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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45643 ***
+
+ POEMS BY
+ IRIS TREE
+
+
+The author returns thanks for permission to use in this collection of
+her poems, those which have appeared in Poetry, Vanity Fair and the
+"Wheels" Anthology.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ HEAD OF IRIS TREE BY JACOB EPSTEIN
+]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ Poems
+ by
+ Iris Tree
+
+ Decorations by
+ Curtis Moffat
+
+ LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+ NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
+ MCMXX
+
+
+
+
+ Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
+ New York, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+ PAGE
+ "YOU PREACH TO ME OF LAWS, YOU TIE MY LIMBS" 11
+
+ "WE ARE THE CARETAKERS OF EMPTY HOUSES" 12
+
+ "FROM FAR AWAY THE LOST ADVENTURES GLEAM" 13
+
+ "GIVE ME, O GOD, THE POWER OF LAUGHTER STILL" 14
+
+ "WINDING DOWN THE STREET IN WEARIED GAIETY" 15
+
+ "TRANQUILLITY STIRRED BY A SUDDEN SPASM" 17
+
+ "I COULD EXPLAIN" 18
+
+ "I FEEL IN ME A MANIFOLD DESIRE" 19
+
+ "SILENCE" 20
+
+ "I SHOULD LIKE TO SAY TO THE WORLD" 21
+
+ "YOU PASS AS IN A DRUGGED DELIRIUM" 22
+
+ "O FACES THAT LOOK SO COLDLY AT ME" 23
+
+ "I SEE MYSELF IN MANY DIFFERENT DRESSES" 24
+
+ "THERE ARE SONGS ENOUGH OF LOVE, OF JOY, OF GRIEF" 25
+
+ "HOW OFTEN, WHEN THE THOUGHT OF SUICIDE" 27
+
+ "IT IS STILL SOMETHING TO HAVE CHEATED GOD" 28
+
+ "WHAT WORDS THAT MOVE ON WINGS IN A LONG DRIFT" 29
+
+ "I THINK MYSELF" 30
+
+ "THE ADORED, WILD, STRANGE, IRRESISTIBLE" 31
+
+ A ROSE 32
+
+ "LIKE FLOCKS OF TIRED BIRDS WHEN AUTUMN COMES" 33
+
+ "OH, JUST BEYOND THE CURVE OF IDEAL QUEST" 34
+
+ "AH! YOU, FROM THE SMALL HIGH-WALLED ACRE OF YOUR LIVES" 35
+
+ "MOUTH OF THE DUST I KISS, CORRUPTION ABSOLUTE" 36
+
+ "THE CURTAINS ARE DRAWN AS THOUGH IT STILL WERE NIGHT" 37
+
+ BLACK VELVET 38
+
+ NERVES 39
+
+ "MY PAIN HAS ALL THE PATIENCE OF A NUN" 40
+
+ "THE SCANDAL-MONGER AFTER ALL IS RIGHT" 41
+
+ "WOODS OF BROWN GLOOM SOMBRING WITH THE HUSH OF DEATH" 42
+
+ "I FEEL SO MUCH ALONE" 43
+
+ THE COMPLEX LIFE 44
+
+ "SHALL WE BE CHRISTENED POETS, CHILDREN OF GOD" 46
+
+ "WHEN I AM WEARY AT THE ANTIC CHANCE" 47
+
+ MOODS 48
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+ "NOW IS THE EVENING DIPPED KNEE-DEEP IN BLOOD" 53
+
+ "BLOW UPON BLOW THEY BRUISE THE DAYLIGHT WAN" 54
+
+ "A RAGGED DRUMMER RIDES ALONG THE STREET" 56
+
+ ZEPPELINS 58
+
+ "O FLATTERY, IMPOSTURE, BATTLE SHOW" 62
+
+ "WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE BEGGAR, AND THE SINNER, AND THE SAD" 63
+
+ "IF I WERE WHAT I WOULD BE, AND COULD BREAK" 64
+
+ HOLY RUSSIA 65
+
+ "HOW DEEPLY NURTURED IS YOUR FOOLISHNESS" 67
+
+ "OF ALL WHO DIED IN SILENCE FAR AWAY" 68
+
+ "AND AFTERWARDS, WHEN HONOUR HAS MADE GOOD" 69
+
+ "PITY THE SLAIN THAT LAID AWAY THEIR LIVES" 70
+
+
+FLAME
+
+ "YOU HAVE UNDERSTOOD SO LITTLE OF ME, AND MY ADORATION" 75
+
+ "LULLED ARE THE DAZZLING COLOURS OF THE DAY" 77
+
+ "WASHED AT MY FEET BY THE CURDED FOAM OF SLUGGISH WAVES" 78
+
+ "MY POEMS CANNOT LAUGH. THEY ARE THE VOICE" 79
+
+ "ON THE HILL THERE IS A TAVERN, LONG-LOVED, WELL-REMEMBERED" 80
+
+ "OH CANST THOU NOT HEAR IN MY HEART ALL ITS WHISPERING FEARS" 81
+
+ "AS IN THE SILENCE THE CLEAR MOONLIGHT DRIPS" 83
+
+ "I CAN BUT GIVE THEE UNSUBSTANTIAL THINGS" 84
+
+ "I HAVE NO OTHER FRIEND BUT THEE" 85
+
+ "BODIES HEAVING LIKE WAVES" 88
+
+ "YOUR FACE TO ME IS LIKE A BEAUTIFUL CITY" 89
+
+ "OH! WHY WILL YOU NOT LET ME LOVE YOU" 90
+
+ "MY DEVOTION KNEELS TO YOU" 92
+
+ ISLANDS 93
+
+ "MANY THINGS I'D FIND TO CHARM YOU" 94
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+ LAMP-POSTS 97
+
+ LONDON 98
+
+ "SLOWLY THE PALE FEET OF MORNING" 100
+
+ "WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEM" 101
+
+ "AMONG THE CRUMBLING ARCHES OF DECAY" 103
+
+ "AS A NUN'S FACE FROM HER BLACK DRAPERIES" 105
+
+ "THE SUN IS LORD OF LIFE AND COLOUR" 106
+
+ BAHAMA ISLANDS 107
+
+ THOUGHTS OF LONDON 108
+
+ STREETS 109
+
+ "LAUGHTER AND SINGING COME WITH THE MORNING" 113
+
+ "IN THE NIGHT I HEAR MY LONELINESS CALLING" 114
+
+ SUNDAY 115
+
+ "THE LEAVES ARE SINGING, AND THE SEA" 116
+
+ "HOW SOUNDLY SLEEPETH THE FOOL" 117
+
+ "MOONLIT LILACS UNDER THE WINDOW" 118
+
+ "OLD WOMAN FOREVER SITTING" 119
+
+ "LONELINESS I LOVE" 120
+
+ I MET AN INDIAN 121
+
+ "FROM THE FATHOMLESS DEPTH OF MY BOREDOM" 124
+
+ "LOLLING IN SNOW, LIKE KINGS IN ERMINE COATS" 125
+
+ "THE ROOTS OF OUR LONGING ARE PROBING THE HEART OF NIGHT" 126
+
+ VAHDAH 127
+
+ "STARLIGHT SILENCES" 128
+
+ "THE MOUNTAIN IS AN EMPEROR" 130
+
+ "I KNOW WHAT HAPPINESS IS" 131
+
+ "LONG HATH THE PEN LAIN IDLE IN MY HAND" 133
+
+ "I LAY MY HEART ON A STONE" 134
+
+ "THE COLD LIGHT STEALS INTO MY SOUL" 135
+
+ "THE CARAVANS OF SPRING ARE IN THE TOWN" 136
+
+ "I DREAD THE BEAUTY OF APPROACHING SPRING" 137
+
+ TO MY FATHER 139
+
+ TO MY MOTHER 140
+
+ "LONDON GROWS SAD AT EVENING" 142
+
+ AH! THE SPRING 143
+
+ THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG 144
+
+
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs
+ With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,
+ You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,
+ You stop my heart and turn it into wood.
+
+ I serve not God, but make my idol fair
+ From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,
+ Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair
+ By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.
+
+ The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,
+ The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,
+ And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,
+ And sunrise falling on the quiet street.
+
+ The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,
+ And lovers in the secret sheets of night
+ Trembling like instruments of music, till the day
+ Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.
+
+ Age creeps upon your timid little faces
+ Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,
+ Proud in the unimportance of your places
+ You sit in twilight prophesying woe.
+
+ So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,
+ I from my pageant golden as the day
+ Pity your littleness from all my passion,
+ Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ We are the caretakers of empty houses,
+ The moon leans her slender body against the door,
+ But the lock is jarred with rust.
+ The sun looks in through the window,
+ But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.
+ Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things
+ Like bowls of potpourri,
+ A dust of petals
+ Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From far away the lost adventures gleam,
+ The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,
+ The love of her who showed me to the sun
+ In triumph of creation, who did seem
+ With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream
+ To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one
+ Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun
+ The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...
+ The row of soldiered books, authority
+ Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,
+ The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,
+ Rebellion, love made sad with mystery--
+ And like a firefly through the twilit trees
+ Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Give me, O God, the power of laughter still,
+ I shall have need of humour, deftest foil
+ Against the army of infuriated pride,
+ Against the shields of reason, and the spears
+ Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;
+ Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,
+ And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....
+
+ Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,
+ Three musketeers of faithful following.
+ We will fear nothing.--Is not laughter brave,
+ That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?
+ Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves
+ Against the buttressed prisons of the world?
+ And is not love the bravest of them all,
+ So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven
+ While the red fists are threatening all around,
+ And hate is beating on the battledrums?
+ As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse
+ Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,
+ I ride my fancy blithely into danger
+ To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride
+ And stick my roses in the cap of Love....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Winding down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled
+ out its song
+ Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and
+ indefinite along.
+ The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some
+ hunch-backed and some bent with age,
+ They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung
+ heavy in a sombre rage.
+ Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their
+ heads the scolding shrewish tongue;
+ They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out
+ the dust and dung.
+ Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags
+ upon the line,
+ I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a
+ slow decline.
+ Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded
+ here and there,
+ Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew
+ brilliant in the tinsel glare.
+ Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of
+ the day stretched to the night,
+ Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen
+ light.
+ And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the
+ day,
+ And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long
+ highway.
+ And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and
+ pain and hunger and despair,
+ And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and
+ false pansies in their hair,
+ But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or
+ splendour in their lives,
+ Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking
+ wives.
+ I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with
+ coarse uncaring hand,
+ But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to
+ understand;
+ Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced
+ on grief,
+ Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and
+ hide my disbelief.
+
+ Strange we so love the world--for presently, out of my window looking
+ on the city,
+ I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt
+ no shame nor pity
+ For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our
+ dreams,
+ Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of
+ sleeping streams.
+ I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of
+ million lungs,
+ And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a
+ million tongues;
+ And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the
+ peopled spaces,
+ And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of
+ faces.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Tranquility stirred by a sudden spasm,
+ Knives of rain that cut the silence,
+ Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,
+ Calm of the marble-terraced night
+ Charred with the spattering of rockets.
+
+ Drums will I hear and battles now,
+ And the long death howl of wolves by night,
+ Watching the moon on the forest tops,
+ Walking with delicate frightened steps
+ To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I could explain
+ The complicated lore that drags the soul
+ From what shall profit him
+ To gild damnation with his choicest gold.
+ But you
+ Are poring over precious books and do not hear
+ Our plaintive, frivolous songs;
+ For we in stubborn vanity ascend
+ On ladders insecure,
+ Toward the tottering balconies
+ To serenade our painted paramours;
+ Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,
+ Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes
+ That cheat between unrest and false repose.
+ And we are haunted
+ By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,
+ Now taking shape of Pleasure,
+ Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.
+ I could disclose
+ The truth that hangs between our lies
+ And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;
+ Truth, that stings like nettles
+ Our frail hands dare not pluck
+ From out our garden's terraced indolence.
+ We are not happy,
+ And you make us dumb with loving hands
+ Reproachful on our lips.
+ Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,
+ For we have bartered diamonds for glass,
+ Our tears for smiles,
+ Eternity for now.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I feel in me a manifold desire
+ From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,
+ And I the Queen
+ Of crowding vagabonds,
+ Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,
+ With pathos of torn laces
+ And broken swords;
+ Cut-throats and kings and poets
+ Who have loved me
+ In visions wild, not knowing
+ What I was.
+ In me no end
+ Even where the last content
+ Clasps on my head a crown
+ Of shining endurance--
+ I slip from all my robes
+ Into the rags of a tattered romance;
+ The stars crowd at the window,
+ Their jealous destiny
+ Raps at the door--
+ They bob and wink and leer,
+ And I must leave the lamplight for the road
+ To keep strange company.
+ Farewell and Hail!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Silence--
+ Somewhere on earth
+ There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.
+ The trees stand bolt upright
+ Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.
+ There is a purpose in Heaven,
+ But for me
+ Nothing.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I should like to say to the world:
+ I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;
+ Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting
+ the sky,
+ Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,
+ Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,
+ Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.
+ I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour
+ Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and
+ shout,
+ In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled
+ stallions,
+ Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....
+
+ But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,
+ To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,
+ I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola
+ Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes
+ And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ You pass as in a drugged delirium
+ Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;
+ You sing a blasphemous Te Deum
+ To harlot virgins, and a fraction
+ Of your fulginous colour passes,
+ Stains my spirit's great conception
+ As it dips into your glasses.
+ I that am the sole exception
+ To your stillborn, false devices,
+ I that know you, I that hate you,
+ I that drank now spit your vices
+ Through my loathing reinstate you;
+ Dive once more into the stagnance,
+ Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,
+ Concentrate your cruel fragrance,
+ Steal your flowers before I sink you,
+ Lift with hate instead of praises,
+ Show you honour of my scorning,
+ Garlanded you go to blazes
+ With my rhymes for your adorning!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ O faces that look so coldly at me,
+ Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,
+ Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.
+ You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,
+ While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,
+ With tinkling bells that harass my calm,
+ Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.
+ Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,
+ How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?
+ The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...
+ Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,
+ Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,
+ You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,
+ And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea
+ To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your dress,--
+ How I might love you and weep for you,
+ Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs
+ If you could understand my singing,
+ If you could understand my love!
+ But you are waltzing with your marionettes
+ And marching to the music of the clock--
+ I cannot bear you to watch me
+ With those cold eyes through which I see,
+ Emptiness only and dust.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I see myself in many different dresses,
+ In many moods, and many different places;
+ All gold amid the grey where solemn faces
+ Are silence to my mirth--a flame that blesses
+ From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...
+ Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces
+ Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,
+ Disdainful of their slander or caresses.
+ I see myself the child of many races,
+ Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;
+ Within my soul a thousand weary traces
+ Of pain and joy and passionate excesses--
+ Eternal beauty that our brief love chases
+ With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ There are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:
+ Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;
+ Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,
+ Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.
+
+ The long road unto nothing I will sing,
+ Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,
+ Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring
+ No more emotion than the fear to die.
+
+ Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,
+ Another house as grey and steep and still:
+ An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,
+ A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.
+
+ Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,
+ Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!
+ Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?
+ Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?
+
+ Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain
+ Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:
+ A black umbrella held up in the rain,
+ The raindrops making patterns in the dust.
+
+ If this distaste I hold for fools is such,
+ Shall I not spit upon myself as well?
+ Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?
+ Do I not fatten also in this hell?
+
+ Sadness and joy--if they were melted up,
+ Things that were great--upon the fires of time
+ Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,
+ Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.
+
+ Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two
+ And set him like a pilgrim on his way
+ With Beauty's face before him--what of you,
+ Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?
+
+ The dullard-masses that no god can save!
+ If I were God, to rise and strike you down
+ And break your churches in an angry wave
+ And make a furious bonfire of your town!
+
+ God in a coloured globe, alone and still,
+ Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,
+ On loom of spaces measureless, to fill
+ The empty air with passion and with pain.
+
+ Emblazon all the heavens with desire
+ And Wisdom delved for in the depths of time--
+ Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire
+ Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.
+
+ Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,
+ Perfected and undone and built afresh
+ With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...
+ If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ How often, when the thought of suicide
+ With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,
+ The ghosts of many foods alluring glide
+ On golden dishes, wine in purple tide
+ To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye
+ Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly
+ Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride
+ Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie
+ Resigned to death like heroes--July peas,
+ Expectant bottles foaming at the brink--
+ White bread, and honey of the golden bees--
+ A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,
+ A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,
+ And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ It is still something to have cheated God
+ And bored the Devil with so easy prey,
+ And in the midst of summer woods to raise
+ A leafless tree whose stark limbs mock at Heaven,
+ Flaunting an iron hatred in the midst of hope--
+ Yet sometimes in the loneliness of night
+ My buried longings blossom on the boughs,
+ My wistful longings come out star by star,
+ Till the great sky is light with my desire,
+ And on the winds my songs are galloping....
+ Ah, to what dismal greyness creeps the soul
+ Too weak, too tired, to struggle from the slough!
+ My weapons rust, my pen is in the dust,
+ The moulting feathers plucked from out my wings
+ Lie dangling in the hats I stole them for.
+ My heart is floating in a claret cup,
+ My brain is toppling drunken at the brim,
+ My life is drowned within the lurid dregs.
+ I turn and fold my hands in a last appeal,
+ What heaven shall I pray to and for what,
+ Now that my songs to penny tunes are set,
+ And nothing is to save of me but flesh?
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ What words that move on wings in a long drift
+ Can waft this silence into weary ears,
+ And steal into the veins and fingertips
+ Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships
+ Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,
+ Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.
+ What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,
+ Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,
+ Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors
+ Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,
+ Steeled with indifference against all hurt,
+ Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:
+ To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,
+ Where all the lamps each with a separate soul
+ Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;
+ And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife
+ Cuts free the tethered heart from long control
+ And flings it like a ball with mad delight
+ Into the silver lap of the young moon.
+ What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine
+ Can broider tapestries as rich as these,
+ Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,
+ Transparent as the gods we half divine,
+ Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon
+ Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain
+ That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,
+ And visioned faces that our dreams create
+ Born in the land forbidden us of fate
+ And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind
+ Forever Joy, that never comes again!
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage
+ Where murder creeps and whispers.
+ The jester clad in piebald tights
+ Half black, half golden, with no company
+ Save bells that jingle,
+ And an effigy,
+ The grinning image painted like myself
+ Upon a stick....
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of comedy mournfully straying
+ Amid the revellers,
+ Loving the moon and my own shadow
+ With its strange solemn gestures--
+ Loving the painted moon
+ That lets me play with shadows.
+
+ I am the jester on an empty stage
+ Playing a pantomime
+ To spectres in the stalls,
+ Listening at last
+ For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding,
+ And for some king with decadent tired fingers
+ To fling a white gardenia at my feet.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The adored, wild, strange, irresistible,
+ How they fail one at the last!
+ What is there in your faces
+ That we should worship with our souls?
+ Most lovable, perfidious,
+ Vague--
+ Molesting even our visions
+ With treacherous pathos.
+ O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,
+ What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,
+ Covering your meagre bodies
+ With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?
+ Life and its grey days, and time
+ Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,
+ Or a dim glass through which you peer.
+ You climb in at the windows of our souls
+ With ladders and stratagems,
+ You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.
+ But what do you do for us
+ Lute players, dancers, deceivers,
+ Other than lie with red lips
+ And cajole with tears of beryl?
+ People--
+ Men and women with laughable, tragic faces
+ Winking at love,
+ Treading our songs and illusions
+ Under petulant feet!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+A ROSE
+
+
+ What do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging
+ Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?
+ What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging
+ Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?
+
+ What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic
+ Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,
+ Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,
+ And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had mangled;--
+
+ What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died
+ unrequited,
+ And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,
+ Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and
+ slighted,
+ That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of
+ Heaven?
+
+ You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and
+ bleeding,
+ Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging,
+ What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading,
+ I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Like flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,
+ My spirit flags across the darkening fields
+ And melts into the drabness of the sky
+ And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.
+ But many wizened faces brown and sad
+ Peer from the bushes as I wander past,--
+ They tell me all those things that old men say
+ As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.
+ "When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,
+ When you have bowed before all other gods,
+ And found them false, then shall you come at last
+ To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless
+ Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,
+ And call you slave and lover." ...
+ Shall not a child take Pain for company
+ And share her loneliness with him?
+ Does not a youth know tears
+ In the first bitterness of broken love?
+ Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come
+ To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ...
+ He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,
+ He sits a jester at the feet of kings
+ And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.
+ He rides the wooden horses at a fair,
+ And dances with the jiggers on the stage.
+ Led by the violins of discontent
+ That whine their music to my listening soul,
+ I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,
+ We dance together to the tunes of rain
+ Played on one note upon the only string.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Oh, just beyond the curve of ideal quest
+ That changes as a sea wave to the wind,
+ Beyond the cloud that folds around a star,
+ And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in,
+ Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone,
+ The paradise of all we might have been,
+ While we are washed back downwards in the dark
+ Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,
+ Your windows only looking upon gardens,
+ Only perceiving love and death and truth
+ As facts that come to pass,
+ That pass and leave you still
+ Within your safe small prisons,
+ Older, duller,
+ To walk and talk among the evergreens.
+ You have never known
+ Delight of dying slowly,
+ Poisoned with raptures
+ In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death--
+ The tunes
+ That dishevel and smooth,
+ Cajole and melancholize--
+ The dance
+ Which is a whirling of leaves
+ In their last scorn of sorrow
+ Flung upwards by the wind
+ Into the haggard face of winter--
+ Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons
+ Tossed by impulsive hands;
+ Nor slid as skaters swiftly
+ Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,
+ Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ...
+ You have not felt the abandon
+ Of light love
+ Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Mouth of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute,
+ Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour,
+ Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute,
+ Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.
+
+ For you I sheave the harvest of my hair,
+ For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour,
+ For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air
+ My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.
+
+ For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great
+ Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence,
+ For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate,
+ Science for giving wounds, and healing science.
+
+ For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care,
+ Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness,
+ For you the unborn child that I prepare,
+ You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ The curtains are drawn as though it still were night,
+ A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon;
+ And all about the room is quietness--Each patient chair
+ Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book
+ Lie as you left them, now bereft of purpose--
+ Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you
+ Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes!
+ How grey and sober, full of placid wit
+ The furniture, the pictures on the wall;
+ How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart
+ As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood.
+ Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face
+ And white, white gloves ...
+ What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock,
+ With face grimacing ... nearly six it is....
+ Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts,
+ For in its dial eternity is housed--
+ A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town!
+ But a water cart with surly noise below
+ Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street.
+ How cold and how familiar all these things,
+ To you so lonely in the enormous dawn
+ Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+BLACK VELVET
+
+
+ The darkness of the trees at deep midnight
+ And sombreness of shadows in the lake;
+ A mountain in the starlight wide awake
+ Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might
+ Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright
+ Bespattered jewelry of stars--the ache
+ Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break
+ From music. Slumbering cities--candle light
+ Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train
+ Of Queens that go to scaffold for a sin--
+ Or splash of blackness manifest of pain,
+ Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin
+ Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again
+ Venetian masks against a milky skin.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+NERVES
+
+
+ These curious looms where we have spun our fancies,
+ These intricate webs where our desires are threaded,
+ These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies
+ Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed.
+ These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles
+ Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers
+ From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles
+ Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors.
+ These colours twinging on a prism's edges,
+ These speckled patterns of fanatic madness
+ From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges
+ For pearls within the depths of sadness and of gladness--
+ O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after
+ As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary,
+ Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter,
+ Molesting quietness and waking up the weary!
+ What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting
+ With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you
+ O wrangling, juggling, jangling, pirouetting--
+ What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you?
+ You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion,
+ And trodden out the red stars into ashes,
+ Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron,
+ And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes
+ ...
+ You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary,
+ Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters,
+ The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary,
+ A poor bewildered clown--and nothing matters.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My pain has all the patience of a nun
+ Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone,
+ In some chill cellar where the amens moan,
+ Ave Maria, the long penance spun
+ Forever. And the tapers one by one
+ Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne.
+ My soul is tired from kneeling all alone,
+ Its little candles yearning to the sun.
+
+ Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen
+ Bright mirages of glory on the grey
+ Of sad horizons; I have kept the green
+ Surprise of spring through winter and dismay,
+ Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen
+ Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ The scandal-monger after all is right--
+ The old and cunning voice with weary repetition
+ Is justified in all dull words and warnings.
+ I see at last how you,
+ Spendthrift of passion
+ In love's bankruptcy,
+ Borrow new beauty from each passing face--
+ How being too lavish you did steal
+ From generous hands--
+ You are the idol builder and the robber of temples,
+ Praising with passionate psalms
+ The thing you cannot worship--
+ And yet your prayers have stirred
+ Belief in us--
+ We see beyond the false and weary face
+ Into your haggard soul and trust from pity--
+ We hear beyond the idle music of your voice,
+ A wisdom taught by cruelty
+ And a tired scorn of treachery and guile--
+ We see your wounds and weep,
+ You meet our pity with a traitor's kiss--
+ For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled
+ In teaching pain to others--
+ And all that mob of furious accusation
+ To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well,
+ Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered,
+ That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Woods of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death,
+ Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering,
+ Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath
+ Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering,
+ As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly
+ Listless they perish, wavering and hovering.
+ Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry,
+ Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering
+ The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun.
+ No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet,
+ No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one
+ As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet....
+ How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound
+ From shrill carousers riotous and merry all,
+ As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground,
+ As funeral bagpipes at a burial.
+ And I who wander passionless and forlorn,
+ A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection,
+ In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn,
+ See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ I feel so much alone,
+ And yet I know that many hopes are storming
+ My shut heart;
+ For I am bolted fast in my own house.
+ I pace distracted through its corridors
+ To the music of Love's knocking hands
+ Against the gate,
+ Or silence when they sleep.
+ I cannot find the key to let them in,
+ I, my own host and guest and ghost,
+ Imprisoned in myself!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPLEX LIFE
+
+
+ I know it to be true that those who live
+ As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
+ Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
+ Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.
+
+ But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
+ That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
+ Spins into complex patterns and conceals
+ His huge invention with forms intricate.
+
+ Each generation blindly fills the plan,
+ A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
+ With many processes from out the sod,
+ The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.
+
+ We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
+ Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
+ A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
+ Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.
+
+ We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
+ We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
+ We crave perfection that we may not find.
+ Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.
+
+ You peasants and you hermits, simple livers!
+ So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned
+ While we give up our bodies to be burned,
+ And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.
+
+ We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
+ We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
+ We make a gaudy havoc of our life
+ And live a thousand ages in an hour.
+
+ Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
+ We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
+ We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
+ And dream of harassed continents the while.
+
+ Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
+ Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint,
+ Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
+ Inverted religion, and perverted passion.
+
+ But since we are children of this age,
+ In curious ways discovering salvation,
+ I will not quit my muddled generation,
+ But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.
+
+ Although I know that Nature's bounty yields
+ Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
+ Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
+ Will I give back my body to the fields.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Shall we be christened poets, children of God,
+ For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,
+ For tugging at the moaning bells of death,
+ And coming as the autumn grave-digger
+ To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers
+ Of wind upon the rushes,
+ Of music upon silence?
+ Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel
+ For forcing tragedy into a rhyme
+ As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?
+ The poet ever wanders after Death,
+ The flunkey on a funeral chariot
+ Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;
+ And all the roses that he plucks from summer
+ Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse....
+ How shall the world learn how to laugh again
+ When all its songs have only learnt to weep?
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ When I am weary at the antic chance,
+ The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,
+ The hope and fear in jugglery, and see
+ How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,
+ And life a laboured trick--the years advance
+ A shrilling chorus in affected dance
+ With lust of many eyes that watch and wink
+ Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink
+ Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance--
+ Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,
+ Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin--
+ Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin
+ Through curtained silence trips as from a trance
+ With blushing flowers for Columbine--Romance.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+MOODS
+
+
+I
+
+ I crouched upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses,
+ And--listening with dread for the moment of my own silence
+ Rending the flimsy lace of whisperings--
+ My gnome dances before me
+ Behind a fan of smoke,
+ My dwarf squats on my shoulders
+ Tweeking their moulted wings,
+ My ape peers in the mirror of my face
+ Mimicking my soul's gaunt gestures--
+ My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness
+ Blotching the night with howls--
+ My laughter goes whining away on the wind,
+ Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment,
+ Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...
+
+
+II
+
+ Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet
+ Dancing across the leer of ugliness,
+ Skimming like a gold thread
+ Through a necklace of vile masks--
+ Lifting with lotus fingers
+ The blue arras of nightmare--
+ Loveliness like a delicate silver flute
+ Pressed to a negro's lips--
+
+
+III
+
+ Do you then wish for all those griefs
+ Whose snarling hands you kiss,
+ Kneeling in adoration to a dagger
+ As saints before a cross?
+ You who have tossed all flowers away,
+ Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood
+ Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,--
+ Do you then crave your own blood's offering,
+ Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?
+ In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,
+ Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,
+ You lean across the precipice of time
+ Calling and crying
+ For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter--
+
+
+IV
+
+ Waiting,
+ Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven
+ Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos--
+ Waiting,
+ Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,
+ Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,
+ Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,
+ Waiting like a vast arch of quietness
+ Through which a screaming messenger shall dart--
+ Like a dense hood of silence
+ Pierced by a sword of music--
+ Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool
+ Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Now is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood
+ And the dun hills stand fearful in their places.
+ Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets
+ With burdens of vainglory on our backs,
+ Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web
+ Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease.
+ But out beyond, the armies of the world
+ March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum
+ Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:
+
+ His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil:
+ He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high
+ The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed
+ With livid roses; all his pillars black
+ Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust
+ He raises up his awful golden throne.
+
+ Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears;
+ Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone;
+ Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God
+ Where good and evil mix; and all your rage
+ Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan,
+ Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore;
+ They ride on furious, leaving every man
+ Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war:
+ Gods that grow tired of paradisial water
+ And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.
+
+ I fear a thing more terrible than death:
+ The glamour of the battle grips us yet--
+ As crowds before a fire that hold their breath
+ Watching the burning houses, and forget
+ All they will lose, but marvel to behold
+ Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.
+
+ I fear the time when slow the flame expires,
+ When this kaleidoscope of roaring color
+ Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires
+ That shone with battle, nothing left of valour
+ Save chill ignoble ashes for despair
+ To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.
+
+ Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet,
+ Hiding the mangled body of the Earth:
+ The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet
+ Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth,
+ But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust
+ Save to end living and be heaped with dust.
+
+ That stillness that must follow where Death trod,
+ The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall,
+ The tuneless voices cringing praise to God,
+ Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call,
+ Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise,
+ With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.
+
+ Across the world from out the fevered ground
+ Decay from every pore exhales its breath;
+ A cloak of penance winding close around
+ The bright desire of spring. And unto Death,
+ As to a conquering king, we yield the keys
+ Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.
+
+ The maiden loverless shall go her ways,
+ And child unfathered feed on crust and husk;
+ The sun that was the glory of our days
+ Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk
+ Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay
+ Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ A ragged drummer rides along the street,
+ And at his coming
+ The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet
+ And voices humming.
+ He rode a year ago from far away,
+ On charger prancing,
+ With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay,
+ And banners dancing.
+ Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum
+ He bore so proudly,
+ His roaring music woke the silence dumb
+ To thunder loudly.
+ And by his side the old men and the young
+ Had followed cheering
+ Into the sunset smiling as they sung,
+ Nor thought of fearing.
+ They left their lovers and their mothers' lap,
+ Their homes demolish,
+ "For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap,
+ A sword to polish!"
+ And so the town was silent once again,
+ Though tunes of battle
+ Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain
+ Ghost drums would rattle.
+ But at the chuckling dice or careful loom,
+ Or candled churches
+ A few forgot or prayed or followed doom
+ With drunken lurches....
+ Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng,
+ In huddled masses
+ They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song
+ As back he passes--
+ Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone
+ In rags and tatters,
+ And on a soundless barrel with a bone
+ He beats and batters.
+ "Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd,
+ That we may kiss them?
+ Where sound your little songs that rang so loud
+ To us that miss them?"
+ There are no songs, no happy marching feet,
+ No favours flying:
+ The drummer passes ... on the quiet street
+ The sun is dying.
+ Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!...
+ Have done with weeping,
+ But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave
+ As he lies sleeping.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ZEPPELINS
+
+
+ MIDNIGHT
+
+ Suddenly
+ Shutting our lips upon a jest
+ As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
+ A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
+ Quiver with startled terrors--
+ How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
+ Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
+ Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
+ Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....
+ How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
+ How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
+ Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
+ Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
+ To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
+ A little longer, oh a little year!
+ Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
+ And resolutions of new wondrous lives
+ Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....
+ Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
+ The lurid silent people loved by death,
+ And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
+ To drag our body's glory from the light.
+ Though all the world should fall into their cells
+ And lie within their larders shelf on shelf--
+ Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
+ Yet _will I_ be the mistress of the sun!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1 A. M.
+
+ Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
+ Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes--
+ Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
+ An army fierce upon its own destruction,
+ A famished monster tearing in its claws
+ Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
+ Digesting all the world!...
+ Look at the eager people open-mouthed
+ That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised
+ By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,
+ Their earth adoring senses caught awhile
+ In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;
+ Their spirits straining upward upon strings
+ Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,
+ Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy--
+ Yet for an hour
+ Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears
+ They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes
+ Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 3 A. M.
+
+ The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless--
+ Slowly the river moves as though in sleep
+ While silent barges
+ Slide from the mist like dreams;
+ The intricate patterns of the scaffolding
+ Are drawn against the sky
+ More delicate than lace.
+ All the shimmering lights
+ Have shrunk away from morning
+ As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....
+ I am alone, most utterly alone,
+ More lonely than the last man in the world
+ Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
+ More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
+ Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
+ Dividing sleep from death,
+ Eternity from time....
+ Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
+ She brings no feverous memories of night
+ And sheds no tears.
+
+ Only two hours ago
+ Fire walked in crimson armour through the city
+ Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,
+ While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats
+ Among the silver foliage of the stars....
+ But rage has left no furrow in the sky,
+ No wake of sparks across the placid water....
+ This is the ominous and sacred hour
+ When priest-like the world kneels
+ Bowed low toward the empty throne of day--
+ Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard
+ And the flamingo messengers will come
+ Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise....
+ This is the hour of nothing,
+ Colourless and chill
+ Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,
+ As sits an idol holding in his fingers
+ A scentless lotus carven out of stone.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 4 A. M.
+
+ Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
+ And up the long uncomfortable street
+ With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
+ The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
+ Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
+ And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well--
+ A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
+ The light steals after me, emerging slow
+ And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
+ I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
+ From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw
+ Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
+ My own reflection as I hurried past,
+ My flaring colours and my face aghast--
+ The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
+ Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
+ About my knees and fluttered at the back:
+ An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
+ My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
+ My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
+ Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
+ Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.
+ ... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
+ Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ O flattery, imposture, battle show,
+ What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,
+ What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow
+ Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!
+
+ How have you turned the simple truth to lies
+ Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,
+ Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs
+ The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.
+
+ And ever quoting God for your excuse,
+ Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,
+ You train the spirit for material use,
+ You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.
+
+ When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,
+ Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,
+ The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts
+ Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ What will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,
+ And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;
+ What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,
+ Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?
+ They shall go to prison black
+ With a striped shirt on the back,
+ Feast on bread and water there
+ In a cell, without a care.
+ They shall learn at least their duty,
+ Never tempted more of beauty--
+ They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,
+ And one or two shall hang upon a cord--
+ And two or three shall die of grief alone--
+ (And this is well, for sinners should atone,)
+ And five or six shall curse the God that made them,
+ (And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)
+ And those that grew from dust shall go to dust
+ Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:--"God is just."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ If I were what I would be, and could break
+ The buttressed fortress of stupidity
+ Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,
+ Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,
+ Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake
+ Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn puppetry--
+ The gods are blinking at us sleepily,
+ Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,
+ The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess
+ Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and pawn--
+ The rigid squares of black and white, they dress
+ With their perpetual challenge--faded, worn,
+ Are all the creeds and praises you profess
+ To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+HOLY RUSSIA
+
+
+ The ghostly blood of thee is in my veins,
+ Back through the centuries of death and birth,
+ Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains,
+ My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.
+
+ And ever as in dreams I seem to see
+ Those streets and people with their colours cold;
+ Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea,
+ The tides of restless passion ages old.
+
+ I know thy humours and their contradiction,
+ I know thy fevers and hallucinations,
+ I see beneath the painted mask of fiction
+ Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.
+
+ And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes
+ Into the sick world's travail and her grief,
+ Dost thou from thy long battling surmise
+ The end of battle and the world's relief?
+
+ While we are creeping in our crooked ways
+ Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds
+ Where Ignorance walks royally through days
+ That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.
+
+ While we still cry to God for strength to kill,
+ Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves,
+ And grind young bones for the commercial mill,
+ And build munition works among the graves.
+
+ Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag,"
+ "The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!"
+ Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates brag--
+ They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...
+
+ Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God,
+ And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet,
+ Feeling beneath the burden and the rod
+ His justice and Her pity in the street.
+
+ Justice and Pity, crying in the wind--
+ We only hear the guns that never cease,
+ The flapping of our flags has made us blind!
+ We may not see the sacred gods of peace.
+
+ But thou dost build fanatic temples for them,
+ And thou dost pave the road with sanity,
+ And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them,
+ Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.
+
+ I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers,
+ The drum that life has snatched away from death,
+ And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears,
+ And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.
+
+ PEACE! But a cynic whispered in my ear
+ How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown
+ That lay amid the dust--and I could hear
+ A hum of money-changing in the town.
+
+ I feared that afterwards, when all is won,
+ We shall forget the meaning of thy deed--
+ And man will creep as he has always done
+ Along the little gutters of his greed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ How deeply nurtured is your foolishness,
+ Calling destruction great and slaughter brave,
+ Making large triumph of a little grave,
+ Imperial purple of a mourning dress,
+ The gun an emblem of your godliness--
+ A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave,
+ A medal or a bayonet, or rave
+ Of singing, marching in the forward press
+ Of hatred to the banging of a band;
+ Your country's honour and the world's release.
+ Are _they_ not strong in courage who withstand
+ The armies of your folly and shall cease
+ To tarnish with spilt life their motherland?
+ Cowards--or martyrs--crucified for peace.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Of all who died in silence far away
+ Where sympathy was busy with other things,
+ Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,
+ Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.
+
+ The little dead who knew so large a love,
+ Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
+ Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
+ Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.
+
+ Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
+ A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,
+ Stars were they to her night, and she the stem
+ From which they flowered--now barren and left unblessed.
+
+ Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
+ Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
+ Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
+ With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.
+
+ No more!--And we, the mourners, dare not wear
+ The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,
+ But must don purple and bright standards bear,
+ Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.
+
+ We dare not weep who must be brave in battle--
+ "Another death--another day--another inch of land--
+ The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ...
+ The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....
+
+ Of all who died in darkness far away
+ Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now,
+ His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
+ The passion-red roses clustering his brow.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ And afterwards, when honour has made good,
+ And all you think you fight for shall take place,
+ A late rejoicing to a crippled race;
+ The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food,
+ The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,
+ Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace
+ Shall spread a blush across the haggard face
+ Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.
+
+ In victory will you have conquered Hate,
+ And stuck old Folly with a bayonet
+ And battered down the hideous prison gate?
+ Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,
+ Glutted with gold and dust and empty state,
+ The incense of our anguish and our sweat?
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Pity the slain that laid away their lives,
+ Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves,
+ Thin little children and widowed wives,
+ And the broken soldier who survives.
+
+ Pity the woman whose body was sold
+ For a little bread or a little gold,
+ And a little fire to keep out the cold,
+ So tired, and fearful of growing old.
+
+ Pity the people in the grey street
+ Before the dawn trooping with listless feet
+ Down to their work in the dust and the heat,
+ For a little bread and a little meat.
+
+ Pity the criminal sentenced to die,
+ Loving life so, with the world in his eye,
+ In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry
+ Of love that will call when he may not reply.
+
+ Pity them all, the imperative faces
+ That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces,
+ Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places,
+ With indolent postures and frivolous graces.
+
+ Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin
+ Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin
+ That batters the door and staggers in....
+ The streets surround with clamour and din,
+
+ Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city
+ Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity,
+ Force us to sigh and arrange a committee,
+ Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....
+
+ The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave,
+ A rebel flag on a rebel grave,
+ But to us the strong alone are brave,
+ And only the rich are worthy to save!
+
+ Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled,
+ Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled,
+ Flags that blow where the dead are hurled,
+ Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+FLAME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You have understood so little of me, and my adoration
+ That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones,
+ You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation
+ And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my
+ moans.
+
+ You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter,
+ You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd;
+ But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter;
+ I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!
+
+ A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning,
+ A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow;
+ I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning,
+ And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.
+
+ In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes;
+ They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for
+ you;
+ In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes
+ As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.
+
+ Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters;
+ You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign,
+ But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of
+ fetters
+ And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine.
+ All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces,
+ Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head,
+ For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces
+ And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.
+
+ I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles
+ sacred
+ With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell;
+ I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping
+ acrid
+ And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day,
+ And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash.
+ Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk
+ Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth
+ Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit.
+ Now can I sing the sickly lines of love
+ And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out
+ In the sad spaces of the gloaming night,
+ And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark.
+ My words were fireless in the flaming sun,
+ And all the throats of flowers from their content
+ Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face
+ And bade me give them tunes to make them dance....
+ Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down
+ From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast
+ And sterile as the arms of my desire
+ She flings her light despairing on the sky.
+ The night is strange and still, for dropping tears,
+ Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Washed at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves,
+ As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light,
+ Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought
+ The thought of you, which held against mine ear
+ Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul;
+ The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love,
+ The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death,
+ The following of beauty's fugitive limbs
+ Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast
+ Gleam on the clouds and foam,
+ Call to her lovers.--
+ Thus standing in the blasting of the wind,
+ And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud
+ Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea,
+ Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels,
+ Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My poems cannot laugh. They are the voice
+ Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea,
+ And this wild joy my love has brought to me
+ Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.
+
+ I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing,
+ Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep,
+ And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep
+ Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;
+
+ To fashion for my love one perfect verse
+ Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word,
+ Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird
+ To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.
+
+ But as a coward in the general gloom
+ I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill,
+ Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill
+ Of love that moves with music into Doom;
+
+ Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold,
+ And like a gay canary in a cage
+ Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage
+ Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ On the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered,
+ Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream,
+ And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden
+ highlights,
+ And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed.
+ We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment,
+ And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white
+ wine,
+ And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing,
+ Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Oh canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears
+ Whose wind-like voices
+ Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears
+ While the body rejoices.
+ Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun
+ Trailing his scarlet vesture
+ Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun,
+ Turns with a gesture
+ Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey.
+ I follow the shadows of sorrow
+ That press so close to the dancing heels of the day
+ And darken the morrow.
+ The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see
+ Beyond its golden visor
+ The leering skull that derides at our lives and me
+ Being older than life and wiser....
+ I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the
+ whip
+ Beyond the sound of the treetops singing
+ To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip,
+ Or rush of feathers winging....
+ Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my
+ cheek
+ Murmuring tenderly
+ The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the
+ bleak
+ Windows of frost so slenderly
+ Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might
+ be
+ If life were as kind as a lover,
+ If we were beloved of the world and the world of we.
+ Thy white words hover
+ Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest
+ Silvering heaven
+ With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest.
+ If I could have given
+ My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee,
+ Ah then and then only
+ The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me
+ And death were not lonely.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ As in the silence the clear moonlight drips
+ Among the fields that love her drowsily,
+ These passionate moments trickle on through time,
+ From soul to languorous soul.
+ Like mad musicians upon fretted harps,
+ The senses play upon the poignant nerves,--
+ And colours clothe our mood
+ As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms
+ Irised with pallors of an opal's heart
+ In which the glittered pattern of desire
+ Smoulders and changes....
+ O love, thou nightingale-throated singer,
+ Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star
+ And keep thy silver delicate delight
+ Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad.
+ Let thy fairy feet
+ Go tripping down a scarcely scented path,
+ Between an avenue of breathless flowers.
+ The hours glide by as swans across a lake,
+ Across the luminous waters of desire,
+ And beat as wings the rustle of soft words,
+ As love bends down,
+ Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I can but give thee unsubstantial things
+ Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought,
+ No gems or garments marvellously wrought
+ On ivory spools with rare embroiderings.
+ Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings
+ That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought
+ With blood and beauty. I have only sought
+ A song that hovers on illusive wings.
+
+ Accept from me a dream that hath no art,
+ I give my empty hands for thee to hold,
+ Take thou the gift of silence for my part,
+ With all the deeper things I have not told.
+ Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart
+ Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ I have no other friend but thee,
+ But while I tell thee all my thought
+ Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams,
+ Soothsayings and sighs, and little things--
+ How canst thou listen to me?
+
+
+II
+
+ Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long,
+ And when my cheek grew pale
+ I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back
+ Responsive in the double rose of joy--
+ But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness
+ Where the ghost moon glides between us....
+
+
+III
+
+ When at a masquerade
+ I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng,
+ Our faces painted each in some disguise
+ Of varnished revelry;
+ I whisper in thine ear
+ Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales,
+ Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet,
+ And shower the multicoloured streamers high
+ Where Folly is king of midnight--
+ Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside,
+ And thy still face looks out,
+ Weary and overwise
+ Where the mad pretence avails not.
+
+
+IV
+
+ Long ago we walked together in a garden;
+ It was evening and the leaves fell down;
+ Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen,
+ Over flowers and branches that were withered there--
+ And the air was weary with the scent of other days,
+ A fragrance faint and pensive.
+ The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet
+ Were as old dreams retold,
+ Stirred from the golden quilt of memory,
+ And farewells rang their whispering bells,
+ Tolling the days away.
+ But peace lay folded between our hands
+ As we thought of the vanishing years
+ And of love dying in the arms of love.
+
+
+V
+
+ Sometimes I look into the glass
+ And see my face without the conquering light
+ That gave me glamour when I gave thee love.
+ Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty,
+ To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire,
+ And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell,
+ And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven.
+ I would be for thee
+ As a ring of white flowers on the sward,
+ As a red fire playing to thy breath,
+ As a flock of kingfishers
+ Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes!
+ Remember only this,
+ My will toward all loveliness, and look
+ Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.
+
+
+VI
+
+ Be perfect--for I love thee more in thought
+ Than thou canst reach in every trivial day.
+ Since days are as the flowers on a wreath
+ That wither while we bind them each to each.
+ Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days
+ Can wall it in a little space of ground.
+ Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock
+ And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour,
+ But the patient spirit stands
+ Waiting the last fulfilment.
+ Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands
+ Or as an endless rosary.
+ Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter
+ And my hands part from the unriveted faith
+ With Amen scarcely sighed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Bodies heaving like waves,
+ Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam,
+ The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow,
+ Splashed with ecstasial moonlight,
+ Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles.
+ Lingering touch of fingers,
+ Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray
+ Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell,
+ And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness
+ Against the ivory forehead of the moon.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Your face to me is like a beautiful city
+ Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea,
+ And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves
+ Heavily laden with memories....
+ I roam over all the earth
+ Making rhymes of you, and singing songs,
+ Because your face will never let me rest,
+ Because I can not frame it in a star
+ Surrounded with my cloudy reveries,
+ Because I may not pluck it like a flower
+ To breathe the incense of its perfumed soul--
+ Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword
+ Whose sheath is in my breast!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Oh! why will you not let me love you
+ Well enough?
+ You have plucked my blossoms,
+ Gathered the leaves
+ And revived them with water;
+ But all the tortuous roots
+ Delving for your spirit
+ In subterranean passions
+ With a blind unresting desire,
+ Have you felt them, have you known?
+ In the blackest night of sleep
+ Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms
+ In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion,
+ My soul still swims toward you
+ Against the envious pressure of the tide....
+ You who are so tired, so filled with sleep
+ That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek
+ Lest its heaviness should stir your rest,
+ How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden
+ That is too vast for me to bear alone?
+ I tell you
+ Love is no little thing,
+ No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air,
+ No thin flute music petaling the silence
+ As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree.
+ It is the thought that broods upon its death,
+ The dread of mountains looking to the storm
+ Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain.
+ It is the fire that pillars up the stars
+ To mix its flame with their eternal gold.
+ Oh, listen to me!
+ You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere
+ As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven.
+ You shall know me
+ In the pensive shadows of trees,
+ In the luminary phantoms
+ Reflected in the stillness of a lake;
+ In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves
+ And quivering in the moss;
+ In the abandoned play of breakers
+ Showering their crystals to the moon;
+ In the folly of rainbow dolphins.
+ I only ask of you
+ To be the diver in my deepest pool,
+ To bring from out its blue obscurity
+ The things my life has moulded unaware,
+ Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned
+ In loneliness of prayer unlit by life,
+ Created out of nothing save myself
+ Within the blind fast silence of the soul.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ My devotion kneels to you,
+ Holding a candle to illumine your face.
+ My loneliness is your shadow
+ Along the solitary roads.
+ My passion is a book between your hands
+ Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets,
+ A volume of pressed flowers
+ Scenting your fingers though you read it not.
+ And my white faith
+ Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ISLANDS
+
+
+ As launched upon the loneliness of time
+ We float and dream of what the waves conceal,
+ Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal
+ Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime,
+ Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme,
+ Or indolent ripple sighing at the keel--
+ Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel,
+ The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours climb--
+ So toss our weary ships, till from afar
+ Our visioned island rises suddenly,
+ Where palaces like cloudy colours are,
+ With scented gardens terraced to the sea,
+ The silver steps to our appointed star
+ Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Many things I'd find to charm you,
+ Books and scarves and silken socks,
+ All the seven rainbow colours
+ Black and white with 'broidered clocks.
+ Then a stick of polished whalebone
+ And a coat of tawny fur,
+ And a row of gleaming bottles
+ Filled with rose-water and myrrh.
+ Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,
+ Old liqueurs in leather kegs,
+ Golden Sauterne, copper sherry
+ And a nest of plover's eggs.
+ Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,
+ Little boxes cut in jade;
+ Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,
+ Damask cloths and dim brocade.
+ Six musicians of the Magyar,
+ Madness making harmony;
+ And a bed austere and narrow
+ With a quilt from Barbary.
+ You shall have a bath of amber,
+ A Venetian looking-glass,
+ And a crimson-chested parrot
+ On a lawn of terraced grass.
+ Then a small Tanagra statue
+ Found anew in ruins old,
+ Or an azure plate from Persia,
+ Or my hair in plaits of gold;
+ Or my scalp that like an Indian
+ You shall carry for a purse,
+ Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...
+ Or a volume of my verse.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+LAMP-POSTS
+
+
+ The eternal flame of laughter and desire
+ Breaks the long darkness with a little glance,
+ Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance
+ Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire
+ That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire
+ Sadly toward their jubilance--Romance
+ Of faery glitter in the streets of chance--
+ Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire
+ Within the fog of our despairing gloom;
+ In the glum alleys, down the haunted night
+ Through tunnelling of subterranean doom,
+ Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright,
+ They bear their coronets of golden bloom
+ To front our anguish with their brave delight.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+
+ Richer than fields of corn that fire in summer,
+ Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden,
+ More fearful and beloved than peace or silence,
+ Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever,
+ Calling towards me with a voice incessant.
+ Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant
+ I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened!
+ I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom,
+ My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty,
+ And honey in thine oaths and lamentations.
+ I played about thy feet that know not resting
+ And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.
+
+ When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter,
+ Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow
+ With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter
+ Are tossed in feathered gaiety about thee--
+ Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant,
+ Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing,
+ Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns,
+ While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter;
+ Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring,
+ As of the angry ocean in her travail ...
+ They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest,
+ Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled;
+ Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion
+ Here crucified each day with lust and hunger,
+ Hung up unlovely in the open market;
+ Made gay with paper garlands, covered over
+ With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet,
+ Lest the elect in passing should be startled,
+ Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour!
+ With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic
+ Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,
+ And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour
+ Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.
+ Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,
+ Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,
+ Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.
+ I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,
+ The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;
+ The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,
+ A million faces scattered like confetti,
+ All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing.
+ There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary,
+ Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling
+ In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.
+
+ O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses,
+ How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us,
+ Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition,
+ Spent in the evening like a rose of fever,
+ Fainting before us paler than a lily.
+ While here each day self-satisfied and placid
+ Moves opulent among the groves of summer;
+ The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes,
+ The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard,
+ Please for a while until the spirit sickens
+ And turns her panting to her ancient lover.
+
+ Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses,
+ Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture
+ Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses
+ Like hungry animals eat up the spaces
+ And close upon the miles that God created,
+ With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening
+ To the far rhythm in the drums of battle,
+ As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting,
+ I feel the scamper of your feet approaching
+ And your great starving arms and strangling fingers
+ That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Slowly the pale feet of morning
+ Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous
+ lamplight,
+ Colourless, cold, as the rainclad
+ Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out
+ sea-ward.
+ Slowly the fingers of dawn-light
+ Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,
+ Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing
+ From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.
+ Smoothly the wild hair of darkness
+ Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep
+ veils.
+ Patiently, Morning, the priestess
+ Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness,
+ Gashed with the daggers of street-lights,
+ Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister kisses,--
+ Morning with healing and kindness
+ Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter,
+ Sweeps up the rags of our shadows
+ That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ What have I to do with them,
+ The red athletes in their snow-white clothes?
+ They are sun lovers and moon haters,
+ Toiling or playing in the fields
+ Whereon no shadows lie,
+ Pensively, whispering together--
+ They are space lovers and haters of the stars,
+ Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see
+ The tiaraed brows of darkness.
+ I weary of their striving upward and onward,
+ Away from the green hush of twilight,
+ Where silence drips from the trees,
+ Away from the solemn avenues
+ Where the ghosts blow by
+ Along with a drift of leaves.
+
+ Let us linger awhile
+ Far away from the frets and wars of the world,
+ From the strong men
+ With their strident hymning voices and marching feet--
+ Let us walk alone
+ For the love of our own shadows
+ Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver,
+ With behind us the sky's grey curtain
+ Drawn backward from the moon....
+ Let us sit by the fireside
+ And hear the wind's shrill orchestras,
+ Fiddle and fife and flute,
+ And omened bagpipe screaming....
+ Let us lie abed and dream
+ Through the long summer's morning
+ Of trivial things, and beautiful....
+ Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden
+ gong;
+ Let us run through pools of wine
+ And be splashed with purple.
+ Let us, being sick, make merry,
+ And rejoice when we are weary.
+ Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet,
+ Drinking to Death.
+
+ What have we to do with them,
+ Sons of the sun and the soil,
+ Daughters of the hearth and the field?
+ They that remake the world
+ Melting our idols for silver,
+ Our goblets for gold;
+ Tearing our temples down
+ To build their red brick villages.
+
+ The doomed world faints into mist,
+ World of our indolence and dreams,
+ And the faces and bodies we love
+ Sink through oblivion, and are seen
+ Dimly, as divers through the waters.
+ Old worlds and new worlds!
+ Let us slip between them,
+ And float on the stream that floweth nowhither--
+ Our red ambitions burn
+ To a blue smoke of forgetting;
+ Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out,
+ As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Among the crumbling arches of decay
+ Where all around the red new buildings crept,
+ Where huge machines had rolled the past away,
+ And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;
+
+ Among the ruins I beheld a man
+ Who heeded not the engines as they neared,
+ Painting dead carnivals upon a fan,
+ He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.
+
+ And here and there were flung a mess of things,
+ Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses,
+ Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings,
+ Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.
+
+ A carven sabre hung upon the wall,
+ A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it,
+ A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl,
+ A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.
+
+ And mirrors flashed their argent memories
+ Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed,
+ While ghostly faces of past vanities
+ Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.
+
+ The stranger turned his head and bowed to me
+ And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair.
+ I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see,
+ You really have a fine collection there."
+
+ He bowed to me again, and in his hand
+ Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye
+ With beckoning lights--I could not understand--
+ His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh
+
+ So much he loved their frail inconsequence.
+ I spoke of progress conquering decay,
+ And tired the stillness with my common sense
+ Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.
+
+ But I have never met so queer a man,
+ "I better love my memories," he said,
+ "Look at those painted figures on the fan,
+ How delicate and wistful are the dead."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ As a nun's face from her black draperies
+ So full of mystery the moon looks down.
+ She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time,
+ Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close,
+ Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up,
+ Smiling away, to watch them swell and die.
+ She dreams of music played among the stars
+ When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed.
+ Above the city glittering giddily,
+ Above the jostling heads of man she moves,
+ Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.
+
+ 1912
+
+
+
+
+ The sun is lord of life and colour,
+ Blood of the rose and hyacinth,
+ Hair of the sea and forests,
+ Crown of the cornfields,
+ Body of the hills.
+ The moon is the harlot of Death,
+ Slaughterer of the Sun,
+ Priestess and poisoner she goes
+ With all her silver flock of wandering souls,
+ Her chant of wailing waters,
+ The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes
+ Bound all around with bandages of mist....
+ The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree,
+ The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes;
+ The living are as cherries that bow to the morning
+ Beckoning to the loitering stranger,
+ The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads.
+ The dead are as frozen skeleton branches
+ Whereon the stillness perches like an owl....
+ The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+BAHAMA ISLANDS
+
+
+I
+
+ All down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream
+ The negroes go, black faces crowding together;
+ And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures,
+ The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's wing--
+ We have rest here and a monotony of wheels,
+ A peaceful noise like bees that moan in June--
+ And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries
+ Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn.
+ Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the
+ window,
+ A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of desire--
+ And nothing rids us utterly of grief,
+ We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.
+
+
+II
+
+ Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and
+ scented,
+ But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their
+ hymns
+ And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented,
+ With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS OF LONDON
+
+
+ Oh, have I bartered and forgotten thee,
+ Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun,
+ Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run
+ A ragged troop along thy streets with me?
+ Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry,
+ Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun,
+ The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun,
+ The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery?
+ Mother of dreams and laughter and despair!
+ Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain,
+ Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere,
+ Thy sins and passions baffle me again;
+ And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare,
+ And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+STREETS
+
+
+ I am going
+ Up and down the roads and alleys
+ Through the forests of the city,
+ Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.
+ My mind shall wander through the streets
+ Whistling to a vague adventure,
+ Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer
+ And casting them away.
+ Dusk is creeping through the town
+ Lighting the lamps and loitering,
+ Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,
+ Hovering clouds of peace;
+ And behind her race the winds
+ Whining to the scent of darkness,
+ Scattering the dust
+ With their swift hounds' feet....
+ I am a hunter in the city's jungle,
+ Exploring all her secret mysteries.
+ I know her well,
+ The moaning highways,
+ And whispering alleys,
+ The chimney-dishevelled roofs
+ Where the moon walks delicately
+ As a stray spectral cat;
+ The little forlorn squares
+ Where one tree stands
+ Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers
+ Over the benches where the people sit
+ And stir not from their sullen postures,
+ Staring out where evening passes
+ With such a sauntering dreamy step.
+ I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,
+ Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,
+ Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,
+ Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.
+ Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker
+ Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate
+ Picks up the littered wreck of holiday
+ To mount the dust heap where our memories lie
+ Sprawled in a mess of ruins....
+ I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,
+ Repeating each in each a dull despair,
+ Indifferent and dignified;
+ Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,
+ With dismal silences of velvet carpets,
+ Where starving souls are kept
+ Feeding upon each other's isolations,
+ Not daring to escape....
+ Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me
+ With their crude temples built in praise of lust,
+ Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream
+ Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods
+ Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,
+ Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....
+
+ I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,
+ Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces
+ That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust....
+ I love the memory-crusted taverns
+ In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune
+ Until the dawn,
+ Like a white minstrel stopped to sing
+ Fantastic serenades, and called me forth
+ Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning
+ Dew-prismed shone the sun....
+ I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses
+ Are bathed in vitriol twilights,
+ Spitting smoke,
+ Or making oaths and mouths at one another....
+ While between
+ The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window
+ Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging
+ Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin....
+ Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes
+ I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,
+ Reflective of the solitude of stars....
+ And I am thrilled
+ With horror and the hope for tragedies....
+
+ But, they surround my heart these weary streets,
+ Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,
+ And through them pass forever
+ Those shadow figures trudging through the grey
+ Like penitent souls through haunted corridors....
+ Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,
+ Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!
+ Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,
+ Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,
+ And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.
+ Through all the winding mazes of the city
+ Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,
+ And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,
+ And by the iron door,
+ Under the windows where we sit and wait
+ For some sweet promise to unfold itself
+ From the shut scrolls of sleep,
+ And at the dusty curtain that divides
+ Glory from Death,
+ And lover from the lover....
+
+ Now in my room I sit
+ And round me falls the darkness
+ In rustling folds of peace.
+ But round my heart I know
+ No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound
+ To shut the city out.
+ For I shall feel the rush of streets
+ Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,
+ Piercing the night's remote divinity.
+ And I shall never rid me of these scars
+ That time and man have cut into my thought,
+ Never shake off my shoulders
+ The burden of the city's pain.
+ Oh, never shall we escape thee,
+ Mother of mutiny and want,
+ Thou beautiful mistress of Grief....
+ Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights
+ Beating with ineloquent hands
+ The tambourines of time,
+ The drums of war;
+ Fevering our minds
+ With the swollen traffic of thoughts,
+ The wheels and rattle of an endless search....
+
+ Tired I am with wandering,
+ Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,
+ More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,
+ Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Laughter and singing come with the morning,
+ When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor,
+ And dons his arrogant clothes.
+ But in the night,
+ When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale,
+ We too put off our opulent disguise
+ And stand alone in the baffling darkness,
+ Fighting with our sins,
+ Weeping for our loneliness,
+ That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ In the night I hear my loneliness calling
+ The long shrill note of the seabird's cry
+ Over the fuming spite of breakers,
+ Over the brumous, sulky tides.
+ All the ocean is craving Heavenward,
+ And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,
+ Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,
+ And the waves rear their supplicating hands.
+ Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,
+ Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,
+ To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,
+ Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,
+ Flashing their signals of unrest.--
+ My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,
+ Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors--
+ My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight
+ That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed--
+ My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,
+ Through the heavy pauses of sleep.--
+ Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,
+ Lest I hear my loneliness crying!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY
+
+
+ How beautiful is the world's delight,
+ How trivial, yet as sweet as a passing dream
+ That makes the harassed sleeper in the night
+ Smile, and on waking sigh. Forever the stream
+ Of time moves onward; as in coloured boats
+ A thousand souls go sailing,
+ And stilly down the tide my spirit floats
+ Singing or wailing
+ To the tune the waters make. Here we forget a space
+ The crawling sins of man that sting and gloat,
+ The pain and fear that haggers every face,
+ But vaguely and remote
+ The strident trumpet and the clamorous voices sound--
+ Grief doth forget to curse her Gods or pray,
+ While pagan follies squander all around
+ Their brief gay hours in holiday;
+ For all prayers die when laughter is on the lips.--
+ How frail the moods of joy, how sweet to see them pass
+ Like bubbles on the tide, like coloured ships
+ Sailing on glass!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The leaves are singing, and the sea,
+ And the sand in the wind,
+ Blown grass and hurrying people;
+ Full of melodious strings and lutes and flutes
+ Rustling and whispering forever.
+ The sad music of Life is in my ears,
+ Never ceasing, never asleep,
+ And my heart is strung between chord and chord
+ Like a crucifix in a rosary.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ How soundly sleepeth the fool,
+ With profane snore taunting the solemn-pillared night--
+ He hath no dreams of restless, subtle forms
+ That shift across a feverish vacancy;
+ Nor doth he hear the drums of time
+ Beating against oblivion tunes of war,
+ Goading the crippled hours on their endless march--
+ But waketh to yawn in the face of the sun,
+ Then turneth back to sleep....
+
+ How soundly the wise man sleepeth,
+ Couched royally in the purple of the dark
+ With his white mistress, Peace--
+ And when the morning stealeth on his rest,
+ As a rose he doth pluck her from the spreading tree of days,
+ And reviveth his heart
+ With the perfume of the world....
+ But 'twixt the wise and the foolish
+ Many nights shed sorrow and fear,
+ And nets are spread for timid feet,
+ And the waves beat on the shifting sand....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Moonlit lilacs under the window,
+ And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,
+ And the white floating beams like luminous moths
+ Fluttering from bloom to bloom.
+ Sprays of lilac flowers
+ Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,
+ Frozen to motionless icicles.
+ Moonlight flows over me,
+ Spreads her bright watery hair over my face,
+ Full of illicit, marvellous perfumes
+ Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;
+ Hair of the moonlight falling about me,
+ Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Old woman forever sitting
+ Alone in the large hotel under the fans,
+ Infinitely alone where around you spin
+ So many lives like painted tops,
+ Smearing the void a moment with their hues,
+ Giddily catching at balance as they pause.
+ What crime was yours, old woman,
+ What sin against the Earth
+ That she should give you now
+ A cap of dust and furrows on your cheeks,
+ And at the end
+ A hole dug in the mould?
+ Is death the promise of Fate's last rebound,
+ Revenge of Time that waits within the clock
+ And laughs awry at life,
+ For a kiss, for a dream, for a child that you bore,
+ For a fresh rose pinned to your bosom?
+ The owl is in your spirit,
+ Blinking through the oldest tree of wisdom--
+ And now your fingers are weaving
+ The cold pale invisible blossoms of death
+ Into a waxen wreath,
+ And Time
+ Sits down beside you knitting with quick hands
+ Grey counterpanes to cover up a grave!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Loneliness I love,
+ And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.
+ Loneliness I love,
+ But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands,...
+ My spirit speaks
+ In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy
+ Murmuring the tunes
+ For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.
+ The shadowy silences
+ Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities,
+ And that is why
+ The noise of tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing,
+ And I am clad
+ In the lust-lipped whispering of furtive caresses.
+ Holiness I love,
+ And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs,
+ The crucified feet
+ Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.
+ Holiness I love
+ And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.
+ But that is why
+ Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear
+ The vesture of secrecy
+ Which hides the human nakedness of God.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I met an Indian underneath a tree, under a ragged tree,
+ His face was yellow and wrinkled like some stone whereon a God had
+ writ
+ And his emaciated fingers drew circles in the dust....
+ I bent my mouth to his ear, crying "O father, O Prophet!
+ I have wandered far over the earth troubled with doubts that will not
+ let me rest,
+ Canst thou not tell me with all thy wizardries and meditations
+ The purpose of our lives upon this world,
+ The secret truth Earth shelters in her womb?"
+
+ But he was listening to the whispering of the mountains,
+ To the boom of God's paces on the rocks,
+ And the swishing steps of his followers in the rivers.
+ Then suddenly he pointed to the arched doorway in between the
+ hills,
+ And the mysterious purple curtain of the dusk that drooped from cliff
+ to cliff.
+ I saw in his eyes the vision of highborn ghosts,
+ Of divine ivory faces wreathed with the flowers of wisdom--
+ And I knew that he had found only the half-spoken promises of
+ Heaven....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ I saw a drunkard laughing in a tavern,
+ His cup was tilted and the wine spilt crimson on the sprawled arms
+ and distracted hair of a woman fallen asleep,
+ I watched him there and wondered
+ If ever the bubbling goblins of wine had whispered him life's
+ secret.
+ But he raised the cup of his carousals and gazed at emptiness,
+ Toasting some wild, irreverent dream,
+ Some flame-red salamander pirouetting among the dead waste ashes of
+ time--
+ And I knew that he had found only the secrets of sleep....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ A woman sat within a little house,
+ Scolding and singing ballads to her child,
+ And all around came the quarrel of children's voices.
+ Yet one boy sat apart within the furthest corner of the room
+ Painting an animal with coloured chalks.
+ I lingered by the fire thinking of life, its vanities and mysteries,
+ But the woman did not heed me,
+ Nor her pale son that sat so hunched and still,
+ Painting his visions with the broken chalks,
+ For they had discovered the absorbing painful secrets of giving
+ birth....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ It was evening as I wandered,
+ By a lake two lovers leaned, smiling to see their faces in the
+ water,
+ For they had found within each other's souls
+ An argent flattering mirror wherein to gaze and see their faces
+ change with all the moods and shadows of the day....
+ Not here should I discover the answer to bring light into my
+ darkness,
+ Into the dim psychic crystals of my soul opalled with the changing
+ colours of unrest--
+ So I went away into the loneliness, asking the forests and the
+ mountains and the sea
+ The knowledge of life's baffling mysteries.
+ But they were roaring in a wind of memories,
+ Gathering the rain into their bodies to make them fierce and
+ strong,
+ Heaving their shoulders upward to the morning,
+ Crowning their foreheads with sunlight.
+ And I knew that they were Life itself,
+ The pushing vehemence that rushes from the strangling arms of
+ Death,
+ Nor could they guess
+ The purpose of God's beauty in their joy....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From the fathomless depth of my boredom, from the
+ last room of its emptiness, an elf has come to play
+ with me.
+
+ As comes a little gold spider to a prison cell teasing the
+ criminal from his darkness to tear at a thread of sunlight,
+ and kiss the mouth of a shy morning whispering through
+ the window.
+
+ An elf has come to dance with me, blown like a leaf on
+ the path of my autumn lassitude.
+
+ Sprightly one, dervish! You are the living adventure
+ born of my dead childhood, you are the small god in the
+ temples of my unbelief, you are the bird that nests in ruined
+ temples, laying your silver eggs by moonlight and singing
+ when the pagan birds are still.
+
+ You are the dream-sower in the fields of sleep, you have
+ jingled the star-bells on the hood of darkness, and from the
+ knarled, stark tree of time have flung me the apple of
+ eternal laughter.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Lolling in snow, like kings in ermine coats, the gilt-crowned
+ bottles lie.... Our thoughts are dangled in
+ a laughter of leaves as bunches of blue and yellow grapes
+ for faery beggars, for ragged fancies to pluck and taste.
+
+ Our music shall be the minstrelsy of ghostly ballad-mongers
+ that have stolen from the ashen banquets of death to bless
+ our revels.
+
+ Our spirits shall flit like those winged faces of cherubs
+ that never can alight, but swing forever on the azure ribbons
+ of the sky.
+
+ And all our dreams and kisses shall be as the rose-leaves
+ falling on ancient festivals, as the shadows of rose-leaves
+ falling on phantom lovers in the sleep-pillared temples of
+ our first archaic passion.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The roots of our longing are probing the heart of night,
+ delving and twining together that our ultimate truth
+ may grow out of the darkness that bewilders and nourishes.
+ Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind
+ themselves like a tight crown over our heads.
+
+ Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall
+ prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green
+ ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire
+ shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays
+ that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright
+ foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into
+ a fountain of blossoms.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+VAHDAH
+
+
+ Sun-aureoled lilies are your priestesses,
+ They stand like choirs in silver surplices,
+ Melodious streams of silence fill the room,
+ And pensive listeners lean within the gloom
+ Of purple quietness. A laughter full of holiness--
+ Like the wild bells of lilies ringing in the loneliness
+ Of star-reflected gardens walled with night,--
+ Thrills from your soul which empties its delight
+ As rain on lilies, or as sunlight falling slenderly
+ To gild their ivory temples, and as moonlight shutting tenderly
+ Their alabaster doors.... A white peace grows,
+ And love, within your spirit like a lily and a rose.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Starlit silences!
+ Breeding fears, swarming with sudden deaths,
+ With separations, burdens, and despairs,
+ Weaving slow eerie fancies in my brain ...
+ Forlorn shorn monks go down the cloisters of quietness
+ With tortured crucifixes cut in ivory
+ Clasped in their praying hands,
+ And psalmed with lips renunciate of kisses ...
+ Forgotten days are painted on the night
+ In parables and symbols of remorse
+ That jeer from out the wind-stirred tapestries.
+ The hangman's rope coils upward like a snake
+ Out of the death-coloured waters,
+ While the black barges pass
+ Funereal,
+ Carrying doom from mist to mist....
+ And madmen steal about the wintry parks
+ Under the high glum walls of an asylum,
+ With eyes lit up in phosphorescent ecstasies,
+ With fumbling hands
+ That grope for things invisibly obscene.
+ Even the clock
+ Grown idiot too from keeping madmen's time
+ Gibbers the hours away in irrelevant chimes....
+ Silence embalms the dead with scented bands
+ And is the watchman to deserted houses,
+ And draws the violet curtain on the day,
+ And fits a mask of silver to the moon.
+ Silence brings corpses from the crypts of memory
+ And sits them round us in the empty chairs,
+ Opens the secret chambers of our hopes
+ And shows us there in awful pantomime
+ Lust wreathing love with poppies and with ashes,
+ And Beauty dressing Sin for carnival,
+ And Peace made drunken with a cup of blood.
+ It winds as ivy round our listening thoughts
+ Shutting all sounds away, enclosing us
+ Within its stifled virid twilight....
+
+ Cry out, sing, make noises,
+ Bacchantes, revellers, clowns!
+ Bring myriad lamps in clusters, likening grapes
+ That spill the wine of light into our gloom;
+ Pressing against our lips
+ The red grape-kisses of pleasure.
+ Bring the hounds,
+ The garlanded white ones,
+ To bay and snarl and tear the flying rags
+ Of stillness shadowing away!
+ Lean over me, O Life,
+ And whisper all thy lying flatteries
+ That drag me back from Silence and her dead.
+ I have kept vigil on my soul too long
+ Within this vast cathedral of dim sleep,
+ Languidly gathering
+ The cold grey lilies of the stars
+ To slip between her passive waxen hands....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The mountain is an Emperor.
+ The clouds are his beard, and the stars his diadem;
+ His bauble is the moon;
+ He is dressed in silver forests, and the mist his train;
+ His feet are two white rivers.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the negation of thought,
+ The shutting off
+ Of all those brooding phantoms that surround
+ As dank trees in a forest
+ Cutting the daylight into rags,
+ Caging the sun
+ In rusted prison bars.
+ Happiness loves to lie at a river's edge
+ And make no song,
+ But listen to the water's murmuring wisdom,
+ The kissing touch of leaves wind-bowed together,
+ The feathery swish of cloud wings on a hill;
+ Opening wide the violet-petalled doors
+ Of every shy and cloistered sense,
+ That all the scent and music of the world
+ May rush into the soul.
+ And happiness expands
+ The rainbow arch for a procession of dreams,
+ For moth-like fancies winged with evening,
+ For dove-breasted silences,
+ For shadowy reveries
+ And starry pilgrims....
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the giving back to Earth
+ Of all our furtive thefts,
+ The lurid jewels that we stole away
+ From passion, sin and pain,
+ Because they glittered strangely, luring us
+ With their forbidden beauty.
+ Because our childish fingers curiously
+ Crave the pale secrets of the moon
+ And grope for dangerous toys.
+ Happiness comes in giving back to Earth
+ The things we took from her with violent hands,
+ Remembering only
+ That her dust is our garment,
+ Her fruits our endeavour,
+ Her waters our priestess,
+ Her leaves our interpreters to God,
+ Her hills our infinite patience.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Long hath the pen lain idle in my hand,
+ Or traced slow sentences without a rhyme,
+ Words strung at random to beguile the time
+ As children threading beads upon a strand.
+ I have strayed far away from fairyland
+ Whose little hills grow steep and hard to climb;
+ I creep along the valleys in the slime,
+ Or hide me like an ostrich in the sand.
+
+ For I have sought a mellow idleness,
+ To be forever buried as a fly
+ Lies casketed in amber; where the stress
+ Of peril, hunger, Death can never cry
+ To wake me from my sanguine weariness,
+ Or cloud the lucid stillness with a sigh.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I laid my heart on a stone
+ And stood in the wood to watch.
+ Presently a priest came by;
+ He hid it in his cowl
+ And buried it in the graveyard.
+ Now is it grown into a cyclamen tree,
+ Clustering over the wall,
+ Beckoning far along the twilight road;
+ Nodding and singing where the cypress moans,
+ Ringing its little bells while the great bell tolls.
+ Whiter than ghosts are its flowers,
+ And its scent is sweeter than ghostly music--
+ All the men and priests that pass
+ In the night when the stars lean down,
+ Smell the heavy fragrance there
+ And feel the gentle touch of dripping dew.
+ Then they cross themselves and go
+ Hurriedly, warily,
+ Dreaming of pale women,
+ Under the pale stars.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The cold light steals into my soul
+ Revealing its emptiness,
+ The cold winds batter at my heart
+ And make its lonely tenant shake with fear--
+ The raindrops slide across the window-glass
+ Like sighs that fall from patient weariness;
+ And coldly smiling time
+ Peers with his clock-face, ticking in my brain
+ The pulse of a monotonous remorse.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The caravans of spring are in the town,
+ Lighting their brilliant torches in the park,
+ Dangling their bells, engirdling each stark
+ Black tree with coloured rings. The houses frown
+ Against the beryl sky, yet wear a crown
+ Of hazy dream, or flash a golden spark
+ Of sun-fire in their windows glum and dark;
+ The people blow like petals up and down.
+
+ But London tires at evening, each grey street
+ Mourns as the slow procession passes by,
+ Traffic and crowd, and Time on loitering feet.
+ Spring droops his lute, the slender echoes sigh,
+ And wistfully the jaded revellers meet,
+ Their pomp in tatters and their wreaths awry.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I dread the beauty of approaching spring
+ Now the old month is dead and the young moon
+ Has pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.
+ My tired soul is startled out of sleep
+ By all the urging joy of bud and leaf,
+ And in the barren yard where I have paced
+ Content with prison and despair's monotony,
+ The trees break into music wild and shrill,
+ And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,
+ Bewildering my loneliness with beauty....
+ For winter with her melancholy face
+ Shone back my miseries as in a glass,
+ And wept and whined in harmony with me;
+ And I could listen by the withering ashes
+ To the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,
+ And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,
+ And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,
+ And hating, hear the laughter of the wind
+ Whose mad hands tear the sky.
+ But now again the promise of the spring
+ Shall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,
+ To where the lilied altar shines with peace,
+ And the white priestess comes
+ Crowning each candle with a gold desire
+ Engirdling with pallors
+ The forehead of a divine ghost.
+ Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindle
+ And spring is but a radiant beckoning
+ To death that follows slowly, silently....
+
+ O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,
+ O flash of silver in the wings of dawn
+ That are spread out and closed. O hush of night
+ Breathless with love, oh swish of whispering tide
+ That swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.
+ O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide
+ That grow too soon to weariness and close;
+ O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,
+ And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;
+ O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,
+ And mystery of flower in the bud.
+ O burning galaxy of buttercups,
+ And drone of bees above the pouting rose,--
+ O twilit lovers stilled with reverie
+ And footprints of them swerving on the sand
+ And darkness of them clasped against the sky!
+ I see beyond the glory of your days
+ The grey days marching one behind the other
+ To the bleak tunes of silence.
+ When mists shall smear the radiance of the moon
+ And the lean thief shall pass,
+ Snatching the glittering toys away from love,
+ Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.
+ And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,
+ Shall go the way that her long shadow points,
+ Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER
+
+
+ I cannot think that you have gone away,
+ You loved the earth--and life lit up your eyes,
+ And flickered in your smile that would surmise
+ Death as a song, a poem, or a play.
+ You were reborn afresh with every day,
+ And baffled fortune in some new disguise.
+ Ah! can it perish when the body dies,
+ Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?
+
+ We shall not see you come to us and leave
+ A conqueror--nor catch on fairy wing
+ Some slender fancy--nor new wonders weave
+ Upon the loom of your imagining.
+ The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve
+ Her child that was a pilgrim and a king.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+ At evening when the twilight curtains fall,
+ Before the lamps are lit within my room,
+ My memories hang bright upon the gloom,
+ Like ancient frescoes painted on the wall.
+
+ And I can hear the call of birds and bells
+ And shadowy sound of waves, and wind through leaves
+ And wind that rustles through the burnished sheaves,
+ And far off voices whispering farewells.
+
+ I dream again the joy I used to know
+ While straying by the sea that hardly sighed
+ A sorrow in my singing, as the tide
+ Crept up to clasp me, smiled, and let me go.
+
+ And I remember all the glad lost hours,
+ The racing of brown rabbits on the hill,
+ The winds that prowled around the lonely mill,
+ Laburnum laughter, music of the flowers.
+
+ The berries plucked with loitering delight,
+ Staining the dusk with purple, till the thought
+ Of starry little ghosts behind us caught
+ Our hearts and made us fearful of the night.
+
+ The London evenings huddled in the rain
+ Whose misty prisms shone with lamplight pale,
+ Making our hearts seem sinister and frail,
+ Fainting our thoughts with mystery and pain.
+
+ I have a world of memories to dream,
+ To touch with loving fingers as a sigh
+ Revives a little flame and lets it die.
+ Ah, were the days as lovely as they seem
+
+ Now that they look so peaceful lying dead?
+ And is it all the hope of Joy we have,
+ The broken trophies of the things she gave
+ And took away to give us dreams instead?
+
+ The things we love and lose before we find
+ The way to love them well enough and keep,
+ That now are woven on the looms of sleep
+ That now are only music of the wind.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ London grows sad at evening,
+ And we at the windows sit
+ To watch her moods,
+ Wearying with her.
+ Even a noise of laughter from the street
+ Sounds in our ears
+ Like something dropped and shattered on the stone.
+ Then her musician comes,
+ A wandering, malicious spirit;
+ The organ grinder, playing those old tunes
+ We know too well,
+ That hurt us with fatigue.
+ Till Hope like a harlequin,
+ His glitter hidden in a ragged coat,
+ The lamplighter, goes by,
+ Planting his pale flames in the dusk.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! the spring,
+ Sudden, surprising,
+ Melting the iron scales around the heart
+ As the earliest sun
+ Melts the cold case of dew on leaves--
+ Ah! the streets like odorous rivers
+ Chanting the echoes of seas--
+ Ah! the flowers in shop-windows
+ Beseeching, persuasive,
+ Reluctant to let their beauty flow away
+ From thoughts that mirror them in passing--
+ Beautiful exiles
+ Fluttering in their chains,
+ Thrilled with the noise of bees,
+ The music of meadows
+ Still hovering around them--
+ Flower fingers, flower-touches,
+ Passional, reminiscent,
+ Rippling the soul's still waters--
+ Flower galaxies,
+ Enamelled bridges arching from dream to dream,
+ Garlands splashing over the eyes of satyrs,
+ The furtive woodland eyes,
+ The pointed inquisitive ears--
+ Pallid flowers foaming on hill-crests,
+ Gushing heavenwards
+ From a sea of stormy mountains--
+ Opening and shutting exquisite doors,
+ As the senses open to music,
+ Shut upon silence,
+ Open to beauty,
+ Close their caskets upon love--
+ Ah! the flowers in the windows,
+ Amorous of poets
+ Making a chaplet of song!
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG
+
+
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee,
+ We are as fog that drifts on the river,
+ As the wailing of voices blown through mist--
+ We are as those that carry bags of dust
+ Heaping them with the dust--
+ We are covered with the dust of days,
+ We are pale from the dust of dreamless nights
+ Shaken before we were rested--
+ At dawn we are found by the sun
+ Adrift, labouring, thinking of nothing--
+ Our wine is bitter, it has made us drunk,
+ Our bread is coarse,
+ We are always athirst and hungry....
+ O God, we have been patient,
+ We have grown old in weariness,
+ Our lives are as the labouring of the wind--
+ We are huddled together in the dawn,
+ The sleeping houses pass us,
+ The dawn is a field of nettles
+ Stinging us from rest....
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee but patience,
+ We have suffered evil and believed Thee good,
+ Thy face is the gentleness of the distance,
+ The river is placid with the thought of Thee--
+ Our tears have washed us harder than the rocks,
+ And like the rocks we wait,
+ Grow old with waiting....
+ Weariness, the river
+ Flowing through banks of sleep....
+ O God, we have nothing to give Thee,
+ Take our great weariness,
+ We that have never lived and never slept,
+ Take our long weariness, O God!...
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+Transcribers' Notes:
+
+
+Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.
+
+Ellipses are reproduced as printed in the original book.
+
+Most of the poems' titles appear only in the Table of Contents, not
+with the poems themselves.
+
+When the Transcriber could not to determine whether a verse at the top
+of a page was a new stanza or part of the stanza on the previous page,
+the latter was assumed.
+
+Page 42: "sombring" was printed that way.
+
+Page 89: "Because I can not" was printed with "can" and "not" as
+separate words.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45643 ***
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+ </head>
+
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45643 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 279px;">
+<img src="images/i_cover.jpg" width="279" height="400" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="newpage p4 center" />
+
+<h1 class="nobreak">POEMS BY
+IRIS TREE</h1>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<p class="in0 newpage p4 narrow drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> author returns thanks for
+permission to use in this collection
+of her poems, those which
+have appeared in Poetry, Vanity
+Fair and the "Wheels" Anthology.</p>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<div id="i_frontis" class="newpage figcenter" style="width: 398px;">
+ <img src="images/i_frontis.jpg" width="398" height="600" class="newpage p4" alt="" /><div class="caption">
+ HEAD OF IRIS TREE<span class="in4"> <span class="smcap">By Jacob Epstein</span></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 338px;">
+<img src="images/i_005.jpg" width="338" height="600" class="newpage p4" alt="Title Page" />
+</div>
+
+<div id="i_005a" class="newpage figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+ <img src="images/i_005a.jpg" width="300" height="161" class="newpage p4" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="p1 center xlarge">
+<span class="large">Poems</span><br />
+<span class="small">by</span><br />
+<span class="xlarge">Iris Tree</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><span class="small">Decorations by</span><br />
+Curtis Moffat</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD<br />
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY<br />
+MCMXX
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center smaller">
+Press of J. J. Little &amp; Ives Company<br />
+New York, U. S. A.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="Contents">
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">ROCKETS AND ASHES</td></tr>
+ <tr class="small">
+ <td>&nbsp;</td>
+ <td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Preach to Me of Laws, You Tie My Limbs</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">We Are the Caretakers of Empty Houses</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">From Far Away the Lost Adventures Gleam</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Give Me, O God, the Power of Laughter Still</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Winding Down the Street in Wearied Gaiety</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Tranquillity Stirred by a Sudden Spasm</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Could Explain</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Feel in Me a Manifold Desire</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Silence</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Should Like to Say to the World</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Pass as in a Drugged Delirium</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">O Faces that Look so Coldly at Me</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I See Myself in Many Different Dresses</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">There are Songs Enough of Love, of Joy, of Grief</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Often, When the Thought of Suicide</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">It is Still Something to have Cheated God</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Words that Move on Wings in a Long Drift</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Think Myself</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Adored, Wild, Strange, Irresistible</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">A Rose</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Like Flocks of Tired Birds When Autumn Comes</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh, Just Beyond the Curve of Ideal Quest</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Ah! You, from the Small High-Walled Acre of Your Lives</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Mouth of the Dust I Kiss, Corruption Absolute</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_36">36</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Curtains are Drawn as though it still were Night</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Black Velvet</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Nerves</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Pain has All the Patience of a Nun</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Scandal-Monger After All is Right</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Woods of Brown Gloom Sombring with the Hush of Death</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Feel So Much Alone</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">The Complex Life</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Shall We Be Christened Poets, Children of God</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">When I Am Weary at the Antic Chance</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Moods</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">SMOKE</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Now is the Evening Dipped Knee-Deep in Blood</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Blow Upon Blow They Bruise the Daylight Wan</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">A Ragged Drummer Rides Along the Street</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Zeppelins</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">O Flattery, Imposture, Battle Show</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Will Happen to the Beggar, and the Sinner, and the Sad</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">If I Were What I Would Be, and Could Break</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Holy Russia</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Deeply Nurtured is Your Foolishness</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Of All Who Died in Silence Far Away</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">And Afterwards, When Honour Has Made Good</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Pity the Slain that Laid Away Their Lives</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">FLAME<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Have Understood so Little of Me, and My Adoration</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Lulled are the Dazzling Colours of the Day</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Washed at My Feet by the Curded Foam of Sluggish Waves</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Poems Cannot Laugh. They are the Voice</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">On the Hill There is a Tavern, Long-Loved, Well-Remembered</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh Canst Thou Not Hear in My Heart All Its Whispering Fears</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">As in the Silence the Clear Moonlight Drips</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Can but Give Thee Unsubstantial Things</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Have No Other Friend but Thee</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Bodies Heaving Like Waves</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Your Face to Me is Like a Beautiful City</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh! Why Will You Not Let Me Love You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Devotion Kneels to You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Islands</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Many Things I'd Find to Charm You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Lamp-posts</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">London</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Slowly the Pale Feet of Morning</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Have I to Do With Them</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Among the Crumbling Arches of Decay</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">As a Nun's Face from Her Black Draperies</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Sun is Lord of Life and Colour</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Bahama Islands</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Thoughts of London</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Streets</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Laughter and Singing Come With the Morning</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">In the Night I Hear My Loneliness Calling</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Sunday</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Leaves are Singing, and the Sea</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Soundly Sleepeth the Fool</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Moonlit Lilacs Under the Window</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Old Woman Forever Sitting</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Loneliness I Love</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">I Met an Indian</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">From the Fathomless Depth of My Boredom</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Lolling in Snow, Like Kings in Ermine Coats</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Roots of Our Longing are Probing the Heart of Night</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Vahdah</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Starlight Silences</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Mountain is an Emperor</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Know What Happiness Is</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Long Hath the Pen Lain Idle in My Hand</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Lay My Heart on a Stone</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Cold Light Steals Into My Soul</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Caravans of Spring are in the Town</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Dread the Beauty of Approaching Spring</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">To My Father</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">To My Mother</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">London Grows Sad at Evening</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Ah! the Spring</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">The Undertone of the Volga Boat Song</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="ROCKETS_AND_ASHES" id="ROCKETS_AND_ASHES">ROCKETS AND ASHES</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_viii" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_011.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs</p>
+<p class="i6">With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,</p>
+<p class="i0">You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,</p>
+<p class="i2">You stop my heart and turn it into wood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I serve not God, but make my idol fair</p>
+<p class="i2">From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair</p>
+<p class="i2">By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,</p>
+<p class="i2">The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,</p>
+<p class="i2">And sunrise falling on the quiet street.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,</p>
+<p class="i2">And lovers in the secret sheets of night</p>
+<p class="i0">Trembling like instruments of music, till the day</p>
+<p class="i2">Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Age creeps upon your timid little faces</p>
+<p class="i2">Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Proud in the unimportance of your places</p>
+<p class="i2">You sit in twilight prophesying woe.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,</p>
+<p class="i2">I from my pageant golden as the day</p>
+<p class="i0">Pity your littleness from all my passion,</p>
+<p class="i2">Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">We</span> are the caretakers of empty houses,</p>
+<p class="i4">The moon leans her slender body against the door,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the lock is jarred with rust.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun looks in through the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.</p>
+<p class="i0">Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things</p>
+<p class="i0">Like bowls of potpourri,</p>
+<p class="i0">A dust of petals</p>
+<p class="i0">Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">From</span> far away the lost adventures gleam,</p>
+<p class="i4">The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,</p>
+<p class="i0">The love of her who showed me to the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">In triumph of creation, who did seem</p>
+<p class="i0">With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream</p>
+<p class="i0">To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun</p>
+<p class="i0">The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...</p>
+<p class="i0">The row of soldiered books, authority</p>
+<p class="i0">Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,</p>
+<p class="i0">The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,</p>
+<p class="i0">Rebellion, love made sad with <span class="locked">mystery&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And like a firefly through the twilit trees</p>
+<p class="i0">Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Give</span> me, O God, the power of laughter still,</p>
+<p class="i4">I shall have need of humour, deftest foil</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the army of infuriated pride,</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the shields of reason, and the spears</p>
+<p class="i0">Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Three musketeers of faithful following.</p>
+<p class="i0">We will fear nothing.&mdash;Is not laughter brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the buttressed prisons of the world?</p>
+<p class="i0">And is not love the bravest of them all,</p>
+<p class="i0">So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">While the red fists are threatening all around,</p>
+<p class="i0">And hate is beating on the battledrums?</p>
+<p class="i0">As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse</p>
+<p class="i0">Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,</p>
+<p class="i0">I ride my fancy blithely into danger</p>
+<p class="i0">To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride</p>
+<p class="i0">And stick my roses in the cap of Love....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Winding</span> down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled out its song</p>
+<p class="i4">Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and indefinite along.</p>
+<p class="i0">The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some hunch-backed and some bent with age,</p>
+<p class="i0">They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung heavy in a sombre rage.</p>
+<p class="i0">Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their heads the scolding shrewish tongue;</p>
+<p class="i0">They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out the dust and dung.</p>
+<p class="i0">Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags upon the line,</p>
+<p class="i0">I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a slow decline.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded here and there,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew brilliant in the tinsel glare.</p>
+<p class="i0">Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of the day stretched to the night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen light.</p>
+<p class="i0">And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long highway.</p>
+<p class="i0">And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and pain and hunger and despair,</p>
+<p class="i0">And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and false pansies in their hair,</p>
+<p class="i0">But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or splendour in their lives,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking wives.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+<p class="i0">I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with coarse uncaring hand,</p>
+<p class="i0">But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to understand;</p>
+<p class="i0">Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced on grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and hide my disbelief.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Strange we so love the world&mdash;for presently, out of my window looking on the city,</p>
+<p class="i0">I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt no shame nor pity</p>
+<p class="i0">For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of sleeping streams.</p>
+<p class="i0">I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of million lungs,</p>
+<p class="i0">And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a million tongues;</p>
+<p class="i0">And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the peopled spaces,</p>
+<p class="i0">And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of faces.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Tranquility</span> stirred by a sudden spasm,</p>
+<p class="i4">Knives of rain that cut the silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Calm of the marble-terraced night</p>
+<p class="i0">Charred with the spattering of rockets.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Drums will I hear and battles now,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the long death howl of wolves by night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Watching the moon on the forest tops,</p>
+<p class="i0">Walking with delicate frightened steps</p>
+<p class="i0">To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I could</span> explain</p>
+<p class="i4">The complicated lore that drags the soul</p>
+<p class="i0">From what shall profit him</p>
+<p class="i0">To gild damnation with his choicest gold.</p>
+<p class="i0">But you</p>
+<p class="i0">Are poring over precious books and do not hear</p>
+<p class="i0">Our plaintive, frivolous songs;</p>
+<p class="i0">For we in stubborn vanity ascend</p>
+<p class="i0">On ladders insecure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toward the tottering balconies</p>
+<p class="i0">To serenade our painted paramours;</p>
+<p class="i0">Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">That cheat between unrest and false repose.</p>
+<p class="i0">And we are haunted</p>
+<p class="i0">By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now taking shape of Pleasure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.</p>
+<p class="i0">I could disclose</p>
+<p class="i0">The truth that hangs between our lies</p>
+<p class="i0">And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;</p>
+<p class="i0">Truth, that stings like nettles</p>
+<p class="i0">Our frail hands dare not pluck</p>
+<p class="i0">From out our garden's terraced indolence.</p>
+<p class="i0">We are not happy,</p>
+<p class="i0">And you make us dumb with loving hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Reproachful on our lips.</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,</p>
+<p class="i0">For we have bartered diamonds for glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our tears for smiles,</p>
+<p class="i0">Eternity for now.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I feel</span> in me a manifold desire</p>
+<p class="i4">From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I the Queen</p>
+<p class="i0">Of crowding vagabonds,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,</p>
+<p class="i0">With pathos of torn laces</p>
+<p class="i0">And broken swords;</p>
+<p class="i0">Cut-throats and kings and poets</p>
+<p class="i0">Who have loved me</p>
+<p class="i0">In visions wild, not knowing</p>
+<p class="i0">What I was.</p>
+<p class="i0">In me no end</p>
+<p class="i0">Even where the last content</p>
+<p class="i0">Clasps on my head a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">Of shining <span class="locked">endurance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">I slip from all my robes</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the rags of a tattered romance;</p>
+<p class="i0">The stars crowd at the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their jealous destiny</p>
+<p class="i0">Raps at the <span class="locked">door&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They bob and wink and leer,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I must leave the lamplight for the road</p>
+<p class="i0">To keep strange company.</p>
+<p class="i0">Farewell and Hail!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Silence</span>&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Somewhere on earth</p>
+<p class="i0">There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.</p>
+<p class="i0">The trees stand bolt upright</p>
+<p class="i0">Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.</p>
+<p class="i0">There is a purpose in Heaven,</p>
+<p class="i0">But for me</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I should</span> like to say to the world:</p>
+<p class="i4">I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;</p>
+<p class="i0">Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,</p>
+<p class="i0">Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.</p>
+<p class="i0">I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,</p>
+<p class="i0">In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,</p>
+<p class="i0">To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,</p>
+<p class="i0">I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola</p>
+<p class="i0">Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> pass as in a drugged delirium</p>
+<p class="i4">Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;</p>
+<p class="i0">You sing a blasphemous Te Deum</p>
+<p class="i0">To harlot virgins, and a fraction</p>
+<p class="i0">Of your fulginous colour passes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stains my spirit's great conception</p>
+<p class="i0">As it dips into your glasses.</p>
+<p class="i0">I that am the sole exception</p>
+<p class="i0">To your stillborn, false devices,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that know you, I that hate you,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that drank now spit your vices</p>
+<p class="i0">Through my loathing reinstate you;</p>
+<p class="i0">Dive once more into the stagnance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Concentrate your cruel fragrance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Steal your flowers before I sink you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lift with hate instead of praises,</p>
+<p class="i0">Show you honour of my scorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">Garlanded you go to blazes</p>
+<p class="i0">With my rhymes for your adorning!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">O faces</span> that look so coldly at me,</p>
+<p class="i4">Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,</p>
+<p class="i0">Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.</p>
+<p class="i0">You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,</p>
+<p class="i0">With tinkling bells that harass my calm,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.</p>
+<p class="i0">Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,</p>
+<p class="i0">How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?</p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,</p>
+<p class="i0">You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea</p>
+<p class="i0">To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your <span class="locked">dress,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How I might love you and weep for you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs</p>
+<p class="i0">If you could understand my singing,</p>
+<p class="i0">If you could understand my love!</p>
+<p class="i0">But you are waltzing with your marionettes</p>
+<p class="i0">And marching to the music of the <span class="locked">clock&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">I cannot bear you to watch me</p>
+<p class="i0">With those cold eyes through which I see,</p>
+<p class="i0">Emptiness only and dust.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I see</span> myself in many different dresses,</p>
+<p class="i4">In many moods, and many different places;</p>
+<p class="i0">All gold amid the grey where solemn faces</p>
+<p class="i0">Are silence to my mirth&mdash;a flame that blesses</p>
+<p class="i0">From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces</p>
+<p class="i0">Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disdainful of their slander or caresses.</p>
+<p class="i0">I see myself the child of many races,</p>
+<p class="i0">Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;</p>
+<p class="i0">Within my soul a thousand weary traces</p>
+<p class="i0">Of pain and joy and passionate <span class="locked">excesses&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Eternal beauty that our brief love chases</p>
+<p class="i0">With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">There</span> are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:</p>
+<p class="i6">Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,</p>
+<p class="i2">Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The long road unto nothing I will sing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring</p>
+<p class="i2">No more emotion than the fear to die.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,</p>
+<p class="i2">Another house as grey and steep and still:</p>
+<p class="i0">An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,</p>
+<p class="i2">A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,</p>
+<p class="i2">Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!</p>
+<p class="i0">Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?</p>
+<p class="i2">Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain</p>
+<p class="i2">Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:</p>
+<p class="i0">A black umbrella held up in the rain,</p>
+<p class="i2">The raindrops making patterns in the dust.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">If this distaste I hold for fools is such,</p>
+<p class="i2">Shall I not spit upon myself as well?</p>
+<p class="i0">Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?</p>
+<p class="i2">Do I not fatten also in this hell?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Sadness and joy&mdash;if they were melted up,</p>
+<p class="i2">Things that were great&mdash;upon the fires of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,</p>
+<p class="i2">Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two</p>
+<p class="i2">And set him like a pilgrim on his way</p>
+<p class="i0">With Beauty's face before him&mdash;what of you,</p>
+<p class="i2">Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The dullard-masses that no god can save!</p>
+<p class="i2">If I were God, to rise and strike you down</p>
+<p class="i0">And break your churches in an angry wave</p>
+<p class="i2">And make a furious bonfire of your town!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">God in a coloured globe, alone and still,</p>
+<p class="i2">Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,</p>
+<p class="i0">On loom of spaces measureless, to fill</p>
+<p class="i2">The empty air with passion and with pain.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Emblazon all the heavens with desire</p>
+<p class="i2">And Wisdom delved for in the depths of <span class="locked">time&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire</p>
+<p class="i2">Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,</p>
+<p class="i2">Perfected and undone and built afresh</p>
+<p class="i0">With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...</p>
+<p class="i2">If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> often, when the thought of suicide</p>
+<p class="i4">With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,</p>
+<p class="i0">The ghosts of many foods alluring glide</p>
+<p class="i0">On golden dishes, wine in purple tide</p>
+<p class="i0">To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye</p>
+<p class="i0">Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly</p>
+<p class="i0">Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride</p>
+<p class="i0">Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie</p>
+<p class="i0">Resigned to death like heroes&mdash;July peas,</p>
+<p class="i0">Expectant bottles foaming at the <span class="locked">brink&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">White bread, and honey of the golden <span class="locked">bees&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,</p>
+<p class="i0">A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,</p>
+<p class="i0">And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is still something to have cheated God</p>
+<p class="i4">And bored the Devil with so easy prey,</p>
+<p class="i0">And in the midst of summer woods to raise</p>
+<p class="i0">A leafless tree whose stark limbs mock at Heaven,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flaunting an iron hatred in the midst of <span class="locked">hope&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet sometimes in the loneliness of night</p>
+<p class="i0">My buried longings blossom on the boughs,</p>
+<p class="i0">My wistful longings come out star by star,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till the great sky is light with my desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And on the winds my songs are galloping....</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, to what dismal greyness creeps the soul</p>
+<p class="i0">Too weak, too tired, to struggle from the slough!</p>
+<p class="i0">My weapons rust, my pen is in the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">The moulting feathers plucked from out my wings</p>
+<p class="i0">Lie dangling in the hats I stole them for.</p>
+<p class="i0">My heart is floating in a claret cup,</p>
+<p class="i0">My brain is toppling drunken at the brim,</p>
+<p class="i0">My life is drowned within the lurid dregs.</p>
+<p class="i0">I turn and fold my hands in a last appeal,</p>
+<p class="i0">What heaven shall I pray to and for what,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now that my songs to penny tunes are set,</p>
+<p class="i0">And nothing is to save of me but flesh?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> words that move on wings in a long drift</p>
+<p class="i4">Can waft this silence into weary ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And steal into the veins and fingertips</p>
+<p class="i0">Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships</p>
+<p class="i0">Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.</p>
+<p class="i0">What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,</p>
+<p class="i0">Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,</p>
+<p class="i0">Steeled with indifference against all hurt,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:</p>
+<p class="i0">To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where all the lamps each with a separate soul</p>
+<p class="i0">Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;</p>
+<p class="i0">And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife</p>
+<p class="i0">Cuts free the tethered heart from long control</p>
+<p class="i0">And flings it like a ball with mad delight</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the silver lap of the young moon.</p>
+<p class="i0">What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine</p>
+<p class="i0">Can broider tapestries as rich as these,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Transparent as the gods we half divine,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain</p>
+<p class="i0">That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,</p>
+<p class="i0">And visioned faces that our dreams create</p>
+<p class="i0">Born in the land forbidden us of fate</p>
+<p class="i0">And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind</p>
+<p class="i0">Forever Joy, that never comes again!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I think</span> myself</p>
+<p class="i4">The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage</p>
+<p class="i0">Where murder creeps and whispers.</p>
+<p class="i0">The jester clad in piebald tights</p>
+<p class="i0">Half black, half golden, with no company</p>
+<p class="i0">Save bells that jingle,</p>
+<p class="i0">And an effigy,</p>
+<p class="i0">The grinning image painted like myself</p>
+<p class="i0">Upon a stick....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I think myself</p>
+<p class="i0">The fool of comedy mournfully straying</p>
+<p class="i0">Amid the revellers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Loving the moon and my own shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">With its strange solemn <span class="locked">gestures&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Loving the painted moon</p>
+<p class="i0">That lets me play with shadows.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I am the jester on an empty stage</p>
+<p class="i0">Playing a pantomime</p>
+<p class="i0">To spectres in the stalls,</p>
+<p class="i0">Listening at last</p>
+<p class="i0">For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding,</p>
+<p class="i0">And for some king with decadent tired fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">To fling a white gardenia at my feet.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> adored, wild, strange, irresistible,</p>
+<p class="i4">How they fail one at the last!</p>
+<p class="i0">What is there in your faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That we should worship with our souls?</p>
+<p class="i0">Most lovable, perfidious,</p>
+<p class="i0">Vague&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">Molesting even our visions</p>
+<p class="i0">With treacherous pathos.</p>
+<p class="i0">O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,</p>
+<p class="i0">What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Covering your meagre bodies</p>
+<p class="i0">With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?</p>
+<p class="i0">Life and its grey days, and time</p>
+<p class="i0">Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or a dim glass through which you peer.</p>
+<p class="i0">You climb in at the windows of our souls</p>
+<p class="i0">With ladders and stratagems,</p>
+<p class="i0">You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.</p>
+<p class="i0">But what do you do for us</p>
+<p class="i0">Lute players, dancers, deceivers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Other than lie with red lips</p>
+<p class="i0">And cajole with tears of beryl?</p>
+<p class="i0">People&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">Men and women with laughable, tragic faces</p>
+<p class="i0">Winking at love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Treading our songs and illusions</p>
+<p class="i0">Under petulant feet!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="A_ROSE" id="A_ROSE">A ROSE</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging</p>
+<p class="i4">Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?</p>
+<p class="i0">What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging</p>
+<p class="i0">Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic</p>
+<p class="i0">Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,</p>
+<p class="i0">And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had <span class="locked">mangled;&mdash;</span></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died unrequited,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,</p>
+<p class="i0">Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and slighted,</p>
+<p class="i0">That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of Heaven?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and bleeding,</p>
+<p class="i0">Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging,</p>
+<p class="i0">What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Like</span> flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,</p>
+<p class="i4">My spirit flags across the darkening fields</p>
+<p class="i0">And melts into the drabness of the sky</p>
+<p class="i0">And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.</p>
+<p class="i0">But many wizened faces brown and sad</p>
+<p class="i0">Peer from the bushes as I wander <span class="locked">past,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They tell me all those things that old men say</p>
+<p class="i0">As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.</p>
+<p class="i0">"When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,</p>
+<p class="i0">When you have bowed before all other gods,</p>
+<p class="i0">And found them false, then shall you come at last</p>
+<p class="i0">To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless</p>
+<p class="i0">Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">And call you slave and lover." ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall not a child take Pain for company</p>
+<p class="i0">And share her loneliness with him?</p>
+<p class="i0">Does not a youth know tears</p>
+<p class="i0">In the first bitterness of broken love?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come</p>
+<p class="i0">To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ...</p>
+<p class="i0">He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,</p>
+<p class="i0">He sits a jester at the feet of kings</p>
+<p class="i0">And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.</p>
+<p class="i0">He rides the wooden horses at a fair,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dances with the jiggers on the stage.</p>
+<p class="i0">Led by the violins of discontent</p>
+<p class="i0">That whine their music to my listening soul,</p>
+<p class="i0">I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,</p>
+<p class="i0">We dance together to the tunes of rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Played on one note upon the only string.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh,</span> just beyond the curve of ideal quest</p>
+<p class="i4">That changes as a sea wave to the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond the cloud that folds around a star,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone,</p>
+<p class="i0">The paradise of all we might have been,</p>
+<p class="i0">While we are washed back downwards in the dark</p>
+<p class="i0">Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Ah!</span> you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,</p>
+<p class="i4">Your windows only looking upon gardens,</p>
+<p class="i0">Only perceiving love and death and truth</p>
+<p class="i0">As facts that come to pass,</p>
+<p class="i0">That pass and leave you still</p>
+<p class="i0">Within your safe small prisons,</p>
+<p class="i0">Older, duller,</p>
+<p class="i0">To walk and talk among the evergreens.</p>
+<p class="i0">You have never known</p>
+<p class="i0">Delight of dying slowly,</p>
+<p class="i0">Poisoned with raptures</p>
+<p class="i0">In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of <span class="locked">death&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">That dishevel and smooth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cajole and <span class="locked">melancholize&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The dance</p>
+<p class="i0">Which is a whirling of leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">In their last scorn of sorrow</p>
+<p class="i0">Flung upwards by the wind</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the haggard face of <span class="locked">winter&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons</p>
+<p class="i0">Tossed by impulsive hands;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor slid as skaters swiftly</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,</p>
+<p class="i0">Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ...</p>
+<p class="i0">You have not felt the abandon</p>
+<p class="i0">Of light love</p>
+<p class="i0">Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Mouth</span> of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute,</p>
+<p class="i4">Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour,</p>
+<p class="i0">Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you I sheave the harvest of my hair,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air</p>
+<p class="i0">My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great</p>
+<p class="i0">Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate,</p>
+<p class="i0">Science for giving wounds, and healing science.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care,</p>
+<p class="i0">Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the unborn child that I prepare,</p>
+<p class="i0">You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> curtains are drawn as though it still were night,</p>
+<p class="i4">A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all about the room is quietness&mdash;Each patient chair</p>
+<p class="i0">Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book</p>
+<p class="i0">Lie as you left them, now bereft of <span class="locked">purpose&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you</p>
+<p class="i0">Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes!</p>
+<p class="i0">How grey and sober, full of placid wit</p>
+<p class="i0">The furniture, the pictures on the wall;</p>
+<p class="i0">How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart</p>
+<p class="i0">As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood.</p>
+<p class="i0">Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face</p>
+<p class="i0">And white, white gloves ...</p>
+<p class="i0">What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock,</p>
+<p class="i0">With face grimacing ... nearly six it is....</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts,</p>
+<p class="i0">For in its dial eternity is <span class="locked">housed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town!</p>
+<p class="i0">But a water cart with surly noise below</p>
+<p class="i0">Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street.</p>
+<p class="i0">How cold and how familiar all these things,</p>
+<p class="i0">To you so lonely in the enormous dawn</p>
+<p class="i0">Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="BLACK_VELVET" id="BLACK_VELVET">BLACK VELVET</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> darkness of the trees at deep midnight</p>
+<p class="i4">And sombreness of shadows in the lake;</p>
+<p class="i0">A mountain in the starlight wide awake</p>
+<p class="i0">Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might</p>
+<p class="i0">Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright</p>
+<p class="i0">Bespattered jewelry of stars&mdash;the ache</p>
+<p class="i0">Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break</p>
+<p class="i0">From music. Slumbering cities&mdash;candle light</p>
+<p class="i0">Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Queens that go to scaffold for a <span class="locked">sin&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Or splash of blackness manifest of pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin</p>
+<p class="i0">Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again</p>
+<p class="i0">Venetian masks against a milky skin.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="NERVES" id="NERVES">NERVES</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">These</span> curious looms where we have spun our fancies,</p>
+<p class="i4">These intricate webs where our desires are threaded,</p>
+<p class="i0">These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies</p>
+<p class="i0">Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed.</p>
+<p class="i0">These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles</p>
+<p class="i0">Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers</p>
+<p class="i0">From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles</p>
+<p class="i0">Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors.</p>
+<p class="i0">These colours twinging on a prism's edges,</p>
+<p class="i0">These speckled patterns of fanatic madness</p>
+<p class="i0">From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges</p>
+<p class="i0">For pearls within the depths of sadness and of <span class="locked">gladness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after</p>
+<p class="i0">As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter,</p>
+<p class="i0">Molesting quietness and waking up the weary!</p>
+<p class="i0">What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting</p>
+<p class="i0">With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you</p>
+<p class="i0">O wrangling, juggling, jangling, <span class="locked">pirouetting&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you?</p>
+<p class="i0">You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion,</p>
+<p class="i0">And trodden out the red stars into ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron,</p>
+<p class="i0">And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes ...</p>
+<p class="i0">You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters,</p>
+<p class="i0">The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary,</p>
+<p class="i0">A poor bewildered clown&mdash;and nothing matters.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> pain has all the patience of a nun</p>
+<p class="i4">Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone,</p>
+<p class="i0">In some chill cellar where the amens moan,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ave Maria, the long penance spun</p>
+<p class="i0">Forever. And the tapers one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne.</p>
+<p class="i0">My soul is tired from kneeling all alone,</p>
+<p class="i0">Its little candles yearning to the sun.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen</p>
+<p class="i0">Bright mirages of glory on the grey</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sad horizons; I have kept the green</p>
+<p class="i0">Surprise of spring through winter and dismay,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen</p>
+<p class="i0">Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> scandal-monger after all is <span class="locked">right&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i4">The old and cunning voice with weary repetition</p>
+<p class="i0">Is justified in all dull words and warnings.</p>
+<p class="i0">I see at last how you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spendthrift of passion</p>
+<p class="i0">In love's bankruptcy,</p>
+<p class="i0">Borrow new beauty from each passing <span class="locked">face&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How being too lavish you did steal</p>
+<p class="i0">From generous <span class="locked">hands&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">You are the idol builder and the robber of temples,</p>
+<p class="i0">Praising with passionate psalms</p>
+<p class="i0">The thing you cannot <span class="locked">worship&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And yet your prayers have stirred</p>
+<p class="i0">Belief in <span class="locked">us&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We see beyond the false and weary face</p>
+<p class="i0">Into your haggard soul and trust from <span class="locked">pity&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We hear beyond the idle music of your voice,</p>
+<p class="i0">A wisdom taught by cruelty</p>
+<p class="i0">And a tired scorn of treachery and <span class="locked">guile&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We see your wounds and weep,</p>
+<p class="i0">You meet our pity with a traitor's <span class="locked">kiss&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled</p>
+<p class="i0">In teaching pain to <span class="locked">others&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And all that mob of furious accusation</p>
+<p class="i0">To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well,</p>
+<p class="i0">Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered,</p>
+<p class="i0">That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Woods</span> of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death,</p>
+<p class="i4">Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath</p>
+<p class="i0">Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering,</p>
+<p class="i0">As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly</p>
+<p class="i0">Listless they perish, wavering and hovering.</p>
+<p class="i0">Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering</p>
+<p class="i0">The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun.</p>
+<p class="i0">No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet,</p>
+<p class="i0">No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet....</p>
+<p class="i0">How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound</p>
+<p class="i0">From shrill carousers riotous and merry all,</p>
+<p class="i0">As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground,</p>
+<p class="i0">As funeral bagpipes at a burial.</p>
+<p class="i0">And I who wander passionless and forlorn,</p>
+<p class="i0">A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection,</p>
+<p class="i0">In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn,</p>
+<p class="i0">See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I feel</span> so much alone,</p>
+<p class="i4">And yet I know that many hopes are storming</p>
+<p class="i0">My shut heart;</p>
+<p class="i0">For I am bolted fast in my own house.</p>
+<p class="i0">I pace distracted through its corridors</p>
+<p class="i0">To the music of Love's knocking hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the gate,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or silence when they sleep.</p>
+<p class="i0">I cannot find the key to let them in,</p>
+<p class="i0">I, my own host and guest and ghost,</p>
+<p class="i0">Imprisoned in myself!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THE_COMPLEX_LIFE" id="THE_COMPLEX_LIFE">THE COMPLEX LIFE</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I know</span> it to be true that those who live</p>
+<p class="i4">As do the grasses and the lilies of the field</p>
+<p class="i0">Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield</p>
+<p class="i0">Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But we are gathered for the looms of Fate</p>
+<p class="i0">That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels</p>
+<p class="i0">Spins into complex patterns and conceals</p>
+<p class="i0">His huge invention with forms intricate.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Each generation blindly fills the plan,</p>
+<p class="i0">A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God</p>
+<p class="i0">With many processes from out the sod,</p>
+<p class="i0">The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,</p>
+<p class="i0">A chemistry of subtle interfusion,</p>
+<p class="i0">Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We spell the crimes of our unruly days,</p>
+<p class="i0">We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,</p>
+<p class="i0">We crave perfection that we may not find.</p>
+<p class="i0">Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You peasants and you hermits, simple livers!</p>
+<p class="i0">So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned</p>
+<p class="i0">While we give up our bodies to be burned,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,</p>
+<p class="i0">We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,</p>
+<p class="i0">We make a gaudy havoc of our life</p>
+<p class="i0">And live a thousand ages in an hour.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,</p>
+<p class="i0">We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,</p>
+<p class="i0">We dance in couples to the tune of fools,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dream of harassed continents the while.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion</p>
+<p class="i0">Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint,</p>
+<p class="i0">Make cryptic perorations of complaint,</p>
+<p class="i0">Inverted religion, and perverted passion.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But since we are children of this age,</p>
+<p class="i0">In curious ways discovering salvation,</p>
+<p class="i0">I will not quit my muddled generation,</p>
+<p class="i0">But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Although I know that Nature's bounty yields</p>
+<p class="i0">Unto simplicity a beautiful content,</p>
+<p class="i0">Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent</p>
+<p class="i0">Will I give back my body to the fields.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Shall</span> we be christened poets, children of God,</p>
+<p class="i4">For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">For tugging at the moaning bells of death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And coming as the autumn grave-digger</p>
+<p class="i0">To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">Of wind upon the rushes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of music upon silence?</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel</p>
+<p class="i0">For forcing tragedy into a rhyme</p>
+<p class="i0">As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?</p>
+<p class="i0">The poet ever wanders after Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The flunkey on a funeral chariot</p>
+<p class="i0">Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the roses that he plucks from summer</p>
+<p class="i0">Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse....</p>
+<p class="i0">How shall the world learn how to laugh again</p>
+<p class="i0">When all its songs have only learnt to weep?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">When</span> I am weary at the antic chance,</p>
+<p class="i4">The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,</p>
+<p class="i0">The hope and fear in jugglery, and see</p>
+<p class="i0">How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,</p>
+<p class="i0">And life a laboured trick&mdash;the years advance</p>
+<p class="i0">A shrilling chorus in affected dance</p>
+<p class="i0">With lust of many eyes that watch and wink</p>
+<p class="i0">Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink</p>
+<p class="i0">Will draw gross laughter by a hideous <span class="locked">prance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where fiddles squeal and all the follies <span class="locked">spin&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin</p>
+<p class="i0">Through curtained silence trips as from a trance</p>
+<p class="i0">With blushing flowers for Columbine&mdash;Romance.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="MOODS" id="MOODS">MOODS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I crouched</span> upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses,</p>
+<p class="i4">And&mdash;listening with dread for the moment of my own silence</p>
+<p class="i0">Rending the flimsy lace of <span class="locked">whisperings&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My gnome dances before me</p>
+<p class="i0">Behind a fan of smoke,</p>
+<p class="i0">My dwarf squats on my shoulders</p>
+<p class="i0">Tweeking their moulted wings,</p>
+<p class="i0">My ape peers in the mirror of my face</p>
+<p class="i0">Mimicking my soul's gaunt <span class="locked">gestures&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Blotching the night with <span class="locked">howls&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My laughter goes whining away on the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment,</p>
+<p class="i0">Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Dancing across the leer of ugliness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Skimming like a gold thread</p>
+<p class="i0">Through a necklace of vile <span class="locked">masks&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Lifting with lotus fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">The blue arras of <span class="locked">nightmare&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Loveliness like a delicate silver flute</p>
+<p class="i0">Pressed to a negro's <span class="locked">lips&mdash;</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Do you then wish for all those griefs</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose snarling hands you kiss,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kneeling in adoration to a dagger</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+<p class="i0">As saints before a cross?</p>
+<p class="i0">You who have tossed all flowers away,</p>
+<p class="i0">Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood</p>
+<p class="i0">Their javelin-petals wet with <span class="locked">slaughter,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Do you then crave your own blood's offering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?</p>
+<p class="i0">In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,</p>
+<p class="i0">You lean across the precipice of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Calling and crying</p>
+<p class="i0">For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Waiting,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">Carrying vast burdens over the crags of <span class="locked">chaos&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,</p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting like a vast arch of quietness</p>
+<p class="i0">Through which a screaming messenger shall <span class="locked">dart&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Like a dense hood of silence</p>
+<p class="i0">Pierced by a sword of <span class="locked">music&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool</p>
+<p class="i0">Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="SMOKE" id="SMOKE">SMOKE</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_49" class="figleft" style="width: 252px;"><img src="images/i_053.jpg" width="252" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Now</span> is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood</p>
+<p class="i4">And the dun hills stand fearful in their places.</p>
+<p class="i0">Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets</p>
+<p class="i0">With burdens of vainglory on our backs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web</p>
+<p class="i0">Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease.</p>
+<p class="i0">But out beyond, the armies of the world</p>
+<p class="i0">March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil:</p>
+<p class="i0">He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high</p>
+<p class="i0">The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed</p>
+<p class="i0">With livid roses; all his pillars black</p>
+<p class="i0">Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust</p>
+<p class="i0">He raises up his awful golden throne.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God</p>
+<p class="i0">Where good and evil mix; and all your rage</p>
+<p class="i0">Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Blow</span> upon blow they bruise the daylight wan,</p>
+<p class="i4">Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore;</p>
+<p class="i0">They ride on furious, leaving every man</p>
+<p class="i0">Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war:</p>
+<p class="i0">Gods that grow tired of paradisial water</p>
+<p class="i0">And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I fear a thing more terrible than death:</p>
+<p class="i0">The glamour of the battle grips us <span class="locked">yet&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">As crowds before a fire that hold their breath</p>
+<p class="i0">Watching the burning houses, and forget</p>
+<p class="i0">All they will lose, but marvel to behold</p>
+<p class="i0">Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I fear the time when slow the flame expires,</p>
+<p class="i0">When this kaleidoscope of roaring color</p>
+<p class="i0">Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires</p>
+<p class="i0">That shone with battle, nothing left of valour</p>
+<p class="i0">Save chill ignoble ashes for despair</p>
+<p class="i0">To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hiding the mangled body of the Earth:</p>
+<p class="i0">The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth,</p>
+<p class="i0">But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust</p>
+<p class="i0">Save to end living and be heaped with dust.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">That stillness that must follow where Death trod,</p>
+<p class="i0">The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tuneless voices cringing praise to God,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise,</p>
+<p class="i0">With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Across the world from out the fevered ground</p>
+<p class="i0">Decay from every pore exhales its breath;</p>
+<p class="i0">A cloak of penance winding close around</p>
+<p class="i0">The bright desire of spring. And unto Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">As to a conquering king, we yield the keys</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The maiden loverless shall go her ways,</p>
+<p class="i0">And child unfathered feed on crust and husk;</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun that was the glory of our days</p>
+<p class="i0">Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk</p>
+<p class="i0">Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay</p>
+<p class="i0">Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap2"><span class="smcap1">A ragged</span> drummer rides along the street,</p>
+<p class="i4">And at his coming</p>
+<p class="i0">The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet</p>
+<p class="i0">And voices humming.</p>
+<p class="i0">He rode a year ago from far away,</p>
+<p class="i0">On charger prancing,</p>
+<p class="i0">With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay,</p>
+<p class="i0">And banners dancing.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum</p>
+<p class="i0">He bore so proudly,</p>
+<p class="i0">His roaring music woke the silence dumb</p>
+<p class="i0">To thunder loudly.</p>
+<p class="i0">And by his side the old men and the young</p>
+<p class="i0">Had followed cheering</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the sunset smiling as they sung,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor thought of fearing.</p>
+<p class="i0">They left their lovers and their mothers' lap,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their homes demolish,</p>
+<p class="i0">"For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap,</p>
+<p class="i0">A sword to polish!"</p>
+<p class="i0">And so the town was silent once again,</p>
+<p class="i0">Though tunes of battle</p>
+<p class="i0">Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghost drums would rattle.</p>
+<p class="i0">But at the chuckling dice or careful loom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or candled churches</p>
+<p class="i0">A few forgot or prayed or followed doom</p>
+<p class="i0">With drunken lurches....</p>
+<p class="i0">Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng,</p>
+<p class="i0">In huddled masses</p>
+<p class="i0">They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song</p>
+<p class="i0">As back he <span class="locked">passes&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone</p>
+<p class="i0">In rags and tatters,</p>
+<p class="i0">And on a soundless barrel with a bone</p>
+<p class="i0">He beats and batters.</p>
+<p class="i0">"Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That we may kiss them?</p>
+<p class="i0">Where sound your little songs that rang so loud</p>
+<p class="i0">To us that miss them?"</p>
+<p class="i0">There are no songs, no happy marching feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">No favours flying:</p>
+<p class="i0">The drummer passes ... on the quiet street</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun is dying.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!...</p>
+<p class="i0">Have done with weeping,</p>
+<p class="i0">But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave</p>
+<p class="i0">As he lies sleeping.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="ZEPPELINS" id="ZEPPELINS">ZEPPELINS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="i25 smaller">MIDNIGHT</p>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Suddenly</span></p>
+<p class="i4">Shutting our lips upon a jest</p>
+<p class="i0">As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,</p>
+<p class="i0">A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Quiver with startled <span class="locked">terrors&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!</p>
+<p class="i0">Now every muscle weakens, every pulse</p>
+<p class="i0">Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve</p>
+<p class="i0">Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....</p>
+<p class="i0">How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,</p>
+<p class="i0">How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!</p>
+<p class="i0">Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh</p>
+<p class="i0">A little longer, oh a little year!</p>
+<p class="i0">Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,</p>
+<p class="i0">And resolutions of new wondrous lives</p>
+<p class="i0">Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....</p>
+<p class="i0">Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lurid silent people loved by death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings</p>
+<p class="i0">To drag our body's glory from the light.</p>
+<p class="i0">Though all the world should fall into their cells</p>
+<p class="i0">And lie within their larders shelf on <span class="locked">shelf&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet <i>will I</i> be the mistress of the sun!</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">1&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,</p>
+<p class="i0">Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted <span class="locked">domes&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,</p>
+<p class="i0">An army fierce upon its own destruction,</p>
+<p class="i0">A famished monster tearing in its claws</p>
+<p class="i0">Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Digesting all the world!...</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Look at the eager people open-mouthed</p>
+<p class="i0">That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised</p>
+<p class="i0">By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their earth adoring senses caught awhile</p>
+<p class="i0">In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;</p>
+<p class="i0">Their spirits straining upward upon strings</p>
+<p class="i0">Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a <span class="locked">toy&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet for an hour</p>
+<p class="i0">Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears</p>
+<p class="i0">They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes</p>
+<p class="i0">Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">3&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The dawn seems drained of blood so <span class="locked">colourless&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Slowly the river moves as though in sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">While silent barges</p>
+<p class="i0">Slide from the mist like dreams;</p>
+<p class="i0">The intricate patterns of the scaffolding</p>
+<p class="i0">Are drawn against the sky</p>
+<p class="i0">More delicate than lace.</p>
+<p class="i0">All the shimmering lights</p>
+<p class="i0">Have shrunk away from morning</p>
+<p class="i0">As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....</p>
+<p class="i0">I am alone, most utterly alone,</p>
+<p class="i0">More lonely than the last man in the world</p>
+<p class="i0">Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.</p>
+<p class="i0">More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">Who stands beside that nebulous cold river</p>
+<p class="i0">Dividing sleep from death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Eternity from time....</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">She brings no feverous memories of night</p>
+<p class="i0">And sheds no tears.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Only two hours ago</p>
+<p class="i0">Fire walked in crimson armour through the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,</p>
+<p class="i0">While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats</p>
+<p class="i0">Among the silver foliage of the stars....</p>
+<p class="i0">But rage has left no furrow in the sky,</p>
+<p class="i0">No wake of sparks across the placid water....</p>
+<p class="i0">This is the ominous and sacred hour</p>
+<p class="i0">When priest-like the world kneels</p>
+<p class="i0">Bowed low toward the empty throne of <span class="locked">day&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard</p>
+<p class="i0">And the flamingo messengers will come</p>
+<p class="i0">Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise....</p>
+<p class="i0">This is the hour of nothing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Colourless and chill</p>
+<p class="i0">Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,</p>
+<p class="i0">As sits an idol holding in his fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">A scentless lotus carven out of stone.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">4&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet</p>
+<p class="i0">And up the long uncomfortable street</p>
+<p class="i0">With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read</p>
+<p class="i0">The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel</p>
+<p class="i0">And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing <span class="locked">well&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,</p>
+<p class="i0">The light steals after me, emerging slow</p>
+<p class="i0">And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.</p>
+<p class="i0">I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched</p>
+<p class="i0">From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw</p>
+<p class="i0">Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door</p>
+<p class="i0">My own reflection as I hurried past,</p>
+<p class="i0">My flaring colours and my face <span class="locked">aghast&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung</p>
+<p class="i0">About my knees and fluttered at the back:</p>
+<p class="i0">An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,</p>
+<p class="i0">My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;</p>
+<p class="i0">My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.</p>
+<p class="i0">Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.</p>
+<p class="i0">... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">O flattery,</span> imposture, battle show,</p>
+<p class="i4">What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,</p>
+<p class="i0">What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow</p>
+<p class="i0">Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">How have you turned the simple truth to lies</p>
+<p class="i0">Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs</p>
+<p class="i0">The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And ever quoting God for your excuse,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,</p>
+<p class="i0">You train the spirit for material use,</p>
+<p class="i0">You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;</p>
+<p class="i0">What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?</p>
+<p class="i0">They shall go to prison black</p>
+<p class="i0">With a striped shirt on the back,</p>
+<p class="i0">Feast on bread and water there</p>
+<p class="i0">In a cell, without a care.</p>
+<p class="i0">They shall learn at least their duty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never tempted more of <span class="locked">beauty&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,</p>
+<p class="i0">And one or two shall hang upon a <span class="locked">cord&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And two or three shall die of grief <span class="locked">alone&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">(And this is well, for sinners should atone,)</p>
+<p class="i0">And five or six shall curse the God that made them,</p>
+<p class="i0">(And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)</p>
+<p class="i0">And those that grew from dust shall go to dust</p>
+<p class="i0">Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:&mdash;"God is just."</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">If</span> I were what I would be, and could break</p>
+<p class="i4">The buttressed fortress of stupidity</p>
+<p class="i0">Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake</p>
+<p class="i0">Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn <span class="locked">puppetry&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The gods are blinking at us sleepily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess</p>
+<p class="i0">Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and <span class="locked">pawn&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The rigid squares of black and white, they dress</p>
+<p class="i0">With their perpetual challenge&mdash;faded, worn,</p>
+<p class="i0">Are all the creeds and praises you profess</p>
+<p class="i0">To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="HOLY_RUSSIA" id="HOLY_RUSSIA">HOLY RUSSIA</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> ghostly blood of thee is in my veins,</p>
+<p class="i4">Back through the centuries of death and birth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains,</p>
+<p class="i0">My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And ever as in dreams I seem to see</p>
+<p class="i0">Those streets and people with their colours cold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tides of restless passion ages old.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I know thy humours and their contradiction,</p>
+<p class="i0">I know thy fevers and hallucinations,</p>
+<p class="i0">I see beneath the painted mask of fiction</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the sick world's travail and her grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dost thou from thy long battling surmise</p>
+<p class="i0">The end of battle and the world's relief?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">While we are creeping in our crooked ways</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds</p>
+<p class="i0">Where Ignorance walks royally through days</p>
+<p class="i0">That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">While we still cry to God for strength to kill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves,</p>
+<p class="i0">And grind young bones for the commercial mill,</p>
+<p class="i0">And build munition works among the graves.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag,"</p>
+<p class="i0">"The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!"</p>
+<p class="i0">Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates <span class="locked">brag&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God,</p>
+<p class="i0">And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Feeling beneath the burden and the rod</p>
+<p class="i0">His justice and Her pity in the street.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Justice and Pity, crying in the <span class="locked">wind&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We only hear the guns that never cease,</p>
+<p class="i0">The flapping of our flags has made us blind!</p>
+<p class="i0">We may not see the sacred gods of peace.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But thou dost build fanatic temples for them,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thou dost pave the road with sanity,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers,</p>
+<p class="i0">The drum that life has snatched away from death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0"><span class="smcap">Peace!</span> But a cynic whispered in my ear</p>
+<p class="i0">How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">That lay amid the dust&mdash;and I could hear</p>
+<p class="i0">A hum of money-changing in the town.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I feared that afterwards, when all is won,</p>
+<p class="i0">We shall forget the meaning of thy <span class="locked">deed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And man will creep as he has always done</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the little gutters of his greed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> deeply nurtured is your foolishness,</p>
+<p class="i4">Calling destruction great and slaughter brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Making large triumph of a little grave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Imperial purple of a mourning dress,</p>
+<p class="i0">The gun an emblem of your <span class="locked">godliness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">A medal or a bayonet, or rave</p>
+<p class="i0">Of singing, marching in the forward press</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hatred to the banging of a band;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your country's honour and the world's release.</p>
+<p class="i0">Are <i>they</i> not strong in courage who withstand</p>
+<p class="i0">The armies of your folly and shall cease</p>
+<p class="i0">To tarnish with spilt life their motherland?</p>
+<p class="i0">Cowards&mdash;or martyrs&mdash;crucified for peace.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Of</span> all who died in silence far away</p>
+<p class="i4">Where sympathy was busy with other things,</p>
+<p class="i0">Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,</p>
+<p class="i0">Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The little dead who knew so large a love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,</p>
+<p class="i0">A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stars were they to her night, and she the stem</p>
+<p class="i0">From which they flowered&mdash;now barren and left unblessed.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave</p>
+<p class="i0">Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now stifled in the darkness of a grave</p>
+<p class="i0">With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">No more!&mdash;And we, the mourners, dare not wear</p>
+<p class="i0">The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">But must don purple and bright standards bear,</p>
+<p class="i0">Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We dare not weep who must be brave in <span class="locked">battle&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">"Another death&mdash;another day&mdash;another inch of <span class="locked">land&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ...</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all who died in darkness far away</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing is left of them but <span class="smcap smaller">LOVE</span>, who triumphs now,</p>
+<p class="i0">His arms held crosswise to the budding day,</p>
+<p class="i0">The passion-red roses clustering his brow.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">And</span> afterwards, when honour has made good,</p>
+<p class="i4">And all you think you fight for shall take place,</p>
+<p class="i0">A late rejoicing to a crippled race;</p>
+<p class="i0">The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food,</p>
+<p class="i0">The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall spread a blush across the haggard face</p>
+<p class="i0">Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">In victory will you have conquered Hate,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stuck old Folly with a bayonet</p>
+<p class="i0">And battered down the hideous prison gate?</p>
+<p class="i0">Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Glutted with gold and dust and empty state,</p>
+<p class="i0">The incense of our anguish and our sweat?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Pity</span> the slain that laid away their lives,</p>
+<p class="i4">Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thin little children and widowed wives,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the broken soldier who survives.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the woman whose body was sold</p>
+<p class="i0">For a little bread or a little gold,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a little fire to keep out the cold,</p>
+<p class="i0">So tired, and fearful of growing old.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the people in the grey street</p>
+<p class="i0">Before the dawn trooping with listless feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Down to their work in the dust and the heat,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a little bread and a little meat.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the criminal sentenced to die,</p>
+<p class="i0">Loving life so, with the world in his eye,</p>
+<p class="i0">In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry</p>
+<p class="i0">Of love that will call when he may not reply.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity them all, the imperative faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places,</p>
+<p class="i0">With indolent postures and frivolous graces.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin</p>
+<p class="i0">Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin</p>
+<p class="i0">That batters the door and staggers in....</p>
+<p class="i0">The streets surround with clamour and din,</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity,</p>
+<p class="i0">Force us to sigh and arrange a committee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">A rebel flag on a rebel grave,</p>
+<p class="i0">But to us the strong alone are brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">And only the rich are worthy to save!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flags that blow where the dead are hurled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="FLAME" id="FLAME">FLAME</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_71" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_075.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> have understood so little of me, and my adoration</p>
+<p class="i4">That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones,</p>
+<p class="i0">You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation</p>
+<p class="i0">And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my</p>
+<p class="i0">moans.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter,</p>
+<p class="i0">You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd;</p>
+<p class="i0">But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter;</p>
+<p class="i0">I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow;</p>
+<p class="i0">I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes;</p>
+<p class="i0">They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for you;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes</p>
+<p class="i0">As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters;</p>
+<p class="i0">You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign,</p>
+<p class="i0">But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of fetters</p>
+<p class="i0">And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+<p class="i0">All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head,</p>
+<p class="i0">For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces</p>
+<p class="i0">And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles sacred</p>
+<p class="i0">With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell;</p>
+<p class="i0">I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping acrid</p>
+<p class="i0">And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Lulled</span> are the dazzling colours of the day,</p>
+<p class="i4">And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash.</p>
+<p class="i0">Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk</p>
+<p class="i0">Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth</p>
+<p class="i0">Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now can I sing the sickly lines of love</p>
+<p class="i0">And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out</p>
+<p class="i0">In the sad spaces of the gloaming night,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark.</p>
+<p class="i0">My words were fireless in the flaming sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the throats of flowers from their content</p>
+<p class="i0">Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face</p>
+<p class="i0">And bade me give them tunes to make them dance....</p>
+<p class="i0">Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down</p>
+<p class="i0">From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast</p>
+<p class="i0">And sterile as the arms of my desire</p>
+<p class="i0">She flings her light despairing on the sky.</p>
+<p class="i0">The night is strange and still, for dropping tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Washed</span> at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves,</p>
+<p class="i4">As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought</p>
+<p class="i0">The thought of you, which held against mine ear</p>
+<p class="i0">Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul;</p>
+<p class="i0">The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love,</p>
+<p class="i0">The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The following of beauty's fugitive limbs</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast</p>
+<p class="i0">Gleam on the clouds and foam,</p>
+<p class="i0">Call to her <span class="locked">lovers.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thus standing in the blasting of the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i0">Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> poems cannot laugh. They are the voice</p>
+<p class="i4">Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">And this wild joy my love has brought to me</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">To fashion for my love one perfect verse</p>
+<p class="i0">Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird</p>
+<p class="i0">To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But as a coward in the general gloom</p>
+<p class="i0">I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill</p>
+<p class="i0">Of love that moves with music into Doom;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold,</p>
+<p class="i0">And like a gay canary in a cage</p>
+<p class="i0">Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage</p>
+<p class="i0">Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">On</span> the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered,</p>
+<p class="i4">Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden highlights,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed.</p>
+<p class="i0">We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment,</p>
+<p class="i0">And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white wine,</p>
+<p class="i0">And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh</span> canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears</p>
+<p class="i4">Whose wind-like voices</p>
+<p class="i0">Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears</p>
+<p class="i0">While the body rejoices.</p>
+<p class="i0">Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Trailing his scarlet vesture</p>
+<p class="i0">Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Turns with a gesture</p>
+<p class="i0">Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey.</p>
+<p class="i0">I follow the shadows of sorrow</p>
+<p class="i0">That press so close to the dancing heels of the day</p>
+<p class="i0">And darken the morrow.</p>
+<p class="i0">The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond its golden visor</p>
+<p class="i0">The leering skull that derides at our lives and me</p>
+<p class="i0">Being older than life and wiser....</p>
+<p class="i0">I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the whip</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond the sound of the treetops singing</p>
+<p class="i0">To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or rush of feathers winging....</p>
+<p class="i0">Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my cheek</p>
+<p class="i0">Murmuring tenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the bleak</p>
+<p class="i0">Windows of frost so slenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might be</p>
+<p class="i0">If life were as kind as a lover,</p>
+<p class="i0">If we were beloved of the world and the world of we.</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy white words hover</p>
+<p class="i0">Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest</p>
+<p class="i0">Silvering heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest.</p>
+<p class="i0">If I could have given</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+<p class="i0">My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah then and then only</p>
+<p class="i0">The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me</p>
+<p class="i0">And death were not lonely.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> in the silence the clear moonlight drips</p>
+<p class="i4">Among the fields that love her drowsily,</p>
+<p class="i0">These passionate moments trickle on through time,</p>
+<p class="i0">From soul to languorous soul.</p>
+<p class="i0">Like mad musicians upon fretted harps,</p>
+<p class="i0">The senses play upon the poignant <span class="locked">nerves,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And colours clothe our mood</p>
+<p class="i0">As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms</p>
+<p class="i0">Irised with pallors of an opal's heart</p>
+<p class="i0">In which the glittered pattern of desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Smoulders and changes....</p>
+<p class="i0">O love, thou nightingale-throated singer,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star</p>
+<p class="i0">And keep thy silver delicate delight</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad.</p>
+<p class="i0">Let thy fairy feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Go tripping down a scarcely scented path,</p>
+<p class="i0">Between an avenue of breathless flowers.</p>
+<p class="i0">The hours glide by as swans across a lake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Across the luminous waters of desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And beat as wings the rustle of soft words,</p>
+<p class="i0">As love bends down,</p>
+<p class="i0">Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I can</span> but give thee unsubstantial things</p>
+<p class="i4">Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">No gems or garments marvellously wrought</p>
+<p class="i0">On ivory spools with rare embroiderings.</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings</p>
+<p class="i0">That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought</p>
+<p class="i0">With blood and beauty. I have only sought</p>
+<p class="i0">A song that hovers on illusive wings.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Accept from me a dream that hath no art,</p>
+<p class="i0">I give my empty hands for thee to hold,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take thou the gift of silence for my part,</p>
+<p class="i0">With all the deeper things I have not told.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart</p>
+<p class="i0">Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I">I</a></h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I have</span> no other friend but thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">But while I tell thee all my thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">Soothsayings and sighs, and little <span class="locked">things&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How canst thou listen to me?</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long,</p>
+<p class="i0">And when my cheek grew pale</p>
+<p class="i0">I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back</p>
+<p class="i0">Responsive in the double rose of <span class="locked">joy&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the ghost moon glides between us....</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">When at a masquerade</p>
+<p class="i0">I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our faces painted each in some disguise</p>
+<p class="i0">Of varnished revelry;</p>
+<p class="i0">I whisper in thine ear</p>
+<p class="i0">Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales,</p>
+<p class="i0">Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And shower the multicoloured streamers high</p>
+<p class="i0">Where Folly is king of <span class="locked">midnight&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thy still face looks out,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weary and overwise</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the mad pretence avails not.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Long ago we walked together in a garden;</p>
+<p class="i0">It was evening and the leaves fell down;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen,</p>
+<p class="i0">Over flowers and branches that were withered <span class="locked">there&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And the air was weary with the scent of other days,</p>
+<p class="i0">A fragrance faint and pensive.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Were as old dreams retold,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stirred from the golden quilt of memory,</p>
+<p class="i0">And farewells rang their whispering bells,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tolling the days away.</p>
+<p class="i0">But peace lay folded between our hands</p>
+<p class="i0">As we thought of the vanishing years</p>
+<p class="i0">And of love dying in the arms of love.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Sometimes I look into the glass</p>
+<p class="i0">And see my face without the conquering light</p>
+<p class="i0">That gave me glamour when I gave thee love.</p>
+<p class="i0">Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell,</p>
+<p class="i0">And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven.</p>
+<p class="i0">I would be for thee</p>
+<p class="i0">As a ring of white flowers on the sward,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a red fire playing to thy breath,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a flock of kingfishers</p>
+<p class="i0">Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes!</p>
+<p class="i0">Remember only this,</p>
+<p class="i0">My will toward all loveliness, and look</p>
+<p class="i0">Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Be perfect&mdash;for I love thee more in thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Than thou canst reach in every trivial day.</p>
+<p class="i0">Since days are as the flowers on a wreath</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That wither while we bind them each to each.</p>
+<p class="i0">Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days</p>
+<p class="i0">Can wall it in a little space of ground.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the patient spirit stands</p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting the last fulfilment.</p>
+<p class="i0">Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands</p>
+<p class="i0">Or as an endless rosary.</p>
+<p class="i0">Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter</p>
+<p class="i0">And my hands part from the unriveted faith</p>
+<p class="i0">With Amen scarcely sighed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Bodies</span> heaving like waves,</p>
+<p class="i4">Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam,</p>
+<p class="i0">The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Splashed with ecstasial moonlight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Lingering touch of fingers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell,</p>
+<p class="i0">And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the ivory forehead of the moon.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Your</span> face to me is like a beautiful city</p>
+<p class="i4">Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves</p>
+<p class="i0">Heavily laden with memories....</p>
+<p class="i0">I roam over all the earth</p>
+<p class="i0">Making rhymes of you, and singing songs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because your face will never let me rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because I can not frame it in a star</p>
+<p class="i0">Surrounded with my cloudy reveries,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because I may not pluck it like a flower</p>
+<p class="i0">To breathe the incense of its perfumed <span class="locked">soul&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose sheath is in my breast!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh!</span> why will you not let me love you</p>
+<p class="i4">Well enough?</p>
+<p class="i0">You have plucked my blossoms,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gathered the leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And revived them with water;</p>
+<p class="i0">But all the tortuous roots</p>
+<p class="i0">Delving for your spirit</p>
+<p class="i0">In subterranean passions</p>
+<p class="i0">With a blind unresting desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">Have you felt them, have you known?</p>
+<p class="i0">In the blackest night of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms</p>
+<p class="i0">In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion,</p>
+<p class="i0">My soul still swims toward you</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the envious pressure of the tide....</p>
+<p class="i0">You who are so tired, so filled with sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest its heaviness should stir your rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden</p>
+<p class="i0">That is too vast for me to bear alone?</p>
+<p class="i0">I tell you</p>
+<p class="i0">Love is no little thing,</p>
+<p class="i0">No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air,</p>
+<p class="i0">No thin flute music petaling the silence</p>
+<p class="i0">As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree.</p>
+<p class="i0">It is the thought that broods upon its death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dread of mountains looking to the storm</p>
+<p class="i0">Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain.</p>
+<p class="i0">It is the fire that pillars up the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">To mix its flame with their eternal gold.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, listen to me!</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere</p>
+<p class="i0">As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven.</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall know me</p>
+<p class="i0">In the pensive shadows of trees,</p>
+<p class="i0">In the luminary phantoms</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Reflected in the stillness of a lake;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And quivering in the moss;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the abandoned play of breakers</p>
+<p class="i0">Showering their crystals to the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the folly of rainbow dolphins.</p>
+<p class="i0">I only ask of you</p>
+<p class="i0">To be the diver in my deepest pool,</p>
+<p class="i0">To bring from out its blue obscurity</p>
+<p class="i0">The things my life has moulded unaware,</p>
+<p class="i0">Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned</p>
+<p class="i0">In loneliness of prayer unlit by life,</p>
+<p class="i0">Created out of nothing save myself</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the blind fast silence of the soul.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> devotion kneels to you,</p>
+<p class="i4">Holding a candle to illumine your face.</p>
+<p class="i0">My loneliness is your shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the solitary roads.</p>
+<p class="i0">My passion is a book between your hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets,</p>
+<p class="i0">A volume of pressed flowers</p>
+<p class="i0">Scenting your fingers though you read it not.</p>
+<p class="i0">And my white faith</p>
+<p class="i0">Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="ISLANDS" id="ISLANDS">ISLANDS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> launched upon the loneliness of time</p>
+<p class="i4">We float and dream of what the waves conceal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal</p>
+<p class="i0">Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or indolent ripple sighing at the <span class="locked">keel&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours <span class="locked">climb&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">So toss our weary ships, till from afar</p>
+<p class="i0">Our visioned island rises suddenly,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where palaces like cloudy colours are,</p>
+<p class="i0">With scented gardens terraced to the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">The silver steps to our appointed star</p>
+<p class="i0">Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Many</span> things I'd find to charm you,</p>
+<p class="i4">Books and scarves and silken socks,</p>
+<p class="i0">All the seven rainbow colours</p>
+<p class="i0">Black and white with 'broidered clocks.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then a stick of polished whalebone</p>
+<p class="i0">And a coat of tawny fur,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a row of gleaming bottles</p>
+<p class="i0">Filled with rose-water and myrrh.</p>
+<p class="i0">Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,</p>
+<p class="i0">Old liqueurs in leather kegs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Golden Sauterne, copper sherry</p>
+<p class="i0">And a nest of plover's eggs.</p>
+<p class="i0">Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,</p>
+<p class="i0">Little boxes cut in jade;</p>
+<p class="i0">Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,</p>
+<p class="i0">Damask cloths and dim brocade.</p>
+<p class="i0">Six musicians of the Magyar,</p>
+<p class="i0">Madness making harmony;</p>
+<p class="i0">And a bed austere and narrow</p>
+<p class="i0">With a quilt from Barbary.</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall have a bath of amber,</p>
+<p class="i0">A Venetian looking-glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a crimson-chested parrot</p>
+<p class="i0">On a lawn of terraced grass.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then a small Tanagra statue</p>
+<p class="i0">Found anew in ruins old,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or an azure plate from Persia,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my hair in plaits of gold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my scalp that like an Indian</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall carry for a purse,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Or a volume of my verse.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="LAMPLIGHT_AND_STARLIGHT" id="LAMPLIGHT_AND_STARLIGHT">LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_94" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_097.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="LAMP-POSTS" id="LAMP-POSTS">LAMP-POSTS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> eternal flame of laughter and desire</p>
+<p class="i4">Breaks the long darkness with a little glance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance</p>
+<p class="i0">Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire</p>
+<p class="i0">That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire</p>
+<p class="i0">Sadly toward their jubilance&mdash;Romance</p>
+<p class="i0">Of faery glitter in the streets of <span class="locked">chance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the fog of our despairing gloom;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the glum alleys, down the haunted night</p>
+<p class="i0">Through tunnelling of subterranean doom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright,</p>
+<p class="i0">They bear their coronets of golden bloom</p>
+<p class="i0">To front our anguish with their brave delight.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="LONDON" id="LONDON">LONDON</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Richer</span> than fields of corn that fire in summer,</p>
+<p class="i4">Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden,</p>
+<p class="i0">More fearful and beloved than peace or silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Calling towards me with a voice incessant.</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant</p>
+<p class="i0">I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened!</p>
+<p class="i0">I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom,</p>
+<p class="i0">My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">And honey in thine oaths and lamentations.</p>
+<p class="i0">I played about thy feet that know not resting</p>
+<p class="i0">And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter</p>
+<p class="i0">Are tossed in feathered gaiety about <span class="locked">thee&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns,</p>
+<p class="i0">While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter;</p>
+<p class="i0">Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring,</p>
+<p class="i0">As of the angry ocean in her travail ...</p>
+<p class="i0">They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled;</p>
+<p class="i0">Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion</p>
+<p class="i0">Here crucified each day with lust and hunger,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hung up unlovely in the open market;</p>
+<p class="i0">Made gay with paper garlands, covered over</p>
+<p class="i0">With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest the elect in passing should be startled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour!</p>
+<p class="i0">With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic</p>
+<p class="i0">Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.</p>
+<p class="i0">Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;</p>
+<p class="i0">The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">A million faces scattered like confetti,</p>
+<p class="i0">All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing.</p>
+<p class="i0">There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling</p>
+<p class="i0">In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses,</p>
+<p class="i0">How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spent in the evening like a rose of fever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fainting before us paler than a lily.</p>
+<p class="i0">While here each day self-satisfied and placid</p>
+<p class="i0">Moves opulent among the groves of summer;</p>
+<p class="i0">The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes,</p>
+<p class="i0">The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard,</p>
+<p class="i0">Please for a while until the spirit sickens</p>
+<p class="i0">And turns her panting to her ancient lover.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses,</p>
+<p class="i0">Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture</p>
+<p class="i0">Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses</p>
+<p class="i0">Like hungry animals eat up the spaces</p>
+<p class="i0">And close upon the miles that God created,</p>
+<p class="i0">With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening</p>
+<p class="i0">To the far rhythm in the drums of battle,</p>
+<p class="i0">As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting,</p>
+<p class="i0">I feel the scamper of your feet approaching</p>
+<p class="i0">And your great starving arms and strangling fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Slowly</span> the pale feet of morning</p>
+<p class="i4">Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous lamplight,</p>
+<p class="i2">Colourless, cold, as the rainclad</p>
+<p class="i0">Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out sea-ward.</p>
+<p class="i2">Slowly the fingers of dawn-light</p>
+<p class="i0">Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing</p>
+<p class="i0">From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.</p>
+<p class="i2">Smoothly the wild hair of darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep veils.</p>
+<p class="i2">Patiently, Morning, the priestess</p>
+<p class="i0">Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness,</p>
+<p class="i2">Gashed with the daggers of street-lights,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister <span class="locked">kisses,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i2">Morning with healing and kindness</p>
+<p class="i0">Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sweeps up the rags of our shadows</p>
+<p class="i0">That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> have I to do with them,</p>
+<p class="i4">The red athletes in their snow-white clothes?</p>
+<p class="i0">They are sun lovers and moon haters,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toiling or playing in the fields</p>
+<p class="i0">Whereon no shadows lie,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pensively, whispering <span class="locked">together&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They are space lovers and haters of the stars,</p>
+<p class="i0">Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see</p>
+<p class="i0">The tiaraed brows of darkness.</p>
+<p class="i0">I weary of their striving upward and onward,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the green hush of twilight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where silence drips from the trees,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the solemn avenues</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the ghosts blow by</p>
+<p class="i0">Along with a drift of leaves.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Let us linger awhile</p>
+<p class="i0">Far away from the frets and wars of the world,</p>
+<p class="i0">From the strong men</p>
+<p class="i0">With their strident hymning voices and marching <span class="locked">feet&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Let us walk alone</p>
+<p class="i0">For the love of our own shadows</p>
+<p class="i0">Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver,</p>
+<p class="i0">With behind us the sky's grey curtain</p>
+<p class="i0">Drawn backward from the moon....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us sit by the fireside</p>
+<p class="i0">And hear the wind's shrill orchestras,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fiddle and fife and flute,</p>
+<p class="i0">And omened bagpipe screaming....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us lie abed and dream</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the long summer's morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Of trivial things, and beautiful....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden gong;</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us run through pools of wine</p>
+<p class="i0">And be splashed with purple.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Let us, being sick, make merry,</p>
+<p class="i0">And rejoice when we are weary.</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Drinking to Death.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What have we to do with them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sons of the sun and the soil,</p>
+<p class="i0">Daughters of the hearth and the field?</p>
+<p class="i0">They that remake the world</p>
+<p class="i0">Melting our idols for silver,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our goblets for gold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Tearing our temples down</p>
+<p class="i0">To build their red brick villages.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The doomed world faints into mist,</p>
+<p class="i0">World of our indolence and dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the faces and bodies we love</p>
+<p class="i0">Sink through oblivion, and are seen</p>
+<p class="i0">Dimly, as divers through the waters.</p>
+<p class="i0">Old worlds and new worlds!</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us slip between them,</p>
+<p class="i0">And float on the stream that floweth <span class="locked">nowhither&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our red ambitions burn</p>
+<p class="i0">To a blue smoke of forgetting;</p>
+<p class="i0">Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Among</span> the crumbling arches of decay</p>
+<p class="i4">Where all around the red new buildings crept,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where huge machines had rolled the past away,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Among the ruins I beheld a man</p>
+<p class="i0">Who heeded not the engines as they neared,</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting dead carnivals upon a fan,</p>
+<p class="i0">He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And here and there were flung a mess of things,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A carven sabre hung upon the wall,</p>
+<p class="i0">A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it,</p>
+<p class="i0">A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl,</p>
+<p class="i0">A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And mirrors flashed their argent memories</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed,</p>
+<p class="i0">While ghostly faces of past vanities</p>
+<p class="i0">Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The stranger turned his head and bowed to me</p>
+<p class="i0">And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair.</p>
+<p class="i0">I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see,</p>
+<p class="i0">You really have a fine collection there."</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">He bowed to me again, and in his hand</p>
+<p class="i0">Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye</p>
+<p class="i0">With beckoning lights&mdash;I could not <span class="locked">understand&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">So much he loved their frail inconsequence.</p>
+<p class="i0">I spoke of progress conquering decay,</p>
+<p class="i0">And tired the stillness with my common sense</p>
+<p class="i0">Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But I have never met so queer a man,</p>
+<p class="i0">"I better love my memories," he said,</p>
+<p class="i0">"Look at those painted figures on the fan,</p>
+<p class="i0">How delicate and wistful are the dead."</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> a nun's face from her black draperies</p>
+<p class="i4">So full of mystery the moon looks down.</p>
+<p class="i0">She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smiling away, to watch them swell and die.</p>
+<p class="i0">She dreams of music played among the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed.</p>
+<p class="i0">Above the city glittering giddily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Above the jostling heads of man she moves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1912</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> sun is lord of life and colour,</p>
+<p class="i4">Blood of the rose and hyacinth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hair of the sea and forests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crown of the cornfields,</p>
+<p class="i0">Body of the hills.</p>
+<p class="i0">The moon is the harlot of Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Slaughterer of the Sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Priestess and poisoner she goes</p>
+<p class="i0">With all her silver flock of wandering souls,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her chant of wailing waters,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes</p>
+<p class="i0">Bound all around with bandages of mist....</p>
+<p class="i0">The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes;</p>
+<p class="i0">The living are as cherries that bow to the morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Beckoning to the loitering stranger,</p>
+<p class="i0">The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads.</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as frozen skeleton branches</p>
+<p class="i0">Whereon the stillness perches like an owl....</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="BAHAMA_ISLANDS" id="BAHAMA_ISLANDS">BAHAMA ISLANDS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">All</span> down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream</p>
+<p class="i4">The negroes go, black faces crowding together;</p>
+<p class="i0">And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's <span class="locked">wing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We have rest here and a monotony of wheels,</p>
+<p class="i0">A peaceful noise like bees that moan in <span class="locked">June&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries</p>
+<p class="i0">Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of <span class="locked">desire&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And nothing rids us utterly of grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and scented,</p>
+<p class="i0">But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their hymns</p>
+<p class="i0">And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented,</p>
+<p class="i0">With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THOUGHTS_OF_LONDON" id="THOUGHTS_OF_LONDON">THOUGHTS OF LONDON</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh,</span> have I bartered and forgotten thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run</p>
+<p class="i0">A ragged troop along thy streets with me?</p>
+<p class="i0">Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun,</p>
+<p class="i0">The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun,</p>
+<p class="i0">The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery?</p>
+<p class="i0">Mother of dreams and laughter and despair!</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy sins and passions baffle me again;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="STREETS" id="STREETS">STREETS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I am</span> going</p>
+<p class="i4">Up and down the roads and alleys</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the forests of the city,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.</p>
+<p class="i0">My mind shall wander through the streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Whistling to a vague adventure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer</p>
+<p class="i0">And casting them away.</p>
+<p class="i0">Dusk is creeping through the town</p>
+<p class="i0">Lighting the lamps and loitering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hovering clouds of peace;</p>
+<p class="i0">And behind her race the winds</p>
+<p class="i0">Whining to the scent of darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Scattering the dust</p>
+<p class="i0">With their swift hounds' feet....</p>
+<p class="i0">I am a hunter in the city's jungle,</p>
+<p class="i0">Exploring all her secret mysteries.</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her well,</p>
+<p class="i0">The moaning highways,</p>
+<p class="i0">And whispering alleys,</p>
+<p class="i0">The chimney-dishevelled roofs</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the moon walks delicately</p>
+<p class="i0">As a stray spectral cat;</p>
+<p class="i0">The little forlorn squares</p>
+<p class="i0">Where one tree stands</p>
+<p class="i0">Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the benches where the people sit</p>
+<p class="i0">And stir not from their sullen postures,</p>
+<p class="i0">Staring out where evening passes</p>
+<p class="i0">With such a sauntering dreamy step.</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker</p>
+<p class="i0">Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate</p>
+<p class="i0">Picks up the littered wreck of holiday</p>
+<p class="i0">To mount the dust heap where our memories lie</p>
+<p class="i0">Sprawled in a mess of ruins....</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,</p>
+<p class="i0">Repeating each in each a dull despair,</p>
+<p class="i0">Indifferent and dignified;</p>
+<p class="i0">Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,</p>
+<p class="i0">With dismal silences of velvet carpets,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where starving souls are kept</p>
+<p class="i0">Feeding upon each other's isolations,</p>
+<p class="i0">Not daring to escape....</p>
+<p class="i0">Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me</p>
+<p class="i0">With their crude temples built in praise of lust,</p>
+<p class="i0">Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream</p>
+<p class="i0">Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods</p>
+<p class="i0">Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,</p>
+<p class="i0">Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust....</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the memory-crusted taverns</p>
+<p class="i0">In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune</p>
+<p class="i0">Until the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a white minstrel stopped to sing</p>
+<p class="i0">Fantastic serenades, and called me forth</p>
+<p class="i0">Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Dew-prismed shone the sun....</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses</p>
+<p class="i0">Are bathed in vitriol twilights,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spitting smoke,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or making oaths and mouths at one another....</p>
+<p class="i0">While between</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+<p class="i0">The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window</p>
+<p class="i0">Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging</p>
+<p class="i0">Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin....</p>
+<p class="i0">Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reflective of the solitude of stars....</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am thrilled</p>
+<p class="i0">With horror and the hope for tragedies....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But, they surround my heart these weary streets,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,</p>
+<p class="i0">And through them pass forever</p>
+<p class="i0">Those shadow figures trudging through the grey</p>
+<p class="i0">Like penitent souls through haunted corridors....</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!</p>
+<p class="i0">Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.</p>
+<p class="i0">Through all the winding mazes of the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And by the iron door,</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the windows where we sit and wait</p>
+<p class="i0">For some sweet promise to unfold itself</p>
+<p class="i0">From the shut scrolls of sleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And at the dusty curtain that divides</p>
+<p class="i0">Glory from Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And lover from the lover....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Now in my room I sit</p>
+<p class="i0">And round me falls the darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">In rustling folds of peace.</p>
+<p class="i0">But round my heart I know</p>
+<p class="i0">No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound</p>
+<p class="i0">To shut the city out.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+<p class="i0">For I shall feel the rush of streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,</p>
+<p class="i0">Piercing the night's remote divinity.</p>
+<p class="i0">And I shall never rid me of these scars</p>
+<p class="i0">That time and man have cut into my thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never shake off my shoulders</p>
+<p class="i0">The burden of the city's pain.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, never shall we escape thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Mother of mutiny and want,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou beautiful mistress of Grief....</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights</p>
+<p class="i0">Beating with ineloquent hands</p>
+<p class="i0">The tambourines of time,</p>
+<p class="i0">The drums of war;</p>
+<p class="i0">Fevering our minds</p>
+<p class="i0">With the swollen traffic of thoughts,</p>
+<p class="i0">The wheels and rattle of an endless search....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Tired I am with wandering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,</p>
+<p class="i0">More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,</p>
+<p class="i0">Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Laughter</span> and singing come with the morning,</p>
+<p class="i4">When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dons his arrogant clothes.</p>
+<p class="i0">But in the night,</p>
+<p class="i0">When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale,</p>
+<p class="i0">We too put off our opulent disguise</p>
+<p class="i0">And stand alone in the baffling darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fighting with our sins,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weeping for our loneliness,</p>
+<p class="i0">That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">In</span> the night I hear my loneliness calling</p>
+<p class="i4">The long shrill note of the seabird's cry</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the fuming spite of breakers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the brumous, sulky tides.</p>
+<p class="i0">All the ocean is craving Heavenward,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waves rear their supplicating hands.</p>
+<p class="i0">Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,</p>
+<p class="i0">To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,</p>
+<p class="i0">Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flashing their signals of <span class="locked">unrest.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,</p>
+<p class="i0">Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted <span class="locked">doors&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight</p>
+<p class="i0">That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and <span class="locked">hushed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the heavy pauses of <span class="locked">sleep.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest I hear my loneliness crying!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="SUNDAY" id="SUNDAY">SUNDAY</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> beautiful is the world's delight,</p>
+<p class="i4">How trivial, yet as sweet as a passing dream</p>
+<p class="i0">That makes the harassed sleeper in the night</p>
+<p class="i0">Smile, and on waking sigh. Forever the stream</p>
+<p class="i0">Of time moves onward; as in coloured boats</p>
+<p class="i0">A thousand souls go sailing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stilly down the tide my spirit floats</p>
+<p class="i0">Singing or wailing</p>
+<p class="i0">To the tune the waters make. Here we forget a space</p>
+<p class="i0">The crawling sins of man that sting and gloat,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pain and fear that haggers every face,</p>
+<p class="i0">But vaguely and remote</p>
+<p class="i0">The strident trumpet and the clamorous voices <span class="locked">sound&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Grief doth forget to curse her Gods or pray,</p>
+<p class="i0">While pagan follies squander all around</p>
+<p class="i0">Their brief gay hours in holiday;</p>
+<p class="i0">For all prayers die when laughter is on the <span class="locked">lips.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How frail the moods of joy, how sweet to see them pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Like bubbles on the tide, like coloured ships</p>
+<p class="i0">Sailing on glass!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> leaves are singing, and the sea,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the sand in the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blown grass and hurrying people;</p>
+<p class="i0">Full of melodious strings and lutes and flutes</p>
+<p class="i0">Rustling and whispering forever.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sad music of Life is in my ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never ceasing, never asleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And my heart is strung between chord and chord</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a crucifix in a rosary.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> soundly sleepeth the fool,</p>
+<p class="i4">With profane snore taunting the solemn-pillared <span class="locked">night&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">He hath no dreams of restless, subtle forms</p>
+<p class="i0">That shift across a feverish vacancy;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor doth he hear the drums of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Beating against oblivion tunes of war,</p>
+<p class="i0">Goading the crippled hours on their endless <span class="locked">march&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">But waketh to yawn in the face of the sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Then turneth back to sleep....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">How soundly the wise man sleepeth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Couched royally in the purple of the dark</p>
+<p class="i0">With his white mistress, <span class="locked">Peace&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And when the morning stealeth on his rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a rose he doth pluck her from the spreading tree of days,</p>
+<p class="i0">And reviveth his heart</p>
+<p class="i0">With the perfume of the world....</p>
+<p class="i0">But 'twixt the wise and the foolish</p>
+<p class="i0">Many nights shed sorrow and fear,</p>
+<p class="i0">And nets are spread for timid feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waves beat on the shifting sand....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Moonlit</span> lilacs under the window,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the white floating beams like luminous moths</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttering from bloom to bloom.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sprays of lilac flowers</p>
+<p class="i0">Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frozen to motionless icicles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Moonlight flows over me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spreads her bright watery hair over my face,</p>
+<p class="i0">Full of illicit, marvellous perfumes</p>
+<p class="i0">Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;</p>
+<p class="i0">Hair of the moonlight falling about me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Old</span> woman forever sitting</p>
+<p class="i4">Alone in the large hotel under the fans,</p>
+<p class="i0">Infinitely alone where around you spin</p>
+<p class="i0">So many lives like painted tops,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smearing the void a moment with their hues,</p>
+<p class="i0">Giddily catching at balance as they pause.</p>
+<p class="i0">What crime was yours, old woman,</p>
+<p class="i0">What sin against the Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">That she should give you now</p>
+<p class="i0">A cap of dust and furrows on your cheeks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And at the end</p>
+<p class="i0">A hole dug in the mould?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is death the promise of Fate's last rebound,</p>
+<p class="i0">Revenge of Time that waits within the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">And laughs awry at life,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a kiss, for a dream, for a child that you bore,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a fresh rose pinned to your bosom?</p>
+<p class="i0">The owl is in your spirit,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blinking through the oldest tree of <span class="locked">wisdom&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And now your fingers are weaving</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold pale invisible blossoms of death</p>
+<p class="i0">Into a waxen wreath,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Time</p>
+<p class="i0">Sits down beside you knitting with quick hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Grey counterpanes to cover up a grave!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Loneliness</span> I love,</p>
+<p class="i4">And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.</p>
+<p class="i0">Loneliness I love,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands,...</p>
+<p class="i0">My spirit speaks</p>
+<p class="i0">In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy</p>
+<p class="i0">Murmuring the tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.</p>
+<p class="i0">The shadowy silences</p>
+<p class="i0">Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities,</p>
+<p class="i0">And that is why</p>
+<p class="i0">The noise of tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am clad</p>
+<p class="i0">In the lust-lipped whispering of furtive caresses.</p>
+<p class="i0">Holiness I love,</p>
+<p class="i0">And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs,</p>
+<p class="i0">The crucified feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Holiness I love</p>
+<p class="i0">And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.</p>
+<p class="i0">But that is why</p>
+<p class="i0">Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear</p>
+<p class="i0">The vesture of secrecy</p>
+<p class="i0">Which hides the human nakedness of God.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I met</span> an Indian underneath a tree, under a ragged tree,</p>
+<p class="i4">His face was yellow and wrinkled like some stone whereon a God had writ</p>
+<p class="i0">And his emaciated fingers drew circles in the dust....</p>
+<p class="i0">I bent my mouth to his ear, crying "O father, O Prophet!</p>
+<p class="i0">I have wandered far over the earth troubled with doubts that will not let me rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Canst thou not tell me with all thy wizardries and meditations</p>
+<p class="i0">The purpose of our lives upon this world,</p>
+<p class="i0">The secret truth Earth shelters in her womb?"</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But he was listening to the whispering of the mountains,</p>
+<p class="i0">To the boom of God's paces on the rocks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the swishing steps of his followers in the rivers.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then suddenly he pointed to the arched doorway in between the hills,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the mysterious purple curtain of the dusk that drooped from cliff to cliff.</p>
+<p class="i0">I saw in his eyes the vision of highborn ghosts,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of divine ivory faces wreathed with the flowers of <span class="locked">wisdom&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that he had found only the half-spoken promises of Heaven....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I saw a drunkard laughing in a tavern,</p>
+<p class="i0">His cup was tilted and the wine spilt crimson on the sprawled arms and distracted hair of a woman fallen asleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">I watched him there and wondered</p>
+<p class="i0">If ever the bubbling goblins of wine had whispered him life's secret.</p>
+<p class="i0">But he raised the cup of his carousals and gazed at emptiness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toasting some wild, irreverent dream,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Some flame-red salamander pirouetting among the dead waste ashes of <span class="locked">time&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that he had found only the secrets of sleep....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A woman sat within a little house,</p>
+<p class="i0">Scolding and singing ballads to her child,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all around came the quarrel of children's voices.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet one boy sat apart within the furthest corner of the room</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting an animal with coloured chalks.</p>
+<p class="i0">I lingered by the fire thinking of life, its vanities and mysteries,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the woman did not heed me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor her pale son that sat so hunched and still,</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting his visions with the broken chalks,</p>
+<p class="i0">For they had discovered the absorbing painful secrets of giving birth....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">It was evening as I wandered,</p>
+<p class="i0">By a lake two lovers leaned, smiling to see their faces in the water,</p>
+<p class="i0">For they had found within each other's souls</p>
+<p class="i0">An argent flattering mirror wherein to gaze and see their faces change with all the moods and shadows of the day....</p>
+<p class="i0">Not here should I discover the answer to bring light into my darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the dim psychic crystals of my soul opalled with the changing colours of <span class="locked">unrest&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">So I went away into the loneliness, asking the forests and the mountains and the sea</p>
+<p class="i0">The knowledge of life's baffling mysteries.</p>
+<p class="i0">But they were roaring in a wind of memories,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gathering the rain into their bodies to make them fierce and strong,</p>
+<p class="i0">Heaving their shoulders upward to the morning,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning their foreheads with sunlight.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that they were Life itself,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pushing vehemence that rushes from the strangling arms of Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor could they guess</p>
+<p class="i0">The purpose of God's beauty in their joy....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">From</span> the fathomless depth of my boredom, from the</p>
+<p class="i4">last room of its emptiness, an elf has come to play</p>
+<p class="i0">with me.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">As comes a little gold spider to a prison cell teasing the</p>
+<p class="i0">criminal from his darkness to tear at a thread of sunlight,</p>
+<p class="i0">and kiss the mouth of a shy morning whispering through</p>
+<p class="i0">the window.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">An elf has come to dance with me, blown like a leaf on</p>
+<p class="i0">the path of my autumn lassitude.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Sprightly one, dervish! You are the living adventure</p>
+<p class="i0">born of my dead childhood, you are the small god in the</p>
+<p class="i0">temples of my unbelief, you are the bird that nests in ruined</p>
+<p class="i0">temples, laying your silver eggs by moonlight and singing</p>
+<p class="i0">when the pagan birds are still.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You are the dream-sower in the fields of sleep, you have</p>
+<p class="i0">jingled the star-bells on the hood of darkness, and from the</p>
+<p class="i0">knarled, stark tree of time have flung me the apple of</p>
+<p class="i0">eternal laughter.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Lolling</span> in snow, like kings in ermine coats, the gilt-crowned</p>
+<p class="i4">bottles lie.... Our thoughts are dangled in</p>
+<p class="i0">a laughter of leaves as bunches of blue and yellow grapes</p>
+<p class="i0">for faery beggars, for ragged fancies to pluck and taste.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our music shall be the minstrelsy of ghostly ballad-mongers</p>
+<p class="i0">that have stolen from the ashen banquets of death to bless</p>
+<p class="i0">our revels.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our spirits shall flit like those winged faces of cherubs</p>
+<p class="i0">that never can alight, but swing forever on the azure ribbons</p>
+<p class="i0">of the sky.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And all our dreams and kisses shall be as the rose-leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">falling on ancient festivals, as the shadows of rose-leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">falling on phantom lovers in the sleep-pillared temples of</p>
+<p class="i0">our first archaic passion.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> roots of our longing are probing the heart of night,</p>
+<p class="i4">delving and twining together that our ultimate truth</p>
+<p class="i0">may grow out of the darkness that bewilders and nourishes.</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind</p>
+<p class="i0">themselves like a tight crown over our heads.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall</p>
+<p class="i0">prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green</p>
+<p class="i0">ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire</p>
+<p class="i0">shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays</p>
+<p class="i0">that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright</p>
+<p class="i0">foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into</p>
+<p class="i0">a fountain of blossoms.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="VAHDAH" id="VAHDAH">VAHDAH</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Sun-aureoled</span> lilies are your priestesses,</p>
+<p class="i4">They stand like choirs in silver surplices,</p>
+<p class="i0">Melodious streams of silence fill the room,</p>
+<p class="i0">And pensive listeners lean within the gloom</p>
+<p class="i0">Of purple quietness. A laughter full of <span class="locked">holiness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Like the wild bells of lilies ringing in the loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Of star-reflected gardens walled with <span class="locked">night,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thrills from your soul which empties its delight</p>
+<p class="i0">As rain on lilies, or as sunlight falling slenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">To gild their ivory temples, and as moonlight shutting tenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">Their alabaster doors.... A white peace grows,</p>
+<p class="i0">And love, within your spirit like a lily and a rose.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Starlit</span> silences!</p>
+<p class="i4">Breeding fears, swarming with sudden deaths,</p>
+<p class="i0">With separations, burdens, and despairs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weaving slow eerie fancies in my brain ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Forlorn shorn monks go down the cloisters of quietness</p>
+<p class="i0">With tortured crucifixes cut in ivory</p>
+<p class="i0">Clasped in their praying hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">And psalmed with lips renunciate of kisses ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Forgotten days are painted on the night</p>
+<p class="i0">In parables and symbols of remorse</p>
+<p class="i0">That jeer from out the wind-stirred tapestries.</p>
+<p class="i0">The hangman's rope coils upward like a snake</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the death-coloured waters,</p>
+<p class="i0">While the black barges pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Funereal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Carrying doom from mist to mist....</p>
+<p class="i0">And madmen steal about the wintry parks</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the high glum walls of an asylum,</p>
+<p class="i0">With eyes lit up in phosphorescent ecstasies,</p>
+<p class="i0">With fumbling hands</p>
+<p class="i0">That grope for things invisibly obscene.</p>
+<p class="i0">Even the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">Grown idiot too from keeping madmen's time</p>
+<p class="i0">Gibbers the hours away in irrelevant chimes....</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence embalms the dead with scented bands</p>
+<p class="i0">And is the watchman to deserted houses,</p>
+<p class="i0">And draws the violet curtain on the day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And fits a mask of silver to the moon.</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence brings corpses from the crypts of memory</p>
+<p class="i0">And sits them round us in the empty chairs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Opens the secret chambers of our hopes</p>
+<p class="i0">And shows us there in awful pantomime</p>
+<p class="i0">Lust wreathing love with poppies and with ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Beauty dressing Sin for carnival,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Peace made drunken with a cup of blood.</p>
+<p class="i0">It winds as ivy round our listening thoughts</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Shutting all sounds away, enclosing us</p>
+<p class="i0">Within its stifled virid twilight....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Cry out, sing, make noises,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bacchantes, revellers, clowns!</p>
+<p class="i0">Bring myriad lamps in clusters, likening grapes</p>
+<p class="i0">That spill the wine of light into our gloom;</p>
+<p class="i0">Pressing against our lips</p>
+<p class="i0">The red grape-kisses of pleasure.</p>
+<p class="i0">Bring the hounds,</p>
+<p class="i0">The garlanded white ones,</p>
+<p class="i0">To bay and snarl and tear the flying rags</p>
+<p class="i0">Of stillness shadowing away!</p>
+<p class="i0">Lean over me, O Life,</p>
+<p class="i0">And whisper all thy lying flatteries</p>
+<p class="i0">That drag me back from Silence and her dead.</p>
+<p class="i0">I have kept vigil on my soul too long</p>
+<p class="i0">Within this vast cathedral of dim sleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">Languidly gathering</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold grey lilies of the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">To slip between her passive waxen hands....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> mountain is an Emperor.</p>
+<p class="i4">The clouds are his beard, and the stars his diadem;</p>
+<p class="i0">His bauble is the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">He is dressed in silver forests, and the mist his train;</p>
+<p class="i0">His feet are two white rivers.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I know</span> what happiness <span class="locked">is&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i4">It is the negation of thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">The shutting off</p>
+<p class="i0">Of all those brooding phantoms that surround</p>
+<p class="i0">As dank trees in a forest</p>
+<p class="i0">Cutting the daylight into rags,</p>
+<p class="i0">Caging the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">In rusted prison bars.</p>
+<p class="i0">Happiness loves to lie at a river's edge</p>
+<p class="i0">And make no song,</p>
+<p class="i0">But listen to the water's murmuring wisdom,</p>
+<p class="i0">The kissing touch of leaves wind-bowed together,</p>
+<p class="i0">The feathery swish of cloud wings on a hill;</p>
+<p class="i0">Opening wide the violet-petalled doors</p>
+<p class="i0">Of every shy and cloistered sense,</p>
+<p class="i0">That all the scent and music of the world</p>
+<p class="i0">May rush into the soul.</p>
+<p class="i0">And happiness expands</p>
+<p class="i0">The rainbow arch for a procession of dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">For moth-like fancies winged with evening,</p>
+<p class="i0">For dove-breasted silences,</p>
+<p class="i0">For shadowy reveries</p>
+<p class="i0">And starry pilgrims....</p>
+<p class="i0">I know what happiness <span class="locked">is&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">It is the giving back to Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">Of all our furtive thefts,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lurid jewels that we stole away</p>
+<p class="i0">From passion, sin and pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because they glittered strangely, luring us</p>
+<p class="i0">With their forbidden beauty.</p>
+<p class="i0">Because our childish fingers curiously</p>
+<p class="i0">Crave the pale secrets of the moon</p>
+<p class="i0">And grope for dangerous toys.</p>
+<p class="i0">Happiness comes in giving back to Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">The things we took from her with violent hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Remembering only</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That her dust is our garment,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her fruits our endeavour,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her waters our priestess,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her leaves our interpreters to God,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her hills our infinite patience.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Long</span> hath the pen lain idle in my hand,</p>
+<p class="i4">Or traced slow sentences without a rhyme,</p>
+<p class="i0">Words strung at random to beguile the time</p>
+<p class="i0">As children threading beads upon a strand.</p>
+<p class="i0">I have strayed far away from fairyland</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose little hills grow steep and hard to climb;</p>
+<p class="i0">I creep along the valleys in the slime,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or hide me like an ostrich in the sand.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For I have sought a mellow idleness,</p>
+<p class="i0">To be forever buried as a fly</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies casketed in amber; where the stress</p>
+<p class="i0">Of peril, hunger, Death can never cry</p>
+<p class="i0">To wake me from my sanguine weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or cloud the lucid stillness with a sigh.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I laid</span> my heart on a stone</p>
+<p class="i4">And stood in the wood to watch.</p>
+<p class="i0">Presently a priest came by;</p>
+<p class="i0">He hid it in his cowl</p>
+<p class="i0">And buried it in the graveyard.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now is it grown into a cyclamen tree,</p>
+<p class="i0">Clustering over the wall,</p>
+<p class="i0">Beckoning far along the twilight road;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nodding and singing where the cypress moans,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ringing its little bells while the great bell tolls.</p>
+<p class="i0">Whiter than ghosts are its flowers,</p>
+<p class="i0">And its scent is sweeter than ghostly <span class="locked">music&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">All the men and priests that pass</p>
+<p class="i0">In the night when the stars lean down,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smell the heavy fragrance there</p>
+<p class="i0">And feel the gentle touch of dripping dew.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then they cross themselves and go</p>
+<p class="i0">Hurriedly, warily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dreaming of pale women,</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the pale stars.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> cold light steals into my soul</p>
+<p class="i4">Revealing its emptiness,</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold winds batter at my heart</p>
+<p class="i0">And make its lonely tenant shake with <span class="locked">fear&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The raindrops slide across the window-glass</p>
+<p class="i0">Like sighs that fall from patient weariness;</p>
+<p class="i0">And coldly smiling time</p>
+<p class="i0">Peers with his clock-face, ticking in my brain</p>
+<p class="i0">The pulse of a monotonous remorse.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> caravans of spring are in the town,</p>
+<p class="i4">Lighting their brilliant torches in the park,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dangling their bells, engirdling each stark</p>
+<p class="i0">Black tree with coloured rings. The houses frown</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the beryl sky, yet wear a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hazy dream, or flash a golden spark</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sun-fire in their windows glum and dark;</p>
+<p class="i0">The people blow like petals up and down.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But London tires at evening, each grey street</p>
+<p class="i0">Mourns as the slow procession passes by,</p>
+<p class="i0">Traffic and crowd, and Time on loitering feet.</p>
+<p class="i0">Spring droops his lute, the slender echoes sigh,</p>
+<p class="i0">And wistfully the jaded revellers meet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their pomp in tatters and their wreaths awry.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I dread</span> the beauty of approaching spring</p>
+<p class="i4">Now the old month is dead and the young moon</p>
+<p class="i0">Has pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.</p>
+<p class="i0">My tired soul is startled out of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">By all the urging joy of bud and leaf,</p>
+<p class="i0">And in the barren yard where I have paced</p>
+<p class="i0">Content with prison and despair's monotony,</p>
+<p class="i0">The trees break into music wild and shrill,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bewildering my loneliness with beauty....</p>
+<p class="i0">For winter with her melancholy face</p>
+<p class="i0">Shone back my miseries as in a glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And wept and whined in harmony with me;</p>
+<p class="i0">And I could listen by the withering ashes</p>
+<p class="i0">To the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,</p>
+<p class="i0">And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,</p>
+<p class="i0">And hating, hear the laughter of the wind</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose mad hands tear the sky.</p>
+<p class="i0">But now again the promise of the spring</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">To where the lilied altar shines with peace,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the white priestess comes</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning each candle with a gold desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Engirdling with pallors</p>
+<p class="i0">The forehead of a divine ghost.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindle</p>
+<p class="i0">And spring is but a radiant beckoning</p>
+<p class="i0">To death that follows slowly, silently....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">O flash of silver in the wings of dawn</p>
+<p class="i0">That are spread out and closed. O hush of night</p>
+<p class="i0">Breathless with love, oh swish of whispering tide</p>
+<p class="i0">That swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.</p>
+<p class="i0">O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That grow too soon to weariness and close;</p>
+<p class="i0">O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;</p>
+<p class="i0">O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,</p>
+<p class="i0">And mystery of flower in the bud.</p>
+<p class="i0">O burning galaxy of buttercups,</p>
+<p class="i0">And drone of bees above the pouting <span class="locked">rose,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">O twilit lovers stilled with reverie</p>
+<p class="i0">And footprints of them swerving on the sand</p>
+<p class="i0">And darkness of them clasped against the sky!</p>
+<p class="i0">I see beyond the glory of your days</p>
+<p class="i0">The grey days marching one behind the other</p>
+<p class="i0">To the bleak tunes of silence.</p>
+<p class="i0">When mists shall smear the radiance of the moon</p>
+<p class="i0">And the lean thief shall pass,</p>
+<p class="i0">Snatching the glittering toys away from love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.</p>
+<p class="i0">And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall go the way that her long shadow points,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="TO_MY_FATHER" id="TO_MY_FATHER">TO MY FATHER</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I cannot</span> think that you have gone away,</p>
+<p class="i4">You loved the earth&mdash;and life lit up your eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flickered in your smile that would surmise</p>
+<p class="i0">Death as a song, a poem, or a play.</p>
+<p class="i0">You were reborn afresh with every day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And baffled fortune in some new disguise.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! can it perish when the body dies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We shall not see you come to us and leave</p>
+<p class="i0">A conqueror&mdash;nor catch on fairy wing</p>
+<p class="i0">Some slender fancy&mdash;nor new wonders weave</p>
+<p class="i0">Upon the loom of your imagining.</p>
+<p class="i0">The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve</p>
+<p class="i0">Her child that was a pilgrim and a king.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="TO_MY_MOTHER" id="TO_MY_MOTHER">TO MY MOTHER</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">At</span> evening when the twilight curtains fall,</p>
+<p class="i4">Before the lamps are lit within my room,</p>
+<p class="i0">My memories hang bright upon the gloom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like ancient frescoes painted on the wall.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And I can hear the call of birds and bells</p>
+<p class="i0">And shadowy sound of waves, and wind through leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And wind that rustles through the burnished sheaves,</p>
+<p class="i0">And far off voices whispering farewells.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I dream again the joy I used to know</p>
+<p class="i0">While straying by the sea that hardly sighed</p>
+<p class="i0">A sorrow in my singing, as the tide</p>
+<p class="i0">Crept up to clasp me, smiled, and let me go.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And I remember all the glad lost hours,</p>
+<p class="i0">The racing of brown rabbits on the hill,</p>
+<p class="i0">The winds that prowled around the lonely mill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Laburnum laughter, music of the flowers.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The berries plucked with loitering delight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Staining the dusk with purple, till the thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Of starry little ghosts behind us caught</p>
+<p class="i0">Our hearts and made us fearful of the night.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The London evenings huddled in the rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose misty prisms shone with lamplight pale,</p>
+<p class="i0">Making our hearts seem sinister and frail,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fainting our thoughts with mystery and pain.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I have a world of memories to dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">To touch with loving fingers as a sigh</p>
+<p class="i0">Revives a little flame and lets it die.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, were the days as lovely as they seem</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Now that they look so peaceful lying dead?</p>
+<p class="i0">And is it all the hope of Joy we have,</p>
+<p class="i0">The broken trophies of the things she gave</p>
+<p class="i0">And took away to give us dreams instead?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The things we love and lose before we find</p>
+<p class="i0">The way to love them well enough and keep,</p>
+<p class="i0">That now are woven on the looms of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">That now are only music of the wind.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">London</span> grows sad at evening,</p>
+<p class="i4">And we at the windows sit</p>
+<p class="i0">To watch her moods,</p>
+<p class="i0">Wearying with her.</p>
+<p class="i0">Even a noise of laughter from the street</p>
+<p class="i0">Sounds in our ears</p>
+<p class="i0">Like something dropped and shattered on the stone.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then her musician comes,</p>
+<p class="i0">A wandering, malicious spirit;</p>
+<p class="i0">The organ grinder, playing those old tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">We know too well,</p>
+<p class="i0">That hurt us with fatigue.</p>
+<p class="i0">Till Hope like a harlequin,</p>
+<p class="i0">His glitter hidden in a ragged coat,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lamplighter, goes by,</p>
+<p class="i0">Planting his pale flames in the dusk.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Ah!</span> the spring,</p>
+<p class="i4">Sudden, surprising,</p>
+<p class="i0">Melting the iron scales around the heart</p>
+<p class="i0">As the earliest sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Melts the cold case of dew on <span class="locked">leaves&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the streets like odorous rivers</p>
+<p class="i0">Chanting the echoes of <span class="locked">seas&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the flowers in shop-windows</p>
+<p class="i0">Beseeching, persuasive,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reluctant to let their beauty flow away</p>
+<p class="i0">From thoughts that mirror them in <span class="locked">passing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Beautiful exiles</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttering in their chains,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thrilled with the noise of bees,</p>
+<p class="i0">The music of meadows</p>
+<p class="i0">Still hovering around <span class="locked">them&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Flower fingers, flower-touches,</p>
+<p class="i0">Passional, reminiscent,</p>
+<p class="i0">Rippling the soul's still <span class="locked">waters&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Flower galaxies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Enamelled bridges arching from dream to dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">Garlands splashing over the eyes of satyrs,</p>
+<p class="i0">The furtive woodland eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pointed inquisitive <span class="locked">ears&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Pallid flowers foaming on hill-crests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gushing heavenwards</p>
+<p class="i0">From a sea of stormy <span class="locked">mountains&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Opening and shutting exquisite doors,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the senses open to music,</p>
+<p class="i0">Shut upon silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Open to beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Close their caskets upon <span class="locked">love&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the flowers in the windows,</p>
+<p class="i0">Amorous of poets</p>
+<p class="i0">Making a chaplet of song!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THE_UNDERTONE_OF_THE_VOLGA_BOAT_SONG" id="THE_UNDERTONE_OF_THE_VOLGA_BOAT_SONG">THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">O</span> God,</p>
+<p class="i4">We have nothing to give Thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are as fog that drifts on the river,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the wailing of voices blown through <span class="locked">mist&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are as those that carry bags of dust</p>
+<p class="i0">Heaping them with the <span class="locked">dust&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are covered with the dust of days,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are pale from the dust of dreamless nights</p>
+<p class="i0">Shaken before we were <span class="locked">rested&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">At dawn we are found by the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Adrift, labouring, thinking of <span class="locked">nothing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our wine is bitter, it has made us drunk,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our bread is coarse,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are always athirst and hungry....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God, we have been patient,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have grown old in weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our lives are as the labouring of the <span class="locked">wind&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are huddled together in the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">The sleeping houses pass us,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dawn is a field of nettles</p>
+<p class="i0">Stinging us from rest....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have nothing to give Thee but patience,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have suffered evil and believed Thee good,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy face is the gentleness of the distance,</p>
+<p class="i0">The river is placid with the thought of <span class="locked">Thee&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our tears have washed us harder than the rocks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And like the rocks we wait,</p>
+<p class="i0">Grow old with waiting....</p>
+<p class="i0">Weariness, the river</p>
+<p class="i0">Flowing through banks of sleep....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God, we have nothing to give Thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take our great weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">We that have never lived and never slept,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take our long weariness, O God!...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="newpage p4 transnote">
+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Transcribers_Notes" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcribers' Notes:</a></h2>
+
+<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.</p>
+
+<p>Ellipses are reproduced as printed in the original book.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the poems' titles appear only in the Table of Contents, not with
+the poems themselves.</p>
+
+<p>When the Transcriber could not to determine whether a verse at the top
+of a page was a new stanza or part of the stanza on the previous page,
+the latter was assumed.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_42">42</a>: "sombring" was printed that way.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_89">89</a>: "Because I can not" was printed with "can" and "not" as
+separate words.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45643 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #45643 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45643)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+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: Poems
+
+Author: Iris Tree
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2014 [EBook #45643]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS BY
+ IRIS TREE
+
+
+The author returns thanks for permission to use in this collection of
+her poems, those which have appeared in Poetry, Vanity Fair and the
+"Wheels" Anthology.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ HEAD OF IRIS TREE BY JACOB EPSTEIN
+]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ Poems
+ by
+ Iris Tree
+
+ Decorations by
+ Curtis Moffat
+
+ LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+ NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
+ MCMXX
+
+
+
+
+ Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
+ New York, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+ PAGE
+ "YOU PREACH TO ME OF LAWS, YOU TIE MY LIMBS" 11
+
+ "WE ARE THE CARETAKERS OF EMPTY HOUSES" 12
+
+ "FROM FAR AWAY THE LOST ADVENTURES GLEAM" 13
+
+ "GIVE ME, O GOD, THE POWER OF LAUGHTER STILL" 14
+
+ "WINDING DOWN THE STREET IN WEARIED GAIETY" 15
+
+ "TRANQUILLITY STIRRED BY A SUDDEN SPASM" 17
+
+ "I COULD EXPLAIN" 18
+
+ "I FEEL IN ME A MANIFOLD DESIRE" 19
+
+ "SILENCE" 20
+
+ "I SHOULD LIKE TO SAY TO THE WORLD" 21
+
+ "YOU PASS AS IN A DRUGGED DELIRIUM" 22
+
+ "O FACES THAT LOOK SO COLDLY AT ME" 23
+
+ "I SEE MYSELF IN MANY DIFFERENT DRESSES" 24
+
+ "THERE ARE SONGS ENOUGH OF LOVE, OF JOY, OF GRIEF" 25
+
+ "HOW OFTEN, WHEN THE THOUGHT OF SUICIDE" 27
+
+ "IT IS STILL SOMETHING TO HAVE CHEATED GOD" 28
+
+ "WHAT WORDS THAT MOVE ON WINGS IN A LONG DRIFT" 29
+
+ "I THINK MYSELF" 30
+
+ "THE ADORED, WILD, STRANGE, IRRESISTIBLE" 31
+
+ A ROSE 32
+
+ "LIKE FLOCKS OF TIRED BIRDS WHEN AUTUMN COMES" 33
+
+ "OH, JUST BEYOND THE CURVE OF IDEAL QUEST" 34
+
+ "AH! YOU, FROM THE SMALL HIGH-WALLED ACRE OF YOUR LIVES" 35
+
+ "MOUTH OF THE DUST I KISS, CORRUPTION ABSOLUTE" 36
+
+ "THE CURTAINS ARE DRAWN AS THOUGH IT STILL WERE NIGHT" 37
+
+ BLACK VELVET 38
+
+ NERVES 39
+
+ "MY PAIN HAS ALL THE PATIENCE OF A NUN" 40
+
+ "THE SCANDAL-MONGER AFTER ALL IS RIGHT" 41
+
+ "WOODS OF BROWN GLOOM SOMBRING WITH THE HUSH OF DEATH" 42
+
+ "I FEEL SO MUCH ALONE" 43
+
+ THE COMPLEX LIFE 44
+
+ "SHALL WE BE CHRISTENED POETS, CHILDREN OF GOD" 46
+
+ "WHEN I AM WEARY AT THE ANTIC CHANCE" 47
+
+ MOODS 48
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+ "NOW IS THE EVENING DIPPED KNEE-DEEP IN BLOOD" 53
+
+ "BLOW UPON BLOW THEY BRUISE THE DAYLIGHT WAN" 54
+
+ "A RAGGED DRUMMER RIDES ALONG THE STREET" 56
+
+ ZEPPELINS 58
+
+ "O FLATTERY, IMPOSTURE, BATTLE SHOW" 62
+
+ "WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE BEGGAR, AND THE SINNER, AND THE SAD" 63
+
+ "IF I WERE WHAT I WOULD BE, AND COULD BREAK" 64
+
+ HOLY RUSSIA 65
+
+ "HOW DEEPLY NURTURED IS YOUR FOOLISHNESS" 67
+
+ "OF ALL WHO DIED IN SILENCE FAR AWAY" 68
+
+ "AND AFTERWARDS, WHEN HONOUR HAS MADE GOOD" 69
+
+ "PITY THE SLAIN THAT LAID AWAY THEIR LIVES" 70
+
+
+FLAME
+
+ "YOU HAVE UNDERSTOOD SO LITTLE OF ME, AND MY ADORATION" 75
+
+ "LULLED ARE THE DAZZLING COLOURS OF THE DAY" 77
+
+ "WASHED AT MY FEET BY THE CURDED FOAM OF SLUGGISH WAVES" 78
+
+ "MY POEMS CANNOT LAUGH. THEY ARE THE VOICE" 79
+
+ "ON THE HILL THERE IS A TAVERN, LONG-LOVED, WELL-REMEMBERED" 80
+
+ "OH CANST THOU NOT HEAR IN MY HEART ALL ITS WHISPERING FEARS" 81
+
+ "AS IN THE SILENCE THE CLEAR MOONLIGHT DRIPS" 83
+
+ "I CAN BUT GIVE THEE UNSUBSTANTIAL THINGS" 84
+
+ "I HAVE NO OTHER FRIEND BUT THEE" 85
+
+ "BODIES HEAVING LIKE WAVES" 88
+
+ "YOUR FACE TO ME IS LIKE A BEAUTIFUL CITY" 89
+
+ "OH! WHY WILL YOU NOT LET ME LOVE YOU" 90
+
+ "MY DEVOTION KNEELS TO YOU" 92
+
+ ISLANDS 93
+
+ "MANY THINGS I'D FIND TO CHARM YOU" 94
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+ LAMP-POSTS 97
+
+ LONDON 98
+
+ "SLOWLY THE PALE FEET OF MORNING" 100
+
+ "WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEM" 101
+
+ "AMONG THE CRUMBLING ARCHES OF DECAY" 103
+
+ "AS A NUN'S FACE FROM HER BLACK DRAPERIES" 105
+
+ "THE SUN IS LORD OF LIFE AND COLOUR" 106
+
+ BAHAMA ISLANDS 107
+
+ THOUGHTS OF LONDON 108
+
+ STREETS 109
+
+ "LAUGHTER AND SINGING COME WITH THE MORNING" 113
+
+ "IN THE NIGHT I HEAR MY LONELINESS CALLING" 114
+
+ SUNDAY 115
+
+ "THE LEAVES ARE SINGING, AND THE SEA" 116
+
+ "HOW SOUNDLY SLEEPETH THE FOOL" 117
+
+ "MOONLIT LILACS UNDER THE WINDOW" 118
+
+ "OLD WOMAN FOREVER SITTING" 119
+
+ "LONELINESS I LOVE" 120
+
+ I MET AN INDIAN 121
+
+ "FROM THE FATHOMLESS DEPTH OF MY BOREDOM" 124
+
+ "LOLLING IN SNOW, LIKE KINGS IN ERMINE COATS" 125
+
+ "THE ROOTS OF OUR LONGING ARE PROBING THE HEART OF NIGHT" 126
+
+ VAHDAH 127
+
+ "STARLIGHT SILENCES" 128
+
+ "THE MOUNTAIN IS AN EMPEROR" 130
+
+ "I KNOW WHAT HAPPINESS IS" 131
+
+ "LONG HATH THE PEN LAIN IDLE IN MY HAND" 133
+
+ "I LAY MY HEART ON A STONE" 134
+
+ "THE COLD LIGHT STEALS INTO MY SOUL" 135
+
+ "THE CARAVANS OF SPRING ARE IN THE TOWN" 136
+
+ "I DREAD THE BEAUTY OF APPROACHING SPRING" 137
+
+ TO MY FATHER 139
+
+ TO MY MOTHER 140
+
+ "LONDON GROWS SAD AT EVENING" 142
+
+ AH! THE SPRING 143
+
+ THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG 144
+
+
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs
+ With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,
+ You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,
+ You stop my heart and turn it into wood.
+
+ I serve not God, but make my idol fair
+ From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,
+ Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair
+ By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.
+
+ The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,
+ The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,
+ And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,
+ And sunrise falling on the quiet street.
+
+ The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,
+ And lovers in the secret sheets of night
+ Trembling like instruments of music, till the day
+ Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.
+
+ Age creeps upon your timid little faces
+ Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,
+ Proud in the unimportance of your places
+ You sit in twilight prophesying woe.
+
+ So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,
+ I from my pageant golden as the day
+ Pity your littleness from all my passion,
+ Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ We are the caretakers of empty houses,
+ The moon leans her slender body against the door,
+ But the lock is jarred with rust.
+ The sun looks in through the window,
+ But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.
+ Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things
+ Like bowls of potpourri,
+ A dust of petals
+ Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From far away the lost adventures gleam,
+ The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,
+ The love of her who showed me to the sun
+ In triumph of creation, who did seem
+ With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream
+ To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one
+ Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun
+ The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...
+ The row of soldiered books, authority
+ Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,
+ The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,
+ Rebellion, love made sad with mystery--
+ And like a firefly through the twilit trees
+ Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Give me, O God, the power of laughter still,
+ I shall have need of humour, deftest foil
+ Against the army of infuriated pride,
+ Against the shields of reason, and the spears
+ Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;
+ Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,
+ And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....
+
+ Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,
+ Three musketeers of faithful following.
+ We will fear nothing.--Is not laughter brave,
+ That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?
+ Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves
+ Against the buttressed prisons of the world?
+ And is not love the bravest of them all,
+ So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven
+ While the red fists are threatening all around,
+ And hate is beating on the battledrums?
+ As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse
+ Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,
+ I ride my fancy blithely into danger
+ To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride
+ And stick my roses in the cap of Love....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Winding down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled
+ out its song
+ Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and
+ indefinite along.
+ The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some
+ hunch-backed and some bent with age,
+ They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung
+ heavy in a sombre rage.
+ Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their
+ heads the scolding shrewish tongue;
+ They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out
+ the dust and dung.
+ Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags
+ upon the line,
+ I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a
+ slow decline.
+ Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded
+ here and there,
+ Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew
+ brilliant in the tinsel glare.
+ Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of
+ the day stretched to the night,
+ Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen
+ light.
+ And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the
+ day,
+ And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long
+ highway.
+ And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and
+ pain and hunger and despair,
+ And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and
+ false pansies in their hair,
+ But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or
+ splendour in their lives,
+ Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking
+ wives.
+ I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with
+ coarse uncaring hand,
+ But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to
+ understand;
+ Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced
+ on grief,
+ Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and
+ hide my disbelief.
+
+ Strange we so love the world--for presently, out of my window looking
+ on the city,
+ I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt
+ no shame nor pity
+ For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our
+ dreams,
+ Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of
+ sleeping streams.
+ I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of
+ million lungs,
+ And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a
+ million tongues;
+ And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the
+ peopled spaces,
+ And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of
+ faces.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Tranquility stirred by a sudden spasm,
+ Knives of rain that cut the silence,
+ Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,
+ Calm of the marble-terraced night
+ Charred with the spattering of rockets.
+
+ Drums will I hear and battles now,
+ And the long death howl of wolves by night,
+ Watching the moon on the forest tops,
+ Walking with delicate frightened steps
+ To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I could explain
+ The complicated lore that drags the soul
+ From what shall profit him
+ To gild damnation with his choicest gold.
+ But you
+ Are poring over precious books and do not hear
+ Our plaintive, frivolous songs;
+ For we in stubborn vanity ascend
+ On ladders insecure,
+ Toward the tottering balconies
+ To serenade our painted paramours;
+ Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,
+ Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes
+ That cheat between unrest and false repose.
+ And we are haunted
+ By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,
+ Now taking shape of Pleasure,
+ Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.
+ I could disclose
+ The truth that hangs between our lies
+ And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;
+ Truth, that stings like nettles
+ Our frail hands dare not pluck
+ From out our garden's terraced indolence.
+ We are not happy,
+ And you make us dumb with loving hands
+ Reproachful on our lips.
+ Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,
+ For we have bartered diamonds for glass,
+ Our tears for smiles,
+ Eternity for now.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I feel in me a manifold desire
+ From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,
+ And I the Queen
+ Of crowding vagabonds,
+ Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,
+ With pathos of torn laces
+ And broken swords;
+ Cut-throats and kings and poets
+ Who have loved me
+ In visions wild, not knowing
+ What I was.
+ In me no end
+ Even where the last content
+ Clasps on my head a crown
+ Of shining endurance--
+ I slip from all my robes
+ Into the rags of a tattered romance;
+ The stars crowd at the window,
+ Their jealous destiny
+ Raps at the door--
+ They bob and wink and leer,
+ And I must leave the lamplight for the road
+ To keep strange company.
+ Farewell and Hail!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Silence--
+ Somewhere on earth
+ There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.
+ The trees stand bolt upright
+ Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.
+ There is a purpose in Heaven,
+ But for me
+ Nothing.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I should like to say to the world:
+ I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;
+ Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting
+ the sky,
+ Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,
+ Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,
+ Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.
+ I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour
+ Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and
+ shout,
+ In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled
+ stallions,
+ Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....
+
+ But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,
+ To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,
+ I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola
+ Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes
+ And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ You pass as in a drugged delirium
+ Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;
+ You sing a blasphemous Te Deum
+ To harlot virgins, and a fraction
+ Of your fulginous colour passes,
+ Stains my spirit's great conception
+ As it dips into your glasses.
+ I that am the sole exception
+ To your stillborn, false devices,
+ I that know you, I that hate you,
+ I that drank now spit your vices
+ Through my loathing reinstate you;
+ Dive once more into the stagnance,
+ Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,
+ Concentrate your cruel fragrance,
+ Steal your flowers before I sink you,
+ Lift with hate instead of praises,
+ Show you honour of my scorning,
+ Garlanded you go to blazes
+ With my rhymes for your adorning!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ O faces that look so coldly at me,
+ Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,
+ Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.
+ You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,
+ While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,
+ With tinkling bells that harass my calm,
+ Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.
+ Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,
+ How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?
+ The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...
+ Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,
+ Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,
+ You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,
+ And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea
+ To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your dress,--
+ How I might love you and weep for you,
+ Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs
+ If you could understand my singing,
+ If you could understand my love!
+ But you are waltzing with your marionettes
+ And marching to the music of the clock--
+ I cannot bear you to watch me
+ With those cold eyes through which I see,
+ Emptiness only and dust.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I see myself in many different dresses,
+ In many moods, and many different places;
+ All gold amid the grey where solemn faces
+ Are silence to my mirth--a flame that blesses
+ From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...
+ Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces
+ Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,
+ Disdainful of their slander or caresses.
+ I see myself the child of many races,
+ Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;
+ Within my soul a thousand weary traces
+ Of pain and joy and passionate excesses--
+ Eternal beauty that our brief love chases
+ With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ There are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:
+ Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;
+ Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,
+ Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.
+
+ The long road unto nothing I will sing,
+ Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,
+ Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring
+ No more emotion than the fear to die.
+
+ Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,
+ Another house as grey and steep and still:
+ An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,
+ A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.
+
+ Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,
+ Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!
+ Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?
+ Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?
+
+ Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain
+ Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:
+ A black umbrella held up in the rain,
+ The raindrops making patterns in the dust.
+
+ If this distaste I hold for fools is such,
+ Shall I not spit upon myself as well?
+ Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?
+ Do I not fatten also in this hell?
+
+ Sadness and joy--if they were melted up,
+ Things that were great--upon the fires of time
+ Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,
+ Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.
+
+ Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two
+ And set him like a pilgrim on his way
+ With Beauty's face before him--what of you,
+ Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?
+
+ The dullard-masses that no god can save!
+ If I were God, to rise and strike you down
+ And break your churches in an angry wave
+ And make a furious bonfire of your town!
+
+ God in a coloured globe, alone and still,
+ Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,
+ On loom of spaces measureless, to fill
+ The empty air with passion and with pain.
+
+ Emblazon all the heavens with desire
+ And Wisdom delved for in the depths of time--
+ Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire
+ Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.
+
+ Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,
+ Perfected and undone and built afresh
+ With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...
+ If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ How often, when the thought of suicide
+ With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,
+ The ghosts of many foods alluring glide
+ On golden dishes, wine in purple tide
+ To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye
+ Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly
+ Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride
+ Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie
+ Resigned to death like heroes--July peas,
+ Expectant bottles foaming at the brink--
+ White bread, and honey of the golden bees--
+ A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,
+ A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,
+ And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ It is still something to have cheated God
+ And bored the Devil with so easy prey,
+ And in the midst of summer woods to raise
+ A leafless tree whose stark limbs mock at Heaven,
+ Flaunting an iron hatred in the midst of hope--
+ Yet sometimes in the loneliness of night
+ My buried longings blossom on the boughs,
+ My wistful longings come out star by star,
+ Till the great sky is light with my desire,
+ And on the winds my songs are galloping....
+ Ah, to what dismal greyness creeps the soul
+ Too weak, too tired, to struggle from the slough!
+ My weapons rust, my pen is in the dust,
+ The moulting feathers plucked from out my wings
+ Lie dangling in the hats I stole them for.
+ My heart is floating in a claret cup,
+ My brain is toppling drunken at the brim,
+ My life is drowned within the lurid dregs.
+ I turn and fold my hands in a last appeal,
+ What heaven shall I pray to and for what,
+ Now that my songs to penny tunes are set,
+ And nothing is to save of me but flesh?
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ What words that move on wings in a long drift
+ Can waft this silence into weary ears,
+ And steal into the veins and fingertips
+ Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships
+ Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,
+ Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.
+ What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,
+ Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,
+ Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors
+ Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,
+ Steeled with indifference against all hurt,
+ Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:
+ To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,
+ Where all the lamps each with a separate soul
+ Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;
+ And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife
+ Cuts free the tethered heart from long control
+ And flings it like a ball with mad delight
+ Into the silver lap of the young moon.
+ What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine
+ Can broider tapestries as rich as these,
+ Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,
+ Transparent as the gods we half divine,
+ Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon
+ Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain
+ That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,
+ And visioned faces that our dreams create
+ Born in the land forbidden us of fate
+ And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind
+ Forever Joy, that never comes again!
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage
+ Where murder creeps and whispers.
+ The jester clad in piebald tights
+ Half black, half golden, with no company
+ Save bells that jingle,
+ And an effigy,
+ The grinning image painted like myself
+ Upon a stick....
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of comedy mournfully straying
+ Amid the revellers,
+ Loving the moon and my own shadow
+ With its strange solemn gestures--
+ Loving the painted moon
+ That lets me play with shadows.
+
+ I am the jester on an empty stage
+ Playing a pantomime
+ To spectres in the stalls,
+ Listening at last
+ For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding,
+ And for some king with decadent tired fingers
+ To fling a white gardenia at my feet.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The adored, wild, strange, irresistible,
+ How they fail one at the last!
+ What is there in your faces
+ That we should worship with our souls?
+ Most lovable, perfidious,
+ Vague--
+ Molesting even our visions
+ With treacherous pathos.
+ O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,
+ What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,
+ Covering your meagre bodies
+ With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?
+ Life and its grey days, and time
+ Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,
+ Or a dim glass through which you peer.
+ You climb in at the windows of our souls
+ With ladders and stratagems,
+ You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.
+ But what do you do for us
+ Lute players, dancers, deceivers,
+ Other than lie with red lips
+ And cajole with tears of beryl?
+ People--
+ Men and women with laughable, tragic faces
+ Winking at love,
+ Treading our songs and illusions
+ Under petulant feet!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+A ROSE
+
+
+ What do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging
+ Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?
+ What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging
+ Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?
+
+ What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic
+ Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,
+ Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,
+ And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had mangled;--
+
+ What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died
+ unrequited,
+ And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,
+ Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and
+ slighted,
+ That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of
+ Heaven?
+
+ You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and
+ bleeding,
+ Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging,
+ What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading,
+ I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Like flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,
+ My spirit flags across the darkening fields
+ And melts into the drabness of the sky
+ And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.
+ But many wizened faces brown and sad
+ Peer from the bushes as I wander past,--
+ They tell me all those things that old men say
+ As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.
+ "When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,
+ When you have bowed before all other gods,
+ And found them false, then shall you come at last
+ To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless
+ Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,
+ And call you slave and lover." ...
+ Shall not a child take Pain for company
+ And share her loneliness with him?
+ Does not a youth know tears
+ In the first bitterness of broken love?
+ Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come
+ To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ...
+ He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,
+ He sits a jester at the feet of kings
+ And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.
+ He rides the wooden horses at a fair,
+ And dances with the jiggers on the stage.
+ Led by the violins of discontent
+ That whine their music to my listening soul,
+ I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,
+ We dance together to the tunes of rain
+ Played on one note upon the only string.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Oh, just beyond the curve of ideal quest
+ That changes as a sea wave to the wind,
+ Beyond the cloud that folds around a star,
+ And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in,
+ Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone,
+ The paradise of all we might have been,
+ While we are washed back downwards in the dark
+ Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,
+ Your windows only looking upon gardens,
+ Only perceiving love and death and truth
+ As facts that come to pass,
+ That pass and leave you still
+ Within your safe small prisons,
+ Older, duller,
+ To walk and talk among the evergreens.
+ You have never known
+ Delight of dying slowly,
+ Poisoned with raptures
+ In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death--
+ The tunes
+ That dishevel and smooth,
+ Cajole and melancholize--
+ The dance
+ Which is a whirling of leaves
+ In their last scorn of sorrow
+ Flung upwards by the wind
+ Into the haggard face of winter--
+ Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons
+ Tossed by impulsive hands;
+ Nor slid as skaters swiftly
+ Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,
+ Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ...
+ You have not felt the abandon
+ Of light love
+ Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Mouth of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute,
+ Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour,
+ Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute,
+ Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.
+
+ For you I sheave the harvest of my hair,
+ For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour,
+ For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air
+ My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.
+
+ For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great
+ Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence,
+ For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate,
+ Science for giving wounds, and healing science.
+
+ For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care,
+ Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness,
+ For you the unborn child that I prepare,
+ You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ The curtains are drawn as though it still were night,
+ A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon;
+ And all about the room is quietness--Each patient chair
+ Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book
+ Lie as you left them, now bereft of purpose--
+ Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you
+ Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes!
+ How grey and sober, full of placid wit
+ The furniture, the pictures on the wall;
+ How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart
+ As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood.
+ Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face
+ And white, white gloves ...
+ What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock,
+ With face grimacing ... nearly six it is....
+ Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts,
+ For in its dial eternity is housed--
+ A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town!
+ But a water cart with surly noise below
+ Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street.
+ How cold and how familiar all these things,
+ To you so lonely in the enormous dawn
+ Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+BLACK VELVET
+
+
+ The darkness of the trees at deep midnight
+ And sombreness of shadows in the lake;
+ A mountain in the starlight wide awake
+ Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might
+ Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright
+ Bespattered jewelry of stars--the ache
+ Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break
+ From music. Slumbering cities--candle light
+ Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train
+ Of Queens that go to scaffold for a sin--
+ Or splash of blackness manifest of pain,
+ Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin
+ Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again
+ Venetian masks against a milky skin.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+NERVES
+
+
+ These curious looms where we have spun our fancies,
+ These intricate webs where our desires are threaded,
+ These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies
+ Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed.
+ These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles
+ Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers
+ From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles
+ Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors.
+ These colours twinging on a prism's edges,
+ These speckled patterns of fanatic madness
+ From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges
+ For pearls within the depths of sadness and of gladness--
+ O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after
+ As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary,
+ Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter,
+ Molesting quietness and waking up the weary!
+ What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting
+ With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you
+ O wrangling, juggling, jangling, pirouetting--
+ What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you?
+ You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion,
+ And trodden out the red stars into ashes,
+ Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron,
+ And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes
+ ...
+ You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary,
+ Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters,
+ The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary,
+ A poor bewildered clown--and nothing matters.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My pain has all the patience of a nun
+ Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone,
+ In some chill cellar where the amens moan,
+ Ave Maria, the long penance spun
+ Forever. And the tapers one by one
+ Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne.
+ My soul is tired from kneeling all alone,
+ Its little candles yearning to the sun.
+
+ Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen
+ Bright mirages of glory on the grey
+ Of sad horizons; I have kept the green
+ Surprise of spring through winter and dismay,
+ Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen
+ Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ The scandal-monger after all is right--
+ The old and cunning voice with weary repetition
+ Is justified in all dull words and warnings.
+ I see at last how you,
+ Spendthrift of passion
+ In love's bankruptcy,
+ Borrow new beauty from each passing face--
+ How being too lavish you did steal
+ From generous hands--
+ You are the idol builder and the robber of temples,
+ Praising with passionate psalms
+ The thing you cannot worship--
+ And yet your prayers have stirred
+ Belief in us--
+ We see beyond the false and weary face
+ Into your haggard soul and trust from pity--
+ We hear beyond the idle music of your voice,
+ A wisdom taught by cruelty
+ And a tired scorn of treachery and guile--
+ We see your wounds and weep,
+ You meet our pity with a traitor's kiss--
+ For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled
+ In teaching pain to others--
+ And all that mob of furious accusation
+ To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well,
+ Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered,
+ That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Woods of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death,
+ Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering,
+ Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath
+ Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering,
+ As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly
+ Listless they perish, wavering and hovering.
+ Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry,
+ Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering
+ The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun.
+ No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet,
+ No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one
+ As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet....
+ How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound
+ From shrill carousers riotous and merry all,
+ As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground,
+ As funeral bagpipes at a burial.
+ And I who wander passionless and forlorn,
+ A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection,
+ In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn,
+ See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ I feel so much alone,
+ And yet I know that many hopes are storming
+ My shut heart;
+ For I am bolted fast in my own house.
+ I pace distracted through its corridors
+ To the music of Love's knocking hands
+ Against the gate,
+ Or silence when they sleep.
+ I cannot find the key to let them in,
+ I, my own host and guest and ghost,
+ Imprisoned in myself!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPLEX LIFE
+
+
+ I know it to be true that those who live
+ As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
+ Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
+ Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.
+
+ But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
+ That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
+ Spins into complex patterns and conceals
+ His huge invention with forms intricate.
+
+ Each generation blindly fills the plan,
+ A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
+ With many processes from out the sod,
+ The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.
+
+ We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
+ Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
+ A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
+ Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.
+
+ We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
+ We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
+ We crave perfection that we may not find.
+ Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.
+
+ You peasants and you hermits, simple livers!
+ So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned
+ While we give up our bodies to be burned,
+ And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.
+
+ We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
+ We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
+ We make a gaudy havoc of our life
+ And live a thousand ages in an hour.
+
+ Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
+ We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
+ We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
+ And dream of harassed continents the while.
+
+ Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
+ Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint,
+ Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
+ Inverted religion, and perverted passion.
+
+ But since we are children of this age,
+ In curious ways discovering salvation,
+ I will not quit my muddled generation,
+ But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.
+
+ Although I know that Nature's bounty yields
+ Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
+ Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
+ Will I give back my body to the fields.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Shall we be christened poets, children of God,
+ For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,
+ For tugging at the moaning bells of death,
+ And coming as the autumn grave-digger
+ To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers
+ Of wind upon the rushes,
+ Of music upon silence?
+ Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel
+ For forcing tragedy into a rhyme
+ As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?
+ The poet ever wanders after Death,
+ The flunkey on a funeral chariot
+ Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;
+ And all the roses that he plucks from summer
+ Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse....
+ How shall the world learn how to laugh again
+ When all its songs have only learnt to weep?
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ When I am weary at the antic chance,
+ The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,
+ The hope and fear in jugglery, and see
+ How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,
+ And life a laboured trick--the years advance
+ A shrilling chorus in affected dance
+ With lust of many eyes that watch and wink
+ Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink
+ Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance--
+ Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,
+ Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin--
+ Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin
+ Through curtained silence trips as from a trance
+ With blushing flowers for Columbine--Romance.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+MOODS
+
+
+I
+
+ I crouched upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses,
+ And--listening with dread for the moment of my own silence
+ Rending the flimsy lace of whisperings--
+ My gnome dances before me
+ Behind a fan of smoke,
+ My dwarf squats on my shoulders
+ Tweeking their moulted wings,
+ My ape peers in the mirror of my face
+ Mimicking my soul's gaunt gestures--
+ My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness
+ Blotching the night with howls--
+ My laughter goes whining away on the wind,
+ Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment,
+ Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...
+
+
+II
+
+ Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet
+ Dancing across the leer of ugliness,
+ Skimming like a gold thread
+ Through a necklace of vile masks--
+ Lifting with lotus fingers
+ The blue arras of nightmare--
+ Loveliness like a delicate silver flute
+ Pressed to a negro's lips--
+
+
+III
+
+ Do you then wish for all those griefs
+ Whose snarling hands you kiss,
+ Kneeling in adoration to a dagger
+ As saints before a cross?
+ You who have tossed all flowers away,
+ Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood
+ Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,--
+ Do you then crave your own blood's offering,
+ Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?
+ In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,
+ Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,
+ You lean across the precipice of time
+ Calling and crying
+ For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter--
+
+
+IV
+
+ Waiting,
+ Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven
+ Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos--
+ Waiting,
+ Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,
+ Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,
+ Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,
+ Waiting like a vast arch of quietness
+ Through which a screaming messenger shall dart--
+ Like a dense hood of silence
+ Pierced by a sword of music--
+ Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool
+ Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Now is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood
+ And the dun hills stand fearful in their places.
+ Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets
+ With burdens of vainglory on our backs,
+ Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web
+ Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease.
+ But out beyond, the armies of the world
+ March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum
+ Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:
+
+ His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil:
+ He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high
+ The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed
+ With livid roses; all his pillars black
+ Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust
+ He raises up his awful golden throne.
+
+ Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears;
+ Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone;
+ Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God
+ Where good and evil mix; and all your rage
+ Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan,
+ Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore;
+ They ride on furious, leaving every man
+ Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war:
+ Gods that grow tired of paradisial water
+ And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.
+
+ I fear a thing more terrible than death:
+ The glamour of the battle grips us yet--
+ As crowds before a fire that hold their breath
+ Watching the burning houses, and forget
+ All they will lose, but marvel to behold
+ Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.
+
+ I fear the time when slow the flame expires,
+ When this kaleidoscope of roaring color
+ Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires
+ That shone with battle, nothing left of valour
+ Save chill ignoble ashes for despair
+ To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.
+
+ Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet,
+ Hiding the mangled body of the Earth:
+ The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet
+ Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth,
+ But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust
+ Save to end living and be heaped with dust.
+
+ That stillness that must follow where Death trod,
+ The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall,
+ The tuneless voices cringing praise to God,
+ Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call,
+ Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise,
+ With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.
+
+ Across the world from out the fevered ground
+ Decay from every pore exhales its breath;
+ A cloak of penance winding close around
+ The bright desire of spring. And unto Death,
+ As to a conquering king, we yield the keys
+ Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.
+
+ The maiden loverless shall go her ways,
+ And child unfathered feed on crust and husk;
+ The sun that was the glory of our days
+ Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk
+ Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay
+ Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ A ragged drummer rides along the street,
+ And at his coming
+ The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet
+ And voices humming.
+ He rode a year ago from far away,
+ On charger prancing,
+ With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay,
+ And banners dancing.
+ Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum
+ He bore so proudly,
+ His roaring music woke the silence dumb
+ To thunder loudly.
+ And by his side the old men and the young
+ Had followed cheering
+ Into the sunset smiling as they sung,
+ Nor thought of fearing.
+ They left their lovers and their mothers' lap,
+ Their homes demolish,
+ "For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap,
+ A sword to polish!"
+ And so the town was silent once again,
+ Though tunes of battle
+ Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain
+ Ghost drums would rattle.
+ But at the chuckling dice or careful loom,
+ Or candled churches
+ A few forgot or prayed or followed doom
+ With drunken lurches....
+ Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng,
+ In huddled masses
+ They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song
+ As back he passes--
+ Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone
+ In rags and tatters,
+ And on a soundless barrel with a bone
+ He beats and batters.
+ "Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd,
+ That we may kiss them?
+ Where sound your little songs that rang so loud
+ To us that miss them?"
+ There are no songs, no happy marching feet,
+ No favours flying:
+ The drummer passes ... on the quiet street
+ The sun is dying.
+ Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!...
+ Have done with weeping,
+ But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave
+ As he lies sleeping.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ZEPPELINS
+
+
+ MIDNIGHT
+
+ Suddenly
+ Shutting our lips upon a jest
+ As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
+ A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
+ Quiver with startled terrors--
+ How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
+ Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
+ Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
+ Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....
+ How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
+ How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
+ Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
+ Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
+ To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
+ A little longer, oh a little year!
+ Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
+ And resolutions of new wondrous lives
+ Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....
+ Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
+ The lurid silent people loved by death,
+ And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
+ To drag our body's glory from the light.
+ Though all the world should fall into their cells
+ And lie within their larders shelf on shelf--
+ Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
+ Yet _will I_ be the mistress of the sun!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1 A. M.
+
+ Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
+ Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes--
+ Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
+ An army fierce upon its own destruction,
+ A famished monster tearing in its claws
+ Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
+ Digesting all the world!...
+ Look at the eager people open-mouthed
+ That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised
+ By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,
+ Their earth adoring senses caught awhile
+ In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;
+ Their spirits straining upward upon strings
+ Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,
+ Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy--
+ Yet for an hour
+ Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears
+ They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes
+ Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 3 A. M.
+
+ The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless--
+ Slowly the river moves as though in sleep
+ While silent barges
+ Slide from the mist like dreams;
+ The intricate patterns of the scaffolding
+ Are drawn against the sky
+ More delicate than lace.
+ All the shimmering lights
+ Have shrunk away from morning
+ As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....
+ I am alone, most utterly alone,
+ More lonely than the last man in the world
+ Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
+ More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
+ Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
+ Dividing sleep from death,
+ Eternity from time....
+ Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
+ She brings no feverous memories of night
+ And sheds no tears.
+
+ Only two hours ago
+ Fire walked in crimson armour through the city
+ Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,
+ While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats
+ Among the silver foliage of the stars....
+ But rage has left no furrow in the sky,
+ No wake of sparks across the placid water....
+ This is the ominous and sacred hour
+ When priest-like the world kneels
+ Bowed low toward the empty throne of day--
+ Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard
+ And the flamingo messengers will come
+ Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise....
+ This is the hour of nothing,
+ Colourless and chill
+ Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,
+ As sits an idol holding in his fingers
+ A scentless lotus carven out of stone.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 4 A. M.
+
+ Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
+ And up the long uncomfortable street
+ With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
+ The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
+ Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
+ And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well--
+ A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
+ The light steals after me, emerging slow
+ And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
+ I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
+ From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw
+ Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
+ My own reflection as I hurried past,
+ My flaring colours and my face aghast--
+ The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
+ Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
+ About my knees and fluttered at the back:
+ An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
+ My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
+ My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
+ Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
+ Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.
+ ... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
+ Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ O flattery, imposture, battle show,
+ What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,
+ What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow
+ Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!
+
+ How have you turned the simple truth to lies
+ Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,
+ Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs
+ The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.
+
+ And ever quoting God for your excuse,
+ Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,
+ You train the spirit for material use,
+ You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.
+
+ When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,
+ Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,
+ The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts
+ Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ What will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,
+ And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;
+ What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,
+ Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?
+ They shall go to prison black
+ With a striped shirt on the back,
+ Feast on bread and water there
+ In a cell, without a care.
+ They shall learn at least their duty,
+ Never tempted more of beauty--
+ They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,
+ And one or two shall hang upon a cord--
+ And two or three shall die of grief alone--
+ (And this is well, for sinners should atone,)
+ And five or six shall curse the God that made them,
+ (And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)
+ And those that grew from dust shall go to dust
+ Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:--"God is just."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ If I were what I would be, and could break
+ The buttressed fortress of stupidity
+ Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,
+ Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,
+ Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake
+ Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn puppetry--
+ The gods are blinking at us sleepily,
+ Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,
+ The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess
+ Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and pawn--
+ The rigid squares of black and white, they dress
+ With their perpetual challenge--faded, worn,
+ Are all the creeds and praises you profess
+ To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+HOLY RUSSIA
+
+
+ The ghostly blood of thee is in my veins,
+ Back through the centuries of death and birth,
+ Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains,
+ My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.
+
+ And ever as in dreams I seem to see
+ Those streets and people with their colours cold;
+ Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea,
+ The tides of restless passion ages old.
+
+ I know thy humours and their contradiction,
+ I know thy fevers and hallucinations,
+ I see beneath the painted mask of fiction
+ Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.
+
+ And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes
+ Into the sick world's travail and her grief,
+ Dost thou from thy long battling surmise
+ The end of battle and the world's relief?
+
+ While we are creeping in our crooked ways
+ Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds
+ Where Ignorance walks royally through days
+ That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.
+
+ While we still cry to God for strength to kill,
+ Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves,
+ And grind young bones for the commercial mill,
+ And build munition works among the graves.
+
+ Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag,"
+ "The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!"
+ Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates brag--
+ They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...
+
+ Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God,
+ And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet,
+ Feeling beneath the burden and the rod
+ His justice and Her pity in the street.
+
+ Justice and Pity, crying in the wind--
+ We only hear the guns that never cease,
+ The flapping of our flags has made us blind!
+ We may not see the sacred gods of peace.
+
+ But thou dost build fanatic temples for them,
+ And thou dost pave the road with sanity,
+ And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them,
+ Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.
+
+ I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers,
+ The drum that life has snatched away from death,
+ And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears,
+ And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.
+
+ PEACE! But a cynic whispered in my ear
+ How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown
+ That lay amid the dust--and I could hear
+ A hum of money-changing in the town.
+
+ I feared that afterwards, when all is won,
+ We shall forget the meaning of thy deed--
+ And man will creep as he has always done
+ Along the little gutters of his greed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ How deeply nurtured is your foolishness,
+ Calling destruction great and slaughter brave,
+ Making large triumph of a little grave,
+ Imperial purple of a mourning dress,
+ The gun an emblem of your godliness--
+ A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave,
+ A medal or a bayonet, or rave
+ Of singing, marching in the forward press
+ Of hatred to the banging of a band;
+ Your country's honour and the world's release.
+ Are _they_ not strong in courage who withstand
+ The armies of your folly and shall cease
+ To tarnish with spilt life their motherland?
+ Cowards--or martyrs--crucified for peace.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Of all who died in silence far away
+ Where sympathy was busy with other things,
+ Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,
+ Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.
+
+ The little dead who knew so large a love,
+ Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
+ Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
+ Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.
+
+ Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
+ A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,
+ Stars were they to her night, and she the stem
+ From which they flowered--now barren and left unblessed.
+
+ Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
+ Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
+ Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
+ With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.
+
+ No more!--And we, the mourners, dare not wear
+ The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,
+ But must don purple and bright standards bear,
+ Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.
+
+ We dare not weep who must be brave in battle--
+ "Another death--another day--another inch of land--
+ The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ...
+ The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....
+
+ Of all who died in darkness far away
+ Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now,
+ His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
+ The passion-red roses clustering his brow.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ And afterwards, when honour has made good,
+ And all you think you fight for shall take place,
+ A late rejoicing to a crippled race;
+ The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food,
+ The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,
+ Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace
+ Shall spread a blush across the haggard face
+ Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.
+
+ In victory will you have conquered Hate,
+ And stuck old Folly with a bayonet
+ And battered down the hideous prison gate?
+ Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,
+ Glutted with gold and dust and empty state,
+ The incense of our anguish and our sweat?
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Pity the slain that laid away their lives,
+ Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves,
+ Thin little children and widowed wives,
+ And the broken soldier who survives.
+
+ Pity the woman whose body was sold
+ For a little bread or a little gold,
+ And a little fire to keep out the cold,
+ So tired, and fearful of growing old.
+
+ Pity the people in the grey street
+ Before the dawn trooping with listless feet
+ Down to their work in the dust and the heat,
+ For a little bread and a little meat.
+
+ Pity the criminal sentenced to die,
+ Loving life so, with the world in his eye,
+ In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry
+ Of love that will call when he may not reply.
+
+ Pity them all, the imperative faces
+ That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces,
+ Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places,
+ With indolent postures and frivolous graces.
+
+ Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin
+ Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin
+ That batters the door and staggers in....
+ The streets surround with clamour and din,
+
+ Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city
+ Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity,
+ Force us to sigh and arrange a committee,
+ Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....
+
+ The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave,
+ A rebel flag on a rebel grave,
+ But to us the strong alone are brave,
+ And only the rich are worthy to save!
+
+ Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled,
+ Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled,
+ Flags that blow where the dead are hurled,
+ Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+FLAME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You have understood so little of me, and my adoration
+ That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones,
+ You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation
+ And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my
+ moans.
+
+ You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter,
+ You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd;
+ But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter;
+ I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!
+
+ A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning,
+ A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow;
+ I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning,
+ And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.
+
+ In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes;
+ They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for
+ you;
+ In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes
+ As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.
+
+ Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters;
+ You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign,
+ But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of
+ fetters
+ And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine.
+ All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces,
+ Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head,
+ For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces
+ And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.
+
+ I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles
+ sacred
+ With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell;
+ I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping
+ acrid
+ And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day,
+ And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash.
+ Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk
+ Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth
+ Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit.
+ Now can I sing the sickly lines of love
+ And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out
+ In the sad spaces of the gloaming night,
+ And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark.
+ My words were fireless in the flaming sun,
+ And all the throats of flowers from their content
+ Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face
+ And bade me give them tunes to make them dance....
+ Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down
+ From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast
+ And sterile as the arms of my desire
+ She flings her light despairing on the sky.
+ The night is strange and still, for dropping tears,
+ Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Washed at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves,
+ As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light,
+ Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought
+ The thought of you, which held against mine ear
+ Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul;
+ The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love,
+ The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death,
+ The following of beauty's fugitive limbs
+ Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast
+ Gleam on the clouds and foam,
+ Call to her lovers.--
+ Thus standing in the blasting of the wind,
+ And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud
+ Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea,
+ Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels,
+ Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My poems cannot laugh. They are the voice
+ Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea,
+ And this wild joy my love has brought to me
+ Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.
+
+ I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing,
+ Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep,
+ And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep
+ Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;
+
+ To fashion for my love one perfect verse
+ Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word,
+ Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird
+ To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.
+
+ But as a coward in the general gloom
+ I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill,
+ Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill
+ Of love that moves with music into Doom;
+
+ Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold,
+ And like a gay canary in a cage
+ Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage
+ Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ On the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered,
+ Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream,
+ And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden
+ highlights,
+ And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed.
+ We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment,
+ And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white
+ wine,
+ And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing,
+ Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Oh canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears
+ Whose wind-like voices
+ Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears
+ While the body rejoices.
+ Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun
+ Trailing his scarlet vesture
+ Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun,
+ Turns with a gesture
+ Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey.
+ I follow the shadows of sorrow
+ That press so close to the dancing heels of the day
+ And darken the morrow.
+ The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see
+ Beyond its golden visor
+ The leering skull that derides at our lives and me
+ Being older than life and wiser....
+ I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the
+ whip
+ Beyond the sound of the treetops singing
+ To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip,
+ Or rush of feathers winging....
+ Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my
+ cheek
+ Murmuring tenderly
+ The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the
+ bleak
+ Windows of frost so slenderly
+ Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might
+ be
+ If life were as kind as a lover,
+ If we were beloved of the world and the world of we.
+ Thy white words hover
+ Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest
+ Silvering heaven
+ With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest.
+ If I could have given
+ My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee,
+ Ah then and then only
+ The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me
+ And death were not lonely.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ As in the silence the clear moonlight drips
+ Among the fields that love her drowsily,
+ These passionate moments trickle on through time,
+ From soul to languorous soul.
+ Like mad musicians upon fretted harps,
+ The senses play upon the poignant nerves,--
+ And colours clothe our mood
+ As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms
+ Irised with pallors of an opal's heart
+ In which the glittered pattern of desire
+ Smoulders and changes....
+ O love, thou nightingale-throated singer,
+ Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star
+ And keep thy silver delicate delight
+ Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad.
+ Let thy fairy feet
+ Go tripping down a scarcely scented path,
+ Between an avenue of breathless flowers.
+ The hours glide by as swans across a lake,
+ Across the luminous waters of desire,
+ And beat as wings the rustle of soft words,
+ As love bends down,
+ Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I can but give thee unsubstantial things
+ Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought,
+ No gems or garments marvellously wrought
+ On ivory spools with rare embroiderings.
+ Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings
+ That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought
+ With blood and beauty. I have only sought
+ A song that hovers on illusive wings.
+
+ Accept from me a dream that hath no art,
+ I give my empty hands for thee to hold,
+ Take thou the gift of silence for my part,
+ With all the deeper things I have not told.
+ Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart
+ Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ I have no other friend but thee,
+ But while I tell thee all my thought
+ Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams,
+ Soothsayings and sighs, and little things--
+ How canst thou listen to me?
+
+
+II
+
+ Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long,
+ And when my cheek grew pale
+ I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back
+ Responsive in the double rose of joy--
+ But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness
+ Where the ghost moon glides between us....
+
+
+III
+
+ When at a masquerade
+ I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng,
+ Our faces painted each in some disguise
+ Of varnished revelry;
+ I whisper in thine ear
+ Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales,
+ Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet,
+ And shower the multicoloured streamers high
+ Where Folly is king of midnight--
+ Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside,
+ And thy still face looks out,
+ Weary and overwise
+ Where the mad pretence avails not.
+
+
+IV
+
+ Long ago we walked together in a garden;
+ It was evening and the leaves fell down;
+ Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen,
+ Over flowers and branches that were withered there--
+ And the air was weary with the scent of other days,
+ A fragrance faint and pensive.
+ The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet
+ Were as old dreams retold,
+ Stirred from the golden quilt of memory,
+ And farewells rang their whispering bells,
+ Tolling the days away.
+ But peace lay folded between our hands
+ As we thought of the vanishing years
+ And of love dying in the arms of love.
+
+
+V
+
+ Sometimes I look into the glass
+ And see my face without the conquering light
+ That gave me glamour when I gave thee love.
+ Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty,
+ To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire,
+ And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell,
+ And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven.
+ I would be for thee
+ As a ring of white flowers on the sward,
+ As a red fire playing to thy breath,
+ As a flock of kingfishers
+ Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes!
+ Remember only this,
+ My will toward all loveliness, and look
+ Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.
+
+
+VI
+
+ Be perfect--for I love thee more in thought
+ Than thou canst reach in every trivial day.
+ Since days are as the flowers on a wreath
+ That wither while we bind them each to each.
+ Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days
+ Can wall it in a little space of ground.
+ Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock
+ And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour,
+ But the patient spirit stands
+ Waiting the last fulfilment.
+ Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands
+ Or as an endless rosary.
+ Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter
+ And my hands part from the unriveted faith
+ With Amen scarcely sighed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Bodies heaving like waves,
+ Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam,
+ The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow,
+ Splashed with ecstasial moonlight,
+ Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles.
+ Lingering touch of fingers,
+ Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray
+ Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell,
+ And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness
+ Against the ivory forehead of the moon.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Your face to me is like a beautiful city
+ Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea,
+ And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves
+ Heavily laden with memories....
+ I roam over all the earth
+ Making rhymes of you, and singing songs,
+ Because your face will never let me rest,
+ Because I can not frame it in a star
+ Surrounded with my cloudy reveries,
+ Because I may not pluck it like a flower
+ To breathe the incense of its perfumed soul--
+ Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword
+ Whose sheath is in my breast!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Oh! why will you not let me love you
+ Well enough?
+ You have plucked my blossoms,
+ Gathered the leaves
+ And revived them with water;
+ But all the tortuous roots
+ Delving for your spirit
+ In subterranean passions
+ With a blind unresting desire,
+ Have you felt them, have you known?
+ In the blackest night of sleep
+ Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms
+ In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion,
+ My soul still swims toward you
+ Against the envious pressure of the tide....
+ You who are so tired, so filled with sleep
+ That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek
+ Lest its heaviness should stir your rest,
+ How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden
+ That is too vast for me to bear alone?
+ I tell you
+ Love is no little thing,
+ No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air,
+ No thin flute music petaling the silence
+ As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree.
+ It is the thought that broods upon its death,
+ The dread of mountains looking to the storm
+ Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain.
+ It is the fire that pillars up the stars
+ To mix its flame with their eternal gold.
+ Oh, listen to me!
+ You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere
+ As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven.
+ You shall know me
+ In the pensive shadows of trees,
+ In the luminary phantoms
+ Reflected in the stillness of a lake;
+ In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves
+ And quivering in the moss;
+ In the abandoned play of breakers
+ Showering their crystals to the moon;
+ In the folly of rainbow dolphins.
+ I only ask of you
+ To be the diver in my deepest pool,
+ To bring from out its blue obscurity
+ The things my life has moulded unaware,
+ Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned
+ In loneliness of prayer unlit by life,
+ Created out of nothing save myself
+ Within the blind fast silence of the soul.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ My devotion kneels to you,
+ Holding a candle to illumine your face.
+ My loneliness is your shadow
+ Along the solitary roads.
+ My passion is a book between your hands
+ Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets,
+ A volume of pressed flowers
+ Scenting your fingers though you read it not.
+ And my white faith
+ Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ISLANDS
+
+
+ As launched upon the loneliness of time
+ We float and dream of what the waves conceal,
+ Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal
+ Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime,
+ Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme,
+ Or indolent ripple sighing at the keel--
+ Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel,
+ The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours climb--
+ So toss our weary ships, till from afar
+ Our visioned island rises suddenly,
+ Where palaces like cloudy colours are,
+ With scented gardens terraced to the sea,
+ The silver steps to our appointed star
+ Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Many things I'd find to charm you,
+ Books and scarves and silken socks,
+ All the seven rainbow colours
+ Black and white with 'broidered clocks.
+ Then a stick of polished whalebone
+ And a coat of tawny fur,
+ And a row of gleaming bottles
+ Filled with rose-water and myrrh.
+ Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,
+ Old liqueurs in leather kegs,
+ Golden Sauterne, copper sherry
+ And a nest of plover's eggs.
+ Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,
+ Little boxes cut in jade;
+ Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,
+ Damask cloths and dim brocade.
+ Six musicians of the Magyar,
+ Madness making harmony;
+ And a bed austere and narrow
+ With a quilt from Barbary.
+ You shall have a bath of amber,
+ A Venetian looking-glass,
+ And a crimson-chested parrot
+ On a lawn of terraced grass.
+ Then a small Tanagra statue
+ Found anew in ruins old,
+ Or an azure plate from Persia,
+ Or my hair in plaits of gold;
+ Or my scalp that like an Indian
+ You shall carry for a purse,
+ Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...
+ Or a volume of my verse.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+LAMP-POSTS
+
+
+ The eternal flame of laughter and desire
+ Breaks the long darkness with a little glance,
+ Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance
+ Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire
+ That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire
+ Sadly toward their jubilance--Romance
+ Of faery glitter in the streets of chance--
+ Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire
+ Within the fog of our despairing gloom;
+ In the glum alleys, down the haunted night
+ Through tunnelling of subterranean doom,
+ Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright,
+ They bear their coronets of golden bloom
+ To front our anguish with their brave delight.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+
+ Richer than fields of corn that fire in summer,
+ Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden,
+ More fearful and beloved than peace or silence,
+ Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever,
+ Calling towards me with a voice incessant.
+ Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant
+ I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened!
+ I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom,
+ My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty,
+ And honey in thine oaths and lamentations.
+ I played about thy feet that know not resting
+ And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.
+
+ When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter,
+ Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow
+ With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter
+ Are tossed in feathered gaiety about thee--
+ Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant,
+ Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing,
+ Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns,
+ While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter;
+ Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring,
+ As of the angry ocean in her travail ...
+ They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest,
+ Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled;
+ Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion
+ Here crucified each day with lust and hunger,
+ Hung up unlovely in the open market;
+ Made gay with paper garlands, covered over
+ With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet,
+ Lest the elect in passing should be startled,
+ Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour!
+ With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic
+ Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,
+ And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour
+ Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.
+ Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,
+ Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,
+ Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.
+ I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,
+ The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;
+ The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,
+ A million faces scattered like confetti,
+ All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing.
+ There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary,
+ Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling
+ In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.
+
+ O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses,
+ How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us,
+ Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition,
+ Spent in the evening like a rose of fever,
+ Fainting before us paler than a lily.
+ While here each day self-satisfied and placid
+ Moves opulent among the groves of summer;
+ The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes,
+ The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard,
+ Please for a while until the spirit sickens
+ And turns her panting to her ancient lover.
+
+ Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses,
+ Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture
+ Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses
+ Like hungry animals eat up the spaces
+ And close upon the miles that God created,
+ With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening
+ To the far rhythm in the drums of battle,
+ As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting,
+ I feel the scamper of your feet approaching
+ And your great starving arms and strangling fingers
+ That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Slowly the pale feet of morning
+ Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous
+ lamplight,
+ Colourless, cold, as the rainclad
+ Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out
+ sea-ward.
+ Slowly the fingers of dawn-light
+ Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,
+ Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing
+ From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.
+ Smoothly the wild hair of darkness
+ Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep
+ veils.
+ Patiently, Morning, the priestess
+ Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness,
+ Gashed with the daggers of street-lights,
+ Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister kisses,--
+ Morning with healing and kindness
+ Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter,
+ Sweeps up the rags of our shadows
+ That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ What have I to do with them,
+ The red athletes in their snow-white clothes?
+ They are sun lovers and moon haters,
+ Toiling or playing in the fields
+ Whereon no shadows lie,
+ Pensively, whispering together--
+ They are space lovers and haters of the stars,
+ Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see
+ The tiaraed brows of darkness.
+ I weary of their striving upward and onward,
+ Away from the green hush of twilight,
+ Where silence drips from the trees,
+ Away from the solemn avenues
+ Where the ghosts blow by
+ Along with a drift of leaves.
+
+ Let us linger awhile
+ Far away from the frets and wars of the world,
+ From the strong men
+ With their strident hymning voices and marching feet--
+ Let us walk alone
+ For the love of our own shadows
+ Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver,
+ With behind us the sky's grey curtain
+ Drawn backward from the moon....
+ Let us sit by the fireside
+ And hear the wind's shrill orchestras,
+ Fiddle and fife and flute,
+ And omened bagpipe screaming....
+ Let us lie abed and dream
+ Through the long summer's morning
+ Of trivial things, and beautiful....
+ Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden
+ gong;
+ Let us run through pools of wine
+ And be splashed with purple.
+ Let us, being sick, make merry,
+ And rejoice when we are weary.
+ Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet,
+ Drinking to Death.
+
+ What have we to do with them,
+ Sons of the sun and the soil,
+ Daughters of the hearth and the field?
+ They that remake the world
+ Melting our idols for silver,
+ Our goblets for gold;
+ Tearing our temples down
+ To build their red brick villages.
+
+ The doomed world faints into mist,
+ World of our indolence and dreams,
+ And the faces and bodies we love
+ Sink through oblivion, and are seen
+ Dimly, as divers through the waters.
+ Old worlds and new worlds!
+ Let us slip between them,
+ And float on the stream that floweth nowhither--
+ Our red ambitions burn
+ To a blue smoke of forgetting;
+ Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out,
+ As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Among the crumbling arches of decay
+ Where all around the red new buildings crept,
+ Where huge machines had rolled the past away,
+ And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;
+
+ Among the ruins I beheld a man
+ Who heeded not the engines as they neared,
+ Painting dead carnivals upon a fan,
+ He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.
+
+ And here and there were flung a mess of things,
+ Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses,
+ Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings,
+ Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.
+
+ A carven sabre hung upon the wall,
+ A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it,
+ A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl,
+ A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.
+
+ And mirrors flashed their argent memories
+ Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed,
+ While ghostly faces of past vanities
+ Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.
+
+ The stranger turned his head and bowed to me
+ And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair.
+ I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see,
+ You really have a fine collection there."
+
+ He bowed to me again, and in his hand
+ Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye
+ With beckoning lights--I could not understand--
+ His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh
+
+ So much he loved their frail inconsequence.
+ I spoke of progress conquering decay,
+ And tired the stillness with my common sense
+ Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.
+
+ But I have never met so queer a man,
+ "I better love my memories," he said,
+ "Look at those painted figures on the fan,
+ How delicate and wistful are the dead."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ As a nun's face from her black draperies
+ So full of mystery the moon looks down.
+ She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time,
+ Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close,
+ Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up,
+ Smiling away, to watch them swell and die.
+ She dreams of music played among the stars
+ When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed.
+ Above the city glittering giddily,
+ Above the jostling heads of man she moves,
+ Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.
+
+ 1912
+
+
+
+
+ The sun is lord of life and colour,
+ Blood of the rose and hyacinth,
+ Hair of the sea and forests,
+ Crown of the cornfields,
+ Body of the hills.
+ The moon is the harlot of Death,
+ Slaughterer of the Sun,
+ Priestess and poisoner she goes
+ With all her silver flock of wandering souls,
+ Her chant of wailing waters,
+ The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes
+ Bound all around with bandages of mist....
+ The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree,
+ The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes;
+ The living are as cherries that bow to the morning
+ Beckoning to the loitering stranger,
+ The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads.
+ The dead are as frozen skeleton branches
+ Whereon the stillness perches like an owl....
+ The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+BAHAMA ISLANDS
+
+
+I
+
+ All down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream
+ The negroes go, black faces crowding together;
+ And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures,
+ The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's wing--
+ We have rest here and a monotony of wheels,
+ A peaceful noise like bees that moan in June--
+ And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries
+ Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn.
+ Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the
+ window,
+ A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of desire--
+ And nothing rids us utterly of grief,
+ We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.
+
+
+II
+
+ Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and
+ scented,
+ But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their
+ hymns
+ And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented,
+ With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS OF LONDON
+
+
+ Oh, have I bartered and forgotten thee,
+ Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun,
+ Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run
+ A ragged troop along thy streets with me?
+ Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry,
+ Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun,
+ The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun,
+ The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery?
+ Mother of dreams and laughter and despair!
+ Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain,
+ Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere,
+ Thy sins and passions baffle me again;
+ And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare,
+ And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+STREETS
+
+
+ I am going
+ Up and down the roads and alleys
+ Through the forests of the city,
+ Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.
+ My mind shall wander through the streets
+ Whistling to a vague adventure,
+ Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer
+ And casting them away.
+ Dusk is creeping through the town
+ Lighting the lamps and loitering,
+ Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,
+ Hovering clouds of peace;
+ And behind her race the winds
+ Whining to the scent of darkness,
+ Scattering the dust
+ With their swift hounds' feet....
+ I am a hunter in the city's jungle,
+ Exploring all her secret mysteries.
+ I know her well,
+ The moaning highways,
+ And whispering alleys,
+ The chimney-dishevelled roofs
+ Where the moon walks delicately
+ As a stray spectral cat;
+ The little forlorn squares
+ Where one tree stands
+ Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers
+ Over the benches where the people sit
+ And stir not from their sullen postures,
+ Staring out where evening passes
+ With such a sauntering dreamy step.
+ I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,
+ Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,
+ Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,
+ Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.
+ Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker
+ Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate
+ Picks up the littered wreck of holiday
+ To mount the dust heap where our memories lie
+ Sprawled in a mess of ruins....
+ I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,
+ Repeating each in each a dull despair,
+ Indifferent and dignified;
+ Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,
+ With dismal silences of velvet carpets,
+ Where starving souls are kept
+ Feeding upon each other's isolations,
+ Not daring to escape....
+ Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me
+ With their crude temples built in praise of lust,
+ Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream
+ Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods
+ Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,
+ Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....
+
+ I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,
+ Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces
+ That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust....
+ I love the memory-crusted taverns
+ In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune
+ Until the dawn,
+ Like a white minstrel stopped to sing
+ Fantastic serenades, and called me forth
+ Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning
+ Dew-prismed shone the sun....
+ I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses
+ Are bathed in vitriol twilights,
+ Spitting smoke,
+ Or making oaths and mouths at one another....
+ While between
+ The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window
+ Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging
+ Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin....
+ Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes
+ I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,
+ Reflective of the solitude of stars....
+ And I am thrilled
+ With horror and the hope for tragedies....
+
+ But, they surround my heart these weary streets,
+ Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,
+ And through them pass forever
+ Those shadow figures trudging through the grey
+ Like penitent souls through haunted corridors....
+ Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,
+ Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!
+ Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,
+ Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,
+ And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.
+ Through all the winding mazes of the city
+ Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,
+ And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,
+ And by the iron door,
+ Under the windows where we sit and wait
+ For some sweet promise to unfold itself
+ From the shut scrolls of sleep,
+ And at the dusty curtain that divides
+ Glory from Death,
+ And lover from the lover....
+
+ Now in my room I sit
+ And round me falls the darkness
+ In rustling folds of peace.
+ But round my heart I know
+ No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound
+ To shut the city out.
+ For I shall feel the rush of streets
+ Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,
+ Piercing the night's remote divinity.
+ And I shall never rid me of these scars
+ That time and man have cut into my thought,
+ Never shake off my shoulders
+ The burden of the city's pain.
+ Oh, never shall we escape thee,
+ Mother of mutiny and want,
+ Thou beautiful mistress of Grief....
+ Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights
+ Beating with ineloquent hands
+ The tambourines of time,
+ The drums of war;
+ Fevering our minds
+ With the swollen traffic of thoughts,
+ The wheels and rattle of an endless search....
+
+ Tired I am with wandering,
+ Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,
+ More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,
+ Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Laughter and singing come with the morning,
+ When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor,
+ And dons his arrogant clothes.
+ But in the night,
+ When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale,
+ We too put off our opulent disguise
+ And stand alone in the baffling darkness,
+ Fighting with our sins,
+ Weeping for our loneliness,
+ That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ In the night I hear my loneliness calling
+ The long shrill note of the seabird's cry
+ Over the fuming spite of breakers,
+ Over the brumous, sulky tides.
+ All the ocean is craving Heavenward,
+ And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,
+ Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,
+ And the waves rear their supplicating hands.
+ Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,
+ Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,
+ To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,
+ Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,
+ Flashing their signals of unrest.--
+ My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,
+ Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors--
+ My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight
+ That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed--
+ My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,
+ Through the heavy pauses of sleep.--
+ Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,
+ Lest I hear my loneliness crying!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY
+
+
+ How beautiful is the world's delight,
+ How trivial, yet as sweet as a passing dream
+ That makes the harassed sleeper in the night
+ Smile, and on waking sigh. Forever the stream
+ Of time moves onward; as in coloured boats
+ A thousand souls go sailing,
+ And stilly down the tide my spirit floats
+ Singing or wailing
+ To the tune the waters make. Here we forget a space
+ The crawling sins of man that sting and gloat,
+ The pain and fear that haggers every face,
+ But vaguely and remote
+ The strident trumpet and the clamorous voices sound--
+ Grief doth forget to curse her Gods or pray,
+ While pagan follies squander all around
+ Their brief gay hours in holiday;
+ For all prayers die when laughter is on the lips.--
+ How frail the moods of joy, how sweet to see them pass
+ Like bubbles on the tide, like coloured ships
+ Sailing on glass!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The leaves are singing, and the sea,
+ And the sand in the wind,
+ Blown grass and hurrying people;
+ Full of melodious strings and lutes and flutes
+ Rustling and whispering forever.
+ The sad music of Life is in my ears,
+ Never ceasing, never asleep,
+ And my heart is strung between chord and chord
+ Like a crucifix in a rosary.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ How soundly sleepeth the fool,
+ With profane snore taunting the solemn-pillared night--
+ He hath no dreams of restless, subtle forms
+ That shift across a feverish vacancy;
+ Nor doth he hear the drums of time
+ Beating against oblivion tunes of war,
+ Goading the crippled hours on their endless march--
+ But waketh to yawn in the face of the sun,
+ Then turneth back to sleep....
+
+ How soundly the wise man sleepeth,
+ Couched royally in the purple of the dark
+ With his white mistress, Peace--
+ And when the morning stealeth on his rest,
+ As a rose he doth pluck her from the spreading tree of days,
+ And reviveth his heart
+ With the perfume of the world....
+ But 'twixt the wise and the foolish
+ Many nights shed sorrow and fear,
+ And nets are spread for timid feet,
+ And the waves beat on the shifting sand....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Moonlit lilacs under the window,
+ And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,
+ And the white floating beams like luminous moths
+ Fluttering from bloom to bloom.
+ Sprays of lilac flowers
+ Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,
+ Frozen to motionless icicles.
+ Moonlight flows over me,
+ Spreads her bright watery hair over my face,
+ Full of illicit, marvellous perfumes
+ Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;
+ Hair of the moonlight falling about me,
+ Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Old woman forever sitting
+ Alone in the large hotel under the fans,
+ Infinitely alone where around you spin
+ So many lives like painted tops,
+ Smearing the void a moment with their hues,
+ Giddily catching at balance as they pause.
+ What crime was yours, old woman,
+ What sin against the Earth
+ That she should give you now
+ A cap of dust and furrows on your cheeks,
+ And at the end
+ A hole dug in the mould?
+ Is death the promise of Fate's last rebound,
+ Revenge of Time that waits within the clock
+ And laughs awry at life,
+ For a kiss, for a dream, for a child that you bore,
+ For a fresh rose pinned to your bosom?
+ The owl is in your spirit,
+ Blinking through the oldest tree of wisdom--
+ And now your fingers are weaving
+ The cold pale invisible blossoms of death
+ Into a waxen wreath,
+ And Time
+ Sits down beside you knitting with quick hands
+ Grey counterpanes to cover up a grave!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Loneliness I love,
+ And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.
+ Loneliness I love,
+ But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands,...
+ My spirit speaks
+ In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy
+ Murmuring the tunes
+ For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.
+ The shadowy silences
+ Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities,
+ And that is why
+ The noise of tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing,
+ And I am clad
+ In the lust-lipped whispering of furtive caresses.
+ Holiness I love,
+ And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs,
+ The crucified feet
+ Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.
+ Holiness I love
+ And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.
+ But that is why
+ Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear
+ The vesture of secrecy
+ Which hides the human nakedness of God.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I met an Indian underneath a tree, under a ragged tree,
+ His face was yellow and wrinkled like some stone whereon a God had
+ writ
+ And his emaciated fingers drew circles in the dust....
+ I bent my mouth to his ear, crying "O father, O Prophet!
+ I have wandered far over the earth troubled with doubts that will not
+ let me rest,
+ Canst thou not tell me with all thy wizardries and meditations
+ The purpose of our lives upon this world,
+ The secret truth Earth shelters in her womb?"
+
+ But he was listening to the whispering of the mountains,
+ To the boom of God's paces on the rocks,
+ And the swishing steps of his followers in the rivers.
+ Then suddenly he pointed to the arched doorway in between the
+ hills,
+ And the mysterious purple curtain of the dusk that drooped from cliff
+ to cliff.
+ I saw in his eyes the vision of highborn ghosts,
+ Of divine ivory faces wreathed with the flowers of wisdom--
+ And I knew that he had found only the half-spoken promises of
+ Heaven....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ I saw a drunkard laughing in a tavern,
+ His cup was tilted and the wine spilt crimson on the sprawled arms
+ and distracted hair of a woman fallen asleep,
+ I watched him there and wondered
+ If ever the bubbling goblins of wine had whispered him life's
+ secret.
+ But he raised the cup of his carousals and gazed at emptiness,
+ Toasting some wild, irreverent dream,
+ Some flame-red salamander pirouetting among the dead waste ashes of
+ time--
+ And I knew that he had found only the secrets of sleep....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ A woman sat within a little house,
+ Scolding and singing ballads to her child,
+ And all around came the quarrel of children's voices.
+ Yet one boy sat apart within the furthest corner of the room
+ Painting an animal with coloured chalks.
+ I lingered by the fire thinking of life, its vanities and mysteries,
+ But the woman did not heed me,
+ Nor her pale son that sat so hunched and still,
+ Painting his visions with the broken chalks,
+ For they had discovered the absorbing painful secrets of giving
+ birth....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ It was evening as I wandered,
+ By a lake two lovers leaned, smiling to see their faces in the
+ water,
+ For they had found within each other's souls
+ An argent flattering mirror wherein to gaze and see their faces
+ change with all the moods and shadows of the day....
+ Not here should I discover the answer to bring light into my
+ darkness,
+ Into the dim psychic crystals of my soul opalled with the changing
+ colours of unrest--
+ So I went away into the loneliness, asking the forests and the
+ mountains and the sea
+ The knowledge of life's baffling mysteries.
+ But they were roaring in a wind of memories,
+ Gathering the rain into their bodies to make them fierce and
+ strong,
+ Heaving their shoulders upward to the morning,
+ Crowning their foreheads with sunlight.
+ And I knew that they were Life itself,
+ The pushing vehemence that rushes from the strangling arms of
+ Death,
+ Nor could they guess
+ The purpose of God's beauty in their joy....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From the fathomless depth of my boredom, from the
+ last room of its emptiness, an elf has come to play
+ with me.
+
+ As comes a little gold spider to a prison cell teasing the
+ criminal from his darkness to tear at a thread of sunlight,
+ and kiss the mouth of a shy morning whispering through
+ the window.
+
+ An elf has come to dance with me, blown like a leaf on
+ the path of my autumn lassitude.
+
+ Sprightly one, dervish! You are the living adventure
+ born of my dead childhood, you are the small god in the
+ temples of my unbelief, you are the bird that nests in ruined
+ temples, laying your silver eggs by moonlight and singing
+ when the pagan birds are still.
+
+ You are the dream-sower in the fields of sleep, you have
+ jingled the star-bells on the hood of darkness, and from the
+ knarled, stark tree of time have flung me the apple of
+ eternal laughter.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Lolling in snow, like kings in ermine coats, the gilt-crowned
+ bottles lie.... Our thoughts are dangled in
+ a laughter of leaves as bunches of blue and yellow grapes
+ for faery beggars, for ragged fancies to pluck and taste.
+
+ Our music shall be the minstrelsy of ghostly ballad-mongers
+ that have stolen from the ashen banquets of death to bless
+ our revels.
+
+ Our spirits shall flit like those winged faces of cherubs
+ that never can alight, but swing forever on the azure ribbons
+ of the sky.
+
+ And all our dreams and kisses shall be as the rose-leaves
+ falling on ancient festivals, as the shadows of rose-leaves
+ falling on phantom lovers in the sleep-pillared temples of
+ our first archaic passion.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The roots of our longing are probing the heart of night,
+ delving and twining together that our ultimate truth
+ may grow out of the darkness that bewilders and nourishes.
+ Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind
+ themselves like a tight crown over our heads.
+
+ Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall
+ prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green
+ ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire
+ shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays
+ that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright
+ foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into
+ a fountain of blossoms.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+VAHDAH
+
+
+ Sun-aureoled lilies are your priestesses,
+ They stand like choirs in silver surplices,
+ Melodious streams of silence fill the room,
+ And pensive listeners lean within the gloom
+ Of purple quietness. A laughter full of holiness--
+ Like the wild bells of lilies ringing in the loneliness
+ Of star-reflected gardens walled with night,--
+ Thrills from your soul which empties its delight
+ As rain on lilies, or as sunlight falling slenderly
+ To gild their ivory temples, and as moonlight shutting tenderly
+ Their alabaster doors.... A white peace grows,
+ And love, within your spirit like a lily and a rose.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Starlit silences!
+ Breeding fears, swarming with sudden deaths,
+ With separations, burdens, and despairs,
+ Weaving slow eerie fancies in my brain ...
+ Forlorn shorn monks go down the cloisters of quietness
+ With tortured crucifixes cut in ivory
+ Clasped in their praying hands,
+ And psalmed with lips renunciate of kisses ...
+ Forgotten days are painted on the night
+ In parables and symbols of remorse
+ That jeer from out the wind-stirred tapestries.
+ The hangman's rope coils upward like a snake
+ Out of the death-coloured waters,
+ While the black barges pass
+ Funereal,
+ Carrying doom from mist to mist....
+ And madmen steal about the wintry parks
+ Under the high glum walls of an asylum,
+ With eyes lit up in phosphorescent ecstasies,
+ With fumbling hands
+ That grope for things invisibly obscene.
+ Even the clock
+ Grown idiot too from keeping madmen's time
+ Gibbers the hours away in irrelevant chimes....
+ Silence embalms the dead with scented bands
+ And is the watchman to deserted houses,
+ And draws the violet curtain on the day,
+ And fits a mask of silver to the moon.
+ Silence brings corpses from the crypts of memory
+ And sits them round us in the empty chairs,
+ Opens the secret chambers of our hopes
+ And shows us there in awful pantomime
+ Lust wreathing love with poppies and with ashes,
+ And Beauty dressing Sin for carnival,
+ And Peace made drunken with a cup of blood.
+ It winds as ivy round our listening thoughts
+ Shutting all sounds away, enclosing us
+ Within its stifled virid twilight....
+
+ Cry out, sing, make noises,
+ Bacchantes, revellers, clowns!
+ Bring myriad lamps in clusters, likening grapes
+ That spill the wine of light into our gloom;
+ Pressing against our lips
+ The red grape-kisses of pleasure.
+ Bring the hounds,
+ The garlanded white ones,
+ To bay and snarl and tear the flying rags
+ Of stillness shadowing away!
+ Lean over me, O Life,
+ And whisper all thy lying flatteries
+ That drag me back from Silence and her dead.
+ I have kept vigil on my soul too long
+ Within this vast cathedral of dim sleep,
+ Languidly gathering
+ The cold grey lilies of the stars
+ To slip between her passive waxen hands....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The mountain is an Emperor.
+ The clouds are his beard, and the stars his diadem;
+ His bauble is the moon;
+ He is dressed in silver forests, and the mist his train;
+ His feet are two white rivers.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the negation of thought,
+ The shutting off
+ Of all those brooding phantoms that surround
+ As dank trees in a forest
+ Cutting the daylight into rags,
+ Caging the sun
+ In rusted prison bars.
+ Happiness loves to lie at a river's edge
+ And make no song,
+ But listen to the water's murmuring wisdom,
+ The kissing touch of leaves wind-bowed together,
+ The feathery swish of cloud wings on a hill;
+ Opening wide the violet-petalled doors
+ Of every shy and cloistered sense,
+ That all the scent and music of the world
+ May rush into the soul.
+ And happiness expands
+ The rainbow arch for a procession of dreams,
+ For moth-like fancies winged with evening,
+ For dove-breasted silences,
+ For shadowy reveries
+ And starry pilgrims....
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the giving back to Earth
+ Of all our furtive thefts,
+ The lurid jewels that we stole away
+ From passion, sin and pain,
+ Because they glittered strangely, luring us
+ With their forbidden beauty.
+ Because our childish fingers curiously
+ Crave the pale secrets of the moon
+ And grope for dangerous toys.
+ Happiness comes in giving back to Earth
+ The things we took from her with violent hands,
+ Remembering only
+ That her dust is our garment,
+ Her fruits our endeavour,
+ Her waters our priestess,
+ Her leaves our interpreters to God,
+ Her hills our infinite patience.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Long hath the pen lain idle in my hand,
+ Or traced slow sentences without a rhyme,
+ Words strung at random to beguile the time
+ As children threading beads upon a strand.
+ I have strayed far away from fairyland
+ Whose little hills grow steep and hard to climb;
+ I creep along the valleys in the slime,
+ Or hide me like an ostrich in the sand.
+
+ For I have sought a mellow idleness,
+ To be forever buried as a fly
+ Lies casketed in amber; where the stress
+ Of peril, hunger, Death can never cry
+ To wake me from my sanguine weariness,
+ Or cloud the lucid stillness with a sigh.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I laid my heart on a stone
+ And stood in the wood to watch.
+ Presently a priest came by;
+ He hid it in his cowl
+ And buried it in the graveyard.
+ Now is it grown into a cyclamen tree,
+ Clustering over the wall,
+ Beckoning far along the twilight road;
+ Nodding and singing where the cypress moans,
+ Ringing its little bells while the great bell tolls.
+ Whiter than ghosts are its flowers,
+ And its scent is sweeter than ghostly music--
+ All the men and priests that pass
+ In the night when the stars lean down,
+ Smell the heavy fragrance there
+ And feel the gentle touch of dripping dew.
+ Then they cross themselves and go
+ Hurriedly, warily,
+ Dreaming of pale women,
+ Under the pale stars.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The cold light steals into my soul
+ Revealing its emptiness,
+ The cold winds batter at my heart
+ And make its lonely tenant shake with fear--
+ The raindrops slide across the window-glass
+ Like sighs that fall from patient weariness;
+ And coldly smiling time
+ Peers with his clock-face, ticking in my brain
+ The pulse of a monotonous remorse.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The caravans of spring are in the town,
+ Lighting their brilliant torches in the park,
+ Dangling their bells, engirdling each stark
+ Black tree with coloured rings. The houses frown
+ Against the beryl sky, yet wear a crown
+ Of hazy dream, or flash a golden spark
+ Of sun-fire in their windows glum and dark;
+ The people blow like petals up and down.
+
+ But London tires at evening, each grey street
+ Mourns as the slow procession passes by,
+ Traffic and crowd, and Time on loitering feet.
+ Spring droops his lute, the slender echoes sigh,
+ And wistfully the jaded revellers meet,
+ Their pomp in tatters and their wreaths awry.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I dread the beauty of approaching spring
+ Now the old month is dead and the young moon
+ Has pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.
+ My tired soul is startled out of sleep
+ By all the urging joy of bud and leaf,
+ And in the barren yard where I have paced
+ Content with prison and despair's monotony,
+ The trees break into music wild and shrill,
+ And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,
+ Bewildering my loneliness with beauty....
+ For winter with her melancholy face
+ Shone back my miseries as in a glass,
+ And wept and whined in harmony with me;
+ And I could listen by the withering ashes
+ To the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,
+ And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,
+ And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,
+ And hating, hear the laughter of the wind
+ Whose mad hands tear the sky.
+ But now again the promise of the spring
+ Shall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,
+ To where the lilied altar shines with peace,
+ And the white priestess comes
+ Crowning each candle with a gold desire
+ Engirdling with pallors
+ The forehead of a divine ghost.
+ Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindle
+ And spring is but a radiant beckoning
+ To death that follows slowly, silently....
+
+ O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,
+ O flash of silver in the wings of dawn
+ That are spread out and closed. O hush of night
+ Breathless with love, oh swish of whispering tide
+ That swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.
+ O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide
+ That grow too soon to weariness and close;
+ O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,
+ And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;
+ O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,
+ And mystery of flower in the bud.
+ O burning galaxy of buttercups,
+ And drone of bees above the pouting rose,--
+ O twilit lovers stilled with reverie
+ And footprints of them swerving on the sand
+ And darkness of them clasped against the sky!
+ I see beyond the glory of your days
+ The grey days marching one behind the other
+ To the bleak tunes of silence.
+ When mists shall smear the radiance of the moon
+ And the lean thief shall pass,
+ Snatching the glittering toys away from love,
+ Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.
+ And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,
+ Shall go the way that her long shadow points,
+ Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER
+
+
+ I cannot think that you have gone away,
+ You loved the earth--and life lit up your eyes,
+ And flickered in your smile that would surmise
+ Death as a song, a poem, or a play.
+ You were reborn afresh with every day,
+ And baffled fortune in some new disguise.
+ Ah! can it perish when the body dies,
+ Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?
+
+ We shall not see you come to us and leave
+ A conqueror--nor catch on fairy wing
+ Some slender fancy--nor new wonders weave
+ Upon the loom of your imagining.
+ The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve
+ Her child that was a pilgrim and a king.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+ At evening when the twilight curtains fall,
+ Before the lamps are lit within my room,
+ My memories hang bright upon the gloom,
+ Like ancient frescoes painted on the wall.
+
+ And I can hear the call of birds and bells
+ And shadowy sound of waves, and wind through leaves
+ And wind that rustles through the burnished sheaves,
+ And far off voices whispering farewells.
+
+ I dream again the joy I used to know
+ While straying by the sea that hardly sighed
+ A sorrow in my singing, as the tide
+ Crept up to clasp me, smiled, and let me go.
+
+ And I remember all the glad lost hours,
+ The racing of brown rabbits on the hill,
+ The winds that prowled around the lonely mill,
+ Laburnum laughter, music of the flowers.
+
+ The berries plucked with loitering delight,
+ Staining the dusk with purple, till the thought
+ Of starry little ghosts behind us caught
+ Our hearts and made us fearful of the night.
+
+ The London evenings huddled in the rain
+ Whose misty prisms shone with lamplight pale,
+ Making our hearts seem sinister and frail,
+ Fainting our thoughts with mystery and pain.
+
+ I have a world of memories to dream,
+ To touch with loving fingers as a sigh
+ Revives a little flame and lets it die.
+ Ah, were the days as lovely as they seem
+
+ Now that they look so peaceful lying dead?
+ And is it all the hope of Joy we have,
+ The broken trophies of the things she gave
+ And took away to give us dreams instead?
+
+ The things we love and lose before we find
+ The way to love them well enough and keep,
+ That now are woven on the looms of sleep
+ That now are only music of the wind.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ London grows sad at evening,
+ And we at the windows sit
+ To watch her moods,
+ Wearying with her.
+ Even a noise of laughter from the street
+ Sounds in our ears
+ Like something dropped and shattered on the stone.
+ Then her musician comes,
+ A wandering, malicious spirit;
+ The organ grinder, playing those old tunes
+ We know too well,
+ That hurt us with fatigue.
+ Till Hope like a harlequin,
+ His glitter hidden in a ragged coat,
+ The lamplighter, goes by,
+ Planting his pale flames in the dusk.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! the spring,
+ Sudden, surprising,
+ Melting the iron scales around the heart
+ As the earliest sun
+ Melts the cold case of dew on leaves--
+ Ah! the streets like odorous rivers
+ Chanting the echoes of seas--
+ Ah! the flowers in shop-windows
+ Beseeching, persuasive,
+ Reluctant to let their beauty flow away
+ From thoughts that mirror them in passing--
+ Beautiful exiles
+ Fluttering in their chains,
+ Thrilled with the noise of bees,
+ The music of meadows
+ Still hovering around them--
+ Flower fingers, flower-touches,
+ Passional, reminiscent,
+ Rippling the soul's still waters--
+ Flower galaxies,
+ Enamelled bridges arching from dream to dream,
+ Garlands splashing over the eyes of satyrs,
+ The furtive woodland eyes,
+ The pointed inquisitive ears--
+ Pallid flowers foaming on hill-crests,
+ Gushing heavenwards
+ From a sea of stormy mountains--
+ Opening and shutting exquisite doors,
+ As the senses open to music,
+ Shut upon silence,
+ Open to beauty,
+ Close their caskets upon love--
+ Ah! the flowers in the windows,
+ Amorous of poets
+ Making a chaplet of song!
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG
+
+
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee,
+ We are as fog that drifts on the river,
+ As the wailing of voices blown through mist--
+ We are as those that carry bags of dust
+ Heaping them with the dust--
+ We are covered with the dust of days,
+ We are pale from the dust of dreamless nights
+ Shaken before we were rested--
+ At dawn we are found by the sun
+ Adrift, labouring, thinking of nothing--
+ Our wine is bitter, it has made us drunk,
+ Our bread is coarse,
+ We are always athirst and hungry....
+ O God, we have been patient,
+ We have grown old in weariness,
+ Our lives are as the labouring of the wind--
+ We are huddled together in the dawn,
+ The sleeping houses pass us,
+ The dawn is a field of nettles
+ Stinging us from rest....
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee but patience,
+ We have suffered evil and believed Thee good,
+ Thy face is the gentleness of the distance,
+ The river is placid with the thought of Thee--
+ Our tears have washed us harder than the rocks,
+ And like the rocks we wait,
+ Grow old with waiting....
+ Weariness, the river
+ Flowing through banks of sleep....
+ O God, we have nothing to give Thee,
+ Take our great weariness,
+ We that have never lived and never slept,
+ Take our long weariness, O God!...
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+Transcribers' Notes:
+
+
+Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.
+
+Ellipses are reproduced as printed in the original book.
+
+Most of the poems' titles appear only in the Table of Contents, not
+with the poems themselves.
+
+When the Transcriber could not to determine whether a verse at the top
+of a page was a new stanza or part of the stanza on the previous page,
+the latter was assumed.
+
+Page 42: "sombring" was printed that way.
+
+Page 89: "Because I can not" was printed with "can" and "not" as
+separate words.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 45643-8.txt or 45643-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+ http://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/6/4/45643/
+
+Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American 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
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+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: Poems
+
+Author: Iris Tree
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2014 [EBook #45643]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 279px;">
+<img src="images/i_cover.jpg" width="279" height="400" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="newpage p4 center" />
+
+<h1 class="nobreak">POEMS BY
+IRIS TREE</h1>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<p class="in0 newpage p4 narrow drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> author returns thanks for
+permission to use in this collection
+of her poems, those which
+have appeared in Poetry, Vanity
+Fair and the "Wheels" Anthology.</p>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<div id="i_frontis" class="newpage figcenter" style="width: 398px;">
+ <img src="images/i_frontis.jpg" width="398" height="600" class="newpage p4" alt="" /><div class="caption">
+ HEAD OF IRIS TREE<span class="in4"> <span class="smcap">By Jacob Epstein</span></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 338px;">
+<img src="images/i_005.jpg" width="338" height="600" class="newpage p4" alt="Title Page" />
+</div>
+
+<div id="i_005a" class="newpage figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+ <img src="images/i_005a.jpg" width="300" height="161" class="newpage p4" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="p1 center xlarge">
+<span class="large">Poems</span><br />
+<span class="small">by</span><br />
+<span class="xlarge">Iris Tree</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2 center"><span class="small">Decorations by</span><br />
+Curtis Moffat</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center">LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD<br />
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY<br />
+MCMXX
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2 center smaller">
+Press of J. J. Little &amp; Ives Company<br />
+New York, U. S. A.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</a></h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="Contents">
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">ROCKETS AND ASHES</td></tr>
+ <tr class="small">
+ <td>&nbsp;</td>
+ <td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Preach to Me of Laws, You Tie My Limbs</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">We Are the Caretakers of Empty Houses</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">From Far Away the Lost Adventures Gleam</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Give Me, O God, the Power of Laughter Still</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Winding Down the Street in Wearied Gaiety</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Tranquillity Stirred by a Sudden Spasm</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Could Explain</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Feel in Me a Manifold Desire</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Silence</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Should Like to Say to the World</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Pass as in a Drugged Delirium</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">O Faces that Look so Coldly at Me</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I See Myself in Many Different Dresses</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">There are Songs Enough of Love, of Joy, of Grief</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Often, When the Thought of Suicide</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">It is Still Something to have Cheated God</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Words that Move on Wings in a Long Drift</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Think Myself</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Adored, Wild, Strange, Irresistible</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">A Rose</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Like Flocks of Tired Birds When Autumn Comes</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh, Just Beyond the Curve of Ideal Quest</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Ah! You, from the Small High-Walled Acre of Your Lives</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Mouth of the Dust I Kiss, Corruption Absolute</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_36">36</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Curtains are Drawn as though it still were Night</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Black Velvet</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Nerves</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Pain has All the Patience of a Nun</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Scandal-Monger After All is Right</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Woods of Brown Gloom Sombring with the Hush of Death</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Feel So Much Alone</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">The Complex Life</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Shall We Be Christened Poets, Children of God</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">When I Am Weary at the Antic Chance</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Moods</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">SMOKE</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Now is the Evening Dipped Knee-Deep in Blood</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Blow Upon Blow They Bruise the Daylight Wan</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">A Ragged Drummer Rides Along the Street</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Zeppelins</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">O Flattery, Imposture, Battle Show</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Will Happen to the Beggar, and the Sinner, and the Sad</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">If I Were What I Would Be, and Could Break</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Holy Russia</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Deeply Nurtured is Your Foolishness</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Of All Who Died in Silence Far Away</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">And Afterwards, When Honour Has Made Good</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Pity the Slain that Laid Away Their Lives</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">FLAME<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">You Have Understood so Little of Me, and My Adoration</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Lulled are the Dazzling Colours of the Day</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Washed at My Feet by the Curded Foam of Sluggish Waves</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Poems Cannot Laugh. They are the Voice</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">On the Hill There is a Tavern, Long-Loved, Well-Remembered</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh Canst Thou Not Hear in My Heart All Its Whispering Fears</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">As in the Silence the Clear Moonlight Drips</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Can but Give Thee Unsubstantial Things</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Have No Other Friend but Thee</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Bodies Heaving Like Waves</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Your Face to Me is Like a Beautiful City</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Oh! Why Will You Not Let Me Love You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">My Devotion Kneels to You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Islands</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Many Things I'd Find to Charm You</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl hdr">LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT</td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Lamp-posts</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">London</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Slowly the Pale Feet of Morning</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">What Have I to Do With Them</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Among the Crumbling Arches of Decay</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">As a Nun's Face from Her Black Draperies</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Sun is Lord of Life and Colour</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Bahama Islands</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Thoughts of London</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Streets</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Laughter and Singing Come With the Morning</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">In the Night I Hear My Loneliness Calling</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Sunday</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Leaves are Singing, and the Sea</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">How Soundly Sleepeth the Fool</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Moonlit Lilacs Under the Window</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Old Woman Forever Sitting</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Loneliness I Love</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">I Met an Indian</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">From the Fathomless Depth of My Boredom</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Lolling in Snow, Like Kings in Ermine Coats</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Roots of Our Longing are Probing the Heart of Night</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Vahdah</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Starlight Silences</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Mountain is an Emperor</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Know What Happiness Is</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">Long Hath the Pen Lain Idle in My Hand</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Lay My Heart on a Stone</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Cold Light Steals Into My Soul</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">The Caravans of Spring are in the Town</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">I Dread the Beauty of Approaching Spring</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">To My Father</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">To My Mother</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl">"<span class="smcap">London Grows Sad at Evening</span>"</td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">Ah! the Spring</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td class="tdl noq"><span class="smcap">The Undertone of the Volga Boat Song</span></td>
+ <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="ROCKETS_AND_ASHES" id="ROCKETS_AND_ASHES">ROCKETS AND ASHES</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_viii" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_011.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs</p>
+<p class="i6">With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,</p>
+<p class="i0">You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,</p>
+<p class="i2">You stop my heart and turn it into wood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I serve not God, but make my idol fair</p>
+<p class="i2">From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair</p>
+<p class="i2">By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,</p>
+<p class="i2">The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,</p>
+<p class="i2">And sunrise falling on the quiet street.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,</p>
+<p class="i2">And lovers in the secret sheets of night</p>
+<p class="i0">Trembling like instruments of music, till the day</p>
+<p class="i2">Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Age creeps upon your timid little faces</p>
+<p class="i2">Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Proud in the unimportance of your places</p>
+<p class="i2">You sit in twilight prophesying woe.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,</p>
+<p class="i2">I from my pageant golden as the day</p>
+<p class="i0">Pity your littleness from all my passion,</p>
+<p class="i2">Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">We</span> are the caretakers of empty houses,</p>
+<p class="i4">The moon leans her slender body against the door,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the lock is jarred with rust.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun looks in through the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.</p>
+<p class="i0">Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things</p>
+<p class="i0">Like bowls of potpourri,</p>
+<p class="i0">A dust of petals</p>
+<p class="i0">Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">From</span> far away the lost adventures gleam,</p>
+<p class="i4">The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,</p>
+<p class="i0">The love of her who showed me to the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">In triumph of creation, who did seem</p>
+<p class="i0">With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream</p>
+<p class="i0">To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun</p>
+<p class="i0">The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...</p>
+<p class="i0">The row of soldiered books, authority</p>
+<p class="i0">Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,</p>
+<p class="i0">The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,</p>
+<p class="i0">Rebellion, love made sad with <span class="locked">mystery&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And like a firefly through the twilit trees</p>
+<p class="i0">Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Give</span> me, O God, the power of laughter still,</p>
+<p class="i4">I shall have need of humour, deftest foil</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the army of infuriated pride,</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the shields of reason, and the spears</p>
+<p class="i0">Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Three musketeers of faithful following.</p>
+<p class="i0">We will fear nothing.&mdash;Is not laughter brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the buttressed prisons of the world?</p>
+<p class="i0">And is not love the bravest of them all,</p>
+<p class="i0">So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">While the red fists are threatening all around,</p>
+<p class="i0">And hate is beating on the battledrums?</p>
+<p class="i0">As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse</p>
+<p class="i0">Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,</p>
+<p class="i0">I ride my fancy blithely into danger</p>
+<p class="i0">To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride</p>
+<p class="i0">And stick my roses in the cap of Love....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Winding</span> down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled out its song</p>
+<p class="i4">Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and indefinite along.</p>
+<p class="i0">The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some hunch-backed and some bent with age,</p>
+<p class="i0">They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung heavy in a sombre rage.</p>
+<p class="i0">Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their heads the scolding shrewish tongue;</p>
+<p class="i0">They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out the dust and dung.</p>
+<p class="i0">Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags upon the line,</p>
+<p class="i0">I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a slow decline.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded here and there,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew brilliant in the tinsel glare.</p>
+<p class="i0">Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of the day stretched to the night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen light.</p>
+<p class="i0">And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long highway.</p>
+<p class="i0">And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and pain and hunger and despair,</p>
+<p class="i0">And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and false pansies in their hair,</p>
+<p class="i0">But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or splendour in their lives,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking wives.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+<p class="i0">I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with coarse uncaring hand,</p>
+<p class="i0">But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to understand;</p>
+<p class="i0">Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced on grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and hide my disbelief.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Strange we so love the world&mdash;for presently, out of my window looking on the city,</p>
+<p class="i0">I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt no shame nor pity</p>
+<p class="i0">For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of sleeping streams.</p>
+<p class="i0">I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of million lungs,</p>
+<p class="i0">And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a million tongues;</p>
+<p class="i0">And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the peopled spaces,</p>
+<p class="i0">And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of faces.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Tranquility</span> stirred by a sudden spasm,</p>
+<p class="i4">Knives of rain that cut the silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Calm of the marble-terraced night</p>
+<p class="i0">Charred with the spattering of rockets.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Drums will I hear and battles now,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the long death howl of wolves by night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Watching the moon on the forest tops,</p>
+<p class="i0">Walking with delicate frightened steps</p>
+<p class="i0">To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I could</span> explain</p>
+<p class="i4">The complicated lore that drags the soul</p>
+<p class="i0">From what shall profit him</p>
+<p class="i0">To gild damnation with his choicest gold.</p>
+<p class="i0">But you</p>
+<p class="i0">Are poring over precious books and do not hear</p>
+<p class="i0">Our plaintive, frivolous songs;</p>
+<p class="i0">For we in stubborn vanity ascend</p>
+<p class="i0">On ladders insecure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toward the tottering balconies</p>
+<p class="i0">To serenade our painted paramours;</p>
+<p class="i0">Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">That cheat between unrest and false repose.</p>
+<p class="i0">And we are haunted</p>
+<p class="i0">By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now taking shape of Pleasure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.</p>
+<p class="i0">I could disclose</p>
+<p class="i0">The truth that hangs between our lies</p>
+<p class="i0">And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;</p>
+<p class="i0">Truth, that stings like nettles</p>
+<p class="i0">Our frail hands dare not pluck</p>
+<p class="i0">From out our garden's terraced indolence.</p>
+<p class="i0">We are not happy,</p>
+<p class="i0">And you make us dumb with loving hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Reproachful on our lips.</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,</p>
+<p class="i0">For we have bartered diamonds for glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our tears for smiles,</p>
+<p class="i0">Eternity for now.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I feel</span> in me a manifold desire</p>
+<p class="i4">From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I the Queen</p>
+<p class="i0">Of crowding vagabonds,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,</p>
+<p class="i0">With pathos of torn laces</p>
+<p class="i0">And broken swords;</p>
+<p class="i0">Cut-throats and kings and poets</p>
+<p class="i0">Who have loved me</p>
+<p class="i0">In visions wild, not knowing</p>
+<p class="i0">What I was.</p>
+<p class="i0">In me no end</p>
+<p class="i0">Even where the last content</p>
+<p class="i0">Clasps on my head a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">Of shining <span class="locked">endurance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">I slip from all my robes</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the rags of a tattered romance;</p>
+<p class="i0">The stars crowd at the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their jealous destiny</p>
+<p class="i0">Raps at the <span class="locked">door&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They bob and wink and leer,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I must leave the lamplight for the road</p>
+<p class="i0">To keep strange company.</p>
+<p class="i0">Farewell and Hail!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Silence</span>&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i4">Somewhere on earth</p>
+<p class="i0">There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.</p>
+<p class="i0">The trees stand bolt upright</p>
+<p class="i0">Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.</p>
+<p class="i0">There is a purpose in Heaven,</p>
+<p class="i0">But for me</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I should</span> like to say to the world:</p>
+<p class="i4">I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;</p>
+<p class="i0">Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting the sky,</p>
+<p class="i0">Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.</p>
+<p class="i0">I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and shout,</p>
+<p class="i0">In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled stallions,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,</p>
+<p class="i0">To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,</p>
+<p class="i0">I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola</p>
+<p class="i0">Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> pass as in a drugged delirium</p>
+<p class="i4">Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;</p>
+<p class="i0">You sing a blasphemous Te Deum</p>
+<p class="i0">To harlot virgins, and a fraction</p>
+<p class="i0">Of your fulginous colour passes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stains my spirit's great conception</p>
+<p class="i0">As it dips into your glasses.</p>
+<p class="i0">I that am the sole exception</p>
+<p class="i0">To your stillborn, false devices,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that know you, I that hate you,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that drank now spit your vices</p>
+<p class="i0">Through my loathing reinstate you;</p>
+<p class="i0">Dive once more into the stagnance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Concentrate your cruel fragrance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Steal your flowers before I sink you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lift with hate instead of praises,</p>
+<p class="i0">Show you honour of my scorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">Garlanded you go to blazes</p>
+<p class="i0">With my rhymes for your adorning!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">O faces</span> that look so coldly at me,</p>
+<p class="i4">Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,</p>
+<p class="i0">Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.</p>
+<p class="i0">You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,</p>
+<p class="i0">With tinkling bells that harass my calm,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.</p>
+<p class="i0">Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,</p>
+<p class="i0">How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?</p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,</p>
+<p class="i0">You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea</p>
+<p class="i0">To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your <span class="locked">dress,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How I might love you and weep for you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs</p>
+<p class="i0">If you could understand my singing,</p>
+<p class="i0">If you could understand my love!</p>
+<p class="i0">But you are waltzing with your marionettes</p>
+<p class="i0">And marching to the music of the <span class="locked">clock&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">I cannot bear you to watch me</p>
+<p class="i0">With those cold eyes through which I see,</p>
+<p class="i0">Emptiness only and dust.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I see</span> myself in many different dresses,</p>
+<p class="i4">In many moods, and many different places;</p>
+<p class="i0">All gold amid the grey where solemn faces</p>
+<p class="i0">Are silence to my mirth&mdash;a flame that blesses</p>
+<p class="i0">From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces</p>
+<p class="i0">Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Disdainful of their slander or caresses.</p>
+<p class="i0">I see myself the child of many races,</p>
+<p class="i0">Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;</p>
+<p class="i0">Within my soul a thousand weary traces</p>
+<p class="i0">Of pain and joy and passionate <span class="locked">excesses&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Eternal beauty that our brief love chases</p>
+<p class="i0">With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">There</span> are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:</p>
+<p class="i6">Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,</p>
+<p class="i2">Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The long road unto nothing I will sing,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring</p>
+<p class="i2">No more emotion than the fear to die.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,</p>
+<p class="i2">Another house as grey and steep and still:</p>
+<p class="i0">An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,</p>
+<p class="i2">A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,</p>
+<p class="i2">Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!</p>
+<p class="i0">Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?</p>
+<p class="i2">Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain</p>
+<p class="i2">Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:</p>
+<p class="i0">A black umbrella held up in the rain,</p>
+<p class="i2">The raindrops making patterns in the dust.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">If this distaste I hold for fools is such,</p>
+<p class="i2">Shall I not spit upon myself as well?</p>
+<p class="i0">Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?</p>
+<p class="i2">Do I not fatten also in this hell?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Sadness and joy&mdash;if they were melted up,</p>
+<p class="i2">Things that were great&mdash;upon the fires of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,</p>
+<p class="i2">Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two</p>
+<p class="i2">And set him like a pilgrim on his way</p>
+<p class="i0">With Beauty's face before him&mdash;what of you,</p>
+<p class="i2">Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The dullard-masses that no god can save!</p>
+<p class="i2">If I were God, to rise and strike you down</p>
+<p class="i0">And break your churches in an angry wave</p>
+<p class="i2">And make a furious bonfire of your town!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">God in a coloured globe, alone and still,</p>
+<p class="i2">Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,</p>
+<p class="i0">On loom of spaces measureless, to fill</p>
+<p class="i2">The empty air with passion and with pain.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Emblazon all the heavens with desire</p>
+<p class="i2">And Wisdom delved for in the depths of <span class="locked">time&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire</p>
+<p class="i2">Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,</p>
+<p class="i2">Perfected and undone and built afresh</p>
+<p class="i0">With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...</p>
+<p class="i2">If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> often, when the thought of suicide</p>
+<p class="i4">With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,</p>
+<p class="i0">The ghosts of many foods alluring glide</p>
+<p class="i0">On golden dishes, wine in purple tide</p>
+<p class="i0">To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye</p>
+<p class="i0">Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly</p>
+<p class="i0">Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride</p>
+<p class="i0">Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie</p>
+<p class="i0">Resigned to death like heroes&mdash;July peas,</p>
+<p class="i0">Expectant bottles foaming at the <span class="locked">brink&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">White bread, and honey of the golden <span class="locked">bees&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,</p>
+<p class="i0">A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,</p>
+<p class="i0">And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is still something to have cheated God</p>
+<p class="i4">And bored the Devil with so easy prey,</p>
+<p class="i0">And in the midst of summer woods to raise</p>
+<p class="i0">A leafless tree whose stark limbs mock at Heaven,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flaunting an iron hatred in the midst of <span class="locked">hope&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet sometimes in the loneliness of night</p>
+<p class="i0">My buried longings blossom on the boughs,</p>
+<p class="i0">My wistful longings come out star by star,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till the great sky is light with my desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And on the winds my songs are galloping....</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, to what dismal greyness creeps the soul</p>
+<p class="i0">Too weak, too tired, to struggle from the slough!</p>
+<p class="i0">My weapons rust, my pen is in the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">The moulting feathers plucked from out my wings</p>
+<p class="i0">Lie dangling in the hats I stole them for.</p>
+<p class="i0">My heart is floating in a claret cup,</p>
+<p class="i0">My brain is toppling drunken at the brim,</p>
+<p class="i0">My life is drowned within the lurid dregs.</p>
+<p class="i0">I turn and fold my hands in a last appeal,</p>
+<p class="i0">What heaven shall I pray to and for what,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now that my songs to penny tunes are set,</p>
+<p class="i0">And nothing is to save of me but flesh?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> words that move on wings in a long drift</p>
+<p class="i4">Can waft this silence into weary ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And steal into the veins and fingertips</p>
+<p class="i0">Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships</p>
+<p class="i0">Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.</p>
+<p class="i0">What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,</p>
+<p class="i0">Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,</p>
+<p class="i0">Steeled with indifference against all hurt,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:</p>
+<p class="i0">To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where all the lamps each with a separate soul</p>
+<p class="i0">Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;</p>
+<p class="i0">And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife</p>
+<p class="i0">Cuts free the tethered heart from long control</p>
+<p class="i0">And flings it like a ball with mad delight</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the silver lap of the young moon.</p>
+<p class="i0">What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine</p>
+<p class="i0">Can broider tapestries as rich as these,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Transparent as the gods we half divine,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain</p>
+<p class="i0">That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,</p>
+<p class="i0">And visioned faces that our dreams create</p>
+<p class="i0">Born in the land forbidden us of fate</p>
+<p class="i0">And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind</p>
+<p class="i0">Forever Joy, that never comes again!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I think</span> myself</p>
+<p class="i4">The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage</p>
+<p class="i0">Where murder creeps and whispers.</p>
+<p class="i0">The jester clad in piebald tights</p>
+<p class="i0">Half black, half golden, with no company</p>
+<p class="i0">Save bells that jingle,</p>
+<p class="i0">And an effigy,</p>
+<p class="i0">The grinning image painted like myself</p>
+<p class="i0">Upon a stick....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I think myself</p>
+<p class="i0">The fool of comedy mournfully straying</p>
+<p class="i0">Amid the revellers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Loving the moon and my own shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">With its strange solemn <span class="locked">gestures&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Loving the painted moon</p>
+<p class="i0">That lets me play with shadows.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I am the jester on an empty stage</p>
+<p class="i0">Playing a pantomime</p>
+<p class="i0">To spectres in the stalls,</p>
+<p class="i0">Listening at last</p>
+<p class="i0">For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding,</p>
+<p class="i0">And for some king with decadent tired fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">To fling a white gardenia at my feet.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> adored, wild, strange, irresistible,</p>
+<p class="i4">How they fail one at the last!</p>
+<p class="i0">What is there in your faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That we should worship with our souls?</p>
+<p class="i0">Most lovable, perfidious,</p>
+<p class="i0">Vague&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">Molesting even our visions</p>
+<p class="i0">With treacherous pathos.</p>
+<p class="i0">O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,</p>
+<p class="i0">What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Covering your meagre bodies</p>
+<p class="i0">With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?</p>
+<p class="i0">Life and its grey days, and time</p>
+<p class="i0">Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or a dim glass through which you peer.</p>
+<p class="i0">You climb in at the windows of our souls</p>
+<p class="i0">With ladders and stratagems,</p>
+<p class="i0">You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.</p>
+<p class="i0">But what do you do for us</p>
+<p class="i0">Lute players, dancers, deceivers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Other than lie with red lips</p>
+<p class="i0">And cajole with tears of beryl?</p>
+<p class="i0">People&mdash;</p>
+<p class="i0">Men and women with laughable, tragic faces</p>
+<p class="i0">Winking at love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Treading our songs and illusions</p>
+<p class="i0">Under petulant feet!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="A_ROSE" id="A_ROSE">A ROSE</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging</p>
+<p class="i4">Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?</p>
+<p class="i0">What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging</p>
+<p class="i0">Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic</p>
+<p class="i0">Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,</p>
+<p class="i0">And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had <span class="locked">mangled;&mdash;</span></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died unrequited,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,</p>
+<p class="i0">Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and slighted,</p>
+<p class="i0">That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of Heaven?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and bleeding,</p>
+<p class="i0">Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging,</p>
+<p class="i0">What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading,</p>
+<p class="i0">I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Like</span> flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,</p>
+<p class="i4">My spirit flags across the darkening fields</p>
+<p class="i0">And melts into the drabness of the sky</p>
+<p class="i0">And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.</p>
+<p class="i0">But many wizened faces brown and sad</p>
+<p class="i0">Peer from the bushes as I wander <span class="locked">past,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They tell me all those things that old men say</p>
+<p class="i0">As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.</p>
+<p class="i0">"When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,</p>
+<p class="i0">When you have bowed before all other gods,</p>
+<p class="i0">And found them false, then shall you come at last</p>
+<p class="i0">To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless</p>
+<p class="i0">Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">And call you slave and lover." ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall not a child take Pain for company</p>
+<p class="i0">And share her loneliness with him?</p>
+<p class="i0">Does not a youth know tears</p>
+<p class="i0">In the first bitterness of broken love?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come</p>
+<p class="i0">To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ...</p>
+<p class="i0">He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,</p>
+<p class="i0">He sits a jester at the feet of kings</p>
+<p class="i0">And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.</p>
+<p class="i0">He rides the wooden horses at a fair,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dances with the jiggers on the stage.</p>
+<p class="i0">Led by the violins of discontent</p>
+<p class="i0">That whine their music to my listening soul,</p>
+<p class="i0">I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,</p>
+<p class="i0">We dance together to the tunes of rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Played on one note upon the only string.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh,</span> just beyond the curve of ideal quest</p>
+<p class="i4">That changes as a sea wave to the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond the cloud that folds around a star,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone,</p>
+<p class="i0">The paradise of all we might have been,</p>
+<p class="i0">While we are washed back downwards in the dark</p>
+<p class="i0">Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Ah!</span> you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,</p>
+<p class="i4">Your windows only looking upon gardens,</p>
+<p class="i0">Only perceiving love and death and truth</p>
+<p class="i0">As facts that come to pass,</p>
+<p class="i0">That pass and leave you still</p>
+<p class="i0">Within your safe small prisons,</p>
+<p class="i0">Older, duller,</p>
+<p class="i0">To walk and talk among the evergreens.</p>
+<p class="i0">You have never known</p>
+<p class="i0">Delight of dying slowly,</p>
+<p class="i0">Poisoned with raptures</p>
+<p class="i0">In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of <span class="locked">death&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">That dishevel and smooth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cajole and <span class="locked">melancholize&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The dance</p>
+<p class="i0">Which is a whirling of leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">In their last scorn of sorrow</p>
+<p class="i0">Flung upwards by the wind</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the haggard face of <span class="locked">winter&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons</p>
+<p class="i0">Tossed by impulsive hands;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor slid as skaters swiftly</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,</p>
+<p class="i0">Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ...</p>
+<p class="i0">You have not felt the abandon</p>
+<p class="i0">Of light love</p>
+<p class="i0">Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Mouth</span> of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute,</p>
+<p class="i4">Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour,</p>
+<p class="i0">Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you I sheave the harvest of my hair,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air</p>
+<p class="i0">My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great</p>
+<p class="i0">Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate,</p>
+<p class="i0">Science for giving wounds, and healing science.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care,</p>
+<p class="i0">Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness,</p>
+<p class="i0">For you the unborn child that I prepare,</p>
+<p class="i0">You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1913</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> curtains are drawn as though it still were night,</p>
+<p class="i4">A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all about the room is quietness&mdash;Each patient chair</p>
+<p class="i0">Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book</p>
+<p class="i0">Lie as you left them, now bereft of <span class="locked">purpose&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you</p>
+<p class="i0">Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes!</p>
+<p class="i0">How grey and sober, full of placid wit</p>
+<p class="i0">The furniture, the pictures on the wall;</p>
+<p class="i0">How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart</p>
+<p class="i0">As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood.</p>
+<p class="i0">Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face</p>
+<p class="i0">And white, white gloves ...</p>
+<p class="i0">What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock,</p>
+<p class="i0">With face grimacing ... nearly six it is....</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts,</p>
+<p class="i0">For in its dial eternity is <span class="locked">housed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town!</p>
+<p class="i0">But a water cart with surly noise below</p>
+<p class="i0">Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street.</p>
+<p class="i0">How cold and how familiar all these things,</p>
+<p class="i0">To you so lonely in the enormous dawn</p>
+<p class="i0">Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="BLACK_VELVET" id="BLACK_VELVET">BLACK VELVET</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> darkness of the trees at deep midnight</p>
+<p class="i4">And sombreness of shadows in the lake;</p>
+<p class="i0">A mountain in the starlight wide awake</p>
+<p class="i0">Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might</p>
+<p class="i0">Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright</p>
+<p class="i0">Bespattered jewelry of stars&mdash;the ache</p>
+<p class="i0">Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break</p>
+<p class="i0">From music. Slumbering cities&mdash;candle light</p>
+<p class="i0">Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Queens that go to scaffold for a <span class="locked">sin&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Or splash of blackness manifest of pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin</p>
+<p class="i0">Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again</p>
+<p class="i0">Venetian masks against a milky skin.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="NERVES" id="NERVES">NERVES</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">These</span> curious looms where we have spun our fancies,</p>
+<p class="i4">These intricate webs where our desires are threaded,</p>
+<p class="i0">These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies</p>
+<p class="i0">Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed.</p>
+<p class="i0">These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles</p>
+<p class="i0">Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers</p>
+<p class="i0">From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles</p>
+<p class="i0">Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors.</p>
+<p class="i0">These colours twinging on a prism's edges,</p>
+<p class="i0">These speckled patterns of fanatic madness</p>
+<p class="i0">From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges</p>
+<p class="i0">For pearls within the depths of sadness and of <span class="locked">gladness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after</p>
+<p class="i0">As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter,</p>
+<p class="i0">Molesting quietness and waking up the weary!</p>
+<p class="i0">What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting</p>
+<p class="i0">With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you</p>
+<p class="i0">O wrangling, juggling, jangling, <span class="locked">pirouetting&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you?</p>
+<p class="i0">You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion,</p>
+<p class="i0">And trodden out the red stars into ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron,</p>
+<p class="i0">And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes ...</p>
+<p class="i0">You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters,</p>
+<p class="i0">The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary,</p>
+<p class="i0">A poor bewildered clown&mdash;and nothing matters.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> pain has all the patience of a nun</p>
+<p class="i4">Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone,</p>
+<p class="i0">In some chill cellar where the amens moan,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ave Maria, the long penance spun</p>
+<p class="i0">Forever. And the tapers one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne.</p>
+<p class="i0">My soul is tired from kneeling all alone,</p>
+<p class="i0">Its little candles yearning to the sun.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen</p>
+<p class="i0">Bright mirages of glory on the grey</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sad horizons; I have kept the green</p>
+<p class="i0">Surprise of spring through winter and dismay,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen</p>
+<p class="i0">Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> scandal-monger after all is <span class="locked">right&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i4">The old and cunning voice with weary repetition</p>
+<p class="i0">Is justified in all dull words and warnings.</p>
+<p class="i0">I see at last how you,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spendthrift of passion</p>
+<p class="i0">In love's bankruptcy,</p>
+<p class="i0">Borrow new beauty from each passing <span class="locked">face&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How being too lavish you did steal</p>
+<p class="i0">From generous <span class="locked">hands&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">You are the idol builder and the robber of temples,</p>
+<p class="i0">Praising with passionate psalms</p>
+<p class="i0">The thing you cannot <span class="locked">worship&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And yet your prayers have stirred</p>
+<p class="i0">Belief in <span class="locked">us&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We see beyond the false and weary face</p>
+<p class="i0">Into your haggard soul and trust from <span class="locked">pity&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We hear beyond the idle music of your voice,</p>
+<p class="i0">A wisdom taught by cruelty</p>
+<p class="i0">And a tired scorn of treachery and <span class="locked">guile&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We see your wounds and weep,</p>
+<p class="i0">You meet our pity with a traitor's <span class="locked">kiss&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled</p>
+<p class="i0">In teaching pain to <span class="locked">others&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And all that mob of furious accusation</p>
+<p class="i0">To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well,</p>
+<p class="i0">Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered,</p>
+<p class="i0">That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Woods</span> of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death,</p>
+<p class="i4">Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath</p>
+<p class="i0">Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering,</p>
+<p class="i0">As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly</p>
+<p class="i0">Listless they perish, wavering and hovering.</p>
+<p class="i0">Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering</p>
+<p class="i0">The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun.</p>
+<p class="i0">No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet,</p>
+<p class="i0">No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one</p>
+<p class="i0">As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet....</p>
+<p class="i0">How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound</p>
+<p class="i0">From shrill carousers riotous and merry all,</p>
+<p class="i0">As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground,</p>
+<p class="i0">As funeral bagpipes at a burial.</p>
+<p class="i0">And I who wander passionless and forlorn,</p>
+<p class="i0">A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection,</p>
+<p class="i0">In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn,</p>
+<p class="i0">See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I feel</span> so much alone,</p>
+<p class="i4">And yet I know that many hopes are storming</p>
+<p class="i0">My shut heart;</p>
+<p class="i0">For I am bolted fast in my own house.</p>
+<p class="i0">I pace distracted through its corridors</p>
+<p class="i0">To the music of Love's knocking hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the gate,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or silence when they sleep.</p>
+<p class="i0">I cannot find the key to let them in,</p>
+<p class="i0">I, my own host and guest and ghost,</p>
+<p class="i0">Imprisoned in myself!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THE_COMPLEX_LIFE" id="THE_COMPLEX_LIFE">THE COMPLEX LIFE</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I know</span> it to be true that those who live</p>
+<p class="i4">As do the grasses and the lilies of the field</p>
+<p class="i0">Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield</p>
+<p class="i0">Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But we are gathered for the looms of Fate</p>
+<p class="i0">That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels</p>
+<p class="i0">Spins into complex patterns and conceals</p>
+<p class="i0">His huge invention with forms intricate.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Each generation blindly fills the plan,</p>
+<p class="i0">A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God</p>
+<p class="i0">With many processes from out the sod,</p>
+<p class="i0">The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,</p>
+<p class="i0">A chemistry of subtle interfusion,</p>
+<p class="i0">Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We spell the crimes of our unruly days,</p>
+<p class="i0">We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,</p>
+<p class="i0">We crave perfection that we may not find.</p>
+<p class="i0">Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You peasants and you hermits, simple livers!</p>
+<p class="i0">So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned</p>
+<p class="i0">While we give up our bodies to be burned,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,</p>
+<p class="i0">We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,</p>
+<p class="i0">We make a gaudy havoc of our life</p>
+<p class="i0">And live a thousand ages in an hour.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,</p>
+<p class="i0">We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,</p>
+<p class="i0">We dance in couples to the tune of fools,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dream of harassed continents the while.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion</p>
+<p class="i0">Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint,</p>
+<p class="i0">Make cryptic perorations of complaint,</p>
+<p class="i0">Inverted religion, and perverted passion.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But since we are children of this age,</p>
+<p class="i0">In curious ways discovering salvation,</p>
+<p class="i0">I will not quit my muddled generation,</p>
+<p class="i0">But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Although I know that Nature's bounty yields</p>
+<p class="i0">Unto simplicity a beautiful content,</p>
+<p class="i0">Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent</p>
+<p class="i0">Will I give back my body to the fields.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Shall</span> we be christened poets, children of God,</p>
+<p class="i4">For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">For tugging at the moaning bells of death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And coming as the autumn grave-digger</p>
+<p class="i0">To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">Of wind upon the rushes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of music upon silence?</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel</p>
+<p class="i0">For forcing tragedy into a rhyme</p>
+<p class="i0">As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?</p>
+<p class="i0">The poet ever wanders after Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The flunkey on a funeral chariot</p>
+<p class="i0">Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the roses that he plucks from summer</p>
+<p class="i0">Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse....</p>
+<p class="i0">How shall the world learn how to laugh again</p>
+<p class="i0">When all its songs have only learnt to weep?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">When</span> I am weary at the antic chance,</p>
+<p class="i4">The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,</p>
+<p class="i0">The hope and fear in jugglery, and see</p>
+<p class="i0">How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,</p>
+<p class="i0">And life a laboured trick&mdash;the years advance</p>
+<p class="i0">A shrilling chorus in affected dance</p>
+<p class="i0">With lust of many eyes that watch and wink</p>
+<p class="i0">Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink</p>
+<p class="i0">Will draw gross laughter by a hideous <span class="locked">prance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where fiddles squeal and all the follies <span class="locked">spin&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin</p>
+<p class="i0">Through curtained silence trips as from a trance</p>
+<p class="i0">With blushing flowers for Columbine&mdash;Romance.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="MOODS" id="MOODS">MOODS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I crouched</span> upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses,</p>
+<p class="i4">And&mdash;listening with dread for the moment of my own silence</p>
+<p class="i0">Rending the flimsy lace of <span class="locked">whisperings&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My gnome dances before me</p>
+<p class="i0">Behind a fan of smoke,</p>
+<p class="i0">My dwarf squats on my shoulders</p>
+<p class="i0">Tweeking their moulted wings,</p>
+<p class="i0">My ape peers in the mirror of my face</p>
+<p class="i0">Mimicking my soul's gaunt <span class="locked">gestures&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Blotching the night with <span class="locked">howls&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My laughter goes whining away on the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment,</p>
+<p class="i0">Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Dancing across the leer of ugliness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Skimming like a gold thread</p>
+<p class="i0">Through a necklace of vile <span class="locked">masks&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Lifting with lotus fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">The blue arras of <span class="locked">nightmare&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Loveliness like a delicate silver flute</p>
+<p class="i0">Pressed to a negro's <span class="locked">lips&mdash;</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Do you then wish for all those griefs</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose snarling hands you kiss,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kneeling in adoration to a dagger</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+<p class="i0">As saints before a cross?</p>
+<p class="i0">You who have tossed all flowers away,</p>
+<p class="i0">Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood</p>
+<p class="i0">Their javelin-petals wet with <span class="locked">slaughter,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Do you then crave your own blood's offering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?</p>
+<p class="i0">In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,</p>
+<p class="i0">You lean across the precipice of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Calling and crying</p>
+<p class="i0">For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Waiting,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">Carrying vast burdens over the crags of <span class="locked">chaos&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,</p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting like a vast arch of quietness</p>
+<p class="i0">Through which a screaming messenger shall <span class="locked">dart&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Like a dense hood of silence</p>
+<p class="i0">Pierced by a sword of <span class="locked">music&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool</p>
+<p class="i0">Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="SMOKE" id="SMOKE">SMOKE</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_49" class="figleft" style="width: 252px;"><img src="images/i_053.jpg" width="252" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Now</span> is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood</p>
+<p class="i4">And the dun hills stand fearful in their places.</p>
+<p class="i0">Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets</p>
+<p class="i0">With burdens of vainglory on our backs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web</p>
+<p class="i0">Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease.</p>
+<p class="i0">But out beyond, the armies of the world</p>
+<p class="i0">March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil:</p>
+<p class="i0">He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high</p>
+<p class="i0">The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed</p>
+<p class="i0">With livid roses; all his pillars black</p>
+<p class="i0">Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust</p>
+<p class="i0">He raises up his awful golden throne.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God</p>
+<p class="i0">Where good and evil mix; and all your rage</p>
+<p class="i0">Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Blow</span> upon blow they bruise the daylight wan,</p>
+<p class="i4">Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore;</p>
+<p class="i0">They ride on furious, leaving every man</p>
+<p class="i0">Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war:</p>
+<p class="i0">Gods that grow tired of paradisial water</p>
+<p class="i0">And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I fear a thing more terrible than death:</p>
+<p class="i0">The glamour of the battle grips us <span class="locked">yet&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">As crowds before a fire that hold their breath</p>
+<p class="i0">Watching the burning houses, and forget</p>
+<p class="i0">All they will lose, but marvel to behold</p>
+<p class="i0">Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I fear the time when slow the flame expires,</p>
+<p class="i0">When this kaleidoscope of roaring color</p>
+<p class="i0">Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires</p>
+<p class="i0">That shone with battle, nothing left of valour</p>
+<p class="i0">Save chill ignoble ashes for despair</p>
+<p class="i0">To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hiding the mangled body of the Earth:</p>
+<p class="i0">The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth,</p>
+<p class="i0">But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust</p>
+<p class="i0">Save to end living and be heaped with dust.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">That stillness that must follow where Death trod,</p>
+<p class="i0">The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tuneless voices cringing praise to God,</p>
+<p class="i0">Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise,</p>
+<p class="i0">With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Across the world from out the fevered ground</p>
+<p class="i0">Decay from every pore exhales its breath;</p>
+<p class="i0">A cloak of penance winding close around</p>
+<p class="i0">The bright desire of spring. And unto Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">As to a conquering king, we yield the keys</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The maiden loverless shall go her ways,</p>
+<p class="i0">And child unfathered feed on crust and husk;</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun that was the glory of our days</p>
+<p class="i0">Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk</p>
+<p class="i0">Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay</p>
+<p class="i0">Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap2"><span class="smcap1">A ragged</span> drummer rides along the street,</p>
+<p class="i4">And at his coming</p>
+<p class="i0">The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet</p>
+<p class="i0">And voices humming.</p>
+<p class="i0">He rode a year ago from far away,</p>
+<p class="i0">On charger prancing,</p>
+<p class="i0">With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay,</p>
+<p class="i0">And banners dancing.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum</p>
+<p class="i0">He bore so proudly,</p>
+<p class="i0">His roaring music woke the silence dumb</p>
+<p class="i0">To thunder loudly.</p>
+<p class="i0">And by his side the old men and the young</p>
+<p class="i0">Had followed cheering</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the sunset smiling as they sung,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor thought of fearing.</p>
+<p class="i0">They left their lovers and their mothers' lap,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their homes demolish,</p>
+<p class="i0">"For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap,</p>
+<p class="i0">A sword to polish!"</p>
+<p class="i0">And so the town was silent once again,</p>
+<p class="i0">Though tunes of battle</p>
+<p class="i0">Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Ghost drums would rattle.</p>
+<p class="i0">But at the chuckling dice or careful loom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or candled churches</p>
+<p class="i0">A few forgot or prayed or followed doom</p>
+<p class="i0">With drunken lurches....</p>
+<p class="i0">Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng,</p>
+<p class="i0">In huddled masses</p>
+<p class="i0">They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song</p>
+<p class="i0">As back he <span class="locked">passes&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone</p>
+<p class="i0">In rags and tatters,</p>
+<p class="i0">And on a soundless barrel with a bone</p>
+<p class="i0">He beats and batters.</p>
+<p class="i0">"Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That we may kiss them?</p>
+<p class="i0">Where sound your little songs that rang so loud</p>
+<p class="i0">To us that miss them?"</p>
+<p class="i0">There are no songs, no happy marching feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">No favours flying:</p>
+<p class="i0">The drummer passes ... on the quiet street</p>
+<p class="i0">The sun is dying.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!...</p>
+<p class="i0">Have done with weeping,</p>
+<p class="i0">But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave</p>
+<p class="i0">As he lies sleeping.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="ZEPPELINS" id="ZEPPELINS">ZEPPELINS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="i25 smaller">MIDNIGHT</p>
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Suddenly</span></p>
+<p class="i4">Shutting our lips upon a jest</p>
+<p class="i0">As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,</p>
+<p class="i0">A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Quiver with startled <span class="locked">terrors&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!</p>
+<p class="i0">Now every muscle weakens, every pulse</p>
+<p class="i0">Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve</p>
+<p class="i0">Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....</p>
+<p class="i0">How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,</p>
+<p class="i0">How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!</p>
+<p class="i0">Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh</p>
+<p class="i0">A little longer, oh a little year!</p>
+<p class="i0">Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,</p>
+<p class="i0">And resolutions of new wondrous lives</p>
+<p class="i0">Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....</p>
+<p class="i0">Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lurid silent people loved by death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings</p>
+<p class="i0">To drag our body's glory from the light.</p>
+<p class="i0">Though all the world should fall into their cells</p>
+<p class="i0">And lie within their larders shelf on <span class="locked">shelf&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet <i>will I</i> be the mistress of the sun!</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">1&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,</p>
+<p class="i0">Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted <span class="locked">domes&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,</p>
+<p class="i0">An army fierce upon its own destruction,</p>
+<p class="i0">A famished monster tearing in its claws</p>
+<p class="i0">Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Digesting all the world!...</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Look at the eager people open-mouthed</p>
+<p class="i0">That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised</p>
+<p class="i0">By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their earth adoring senses caught awhile</p>
+<p class="i0">In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;</p>
+<p class="i0">Their spirits straining upward upon strings</p>
+<p class="i0">Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a <span class="locked">toy&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Yet for an hour</p>
+<p class="i0">Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears</p>
+<p class="i0">They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes</p>
+<p class="i0">Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">3&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The dawn seems drained of blood so <span class="locked">colourless&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Slowly the river moves as though in sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">While silent barges</p>
+<p class="i0">Slide from the mist like dreams;</p>
+<p class="i0">The intricate patterns of the scaffolding</p>
+<p class="i0">Are drawn against the sky</p>
+<p class="i0">More delicate than lace.</p>
+<p class="i0">All the shimmering lights</p>
+<p class="i0">Have shrunk away from morning</p>
+<p class="i0">As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....</p>
+<p class="i0">I am alone, most utterly alone,</p>
+<p class="i0">More lonely than the last man in the world</p>
+<p class="i0">Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.</p>
+<p class="i0">More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">Who stands beside that nebulous cold river</p>
+<p class="i0">Dividing sleep from death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Eternity from time....</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">She brings no feverous memories of night</p>
+<p class="i0">And sheds no tears.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Only two hours ago</p>
+<p class="i0">Fire walked in crimson armour through the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,</p>
+<p class="i0">While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats</p>
+<p class="i0">Among the silver foliage of the stars....</p>
+<p class="i0">But rage has left no furrow in the sky,</p>
+<p class="i0">No wake of sparks across the placid water....</p>
+<p class="i0">This is the ominous and sacred hour</p>
+<p class="i0">When priest-like the world kneels</p>
+<p class="i0">Bowed low toward the empty throne of <span class="locked">day&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard</p>
+<p class="i0">And the flamingo messengers will come</p>
+<p class="i0">Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise....</p>
+<p class="i0">This is the hour of nothing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Colourless and chill</p>
+<p class="i0">Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,</p>
+<p class="i0">As sits an idol holding in his fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">A scentless lotus carven out of stone.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="intact">
+<p class="i25 smaller">4&nbsp;A.&nbsp;M.</p>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet</p>
+<p class="i0">And up the long uncomfortable street</p>
+<p class="i0">With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read</p>
+<p class="i0">The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel</p>
+<p class="i0">And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing <span class="locked">well&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,</p>
+<p class="i0">The light steals after me, emerging slow</p>
+<p class="i0">And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.</p>
+<p class="i0">I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched</p>
+<p class="i0">From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw</p>
+<p class="i0">Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door</p>
+<p class="i0">My own reflection as I hurried past,</p>
+<p class="i0">My flaring colours and my face <span class="locked">aghast&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung</p>
+<p class="i0">About my knees and fluttered at the back:</p>
+<p class="i0">An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,</p>
+<p class="i0">My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;</p>
+<p class="i0">My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.</p>
+<p class="i0">Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.</p>
+<p class="i0">... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1915</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">O flattery,</span> imposture, battle show,</p>
+<p class="i4">What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,</p>
+<p class="i0">What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow</p>
+<p class="i0">Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">How have you turned the simple truth to lies</p>
+<p class="i0">Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs</p>
+<p class="i0">The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And ever quoting God for your excuse,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,</p>
+<p class="i0">You train the spirit for material use,</p>
+<p class="i0">You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;</p>
+<p class="i0">What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?</p>
+<p class="i0">They shall go to prison black</p>
+<p class="i0">With a striped shirt on the back,</p>
+<p class="i0">Feast on bread and water there</p>
+<p class="i0">In a cell, without a care.</p>
+<p class="i0">They shall learn at least their duty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never tempted more of <span class="locked">beauty&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,</p>
+<p class="i0">And one or two shall hang upon a <span class="locked">cord&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And two or three shall die of grief <span class="locked">alone&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">(And this is well, for sinners should atone,)</p>
+<p class="i0">And five or six shall curse the God that made them,</p>
+<p class="i0">(And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)</p>
+<p class="i0">And those that grew from dust shall go to dust</p>
+<p class="i0">Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:&mdash;"God is just."</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">If</span> I were what I would be, and could break</p>
+<p class="i4">The buttressed fortress of stupidity</p>
+<p class="i0">Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake</p>
+<p class="i0">Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn <span class="locked">puppetry&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The gods are blinking at us sleepily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess</p>
+<p class="i0">Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and <span class="locked">pawn&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The rigid squares of black and white, they dress</p>
+<p class="i0">With their perpetual challenge&mdash;faded, worn,</p>
+<p class="i0">Are all the creeds and praises you profess</p>
+<p class="i0">To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="HOLY_RUSSIA" id="HOLY_RUSSIA">HOLY RUSSIA</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> ghostly blood of thee is in my veins,</p>
+<p class="i4">Back through the centuries of death and birth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains,</p>
+<p class="i0">My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And ever as in dreams I seem to see</p>
+<p class="i0">Those streets and people with their colours cold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tides of restless passion ages old.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I know thy humours and their contradiction,</p>
+<p class="i0">I know thy fevers and hallucinations,</p>
+<p class="i0">I see beneath the painted mask of fiction</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the sick world's travail and her grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dost thou from thy long battling surmise</p>
+<p class="i0">The end of battle and the world's relief?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">While we are creeping in our crooked ways</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds</p>
+<p class="i0">Where Ignorance walks royally through days</p>
+<p class="i0">That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">While we still cry to God for strength to kill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves,</p>
+<p class="i0">And grind young bones for the commercial mill,</p>
+<p class="i0">And build munition works among the graves.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag,"</p>
+<p class="i0">"The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!"</p>
+<p class="i0">Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates <span class="locked">brag&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God,</p>
+<p class="i0">And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Feeling beneath the burden and the rod</p>
+<p class="i0">His justice and Her pity in the street.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Justice and Pity, crying in the <span class="locked">wind&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We only hear the guns that never cease,</p>
+<p class="i0">The flapping of our flags has made us blind!</p>
+<p class="i0">We may not see the sacred gods of peace.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But thou dost build fanatic temples for them,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thou dost pave the road with sanity,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers,</p>
+<p class="i0">The drum that life has snatched away from death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0"><span class="smcap">Peace!</span> But a cynic whispered in my ear</p>
+<p class="i0">How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">That lay amid the dust&mdash;and I could hear</p>
+<p class="i0">A hum of money-changing in the town.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I feared that afterwards, when all is won,</p>
+<p class="i0">We shall forget the meaning of thy <span class="locked">deed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And man will creep as he has always done</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the little gutters of his greed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> deeply nurtured is your foolishness,</p>
+<p class="i4">Calling destruction great and slaughter brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Making large triumph of a little grave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Imperial purple of a mourning dress,</p>
+<p class="i0">The gun an emblem of your <span class="locked">godliness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">A medal or a bayonet, or rave</p>
+<p class="i0">Of singing, marching in the forward press</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hatred to the banging of a band;</p>
+<p class="i0">Your country's honour and the world's release.</p>
+<p class="i0">Are <i>they</i> not strong in courage who withstand</p>
+<p class="i0">The armies of your folly and shall cease</p>
+<p class="i0">To tarnish with spilt life their motherland?</p>
+<p class="i0">Cowards&mdash;or martyrs&mdash;crucified for peace.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Of</span> all who died in silence far away</p>
+<p class="i4">Where sympathy was busy with other things,</p>
+<p class="i0">Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,</p>
+<p class="i0">Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The little dead who knew so large a love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,</p>
+<p class="i0">A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stars were they to her night, and she the stem</p>
+<p class="i0">From which they flowered&mdash;now barren and left unblessed.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave</p>
+<p class="i0">Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Now stifled in the darkness of a grave</p>
+<p class="i0">With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">No more!&mdash;And we, the mourners, dare not wear</p>
+<p class="i0">The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">But must don purple and bright standards bear,</p>
+<p class="i0">Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We dare not weep who must be brave in <span class="locked">battle&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">"Another death&mdash;another day&mdash;another inch of <span class="locked">land&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ...</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of all who died in darkness far away</p>
+<p class="i0">Nothing is left of them but <span class="smcap smaller">LOVE</span>, who triumphs now,</p>
+<p class="i0">His arms held crosswise to the budding day,</p>
+<p class="i0">The passion-red roses clustering his brow.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">And</span> afterwards, when honour has made good,</p>
+<p class="i4">And all you think you fight for shall take place,</p>
+<p class="i0">A late rejoicing to a crippled race;</p>
+<p class="i0">The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food,</p>
+<p class="i0">The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall spread a blush across the haggard face</p>
+<p class="i0">Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">In victory will you have conquered Hate,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stuck old Folly with a bayonet</p>
+<p class="i0">And battered down the hideous prison gate?</p>
+<p class="i0">Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Glutted with gold and dust and empty state,</p>
+<p class="i0">The incense of our anguish and our sweat?</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Pity</span> the slain that laid away their lives,</p>
+<p class="i4">Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thin little children and widowed wives,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the broken soldier who survives.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the woman whose body was sold</p>
+<p class="i0">For a little bread or a little gold,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a little fire to keep out the cold,</p>
+<p class="i0">So tired, and fearful of growing old.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the people in the grey street</p>
+<p class="i0">Before the dawn trooping with listless feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Down to their work in the dust and the heat,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a little bread and a little meat.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity the criminal sentenced to die,</p>
+<p class="i0">Loving life so, with the world in his eye,</p>
+<p class="i0">In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry</p>
+<p class="i0">Of love that will call when he may not reply.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Pity them all, the imperative faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places,</p>
+<p class="i0">With indolent postures and frivolous graces.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin</p>
+<p class="i0">Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin</p>
+<p class="i0">That batters the door and staggers in....</p>
+<p class="i0">The streets surround with clamour and din,</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity,</p>
+<p class="i0">Force us to sigh and arrange a committee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">A rebel flag on a rebel grave,</p>
+<p class="i0">But to us the strong alone are brave,</p>
+<p class="i0">And only the rich are worthy to save!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flags that blow where the dead are hurled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="FLAME" id="FLAME">FLAME</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_71" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_075.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">You</span> have understood so little of me, and my adoration</p>
+<p class="i4">That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones,</p>
+<p class="i0">You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation</p>
+<p class="i0">And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my</p>
+<p class="i0">moans.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter,</p>
+<p class="i0">You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd;</p>
+<p class="i0">But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter;</p>
+<p class="i0">I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow;</p>
+<p class="i0">I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes;</p>
+<p class="i0">They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for you;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes</p>
+<p class="i0">As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters;</p>
+<p class="i0">You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign,</p>
+<p class="i0">But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of fetters</p>
+<p class="i0">And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+<p class="i0">All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces,</p>
+<p class="i0">Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head,</p>
+<p class="i0">For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces</p>
+<p class="i0">And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles sacred</p>
+<p class="i0">With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell;</p>
+<p class="i0">I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping acrid</p>
+<p class="i0">And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Lulled</span> are the dazzling colours of the day,</p>
+<p class="i4">And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash.</p>
+<p class="i0">Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk</p>
+<p class="i0">Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth</p>
+<p class="i0">Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now can I sing the sickly lines of love</p>
+<p class="i0">And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out</p>
+<p class="i0">In the sad spaces of the gloaming night,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark.</p>
+<p class="i0">My words were fireless in the flaming sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all the throats of flowers from their content</p>
+<p class="i0">Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face</p>
+<p class="i0">And bade me give them tunes to make them dance....</p>
+<p class="i0">Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down</p>
+<p class="i0">From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast</p>
+<p class="i0">And sterile as the arms of my desire</p>
+<p class="i0">She flings her light despairing on the sky.</p>
+<p class="i0">The night is strange and still, for dropping tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Washed</span> at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves,</p>
+<p class="i4">As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought</p>
+<p class="i0">The thought of you, which held against mine ear</p>
+<p class="i0">Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul;</p>
+<p class="i0">The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love,</p>
+<p class="i0">The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The following of beauty's fugitive limbs</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast</p>
+<p class="i0">Gleam on the clouds and foam,</p>
+<p class="i0">Call to her <span class="locked">lovers.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thus standing in the blasting of the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud</p>
+<p class="i0">Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> poems cannot laugh. They are the voice</p>
+<p class="i4">Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">And this wild joy my love has brought to me</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">To fashion for my love one perfect verse</p>
+<p class="i0">Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird</p>
+<p class="i0">To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But as a coward in the general gloom</p>
+<p class="i0">I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill</p>
+<p class="i0">Of love that moves with music into Doom;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold,</p>
+<p class="i0">And like a gay canary in a cage</p>
+<p class="i0">Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage</p>
+<p class="i0">Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">On</span> the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered,</p>
+<p class="i4">Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden highlights,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed.</p>
+<p class="i0">We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment,</p>
+<p class="i0">And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white wine,</p>
+<p class="i0">And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh</span> canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears</p>
+<p class="i4">Whose wind-like voices</p>
+<p class="i0">Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears</p>
+<p class="i0">While the body rejoices.</p>
+<p class="i0">Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Trailing his scarlet vesture</p>
+<p class="i0">Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Turns with a gesture</p>
+<p class="i0">Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey.</p>
+<p class="i0">I follow the shadows of sorrow</p>
+<p class="i0">That press so close to the dancing heels of the day</p>
+<p class="i0">And darken the morrow.</p>
+<p class="i0">The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond its golden visor</p>
+<p class="i0">The leering skull that derides at our lives and me</p>
+<p class="i0">Being older than life and wiser....</p>
+<p class="i0">I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the whip</p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond the sound of the treetops singing</p>
+<p class="i0">To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or rush of feathers winging....</p>
+<p class="i0">Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my cheek</p>
+<p class="i0">Murmuring tenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the bleak</p>
+<p class="i0">Windows of frost so slenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might be</p>
+<p class="i0">If life were as kind as a lover,</p>
+<p class="i0">If we were beloved of the world and the world of we.</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy white words hover</p>
+<p class="i0">Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest</p>
+<p class="i0">Silvering heaven</p>
+<p class="i0">With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest.</p>
+<p class="i0">If I could have given</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+<p class="i0">My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah then and then only</p>
+<p class="i0">The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me</p>
+<p class="i0">And death were not lonely.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> in the silence the clear moonlight drips</p>
+<p class="i4">Among the fields that love her drowsily,</p>
+<p class="i0">These passionate moments trickle on through time,</p>
+<p class="i0">From soul to languorous soul.</p>
+<p class="i0">Like mad musicians upon fretted harps,</p>
+<p class="i0">The senses play upon the poignant <span class="locked">nerves,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And colours clothe our mood</p>
+<p class="i0">As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms</p>
+<p class="i0">Irised with pallors of an opal's heart</p>
+<p class="i0">In which the glittered pattern of desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Smoulders and changes....</p>
+<p class="i0">O love, thou nightingale-throated singer,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star</p>
+<p class="i0">And keep thy silver delicate delight</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad.</p>
+<p class="i0">Let thy fairy feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Go tripping down a scarcely scented path,</p>
+<p class="i0">Between an avenue of breathless flowers.</p>
+<p class="i0">The hours glide by as swans across a lake,</p>
+<p class="i0">Across the luminous waters of desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And beat as wings the rustle of soft words,</p>
+<p class="i0">As love bends down,</p>
+<p class="i0">Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I can</span> but give thee unsubstantial things</p>
+<p class="i4">Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">No gems or garments marvellously wrought</p>
+<p class="i0">On ivory spools with rare embroiderings.</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings</p>
+<p class="i0">That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought</p>
+<p class="i0">With blood and beauty. I have only sought</p>
+<p class="i0">A song that hovers on illusive wings.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Accept from me a dream that hath no art,</p>
+<p class="i0">I give my empty hands for thee to hold,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take thou the gift of silence for my part,</p>
+<p class="i0">With all the deeper things I have not told.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart</p>
+<p class="i0">Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I">I</a></h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I have</span> no other friend but thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">But while I tell thee all my thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">Soothsayings and sighs, and little <span class="locked">things&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How canst thou listen to me?</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long,</p>
+<p class="i0">And when my cheek grew pale</p>
+<p class="i0">I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back</p>
+<p class="i0">Responsive in the double rose of <span class="locked">joy&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the ghost moon glides between us....</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">When at a masquerade</p>
+<p class="i0">I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our faces painted each in some disguise</p>
+<p class="i0">Of varnished revelry;</p>
+<p class="i0">I whisper in thine ear</p>
+<p class="i0">Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales,</p>
+<p class="i0">Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And shower the multicoloured streamers high</p>
+<p class="i0">Where Folly is king of <span class="locked">midnight&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thy still face looks out,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weary and overwise</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the mad pretence avails not.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Long ago we walked together in a garden;</p>
+<p class="i0">It was evening and the leaves fell down;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen,</p>
+<p class="i0">Over flowers and branches that were withered <span class="locked">there&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And the air was weary with the scent of other days,</p>
+<p class="i0">A fragrance faint and pensive.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Were as old dreams retold,</p>
+<p class="i0">Stirred from the golden quilt of memory,</p>
+<p class="i0">And farewells rang their whispering bells,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tolling the days away.</p>
+<p class="i0">But peace lay folded between our hands</p>
+<p class="i0">As we thought of the vanishing years</p>
+<p class="i0">And of love dying in the arms of love.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Sometimes I look into the glass</p>
+<p class="i0">And see my face without the conquering light</p>
+<p class="i0">That gave me glamour when I gave thee love.</p>
+<p class="i0">Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell,</p>
+<p class="i0">And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven.</p>
+<p class="i0">I would be for thee</p>
+<p class="i0">As a ring of white flowers on the sward,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a red fire playing to thy breath,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a flock of kingfishers</p>
+<p class="i0">Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes!</p>
+<p class="i0">Remember only this,</p>
+<p class="i0">My will toward all loveliness, and look</p>
+<p class="i0">Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>VI</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Be perfect&mdash;for I love thee more in thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Than thou canst reach in every trivial day.</p>
+<p class="i0">Since days are as the flowers on a wreath</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That wither while we bind them each to each.</p>
+<p class="i0">Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days</p>
+<p class="i0">Can wall it in a little space of ground.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the patient spirit stands</p>
+<p class="i0">Waiting the last fulfilment.</p>
+<p class="i0">Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands</p>
+<p class="i0">Or as an endless rosary.</p>
+<p class="i0">Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter</p>
+<p class="i0">And my hands part from the unriveted faith</p>
+<p class="i0">With Amen scarcely sighed.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Bodies</span> heaving like waves,</p>
+<p class="i4">Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam,</p>
+<p class="i0">The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Splashed with ecstasial moonlight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Lingering touch of fingers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell,</p>
+<p class="i0">And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the ivory forehead of the moon.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Your</span> face to me is like a beautiful city</p>
+<p class="i4">Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves</p>
+<p class="i0">Heavily laden with memories....</p>
+<p class="i0">I roam over all the earth</p>
+<p class="i0">Making rhymes of you, and singing songs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because your face will never let me rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because I can not frame it in a star</p>
+<p class="i0">Surrounded with my cloudy reveries,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because I may not pluck it like a flower</p>
+<p class="i0">To breathe the incense of its perfumed <span class="locked">soul&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose sheath is in my breast!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh!</span> why will you not let me love you</p>
+<p class="i4">Well enough?</p>
+<p class="i0">You have plucked my blossoms,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gathered the leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And revived them with water;</p>
+<p class="i0">But all the tortuous roots</p>
+<p class="i0">Delving for your spirit</p>
+<p class="i0">In subterranean passions</p>
+<p class="i0">With a blind unresting desire,</p>
+<p class="i0">Have you felt them, have you known?</p>
+<p class="i0">In the blackest night of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms</p>
+<p class="i0">In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion,</p>
+<p class="i0">My soul still swims toward you</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the envious pressure of the tide....</p>
+<p class="i0">You who are so tired, so filled with sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest its heaviness should stir your rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden</p>
+<p class="i0">That is too vast for me to bear alone?</p>
+<p class="i0">I tell you</p>
+<p class="i0">Love is no little thing,</p>
+<p class="i0">No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air,</p>
+<p class="i0">No thin flute music petaling the silence</p>
+<p class="i0">As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree.</p>
+<p class="i0">It is the thought that broods upon its death,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dread of mountains looking to the storm</p>
+<p class="i0">Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain.</p>
+<p class="i0">It is the fire that pillars up the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">To mix its flame with their eternal gold.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, listen to me!</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere</p>
+<p class="i0">As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven.</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall know me</p>
+<p class="i0">In the pensive shadows of trees,</p>
+<p class="i0">In the luminary phantoms</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Reflected in the stillness of a lake;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And quivering in the moss;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the abandoned play of breakers</p>
+<p class="i0">Showering their crystals to the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the folly of rainbow dolphins.</p>
+<p class="i0">I only ask of you</p>
+<p class="i0">To be the diver in my deepest pool,</p>
+<p class="i0">To bring from out its blue obscurity</p>
+<p class="i0">The things my life has moulded unaware,</p>
+<p class="i0">Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned</p>
+<p class="i0">In loneliness of prayer unlit by life,</p>
+<p class="i0">Created out of nothing save myself</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the blind fast silence of the soul.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">My</span> devotion kneels to you,</p>
+<p class="i4">Holding a candle to illumine your face.</p>
+<p class="i0">My loneliness is your shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">Along the solitary roads.</p>
+<p class="i0">My passion is a book between your hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets,</p>
+<p class="i0">A volume of pressed flowers</p>
+<p class="i0">Scenting your fingers though you read it not.</p>
+<p class="i0">And my white faith</p>
+<p class="i0">Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="ISLANDS" id="ISLANDS">ISLANDS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> launched upon the loneliness of time</p>
+<p class="i4">We float and dream of what the waves conceal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal</p>
+<p class="i0">Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or indolent ripple sighing at the <span class="locked">keel&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours <span class="locked">climb&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">So toss our weary ships, till from afar</p>
+<p class="i0">Our visioned island rises suddenly,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where palaces like cloudy colours are,</p>
+<p class="i0">With scented gardens terraced to the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">The silver steps to our appointed star</p>
+<p class="i0">Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Many</span> things I'd find to charm you,</p>
+<p class="i4">Books and scarves and silken socks,</p>
+<p class="i0">All the seven rainbow colours</p>
+<p class="i0">Black and white with 'broidered clocks.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then a stick of polished whalebone</p>
+<p class="i0">And a coat of tawny fur,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a row of gleaming bottles</p>
+<p class="i0">Filled with rose-water and myrrh.</p>
+<p class="i0">Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,</p>
+<p class="i0">Old liqueurs in leather kegs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Golden Sauterne, copper sherry</p>
+<p class="i0">And a nest of plover's eggs.</p>
+<p class="i0">Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,</p>
+<p class="i0">Little boxes cut in jade;</p>
+<p class="i0">Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,</p>
+<p class="i0">Damask cloths and dim brocade.</p>
+<p class="i0">Six musicians of the Magyar,</p>
+<p class="i0">Madness making harmony;</p>
+<p class="i0">And a bed austere and narrow</p>
+<p class="i0">With a quilt from Barbary.</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall have a bath of amber,</p>
+<p class="i0">A Venetian looking-glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And a crimson-chested parrot</p>
+<p class="i0">On a lawn of terraced grass.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then a small Tanagra statue</p>
+<p class="i0">Found anew in ruins old,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or an azure plate from Persia,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my hair in plaits of gold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my scalp that like an Indian</p>
+<p class="i0">You shall carry for a purse,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Or a volume of my verse.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1916</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="center" />
+
+<h2 class="left large"><a name="LAMPLIGHT_AND_STARLIGHT" id="LAMPLIGHT_AND_STARLIGHT">LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT</a></h2>
+
+<div id="ip_94" class="figleft" style="width: 249px;"><img src="images/i_097.jpg" width="249" height="500" alt="" /></div>
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="LAMP-POSTS" id="LAMP-POSTS">LAMP-POSTS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> eternal flame of laughter and desire</p>
+<p class="i4">Breaks the long darkness with a little glance,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance</p>
+<p class="i0">Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire</p>
+<p class="i0">That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire</p>
+<p class="i0">Sadly toward their jubilance&mdash;Romance</p>
+<p class="i0">Of faery glitter in the streets of <span class="locked">chance&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire</p>
+<p class="i0">Within the fog of our despairing gloom;</p>
+<p class="i0">In the glum alleys, down the haunted night</p>
+<p class="i0">Through tunnelling of subterranean doom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright,</p>
+<p class="i0">They bear their coronets of golden bloom</p>
+<p class="i0">To front our anguish with their brave delight.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="LONDON" id="LONDON">LONDON</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Richer</span> than fields of corn that fire in summer,</p>
+<p class="i4">Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden,</p>
+<p class="i0">More fearful and beloved than peace or silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Calling towards me with a voice incessant.</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant</p>
+<p class="i0">I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened!</p>
+<p class="i0">I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom,</p>
+<p class="i0">My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">And honey in thine oaths and lamentations.</p>
+<p class="i0">I played about thy feet that know not resting</p>
+<p class="i0">And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow</p>
+<p class="i0">With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter</p>
+<p class="i0">Are tossed in feathered gaiety about <span class="locked">thee&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing,</p>
+<p class="i0">Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns,</p>
+<p class="i0">While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter;</p>
+<p class="i0">Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring,</p>
+<p class="i0">As of the angry ocean in her travail ...</p>
+<p class="i0">They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled;</p>
+<p class="i0">Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion</p>
+<p class="i0">Here crucified each day with lust and hunger,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hung up unlovely in the open market;</p>
+<p class="i0">Made gay with paper garlands, covered over</p>
+<p class="i0">With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest the elect in passing should be startled,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour!</p>
+<p class="i0">With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic</p>
+<p class="i0">Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.</p>
+<p class="i0">Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,</p>
+<p class="i0">The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;</p>
+<p class="i0">The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">A million faces scattered like confetti,</p>
+<p class="i0">All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing.</p>
+<p class="i0">There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary,</p>
+<p class="i0">Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling</p>
+<p class="i0">In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses,</p>
+<p class="i0">How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spent in the evening like a rose of fever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fainting before us paler than a lily.</p>
+<p class="i0">While here each day self-satisfied and placid</p>
+<p class="i0">Moves opulent among the groves of summer;</p>
+<p class="i0">The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes,</p>
+<p class="i0">The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard,</p>
+<p class="i0">Please for a while until the spirit sickens</p>
+<p class="i0">And turns her panting to her ancient lover.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses,</p>
+<p class="i0">Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture</p>
+<p class="i0">Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses</p>
+<p class="i0">Like hungry animals eat up the spaces</p>
+<p class="i0">And close upon the miles that God created,</p>
+<p class="i0">With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening</p>
+<p class="i0">To the far rhythm in the drums of battle,</p>
+<p class="i0">As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting,</p>
+<p class="i0">I feel the scamper of your feet approaching</p>
+<p class="i0">And your great starving arms and strangling fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1914</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Slowly</span> the pale feet of morning</p>
+<p class="i4">Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous lamplight,</p>
+<p class="i2">Colourless, cold, as the rainclad</p>
+<p class="i0">Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out sea-ward.</p>
+<p class="i2">Slowly the fingers of dawn-light</p>
+<p class="i0">Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing</p>
+<p class="i0">From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.</p>
+<p class="i2">Smoothly the wild hair of darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep veils.</p>
+<p class="i2">Patiently, Morning, the priestess</p>
+<p class="i0">Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness,</p>
+<p class="i2">Gashed with the daggers of street-lights,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister <span class="locked">kisses,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i2">Morning with healing and kindness</p>
+<p class="i0">Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter,</p>
+<p class="i2">Sweeps up the rags of our shadows</p>
+<p class="i0">That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">What</span> have I to do with them,</p>
+<p class="i4">The red athletes in their snow-white clothes?</p>
+<p class="i0">They are sun lovers and moon haters,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toiling or playing in the fields</p>
+<p class="i0">Whereon no shadows lie,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pensively, whispering <span class="locked">together&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">They are space lovers and haters of the stars,</p>
+<p class="i0">Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see</p>
+<p class="i0">The tiaraed brows of darkness.</p>
+<p class="i0">I weary of their striving upward and onward,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the green hush of twilight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where silence drips from the trees,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the solemn avenues</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the ghosts blow by</p>
+<p class="i0">Along with a drift of leaves.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Let us linger awhile</p>
+<p class="i0">Far away from the frets and wars of the world,</p>
+<p class="i0">From the strong men</p>
+<p class="i0">With their strident hymning voices and marching <span class="locked">feet&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Let us walk alone</p>
+<p class="i0">For the love of our own shadows</p>
+<p class="i0">Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver,</p>
+<p class="i0">With behind us the sky's grey curtain</p>
+<p class="i0">Drawn backward from the moon....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us sit by the fireside</p>
+<p class="i0">And hear the wind's shrill orchestras,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fiddle and fife and flute,</p>
+<p class="i0">And omened bagpipe screaming....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us lie abed and dream</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the long summer's morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Of trivial things, and beautiful....</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden gong;</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us run through pools of wine</p>
+<p class="i0">And be splashed with purple.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Let us, being sick, make merry,</p>
+<p class="i0">And rejoice when we are weary.</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Drinking to Death.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">What have we to do with them,</p>
+<p class="i0">Sons of the sun and the soil,</p>
+<p class="i0">Daughters of the hearth and the field?</p>
+<p class="i0">They that remake the world</p>
+<p class="i0">Melting our idols for silver,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our goblets for gold;</p>
+<p class="i0">Tearing our temples down</p>
+<p class="i0">To build their red brick villages.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The doomed world faints into mist,</p>
+<p class="i0">World of our indolence and dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the faces and bodies we love</p>
+<p class="i0">Sink through oblivion, and are seen</p>
+<p class="i0">Dimly, as divers through the waters.</p>
+<p class="i0">Old worlds and new worlds!</p>
+<p class="i0">Let us slip between them,</p>
+<p class="i0">And float on the stream that floweth <span class="locked">nowhither&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our red ambitions burn</p>
+<p class="i0">To a blue smoke of forgetting;</p>
+<p class="i0">Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Among</span> the crumbling arches of decay</p>
+<p class="i4">Where all around the red new buildings crept,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where huge machines had rolled the past away,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Among the ruins I beheld a man</p>
+<p class="i0">Who heeded not the engines as they neared,</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting dead carnivals upon a fan,</p>
+<p class="i0">He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And here and there were flung a mess of things,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses,</p>
+<p class="i0">Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A carven sabre hung upon the wall,</p>
+<p class="i0">A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it,</p>
+<p class="i0">A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl,</p>
+<p class="i0">A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And mirrors flashed their argent memories</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed,</p>
+<p class="i0">While ghostly faces of past vanities</p>
+<p class="i0">Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The stranger turned his head and bowed to me</p>
+<p class="i0">And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair.</p>
+<p class="i0">I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see,</p>
+<p class="i0">You really have a fine collection there."</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">He bowed to me again, and in his hand</p>
+<p class="i0">Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye</p>
+<p class="i0">With beckoning lights&mdash;I could not <span class="locked">understand&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span></div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">So much he loved their frail inconsequence.</p>
+<p class="i0">I spoke of progress conquering decay,</p>
+<p class="i0">And tired the stillness with my common sense</p>
+<p class="i0">Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But I have never met so queer a man,</p>
+<p class="i0">"I better love my memories," he said,</p>
+<p class="i0">"Look at those painted figures on the fan,</p>
+<p class="i0">How delicate and wistful are the dead."</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">As</span> a nun's face from her black draperies</p>
+<p class="i4">So full of mystery the moon looks down.</p>
+<p class="i0">She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smiling away, to watch them swell and die.</p>
+<p class="i0">She dreams of music played among the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed.</p>
+<p class="i0">Above the city glittering giddily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Above the jostling heads of man she moves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1912</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> sun is lord of life and colour,</p>
+<p class="i4">Blood of the rose and hyacinth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hair of the sea and forests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crown of the cornfields,</p>
+<p class="i0">Body of the hills.</p>
+<p class="i0">The moon is the harlot of Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Slaughterer of the Sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Priestess and poisoner she goes</p>
+<p class="i0">With all her silver flock of wandering souls,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her chant of wailing waters,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes</p>
+<p class="i0">Bound all around with bandages of mist....</p>
+<p class="i0">The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes;</p>
+<p class="i0">The living are as cherries that bow to the morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Beckoning to the loitering stranger,</p>
+<p class="i0">The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads.</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as frozen skeleton branches</p>
+<p class="i0">Whereon the stillness perches like an owl....</p>
+<p class="i0">The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="BAHAMA_ISLANDS" id="BAHAMA_ISLANDS">BAHAMA ISLANDS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">All</span> down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream</p>
+<p class="i4">The negroes go, black faces crowding together;</p>
+<p class="i0">And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures,</p>
+<p class="i0">The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's <span class="locked">wing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We have rest here and a monotony of wheels,</p>
+<p class="i0">A peaceful noise like bees that moan in <span class="locked">June&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries</p>
+<p class="i0">Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the window,</p>
+<p class="i0">A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of <span class="locked">desire&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And nothing rids us utterly of grief,</p>
+<p class="i0">We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<div class="stanza nobreak">
+<p class="i0">Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and scented,</p>
+<p class="i0">But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their hymns</p>
+<p class="i0">And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented,</p>
+<p class="i0">With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THOUGHTS_OF_LONDON" id="THOUGHTS_OF_LONDON">THOUGHTS OF LONDON</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Oh,</span> have I bartered and forgotten thee,</p>
+<p class="i4">Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run</p>
+<p class="i0">A ragged troop along thy streets with me?</p>
+<p class="i0">Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun,</p>
+<p class="i0">The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun,</p>
+<p class="i0">The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery?</p>
+<p class="i0">Mother of dreams and laughter and despair!</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy sins and passions baffle me again;</p>
+<p class="i0">And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="STREETS" id="STREETS">STREETS</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I am</span> going</p>
+<p class="i4">Up and down the roads and alleys</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the forests of the city,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.</p>
+<p class="i0">My mind shall wander through the streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Whistling to a vague adventure,</p>
+<p class="i0">Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer</p>
+<p class="i0">And casting them away.</p>
+<p class="i0">Dusk is creeping through the town</p>
+<p class="i0">Lighting the lamps and loitering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,</p>
+<p class="i0">Hovering clouds of peace;</p>
+<p class="i0">And behind her race the winds</p>
+<p class="i0">Whining to the scent of darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Scattering the dust</p>
+<p class="i0">With their swift hounds' feet....</p>
+<p class="i0">I am a hunter in the city's jungle,</p>
+<p class="i0">Exploring all her secret mysteries.</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her well,</p>
+<p class="i0">The moaning highways,</p>
+<p class="i0">And whispering alleys,</p>
+<p class="i0">The chimney-dishevelled roofs</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the moon walks delicately</p>
+<p class="i0">As a stray spectral cat;</p>
+<p class="i0">The little forlorn squares</p>
+<p class="i0">Where one tree stands</p>
+<p class="i0">Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the benches where the people sit</p>
+<p class="i0">And stir not from their sullen postures,</p>
+<p class="i0">Staring out where evening passes</p>
+<p class="i0">With such a sauntering dreamy step.</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,</p>
+<p class="i0">Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker</p>
+<p class="i0">Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate</p>
+<p class="i0">Picks up the littered wreck of holiday</p>
+<p class="i0">To mount the dust heap where our memories lie</p>
+<p class="i0">Sprawled in a mess of ruins....</p>
+<p class="i0">I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,</p>
+<p class="i0">Repeating each in each a dull despair,</p>
+<p class="i0">Indifferent and dignified;</p>
+<p class="i0">Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,</p>
+<p class="i0">With dismal silences of velvet carpets,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where starving souls are kept</p>
+<p class="i0">Feeding upon each other's isolations,</p>
+<p class="i0">Not daring to escape....</p>
+<p class="i0">Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me</p>
+<p class="i0">With their crude temples built in praise of lust,</p>
+<p class="i0">Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream</p>
+<p class="i0">Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods</p>
+<p class="i0">Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,</p>
+<p class="i0">Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces</p>
+<p class="i0">That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust....</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the memory-crusted taverns</p>
+<p class="i0">In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune</p>
+<p class="i0">Until the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a white minstrel stopped to sing</p>
+<p class="i0">Fantastic serenades, and called me forth</p>
+<p class="i0">Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning</p>
+<p class="i0">Dew-prismed shone the sun....</p>
+<p class="i0">I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses</p>
+<p class="i0">Are bathed in vitriol twilights,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spitting smoke,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or making oaths and mouths at one another....</p>
+<p class="i0">While between</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+<p class="i0">The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window</p>
+<p class="i0">Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging</p>
+<p class="i0">Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin....</p>
+<p class="i0">Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes</p>
+<p class="i0">I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reflective of the solitude of stars....</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am thrilled</p>
+<p class="i0">With horror and the hope for tragedies....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But, they surround my heart these weary streets,</p>
+<p class="i0">Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,</p>
+<p class="i0">And through them pass forever</p>
+<p class="i0">Those shadow figures trudging through the grey</p>
+<p class="i0">Like penitent souls through haunted corridors....</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!</p>
+<p class="i0">Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,</p>
+<p class="i0">And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.</p>
+<p class="i0">Through all the winding mazes of the city</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,</p>
+<p class="i0">And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And by the iron door,</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the windows where we sit and wait</p>
+<p class="i0">For some sweet promise to unfold itself</p>
+<p class="i0">From the shut scrolls of sleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And at the dusty curtain that divides</p>
+<p class="i0">Glory from Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">And lover from the lover....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Now in my room I sit</p>
+<p class="i0">And round me falls the darkness</p>
+<p class="i0">In rustling folds of peace.</p>
+<p class="i0">But round my heart I know</p>
+<p class="i0">No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound</p>
+<p class="i0">To shut the city out.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+<p class="i0">For I shall feel the rush of streets</p>
+<p class="i0">Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,</p>
+<p class="i0">Piercing the night's remote divinity.</p>
+<p class="i0">And I shall never rid me of these scars</p>
+<p class="i0">That time and man have cut into my thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never shake off my shoulders</p>
+<p class="i0">The burden of the city's pain.</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, never shall we escape thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Mother of mutiny and want,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thou beautiful mistress of Grief....</p>
+<p class="i0">Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights</p>
+<p class="i0">Beating with ineloquent hands</p>
+<p class="i0">The tambourines of time,</p>
+<p class="i0">The drums of war;</p>
+<p class="i0">Fevering our minds</p>
+<p class="i0">With the swollen traffic of thoughts,</p>
+<p class="i0">The wheels and rattle of an endless search....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Tired I am with wandering,</p>
+<p class="i0">Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,</p>
+<p class="i0">More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,</p>
+<p class="i0">Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Laughter</span> and singing come with the morning,</p>
+<p class="i4">When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor,</p>
+<p class="i0">And dons his arrogant clothes.</p>
+<p class="i0">But in the night,</p>
+<p class="i0">When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale,</p>
+<p class="i0">We too put off our opulent disguise</p>
+<p class="i0">And stand alone in the baffling darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fighting with our sins,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weeping for our loneliness,</p>
+<p class="i0">That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">In</span> the night I hear my loneliness calling</p>
+<p class="i4">The long shrill note of the seabird's cry</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the fuming spite of breakers,</p>
+<p class="i0">Over the brumous, sulky tides.</p>
+<p class="i0">All the ocean is craving Heavenward,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,</p>
+<p class="i0">Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waves rear their supplicating hands.</p>
+<p class="i0">Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,</p>
+<p class="i0">Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,</p>
+<p class="i0">To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,</p>
+<p class="i0">Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,</p>
+<p class="i0">Flashing their signals of <span class="locked">unrest.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,</p>
+<p class="i0">Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted <span class="locked">doors&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight</p>
+<p class="i0">That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and <span class="locked">hushed&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Through the heavy pauses of <span class="locked">sleep.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,</p>
+<p class="i0">Lest I hear my loneliness crying!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="SUNDAY" id="SUNDAY">SUNDAY</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> beautiful is the world's delight,</p>
+<p class="i4">How trivial, yet as sweet as a passing dream</p>
+<p class="i0">That makes the harassed sleeper in the night</p>
+<p class="i0">Smile, and on waking sigh. Forever the stream</p>
+<p class="i0">Of time moves onward; as in coloured boats</p>
+<p class="i0">A thousand souls go sailing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And stilly down the tide my spirit floats</p>
+<p class="i0">Singing or wailing</p>
+<p class="i0">To the tune the waters make. Here we forget a space</p>
+<p class="i0">The crawling sins of man that sting and gloat,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pain and fear that haggers every face,</p>
+<p class="i0">But vaguely and remote</p>
+<p class="i0">The strident trumpet and the clamorous voices <span class="locked">sound&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Grief doth forget to curse her Gods or pray,</p>
+<p class="i0">While pagan follies squander all around</p>
+<p class="i0">Their brief gay hours in holiday;</p>
+<p class="i0">For all prayers die when laughter is on the <span class="locked">lips.&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">How frail the moods of joy, how sweet to see them pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Like bubbles on the tide, like coloured ships</p>
+<p class="i0">Sailing on glass!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> leaves are singing, and the sea,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the sand in the wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blown grass and hurrying people;</p>
+<p class="i0">Full of melodious strings and lutes and flutes</p>
+<p class="i0">Rustling and whispering forever.</p>
+<p class="i0">The sad music of Life is in my ears,</p>
+<p class="i0">Never ceasing, never asleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">And my heart is strung between chord and chord</p>
+<p class="i0">Like a crucifix in a rosary.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">How</span> soundly sleepeth the fool,</p>
+<p class="i4">With profane snore taunting the solemn-pillared <span class="locked">night&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">He hath no dreams of restless, subtle forms</p>
+<p class="i0">That shift across a feverish vacancy;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor doth he hear the drums of time</p>
+<p class="i0">Beating against oblivion tunes of war,</p>
+<p class="i0">Goading the crippled hours on their endless <span class="locked">march&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">But waketh to yawn in the face of the sun,</p>
+<p class="i0">Then turneth back to sleep....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">How soundly the wise man sleepeth,</p>
+<p class="i0">Couched royally in the purple of the dark</p>
+<p class="i0">With his white mistress, <span class="locked">Peace&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And when the morning stealeth on his rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">As a rose he doth pluck her from the spreading tree of days,</p>
+<p class="i0">And reviveth his heart</p>
+<p class="i0">With the perfume of the world....</p>
+<p class="i0">But 'twixt the wise and the foolish</p>
+<p class="i0">Many nights shed sorrow and fear,</p>
+<p class="i0">And nets are spread for timid feet,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the waves beat on the shifting sand....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Moonlit</span> lilacs under the window,</p>
+<p class="i4">And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the white floating beams like luminous moths</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttering from bloom to bloom.</p>
+<p class="i0">Sprays of lilac flowers</p>
+<p class="i0">Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,</p>
+<p class="i0">Frozen to motionless icicles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Moonlight flows over me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Spreads her bright watery hair over my face,</p>
+<p class="i0">Full of illicit, marvellous perfumes</p>
+<p class="i0">Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;</p>
+<p class="i0">Hair of the moonlight falling about me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Old</span> woman forever sitting</p>
+<p class="i4">Alone in the large hotel under the fans,</p>
+<p class="i0">Infinitely alone where around you spin</p>
+<p class="i0">So many lives like painted tops,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smearing the void a moment with their hues,</p>
+<p class="i0">Giddily catching at balance as they pause.</p>
+<p class="i0">What crime was yours, old woman,</p>
+<p class="i0">What sin against the Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">That she should give you now</p>
+<p class="i0">A cap of dust and furrows on your cheeks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And at the end</p>
+<p class="i0">A hole dug in the mould?</p>
+<p class="i0">Is death the promise of Fate's last rebound,</p>
+<p class="i0">Revenge of Time that waits within the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">And laughs awry at life,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a kiss, for a dream, for a child that you bore,</p>
+<p class="i0">For a fresh rose pinned to your bosom?</p>
+<p class="i0">The owl is in your spirit,</p>
+<p class="i0">Blinking through the oldest tree of <span class="locked">wisdom&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And now your fingers are weaving</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold pale invisible blossoms of death</p>
+<p class="i0">Into a waxen wreath,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Time</p>
+<p class="i0">Sits down beside you knitting with quick hands</p>
+<p class="i0">Grey counterpanes to cover up a grave!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Loneliness</span> I love,</p>
+<p class="i4">And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.</p>
+<p class="i0">Loneliness I love,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands,...</p>
+<p class="i0">My spirit speaks</p>
+<p class="i0">In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy</p>
+<p class="i0">Murmuring the tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.</p>
+<p class="i0">The shadowy silences</p>
+<p class="i0">Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities,</p>
+<p class="i0">And that is why</p>
+<p class="i0">The noise of tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing,</p>
+<p class="i0">And I am clad</p>
+<p class="i0">In the lust-lipped whispering of furtive caresses.</p>
+<p class="i0">Holiness I love,</p>
+<p class="i0">And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs,</p>
+<p class="i0">The crucified feet</p>
+<p class="i0">Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.</p>
+<p class="i0">Holiness I love</p>
+<p class="i0">And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.</p>
+<p class="i0">But that is why</p>
+<p class="i0">Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear</p>
+<p class="i0">The vesture of secrecy</p>
+<p class="i0">Which hides the human nakedness of God.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I met</span> an Indian underneath a tree, under a ragged tree,</p>
+<p class="i4">His face was yellow and wrinkled like some stone whereon a God had writ</p>
+<p class="i0">And his emaciated fingers drew circles in the dust....</p>
+<p class="i0">I bent my mouth to his ear, crying "O father, O Prophet!</p>
+<p class="i0">I have wandered far over the earth troubled with doubts that will not let me rest,</p>
+<p class="i0">Canst thou not tell me with all thy wizardries and meditations</p>
+<p class="i0">The purpose of our lives upon this world,</p>
+<p class="i0">The secret truth Earth shelters in her womb?"</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But he was listening to the whispering of the mountains,</p>
+<p class="i0">To the boom of God's paces on the rocks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the swishing steps of his followers in the rivers.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then suddenly he pointed to the arched doorway in between the hills,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the mysterious purple curtain of the dusk that drooped from cliff to cliff.</p>
+<p class="i0">I saw in his eyes the vision of highborn ghosts,</p>
+<p class="i0">Of divine ivory faces wreathed with the flowers of <span class="locked">wisdom&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that he had found only the half-spoken promises of Heaven....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I saw a drunkard laughing in a tavern,</p>
+<p class="i0">His cup was tilted and the wine spilt crimson on the sprawled arms and distracted hair of a woman fallen asleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">I watched him there and wondered</p>
+<p class="i0">If ever the bubbling goblins of wine had whispered him life's secret.</p>
+<p class="i0">But he raised the cup of his carousals and gazed at emptiness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Toasting some wild, irreverent dream,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Some flame-red salamander pirouetting among the dead waste ashes of <span class="locked">time&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that he had found only the secrets of sleep....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">A woman sat within a little house,</p>
+<p class="i0">Scolding and singing ballads to her child,</p>
+<p class="i0">And all around came the quarrel of children's voices.</p>
+<p class="i0">Yet one boy sat apart within the furthest corner of the room</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting an animal with coloured chalks.</p>
+<p class="i0">I lingered by the fire thinking of life, its vanities and mysteries,</p>
+<p class="i0">But the woman did not heed me,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor her pale son that sat so hunched and still,</p>
+<p class="i0">Painting his visions with the broken chalks,</p>
+<p class="i0">For they had discovered the absorbing painful secrets of giving birth....</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tb">* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">It was evening as I wandered,</p>
+<p class="i0">By a lake two lovers leaned, smiling to see their faces in the water,</p>
+<p class="i0">For they had found within each other's souls</p>
+<p class="i0">An argent flattering mirror wherein to gaze and see their faces change with all the moods and shadows of the day....</p>
+<p class="i0">Not here should I discover the answer to bring light into my darkness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Into the dim psychic crystals of my soul opalled with the changing colours of <span class="locked">unrest&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">So I went away into the loneliness, asking the forests and the mountains and the sea</p>
+<p class="i0">The knowledge of life's baffling mysteries.</p>
+<p class="i0">But they were roaring in a wind of memories,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gathering the rain into their bodies to make them fierce and strong,</p>
+<p class="i0">Heaving their shoulders upward to the morning,</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning their foreheads with sunlight.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+<p class="i0">And I knew that they were Life itself,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pushing vehemence that rushes from the strangling arms of Death,</p>
+<p class="i0">Nor could they guess</p>
+<p class="i0">The purpose of God's beauty in their joy....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">From</span> the fathomless depth of my boredom, from the</p>
+<p class="i4">last room of its emptiness, an elf has come to play</p>
+<p class="i0">with me.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">As comes a little gold spider to a prison cell teasing the</p>
+<p class="i0">criminal from his darkness to tear at a thread of sunlight,</p>
+<p class="i0">and kiss the mouth of a shy morning whispering through</p>
+<p class="i0">the window.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">An elf has come to dance with me, blown like a leaf on</p>
+<p class="i0">the path of my autumn lassitude.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Sprightly one, dervish! You are the living adventure</p>
+<p class="i0">born of my dead childhood, you are the small god in the</p>
+<p class="i0">temples of my unbelief, you are the bird that nests in ruined</p>
+<p class="i0">temples, laying your silver eggs by moonlight and singing</p>
+<p class="i0">when the pagan birds are still.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">You are the dream-sower in the fields of sleep, you have</p>
+<p class="i0">jingled the star-bells on the hood of darkness, and from the</p>
+<p class="i0">knarled, stark tree of time have flung me the apple of</p>
+<p class="i0">eternal laughter.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">Lolling</span> in snow, like kings in ermine coats, the gilt-crowned</p>
+<p class="i4">bottles lie.... Our thoughts are dangled in</p>
+<p class="i0">a laughter of leaves as bunches of blue and yellow grapes</p>
+<p class="i0">for faery beggars, for ragged fancies to pluck and taste.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our music shall be the minstrelsy of ghostly ballad-mongers</p>
+<p class="i0">that have stolen from the ashen banquets of death to bless</p>
+<p class="i0">our revels.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Our spirits shall flit like those winged faces of cherubs</p>
+<p class="i0">that never can alight, but swing forever on the azure ribbons</p>
+<p class="i0">of the sky.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And all our dreams and kisses shall be as the rose-leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">falling on ancient festivals, as the shadows of rose-leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">falling on phantom lovers in the sleep-pillared temples of</p>
+<p class="i0">our first archaic passion.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> roots of our longing are probing the heart of night,</p>
+<p class="i4">delving and twining together that our ultimate truth</p>
+<p class="i0">may grow out of the darkness that bewilders and nourishes.</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind</p>
+<p class="i0">themselves like a tight crown over our heads.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall</p>
+<p class="i0">prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green</p>
+<p class="i0">ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire</p>
+<p class="i0">shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays</p>
+<p class="i0">that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright</p>
+<p class="i0">foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into</p>
+<p class="i0">a fountain of blossoms.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="VAHDAH" id="VAHDAH">VAHDAH</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Sun-aureoled</span> lilies are your priestesses,</p>
+<p class="i4">They stand like choirs in silver surplices,</p>
+<p class="i0">Melodious streams of silence fill the room,</p>
+<p class="i0">And pensive listeners lean within the gloom</p>
+<p class="i0">Of purple quietness. A laughter full of <span class="locked">holiness&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Like the wild bells of lilies ringing in the loneliness</p>
+<p class="i0">Of star-reflected gardens walled with <span class="locked">night,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Thrills from your soul which empties its delight</p>
+<p class="i0">As rain on lilies, or as sunlight falling slenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">To gild their ivory temples, and as moonlight shutting tenderly</p>
+<p class="i0">Their alabaster doors.... A white peace grows,</p>
+<p class="i0">And love, within your spirit like a lily and a rose.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap4"><span class="smcap1">Starlit</span> silences!</p>
+<p class="i4">Breeding fears, swarming with sudden deaths,</p>
+<p class="i0">With separations, burdens, and despairs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Weaving slow eerie fancies in my brain ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Forlorn shorn monks go down the cloisters of quietness</p>
+<p class="i0">With tortured crucifixes cut in ivory</p>
+<p class="i0">Clasped in their praying hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">And psalmed with lips renunciate of kisses ...</p>
+<p class="i0">Forgotten days are painted on the night</p>
+<p class="i0">In parables and symbols of remorse</p>
+<p class="i0">That jeer from out the wind-stirred tapestries.</p>
+<p class="i0">The hangman's rope coils upward like a snake</p>
+<p class="i0">Out of the death-coloured waters,</p>
+<p class="i0">While the black barges pass</p>
+<p class="i0">Funereal,</p>
+<p class="i0">Carrying doom from mist to mist....</p>
+<p class="i0">And madmen steal about the wintry parks</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the high glum walls of an asylum,</p>
+<p class="i0">With eyes lit up in phosphorescent ecstasies,</p>
+<p class="i0">With fumbling hands</p>
+<p class="i0">That grope for things invisibly obscene.</p>
+<p class="i0">Even the clock</p>
+<p class="i0">Grown idiot too from keeping madmen's time</p>
+<p class="i0">Gibbers the hours away in irrelevant chimes....</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence embalms the dead with scented bands</p>
+<p class="i0">And is the watchman to deserted houses,</p>
+<p class="i0">And draws the violet curtain on the day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And fits a mask of silver to the moon.</p>
+<p class="i0">Silence brings corpses from the crypts of memory</p>
+<p class="i0">And sits them round us in the empty chairs,</p>
+<p class="i0">Opens the secret chambers of our hopes</p>
+<p class="i0">And shows us there in awful pantomime</p>
+<p class="i0">Lust wreathing love with poppies and with ashes,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Beauty dressing Sin for carnival,</p>
+<p class="i0">And Peace made drunken with a cup of blood.</p>
+<p class="i0">It winds as ivy round our listening thoughts</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+<p class="i0">Shutting all sounds away, enclosing us</p>
+<p class="i0">Within its stifled virid twilight....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Cry out, sing, make noises,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bacchantes, revellers, clowns!</p>
+<p class="i0">Bring myriad lamps in clusters, likening grapes</p>
+<p class="i0">That spill the wine of light into our gloom;</p>
+<p class="i0">Pressing against our lips</p>
+<p class="i0">The red grape-kisses of pleasure.</p>
+<p class="i0">Bring the hounds,</p>
+<p class="i0">The garlanded white ones,</p>
+<p class="i0">To bay and snarl and tear the flying rags</p>
+<p class="i0">Of stillness shadowing away!</p>
+<p class="i0">Lean over me, O Life,</p>
+<p class="i0">And whisper all thy lying flatteries</p>
+<p class="i0">That drag me back from Silence and her dead.</p>
+<p class="i0">I have kept vigil on my soul too long</p>
+<p class="i0">Within this vast cathedral of dim sleep,</p>
+<p class="i0">Languidly gathering</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold grey lilies of the stars</p>
+<p class="i0">To slip between her passive waxen hands....</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> mountain is an Emperor.</p>
+<p class="i4">The clouds are his beard, and the stars his diadem;</p>
+<p class="i0">His bauble is the moon;</p>
+<p class="i0">He is dressed in silver forests, and the mist his train;</p>
+<p class="i0">His feet are two white rivers.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I know</span> what happiness <span class="locked">is&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i4">It is the negation of thought,</p>
+<p class="i0">The shutting off</p>
+<p class="i0">Of all those brooding phantoms that surround</p>
+<p class="i0">As dank trees in a forest</p>
+<p class="i0">Cutting the daylight into rags,</p>
+<p class="i0">Caging the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">In rusted prison bars.</p>
+<p class="i0">Happiness loves to lie at a river's edge</p>
+<p class="i0">And make no song,</p>
+<p class="i0">But listen to the water's murmuring wisdom,</p>
+<p class="i0">The kissing touch of leaves wind-bowed together,</p>
+<p class="i0">The feathery swish of cloud wings on a hill;</p>
+<p class="i0">Opening wide the violet-petalled doors</p>
+<p class="i0">Of every shy and cloistered sense,</p>
+<p class="i0">That all the scent and music of the world</p>
+<p class="i0">May rush into the soul.</p>
+<p class="i0">And happiness expands</p>
+<p class="i0">The rainbow arch for a procession of dreams,</p>
+<p class="i0">For moth-like fancies winged with evening,</p>
+<p class="i0">For dove-breasted silences,</p>
+<p class="i0">For shadowy reveries</p>
+<p class="i0">And starry pilgrims....</p>
+<p class="i0">I know what happiness <span class="locked">is&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">It is the giving back to Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">Of all our furtive thefts,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lurid jewels that we stole away</p>
+<p class="i0">From passion, sin and pain,</p>
+<p class="i0">Because they glittered strangely, luring us</p>
+<p class="i0">With their forbidden beauty.</p>
+<p class="i0">Because our childish fingers curiously</p>
+<p class="i0">Crave the pale secrets of the moon</p>
+<p class="i0">And grope for dangerous toys.</p>
+<p class="i0">Happiness comes in giving back to Earth</p>
+<p class="i0">The things we took from her with violent hands,</p>
+<p class="i0">Remembering only</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That her dust is our garment,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her fruits our endeavour,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her waters our priestess,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her leaves our interpreters to God,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her hills our infinite patience.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Long</span> hath the pen lain idle in my hand,</p>
+<p class="i4">Or traced slow sentences without a rhyme,</p>
+<p class="i0">Words strung at random to beguile the time</p>
+<p class="i0">As children threading beads upon a strand.</p>
+<p class="i0">I have strayed far away from fairyland</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose little hills grow steep and hard to climb;</p>
+<p class="i0">I creep along the valleys in the slime,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or hide me like an ostrich in the sand.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">For I have sought a mellow idleness,</p>
+<p class="i0">To be forever buried as a fly</p>
+<p class="i0">Lies casketed in amber; where the stress</p>
+<p class="i0">Of peril, hunger, Death can never cry</p>
+<p class="i0">To wake me from my sanguine weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Or cloud the lucid stillness with a sigh.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I laid</span> my heart on a stone</p>
+<p class="i4">And stood in the wood to watch.</p>
+<p class="i0">Presently a priest came by;</p>
+<p class="i0">He hid it in his cowl</p>
+<p class="i0">And buried it in the graveyard.</p>
+<p class="i0">Now is it grown into a cyclamen tree,</p>
+<p class="i0">Clustering over the wall,</p>
+<p class="i0">Beckoning far along the twilight road;</p>
+<p class="i0">Nodding and singing where the cypress moans,</p>
+<p class="i0">Ringing its little bells while the great bell tolls.</p>
+<p class="i0">Whiter than ghosts are its flowers,</p>
+<p class="i0">And its scent is sweeter than ghostly <span class="locked">music&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">All the men and priests that pass</p>
+<p class="i0">In the night when the stars lean down,</p>
+<p class="i0">Smell the heavy fragrance there</p>
+<p class="i0">And feel the gentle touch of dripping dew.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then they cross themselves and go</p>
+<p class="i0">Hurriedly, warily,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dreaming of pale women,</p>
+<p class="i0">Under the pale stars.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> cold light steals into my soul</p>
+<p class="i4">Revealing its emptiness,</p>
+<p class="i0">The cold winds batter at my heart</p>
+<p class="i0">And make its lonely tenant shake with <span class="locked">fear&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">The raindrops slide across the window-glass</p>
+<p class="i0">Like sighs that fall from patient weariness;</p>
+<p class="i0">And coldly smiling time</p>
+<p class="i0">Peers with his clock-face, ticking in my brain</p>
+<p class="i0">The pulse of a monotonous remorse.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">The</span> caravans of spring are in the town,</p>
+<p class="i4">Lighting their brilliant torches in the park,</p>
+<p class="i0">Dangling their bells, engirdling each stark</p>
+<p class="i0">Black tree with coloured rings. The houses frown</p>
+<p class="i0">Against the beryl sky, yet wear a crown</p>
+<p class="i0">Of hazy dream, or flash a golden spark</p>
+<p class="i0">Of sun-fire in their windows glum and dark;</p>
+<p class="i0">The people blow like petals up and down.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">But London tires at evening, each grey street</p>
+<p class="i0">Mourns as the slow procession passes by,</p>
+<p class="i0">Traffic and crowd, and Time on loitering feet.</p>
+<p class="i0">Spring droops his lute, the slender echoes sigh,</p>
+<p class="i0">And wistfully the jaded revellers meet,</p>
+<p class="i0">Their pomp in tatters and their wreaths awry.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I dread</span> the beauty of approaching spring</p>
+<p class="i4">Now the old month is dead and the young moon</p>
+<p class="i0">Has pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.</p>
+<p class="i0">My tired soul is startled out of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">By all the urging joy of bud and leaf,</p>
+<p class="i0">And in the barren yard where I have paced</p>
+<p class="i0">Content with prison and despair's monotony,</p>
+<p class="i0">The trees break into music wild and shrill,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">Bewildering my loneliness with beauty....</p>
+<p class="i0">For winter with her melancholy face</p>
+<p class="i0">Shone back my miseries as in a glass,</p>
+<p class="i0">And wept and whined in harmony with me;</p>
+<p class="i0">And I could listen by the withering ashes</p>
+<p class="i0">To the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,</p>
+<p class="i0">And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,</p>
+<p class="i0">And hating, hear the laughter of the wind</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose mad hands tear the sky.</p>
+<p class="i0">But now again the promise of the spring</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,</p>
+<p class="i0">To where the lilied altar shines with peace,</p>
+<p class="i0">And the white priestess comes</p>
+<p class="i0">Crowning each candle with a gold desire</p>
+<p class="i0">Engirdling with pallors</p>
+<p class="i0">The forehead of a divine ghost.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindle</p>
+<p class="i0">And spring is but a radiant beckoning</p>
+<p class="i0">To death that follows slowly, silently....</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,</p>
+<p class="i0">O flash of silver in the wings of dawn</p>
+<p class="i0">That are spread out and closed. O hush of night</p>
+<p class="i0">Breathless with love, oh swish of whispering tide</p>
+<p class="i0">That swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.</p>
+<p class="i0">O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+<p class="i0">That grow too soon to weariness and close;</p>
+<p class="i0">O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;</p>
+<p class="i0">O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,</p>
+<p class="i0">And mystery of flower in the bud.</p>
+<p class="i0">O burning galaxy of buttercups,</p>
+<p class="i0">And drone of bees above the pouting <span class="locked">rose,&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">O twilit lovers stilled with reverie</p>
+<p class="i0">And footprints of them swerving on the sand</p>
+<p class="i0">And darkness of them clasped against the sky!</p>
+<p class="i0">I see beyond the glory of your days</p>
+<p class="i0">The grey days marching one behind the other</p>
+<p class="i0">To the bleak tunes of silence.</p>
+<p class="i0">When mists shall smear the radiance of the moon</p>
+<p class="i0">And the lean thief shall pass,</p>
+<p class="i0">Snatching the glittering toys away from love,</p>
+<p class="i0">Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.</p>
+<p class="i0">And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,</p>
+<p class="i0">Shall go the way that her long shadow points,</p>
+<p class="i0">Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="TO_MY_FATHER" id="TO_MY_FATHER">TO MY FATHER</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap1"><span class="smcap1">I cannot</span> think that you have gone away,</p>
+<p class="i4">You loved the earth&mdash;and life lit up your eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">And flickered in your smile that would surmise</p>
+<p class="i0">Death as a song, a poem, or a play.</p>
+<p class="i0">You were reborn afresh with every day,</p>
+<p class="i0">And baffled fortune in some new disguise.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! can it perish when the body dies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">We shall not see you come to us and leave</p>
+<p class="i0">A conqueror&mdash;nor catch on fairy wing</p>
+<p class="i0">Some slender fancy&mdash;nor new wonders weave</p>
+<p class="i0">Upon the loom of your imagining.</p>
+<p class="i0">The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve</p>
+<p class="i0">Her child that was a pilgrim and a king.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1917</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="TO_MY_MOTHER" id="TO_MY_MOTHER">TO MY MOTHER</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">At</span> evening when the twilight curtains fall,</p>
+<p class="i4">Before the lamps are lit within my room,</p>
+<p class="i0">My memories hang bright upon the gloom,</p>
+<p class="i0">Like ancient frescoes painted on the wall.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And I can hear the call of birds and bells</p>
+<p class="i0">And shadowy sound of waves, and wind through leaves</p>
+<p class="i0">And wind that rustles through the burnished sheaves,</p>
+<p class="i0">And far off voices whispering farewells.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I dream again the joy I used to know</p>
+<p class="i0">While straying by the sea that hardly sighed</p>
+<p class="i0">A sorrow in my singing, as the tide</p>
+<p class="i0">Crept up to clasp me, smiled, and let me go.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">And I remember all the glad lost hours,</p>
+<p class="i0">The racing of brown rabbits on the hill,</p>
+<p class="i0">The winds that prowled around the lonely mill,</p>
+<p class="i0">Laburnum laughter, music of the flowers.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The berries plucked with loitering delight,</p>
+<p class="i0">Staining the dusk with purple, till the thought</p>
+<p class="i0">Of starry little ghosts behind us caught</p>
+<p class="i0">Our hearts and made us fearful of the night.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The London evenings huddled in the rain</p>
+<p class="i0">Whose misty prisms shone with lamplight pale,</p>
+<p class="i0">Making our hearts seem sinister and frail,</p>
+<p class="i0">Fainting our thoughts with mystery and pain.</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">I have a world of memories to dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">To touch with loving fingers as a sigh</p>
+<p class="i0">Revives a little flame and lets it die.</p>
+<p class="i0">Ah, were the days as lovely as they seem</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">Now that they look so peaceful lying dead?</p>
+<p class="i0">And is it all the hope of Joy we have,</p>
+<p class="i0">The broken trophies of the things she gave</p>
+<p class="i0">And took away to give us dreams instead?</p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<p class="i0">The things we love and lose before we find</p>
+<p class="i0">The way to love them well enough and keep,</p>
+<p class="i0">That now are woven on the looms of sleep</p>
+<p class="i0">That now are only music of the wind.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">London</span> grows sad at evening,</p>
+<p class="i4">And we at the windows sit</p>
+<p class="i0">To watch her moods,</p>
+<p class="i0">Wearying with her.</p>
+<p class="i0">Even a noise of laughter from the street</p>
+<p class="i0">Sounds in our ears</p>
+<p class="i0">Like something dropped and shattered on the stone.</p>
+<p class="i0">Then her musician comes,</p>
+<p class="i0">A wandering, malicious spirit;</p>
+<p class="i0">The organ grinder, playing those old tunes</p>
+<p class="i0">We know too well,</p>
+<p class="i0">That hurt us with fatigue.</p>
+<p class="i0">Till Hope like a harlequin,</p>
+<p class="i0">His glitter hidden in a ragged coat,</p>
+<p class="i0">The lamplighter, goes by,</p>
+<p class="i0">Planting his pale flames in the dusk.</p>
+</div>
+<p>1918</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem-container">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap5"><span class="smcap1">Ah!</span> the spring,</p>
+<p class="i4">Sudden, surprising,</p>
+<p class="i0">Melting the iron scales around the heart</p>
+<p class="i0">As the earliest sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Melts the cold case of dew on <span class="locked">leaves&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the streets like odorous rivers</p>
+<p class="i0">Chanting the echoes of <span class="locked">seas&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the flowers in shop-windows</p>
+<p class="i0">Beseeching, persuasive,</p>
+<p class="i0">Reluctant to let their beauty flow away</p>
+<p class="i0">From thoughts that mirror them in <span class="locked">passing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Beautiful exiles</p>
+<p class="i0">Fluttering in their chains,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thrilled with the noise of bees,</p>
+<p class="i0">The music of meadows</p>
+<p class="i0">Still hovering around <span class="locked">them&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Flower fingers, flower-touches,</p>
+<p class="i0">Passional, reminiscent,</p>
+<p class="i0">Rippling the soul's still <span class="locked">waters&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Flower galaxies,</p>
+<p class="i0">Enamelled bridges arching from dream to dream,</p>
+<p class="i0">Garlands splashing over the eyes of satyrs,</p>
+<p class="i0">The furtive woodland eyes,</p>
+<p class="i0">The pointed inquisitive <span class="locked">ears&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Pallid flowers foaming on hill-crests,</p>
+<p class="i0">Gushing heavenwards</p>
+<p class="i0">From a sea of stormy <span class="locked">mountains&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Opening and shutting exquisite doors,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the senses open to music,</p>
+<p class="i0">Shut upon silence,</p>
+<p class="i0">Open to beauty,</p>
+<p class="i0">Close their caskets upon <span class="locked">love&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Ah! the flowers in the windows,</p>
+<p class="i0">Amorous of poets</p>
+<p class="i0">Making a chaplet of song!</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="newpage">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak left"><a name="THE_UNDERTONE_OF_THE_VOLGA_BOAT_SONG" id="THE_UNDERTONE_OF_THE_VOLGA_BOAT_SONG">THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG</a></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poem-container nobreak">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<p class="drop-cap3"><span class="smcap1">O</span> God,</p>
+<p class="i4">We have nothing to give Thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are as fog that drifts on the river,</p>
+<p class="i0">As the wailing of voices blown through <span class="locked">mist&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are as those that carry bags of dust</p>
+<p class="i0">Heaping them with the <span class="locked">dust&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are covered with the dust of days,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are pale from the dust of dreamless nights</p>
+<p class="i0">Shaken before we were <span class="locked">rested&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">At dawn we are found by the sun</p>
+<p class="i0">Adrift, labouring, thinking of <span class="locked">nothing&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our wine is bitter, it has made us drunk,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our bread is coarse,</p>
+<p class="i0">We are always athirst and hungry....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God, we have been patient,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have grown old in weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">Our lives are as the labouring of the <span class="locked">wind&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">We are huddled together in the dawn,</p>
+<p class="i0">The sleeping houses pass us,</p>
+<p class="i0">The dawn is a field of nettles</p>
+<p class="i0">Stinging us from rest....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have nothing to give Thee but patience,</p>
+<p class="i0">We have suffered evil and believed Thee good,</p>
+<p class="i0">Thy face is the gentleness of the distance,</p>
+<p class="i0">The river is placid with the thought of <span class="locked">Thee&mdash;</span></p>
+<p class="i0">Our tears have washed us harder than the rocks,</p>
+<p class="i0">And like the rocks we wait,</p>
+<p class="i0">Grow old with waiting....</p>
+<p class="i0">Weariness, the river</p>
+<p class="i0">Flowing through banks of sleep....</p>
+<p class="i0">O God, we have nothing to give Thee,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take our great weariness,</p>
+<p class="i0">We that have never lived and never slept,</p>
+<p class="i0">Take our long weariness, O God!...</p>
+</div>
+<p>1919</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="newpage p4 transnote">
+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="Transcribers_Notes" id="Transcribers_Notes">Transcribers' Notes:</a></h2>
+
+<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.</p>
+
+<p>Ellipses are reproduced as printed in the original book.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the poems' titles appear only in the Table of Contents, not with
+the poems themselves.</p>
+
+<p>When the Transcriber could not to determine whether a verse at the top
+of a page was a new stanza or part of the stanza on the previous page,
+the latter was assumed.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_42">42</a>: "sombring" was printed that way.</p>
+
+<p>Page <a href="#Page_89">89</a>: "Because I can not" was printed with "can" and "not" as
+separate words.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+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: Poems
+
+Author: Iris Tree
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2014 [EBook #45643]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clarity, Charlie Howard, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ POEMS BY
+ IRIS TREE
+
+
+The author returns thanks for permission to use in this collection of
+her poems, those which have appeared in Poetry, Vanity Fair and the
+"Wheels" Anthology.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+ HEAD OF IRIS TREE BY JACOB EPSTEIN
+]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+ Poems
+ by
+ Iris Tree
+
+ Decorations by
+ Curtis Moffat
+
+ LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
+ NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
+ MCMXX
+
+
+
+
+ Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
+ New York, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+ PAGE
+ "YOU PREACH TO ME OF LAWS, YOU TIE MY LIMBS" 11
+
+ "WE ARE THE CARETAKERS OF EMPTY HOUSES" 12
+
+ "FROM FAR AWAY THE LOST ADVENTURES GLEAM" 13
+
+ "GIVE ME, O GOD, THE POWER OF LAUGHTER STILL" 14
+
+ "WINDING DOWN THE STREET IN WEARIED GAIETY" 15
+
+ "TRANQUILLITY STIRRED BY A SUDDEN SPASM" 17
+
+ "I COULD EXPLAIN" 18
+
+ "I FEEL IN ME A MANIFOLD DESIRE" 19
+
+ "SILENCE" 20
+
+ "I SHOULD LIKE TO SAY TO THE WORLD" 21
+
+ "YOU PASS AS IN A DRUGGED DELIRIUM" 22
+
+ "O FACES THAT LOOK SO COLDLY AT ME" 23
+
+ "I SEE MYSELF IN MANY DIFFERENT DRESSES" 24
+
+ "THERE ARE SONGS ENOUGH OF LOVE, OF JOY, OF GRIEF" 25
+
+ "HOW OFTEN, WHEN THE THOUGHT OF SUICIDE" 27
+
+ "IT IS STILL SOMETHING TO HAVE CHEATED GOD" 28
+
+ "WHAT WORDS THAT MOVE ON WINGS IN A LONG DRIFT" 29
+
+ "I THINK MYSELF" 30
+
+ "THE ADORED, WILD, STRANGE, IRRESISTIBLE" 31
+
+ A ROSE 32
+
+ "LIKE FLOCKS OF TIRED BIRDS WHEN AUTUMN COMES" 33
+
+ "OH, JUST BEYOND THE CURVE OF IDEAL QUEST" 34
+
+ "AH! YOU, FROM THE SMALL HIGH-WALLED ACRE OF YOUR LIVES" 35
+
+ "MOUTH OF THE DUST I KISS, CORRUPTION ABSOLUTE" 36
+
+ "THE CURTAINS ARE DRAWN AS THOUGH IT STILL WERE NIGHT" 37
+
+ BLACK VELVET 38
+
+ NERVES 39
+
+ "MY PAIN HAS ALL THE PATIENCE OF A NUN" 40
+
+ "THE SCANDAL-MONGER AFTER ALL IS RIGHT" 41
+
+ "WOODS OF BROWN GLOOM SOMBRING WITH THE HUSH OF DEATH" 42
+
+ "I FEEL SO MUCH ALONE" 43
+
+ THE COMPLEX LIFE 44
+
+ "SHALL WE BE CHRISTENED POETS, CHILDREN OF GOD" 46
+
+ "WHEN I AM WEARY AT THE ANTIC CHANCE" 47
+
+ MOODS 48
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+ "NOW IS THE EVENING DIPPED KNEE-DEEP IN BLOOD" 53
+
+ "BLOW UPON BLOW THEY BRUISE THE DAYLIGHT WAN" 54
+
+ "A RAGGED DRUMMER RIDES ALONG THE STREET" 56
+
+ ZEPPELINS 58
+
+ "O FLATTERY, IMPOSTURE, BATTLE SHOW" 62
+
+ "WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE BEGGAR, AND THE SINNER, AND THE SAD" 63
+
+ "IF I WERE WHAT I WOULD BE, AND COULD BREAK" 64
+
+ HOLY RUSSIA 65
+
+ "HOW DEEPLY NURTURED IS YOUR FOOLISHNESS" 67
+
+ "OF ALL WHO DIED IN SILENCE FAR AWAY" 68
+
+ "AND AFTERWARDS, WHEN HONOUR HAS MADE GOOD" 69
+
+ "PITY THE SLAIN THAT LAID AWAY THEIR LIVES" 70
+
+
+FLAME
+
+ "YOU HAVE UNDERSTOOD SO LITTLE OF ME, AND MY ADORATION" 75
+
+ "LULLED ARE THE DAZZLING COLOURS OF THE DAY" 77
+
+ "WASHED AT MY FEET BY THE CURDED FOAM OF SLUGGISH WAVES" 78
+
+ "MY POEMS CANNOT LAUGH. THEY ARE THE VOICE" 79
+
+ "ON THE HILL THERE IS A TAVERN, LONG-LOVED, WELL-REMEMBERED" 80
+
+ "OH CANST THOU NOT HEAR IN MY HEART ALL ITS WHISPERING FEARS" 81
+
+ "AS IN THE SILENCE THE CLEAR MOONLIGHT DRIPS" 83
+
+ "I CAN BUT GIVE THEE UNSUBSTANTIAL THINGS" 84
+
+ "I HAVE NO OTHER FRIEND BUT THEE" 85
+
+ "BODIES HEAVING LIKE WAVES" 88
+
+ "YOUR FACE TO ME IS LIKE A BEAUTIFUL CITY" 89
+
+ "OH! WHY WILL YOU NOT LET ME LOVE YOU" 90
+
+ "MY DEVOTION KNEELS TO YOU" 92
+
+ ISLANDS 93
+
+ "MANY THINGS I'D FIND TO CHARM YOU" 94
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+ LAMP-POSTS 97
+
+ LONDON 98
+
+ "SLOWLY THE PALE FEET OF MORNING" 100
+
+ "WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEM" 101
+
+ "AMONG THE CRUMBLING ARCHES OF DECAY" 103
+
+ "AS A NUN'S FACE FROM HER BLACK DRAPERIES" 105
+
+ "THE SUN IS LORD OF LIFE AND COLOUR" 106
+
+ BAHAMA ISLANDS 107
+
+ THOUGHTS OF LONDON 108
+
+ STREETS 109
+
+ "LAUGHTER AND SINGING COME WITH THE MORNING" 113
+
+ "IN THE NIGHT I HEAR MY LONELINESS CALLING" 114
+
+ SUNDAY 115
+
+ "THE LEAVES ARE SINGING, AND THE SEA" 116
+
+ "HOW SOUNDLY SLEEPETH THE FOOL" 117
+
+ "MOONLIT LILACS UNDER THE WINDOW" 118
+
+ "OLD WOMAN FOREVER SITTING" 119
+
+ "LONELINESS I LOVE" 120
+
+ I MET AN INDIAN 121
+
+ "FROM THE FATHOMLESS DEPTH OF MY BOREDOM" 124
+
+ "LOLLING IN SNOW, LIKE KINGS IN ERMINE COATS" 125
+
+ "THE ROOTS OF OUR LONGING ARE PROBING THE HEART OF NIGHT" 126
+
+ VAHDAH 127
+
+ "STARLIGHT SILENCES" 128
+
+ "THE MOUNTAIN IS AN EMPEROR" 130
+
+ "I KNOW WHAT HAPPINESS IS" 131
+
+ "LONG HATH THE PEN LAIN IDLE IN MY HAND" 133
+
+ "I LAY MY HEART ON A STONE" 134
+
+ "THE COLD LIGHT STEALS INTO MY SOUL" 135
+
+ "THE CARAVANS OF SPRING ARE IN THE TOWN" 136
+
+ "I DREAD THE BEAUTY OF APPROACHING SPRING" 137
+
+ TO MY FATHER 139
+
+ TO MY MOTHER 140
+
+ "LONDON GROWS SAD AT EVENING" 142
+
+ AH! THE SPRING 143
+
+ THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG 144
+
+
+
+
+ROCKETS AND ASHES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs
+ With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,
+ You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,
+ You stop my heart and turn it into wood.
+
+ I serve not God, but make my idol fair
+ From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,
+ Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair
+ By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.
+
+ The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,
+ The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,
+ And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,
+ And sunrise falling on the quiet street.
+
+ The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,
+ And lovers in the secret sheets of night
+ Trembling like instruments of music, till the day
+ Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.
+
+ Age creeps upon your timid little faces
+ Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,
+ Proud in the unimportance of your places
+ You sit in twilight prophesying woe.
+
+ So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,
+ I from my pageant golden as the day
+ Pity your littleness from all my passion,
+ Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ We are the caretakers of empty houses,
+ The moon leans her slender body against the door,
+ But the lock is jarred with rust.
+ The sun looks in through the window,
+ But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.
+ Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things
+ Like bowls of potpourri,
+ A dust of petals
+ Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From far away the lost adventures gleam,
+ The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,
+ The love of her who showed me to the sun
+ In triumph of creation, who did seem
+ With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream
+ To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one
+ Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun
+ The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...
+ The row of soldiered books, authority
+ Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,
+ The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,
+ Rebellion, love made sad with mystery--
+ And like a firefly through the twilit trees
+ Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Give me, O God, the power of laughter still,
+ I shall have need of humour, deftest foil
+ Against the army of infuriated pride,
+ Against the shields of reason, and the spears
+ Of savage moments, sharp-edged bitterness;
+ Against the blazoned armour of intolerance,
+ And all the flags of sentiment waved aloft....
+
+ Love, Humour, and Rebellion, go with me,
+ Three musketeers of faithful following.
+ We will fear nothing.--Is not laughter brave,
+ That unconcerned goes rippling through despair?
+ Is not rebellion brave, that fiercely moves
+ Against the buttressed prisons of the world?
+ And is not love the bravest of them all,
+ So frail to hold his white hands up to Heaven
+ While the red fists are threatening all around,
+ And hate is beating on the battledrums?
+ As d'Artagnan upon a starved grey horse
+ Goes singing ballads on adventurous roads,
+ I ride my fancy blithely into danger
+ To throw my gauntlet at the feet of pride
+ And stick my roses in the cap of Love....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Winding down the street in wearied gaiety, the barrel-organ dribbled
+ out its song
+ Merged with the thud of feet forever dallying indifferent and
+ indefinite along.
+ The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some
+ hunch-backed and some bent with age,
+ They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung
+ heavy in a sombre rage.
+ Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their
+ heads the scolding shrewish tongue;
+ They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out
+ the dust and dung.
+ Above I saw the strip of sunset fluttering, even as washed-out rags
+ upon the line,
+ I listened to the sparrows twittering, and the hours ticking in a
+ slow decline.
+ Then beaded on the hem of evening, the coloured lights were threaded
+ here and there,
+ Till proud with sweets and plumes and oranges, the shops grew
+ brilliant in the tinsel glare.
+ Grey was the death-bed of the twilight, shuddering the faint hands of
+ the day stretched to the night,
+ Fending it off, or feebly wavering over the pallid glints of stolen
+ light.
+ And grey the faces that were gathering among the fallen ashes of the
+ day,
+ And red the faces, yellow, flickering, under the lamps upon the long
+ highway.
+ And some were gashed with smiles, and quaint grimaces of hate and
+ pain and hunger and despair,
+ And some wore coloured hats and meek frivolities, limp ribbons, and
+ false pansies in their hair,
+ But all were cold, and all seemed passionless; there shone no zest or
+ splendour in their lives,
+ Nor hope in anything but holidays, or watching funerals, or taking
+ wives.
+ I dared not think, for truth rose horrible, slapping the face with
+ coarse uncaring hand,
+ But like them cheated into merriment, I wilfully refused to
+ understand;
+ Turned me away from wan-eyed poverty, trod pity underfoot, oh, danced
+ on grief,
+ Bade the crowd sing and fill my desolation, bade them be glad and
+ hide my disbelief.
+
+ Strange we so love the world--for presently, out of my window looking
+ on the city,
+ I blessed the night, and the roofs slumbering all huddled, and I felt
+ no shame nor pity
+ For all our dusty days of journeying amid the wreck and ruins of our
+ dreams,
+ Meandering in a bleared forgetfulness, where lethe laps the wharf of
+ sleeping streams.
+ I only breathed the air, intensified by the ascending breath of
+ million lungs,
+ And heard the labouring metropolis, quickened by whispers of a
+ million tongues;
+ And felt a king of splendid loneliness, and felt an atom of the
+ peopled spaces,
+ And felt again my lordly egoism, one face distinct among the blur of
+ faces.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Tranquility stirred by a sudden spasm,
+ Knives of rain that cut the silence,
+ Storms that rattle the bones of the forest,
+ Calm of the marble-terraced night
+ Charred with the spattering of rockets.
+
+ Drums will I hear and battles now,
+ And the long death howl of wolves by night,
+ Watching the moon on the forest tops,
+ Walking with delicate frightened steps
+ To the slaughter-house of a red sunrise.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I could explain
+ The complicated lore that drags the soul
+ From what shall profit him
+ To gild damnation with his choicest gold.
+ But you
+ Are poring over precious books and do not hear
+ Our plaintive, frivolous songs;
+ For we in stubborn vanity ascend
+ On ladders insecure,
+ Toward the tottering balconies
+ To serenade our painted paramours;
+ Caught by the lure of dangerous pale hands,
+ Oblivion's heavy lids on sleepless eyes
+ That cheat between unrest and false repose.
+ And we are haunted
+ By spectral Joy once murdered in a rage,
+ Now taking shape of Pleasure,
+ Disguised in many clothes and skilful masks.
+ I could disclose
+ The truth that hangs between our lies
+ And jostles sleep to semi-consciousness;
+ Truth, that stings like nettles
+ Our frail hands dare not pluck
+ From out our garden's terraced indolence.
+ We are not happy,
+ And you make us dumb with loving hands
+ Reproachful on our lips.
+ Nor can we sob our sorrows on your breast,
+ For we have bartered diamonds for glass,
+ Our tears for smiles,
+ Eternity for now.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I feel in me a manifold desire
+ From many lands and times and clamouring peoples,
+ And I the Queen
+ Of crowding vagabonds,
+ Ghosts of lost years in seeming fancy dress,
+ With pathos of torn laces
+ And broken swords;
+ Cut-throats and kings and poets
+ Who have loved me
+ In visions wild, not knowing
+ What I was.
+ In me no end
+ Even where the last content
+ Clasps on my head a crown
+ Of shining endurance--
+ I slip from all my robes
+ Into the rags of a tattered romance;
+ The stars crowd at the window,
+ Their jealous destiny
+ Raps at the door--
+ They bob and wink and leer,
+ And I must leave the lamplight for the road
+ To keep strange company.
+ Farewell and Hail!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Silence--
+ Somewhere on earth
+ There is a purpose that I miss or have forgotten.
+ The trees stand bolt upright
+ Like roofless pillars of a broken temple.
+ There is a purpose in Heaven,
+ But for me
+ Nothing.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I should like to say to the world:
+ I have launched my soul like a ship upon free waters;
+ Beautiful she stands in the docks with proud masts cutting
+ the sky,
+ Perfectly poised, her white sails spreading like wings,
+ Her figurehead a woman with breasts that daunt the spray,
+ Her flag a flutter of coloured exuberance.
+ I should like to see her plunging out of the idle harbour
+ Where the sulky tide drifts scum, and the sailors wrangle and
+ shout,
+ In a thunder of churning waves ramping before her like dappled
+ stallions,
+ Blossoming behind her a field of etiolate lilies....
+
+ But to the mimicking, plotting, miserly, cynical,
+ To the rabble and gabble that dance and kill on the quay,
+ I can only say that my soul is a sleeping gondola
+ Lulled by a jester's mandolin, till night is atinkle with tunes
+ And lantern-lights, along the indolent backwaters.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ You pass as in a drugged delirium
+ Wrought strange upon the mind's distraction;
+ You sing a blasphemous Te Deum
+ To harlot virgins, and a fraction
+ Of your fulginous colour passes,
+ Stains my spirit's great conception
+ As it dips into your glasses.
+ I that am the sole exception
+ To your stillborn, false devices,
+ I that know you, I that hate you,
+ I that drank now spit your vices
+ Through my loathing reinstate you;
+ Dive once more into the stagnance,
+ Kiss your cynic lips and drink you,
+ Concentrate your cruel fragrance,
+ Steal your flowers before I sink you,
+ Lift with hate instead of praises,
+ Show you honour of my scorning,
+ Garlanded you go to blazes
+ With my rhymes for your adorning!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ O faces that look so coldly at me,
+ Colder than dawn through the windows of festival,
+ Colder than dawn with her grey nun's face.
+ You blame me, you curse me with your eyes,
+ While your lips are filled with flattering syllables,
+ With tinkling bells that harass my calm,
+ Disturb my silence and shatter my thoughts.
+ Your laughter waltzes like musical boxes,
+ How can I hear the triumphant symphonies?
+ The scarlet rhapsodies and beryl-cold sonatas? ...
+ Ah, strangers, ah, vacant tedious faces,
+ Bobbing beneath the feathery hats,
+ You have stolen the wings of birds for your garnishing,
+ And the stars and the dim pale petals of the sea
+ To make your breasts resplendent, to glitter your dress,--
+ How I might love you and weep for you,
+ Crowning your brows with a wreath of songs
+ If you could understand my singing,
+ If you could understand my love!
+ But you are waltzing with your marionettes
+ And marching to the music of the clock--
+ I cannot bear you to watch me
+ With those cold eyes through which I see,
+ Emptiness only and dust.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I see myself in many different dresses,
+ In many moods, and many different places;
+ All gold amid the grey where solemn faces
+ Are silence to my mirth--a flame that blesses
+ From yellow lamp the darkness which oppresses ...
+ Or mid the dancers in their trivial laces
+ Aloof, as in the ring a lion paces,
+ Disdainful of their slander or caresses.
+ I see myself the child of many races,
+ Poisoners, martyrs, harlots and princesses;
+ Within my soul a thousand weary traces
+ Of pain and joy and passionate excesses--
+ Eternal beauty that our brief love chases
+ With snatch of desperate hands and dying tresses.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ There are songs enough of love, of joy, of grief:
+ Roads to the sunset, alleys to the moon;
+ Poems of the red rose and the golden leaf,
+ Fantastic faery and gay ballad tune.
+
+ The long road unto nothing I will sing,
+ Sing on one note, monotonous and dry,
+ Of sameness, calmness and the years that bring
+ No more emotion than the fear to die.
+
+ Grey house, grey house and after that grey house,
+ Another house as grey and steep and still:
+ An old cat tired of playing with a mouse,
+ A sick child tired of chasing down the hill.
+
+ Shuffle and hurry, idle feet, and slow,
+ Grim face and merry face, so ugly all!
+ Why do you hurry? Where is there to go?
+ Why are you shouting? Who is there to call?
+
+ Lovers still kissing, feverish to drain
+ Stale juices from the shrivelled fruit of lust:
+ A black umbrella held up in the rain,
+ The raindrops making patterns in the dust.
+
+ If this distaste I hold for fools is such,
+ Shall I not spit upon myself as well?
+ Do I not eat and drink and smile as much?
+ Do I not fatten also in this hell?
+
+ Sadness and joy--if they were melted up,
+ Things that were great--upon the fires of time
+ Drop but as soup in the accustomed cup,
+ Settle in stagnance, trickle into grime.
+
+ Faith, freedom, art that fire a man or two
+ And set him like a pilgrim on his way
+ With Beauty's face before him--what of you,
+ Priest, Butcher, Scholar, King, upon that day?
+
+ The dullard-masses that no god can save!
+ If I were God, to rise and strike you down
+ And break your churches in an angry wave
+ And make a furious bonfire of your town!
+
+ God in a coloured globe, alone and still,
+ Embroidering wonders with a fearless brain,
+ On loom of spaces measureless, to fill
+ The empty air with passion and with pain.
+
+ Emblazon all the heavens with desire
+ And Wisdom delved for in the depths of time--
+ Thoughts sculptured mountainous, and fancy's fire
+ Caught in the running swiftness of a rhyme.
+
+ Passion high-pedestalled, pangs turned to treasure,
+ Perfected and undone and built afresh
+ With concentrated agony and Pleasure ...
+ If I were God, and not a weight of flesh!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ How often, when the thought of suicide
+ With ghostly weapon beckons us to die,
+ The ghosts of many foods alluring glide
+ On golden dishes, wine in purple tide
+ To drown our whim. Things danced before the eye
+ Like tasselled grapes to Tantalus: The sly
+ Blue of a curling trout, the battened pride
+ Of ham in frills, complacent quails that lie
+ Resigned to death like heroes--July peas,
+ Expectant bottles foaming at the brink--
+ White bread, and honey of the golden bees--
+ A peach with velvet coat, some prawns in pink,
+ A slice of beef carved deftly, Stilton cheese,
+ And cup where berries float and bubbles wink.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ It is still something to have cheated God
+ And bored the Devil with so easy prey,
+ And in the midst of summer woods to raise
+ A leafless tree whose stark limbs mock at Heaven,
+ Flaunting an iron hatred in the midst of hope--
+ Yet sometimes in the loneliness of night
+ My buried longings blossom on the boughs,
+ My wistful longings come out star by star,
+ Till the great sky is light with my desire,
+ And on the winds my songs are galloping....
+ Ah, to what dismal greyness creeps the soul
+ Too weak, too tired, to struggle from the slough!
+ My weapons rust, my pen is in the dust,
+ The moulting feathers plucked from out my wings
+ Lie dangling in the hats I stole them for.
+ My heart is floating in a claret cup,
+ My brain is toppling drunken at the brim,
+ My life is drowned within the lurid dregs.
+ I turn and fold my hands in a last appeal,
+ What heaven shall I pray to and for what,
+ Now that my songs to penny tunes are set,
+ And nothing is to save of me but flesh?
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ What words that move on wings in a long drift
+ Can waft this silence into weary ears,
+ And steal into the veins and fingertips
+ Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships
+ Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears,
+ Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift.
+ What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together,
+ Or swept like little winds through leaves alert,
+ Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors
+ Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause,
+ Steeled with indifference against all hurt,
+ Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather:
+ To sing the hubbub of this glittering night,
+ Where all the lamps each with a separate soul
+ Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life;
+ And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife
+ Cuts free the tethered heart from long control
+ And flings it like a ball with mad delight
+ Into the silver lap of the young moon.
+ What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine
+ Can broider tapestries as rich as these,
+ Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies,
+ Transparent as the gods we half divine,
+ Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon
+ Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain
+ That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find,
+ And visioned faces that our dreams create
+ Born in the land forbidden us of fate
+ And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind
+ Forever Joy, that never comes again!
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage
+ Where murder creeps and whispers.
+ The jester clad in piebald tights
+ Half black, half golden, with no company
+ Save bells that jingle,
+ And an effigy,
+ The grinning image painted like myself
+ Upon a stick....
+
+ I think myself
+ The fool of comedy mournfully straying
+ Amid the revellers,
+ Loving the moon and my own shadow
+ With its strange solemn gestures--
+ Loving the painted moon
+ That lets me play with shadows.
+
+ I am the jester on an empty stage
+ Playing a pantomime
+ To spectres in the stalls,
+ Listening at last
+ For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding,
+ And for some king with decadent tired fingers
+ To fling a white gardenia at my feet.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The adored, wild, strange, irresistible,
+ How they fail one at the last!
+ What is there in your faces
+ That we should worship with our souls?
+ Most lovable, perfidious,
+ Vague--
+ Molesting even our visions
+ With treacherous pathos.
+ O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,
+ What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,
+ Covering your meagre bodies
+ With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?
+ Life and its grey days, and time
+ Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,
+ Or a dim glass through which you peer.
+ You climb in at the windows of our souls
+ With ladders and stratagems,
+ You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.
+ But what do you do for us
+ Lute players, dancers, deceivers,
+ Other than lie with red lips
+ And cajole with tears of beryl?
+ People--
+ Men and women with laughable, tragic faces
+ Winking at love,
+ Treading our songs and illusions
+ Under petulant feet!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+A ROSE
+
+
+ What do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging
+ Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection?
+ What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging
+ Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?
+
+ What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic
+ Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled,
+ Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic,
+ And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had mangled;--
+
+ What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died
+ unrequited,
+ And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given,
+ Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and
+ slighted,
+ That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of
+ Heaven?
+
+ You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and
+ bleeding,
+ Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging,
+ What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading,
+ I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Like flocks of tired birds when autumn comes,
+ My spirit flags across the darkening fields
+ And melts into the drabness of the sky
+ And falls like dust upon the huddled corn.
+ But many wizened faces brown and sad
+ Peer from the bushes as I wander past,--
+ They tell me all those things that old men say
+ As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek.
+ "When you are grey and crooked as ourselves,
+ When you have bowed before all other gods,
+ And found them false, then shall you come at last
+ To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless
+ Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands,
+ And call you slave and lover." ...
+ Shall not a child take Pain for company
+ And share her loneliness with him?
+ Does not a youth know tears
+ In the first bitterness of broken love?
+ Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come
+ To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ...
+ He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown,
+ He sits a jester at the feet of kings
+ And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train.
+ He rides the wooden horses at a fair,
+ And dances with the jiggers on the stage.
+ Led by the violins of discontent
+ That whine their music to my listening soul,
+ I dance with him the dance of withered leaves,
+ We dance together to the tunes of rain
+ Played on one note upon the only string.
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ Oh, just beyond the curve of ideal quest
+ That changes as a sea wave to the wind,
+ Beyond the cloud that folds around a star,
+ And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in,
+ Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone,
+ The paradise of all we might have been,
+ While we are washed back downwards in the dark
+ Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives,
+ Your windows only looking upon gardens,
+ Only perceiving love and death and truth
+ As facts that come to pass,
+ That pass and leave you still
+ Within your safe small prisons,
+ Older, duller,
+ To walk and talk among the evergreens.
+ You have never known
+ Delight of dying slowly,
+ Poisoned with raptures
+ In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death--
+ The tunes
+ That dishevel and smooth,
+ Cajole and melancholize--
+ The dance
+ Which is a whirling of leaves
+ In their last scorn of sorrow
+ Flung upwards by the wind
+ Into the haggard face of winter--
+ Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons
+ Tossed by impulsive hands;
+ Nor slid as skaters swiftly
+ Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice,
+ Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ...
+ You have not felt the abandon
+ Of light love
+ Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Mouth of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute,
+ Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour,
+ Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute,
+ Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.
+
+ For you I sheave the harvest of my hair,
+ For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour,
+ For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air
+ My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.
+
+ For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great
+ Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence,
+ For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate,
+ Science for giving wounds, and healing science.
+
+ For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care,
+ Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness,
+ For you the unborn child that I prepare,
+ You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!
+
+ 1913
+
+
+
+
+ The curtains are drawn as though it still were night,
+ A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon;
+ And all about the room is quietness--Each patient chair
+ Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book
+ Lie as you left them, now bereft of purpose--
+ Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you
+ Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes!
+ How grey and sober, full of placid wit
+ The furniture, the pictures on the wall;
+ How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart
+ As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood.
+ Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face
+ And white, white gloves ...
+ What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock,
+ With face grimacing ... nearly six it is....
+ Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts,
+ For in its dial eternity is housed--
+ A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town!
+ But a water cart with surly noise below
+ Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street.
+ How cold and how familiar all these things,
+ To you so lonely in the enormous dawn
+ Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+BLACK VELVET
+
+
+ The darkness of the trees at deep midnight
+ And sombreness of shadows in the lake;
+ A mountain in the starlight wide awake
+ Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might
+ Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright
+ Bespattered jewelry of stars--the ache
+ Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break
+ From music. Slumbering cities--candle light
+ Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train
+ Of Queens that go to scaffold for a sin--
+ Or splash of blackness manifest of pain,
+ Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin
+ Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again
+ Venetian masks against a milky skin.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+NERVES
+
+
+ These curious looms where we have spun our fancies,
+ These intricate webs where our desires are threaded,
+ These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies
+ Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed.
+ These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles
+ Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers
+ From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles
+ Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors.
+ These colours twinging on a prism's edges,
+ These speckled patterns of fanatic madness
+ From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges
+ For pearls within the depths of sadness and of gladness--
+ O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after
+ As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary,
+ Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter,
+ Molesting quietness and waking up the weary!
+ What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting
+ With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you
+ O wrangling, juggling, jangling, pirouetting--
+ What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you?
+ You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion,
+ And trodden out the red stars into ashes,
+ Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron,
+ And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes
+ ...
+ You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary,
+ Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters,
+ The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary,
+ A poor bewildered clown--and nothing matters.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My pain has all the patience of a nun
+ Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone,
+ In some chill cellar where the amens moan,
+ Ave Maria, the long penance spun
+ Forever. And the tapers one by one
+ Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne.
+ My soul is tired from kneeling all alone,
+ Its little candles yearning to the sun.
+
+ Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen
+ Bright mirages of glory on the grey
+ Of sad horizons; I have kept the green
+ Surprise of spring through winter and dismay,
+ Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen
+ Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ The scandal-monger after all is right--
+ The old and cunning voice with weary repetition
+ Is justified in all dull words and warnings.
+ I see at last how you,
+ Spendthrift of passion
+ In love's bankruptcy,
+ Borrow new beauty from each passing face--
+ How being too lavish you did steal
+ From generous hands--
+ You are the idol builder and the robber of temples,
+ Praising with passionate psalms
+ The thing you cannot worship--
+ And yet your prayers have stirred
+ Belief in us--
+ We see beyond the false and weary face
+ Into your haggard soul and trust from pity--
+ We hear beyond the idle music of your voice,
+ A wisdom taught by cruelty
+ And a tired scorn of treachery and guile--
+ We see your wounds and weep,
+ You meet our pity with a traitor's kiss--
+ For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled
+ In teaching pain to others--
+ And all that mob of furious accusation
+ To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well,
+ Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered,
+ That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Woods of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death,
+ Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering,
+ Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath
+ Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering,
+ As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly
+ Listless they perish, wavering and hovering.
+ Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry,
+ Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering
+ The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun.
+ No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet,
+ No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one
+ As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet....
+ How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound
+ From shrill carousers riotous and merry all,
+ As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground,
+ As funeral bagpipes at a burial.
+ And I who wander passionless and forlorn,
+ A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection,
+ In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn,
+ See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ I feel so much alone,
+ And yet I know that many hopes are storming
+ My shut heart;
+ For I am bolted fast in my own house.
+ I pace distracted through its corridors
+ To the music of Love's knocking hands
+ Against the gate,
+ Or silence when they sleep.
+ I cannot find the key to let them in,
+ I, my own host and guest and ghost,
+ Imprisoned in myself!
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THE COMPLEX LIFE
+
+
+ I know it to be true that those who live
+ As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
+ Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
+ Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.
+
+ But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
+ That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
+ Spins into complex patterns and conceals
+ His huge invention with forms intricate.
+
+ Each generation blindly fills the plan,
+ A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
+ With many processes from out the sod,
+ The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.
+
+ We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
+ Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
+ A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
+ Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.
+
+ We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
+ We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
+ We crave perfection that we may not find.
+ Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.
+
+ You peasants and you hermits, simple livers!
+ So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned
+ While we give up our bodies to be burned,
+ And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.
+
+ We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
+ We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
+ We make a gaudy havoc of our life
+ And live a thousand ages in an hour.
+
+ Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
+ We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
+ We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
+ And dream of harassed continents the while.
+
+ Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
+ Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint,
+ Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
+ Inverted religion, and perverted passion.
+
+ But since we are children of this age,
+ In curious ways discovering salvation,
+ I will not quit my muddled generation,
+ But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.
+
+ Although I know that Nature's bounty yields
+ Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
+ Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
+ Will I give back my body to the fields.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Shall we be christened poets, children of God,
+ For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears,
+ For tugging at the moaning bells of death,
+ And coming as the autumn grave-digger
+ To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers
+ Of wind upon the rushes,
+ Of music upon silence?
+ Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel
+ For forcing tragedy into a rhyme
+ As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest?
+ The poet ever wanders after Death,
+ The flunkey on a funeral chariot
+ Pouring the wine at feasts of burial;
+ And all the roses that he plucks from summer
+ Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse....
+ How shall the world learn how to laugh again
+ When all its songs have only learnt to weep?
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ When I am weary at the antic chance,
+ The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,
+ The hope and fear in jugglery, and see
+ How starved the juggler, mean and miserly,
+ And life a laboured trick--the years advance
+ A shrilling chorus in affected dance
+ With lust of many eyes that watch and wink
+ Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink
+ Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance--
+ Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,
+ Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin--
+ Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin
+ Through curtained silence trips as from a trance
+ With blushing flowers for Columbine--Romance.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+MOODS
+
+
+I
+
+ I crouched upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses,
+ And--listening with dread for the moment of my own silence
+ Rending the flimsy lace of whisperings--
+ My gnome dances before me
+ Behind a fan of smoke,
+ My dwarf squats on my shoulders
+ Tweeking their moulted wings,
+ My ape peers in the mirror of my face
+ Mimicking my soul's gaunt gestures--
+ My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness
+ Blotching the night with howls--
+ My laughter goes whining away on the wind,
+ Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment,
+ Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...
+
+
+II
+
+ Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet
+ Dancing across the leer of ugliness,
+ Skimming like a gold thread
+ Through a necklace of vile masks--
+ Lifting with lotus fingers
+ The blue arras of nightmare--
+ Loveliness like a delicate silver flute
+ Pressed to a negro's lips--
+
+
+III
+
+ Do you then wish for all those griefs
+ Whose snarling hands you kiss,
+ Kneeling in adoration to a dagger
+ As saints before a cross?
+ You who have tossed all flowers away,
+ Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood
+ Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,--
+ Do you then crave your own blood's offering,
+ Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame?
+ In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet,
+ Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight,
+ You lean across the precipice of time
+ Calling and crying
+ For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter--
+
+
+IV
+
+ Waiting,
+ Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven
+ Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos--
+ Waiting,
+ Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds,
+ Like listening trees that hug their branches round them,
+ Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms,
+ Waiting like a vast arch of quietness
+ Through which a screaming messenger shall dart--
+ Like a dense hood of silence
+ Pierced by a sword of music--
+ Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool
+ Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+SMOKE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ Now is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood
+ And the dun hills stand fearful in their places.
+ Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets
+ With burdens of vainglory on our backs,
+ Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web
+ Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease.
+ But out beyond, the armies of the world
+ March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum
+ Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:
+
+ His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil:
+ He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high
+ The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed
+ With livid roses; all his pillars black
+ Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust
+ He raises up his awful golden throne.
+
+ Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears;
+ Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone;
+ Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God
+ Where good and evil mix; and all your rage
+ Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan,
+ Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore;
+ They ride on furious, leaving every man
+ Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war:
+ Gods that grow tired of paradisial water
+ And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.
+
+ I fear a thing more terrible than death:
+ The glamour of the battle grips us yet--
+ As crowds before a fire that hold their breath
+ Watching the burning houses, and forget
+ All they will lose, but marvel to behold
+ Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.
+
+ I fear the time when slow the flame expires,
+ When this kaleidoscope of roaring color
+ Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires
+ That shone with battle, nothing left of valour
+ Save chill ignoble ashes for despair
+ To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.
+
+ Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet,
+ Hiding the mangled body of the Earth:
+ The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet
+ Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth,
+ But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust
+ Save to end living and be heaped with dust.
+
+ That stillness that must follow where Death trod,
+ The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall,
+ The tuneless voices cringing praise to God,
+ Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call,
+ Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise,
+ With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.
+
+ Across the world from out the fevered ground
+ Decay from every pore exhales its breath;
+ A cloak of penance winding close around
+ The bright desire of spring. And unto Death,
+ As to a conquering king, we yield the keys
+ Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.
+
+ The maiden loverless shall go her ways,
+ And child unfathered feed on crust and husk;
+ The sun that was the glory of our days
+ Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk
+ Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay
+ Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ A ragged drummer rides along the street,
+ And at his coming
+ The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet
+ And voices humming.
+ He rode a year ago from far away,
+ On charger prancing,
+ With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay,
+ And banners dancing.
+ Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum
+ He bore so proudly,
+ His roaring music woke the silence dumb
+ To thunder loudly.
+ And by his side the old men and the young
+ Had followed cheering
+ Into the sunset smiling as they sung,
+ Nor thought of fearing.
+ They left their lovers and their mothers' lap,
+ Their homes demolish,
+ "For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap,
+ A sword to polish!"
+ And so the town was silent once again,
+ Though tunes of battle
+ Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain
+ Ghost drums would rattle.
+ But at the chuckling dice or careful loom,
+ Or candled churches
+ A few forgot or prayed or followed doom
+ With drunken lurches....
+ Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng,
+ In huddled masses
+ They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song
+ As back he passes--
+ Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone
+ In rags and tatters,
+ And on a soundless barrel with a bone
+ He beats and batters.
+ "Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd,
+ That we may kiss them?
+ Where sound your little songs that rang so loud
+ To us that miss them?"
+ There are no songs, no happy marching feet,
+ No favours flying:
+ The drummer passes ... on the quiet street
+ The sun is dying.
+ Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!...
+ Have done with weeping,
+ But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave
+ As he lies sleeping.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ZEPPELINS
+
+
+ MIDNIGHT
+
+ Suddenly
+ Shutting our lips upon a jest
+ As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses,
+ A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets
+ Quiver with startled terrors--
+ How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free!
+ Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
+ Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve
+ Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt....
+ How sweetly spins the world to noise of music,
+ How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure!
+ Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs,
+ Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams,
+ To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh
+ A little longer, oh a little year!
+ Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection,
+ And resolutions of new wondrous lives
+ Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees....
+ Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground,
+ The lurid silent people loved by death,
+ And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings
+ To drag our body's glory from the light.
+ Though all the world should fall into their cells
+ And lie within their larders shelf on shelf--
+ Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away,
+ Yet _will I_ be the mistress of the sun!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1 A. M.
+
+ Look how they struggle in a mist of fire,
+ Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes--
+ Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar,
+ An army fierce upon its own destruction,
+ A famished monster tearing in its claws
+ Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire
+ Digesting all the world!...
+ Look at the eager people open-mouthed
+ That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised
+ By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake,
+ Their earth adoring senses caught awhile
+ In the red whirlwind of ascending wings;
+ Their spirits straining upward upon strings
+ Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque,
+ Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy--
+ Yet for an hour
+ Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears
+ They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes
+ Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 3 A. M.
+
+ The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless--
+ Slowly the river moves as though in sleep
+ While silent barges
+ Slide from the mist like dreams;
+ The intricate patterns of the scaffolding
+ Are drawn against the sky
+ More delicate than lace.
+ All the shimmering lights
+ Have shrunk away from morning
+ As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....
+ I am alone, most utterly alone,
+ More lonely than the last man in the world
+ Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
+ More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
+ Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
+ Dividing sleep from death,
+ Eternity from time....
+ Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
+ She brings no feverous memories of night
+ And sheds no tears.
+
+ Only two hours ago
+ Fire walked in crimson armour through the city
+ Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins,
+ While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats
+ Among the silver foliage of the stars....
+ But rage has left no furrow in the sky,
+ No wake of sparks across the placid water....
+ This is the ominous and sacred hour
+ When priest-like the world kneels
+ Bowed low toward the empty throne of day--
+ Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard
+ And the flamingo messengers will come
+ Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise....
+ This is the hour of nothing,
+ Colourless and chill
+ Oblivion's hands are folded on the world,
+ As sits an idol holding in his fingers
+ A scentless lotus carven out of stone.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 4 A. M.
+
+ Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet
+ And up the long uncomfortable street
+ With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read
+ The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed,
+ Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel
+ And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well--
+ A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go,
+ The light steals after me, emerging slow
+ And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched.
+ I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched
+ From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw
+ Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door
+ My own reflection as I hurried past,
+ My flaring colours and my face aghast--
+ The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung
+ Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung
+ About my knees and fluttered at the back:
+ An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black,
+ My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box;
+ My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks.
+ Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass
+ Painted too brightly on that temperate glass.
+ ... An omnibus from sudden corner reels:
+ Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.
+
+ 1915
+
+
+
+
+ O flattery, imposture, battle show,
+ What banners have you woven from the parted raiment,
+ What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow
+ Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!
+
+ How have you turned the simple truth to lies
+ Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty,
+ Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs
+ The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.
+
+ And ever quoting God for your excuse,
+ Bribing divinity to cloak your shame,
+ You train the spirit for material use,
+ You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.
+
+ When shall the world be rid of these bald priests,
+ Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears,
+ The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts
+ Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ What will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad,
+ And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad;
+ What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling,
+ Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling?
+ They shall go to prison black
+ With a striped shirt on the back,
+ Feast on bread and water there
+ In a cell, without a care.
+ They shall learn at least their duty,
+ Never tempted more of beauty--
+ They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord,
+ And one or two shall hang upon a cord--
+ And two or three shall die of grief alone--
+ (And this is well, for sinners should atone,)
+ And five or six shall curse the God that made them,
+ (And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,)
+ And those that grew from dust shall go to dust
+ Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:--"God is just."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ If I were what I would be, and could break
+ The buttressed fortress of stupidity
+ Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry,
+ Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake,
+ Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake
+ Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn puppetry--
+ The gods are blinking at us sleepily,
+ Tired of our games, the muddles that we make,
+ The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess
+ Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and pawn--
+ The rigid squares of black and white, they dress
+ With their perpetual challenge--faded, worn,
+ Are all the creeds and praises you profess
+ To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+HOLY RUSSIA
+
+
+ The ghostly blood of thee is in my veins,
+ Back through the centuries of death and birth,
+ Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains,
+ My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.
+
+ And ever as in dreams I seem to see
+ Those streets and people with their colours cold;
+ Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea,
+ The tides of restless passion ages old.
+
+ I know thy humours and their contradiction,
+ I know thy fevers and hallucinations,
+ I see beneath the painted mask of fiction
+ Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.
+
+ And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes
+ Into the sick world's travail and her grief,
+ Dost thou from thy long battling surmise
+ The end of battle and the world's relief?
+
+ While we are creeping in our crooked ways
+ Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds
+ Where Ignorance walks royally through days
+ That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.
+
+ While we still cry to God for strength to kill,
+ Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves,
+ And grind young bones for the commercial mill,
+ And build munition works among the graves.
+
+ Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag,"
+ "The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!"
+ Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates brag--
+ They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...
+
+ Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God,
+ And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet,
+ Feeling beneath the burden and the rod
+ His justice and Her pity in the street.
+
+ Justice and Pity, crying in the wind--
+ We only hear the guns that never cease,
+ The flapping of our flags has made us blind!
+ We may not see the sacred gods of peace.
+
+ But thou dost build fanatic temples for them,
+ And thou dost pave the road with sanity,
+ And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them,
+ Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.
+
+ I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers,
+ The drum that life has snatched away from death,
+ And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears,
+ And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.
+
+ PEACE! But a cynic whispered in my ear
+ How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown
+ That lay amid the dust--and I could hear
+ A hum of money-changing in the town.
+
+ I feared that afterwards, when all is won,
+ We shall forget the meaning of thy deed--
+ And man will creep as he has always done
+ Along the little gutters of his greed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ How deeply nurtured is your foolishness,
+ Calling destruction great and slaughter brave,
+ Making large triumph of a little grave,
+ Imperial purple of a mourning dress,
+ The gun an emblem of your godliness--
+ A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave,
+ A medal or a bayonet, or rave
+ Of singing, marching in the forward press
+ Of hatred to the banging of a band;
+ Your country's honour and the world's release.
+ Are _they_ not strong in courage who withstand
+ The armies of your folly and shall cease
+ To tarnish with spilt life their motherland?
+ Cowards--or martyrs--crucified for peace.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Of all who died in silence far away
+ Where sympathy was busy with other things,
+ Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay,
+ Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.
+
+ The little dead who knew so large a love,
+ Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding
+ Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove
+ Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.
+
+ Of all the tenderness that flowed to them,
+ A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast,
+ Stars were they to her night, and she the stem
+ From which they flowered--now barren and left unblessed.
+
+ Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave
+ Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands,
+ Now stifled in the darkness of a grave
+ With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.
+
+ No more!--And we, the mourners, dare not wear
+ The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain,
+ But must don purple and bright standards bear,
+ Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.
+
+ We dare not weep who must be brave in battle--
+ "Another death--another day--another inch of land--
+ The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ...
+ The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....
+
+ Of all who died in darkness far away
+ Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now,
+ His arms held crosswise to the budding day,
+ The passion-red roses clustering his brow.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ And afterwards, when honour has made good,
+ And all you think you fight for shall take place,
+ A late rejoicing to a crippled race;
+ The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food,
+ The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,
+ Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace
+ Shall spread a blush across the haggard face
+ Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.
+
+ In victory will you have conquered Hate,
+ And stuck old Folly with a bayonet
+ And battered down the hideous prison gate?
+ Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,
+ Glutted with gold and dust and empty state,
+ The incense of our anguish and our sweat?
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Pity the slain that laid away their lives,
+ Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves,
+ Thin little children and widowed wives,
+ And the broken soldier who survives.
+
+ Pity the woman whose body was sold
+ For a little bread or a little gold,
+ And a little fire to keep out the cold,
+ So tired, and fearful of growing old.
+
+ Pity the people in the grey street
+ Before the dawn trooping with listless feet
+ Down to their work in the dust and the heat,
+ For a little bread and a little meat.
+
+ Pity the criminal sentenced to die,
+ Loving life so, with the world in his eye,
+ In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry
+ Of love that will call when he may not reply.
+
+ Pity them all, the imperative faces
+ That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces,
+ Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places,
+ With indolent postures and frivolous graces.
+
+ Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin
+ Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin
+ That batters the door and staggers in....
+ The streets surround with clamour and din,
+
+ Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city
+ Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity,
+ Force us to sigh and arrange a committee,
+ Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....
+
+ The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave,
+ A rebel flag on a rebel grave,
+ But to us the strong alone are brave,
+ And only the rich are worthy to save!
+
+ Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled,
+ Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled,
+ Flags that blow where the dead are hurled,
+ Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+FLAME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ You have understood so little of me, and my adoration
+ That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones,
+ You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation
+ And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my
+ moans.
+
+ You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter,
+ You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd;
+ But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter;
+ I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!
+
+ A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning,
+ A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow;
+ I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning,
+ And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.
+
+ In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes;
+ They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for
+ you;
+ In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes
+ As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.
+
+ Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters;
+ You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign,
+ But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of
+ fetters
+ And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine.
+ All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces,
+ Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head,
+ For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces
+ And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.
+
+ I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles
+ sacred
+ With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell;
+ I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping
+ acrid
+ And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day,
+ And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash.
+ Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk
+ Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth
+ Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit.
+ Now can I sing the sickly lines of love
+ And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out
+ In the sad spaces of the gloaming night,
+ And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark.
+ My words were fireless in the flaming sun,
+ And all the throats of flowers from their content
+ Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face
+ And bade me give them tunes to make them dance....
+ Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down
+ From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast
+ And sterile as the arms of my desire
+ She flings her light despairing on the sky.
+ The night is strange and still, for dropping tears,
+ Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Washed at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves,
+ As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light,
+ Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought
+ The thought of you, which held against mine ear
+ Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul;
+ The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love,
+ The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death,
+ The following of beauty's fugitive limbs
+ Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast
+ Gleam on the clouds and foam,
+ Call to her lovers.--
+ Thus standing in the blasting of the wind,
+ And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud
+ Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea,
+ Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels,
+ Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ My poems cannot laugh. They are the voice
+ Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea,
+ And this wild joy my love has brought to me
+ Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.
+
+ I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing,
+ Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep,
+ And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep
+ Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;
+
+ To fashion for my love one perfect verse
+ Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word,
+ Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird
+ To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.
+
+ But as a coward in the general gloom
+ I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill,
+ Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill
+ Of love that moves with music into Doom;
+
+ Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold,
+ And like a gay canary in a cage
+ Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage
+ Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ On the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered,
+ Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream,
+ And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden
+ highlights,
+ And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed.
+ We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment,
+ And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white
+ wine,
+ And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing,
+ Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ Oh canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears
+ Whose wind-like voices
+ Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears
+ While the body rejoices.
+ Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun
+ Trailing his scarlet vesture
+ Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun,
+ Turns with a gesture
+ Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey.
+ I follow the shadows of sorrow
+ That press so close to the dancing heels of the day
+ And darken the morrow.
+ The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see
+ Beyond its golden visor
+ The leering skull that derides at our lives and me
+ Being older than life and wiser....
+ I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the
+ whip
+ Beyond the sound of the treetops singing
+ To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip,
+ Or rush of feathers winging....
+ Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my
+ cheek
+ Murmuring tenderly
+ The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the
+ bleak
+ Windows of frost so slenderly
+ Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might
+ be
+ If life were as kind as a lover,
+ If we were beloved of the world and the world of we.
+ Thy white words hover
+ Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest
+ Silvering heaven
+ With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest.
+ If I could have given
+ My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee,
+ Ah then and then only
+ The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me
+ And death were not lonely.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ As in the silence the clear moonlight drips
+ Among the fields that love her drowsily,
+ These passionate moments trickle on through time,
+ From soul to languorous soul.
+ Like mad musicians upon fretted harps,
+ The senses play upon the poignant nerves,--
+ And colours clothe our mood
+ As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms
+ Irised with pallors of an opal's heart
+ In which the glittered pattern of desire
+ Smoulders and changes....
+ O love, thou nightingale-throated singer,
+ Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star
+ And keep thy silver delicate delight
+ Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad.
+ Let thy fairy feet
+ Go tripping down a scarcely scented path,
+ Between an avenue of breathless flowers.
+ The hours glide by as swans across a lake,
+ Across the luminous waters of desire,
+ And beat as wings the rustle of soft words,
+ As love bends down,
+ Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I can but give thee unsubstantial things
+ Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought,
+ No gems or garments marvellously wrought
+ On ivory spools with rare embroiderings.
+ Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings
+ That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought
+ With blood and beauty. I have only sought
+ A song that hovers on illusive wings.
+
+ Accept from me a dream that hath no art,
+ I give my empty hands for thee to hold,
+ Take thou the gift of silence for my part,
+ With all the deeper things I have not told.
+ Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart
+ Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ I have no other friend but thee,
+ But while I tell thee all my thought
+ Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams,
+ Soothsayings and sighs, and little things--
+ How canst thou listen to me?
+
+
+II
+
+ Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long,
+ And when my cheek grew pale
+ I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back
+ Responsive in the double rose of joy--
+ But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness
+ Where the ghost moon glides between us....
+
+
+III
+
+ When at a masquerade
+ I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng,
+ Our faces painted each in some disguise
+ Of varnished revelry;
+ I whisper in thine ear
+ Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales,
+ Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet,
+ And shower the multicoloured streamers high
+ Where Folly is king of midnight--
+ Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside,
+ And thy still face looks out,
+ Weary and overwise
+ Where the mad pretence avails not.
+
+
+IV
+
+ Long ago we walked together in a garden;
+ It was evening and the leaves fell down;
+ Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen,
+ Over flowers and branches that were withered there--
+ And the air was weary with the scent of other days,
+ A fragrance faint and pensive.
+ The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet
+ Were as old dreams retold,
+ Stirred from the golden quilt of memory,
+ And farewells rang their whispering bells,
+ Tolling the days away.
+ But peace lay folded between our hands
+ As we thought of the vanishing years
+ And of love dying in the arms of love.
+
+
+V
+
+ Sometimes I look into the glass
+ And see my face without the conquering light
+ That gave me glamour when I gave thee love.
+ Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty,
+ To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire,
+ And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell,
+ And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven.
+ I would be for thee
+ As a ring of white flowers on the sward,
+ As a red fire playing to thy breath,
+ As a flock of kingfishers
+ Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes!
+ Remember only this,
+ My will toward all loveliness, and look
+ Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.
+
+
+VI
+
+ Be perfect--for I love thee more in thought
+ Than thou canst reach in every trivial day.
+ Since days are as the flowers on a wreath
+ That wither while we bind them each to each.
+ Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days
+ Can wall it in a little space of ground.
+ Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock
+ And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour,
+ But the patient spirit stands
+ Waiting the last fulfilment.
+ Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands
+ Or as an endless rosary.
+ Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter
+ And my hands part from the unriveted faith
+ With Amen scarcely sighed.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Bodies heaving like waves,
+ Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam,
+ The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow,
+ Splashed with ecstasial moonlight,
+ Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles.
+ Lingering touch of fingers,
+ Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray
+ Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell,
+ And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness
+ Against the ivory forehead of the moon.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Your face to me is like a beautiful city
+ Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea,
+ And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves
+ Heavily laden with memories....
+ I roam over all the earth
+ Making rhymes of you, and singing songs,
+ Because your face will never let me rest,
+ Because I can not frame it in a star
+ Surrounded with my cloudy reveries,
+ Because I may not pluck it like a flower
+ To breathe the incense of its perfumed soul--
+ Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword
+ Whose sheath is in my breast!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Oh! why will you not let me love you
+ Well enough?
+ You have plucked my blossoms,
+ Gathered the leaves
+ And revived them with water;
+ But all the tortuous roots
+ Delving for your spirit
+ In subterranean passions
+ With a blind unresting desire,
+ Have you felt them, have you known?
+ In the blackest night of sleep
+ Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms
+ In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion,
+ My soul still swims toward you
+ Against the envious pressure of the tide....
+ You who are so tired, so filled with sleep
+ That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek
+ Lest its heaviness should stir your rest,
+ How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden
+ That is too vast for me to bear alone?
+ I tell you
+ Love is no little thing,
+ No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air,
+ No thin flute music petaling the silence
+ As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree.
+ It is the thought that broods upon its death,
+ The dread of mountains looking to the storm
+ Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain.
+ It is the fire that pillars up the stars
+ To mix its flame with their eternal gold.
+ Oh, listen to me!
+ You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere
+ As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven.
+ You shall know me
+ In the pensive shadows of trees,
+ In the luminary phantoms
+ Reflected in the stillness of a lake;
+ In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves
+ And quivering in the moss;
+ In the abandoned play of breakers
+ Showering their crystals to the moon;
+ In the folly of rainbow dolphins.
+ I only ask of you
+ To be the diver in my deepest pool,
+ To bring from out its blue obscurity
+ The things my life has moulded unaware,
+ Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned
+ In loneliness of prayer unlit by life,
+ Created out of nothing save myself
+ Within the blind fast silence of the soul.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ My devotion kneels to you,
+ Holding a candle to illumine your face.
+ My loneliness is your shadow
+ Along the solitary roads.
+ My passion is a book between your hands
+ Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets,
+ A volume of pressed flowers
+ Scenting your fingers though you read it not.
+ And my white faith
+ Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ISLANDS
+
+
+ As launched upon the loneliness of time
+ We float and dream of what the waves conceal,
+ Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal
+ Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime,
+ Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme,
+ Or indolent ripple sighing at the keel--
+ Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel,
+ The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours climb--
+ So toss our weary ships, till from afar
+ Our visioned island rises suddenly,
+ Where palaces like cloudy colours are,
+ With scented gardens terraced to the sea,
+ The silver steps to our appointed star
+ Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ Many things I'd find to charm you,
+ Books and scarves and silken socks,
+ All the seven rainbow colours
+ Black and white with 'broidered clocks.
+ Then a stick of polished whalebone
+ And a coat of tawny fur,
+ And a row of gleaming bottles
+ Filled with rose-water and myrrh.
+ Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,
+ Old liqueurs in leather kegs,
+ Golden Sauterne, copper sherry
+ And a nest of plover's eggs.
+ Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,
+ Little boxes cut in jade;
+ Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,
+ Damask cloths and dim brocade.
+ Six musicians of the Magyar,
+ Madness making harmony;
+ And a bed austere and narrow
+ With a quilt from Barbary.
+ You shall have a bath of amber,
+ A Venetian looking-glass,
+ And a crimson-chested parrot
+ On a lawn of terraced grass.
+ Then a small Tanagra statue
+ Found anew in ruins old,
+ Or an azure plate from Persia,
+ Or my hair in plaits of gold;
+ Or my scalp that like an Indian
+ You shall carry for a purse,
+ Or my spilt blood in a goblet ...
+ Or a volume of my verse.
+
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+LAMP-POSTS
+
+
+ The eternal flame of laughter and desire
+ Breaks the long darkness with a little glance,
+ Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance
+ Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire
+ That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire
+ Sadly toward their jubilance--Romance
+ Of faery glitter in the streets of chance--
+ Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire
+ Within the fog of our despairing gloom;
+ In the glum alleys, down the haunted night
+ Through tunnelling of subterranean doom,
+ Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright,
+ They bear their coronets of golden bloom
+ To front our anguish with their brave delight.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+
+ Richer than fields of corn that fire in summer,
+ Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden,
+ More fearful and beloved than peace or silence,
+ Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever,
+ Calling towards me with a voice incessant.
+ Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant
+ I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened!
+ I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom,
+ My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty,
+ And honey in thine oaths and lamentations.
+ I played about thy feet that know not resting
+ And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.
+
+ When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter,
+ Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow
+ With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter
+ Are tossed in feathered gaiety about thee--
+ Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant,
+ Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing,
+ Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns,
+ While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter;
+ Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring,
+ As of the angry ocean in her travail ...
+ They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest,
+ Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled;
+ Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion
+ Here crucified each day with lust and hunger,
+ Hung up unlovely in the open market;
+ Made gay with paper garlands, covered over
+ With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet,
+ Lest the elect in passing should be startled,
+ Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour!
+ With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic
+ Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,
+ And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour
+ Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.
+ Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,
+ Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,
+ Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.
+ I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,
+ The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;
+ The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,
+ A million faces scattered like confetti,
+ All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing.
+ There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary,
+ Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling
+ In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.
+
+ O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses,
+ How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us,
+ Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition,
+ Spent in the evening like a rose of fever,
+ Fainting before us paler than a lily.
+ While here each day self-satisfied and placid
+ Moves opulent among the groves of summer;
+ The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes,
+ The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard,
+ Please for a while until the spirit sickens
+ And turns her panting to her ancient lover.
+
+ Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses,
+ Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture
+ Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses
+ Like hungry animals eat up the spaces
+ And close upon the miles that God created,
+ With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening
+ To the far rhythm in the drums of battle,
+ As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting,
+ I feel the scamper of your feet approaching
+ And your great starving arms and strangling fingers
+ That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!
+
+ 1914
+
+
+
+
+ Slowly the pale feet of morning
+ Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous
+ lamplight,
+ Colourless, cold, as the rainclad
+ Sleep-drugged river that carries the wreckage of cities out
+ sea-ward.
+ Slowly the fingers of dawn-light
+ Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,
+ Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing
+ From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.
+ Smoothly the wild hair of darkness
+ Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep
+ veils.
+ Patiently, Morning, the priestess
+ Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness,
+ Gashed with the daggers of street-lights,
+ Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister kisses,--
+ Morning with healing and kindness
+ Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter,
+ Sweeps up the rags of our shadows
+ That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ What have I to do with them,
+ The red athletes in their snow-white clothes?
+ They are sun lovers and moon haters,
+ Toiling or playing in the fields
+ Whereon no shadows lie,
+ Pensively, whispering together--
+ They are space lovers and haters of the stars,
+ Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see
+ The tiaraed brows of darkness.
+ I weary of their striving upward and onward,
+ Away from the green hush of twilight,
+ Where silence drips from the trees,
+ Away from the solemn avenues
+ Where the ghosts blow by
+ Along with a drift of leaves.
+
+ Let us linger awhile
+ Far away from the frets and wars of the world,
+ From the strong men
+ With their strident hymning voices and marching feet--
+ Let us walk alone
+ For the love of our own shadows
+ Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver,
+ With behind us the sky's grey curtain
+ Drawn backward from the moon....
+ Let us sit by the fireside
+ And hear the wind's shrill orchestras,
+ Fiddle and fife and flute,
+ And omened bagpipe screaming....
+ Let us lie abed and dream
+ Through the long summer's morning
+ Of trivial things, and beautiful....
+ Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden
+ gong;
+ Let us run through pools of wine
+ And be splashed with purple.
+ Let us, being sick, make merry,
+ And rejoice when we are weary.
+ Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet,
+ Drinking to Death.
+
+ What have we to do with them,
+ Sons of the sun and the soil,
+ Daughters of the hearth and the field?
+ They that remake the world
+ Melting our idols for silver,
+ Our goblets for gold;
+ Tearing our temples down
+ To build their red brick villages.
+
+ The doomed world faints into mist,
+ World of our indolence and dreams,
+ And the faces and bodies we love
+ Sink through oblivion, and are seen
+ Dimly, as divers through the waters.
+ Old worlds and new worlds!
+ Let us slip between them,
+ And float on the stream that floweth nowhither--
+ Our red ambitions burn
+ To a blue smoke of forgetting;
+ Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out,
+ As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Among the crumbling arches of decay
+ Where all around the red new buildings crept,
+ Where huge machines had rolled the past away,
+ And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;
+
+ Among the ruins I beheld a man
+ Who heeded not the engines as they neared,
+ Painting dead carnivals upon a fan,
+ He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.
+
+ And here and there were flung a mess of things,
+ Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses,
+ Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings,
+ Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.
+
+ A carven sabre hung upon the wall,
+ A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it,
+ A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl,
+ A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.
+
+ And mirrors flashed their argent memories
+ Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed,
+ While ghostly faces of past vanities
+ Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.
+
+ The stranger turned his head and bowed to me
+ And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair.
+ I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see,
+ You really have a fine collection there."
+
+ He bowed to me again, and in his hand
+ Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye
+ With beckoning lights--I could not understand--
+ His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh
+
+ So much he loved their frail inconsequence.
+ I spoke of progress conquering decay,
+ And tired the stillness with my common sense
+ Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.
+
+ But I have never met so queer a man,
+ "I better love my memories," he said,
+ "Look at those painted figures on the fan,
+ How delicate and wistful are the dead."
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ As a nun's face from her black draperies
+ So full of mystery the moon looks down.
+ She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time,
+ Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close,
+ Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up,
+ Smiling away, to watch them swell and die.
+ She dreams of music played among the stars
+ When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed.
+ Above the city glittering giddily,
+ Above the jostling heads of man she moves,
+ Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.
+
+ 1912
+
+
+
+
+ The sun is lord of life and colour,
+ Blood of the rose and hyacinth,
+ Hair of the sea and forests,
+ Crown of the cornfields,
+ Body of the hills.
+ The moon is the harlot of Death,
+ Slaughterer of the Sun,
+ Priestess and poisoner she goes
+ With all her silver flock of wandering souls,
+ Her chant of wailing waters,
+ The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes
+ Bound all around with bandages of mist....
+ The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree,
+ The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes;
+ The living are as cherries that bow to the morning
+ Beckoning to the loitering stranger,
+ The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads.
+ The dead are as frozen skeleton branches
+ Whereon the stillness perches like an owl....
+ The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+BAHAMA ISLANDS
+
+
+I
+
+ All down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream
+ The negroes go, black faces crowding together;
+ And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures,
+ The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's wing--
+ We have rest here and a monotony of wheels,
+ A peaceful noise like bees that moan in June--
+ And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries
+ Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn.
+ Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the
+ window,
+ A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of desire--
+ And nothing rids us utterly of grief,
+ We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.
+
+
+II
+
+ Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and
+ scented,
+ But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their
+ hymns
+ And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented,
+ With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS OF LONDON
+
+
+ Oh, have I bartered and forgotten thee,
+ Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun,
+ Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run
+ A ragged troop along thy streets with me?
+ Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry,
+ Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun,
+ The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun,
+ The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery?
+ Mother of dreams and laughter and despair!
+ Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain,
+ Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere,
+ Thy sins and passions baffle me again;
+ And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare,
+ And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+STREETS
+
+
+ I am going
+ Up and down the roads and alleys
+ Through the forests of the city,
+ Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.
+ My mind shall wander through the streets
+ Whistling to a vague adventure,
+ Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer
+ And casting them away.
+ Dusk is creeping through the town
+ Lighting the lamps and loitering,
+ Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,
+ Hovering clouds of peace;
+ And behind her race the winds
+ Whining to the scent of darkness,
+ Scattering the dust
+ With their swift hounds' feet....
+ I am a hunter in the city's jungle,
+ Exploring all her secret mysteries.
+ I know her well,
+ The moaning highways,
+ And whispering alleys,
+ The chimney-dishevelled roofs
+ Where the moon walks delicately
+ As a stray spectral cat;
+ The little forlorn squares
+ Where one tree stands
+ Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers
+ Over the benches where the people sit
+ And stir not from their sullen postures,
+ Staring out where evening passes
+ With such a sauntering dreamy step.
+ I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,
+ Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,
+ Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,
+ Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.
+ Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker
+ Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate
+ Picks up the littered wreck of holiday
+ To mount the dust heap where our memories lie
+ Sprawled in a mess of ruins....
+ I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,
+ Repeating each in each a dull despair,
+ Indifferent and dignified;
+ Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,
+ With dismal silences of velvet carpets,
+ Where starving souls are kept
+ Feeding upon each other's isolations,
+ Not daring to escape....
+ Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me
+ With their crude temples built in praise of lust,
+ Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream
+ Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods
+ Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,
+ Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....
+
+ I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,
+ Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces
+ That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust....
+ I love the memory-crusted taverns
+ In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune
+ Until the dawn,
+ Like a white minstrel stopped to sing
+ Fantastic serenades, and called me forth
+ Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning
+ Dew-prismed shone the sun....
+ I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses
+ Are bathed in vitriol twilights,
+ Spitting smoke,
+ Or making oaths and mouths at one another....
+ While between
+ The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window
+ Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging
+ Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin....
+ Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes
+ I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,
+ Reflective of the solitude of stars....
+ And I am thrilled
+ With horror and the hope for tragedies....
+
+ But, they surround my heart these weary streets,
+ Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,
+ And through them pass forever
+ Those shadow figures trudging through the grey
+ Like penitent souls through haunted corridors....
+ Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,
+ Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!
+ Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,
+ Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,
+ And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.
+ Through all the winding mazes of the city
+ Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,
+ And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,
+ And by the iron door,
+ Under the windows where we sit and wait
+ For some sweet promise to unfold itself
+ From the shut scrolls of sleep,
+ And at the dusty curtain that divides
+ Glory from Death,
+ And lover from the lover....
+
+ Now in my room I sit
+ And round me falls the darkness
+ In rustling folds of peace.
+ But round my heart I know
+ No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound
+ To shut the city out.
+ For I shall feel the rush of streets
+ Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,
+ Piercing the night's remote divinity.
+ And I shall never rid me of these scars
+ That time and man have cut into my thought,
+ Never shake off my shoulders
+ The burden of the city's pain.
+ Oh, never shall we escape thee,
+ Mother of mutiny and want,
+ Thou beautiful mistress of Grief....
+ Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights
+ Beating with ineloquent hands
+ The tambourines of time,
+ The drums of war;
+ Fevering our minds
+ With the swollen traffic of thoughts,
+ The wheels and rattle of an endless search....
+
+ Tired I am with wandering,
+ Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,
+ More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,
+ Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Laughter and singing come with the morning,
+ When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor,
+ And dons his arrogant clothes.
+ But in the night,
+ When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale,
+ We too put off our opulent disguise
+ And stand alone in the baffling darkness,
+ Fighting with our sins,
+ Weeping for our loneliness,
+ That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ In the night I hear my loneliness calling
+ The long shrill note of the seabird's cry
+ Over the fuming spite of breakers,
+ Over the brumous, sulky tides.
+ All the ocean is craving Heavenward,
+ And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea,
+ Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies,
+ And the waves rear their supplicating hands.
+ Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever,
+ Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols,
+ To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white,
+ Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave,
+ Flashing their signals of unrest.--
+ My longing is a warm thing in a cold street,
+ Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors--
+ My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight
+ That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed--
+ My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence,
+ Through the heavy pauses of sleep.--
+ Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call,
+ Lest I hear my loneliness crying!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+SUNDAY
+
+
+ How beautiful is the world's delight,
+ How trivial, yet as sweet as a passing dream
+ That makes the harassed sleeper in the night
+ Smile, and on waking sigh. Forever the stream
+ Of time moves onward; as in coloured boats
+ A thousand souls go sailing,
+ And stilly down the tide my spirit floats
+ Singing or wailing
+ To the tune the waters make. Here we forget a space
+ The crawling sins of man that sting and gloat,
+ The pain and fear that haggers every face,
+ But vaguely and remote
+ The strident trumpet and the clamorous voices sound--
+ Grief doth forget to curse her Gods or pray,
+ While pagan follies squander all around
+ Their brief gay hours in holiday;
+ For all prayers die when laughter is on the lips.--
+ How frail the moods of joy, how sweet to see them pass
+ Like bubbles on the tide, like coloured ships
+ Sailing on glass!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The leaves are singing, and the sea,
+ And the sand in the wind,
+ Blown grass and hurrying people;
+ Full of melodious strings and lutes and flutes
+ Rustling and whispering forever.
+ The sad music of Life is in my ears,
+ Never ceasing, never asleep,
+ And my heart is strung between chord and chord
+ Like a crucifix in a rosary.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ How soundly sleepeth the fool,
+ With profane snore taunting the solemn-pillared night--
+ He hath no dreams of restless, subtle forms
+ That shift across a feverish vacancy;
+ Nor doth he hear the drums of time
+ Beating against oblivion tunes of war,
+ Goading the crippled hours on their endless march--
+ But waketh to yawn in the face of the sun,
+ Then turneth back to sleep....
+
+ How soundly the wise man sleepeth,
+ Couched royally in the purple of the dark
+ With his white mistress, Peace--
+ And when the morning stealeth on his rest,
+ As a rose he doth pluck her from the spreading tree of days,
+ And reviveth his heart
+ With the perfume of the world....
+ But 'twixt the wise and the foolish
+ Many nights shed sorrow and fear,
+ And nets are spread for timid feet,
+ And the waves beat on the shifting sand....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Moonlit lilacs under the window,
+ And the pale smell of their falling blossoms,
+ And the white floating beams like luminous moths
+ Fluttering from bloom to bloom.
+ Sprays of lilac flowers
+ Frothing at the green verge of midnight waves,
+ Frozen to motionless icicles.
+ Moonlight flows over me,
+ Spreads her bright watery hair over my face,
+ Full of illicit, marvellous perfumes
+ Wreathed with syringa and plaited with hyacinths;
+ Hair of the moonlight falling about me,
+ Straight and cool as the drooping tresses of rain.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Old woman forever sitting
+ Alone in the large hotel under the fans,
+ Infinitely alone where around you spin
+ So many lives like painted tops,
+ Smearing the void a moment with their hues,
+ Giddily catching at balance as they pause.
+ What crime was yours, old woman,
+ What sin against the Earth
+ That she should give you now
+ A cap of dust and furrows on your cheeks,
+ And at the end
+ A hole dug in the mould?
+ Is death the promise of Fate's last rebound,
+ Revenge of Time that waits within the clock
+ And laughs awry at life,
+ For a kiss, for a dream, for a child that you bore,
+ For a fresh rose pinned to your bosom?
+ The owl is in your spirit,
+ Blinking through the oldest tree of wisdom--
+ And now your fingers are weaving
+ The cold pale invisible blossoms of death
+ Into a waxen wreath,
+ And Time
+ Sits down beside you knitting with quick hands
+ Grey counterpanes to cover up a grave!
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Loneliness I love,
+ And that is why they have called me forth into the streets.
+ Loneliness I love,
+ But the crowd has clutched at me with fawning hands,...
+ My spirit speaks
+ In the scented quietness of a divine melancholy
+ Murmuring the tunes
+ For which my dreams are the delicate instruments.
+ The shadowy silences
+ Have made me beautiful and dressed me in velvet dignities,
+ And that is why
+ The noise of tambourines has maddened my soul into dancing,
+ And I am clad
+ In the lust-lipped whispering of furtive caresses.
+ Holiness I love,
+ And touching the virginal pierced feet of martyrs,
+ The crucified feet
+ Nestled among lilies and hallowing candles.
+ Holiness I love
+ And the melodious absolution falling on my sins.
+ But that is why
+ Blasphemous priests have forced my hands to tear
+ The vesture of secrecy
+ Which hides the human nakedness of God.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I met an Indian underneath a tree, under a ragged tree,
+ His face was yellow and wrinkled like some stone whereon a God had
+ writ
+ And his emaciated fingers drew circles in the dust....
+ I bent my mouth to his ear, crying "O father, O Prophet!
+ I have wandered far over the earth troubled with doubts that will not
+ let me rest,
+ Canst thou not tell me with all thy wizardries and meditations
+ The purpose of our lives upon this world,
+ The secret truth Earth shelters in her womb?"
+
+ But he was listening to the whispering of the mountains,
+ To the boom of God's paces on the rocks,
+ And the swishing steps of his followers in the rivers.
+ Then suddenly he pointed to the arched doorway in between the
+ hills,
+ And the mysterious purple curtain of the dusk that drooped from cliff
+ to cliff.
+ I saw in his eyes the vision of highborn ghosts,
+ Of divine ivory faces wreathed with the flowers of wisdom--
+ And I knew that he had found only the half-spoken promises of
+ Heaven....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ I saw a drunkard laughing in a tavern,
+ His cup was tilted and the wine spilt crimson on the sprawled arms
+ and distracted hair of a woman fallen asleep,
+ I watched him there and wondered
+ If ever the bubbling goblins of wine had whispered him life's
+ secret.
+ But he raised the cup of his carousals and gazed at emptiness,
+ Toasting some wild, irreverent dream,
+ Some flame-red salamander pirouetting among the dead waste ashes of
+ time--
+ And I knew that he had found only the secrets of sleep....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ A woman sat within a little house,
+ Scolding and singing ballads to her child,
+ And all around came the quarrel of children's voices.
+ Yet one boy sat apart within the furthest corner of the room
+ Painting an animal with coloured chalks.
+ I lingered by the fire thinking of life, its vanities and mysteries,
+ But the woman did not heed me,
+ Nor her pale son that sat so hunched and still,
+ Painting his visions with the broken chalks,
+ For they had discovered the absorbing painful secrets of giving
+ birth....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ It was evening as I wandered,
+ By a lake two lovers leaned, smiling to see their faces in the
+ water,
+ For they had found within each other's souls
+ An argent flattering mirror wherein to gaze and see their faces
+ change with all the moods and shadows of the day....
+ Not here should I discover the answer to bring light into my
+ darkness,
+ Into the dim psychic crystals of my soul opalled with the changing
+ colours of unrest--
+ So I went away into the loneliness, asking the forests and the
+ mountains and the sea
+ The knowledge of life's baffling mysteries.
+ But they were roaring in a wind of memories,
+ Gathering the rain into their bodies to make them fierce and
+ strong,
+ Heaving their shoulders upward to the morning,
+ Crowning their foreheads with sunlight.
+ And I knew that they were Life itself,
+ The pushing vehemence that rushes from the strangling arms of
+ Death,
+ Nor could they guess
+ The purpose of God's beauty in their joy....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ From the fathomless depth of my boredom, from the
+ last room of its emptiness, an elf has come to play
+ with me.
+
+ As comes a little gold spider to a prison cell teasing the
+ criminal from his darkness to tear at a thread of sunlight,
+ and kiss the mouth of a shy morning whispering through
+ the window.
+
+ An elf has come to dance with me, blown like a leaf on
+ the path of my autumn lassitude.
+
+ Sprightly one, dervish! You are the living adventure
+ born of my dead childhood, you are the small god in the
+ temples of my unbelief, you are the bird that nests in ruined
+ temples, laying your silver eggs by moonlight and singing
+ when the pagan birds are still.
+
+ You are the dream-sower in the fields of sleep, you have
+ jingled the star-bells on the hood of darkness, and from the
+ knarled, stark tree of time have flung me the apple of
+ eternal laughter.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+ Lolling in snow, like kings in ermine coats, the gilt-crowned
+ bottles lie.... Our thoughts are dangled in
+ a laughter of leaves as bunches of blue and yellow grapes
+ for faery beggars, for ragged fancies to pluck and taste.
+
+ Our music shall be the minstrelsy of ghostly ballad-mongers
+ that have stolen from the ashen banquets of death to bless
+ our revels.
+
+ Our spirits shall flit like those winged faces of cherubs
+ that never can alight, but swing forever on the azure ribbons
+ of the sky.
+
+ And all our dreams and kisses shall be as the rose-leaves
+ falling on ancient festivals, as the shadows of rose-leaves
+ falling on phantom lovers in the sleep-pillared temples of
+ our first archaic passion.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The roots of our longing are probing the heart of night,
+ delving and twining together that our ultimate truth
+ may grow out of the darkness that bewilders and nourishes.
+ Out of the earth, the dust, the crystals of frost that bind
+ themselves like a tight crown over our heads.
+
+ Through the mould and the frost our hair and fingers shall
+ prick their spears of pallor and flame, and in the green
+ ardour of our up-rushing leaves the red goblets of fire
+ shall open, and masses of white flowers, milky as the star-sprays
+ that droop over Heaven, shall splash their bright
+ foam from the darkness, as waves that rise and break into
+ a fountain of blossoms.
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+VAHDAH
+
+
+ Sun-aureoled lilies are your priestesses,
+ They stand like choirs in silver surplices,
+ Melodious streams of silence fill the room,
+ And pensive listeners lean within the gloom
+ Of purple quietness. A laughter full of holiness--
+ Like the wild bells of lilies ringing in the loneliness
+ Of star-reflected gardens walled with night,--
+ Thrills from your soul which empties its delight
+ As rain on lilies, or as sunlight falling slenderly
+ To gild their ivory temples, and as moonlight shutting tenderly
+ Their alabaster doors.... A white peace grows,
+ And love, within your spirit like a lily and a rose.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Starlit silences!
+ Breeding fears, swarming with sudden deaths,
+ With separations, burdens, and despairs,
+ Weaving slow eerie fancies in my brain ...
+ Forlorn shorn monks go down the cloisters of quietness
+ With tortured crucifixes cut in ivory
+ Clasped in their praying hands,
+ And psalmed with lips renunciate of kisses ...
+ Forgotten days are painted on the night
+ In parables and symbols of remorse
+ That jeer from out the wind-stirred tapestries.
+ The hangman's rope coils upward like a snake
+ Out of the death-coloured waters,
+ While the black barges pass
+ Funereal,
+ Carrying doom from mist to mist....
+ And madmen steal about the wintry parks
+ Under the high glum walls of an asylum,
+ With eyes lit up in phosphorescent ecstasies,
+ With fumbling hands
+ That grope for things invisibly obscene.
+ Even the clock
+ Grown idiot too from keeping madmen's time
+ Gibbers the hours away in irrelevant chimes....
+ Silence embalms the dead with scented bands
+ And is the watchman to deserted houses,
+ And draws the violet curtain on the day,
+ And fits a mask of silver to the moon.
+ Silence brings corpses from the crypts of memory
+ And sits them round us in the empty chairs,
+ Opens the secret chambers of our hopes
+ And shows us there in awful pantomime
+ Lust wreathing love with poppies and with ashes,
+ And Beauty dressing Sin for carnival,
+ And Peace made drunken with a cup of blood.
+ It winds as ivy round our listening thoughts
+ Shutting all sounds away, enclosing us
+ Within its stifled virid twilight....
+
+ Cry out, sing, make noises,
+ Bacchantes, revellers, clowns!
+ Bring myriad lamps in clusters, likening grapes
+ That spill the wine of light into our gloom;
+ Pressing against our lips
+ The red grape-kisses of pleasure.
+ Bring the hounds,
+ The garlanded white ones,
+ To bay and snarl and tear the flying rags
+ Of stillness shadowing away!
+ Lean over me, O Life,
+ And whisper all thy lying flatteries
+ That drag me back from Silence and her dead.
+ I have kept vigil on my soul too long
+ Within this vast cathedral of dim sleep,
+ Languidly gathering
+ The cold grey lilies of the stars
+ To slip between her passive waxen hands....
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The mountain is an Emperor.
+ The clouds are his beard, and the stars his diadem;
+ His bauble is the moon;
+ He is dressed in silver forests, and the mist his train;
+ His feet are two white rivers.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the negation of thought,
+ The shutting off
+ Of all those brooding phantoms that surround
+ As dank trees in a forest
+ Cutting the daylight into rags,
+ Caging the sun
+ In rusted prison bars.
+ Happiness loves to lie at a river's edge
+ And make no song,
+ But listen to the water's murmuring wisdom,
+ The kissing touch of leaves wind-bowed together,
+ The feathery swish of cloud wings on a hill;
+ Opening wide the violet-petalled doors
+ Of every shy and cloistered sense,
+ That all the scent and music of the world
+ May rush into the soul.
+ And happiness expands
+ The rainbow arch for a procession of dreams,
+ For moth-like fancies winged with evening,
+ For dove-breasted silences,
+ For shadowy reveries
+ And starry pilgrims....
+ I know what happiness is--
+ It is the giving back to Earth
+ Of all our furtive thefts,
+ The lurid jewels that we stole away
+ From passion, sin and pain,
+ Because they glittered strangely, luring us
+ With their forbidden beauty.
+ Because our childish fingers curiously
+ Crave the pale secrets of the moon
+ And grope for dangerous toys.
+ Happiness comes in giving back to Earth
+ The things we took from her with violent hands,
+ Remembering only
+ That her dust is our garment,
+ Her fruits our endeavour,
+ Her waters our priestess,
+ Her leaves our interpreters to God,
+ Her hills our infinite patience.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Long hath the pen lain idle in my hand,
+ Or traced slow sentences without a rhyme,
+ Words strung at random to beguile the time
+ As children threading beads upon a strand.
+ I have strayed far away from fairyland
+ Whose little hills grow steep and hard to climb;
+ I creep along the valleys in the slime,
+ Or hide me like an ostrich in the sand.
+
+ For I have sought a mellow idleness,
+ To be forever buried as a fly
+ Lies casketed in amber; where the stress
+ Of peril, hunger, Death can never cry
+ To wake me from my sanguine weariness,
+ Or cloud the lucid stillness with a sigh.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I laid my heart on a stone
+ And stood in the wood to watch.
+ Presently a priest came by;
+ He hid it in his cowl
+ And buried it in the graveyard.
+ Now is it grown into a cyclamen tree,
+ Clustering over the wall,
+ Beckoning far along the twilight road;
+ Nodding and singing where the cypress moans,
+ Ringing its little bells while the great bell tolls.
+ Whiter than ghosts are its flowers,
+ And its scent is sweeter than ghostly music--
+ All the men and priests that pass
+ In the night when the stars lean down,
+ Smell the heavy fragrance there
+ And feel the gentle touch of dripping dew.
+ Then they cross themselves and go
+ Hurriedly, warily,
+ Dreaming of pale women,
+ Under the pale stars.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The cold light steals into my soul
+ Revealing its emptiness,
+ The cold winds batter at my heart
+ And make its lonely tenant shake with fear--
+ The raindrops slide across the window-glass
+ Like sighs that fall from patient weariness;
+ And coldly smiling time
+ Peers with his clock-face, ticking in my brain
+ The pulse of a monotonous remorse.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ The caravans of spring are in the town,
+ Lighting their brilliant torches in the park,
+ Dangling their bells, engirdling each stark
+ Black tree with coloured rings. The houses frown
+ Against the beryl sky, yet wear a crown
+ Of hazy dream, or flash a golden spark
+ Of sun-fire in their windows glum and dark;
+ The people blow like petals up and down.
+
+ But London tires at evening, each grey street
+ Mourns as the slow procession passes by,
+ Traffic and crowd, and Time on loitering feet.
+ Spring droops his lute, the slender echoes sigh,
+ And wistfully the jaded revellers meet,
+ Their pomp in tatters and their wreaths awry.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ I dread the beauty of approaching spring
+ Now the old month is dead and the young moon
+ Has pierced my heart with her sharp silver horns.
+ My tired soul is startled out of sleep
+ By all the urging joy of bud and leaf,
+ And in the barren yard where I have paced
+ Content with prison and despair's monotony,
+ The trees break into music wild and shrill,
+ And flowers come out like stars amid the dust,
+ Bewildering my loneliness with beauty....
+ For winter with her melancholy face
+ Shone back my miseries as in a glass,
+ And wept and whined in harmony with me;
+ And I could listen by the withering ashes
+ To the ill-omened drum of dropping rain,
+ And sighing harken sighs and mute feel silence,
+ And cold stretch forth my hand into the snows,
+ And hating, hear the laughter of the wind
+ Whose mad hands tear the sky.
+ But now again the promise of the spring
+ Shall lift my martyred spirit from the dust,
+ To where the lilied altar shines with peace,
+ And the white priestess comes
+ Crowning each candle with a gold desire
+ Engirdling with pallors
+ The forehead of a divine ghost.
+ Ah, but they die, these gods, the candles dwindle
+ And spring is but a radiant beckoning
+ To death that follows slowly, silently....
+
+ O flitting swallows, fleeting laugh of wind,
+ O flash of silver in the wings of dawn
+ That are spread out and closed. O hush of night
+ Breathless with love, oh swish of whispering tide
+ That swells and shrinks upon the dreaming shore.
+ O gentle eyes of children wonder-wide
+ That grow too soon to weariness and close;
+ O scuttling run of rabbit on the hills,
+ And flight of lazy rooks above the elm;
+ O birds' eggs frail, tinged faintly, nestled close,
+ And mystery of flower in the bud.
+ O burning galaxy of buttercups,
+ And drone of bees above the pouting rose,--
+ O twilit lovers stilled with reverie
+ And footprints of them swerving on the sand
+ And darkness of them clasped against the sky!
+ I see beyond the glory of your days
+ The grey days marching one behind the other
+ To the bleak tunes of silence.
+ When mists shall smear the radiance of the moon
+ And the lean thief shall pass,
+ Snatching the glittering toys away from love,
+ Plucking the feathers from the wings of peace.
+ And Life herself, grown old and crooked now,
+ Shall go the way that her long shadow points,
+ Her long black shadow down the roads of sleep.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER
+
+
+ I cannot think that you have gone away,
+ You loved the earth--and life lit up your eyes,
+ And flickered in your smile that would surmise
+ Death as a song, a poem, or a play.
+ You were reborn afresh with every day,
+ And baffled fortune in some new disguise.
+ Ah! can it perish when the body dies,
+ Such youth, such love, such passion to be gay?
+
+ We shall not see you come to us and leave
+ A conqueror--nor catch on fairy wing
+ Some slender fancy--nor new wonders weave
+ Upon the loom of your imagining.
+ The world is wearier, grown dark to grieve
+ Her child that was a pilgrim and a king.
+
+ 1917
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+ At evening when the twilight curtains fall,
+ Before the lamps are lit within my room,
+ My memories hang bright upon the gloom,
+ Like ancient frescoes painted on the wall.
+
+ And I can hear the call of birds and bells
+ And shadowy sound of waves, and wind through leaves
+ And wind that rustles through the burnished sheaves,
+ And far off voices whispering farewells.
+
+ I dream again the joy I used to know
+ While straying by the sea that hardly sighed
+ A sorrow in my singing, as the tide
+ Crept up to clasp me, smiled, and let me go.
+
+ And I remember all the glad lost hours,
+ The racing of brown rabbits on the hill,
+ The winds that prowled around the lonely mill,
+ Laburnum laughter, music of the flowers.
+
+ The berries plucked with loitering delight,
+ Staining the dusk with purple, till the thought
+ Of starry little ghosts behind us caught
+ Our hearts and made us fearful of the night.
+
+ The London evenings huddled in the rain
+ Whose misty prisms shone with lamplight pale,
+ Making our hearts seem sinister and frail,
+ Fainting our thoughts with mystery and pain.
+
+ I have a world of memories to dream,
+ To touch with loving fingers as a sigh
+ Revives a little flame and lets it die.
+ Ah, were the days as lovely as they seem
+
+ Now that they look so peaceful lying dead?
+ And is it all the hope of Joy we have,
+ The broken trophies of the things she gave
+ And took away to give us dreams instead?
+
+ The things we love and lose before we find
+ The way to love them well enough and keep,
+ That now are woven on the looms of sleep
+ That now are only music of the wind.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ London grows sad at evening,
+ And we at the windows sit
+ To watch her moods,
+ Wearying with her.
+ Even a noise of laughter from the street
+ Sounds in our ears
+ Like something dropped and shattered on the stone.
+ Then her musician comes,
+ A wandering, malicious spirit;
+ The organ grinder, playing those old tunes
+ We know too well,
+ That hurt us with fatigue.
+ Till Hope like a harlequin,
+ His glitter hidden in a ragged coat,
+ The lamplighter, goes by,
+ Planting his pale flames in the dusk.
+
+ 1918
+
+
+
+
+ Ah! the spring,
+ Sudden, surprising,
+ Melting the iron scales around the heart
+ As the earliest sun
+ Melts the cold case of dew on leaves--
+ Ah! the streets like odorous rivers
+ Chanting the echoes of seas--
+ Ah! the flowers in shop-windows
+ Beseeching, persuasive,
+ Reluctant to let their beauty flow away
+ From thoughts that mirror them in passing--
+ Beautiful exiles
+ Fluttering in their chains,
+ Thrilled with the noise of bees,
+ The music of meadows
+ Still hovering around them--
+ Flower fingers, flower-touches,
+ Passional, reminiscent,
+ Rippling the soul's still waters--
+ Flower galaxies,
+ Enamelled bridges arching from dream to dream,
+ Garlands splashing over the eyes of satyrs,
+ The furtive woodland eyes,
+ The pointed inquisitive ears--
+ Pallid flowers foaming on hill-crests,
+ Gushing heavenwards
+ From a sea of stormy mountains--
+ Opening and shutting exquisite doors,
+ As the senses open to music,
+ Shut upon silence,
+ Open to beauty,
+ Close their caskets upon love--
+ Ah! the flowers in the windows,
+ Amorous of poets
+ Making a chaplet of song!
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERTONE OF THE VOLGA BOAT SONG
+
+
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee,
+ We are as fog that drifts on the river,
+ As the wailing of voices blown through mist--
+ We are as those that carry bags of dust
+ Heaping them with the dust--
+ We are covered with the dust of days,
+ We are pale from the dust of dreamless nights
+ Shaken before we were rested--
+ At dawn we are found by the sun
+ Adrift, labouring, thinking of nothing--
+ Our wine is bitter, it has made us drunk,
+ Our bread is coarse,
+ We are always athirst and hungry....
+ O God, we have been patient,
+ We have grown old in weariness,
+ Our lives are as the labouring of the wind--
+ We are huddled together in the dawn,
+ The sleeping houses pass us,
+ The dawn is a field of nettles
+ Stinging us from rest....
+ O God,
+ We have nothing to give Thee but patience,
+ We have suffered evil and believed Thee good,
+ Thy face is the gentleness of the distance,
+ The river is placid with the thought of Thee--
+ Our tears have washed us harder than the rocks,
+ And like the rocks we wait,
+ Grow old with waiting....
+ Weariness, the river
+ Flowing through banks of sleep....
+ O God, we have nothing to give Thee,
+ Take our great weariness,
+ We that have never lived and never slept,
+ Take our long weariness, O God!...
+
+ 1919
+
+
+
+
+Transcribers' Notes:
+
+
+Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were not changed.
+
+Ellipses are reproduced as printed in the original book.
+
+Most of the poems' titles appear only in the Table of Contents, not
+with the poems themselves.
+
+When the Transcriber could not to determine whether a verse at the top
+of a page was a new stanza or part of the stanza on the previous page,
+the latter was assumed.
+
+Page 42: "sombring" was printed that way.
+
+Page 89: "Because I can not" was printed with "can" and "not" as
+separate words.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Iris Tree
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***
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