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diff --git a/40344.txt b/40344.txt deleted file mode 100644 index c621d5c..0000000 --- a/40344.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2495 +0,0 @@ - POEMS - - - - -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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - - -Title: Poems - 1916-1918 - -Author: Francis Brett Young - -Release Date: July 26, 2012 [EBook #40344] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines. - - - - -[Illustration: Cover] - - - - - POEMS - - 1916-1918 - - - BY - - FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG - - - - - LONDON: 48 PALL MALL - W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. - GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND - - - - - Copyright 1919 - - - - BY THE SAME AUTHOR - -_Novels:_ - - THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN - THE CRESCENT MOON - THE IRON AGE - THE DARK TOWER - DEEP SEA - UNDERGROWTH (with E. Brett Young) - - -_Poems:_ - - FIVE DEGREES SOUTH - - -_Belles Lettres:_ - - ROBERT BRIDGES: A Critical Study - MARCHING ON TANGA - - - - - TO - EDYTH GOODALL - - -_Remember thus our sweet conspiracy: -That I, having dreamed a lovely thing, with dull -Words marred it--and you gave it back to me -A thousand, thousand times more beautiful._ - - - - - ERRATA - -Page 26, line 17, _for_ "Lybian" _read_ "Libyan." -Page 46, line 9, _for_ "lythe" _read_ "lithe." -Page 70, line 13, _for_ "tyrranous" _read_ "tyrannous." - - -[Transcriber's note: the above errata have been applied to this etext. -The word "Lybia" was also on page 32, and was corrected as above. -Similarly, "tyrranous" was also on page 86, and was corrected.] - - - - - CONTENTS - - -PROTHALAMION -TESTAMENT -LOCHANILAUN -LETTERMORE -LAMENT -THE LEMON-TREE -PHTHONOS -EASTER -THE LEANING ELM -THE JOYOUS LOVER -DEAD POETS -PORTON WATER -AN OLD HOUSE -THE DHOWS -THE GIFT -FIVE DEGREES SOUTH -104 deg. FAHRENHEIT -FEVER-TREES -THE RAIN-BIRD -MOTHS -BETE HUMAINE -DOVES -SONG (i) -BEFORE ACTION -ON A SUBALTERN KILLED IN ACTION -AFTER ACTION -SONNET -A FAREWELL TO AFRICA -SONG (ii) -THE HAWTHORN SPRAY -THE PAVEMENT -TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (i) -TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (ii) -TO LYDIA LOPOKOVA (iii) -GHOSTLY LOVES -FEBRUARY -SONG OF THE DARK AGES -WINTER SUNSET -SONG (iii) -ENGLAND, APRIL 1918 -SLENDER THEMES -INVOCATION -THAMAR -ENVOI - - - - -PROTHALAMION - - - When the evening came my love said to me: - Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool, - The garden of black hellebore and rosemary, - Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool. - - Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat - Of day had waned, and round that shaded plot - Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet: - Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not. - - Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam - Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise - With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome, - So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies - - Veiled with soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk - Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove; - No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk - I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with love. - - No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon - Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: - Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June, - The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers. - - For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now - Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers, - Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough-- - Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers? - - Was ever a moment meeter made for love? - Beautiful are your closed lips beneath my kiss; - And all your yielding sweetness beautiful-- - Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this! - - - - -TESTAMENT - - - If I had died, and never seen the dawn - For which I hardly hoped, lighting this lawn - Of silvery grasses; if there had been no light, - And last night merged into perpetual night; - I doubt if I should ever have been content - To have closed my eyes without some testament - To the great benefits that marked my faring - Through the sweet world; for all my joy was sharing - And lonely pleasures were few. Unto which end - Three legacies I'll send, - Three legacies, already half possess'd: - One to a friend, of all good friends the best, - Better than which is nothing; yet another - Unto thy twin, dissimilar spirit, Brother; - The third to you, - Most beautiful, most true, - Most perfect one, to whom they all are due. - - Quick, quick ... while there is time.... - O best of friends, I leave you one sublime - Summer, one fadeless summer. 'Twas begun - Ere Cotswold hawthorn tarnished in the sun, - When hedges were fledged with green, and early swallows - Swift-darting, on curved wings, pillaged the fallows; - When all our vale was dappled blossom and light, - And oh, the scent of beanfields in the night! - You shall remember that rich dust at even - Which made old Evesham like a street in heaven, - Gold-paved, and washed within a wave of golden - Air all her dreamy towers and gables olden. - You shall remember - How arms sun-blistered, hot palms crack'd with rowing, - Clove the cool water of Avon, sweetly flowing; - And how our bodies, beautifully white, - Stretch'd to a long stroke lengthened in green light, - And we, emerging, laughed in childish wise, - And pressed the kissing water from our eyes. - Ah, was our laughter childish, or were we wise? - And then, crown of the day, a tired returning - With happy sunsets over Bredon burning, - With music and with moonlight, and good ale, - And no thought for the morrow.... Heavy phlox - Our garden pathways bordered, and evening stocks, - Those humble weeds, in sunlight withered and pale, - With a night scent to match the nightingale, - Gladdened with spiced sweetness sweet night's shadows, - Meeting the breath of hay from mowing meadows: - As humble was our joy, and as intense - Our rapture. So, before I hurry hence, - Yours be the memory. - One night again, - When we were men, and had striven, and known pain, - By a dark canal debating, unresigned, - On the blind fate that shadows humankind, - On the blind sword that severs human love... - Then did the hidden belfry from above - On troubled minds in benediction shed - The patience of the great anonymous dead - Who reared those towers, those high cathedrals builded - In solemn stone, and with clear fancy gilded - A beauty beyond ours, trusting in God. - Then dared we follow the dark way they trod, - And bowing to the universal plan - Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man. - - And you, my Brother, - You know, as knows one other, - How my spirit revisiteth a room - In a high wing, beneath pine-trees, where gloom - Dwelleth, dispelled by resinous wood embers, - Where, in half-darkness ... How the heart remembers... - We talked of beauty, and those fiery things - To which the divine desirous spirit clings, - In a wing'd rapture to that heaven flinging, - Where beauty is an easy thing, and singing - The natural speech of man. Like kissing swords - Our wits clashed there; the brittle beauty of words - Breaking, seemed to discover its secret heart - And all the rapt elusiveness of Art. - Now I have known sorrow, and now I sing - That a lovely word is not an idle thing; - For as with stars the cloth of night is spangled, - With star-like words, most lovelily entangled, - The woof of sombre thought is deckt.... Ah, bright - And cold they glitter in the spirit's night! - But neither distant nor dispassionate; - For beauty is an armour against fate.... - I tell you, who have stood in the dark alone. - Seeing the face that turneth all to stone, - Medusa, blind with hate, - While I was dying, Beauty sate with me - Nor tortured any longer; gracious was she; - To her soft words I listened, and was content - To die, nor sorry that my light was spent. - So, Brother, if I come not home, - Go to that little room - That my spirit revisiteth, and there, - Somewhere in the blue air, you shall discover - If that you be a lover - Nor haughtily minded, all that once half-shaped - Then fled us, and escaped: - All that I found that day, - Far, so far away. - - And you, my lovely one, - What can I leave to you, who, you having left, - Am utterly bereft? - What in my store of visionary dowers - Is not already yours? - What silences, what hours - Of peace passing all understanding; days - Made lyric by your beauty and its praise; - Years neither time can tarnish, nor death mar, - Wherein you shined as steadfast as a star - In my bleak night, heedless of the cloud-wrack - Scudding in torn fleeces black - Of my dark moods, as those who rule the far - Star-haunted pleasaunces of heaven are? - So think but lightly of that afternoon - With white clouds climbing a blue sky in June - When a boy worshipped under dreaming trees, - Who touched your hand, and sought your eyes. - ... Ah, cease, - Not these, not these... - Nor yet those nights when icy Brathay thundered - Under his bridges, and ghostly mountains wondered - At the white blossoming of a Christmas rose - More stainless than their snows; - Nor even of those placid days together - Mellow as early autumn's amber weather - When beech is ankleted with fire, and old - Elms wear their livery of yellow gold, - When orchards all are laden with increase, - And the quiet earth hath fruited, and knows peace - Oh, think not overmuch on those sweet years - Lest their last fruit be tears,-- - Your tears, beloved, that were my utmost pain,-- - But rather, dream again - How that a lover, half poet and half child, - An eager spirit of fragile fancies wild - Compact, adored the beauty and truth in you: - To your own truth be true; - And when, not mournfully, you turn this page - Consider still your starry heritage, - Continue in your loveliness, a star - To gladden me from afar - Even where there is no light - In my last night. - - - - -LOCHANILAUN - - - This is the image of my last content: - My soul shall be a little lonely lake, - So hidden that no shadow of man may break - The folding of its mountain battlement; - Only the beautiful and innocent - Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake - Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake - Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent. - For there shall be no terror in the night - When stars that I have loved are born in me, - And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair; - But this shall be the end of my delight: - That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see - Your image in the mirrored beauty there. - - - - -LETTERMORE - - - These winter days on Lettermore - The brown west wind it sweeps the bay, - And icy rain beats on the bare - Unhomely fields that perish there: - The stony fields of Lettermore - That drink the white Atlantic spray. - - And men who starve on Lettermore, - Cursing the haggard, hungry surf, - Will souse the autumn's bruised grains - To light dark fires within their brains - And fight with stones on Lettermore - Or sprawl beside the smoky turf. - - When spring blows over Lettermore - To bloom the ragged furze with gold, - The lovely south wind's living breath - Is laden with the smell of death: - For fever breeds on Lettermore - To waste the eyes of young and old. - - A black van comes to Lettermore; - The horses stumble on the stones, - The drivers curse,--for it is hard - To cross the hills from Oughterard - And cart the sick from Lettermore: - A stinking load of rags and bones. - - But you will go to Lettermore - When white sea-trout are on the run, - When purple glows between the rocks - About Lord Dudley's fishing-box - Adown the road to Lettermore, - And wide seas tarnish in the sun. - - And so you'll think of Lettermore - As a lost island of the blest: - With peasant lovers in a blue - Dim dusk, with heather drench'd in dew, - And the sweet peace of Lettermore - Remote and dreaming in the West. - - - - -LAMENT - - - Once, I think, a finer fire - Touched my lips, and then I sang - Half the songs of my desire: - With their splendour the world rang. - - And their sweetness made me free - Of those starry ways whereby - Planets make their minstrelsy - In echoing, unending sky. - - So, before that spell was broken, - Song of the wind, surge of the sea,-- - Beautiful passionate things unspoken - Rose like a breaking wave in me: - - Rose like a wave with curled crest - That green sunlight splinters through... - But the wave broke within my breast: - And now I am a man like you. - - - - -THE LEMON-TREE - - - Last night, last night, a vision of you - Sweetly troubled my waking dream: - Beneath the clear Algerian blue - You stood with lifted eyes: the beam - Of a winter sun beat on the crown - Of a lemon-tree, whose delicate fruit - Like pale lamps hung airily down; - And in your gazing eyes a mute - And lovely wonder.... Have I sung - Of slender things and naught beside? - You were so beautifully young - I must have kissed you or have died. - - - - -PHTHONOS - -If, in high jealousy, God made me blind -And laughed to see me stumble in the night, -Driving his many-splintered arrows of light -Into that lost dominion of my mind; -Then, knowing me still unvext and unresigned, -Stole from my ears all homely sounds that might -Temper the darkness, saying, in heaven's despite, -I had not wholly left the world behind; -So, sunless, soundless, if, to make an end, -He smote the nerves that move, the nerves that feel: -Even then, O jealous one, I would not complain -If I were spared the wealth I cannot spend, -If I were left the treasure none can steal: -The lovely words that wander through my brain. - - - - -EASTER - - - Adown our lane at Eastertide - Hosts of dancing bluebells lay - In pools of light: and 'Oh,' you cried, - 'Look, look at them: I think that they - Are bluer than the laughing sea,' - And 'Look!' you cried, 'a piece of the sky - Has fallen down for you and me - To gaze upon and love.' ... And I, - Seeing in your eyes the dancing blue - And in your heart the innocent birth - Of a pure delight, I knew, I knew - That heaven had fallen upon earth. - - - - -THE LEANING ELM - - - Before my window, in days of winter hoar - Huddled a mournful wood: - Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore, - In stony sleep they stood: - But you, unhappy elm, the angry west - Had chosen from the rest, - Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare, - And left you leaning there - So dead that when the breath of winter cast - Wild snow upon the blast, - The other living branches, downward bowed, - Shook free their crystal shroud - And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath, - Their livery of death.... - - On windless nights between the beechen bars - I watched cold stars - Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily - Wondered if any life lay locked in thee: - If still the hidden sap secretly moved, - As water in the icy winterbourne - Floweth unheard; - And half I pitied you your trance forlorn: - You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird, - The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight - Or cool voices of owls crying by night.... - Hunting by night under the horned moon: - Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon, - Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen - Steals from his misty prison; - - The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken - In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken: - And lo, your ravaged bole, beyond belief - Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf - As pale as those twin vanes that break at last - In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast - Where no blade springeth green - But pallid bells of the shy helleborine. - What is this ecstasy that overwhelms - The dreaming earth? See, the embrowned elms - Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the wood; - A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown, - His white clouds dapple the down; - Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand; - Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the land.... - - There is no day for thee, my soul, like this, - No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss - Of mortal love that maketh man divine - This light cannot outshine: - Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch - The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match - This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull - Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; - But we, alas, are not more beautiful: - We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. - We sing, our mused words are sped, and then - Poets are only men - Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree - May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be. - - - - -THE JOYOUS LOVER - - - O, now that I am free as the air - And fleet as clouds above, - I will wander everywhere - Over the ways I love. - - Lightly, lightly will I pass - Nor scatter as I go - A shadow on the blowing grass - Or a footprint in the snow. - - All the wild things of the wood - That once were timid and shy - They shall not flee their solitude - For fear, when I pass by; - - And beauty, beauty, the wide world over, - Shall blush when I draw near: - She knows her lover, the joyous lover, - And greets him without fear. - - But if I come to the dark room - From which our love hath fled - And bend above you in the gloom - Or kneel beside your bed, - - Smile soft in your sleep, my beautiful one, - For if you should say 'Nay' - To the dream which visiteth you alone, - My joy would wither away. - - - - -DEAD POETS - - - -ODE WRITTEN AT WILTON HOUSE - - - Last night, amazed, I trod on holy ground - Breathing an air that ancient poets knew, - Where, in a valley compassed with sweet sound, - Beneath a garden's alley'd shades of yew, - With eager feet passed that singer sweet - Who Stella loved, whom bloody Zutphen slew - In the starred zenith of his knightly fame. - There too a dark-stoled figure I did meet: - Herbert, whose faith burned true - And steadfast as the altar candle's flame. - - Under the Wilton cedars, pondering - Upon the pains of Beauty and the wrong - That sealeth lovely lips, fated to sing, - Before they reach the cadence of their song, - I mused upon dead poets: mighty ones - Who sang and suffered: briefly heard were they - As Libyan nightingales weary of wing - Fleeing the temper of Saharan suns - To gladden our moon'd May, - And with the broken blossom vanishing. - - So to my eyes a sorrowful vision came - Of one whose name was writ in water: bright - His cheeks and eyes burned with a hectic flame; - And one, alas! I saw whose passionate might - Was spent upon a fevered fen in Greece; - One shade there was who, starving, choked with bread; - One, a drown'd corpse, through stormy water slips; - One in the numbing poppy-juice found peace; - And one, a youth, lay dead - With powdered arsenic upon his lips. - - O bitter were the sorrow that could dull - The sombre music of slow evening - Here, where the old world is so beautiful - That even lesser lips are moved to sing - How the wide heron sails into the light - Black as the cedarn shadows on the lawns - Or stricken woodlands patient in decay, - And river water murmurs through the night - Until autumnal dawns - Burn in the glass of Nadder's watery way. - - Nay, these were they by whom the world was lost, - To whom the world most richly gave: forlorn - Beauty they worshipp'd, counting not the cost - If of their torment beauty might be born; - And life, the splendid flower of their delight, - Loving too eagerly, they broke, and spill'd - The perfume that the folded petals close - Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white - From that bruised bloom distill'd - Uttermost attar of the living rose. - - Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn - You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways - Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn, - Hatred, and desolation in her praise.... - Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled, - As brooding night with heavy downward wing - Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone, - On the dark woodlands and the waters wild - And every living thing-- - Leaving me there amazed and alone. - - - - -PORTON WATER - - - Through Porton village, under the bridge, - A clear bourne floweth, with grasses trailing, - Wherein are shadows of white clouds sailing, - And elms that shelter under the ridge. - - Through Porton village we passed one day, - Marching the plain for mile on mile, - And crossed the bridge in single file, - Happily singing, and marched away - - Over the bridge where the shallow races, - Under a clear and frosty sky: - And the winterbourne, as we marched by, - Mirrored a thousand laughing faces. - - O, do we trouble you, Porton river, - We who laughing passed, and after - Found a resting-place for laughter? - Over here, where the poplars shiver - - By stagnant waters, we lie rotten. - On windless nights, in the lonely places, - There, where the winter water races, - O, Porton river, are we forgotten? - - Through Porton village, under the bridge, - The clear bourne floweth with grasses trailing, - Wherein are shadows of light cloud sailing, - And elms that shelter under the ridge. - - The pale moon she comes and looks; - Over the lonely spire she climbs; - For there she is lovelier many times - Than in the little broken brooks. - - - - -AN OLD HOUSE - - - No one lives in the old house; long ago - The voices of men and women left it lonely. - They shuttered the sightless windows in a row, - Imprisoning empty darkness--darkness only. - - Beyond the garden-closes, with sudden thunder - The lumbering troop-train passing clanks and jangles; - And I, a stranger, peer with careless wonder - Into the thickets of the garden tangles. - - Yet, as I pass, a transient vision dawns - Ghostly upon my pondering spirit's gloom, - Of grey lavender bushes and weedy lawns - And a solitary cherry-tree in bloom.... - - No one lives in the old house: year by year - The plaster crumbles on the lonely walls: - The apple falls in the lush grass; the pear, - Pulpy with ripeness, on the pathway falls. - - Yet this the garden was, where, on spring nights - Under the cherry-blossom, lovers plighted - Have wondered at the moony billows white, - Dreaming uncountable springs by love delighted; - - Whose ears have heard the blackbird's jolly whistle, - The shadowy cries of bats in twilight flitting - Zigzag beneath the eaves; or, on the thistle, - The twitter of autumn birds swinging and sitting; - - Whose eyes, on winter evenings, slow returning - Saw on the frosted paths pale lamplight fall - Streaming, or, on the hearth, red embers burning, - And shadows of children playing in the hall. - - Where have they gone, lovers of another day? - (No one lives in the old house; long ago - They shuttered the sightless windows....) Where are they, - Whose eyes delighted in this moony snow? - - I cannot tell ... and little enough they care, - Though April spray the cherry-boughs with light, - And autumn pile her harvest unaware - Under the walls that echoed their delight. - - I cannot tell ... yet I am as those lovers; - For me, who pass on my predestinate way, - The prodigal blossom billows and recovers - In ghostly gardens a hundred miles away. - - Yet, in my heart, a melancholy rapture - Tells me that eyes, which now an iron haste - Hurries to iron days, may here recapture - A vision of ancient loveliness gone to waste. - - - - -THE DHOWS - - - South of Guardafui with a dark tide flowing - We hailed two ships with tattered canvas bent to the monsoon, - Hung betwixt the outer sea and pale surf showing - Where dead cities of Libya lay bleaching in the moon. - - 'Oh whither be ye sailing with torn sails broken?' - 'We sail, we sail for Sheba, at Suliman's behest, - With carven silver phalli for the ebony maids of Ophir - From brown-skinned baharias of Arabia the Blest.' - - 'Oh whither be ye sailing, with your dark flag flying?' - 'We sail, with creaking cedar, towards the Northern Star. - The helmsman singeth wearily, and in our hold are lying - A hundred slaves in shackles from the marts of Zanzibar.' - - 'Oh whither be ye sailing...?' - 'Alas, we sail no longer: - Our hulls are wrack, our sails are dust, as any man might know. - And why should you torment us? ... Your iron keels are stronger - Than ghostly ships that sailed from Tyre a thousand years ago.' - - - - -THE GIFT - - - Marching on Tanga, marching the parch'd plain - Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River, - England came to me--me who had always ta'en - But never given before--England, the giver, - In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver - On still evenings of summer, after rain, - By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver - When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. - Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain, - And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake - Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: - In that I count these sufferings my gain - And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain - Suffer as many more for her sweet sake. - - - - -FIVE DEGREES SOUTH - - - I love all waves and lovely water in motion, - That wavering iris in comb of the blown spray: - Iris of tumbled nautilus in the wake's commotion, - Their spread sails dipped in a marmoreal way - Unquarried, wherein are greeny bubbles blowing - Plumes of faint spray, cool in the deep - And lucent seas, that pause not in their flowing - To lap the southern starlight while they sleep. - These I have seen, these I have loved and known: - I have seen Jupiter, that great star, swinging - Like a ship's lantern, silent and alone - Within his sea of sky, and heard the singing - Of the south trade, that siren of the air, - Who shivers the taut shrouds, and singeth there. - - - - -104 deg. FAHRENHEIT - - - To-night I lay with fever in my veins - Consumed, tormented creature of fire and ice, - And, weaving the enhavock'd brain's device, - Dreamed that for evermore I must walk these plains - Where sunlight slayeth life, and where no rains - Abated the fierce air, nor slaked its fire: - So that death seemed the end of all desire, - To ease the distracted body of its pains. - And so I died, and from my eyes the glare - Faded, nor had I further need of breath; - But when I reached my hand to find you there - Beside me, I found nothing.... Lonely was death. - And with a cry I wakened, but to hear - Thin wings of fever singing in my ear. - - - - -FEVER-TREES - - - The beautiful Acacia - She sighs in desert lands: - Over the burning waterways - Of Africa she sways and sways, - Even where no air glideth - In cooling green she stands. - - The beautiful Acacia - She hath a yellow dress: - A slender trunk of lemon sheen - Gleameth through the tender green - (Where the thorn hideth) - Shielding her loveliness. - - The beautiful Acacia - Dwelleth in deadly lands: - Over the brooding waterways - Where death breedeth, she sways and sways, - And no man long abideth - In valleys where she stands. - - - - -THE RAIN-BIRD - - - High on the tufted baobab-tree - To-night a rain-bird sang to me - A simple song, of three notes only, - That made the wilderness more lonely; - - For in my brain it echoed nearly, - Old village church bells chiming clearly: - The sweet cracked bells, just out of tune, - Over the mowing grass in June-- - - Over the mowing grass, and meadows - Where the low sun casts long shadows. - And cuckoos call in the twilight - From elm to elm, in level flight. - - Now through the evening meadows move - Slow couples of young folk in love, - Who pause at every crooked stile - And kiss in the hawthorn's shade the while: - - Like pale moths the summer frocks - Hover between the beds of phlox, - And old men, feeling it is late, - Cease their gossip at the gate, - - Till deeper still the twilight grows, - And night blossometh, like a rose - Full of love and sweet perfume, - Whose heart most tender stars illume. - - Here the red sun sank like lead, - And the sky blackened overhead; - Only the locust chirped at me - From the shadowy baobab-tree. - - - - -MOTHS - - - When I lay wakeful yesternight - My fever's flame was a clear light, - A taper, flaring in the wind, - Whither, fluttering out of the dim - Night, many dreams glimmered by. - Like moths, out of the darkness, blind, - Hurling at that taper's flame, - From drinking honey of the night's flowers - Into my circled light they came: - So near I could see their soft colours, - Grey of the dove, most soothely grey; - But my heat singed their wings, and away - Darting into the dark again, - They escaped me.... - Others floated down - Like those vaned seeds that fall - In autumn from the sycamore's crown - When no leaf trembleth nor branch is stirred, - More silent in flight than any bird, - Or bat's wings flitting in darkness, soft - As lizards moving on a white wall - They came quietly from aloft - Down through my circle of light, and so - Into unlighted gloom below. - But one dream, strong-winged, daring - Flew beating at the heart of the flame - Till I feared it would have put out my light, - My thin taper, fitfully flaring, - And that I should be left alone in the night - With no more dreams for my delight. - - Can it be that from the dead - Even their dreams, their dreams are fled? - - - - -BETE HUMAINE - - - Riding through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, - I saw the world awake; and as the ray - Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day, - Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies, - With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes - Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. - I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay - Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes... - Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain - And horror, at my own careless cruelty, - That where all things are cruel I had slain - A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: - Like beasts that prey with bloody claw... - Nay, they - Must slay to live, but what excuse had I? - - - - -DOVES - - - On the edge of the wild-wood - Grey doves fluttering: - Grey doves of Astarte - To the woods at daybreak - Lazily uttering - Their murmured enchantment, - Old as man's childhood; - - While she, pale divinity - Of hidden evil, - Silvers the regions chaste - Of cold sky, and broodeth - Over forests primeval - And all that thorny waste's - Wooded infinity. - - 'Lovely goddess of groves,' - Cried I, 'what enchanted - Sinister recesses - Of these lone shades - May still be haunted - By thy demon caresses, - Thy unholy loves?' - - But clear day quelleth - Her dominion lonely, - And the soft ring-dove, - Murmuring, telleth - That dark sin only - From man's lust springeth, - In man's heart dwelleth. - - - - -SONG - - - I made a song in my love's likeness - From colours of my quietude, - From trees whose blossoms shine no less - Than butterflies in the wild-wood. - - I laid claim on all beauty - Under the sun to praise her wonder, - Till the noise of war swept over me, - Stopp'd my singing mouth with thunder. - - The angel of death hath swift wings, - I heard him strip the huddled trees - Overhead, as a hornet sings, - And whip the grass about my knees. - - Down we crouched in the parched dust, - Down beneath that deadly rain: - Dead still I lay, as lie one must - Who hath a bullet in his brain. - - Dead they left me: but my soul, waking, - Quietly laughed at their distress - Who guessed not that I still was making - That new song in my love's likeness. - - - - -BEFORE ACTION - - - Now the wind of the dawn sighs, - Now red embers have burned white, - Under the darkness faints and dies - The slow-beating heart of night. - - Into the darkness my eyes peer - Seeing only faces steel'd, - And level eyes that know not fear; - Yet each heart is a battlefield - - Where phantom armies foin and feint - And bloody victories are won - From the time when stars are faint - To the rising of the sun. - - With banners broken, and the roll - Of drums, at dawn the phantoms fly: - A man must commune with his soul - When he marches out to die. - - O day of wrath and of desire! - For each may know upon this day - Whether he be a thing of fire - Or fettered to the traitor clay. - - Such is the hazard that is thrown: - We know not how the dice may fall: - All the secrets shall be known - Or else we shall not know at all. - - - - -ON A SUBALTERN KILLED IN ACTION - - - Into that dry and most desolate place - With heavy gait they dragged the stretcher in - And laid him on the bloody ground: the din - Of Maxim fire ceased not. I raised his head, - And looked into his face, - And saw that he was dead. - Saw beneath matted curls the broken skin - That let the bullet in; - And saw the limp, lithe limbs, the smiling mouth... - (Ah, may we smile at death - As bravely....) the curv'd lips that no more drouth - Should blacken, and no sweetly stirring breath - Mildly displace. - So I covered the calm face - And stripped the shirt from his firm breast, and there, - A zinc identity disc, a bracelet of elephant hair - I found.... Ah, God, how deep it stings - This unendurable pity of small things! - - But more than this I saw, - That dead stranger welcoming, more than the raw - And brutal havoc of war. - England I saw, the mother from whose side - He came hither and died, she at whose hems he had play'd, - In whose quiet womb his body and soul were made. - That pale, estranged flesh that we bowed over - Had breathed the scent in summer of white clover; - Dreamed her cool fading nights, her twilights long, - And days as careless as a blackbird's song - Heard in the hush of eve, when midges' wings - Make a thin music, and the night-jar spins. - (For it is summer, I thought, in England now....) - And once those forward gazing eyes had seen - Her lovely living green: that blackened brow - Cool airs, from those blue hills moving, had fann'd-- - Breath of that holy land - Whither my soul aspireth without despair: - In the broken brain had many a lovely word - Awakened magical echoes of things heard, - Telling of love and laughter and low voices, - And tales in which the English heart rejoices - In vanishing visions of childhood and its glories: - Old-fashioned nursery rhymes and fairy stories: - Words that only an English tongue could tell. - - And the firing died away; and the night fell - On our battle. Only in the sullen sky - A prairie fire, with huge fantastic flame - Leapt, lighting dark clouds charged with thunder. - And my heart was sick with shame - That there, in death, he should lie, - Crying: 'Oh, why am I alive, I wonder?' - - In a dream I saw war riding the land: - Stark rode she, with bowed eyes, against the glare - Of sack'd cities smouldering in the dark, - A tired horse, lean, with outreaching head, - And hid her face of dread.... - Yet, in my passion would I look on her, - Crying, O hark, - Thou pale one, whom now men say bearest the scythe - Of God, that iron scythe forged by his thunder - For reaping of nations overripened, fashioned - Upon the clanging anvil whose sparks, flying - In a starry night, dying, fall hereunder.... - But she, she heeded not my cry impassioned - Nor turned her face of dread, - Urging the tired horse, with outreaching head, - O thou, cried I, who choosest for thy going - These bloomy meadows of youth, these flowery ways - Whereby no influence strays - Ruder than a cold wind blowing, - Or beating needles of rain, - Why must thou ride again - Ruthless among the pastures yet unripened, - Crushing their beauty in thine iron track - Downtrodden, ravish'd in thy following flame, - Parched and black? - But she, she stayed not in her weary haste - Nor turned her face; but fled: - And where she passed the lands lay waste.... - - And now I cannot tell whither she rideth: - But tired, tired rides she. - Yet know I well why her dread face she hideth: - She is pale and faint to death. Yea, her day faileth, - Nor all her blood, nor all her frenzy burning, - Nor all her hate availeth: - For she passeth out of sight - Into that night - From which none, none returneth - To waste the meadows of youth, - Nor vex thine eyelids, Routhe, - O sorrowful sister, soother of our sorrow. - And a hope within me springs - That fair will be the morrow, - And that charred plain, - Those flowery meadows, shall rejoice at last - In a sweet, clean - Freshness, as when the green - Grass springeth, where the prairie fire hath passed. - - - - -AFTER ACTION - - - All through that day of battle the broken sound - Of shattering Maxim fire made mad the wood; - So that the low trees shuddered where they stood, - And echoes bellowed in the bush around: - But when, at last the light of day was drowned, - That madness ceased.... Ah, God, but it was good! - There, in the reek of iodine and blood, - I flung me down upon the thorny ground. - So quiet was it, I might well have been lying - In a room I love, where the ivy cluster shakes - Its dew upon the lattice panes at even: - Where rusty ivory scatters from the dying - Jessamine blossom, and the musk-rose breaks - Her dusky bloom beneath a summer heaven. - - - - -SONNET - - - Not only for remembered loveliness, - England, my mother, my own, we hold thee rare - Who toil, and fight, and sicken beneath the glare - Of brazen skies that smile on our duress, - Making us crave thy cloudy state no less - Than the sweet clarity of thy rain-wash'd air, - Meadows in moonlight cool, and every fair - Slow-fading flower of thy summer dress: - Not for thy flowers, but for the unfading crown - Of sacrifice our happy brothers wove thee: - The joyous ones who laid thy beauty down - Nor stayed to see it shamed. For these we love thee, - For this (O love, O dread!) we hold thee more - Divinely fair to-day than heretofore. - - - - -A FAREWELL TO AFRICA - -,, vspace:: 2 - - Now once again, upon the pole-star's bearing, - We plough these furrowed fields where no blade springeth; - Again the busy trade in the halyards singeth - Sun-whitened spindrift from the blown wave shearing; - The uncomplaining sea suffers our faring; - In a brazen glitter our little wake is lost, - And the starry south rolls over until no ghost - Remaineth of us and all our pitiful daring; - For the sea beareth no trace of man's endeavour, - His might enarmoured, his prosperous argosies, - Soundless, within her unsounded caves, forever - She broodeth, knowing neither war nor peace, - And our grey cruisers holds in mind no more - Than the cedarn fleets that Sheba's treasure bore. - - - - -SONG - - - What is the worth of war - In a world that turneth, turneth - About a tired star - Whose flaming centre burneth - No longer than the space - Of the spent atom's race: - Where conquered lands, soon, soon - Lie waste as the pale moon? - - What is the worth of art - In a world that fast forgetteth - Those who have wrung its heart - With beauty that love begetteth, - Whose faint flames vanish quite - In that star-powdered night - Where even the mighty ones - Shine only as far suns? - - And what is beauty worth, - Sweet beauty, that persuadeth - Of her immortal birth, - Then, as a flower, fadeth: - Or love, whose tender years - End with the mourner's tears, - Die, when the mourner's breath - Is quiet, at last, in death? - - Beauty and love are one, - Even when fierce war clashes: - Even when our fiery sun - Hath burnt itself to ashes, - And the dead planets race - Unlighted through blind space, - Beauty will still shine there: - Wherefore, I worship her. - - - - -THE HAWTHORN SPRAY - - - I saw a thrush light on a hawthorn spray, - One moment only, spilling creamy blossom, - While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom, - Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away. - - The branch was still; but, in my heart, a pain - Than the thorn'd spray more cruel, stabbed me, only - Remembering days in a far land and lonely - When I had never hoped for summer again. - - - - -THE PAVEMENT - - - In bitter London's heart of stone, - Under the lamplight's shielded glare. - I saw a soldier's body thrown - Unto the drabs that traffic there - - Pacing the pavements with slow feet: - Those old pavements whose blown dust - Throttles the hot air of the street, - And the darkness smells of lust. - - The chaste moon, with equal glance, - Looked down on the mad world, astare - At those who conquered in sad France - And those who perished in Leicester Square. - - And in her light his lips were pale: - Lips that love had moulded well: - Out of the jaws of Passchendaele - They had sent him to this nether hell. - - I had no stone of scorn to fling, - For I know not how the wrong began-- - But I had seen a hateful thing - Masked in the dignity of man: - - And hate and sorrow and hopeless anger - Swept my heart, as the winds that sweep - Angrily through the leafless hanger - When winter rises from the deep.... - - * * * * * - - I would that war were what men dream: - A crackling fire, a cleansing flame, - That it might leap the space between - And lap up London and its shame. - - - - -To LYDIA LOPOKOVA - - -HER GARLAND - - - O thou who comest to our wintry shade - Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring, - Before whose shining feet the cherries fling - Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed - With light, and all things musical are made: - O thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring - Blossom, or song of bird, or anything - To match the youth in which you stand arrayed? - Not that rich garland Meleager twined - In his sun-guarded glade above the blue - That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas: - No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind - That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you - These wind-blown blossoms of anemones. - - - -HER VARIETY - - - Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine - I saw thee flutter to the shadowy call - That beckons from the strings of Carneval, - O frail and fragrant image of Columbine: - So, when the spectre of the rose was thine, - A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall - In Cleopatra's stormy bacchanal - Flown with the red insurgence of the vine. - O moth, O flower, O maenad, which art thou? - Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild - As stormlight over savage Tartar skies? - Such were my ancient questionings; but now - I know that you are nothing but a child - With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes. - - - -HER SWIFTNESS - - - You are too swift for poetry, too fleet - For any mused numbers to ensnare: - Swifter than music dying on the air - Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet - Vanishing magic of your flying feet, - Your poised finger, and your shining hair: - Words cannot tell how wonderful you were, - Or how one gesture made a joy complete. - And since you know my pen may never capture - The transient swift loveliness of you, - Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss - Remembering, with a melancholy rapture, - How many dancing-girls ... and poets too... - Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos. - - - - -GHOSTLY LOVES - - - 'Oh why,' my darling prayeth me, 'must you sing - For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion? - Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion - And the love I gave was not a phantom thing, - But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding - The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder, - All fluent grace of which you were the moulder: - And I.... Oh, I was happy for your holding.' - 'Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen - The shadow that broodeth over things that perish: - How age may mock sweet moments that have been - And death defile the beauty that we cherish? - Wherefore, sweet spirit, I thank thee for thy giving: - 'Tis my spirit that embraceth thee dead or living.' - - - - -FEBRUARY - - - The robin on my lawn, - He was the first to tell - How, in the frozen dawn, - This miracle befell, - Waking the meadows white - With hoar, the iron road - Agleam with splintered light, - And ice where water flowed: - Till, when the low sun drank - Those milky mists that cloak - Hanger and hollied bank, - The winter world awoke - To hear the feeble bleat - Of lambs on downland farms: - A blackbird whistled sweet; - Old beeches moved their arms - Into a mellow haze - Aerial, newly-born: - And I, alone, agaze, - Stood waiting for the thorn - To break in blossom white - Or burst in a green flame... - So, in a single night, - Fair February came, - Bidding my lips to sing - Or whisper their surprise, - With all the joy of spring - And morning in her eyes. - - - - -SONG OF THE DARK AGES - - - We digged our trenches on the down - Beside old barrows, and the wet - White chalk we shovelled from below; - It lay like drifts of thawing snow - On parados and parapet: - - Until a pick neither struck flint - Nor split the yielding chalky soil, - But only calcined human bone: - Poor relic of that Age of Stone - Whose ossuary was our spoil. - - Home we marched singing in the rain, - And all the while, beneath our song, - I mused how many springs should wane - And still our trenches scar the plain: - The monument of an old wrong. - - But then, I thought, the fair green sod - Will wholly cover that white stain, - And soften, as it clothes the face - Of those old barrows, every trace - Of violence to the patient plain. - - And careless people, passing by, - Will speak of both in casual tone: - Saying: 'You see the toil they made: - The age of iron, pick, and spade, - Here jostles with the Age of Stone.' - - Yet either from that happier race - Will merit but a passing glance; - And they will leave us both alone: - Poor savages who wrought in stone-- - Poor savages who fought in France. - - - - -WINTER SUNSET - - - Athwart the blackening bars of pines benighted, - The sun, descending to the zones of denser - Cloud that o'erhung the long horizon, lighted - Upon the crown of earth a flaming censer - From which white clouds of incense, overflowing, - Filled the chill clarity from whence the swallows - Had lately fled with wreathed vapours, showing - Like a fine bloom over the lonely fallows: - Where, with the pungent breath of mist was blended - A faint aroma of pine-needles sodden - By autumn rains, and fainter still, ascended - Beneath high woods the scent of leaves downtrodden. - It was a moment when the earth, that sickened - For Spring, as lover when the beloved lingers, - Lay breathless, while the distant goddess quickened - Some southern hill-side with her glowing fingers: - And so, it seemed, the drowsy lands were shaken, - Stirred in their sleep, and sighed, as though the pain - Of a strange dream had bidden them awaken - To frozen days and bitter nights again. - - - - -SONG - - - Why have you stolen my delight - In all the golden shows of Spring - When every cherry-tree is white - And in the limes the thrushes sing, - - O fickler than the April day, - O brighter than the golden broom, - O blyther than the thrushes' lay, - O whiter than the cherry-bloom, - - O sweeter than all things that blow ... - Why have you only left for me - The broom, the cherry's crown of snow, - And thrushes in the linden-tree? - - - - -ENGLAND--APRIL, 1918 - - - Last night the North flew at the throat of Spring - With spite to tear her greening banners down, - Tossing the elm-tree's tender tassels brown, - The virgin blossom of sloe burdening - With colder snow; beneath his frosty sting - Patient, the newly-wakened woods were bowed - By drowned fields where stormy waters flowed: - Yet, on the thorn, I heard a blackbird sing.... - 'Too late, too late,' he sang, 'this wintry spite; - For molten snow will feed the springing grass: - The tide of life, it floweth with the year.' - O England, England, thou that standest upright - Against the tide of death, the bad days pass: - Know, by this miracle, that summer is near. - - - - -SLENDER THEMES - - - When, by a happier race, these leaves are turned, - They'll wonder that such quiet themes engaged - A soldier's mind when noisy wars were waged, - And half the world in one red bonfire burned. - 'When that fierce age,' they'll say, 'went up in flame - He lived ... or died, seeing those bright deeds done - Whereby our sweet and settled peace was won, - Yet offereth slender dreams, not deeds, to Fame.' - Then say: 'Out of the heart the mouth speaketh, - And mine was as the hearts of other men - Whom those dark days impassioned; yet it seeketh - To paint the sombre woes that held us then, - No more than the cloud-rending levin's light - Seeks to illumine the sad skies of night.' - - - - -INVOCATION - - - Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee? - For when I hear thy distant footfall nearing, - And wait on thy appearing, - Lo! my lips are silent: no words come to me. - - Once I waylaid thee in green forest covers, - Hoping that spring might free my lips with gentle fingers; - Alas! her presence lingers - No longer than on the plain the shadow of brown kestrel hovers. - - Through windless ways of the night my spirit followed after;-- - Cold and remote were they, and there, possessed - By a strange unworldly rest, - Awaiting thy still voice heard only starry laughter. - - The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread. - Yet when their secret chambers I essayed - My spirit sank, dismayed, - Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled. - - Once indeed--but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rapture-- - I loved; and once I looked death in the eyes: - So, suddenly made wise, - Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture.... - - Whither, O, divine mistress, must I then follow thee? - Is it only in love ... say, is it only in death - That the spirit blossometh, - And words that may match my vision shall come to me? - - - - -THAMAR - - -(_To Thamar Karsavina_) - -Once in the sombre light of the throng'd courts of night, -In a dream-haunted land only inhabited -By the unhappy dead, came one who, anxious eyed, -Clung to my idle hand with clenched fingers weak -And gazed into my eyes as he had wrongs to speak. -Silent he stood and wan, more pallid than the leaves -Of an aspen blown under a wind that grieves. -Then I: 'O haggard one, say from what ghostly zone -Of thwarted destinies or torment hast thou come? -Tell me thy race and name!' And he, with veiled face: -'I have neither name nor race, but I have travelled far, -A timeless avatar of never-ending dooms, -Out of those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star -In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar... -Once in a lonely dawn my eager spirit fared -By ways that no men dared unto a desert land, -Where, on a sullen strand, a mouldering city, vast -As towered Babylon, stood in the dreamy sand-- -Older a million years: Babel was builded on -That broken city's tears; dust of her crumbled past -Rose from the rapid wheels of Babel's charioteers -In whorled clouds above those shining thoroughfares -Where Babel's millions tread on her unheeding dead. -Forth from an eastern gate where the lips of Asia wait -Parch'd with an ancient thirst that no aeons can abate, -Passed I, predestinate, to a thorn'd desert's drought, -Where the rivers of the south, flowing in a cloudy spate, -Spend at last their splendid strength in a sea of molten glass -Seething with the brazen might of a white sun dipped at length -Like a baked stone, burning hot, plunged in a hissing pot. -Out of that solemn portal over the tawny waste, -Without stay, without haste, nor the joy of any mortal -Glance of eye or clasp of hand, desolate, in a burning land, -Lonely days and nights I travelled and the changing seasons squandered -Friendless, endlessly, I wandered nor my woven fate unravelled; -Drawn to a hidden goal, sore, forlorn with waiting, -Seeking I knew not what, yet unhesitating -Struggled my hapless soul... - There, in a thousand springs, -Slow, beneath frozen snow, where the blind earth lay cringing, -Have I seen the steppe unfold uncounted blossomings, -Where salty pools shone fair in a quivering blue air -That shivered every fringing reed-bed with cool delight, -And fanned the mazy flight of slow-wing'd egrets white -Beating and wheeling bright against the sun astare; -But I could not hear their wings for they were ghostly things -Sent by the powers of night to mock my sufferings -And rain upon the bitter waterpools their drops aglitter. -Yet, when these lakes accursed tortured my aching thirst, -The green reeds fell to dust, the cool pools to a crust -Of frozen salt crystallised to taunt my broken lips, -To cheat my staring eyes, as a vision of great ships -With moving towers of sail, poops throng'd with grinning crowds -And a wind in their shrouds, bears down upon the pale -Wasted castaway afloat with the salt in his throat -And a feeble wild desire to be quenched of his fire -In the green gloom beneath. - So, again and again, -Hath a phantom city thrust to the visionary vault -Of inviolate cobalt, dome and dreaming minaret -Mosque and gleaming water-tower hazy in a fountain's jet -Or a market's rising dust; and my lips have cried aloud -To see them tremble there, though I knew within my heart -They were chiselled out of cloud or carven of thin air; -And my fingers clenched my hand, for I wondered if this land -Of my stony pilgrimage were a glimmering mirage, -And I myself no more than a phantom of the sand. - 'But beyond these fading slender cities, many leagues away, -Strange brooding mountains lay heaped, crowding range on range -In a changing cloudy splendour; and beyond, in lakes of light, -As eastward still I staggered, there swam into my sight, -More vast and hoar and haggard, shoulders of ice and snow -Bounding the heavens low of burnished brass, whereunder -The hot plains of Cathay perpetually slumber: -Where tawny millions breed in cities without number, -Whither, a hill-born thunder, rolling on Tartary -With torrents and barb'd lightning, swelleth the yellow river -To a tumult of whitening foam and confused might -That drowns in a single night many a mud-made city; -And cities of boats, and frail cities of lath and reed, -Are whirled away without pity or set afloat in a pale, -Swirling, shallow sea ... and their names seem lost for ever -Till a stranger nomad race drive their herds to the sad place -Where old sorrows lie forgotten, and raise upon the rotten -Level waste another brood to await another flood. - 'But I never might attain to this melancholy plain -For the mountains rose between; stark in my path they lay -Between me and Cathay, through moving mist half-seen. -And I knew that they were real, for their drooping folds of cloud -Enwrapped me in a shroud, and the air that fell at night -From their frozen summits white slid like an ice-blue steel -Into my living breast and stilled the heart within -As the chill of an old sin that robs a man of rest, -Killing all delight in the silence of the night -And brooding black above till the heart dare not move -But lieth cold and numb ... and the dawn will not come. - 'Yet to me a dawn came, new-kindled in cold flame, -Flinging the imminence of those inviolate snows -On the forest lawns below in a shadow more immense -Than their eternal vastness; and a new hope beyond reason, -Flamed in my heart's dark season, dazzled my pallid eyes, -Till, when the hot sun soared above the uttermost height, -A draught of keen delight into my body was poured, -For all that frozen fastness lay flowered with the spring: -Her starry blossoms broke beneath my bruised feet, -And their beauty was so sweet to me I kissed them where they lay; -Yea, I bent my weary hips and kissed them with dry lips, -Tenderly, only dreading lest their petals delicate -Should be broken by my treading, for I lived, I lived again, -And my heart would have been broken by a living creature's pain, -So I kissed them for a token of my joy in their new birth, -And I kissed the gentle earth. Slowly the shadows crept -To the bases of the crags, and I slept.... - 'Once, in another life, had I remembered sleep, -When tired children creep on to their mother's knees, -And there a dreamless peace more quietly descendeth -Than gentle evening endeth or ring-doves fold their wings, -Before the nightjar spins or the nightingale begins; -When the brooding hedgerow trees where they nest lie awake -And breathe so soft they shake not a single shuddering leaf -Lest the silence should break. - 'Other sleep have I known, -Deeper, beyond belief, when straining limbs relax -After hot human toil in yellow harvest fields -Where the panting earth yields a smell of baked soil, -And the dust of dry stubbles blows over the whitening -Shocks of lank grain and bundles of flax, -And men fling themselves down forgetting their troubles, -Unheedful of the song that the landrail weaves along -Misty woodlands, or lightning that the pale sky laves -Like phosphorescent waves washing summer seas: -And, more beautiful than these, that sleep of dazed wonder -When love has torn asunder the veils of the sky -And raptured lovers lie faint in each other's arms -Beneath a heaven strewn with myriad starry swarms, -Where planets float like lonely gold-flowered nenuphars -In pools of the sky; yet, when they wake, they turn -From those burning galaxies seeking heaven only -In each other's eyes, and sigh, and sleep again; -For while they sleep they seem to forget the world's pain, -And when they wake, they dream.... - 'But other sleep was mine -As I had drunk of wine with bitter hemlock steep'd, -Or soused with the heaped milky poppyheads -A drowsy Tartar treads where slow waters sweep -Over red river beds, and the air is heavy with sleep. -So, when I woke at last, the labouring earth had rolled -Eastward under the vast dominion of night, -Funereal, forlorn as that unlighted chamber -Wherein she first was born, bereft of all starlight, -Pale silver of the moon, or the low sun's amber. - 'Then to my queen I prayed, grave Ashtoreth, whose shade -Hallows the dim abyss of Heliopolis, -Where many an olive maid clashed kissing Syrian cymbals, -And silver-sounding timbrels shivered through the vale. -O lovely, and O white, under the holy night -Is their gleaming wonder, and their brows are pale -As the new risen moon, dancing till they swoon -In far forests under desolate Lebanon, -While the flame of Moloch's pyre reddens the sea-born cloud -That overshadows Tyre; so, when I cried aloud, -Behold, a torch of fire leapt on the mountain-side! - 'O bright, O beautiful! for never kindlier light -Fell on the darkened sight of mortal eyes and dull -Since that devoted one, whom gloomy Caucasus -In icy silence lonely bound to his cruel shoulders, -Brought to benighted men in a hollow fennel-stem -Sparks of the torrid vapour that burned behind the bars -Of evening, broke dawn's rose, or smouldered in the stars, -Or lit the glowworm's taper, or wavered over the fen, -Or tipped the javelin of the far-ravening levin, -Lash of the Lord of Heaven and bitter scourge of sin. -O beautiful, O bright! my tired sinews strained -To this torch that flared and waned as a watery planet gloweth -And waneth in the night when a calm sea floweth -Under a misty sky spread with the tattered veils -Of rapid cloud driven over the deeps of heaven -By winds that range too high to sweep the languid sails. -On through the frozen night, like a blind moth flying -With battered wing and bruised bloom into a light, -I dragged my ragged limbs, cared not if I were dying, -Knew not if I were dead, where cavernous crevasses, -And stony desperate passes snared, waylaid my tread: -In the roar of broken boulders split from rocky shoulders, -In the thunder of snow sliding, or under the appalling -Rending of glacier ice or hoarse cataracts falling: -And I knew not what could save me but the unholy guiding -That some demon gave me. Thrice I fell, and thrice -In torrents of blue ice-water slipp'd and was toss'd -Like a dead leaf, or a ghost -Harried by thin bufferings of wind -Downward to Tartarus at daybreak, -Downward to the regions of the lost.... -But the rushing waters ceased, and the bitter wind fell: -How I cannot tell, unless that I had come -To the hollow heart of the storm where the wind is dumb; -And there my gelid blood thawed, glowed, and grew warm, -While a black-hooded form caught at my arm, and stayed -And held me as I swayed, until, at last, I saw -In a strange unworldly awe, at the gate of light I stood: -And I entered, alone.... - 'Behold a cavern of stone carven, and in the midst -A brazier that hissed with tongued flames, leaping -Over whitened embers of gummy frankincense, -Into a fume of dense and fragrant vapour, creeping -Over the roof to spread a milky coverlet -Softer than the woof of webby spider's net. -But never spider yet spun a more delicate wonder -Than that which hung thereunder, drooping fold on fold, -Silks that glowed with fire of tawny Oxus gold, -Richer than ever flowed from the eager fancy of man -In his vain desire for beauty that endures: -And on the floor were spread by many a heaped daiwan -Carpets of Kurdistan, cured skins, and water-ewers -Encrusted with such gems as emperors of Hind -(Swart conquerors, long dead) sought for their diadems. - -No other light was there but one torch, flaring -Against a square of sky possess'd by the wind, -And never another sound but the tongued flames creeping. - 'At last, my eyes staring into the clouded gloom, -Saw that the caverned room with shadowy forms was strewn -In heavy sleep or swoon fallen, who did not move -But lay as mortals lie in the sweet release of love. -And stark between them stood huge eunuchs of ebony, -Mute, motionless, as they had been carven of black wood. -But these I scarcely saw, for, through the flame was seen -Another, a queen, with heavy closed eyes -White against the skies of that empurpled night -In her loveliness she lay, and leaned upon her hand: -And my blood leapt at the sight, so that I could not stand -But fell upon my knees, pleading, and cried aloud -For her white loveliness as Ixion for his cloud: -And my cry the silence broke, and the sleepers awoke -From their slumber, stirred, and rose every one,--save those -Mute eunuchs of ebony, those frowning caryatides. -Slowly she looked at me, and when I cried again -In yearning and in pain, she beckoned with her hand. -Then from my knees rose I, and greatly daring, -Through the hazy air, past the brazier flaring -And the hissing flame, crept, until I came -Unto the carven seat, and kissed her white feet; -And she smiled, but spake not. -When she smiled the sleepers wavered as the grass -Of a cornfield wavers when the ears are swept -By the breath of brown reapers singing as they pass, -Or grass of woody glades when a wind that has slept -Wakens, and invades their moonlit solitude, -When the hazels shiver and the birch is blown -To a billow of silver, but oaks in the wood -Stand firm nor quiver, stand firm as stone: -So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood. -When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat -Of that painted room a silken sound I heard, -And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale -Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney, -Stranger far than any music mortal made -Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale. -Sweet it was, and clear as light, or as the tears -That sad Narcissus wears in the spring of the year -On barren mountain ranges where rain falls cool -And every lonely pool is sprayed with broken light: -So cool, so beautiful, and so divinely strange -I doubted if it came from any marshy reed -Or hollow fluting stem pluck'd by the hands of men, -Unless it were indeed that airy fugitive -Syrinx, who cried and ran before the laughing eyes -Of goat-footed Pan, and must for ever live -A shadowy green reed by an Arcadian river-- -But never music made of Ladon's reedy daughter -Or singing river-water more sweet than that which stole, -Slow as amber honey wells from the honeycomb, -Into my weary soul with solace and strange peace. -So, trembling as I lay in a dream more desolate -Than is the darkened day of the mid-winter north, -I heard the voice of one who sang in a strange tongue, -And I know not what he sang save that he sang of love, -The while they led me forth unheeding, till we came -Unto a chamber lit with one slow-burning flame -That yellow horn bedims, and laid me down, and there -They soothed my bruised limbs, and combed my tangled hair, -And salved my limbs with rarely-mingled unguents pressed -By hands of holy ones who dream beneath the suns -Of Araby the Blest, and so, when they had bathed -My burning eyes with milk of dreamy anodyne -And cool'd my throat with wine, -In robings of cool silk my broken body they swathed, -Sandals of gold they placed upon my feet, and round -My sad sun-blistered brows a silver fillet bound-- -Decking me with the pride of a bridegroom that goes -To the joy of his bride and is lovely in her eyes-- -And led me to her side. Then, as a conquering prince, -I, who long since had been battered and tost -Like a dead leaf or ghost buffeted by wild storms, -Came to her white arms, conquering, and was lost, -Yet dared not gaze upon the beauty that I dreamed. -So, in my trance, it seemed that a shadowy soft dance -Coiled slowly and unwound, swayed, beckoned, and recovered -As hooded cobra bound by hollow spells of sound -Unto the piper sways; so silently they hovered -I only heard the beat of their naked feet, -And then, another sound.... -A dull throb thrumming, a noise of faint drumming, -Threatening, coming nearer, piercing deeper -Than a dream lost in the heart of a sleeper -Into those deeps where the dark fire gloweth, -The secret flame that every man knoweth, -Embers that smoulder, fires that none can fan, -Terrible, older than the mind of man.... -Before he crawled from his swamp and spurned -The life of the beast that dark fire burned -In the hidden deeps where no dream can come: -Only the throbbing of a drum -Can wake it from its smouldering-- -Sightless, soundless, senseless, dumb-- -Dumb as those blind seeds that lie -Drown'd in mud, and shuddering, -I knew that I was man no more, -But a throbbing core of flesh, that knew -Nor beauty, nor truth, nor anything -But the black sky and the slimy earth: -Roots of trees, and fear, and pain, -The blank of death, the pangs of birth, -An inhuman thing possess'd -By the throbbing of a drum: -And my lips were strange and numb, -But they kissed her white breast.... -Then, being drunk with pride and splendour of love, I cried: -'"O spring of all delight, O mooned mystery, -O living marvel, white as the dead queen of night, -O flower, and O flame ... tell me at least thy name -That, from this desolate height, I may proclaim its wonder -To the lost lands hereunder before thy beauty dies -As fades the fire of dawn upon a peak of snow!"' -Then: "Look," she sighed, "into my eyes, and thou shalt know." -So, with her fingers frail, she pressed my brows, and so, -Slowly, at last, she raised my drooping eyelids pale, -And in her eyes I gazed. - 'Then fear, than love more blind, -Caught at my heart and fast in chains of horror bound-- -As one who in profound and midnight forest ways -Sees in the dark the burning eyes of a tiger barred -Or stealthy footed pard blaze in a solemn hate -And lust of human blood, yet cannot cry, nor turning -Flee from the huddled wood, but stands and sees his fate, -Or one who in a black night, groping for his track, -Clings to the dizzy verge of a cragged precipice, -Shrinks from the dim abyss, yet dare not venture back, -And no sound hears but the hiss of empty air -Swirling past his ears.... So, in a hideous -Abandonment of hope, I waited for her kiss. -Then the restless beat of the muttering drum -Rose to a frenzied heat; the naked dancers leapt -Insolent through the flame, laughing as they came -With parted lips; their cries deadened my ears, my eyes -Throbbed with the pattering of their rapid feet, -And the whirling dust of their dancing swept -Into my throat unslaked, dry-parched with love's drought, -Until my mouth was pressed upon her burning mouth -In a kiss most terrible.... Oh, was it pride, or shame -Unending, without name, or ecstasy, or pain -Or desperate desire? Alas! I cannot tell, -Save that it pierced my trembling soul and body with fire. -For, while her soft lips clove to mine in love, she drove -A flaming blade of steel into my breast, and I, -Rent with a bitter cry, slid from her side and fell -Clutching in dumb despair the dark unbraided hair -My passion had despoiled; while she, like serpent coiled, -Poised for another stroke, terribly, slowly, smiled, -Saying: "O stranger, red, red are my lips, and sweet -Unto those lips so red are the kisses of the dead: -Far hast thou wandered, far, for the kisses of Thamar." -Then a deep silence fell on the frenzy and the laughter; -The leaping dancers crept to the shadows where they had slept, -And the mute eunuchs stood forth, and hugely bent -Above my body, spent in its pool of blood, -And hove me with black arms, while the queen followed after -With stealthy steps, and eyes that burned into the night -Of my dying brain, till, with her hand, she bade -Them falter, and they stayed, while, eagerly, she propped -My listless head that dropped downward from my shoulders, -And slowly raised it up, raised it like a cup -Unto her lips again, -Then shuddered, trembled, shrunk, as though her mouth had drunk -A potion where the fell fire of poison smoulders. -And a darkness came, and I could see no more, -But in my ears the roar of lonely torrents swelled -And stilled my breath for ever, as though a wave appalling -Had broken in my brain, and deep to deep were calling: -And I felt my body falling down and down and down -Into a blank of death, where dumb waters roll -Endlessly, only knowing, that her dagger had stabbed my breast, -But her kiss had killed my soul. -And now I know no rest until again I stand -Where that lost city's towers rise from the dreamy sand, -Until I reach the gate where the lips of Asia wait, -Till I cross the desert's drought, and the rivers of the south, -And shiver through the night under those summits white -That soar above Cathay; until I see the light -Flame from those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star -In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar.' - - - - -ENVOI - - - Now that the hour has come, and under the lonely - Darkness I stumble at the doors of death, - It is not hope, nor faith - That here my spirit sustaineth, but love only. - - In visions, in love: only there have I clutched at divinity: - But the vision fadeth; yet love fades not: and for this - I would have you know that your kiss - Was more to me than all my hopes of infinity. - - Therein you made me divine ... you, who were moon and sun for - me, - You, for whose beauty I would have forsaken the splendour of - the stars - And my shadowy avatars - Renounced: for there is nothing in the world you have not done - for me. - - So that when at length all sentient skill hath forsaken me, - And the bright world beats vainly on my consciousness, - Your beauty shineth no less: - And even if I were dead I think your shadow would awaken me. - - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40344 - -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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