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diff --git a/24364-h/24364-h.htm b/24364-h/24364-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d55a623 --- /dev/null +++ b/24364-h/24364-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2374 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems, by Aldous Huxley + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em;} + + h1 {font-size: 160%; + width: 70%; + text-align: justify;} + + h2.end {font-size: 120%; + width: 70%; + text-align: justify;} + + div.ads {width: 70%;} + + p.end {width: 70%;} + + ol {list-style-type: upper-roman; + padding-left: 2%;} + + h2 {margin-top: 5em;} + + table {width: 65%;} + + body {margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 10%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + right: 2%; + font-size: 80%; + text-align: right; + color: #5a5a5a;} + + .smaller {font-size: 80%;} + + .big {font-size: 110%; + font-weight: bold;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + + .spaced {margin-top: 5em;} + + p.poem {clear: both;} + + .poem1 {margin-left: 10em;} + + .poem2 {margin-left: 13em;} + + .floatl {float: left; + padding-right: .2em; + padding-top: .25em;} + + .smcap {text-transform: uppercase;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Defeat of Youth and Other Peoms, 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 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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