bedimmed with tears, + While the nails crunch at every louse they kill. + + He is drunk with Languor--soft accordion-sigh, + Delirious wine of Love in Idleness; + Longings for tears come welling up and die, + As slow or swift he feels their magical caress. + + + + + B. H. Blackwell, + Oxford. + + + + + THIS THIRD OF THE INITIATES SERIES OF + POETRY BY PROVED HANDS, WAS PRINTED + IN OXFORD AT THE VINCENT WORKS, + AND FINISHED IN JUNE, MCMXVIII. + + PUBLISHED BY B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD + STREET, OXFORD, AND SOLD IN AMERICA + BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK. + + + + + INITIATES + A SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS + UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE ART, BOARDS, THREE SHILLINGS + NET. + + + _NOW READY_ + + I. IN THE VALLEY OF VISION + BY GEOFFREY FABER, AUTHOR OF "INTERFLOW." + + II. SONNETS AND POEMS + BY ELEANOR FARJEON, AUTHOR OF "NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN." + + III. THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, AND OTHER POEMS + BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL." + + _IN PREPARATION_ + + IV. SONGS FOR SALE + AN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE, EDITED BY E. B. C. JONES FROM BOOKS ISSUED + RECENTLY BY B. H. BLACKWELL. + + V. CLOWNS' HOUSES + BY EDITH SITWELL, EDITOR OF "WHEELS." + + + + + THE SHELDONIAN SERIES OF REPRINTS AND RENDERINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN ALL + LANGUAGES EDITED BY REGINALD HEWITT, M.A. + + + _FIRST THREE BOOKS_ + + I. SONGS AND SAYINGS OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, MINNESAENGER + ENGLISHED BY FRANK BETTS. + + II. THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES + ENGLISHED BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY. + + III. BALLADES OF FRANCOIS VILLON + INTERPRETED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY PAUL HOOKHAM. + + ¶ The series is limited in the case of each volume to an edition + of five hundred copies on hand-made paper, printed in two + colours in Dolphin old style type, and published at two shillings + and sixpence net. + + + OXFORD + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST. + + + + + ADVENTURERS ALL + A SERIES OF YOUNG POETS UNKNOWN TO FAME + UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE IN ART WRAPPERS + TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET EACH. + + + ¶ "Beautiful little books ... containing poetry, real poetry."-- + _The New Witness._ + + I., II., III. and IV. [_Out of print._] + + V. THE IRON AGE + BY FRANK BETTS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILBERT MURRAY. + + VI. THE TWO WORLDS + BY SHERARD VINES. + + VII. THE BURNING WHEEL + BY A. L. HUXLEY. + + VIII. A VAGABOND'S WALLET + BY STEPHEN REID-HEYMAN. + + IX. OP. I. + BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS. [_Out of print._] + + X. LYRICAL POEMS + BY DOROTHY PLOWMAN. + + XI. THE WITCHES' SABBATH + BY E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN. + + XII. A SCALLOP SHELL OF QUIET + POEMS BY FOUR WOMEN. INTRODUCED BY MARGARET L. WOODS. + + XIII. AT A VENTURE + POEMS BY EIGHT YOUNG WRITERS. + + XIV. ALDEBARAN + BY M. ST. CLARE BYRNE. + + XV. LIADAIN AND CURITHIR + BY MOIREEN FOX. + + XVI. LINNETS IN THE SLUMS + BY MARION PRYCE. + + XVII. OUT OF THE EAST + BY VERA AND MARGARET LARMINIE. + + XVIII. DUNCH + BY SUSAN MILES. + + XIX. DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS + BY ELEANOR HILL. + + XX. CARGO + BY S. BARRINGTON GATES. + + XXI. DREAMS AND JOURNEYS + BY FREDEGOND SHOVE. + + XXII. THE PEOPLE'S PALACE + BY SACHEVERELL SITWELL. + + XXIII. GALLEYS LADEN + POEMS BY FOUR WRITERS. + + + OXFORD + B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, by +Aldous Huxley + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEFEAT OF YOUTH *** + +***** This file should be named 24364.txt or 24364.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/3/6/24364/ + +Produced by Tamise Totterdell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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