1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099
2100
2101
2102
2103
2104
2105
2106
2107
2108
2109
2110
2111
2112
2113
2114
2115
2116
2117
2118
2119
2120
2121
2122
2123
2124
2125
2126
2127
2128
2129
2130
2131
2132
2133
2134
2135
2136
2137
2138
2139
2140
2141
2142
2143
2144
2145
2146
2147
2148
2149
2150
2151
2152
2153
2154
2155
2156
2157
2158
2159
2160
2161
2162
2163
2164
2165
2166
2167
2168
2169
2170
2171
2172
2173
2174
2175
2176
2177
2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187
2188
2189
2190
2191
2192
2193
2194
2195
2196
2197
2198
2199
2200
2201
2202
2203
2204
2205
2206
2207
2208
2209
2210
2211
2212
2213
2214
2215
2216
2217
2218
2219
2220
2221
2222
2223
2224
2225
2226
2227
2228
2229
2230
2231
2232
2233
2234
2235
2236
2237
2238
2239
2240
2241
2242
2243
2244
2245
2246
2247
2248
2249
2250
2251
2252
2253
2254
2255
2256
2257
2258
2259
2260
2261
2262
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267
2268
2269
2270
2271
2272
2273
2274
2275
2276
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282
2283
2284
2285
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290
2291
2292
2293
2294
2295
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304
2305
2306
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312
2313
2314
2315
2316
2317
2318
2319
2320
2321
2322
2323
2324
2325
2326
2327
2328
2329
2330
2331
2332
2333
2334
2335
2336
2337
2338
2339
2340
2341
2342
2343
2344
2345
2346
2347
2348
2349
2350
2351
2352
2353
2354
2355
2356
2357
2358
2359
2360
2361
2362
2363
2364
2365
2366
2367
2368
2369
2370
2371
2372
2373
2374
2375
2376
2377
2378
2379
2380
2381
2382
2383
2384
2385
2386
2387
2388
2389
2390
2391
2392
2393
2394
2395
2396
2397
2398
2399
2400
2401
2402
2403
2404
2405
2406
2407
2408
2409
2410
2411
2412
2413
2414
2415
2416
2417
2418
2419
2420
2421
2422
2423
2424
2425
2426
2427
2428
2429
2430
2431
2432
2433
2434
2435
2436
2437
2438
2439
2440
2441
2442
2443
2444
2445
2446
2447
2448
2449
2450
2451
2452
2453
2454
2455
2456
2457
2458
2459
2460
2461
2462
2463
2464
2465
2466
2467
2468
2469
2470
2471
2472
2473
2474
2475
2476
2477
2478
2479
2480
2481
2482
2483
2484
2485
2486
2487
2488
2489
2490
2491
2492
2493
2494
2495
2496
2497
2498
2499
2500
2501
2502
2503
2504
2505
2506
2507
2508
2509
2510
2511
2512
2513
2514
2515
2516
2517
2518
2519
2520
2521
2522
2523
2524
2525
2526
2527
2528
2529
2530
2531
2532
2533
2534
2535
2536
2537
2538
2539
2540
2541
2542
2543
2544
2545
2546
2547
2548
2549
2550
2551
2552
2553
2554
2555
2556
2557
2558
2559
2560
2561
2562
2563
2564
2565
2566
2567
2568
2569
2570
2571
2572
2573
2574
2575
2576
2577
2578
2579
2580
2581
2582
2583
2584
2585
2586
2587
2588
2589
2590
2591
2592
2593
2594
2595
2596
2597
2598
2599
2600
2601
2602
2603
2604
2605
2606
2607
2608
2609
2610
2611
2612
2613
2614
2615
2616
2617
2618
2619
2620
2621
2622
2623
2624
2625
2626
2627
2628
2629
2630
2631
2632
2633
2634
2635
2636
2637
2638
2639
2640
2641
2642
2643
2644
2645
2646
2647
2648
2649
2650
2651
2652
2653
2654
2655
2656
2657
2658
2659
2660
2661
2662
2663
2664
2665
2666
2667
2668
2669
2670
2671
2672
2673
2674
2675
2676
2677
2678
2679
2680
2681
2682
2683
2684
2685
2686
2687
2688
2689
2690
2691
2692
2693
2694
2695
2696
2697
2698
2699
2700
2701
2702
2703
2704
2705
2706
2707
2708
2709
2710
2711
2712
2713
2714
2715
2716
2717
2718
2719
2720
2721
2722
2723
2724
2725
2726
2727
2728
2729
2730
2731
2732
2733
2734
2735
2736
2737
2738
2739
2740
2741
2742
2743
2744
2745
2746
2747
2748
2749
2750
2751
2752
2753
2754
2755
2756
2757
2758
2759
2760
2761
2762
2763
2764
2765
2766
2767
2768
2769
2770
2771
2772
2773
2774
2775
2776
2777
2778
2779
2780
2781
2782
2783
2784
2785
2786
2787
2788
2789
2790
2791
2792
2793
2794
2795
2796
2797
2798
2799
2800
2801
2802
2803
2804
2805
2806
2807
2808
2809
2810
2811
2812
2813
2814
2815
2816
2817
2818
2819
2820
2821
2822
2823
2824
2825
2826
2827
2828
2829
2830
2831
2832
2833
2834
2835
2836
2837
2838
2839
2840
2841
2842
2843
2844
2845
2846
2847
2848
2849
2850
2851
2852
2853
2854
2855
2856
2857
2858
2859
2860
2861
2862
2863
2864
2865
2866
2867
2868
2869
2870
2871
2872
2873
2874
2875
2876
2877
2878
2879
2880
2881
2882
2883
2884
2885
2886
2887
2888
2889
2890
2891
2892
2893
2894
2895
2896
2897
2898
2899
2900
2901
2902
2903
2904
2905
2906
2907
2908
2909
2910
2911
2912
2913
2914
2915
2916
2917
2918
2919
2920
2921
2922
2923
2924
2925
2926
2927
2928
2929
2930
2931
2932
2933
2934
2935
2936
2937
2938
2939
2940
2941
2942
2943
2944
2945
2946
2947
2948
2949
2950
2951
2952
2953
2954
2955
2956
2957
2958
2959
2960
2961
2962
2963
2964
2965
2966
2967
2968
2969
2970
2971
2972
2973
2974
2975
2976
2977
2978
2979
2980
2981
2982
2983
2984
2985
2986
2987
2988
2989
2990
2991
2992
2993
2994
2995
2996
2997
2998
2999
3000
3001
3002
3003
3004
3005
3006
3007
3008
3009
3010
3011
3012
3013
3014
3015
3016
3017
3018
3019
3020
3021
3022
3023
3024
3025
3026
3027
3028
3029
3030
3031
3032
3033
3034
3035
3036
3037
3038
3039
3040
3041
3042
3043
3044
3045
3046
3047
3048
3049
3050
3051
3052
3053
3054
3055
3056
3057
3058
3059
3060
3061
3062
3063
3064
3065
3066
3067
3068
3069
3070
3071
3072
3073
3074
3075
3076
3077
3078
3079
3080
3081
3082
3083
3084
3085
3086
3087
3088
3089
3090
3091
3092
3093
3094
3095
3096
3097
3098
3099
3100
3101
3102
3103
3104
3105
3106
3107
3108
3109
3110
3111
3112
3113
3114
3115
3116
3117
3118
3119
3120
3121
3122
3123
3124
3125
3126
3127
3128
3129
3130
3131
3132
3133
3134
3135
3136
3137
3138
3139
3140
3141
3142
3143
3144
3145
3146
3147
3148
3149
3150
3151
3152
3153
3154
3155
3156
3157
3158
3159
3160
3161
3162
3163
3164
3165
3166
3167
3168
3169
3170
3171
3172
3173
3174
3175
3176
3177
3178
3179
3180
3181
3182
3183
3184
3185
3186
3187
3188
3189
3190
3191
3192
3193
3194
3195
3196
3197
3198
3199
3200
3201
3202
3203
3204
3205
3206
3207
3208
3209
3210
3211
3212
3213
3214
3215
3216
3217
3218
3219
3220
3221
3222
3223
3224
3225
3226
3227
3228
3229
3230
3231
3232
3233
3234
3235
3236
3237
3238
3239
3240
3241
3242
3243
3244
3245
3246
3247
3248
3249
3250
3251
3252
3253
3254
3255
3256
3257
3258
3259
3260
3261
3262
3263
3264
3265
3266
3267
3268
3269
3270
3271
3272
3273
3274
3275
3276
3277
3278
3279
3280
3281
3282
3283
3284
3285
3286
3287
3288
3289
3290
3291
3292
3293
3294
3295
3296
3297
3298
3299
3300
3301
3302
3303
3304
3305
3306
3307
3308
3309
3310
3311
3312
3313
3314
3315
3316
3317
3318
3319
3320
3321
3322
3323
3324
3325
3326
3327
3328
3329
3330
3331
3332
3333
3334
3335
3336
3337
3338
3339
3340
3341
3342
3343
3344
3345
3346
3347
3348
3349
3350
3351
3352
3353
3354
3355
3356
3357
3358
3359
3360
3361
3362
3363
3364
3365
3366
3367
3368
3369
3370
3371
3372
3373
3374
3375
3376
3377
3378
3379
3380
3381
3382
3383
3384
3385
3386
3387
3388
3389
3390
3391
3392
3393
3394
3395
3396
3397
3398
3399
3400
3401
3402
3403
3404
3405
3406
3407
3408
3409
3410
3411
3412
3413
3414
3415
3416
3417
3418
3419
3420
3421
3422
3423
3424
3425
3426
3427
3428
3429
3430
3431
3432
3433
3434
3435
3436
3437
3438
3439
3440
3441
3442
3443
3444
3445
3446
3447
3448
3449
3450
3451
3452
3453
3454
3455
3456
3457
3458
3459
3460
3461
3462
3463
3464
3465
3466
3467
3468
3469
3470
3471
3472
3473
3474
3475
3476
3477
3478
3479
3480
3481
3482
3483
3484
3485
3486
3487
3488
3489
3490
3491
3492
3493
3494
3495
3496
3497
3498
3499
3500
3501
3502
3503
3504
3505
3506
3507
3508
3509
3510
3511
3512
3513
3514
3515
3516
3517
3518
3519
3520
3521
3522
3523
3524
3525
3526
3527
3528
3529
3530
3531
3532
3533
3534
3535
3536
3537
3538
3539
3540
3541
3542
3543
3544
3545
3546
3547
3548
3549
3550
3551
3552
3553
3554
3555
3556
3557
3558
3559
3560
3561
3562
3563
3564
3565
3566
3567
3568
3569
3570
3571
3572
3573
3574
3575
3576
3577
3578
3579
3580
3581
3582
3583
3584
3585
3586
3587
3588
3589
3590
3591
3592
3593
3594
3595
3596
3597
3598
3599
3600
3601
3602
3603
3604
3605
3606
3607
3608
3609
3610
3611
3612
3613
3614
3615
3616
3617
3618
3619
3620
3621
3622
3623
3624
3625
3626
3627
3628
3629
3630
3631
3632
3633
3634
3635
3636
3637
3638
3639
3640
3641
3642
3643
3644
3645
3646
3647
3648
3649
3650
3651
3652
3653
3654
3655
3656
3657
3658
3659
3660
3661
3662
3663
3664
3665
3666
3667
3668
3669
3670
3671
3672
3673
3674
3675
3676
3677
3678
3679
3680
3681
3682
3683
3684
3685
3686
3687
3688
3689
3690
3691
3692
3693
3694
3695
3696
3697
3698
3699
3700
3701
3702
3703
3704
3705
3706
3707
3708
3709
3710
3711
3712
3713
3714
3715
3716
3717
3718
3719
3720
3721
3722
3723
3724
3725
3726
3727
3728
3729
3730
3731
3732
3733
3734
3735
3736
3737
3738
3739
3740
3741
3742
3743
3744
3745
3746
3747
3748
3749
3750
3751
3752
3753
3754
3755
3756
3757
3758
3759
3760
3761
3762
3763
3764
3765
3766
3767
3768
3769
3770
3771
3772
3773
3774
3775
3776
3777
3778
3779
3780
3781
3782
3783
3784
3785
3786
3787
3788
3789
3790
3791
3792
3793
3794
3795
3796
3797
3798
3799
3800
3801
3802
3803
3804
3805
3806
3807
3808
3809
3810
3811
3812
3813
3814
3815
3816
3817
3818
3819
3820
3821
3822
3823
3824
3825
3826
3827
3828
3829
3830
3831
3832
3833
3834
3835
3836
3837
3838
3839
3840
3841
3842
3843
3844
3845
3846
3847
3848
3849
3850
3851
3852
3853
3854
3855
3856
3857
3858
3859
3860
3861
3862
3863
3864
3865
3866
3867
3868
3869
3870
3871
3872
3873
3874
3875
3876
3877
3878
3879
3880
3881
3882
3883
3884
3885
3886
3887
3888
3889
3890
3891
3892
3893
3894
3895
3896
3897
3898
3899
3900
3901
3902
3903
3904
3905
3906
3907
3908
3909
3910
3911
3912
3913
3914
3915
3916
3917
3918
3919
3920
3921
3922
3923
3924
3925
3926
3927
3928
3929
3930
3931
3932
3933
3934
3935
3936
3937
3938
3939
3940
3941
3942
3943
3944
3945
3946
3947
3948
3949
3950
3951
3952
3953
3954
3955
3956
3957
3958
3959
3960
3961
3962
3963
3964
3965
3966
3967
3968
3969
3970
3971
3972
3973
3974
3975
3976
3977
3978
3979
3980
3981
3982
3983
3984
3985
3986
3987
3988
3989
3990
3991
3992
3993
3994
3995
3996
3997
3998
3999
4000
4001
4002
4003
4004
4005
4006
4007
4008
4009
4010
4011
4012
4013
4014
4015
4016
4017
4018
4019
4020
4021
4022
4023
4024
4025
4026
4027
4028
4029
4030
4031
4032
4033
4034
4035
4036
4037
4038
4039
4040
4041
4042
4043
4044
4045
4046
4047
4048
4049
4050
4051
4052
4053
4054
4055
4056
4057
4058
4059
4060
4061
4062
4063
4064
4065
4066
4067
4068
4069
4070
4071
4072
4073
4074
4075
4076
4077
4078
4079
4080
4081
4082
4083
4084
4085
4086
4087
4088
4089
4090
4091
4092
4093
4094
4095
4096
4097
4098
4099
4100
4101
4102
4103
4104
|
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<link rel="coverpage" href="images/img-cover.jpg" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Argonaut and Juggernaut,
by Osbert Sitwell
</title>
<style type="text/css">
body { color: black;
background: white;
margin-right: 10%;
margin-left: 10%;
font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
text-align: justify }
p {text-indent: 4% }
p.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
p.t1 {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 200%;
text-align: center }
p.t2 {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 150%;
text-align: center }
p.t2b {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 150%;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center }
p.t3 {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 100%;
text-align: center }
p.t3b {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 100%;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center }
p.t4 {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 80%;
text-align: center }
p.t4b {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 80%;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center }
p.t5 {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 60%;
text-align: center }
h1 { text-align: center }
h2 { text-align: center }
h3 { text-align: center }
h4 { text-align: center }
h5 { text-align: center }
p.poem {text-indent: 0%;
margin-left: 0%; }
p.thought {text-indent: 0% ;
letter-spacing: 4em ;
text-align: center }
p.letter {text-indent: 0%;
margin-left: 10% ;
margin-right: 10% }
p.footnote {text-indent: 0% ;
font-size: 80%;
margin-left: 10% ;
margin-right: 10% }
.smcap { font-variant: small-caps }
p.transnote {text-indent: 0% ;
margin-left: 10% ;
margin-right: 10% }
p.intro {font-size: 90% ;
text-indent: -5% ;
margin-left: 5% ;
margin-right: 0% }
p.quote {text-indent: 4% ;
margin-left: 0% ;
margin-right: 0% }
p.finis { font-size: larger ;
text-align: center ;
text-indent: 0% ;
margin-left: 0% ;
margin-right: 0% }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 61368 ***</div>
<h1>
<br /><br />
Argonaut and<br />
Juggernaut<br />
</h1>
<p class="t3">
BY<br />
</p>
<p class="t2">
OSBERT SITWELL<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3">
LONDON<br />
Chatto & Windus<br />
1919<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t4">
<i>All rights reserved</i>
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3">
TO<br />
THE MEMORY OF<br />
ROBERT ROSS<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
My thanks are due to Messrs. Blackwell for
permission to reprint certain poems which
first appeared in the anthology "Wheels," and
to the editors of <i>The Times</i>, the <i>Nation</i>, <i>Art and
Letters</i>, the <i>Cambridge Magazine</i>, <i>Everyman</i>,
<i>Colour</i>, <i>New Paths</i>, and <i>Poetry and Drama</i>
(New Series), for allowing me to reprint
various poems which first appeared in their
columns. Several of the war verses at the
end of this volume first appeared in the
<i>Nation</i> under the signature "Miles."
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="howshallwe"></a>
"HOW SHALL WE RISE TO GREET THE DAWN?"<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
How shall we rise to greet the dawn?<br />
Not timidly,<br />
With a hand above our eyes,<br />
But greet the strong light<br />
Joyfully;<br />
Nor will we mistake the dawn<br />
For the mid-day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We must create and fashion a new God—<br />
A God of power, of beauty, and of strength—<br />
Created painfully, cruelly,<br />
Labouring from the revulsion of men's minds.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
It is not that the money-changers<br />
Ply their trade<br />
Within the sacred places;<br />
But that the old God<br />
Has made the Stock Exchange his Temple.<br />
We must drive him from it.<br />
Why should we tinker with clay feet?<br />
We will fashion<br />
A perfect unity<br />
Of precious metals.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Let us tear the paper moon<br />
From its empty dome.<br />
Let us see the world with young eyes.<br />
Let us harness the waves to make power,<br />
And in so doing,<br />
Seek not to spoil their rolling freedom,<br />
But to endow<br />
The soiled and straining cities<br />
With the same splendour of strength.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We will not be afraid,<br />
Tho' the golden geese cackle in the Capitol,<br />
In fear<br />
That their eggs may be placed<br />
In an incubator.<br />
Continually they cackle thus—<br />
These venerable birds—<br />
Crying, "Those whom the Gods love<br />
Die young,"<br />
Or something of that sort.<br />
But we will see that they live<br />
And prosper.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Let us prune the tree of language<br />
Of its dead fruit.<br />
Let us melt up the clichés<br />
Into molten metal;<br />
Fashion weapons that will scald and flay;<br />
Let us curb this eternal humour<br />
And become witty.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Let us dig up the dragon's teeth<br />
From this fertile soil;<br />
Swiftly,<br />
Before they fructify;<br />
Let us give them as medicine<br />
To the writhing monster itself.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We must create and fashion a new God—<br />
A God of power, of beauty, and of strength;<br />
Created painfully, cruelly,<br />
Labouring from the revulsion of men's minds.<br />
Cast down the idols of a thousand years,<br />
Crush them to dust<br />
Beneath the dancing rhythm of our feet.<br />
Oh! let us dance upon the weak and cruel:<br />
We must create and fashion a new God.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>November</i>, 1918.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
CONTENTS<br />
</p>
<p class="t3">
PREFACE POEM<br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#howshallwe">"How shall We rise to Greet the Dawn?"</a><br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
<a href="#book1">BOOK I: THE PHOENIX-FEASTERS</a><br />
</p>
<p class="t3">
<a href="#part1">PART I</a><br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#prelude">Prelude</a><br />
<a href="#silence">The Silence of God</a><br />
<a href="#adventure">Adventure</a><br />
<a href="#dusk">Dusk</a><br />
<a href="#sailor">Sailor-Song</a><br />
<a href="#dance">The Dance</a><br />
<a href="#whyshould">Why should a Sailor ride the Sea?</a><br />
</p>
<p class="t3">
<a href="#part2">PART II</a><br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#cornucopia">Cornucopia</a><br />
<a href="#song">Song</a><br />
<a href="#prospect">Prospect Road</a><br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
<a href="#book2">BOOK II: GREEN-FLY</a><br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#warhorses">War Horses</a><br />
<a href="#churchparade">Church-Parade</a><br />
<a href="#mrskinfoot">At the House of Mrs. Kinfoot</a><br />
<a href="#greenfly">Green-fly</a><br />
<a href="#deluxe">De Luxe</a><br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
<a href="#book3">BOOK III: PROMENADES</a><br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#nocturne">Nocturne</a><br />
<a href="#catcher">Lament of the Mole Catcher</a><br />
<a href="#beginning">The Beginning</a><br />
<a href="#theend">The End</a><br />
<a href="#fountains">Fountains</a><br />
<a href="#songfauns">Song of the Fauns</a><br />
<a href="#cruelty">"A Sculptor's Cruelty"</a><br />
<a href="#pierrotold">Pierrot Old</a><br />
<a href="#night">Night</a><br />
<a href="#carcassonne">From Carcassonne</a><br />
<a href="#progress">Progress</a><br />
<a href="#prodigal">Return of the Prodigal</a><br />
<a href="#london">London Squares</a><br />
<a href="#tears">Tears</a><br />
<a href="#clavichords">Clavichords</a><br />
<a href="#promenades">Promenades</a><br />
<a href="#clownpondi">Clown Pondi</a><br />
<a href="#lausiac">Lausiac Theme</a><br />
<a href="#metamorphosis">Metamorphosis</a><br />
<a href="#gipsyqueen">The Gipsy Queen</a><br />
<a href="#blackmass">Black Mass</a><br />
<a href="#pierrotwar">Pierrot at the War</a><br />
<a href="#springhours">Spring Hours</a><br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
<a href="#book4">BOOK IV: WAR POEMS</a><br />
</p>
<p class="noindent">
<a href="#babel">"Therefore is the Name of it called Babel"</a><br />
<a href="#harlequinade">Twentieth-Century Harlequinade</a><br />
<a href="#generation">This Generation</a><br />
<a href="#sheepsong">Sheep-Song</a><br />
<a href="#lament">The Poet's Lament</a><br />
<a href="#judas">Judas and the Profiteer</a><br />
<a href="#rhapsode">Rhapsode</a><br />
<a href="#abraham">The Modern Abraham</a><br />
<a href="#trap">The Trap</a><br />
<a href="#eternal">The Eternal Club</a><br />
<a href="#heaven">Heaven</a><br />
<a href="#pedlar">The Blind Pedlar</a><br />
<a href="#moloch">Hymn to Moloch</a><br />
<a href="#armchair">Armchair</a><br />
<a href="#ragtime">Ragtime</a><br />
<a href="#peace">Peace Celebration</a><br />
<a href="#nextwar">The Next War</a><br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>
<a id="book1"></a>
<a id="part1"></a>
</p>
<h2>
BOOK I
<br />
THE PHOENIX-FEASTERS<br />
</h2>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> EDITH<br />
</p>
<p class="t2">
THE PHOENIX-FEASTERS<br />
</p>
<p class="t3b">
PART I<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="prelude"></a>
PRELUDE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
We have wandered through the dim valleys of sleep<br />
—That lie so still and far—<br />
Have bathed in the lakes of silence,<br />
Where each star<br />
Shines brighter than its own reflection in the heavens;<br />
Where, diving deep,<br />
My soul has sought to catch and keep<br />
The silver feathers of the moon<br />
That float like down upon the waters,<br />
In whose pale rest<br />
We find<br />
Forgetfulness of death<br />
That comes so soon<br />
—Waters that lull the mind<br />
With some sweet breath<br />
Of wind, of flowers,<br />
With summer showers of rain,<br />
Or quicken it with recreative pain.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We have fled further from this leaden cage,<br />
Seeking those rainbow forests,<br />
Where the light<br />
Thrills through you, shaking, fainting, with delight;<br />
Where sway tall luminous trees<br />
Wind-swept in one vast flashing harmony,<br />
That like a wave<br />
Splashes its seething sound<br />
And then envelops you.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We have strayed to other places,<br />
Courts of fear,<br />
That stretch like echoes through the endless dusk<br />
Drenched with dead memories;<br />
Like musk<br />
They cling about you<br />
In a heavy cloud.<br />
Each shadow-sound we hear<br />
Clutches the heart.<br />
With fevered hands we tear<br />
The terror-pulsing walls<br />
—Fight our way out<br />
—Out<br />
Into other Courts<br />
As vague and full of fear.<br />
And we have found the proud and distant palaces of night.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="silence"></a>
THE SILENCE OF GOD<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
One night upon the southern sea<br />
In helpless calm we lay,<br />
Waiting for day,<br />
Waiting for day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
As goldripe fruit fall from a tree<br />
A comet fell; no other sight,<br />
But in the ocean tracks of light<br />
Trembled—then passed away,<br />
Away.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
No sound broke on our waiting ears,<br />
Though instinct whispered wayward fears<br />
Of things we cannot tell—<br />
Of things the sea could tell.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
No wisp of wind, no watery sound<br />
Reached us; as if high on the ground<br />
We stayed. A sense of fever fell<br />
Upon each mind,<br />
Each soul and mind.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Until our eyes, that ever sought<br />
The cloying empty darkness, find<br />
Another shape—or is it wrought<br />
Of terror?—on the deep<br />
The endless deep.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
All dark it lay. No light shone out;<br />
And though we cried across, no shout<br />
Came back to us. As if in sleep<br />
The black bulk lay so still,<br />
So still.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
No sign came back; no answering cry<br />
Cleft the immense monotony<br />
That swathed us like a funeral pall,<br />
In folds of menace; almost shrill<br />
The silence seemed,<br />
And we so small.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Swiftly a boat was lowered down;<br />
The rowlocks creaked; our track shone white<br />
Behind us like God's frown,<br />
God's frown.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We clambered up that great ship's height;<br />
There was no light; there was no sound;<br />
Nor was there any being found<br />
Upon that ship,<br />
That ship.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We groped our way along. God knows<br />
How long the rats had been alone<br />
With dust and rust! Yet flight was shown<br />
To have been instant, in the grip<br />
Of some force stronger than its foes<br />
—Its human foes.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then sudden from the dark there thrilled<br />
The distant dying of a song<br />
That hung like haze upon the sea, and filled<br />
Each soul with joy and terror strong,<br />
With joy and terror strong.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Upon the sombre air were spent<br />
These notes, as from a hidden place<br />
Where all time and all love lay pent<br />
In lingering embrace—<br />
In lingering embrace.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Deep in our hearts we felt the call;<br />
We knew that if our fate should send<br />
That song again, we must leave all<br />
And follow to the end,<br />
The end.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="adventure"></a>
ADVENTURE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Down through the torrid seas we swept,<br />
Sails curved like bows about to shoot.<br />
As an arrow speeds through the air<br />
Our ship parted the clinging waters.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then, out of the ocean<br />
Blossomed a distant land.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The air quivered,<br />
Dancing above it<br />
In a frenzy of passion.<br />
Waves of heat trembled towards us<br />
Across the cool lassitude of the ocean.<br />
They rolled new odours at us,<br />
Sounding the chords of hidden senses,<br />
Till we were alert<br />
With minds as sensitive and taut<br />
As resined strings.<br />
The sea itself<br />
Crouched down behind us,<br />
Urging us on,<br />
Driving us on,<br />
To unknown<br />
Perilous adventures.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Ships and sea were forgotten.<br />
We trampled<br />
And stumbled<br />
On, on,<br />
Through the burning sand<br />
To the hot shroud of the squat threatening forest,<br />
Where, as you walked,<br />
You tore apart<br />
A solid sheet of air.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Brown satyrs grimaced at us,<br />
Swinging with long hairy arms<br />
From crooked branch to crooked branch.<br />
The sun<br />
Was at its height.<br />
Rays pierced the hot shade;<br />
White lines of light<br />
Shot through the shadows<br />
To where a point of green<br />
Shuddered with dangerous movement,<br />
Throbbed and hummed with the whirr of insects.<br />
Birds more bright than any streamers from the sun<br />
Cleft the air<br />
Like hammers;<br />
Scintillating wings<br />
Tossed patches of colour<br />
Into the dark shimmering air.<br />
Shrill calls<br />
Whistled like knives<br />
Hurled through the empty heat.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Frantic chattering rose up.<br />
Through the honeycombed darkness<br />
Slim animals<br />
—Their hides splashed with false sunlight—<br />
Quivered away<br />
Into the hollow distance.<br />
Or clattered past us,<br />
Cloven hooves<br />
Kicking at the hard, bent trunks<br />
Of gnarled trees.<br />
Large hairy fruits of wood<br />
Were cast at us,<br />
Snarlingly,<br />
From the darkness.<br />
Faces<br />
—Faces peered down<br />
From the interwoven boughs.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Hastily we stumbled on;<br />
Hurriedly we stumbled back,<br />
Bewildered.<br />
Small tracks<br />
Tripped through the blackness<br />
Hither and thither;<br />
Twigs crawled from under our feet,<br />
Hissing away<br />
In venom<br />
—And we were bewildered.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then suddenly<br />
We felt,<br />
Rumbling in curling patterns through the ground,<br />
The beating of drums.<br />
As winds bellow into caves,<br />
As waves swirl and curl into hollows,<br />
We heard the blowing of wooden trumpets<br />
And of pipes.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Soon,<br />
Under the western canopy of the sun,<br />
Where the fevered hills lay huddled together,<br />
We saw great gourd-shaped palaces<br />
Loom up like mountains.<br />
Figures played on trumpets,<br />
Twisted like snakes,<br />
Or on the curved, carved horns of unknown beasts.<br />
In the sound was mirrored<br />
The panic seizures of the night,<br />
—The fear of things that walk in darkness.<br />
The drums were painted<br />
In hot colours<br />
That, even through the dusk,<br />
Glowed torture and writhing torment.<br />
Like a shower of molten lead<br />
The din fell down upon us<br />
From the Palaces.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Bare yellow women<br />
Hurried<br />
To greet us;<br />
Their heels swayed inward<br />
As they walked.<br />
They offered fruits<br />
—Fruits that were strange to us;<br />
Mellow they were, and with a scent<br />
Of sun, of summer,<br />
And of woodland nights.<br />
We ate<br />
—And dreams closed round.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="dusk"></a>
DUSK<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Night like a hawk<br />
Swooped down<br />
On to the phoenix bird,<br />
—Tore out its flaming feathers.<br />
Solitary plumes<br />
Flared down into the darkness,<br />
Floating above the distant sea.<br />
Stillness and heat clung together;<br />
And the hawk<br />
Spread out her wings.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Gigantic pinions<br />
Flutter the air above,<br />
Fanning our faces<br />
And<br />
We sing.....<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="sailor"></a>
SAILOR-SONG<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
On swinging seas our ship has flown<br />
—In sun and shadow lands alit.<br />
We saw the sack of Carthage Town<br />
(And Dido building it).<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Cassandra, direful prophetess,<br />
We heard foretell the fate of Troy,<br />
And through its streets helped wheel and press<br />
That wooden, painted toy.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We've seen events aboard this hulk<br />
Of grave import and mystery<br />
—The serpent's writhing horrid bulk<br />
Go seething through the sea.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then once we left Atlantis Town.<br />
Behind us like a lily flower<br />
It blossomed; but then down, far down,<br />
Sank every vane and tower.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Now you can hear the clanging beat<br />
Of bells beneath the furious foam.<br />
In coral palaces the great<br />
Sea monsters make their home.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Their corridors with pearl are pav'd;<br />
Float down them in an endless flight<br />
Fierce finny beasts. The walls are laved<br />
In irridescent light.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We brought gifts—myrrh and frankincense—<br />
From Khubla to the Great Moghul;<br />
Espied the Juggernaut immense<br />
Pound over flesh and skull;<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Saw desert-men atone for ills<br />
With frenzied hands, with wounds that gape,<br />
—The hermits hidden in the hills<br />
—The Herod in his Tyrian Cape.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From out our ship, held fast by gale,<br />
We watched Andromeda's release;<br />
Beheld the galleon in full sail<br />
That flew the Golden Fleece.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Icarus, proud of his new power,<br />
We saw stretch out his wings to fly.<br />
We heard in that tremendous hour<br />
The cry from Calvary.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Thus many things we understand<br />
That puzzle landsmen: we can tell<br />
Of perils in each time and land;<br />
But outside Heaven or Hell<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
No fruit so strange we tasted save<br />
But one; none cast so strange a spell<br />
Except the fruit the first Eve gave<br />
To the first man who fell.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="dance"></a>
THE DANCE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The song ends.<br />
The rocking earth<br />
Plunges madly<br />
—Lunges like a man<br />
About to fight.<br />
Trees roll beckoning branches at us,<br />
Branches that swing and sway.<br />
From the forest<br />
The animals<br />
Howl<br />
Like laughter.<br />
With their burning scimiters<br />
Flames slice the night.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Monotony,<br />
A life preserved in ocean salt,<br />
Scales off our limbs.<br />
Within our veins<br />
The liquor of this fruit-of-fire<br />
Mounts in splendour inexhaustible.<br />
The world itself<br />
Dances<br />
To make us dance<br />
In cosmic frenzy.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="whyshould"></a>
WHY SHOULD A SAILOR RIDE THE SEA?<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Why should a sailor ride the sea,<br />
When he can drink and dance and sing,<br />
Or watch the stars out-blossoming<br />
Upon the tree of night?<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Why should he face the tear-salt waves,<br />
When he can sing, or feast on fruit,<br />
Dance to the silver-sobbing lute,<br />
And all men seem his slaves?<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
No more to ship or sea we'll go,<br />
To watch the land sink out of sight<br />
Suffused by purple fumes of night,<br />
Each heart weighed down with woe.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But under rustling fretted lace<br />
Of leaves, we'll dance and stamp our feet<br />
In frenzy, to the furious beat,<br />
—The rhythm of all space.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Or watch each dappled fawn and elf<br />
Spring from the green lairs where they hide;<br />
Now every soul is multiplied<br />
And communes with itself.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The softly sailing moon is now<br />
A pendulum, hung in a vast<br />
Blue bubble—so to mark our fast<br />
Lithe movements to and fro.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Down from the sky the willing stars<br />
Fall round each brow a crown to form;<br />
Till feet and limbs, a rushing storm,<br />
Dance whirling on in ecstasy.<br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="poem">
The earth dances;<br />
The earth dances;<br />
Trees charge at us<br />
Like horsemen;<br />
Forests swoop<br />
Down the hill,<br />
Charging at us,<br />
But we are brave,<br />
Full of a fiery courage,<br />
And go onward<br />
Onward,<br />
Through the galloping trees.<br />
We shout<br />
Glowing phrases<br />
—Snatches of ineffable wit.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The frenzy in our feet<br />
Must surely set the world afire.<br />
Yet still the stars<br />
Rain down their golden tremors of delight,<br />
And the moon<br />
Sweeps like a bird<br />
Through the arch of space.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We, too,<br />
Float downward<br />
Gently<br />
To soft shipwreck.<br />
We, too,<br />
Are of the kindred of the Pleiades;<br />
Reel on our golden path<br />
Down,<br />
Down,<br />
Through the curved emptiness of the heavens.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><a id="part2"></a></p>
<p class="t3b">
PART II
</p>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="cornucopia"></a>
CORNUCOPIA<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Now music fills the night with moving shades;<br />
Its velvet darkness, veined like a grape,<br />
Obscures and falls round many a subtle shape<br />
—Figures that steal through cool tall colonnades,<br />
Vast minotaurian corridors of sleep;<br />
Rhythmic they pass us, splashed by red cascades<br />
Of wine, fierce-flashing fountains whose proud waves<br />
Shimmer awhile; plunge foaming over steep<br />
Age-polished rocks, into the dim cold caves<br />
Of starlit dusk below—then merge with night,<br />
Softly as children sinking into sleep.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now more figures sway into our sight;<br />
Strong and bare-shouldered, pressed and laden down,<br />
Stagger across the terraces. They bear<br />
Great Cornucopia of summer fruit<br />
And heavy roses scented with the noon<br />
—Piled up with fruit and blossoms, all full blown,<br />
Crimson, or golden as the harvest moon—<br />
Piled up and overflowing in a flood<br />
Of riches; brilliant-plumaged birds, that sing<br />
As the faint playing on a far sweet lute,<br />
Warble their tales of conquest and of love;<br />
Perch on each shoulder; sweep each rainbow wing<br />
Like light'ning through the breathless dark above.<br />
Heaped up in vases gems shine hard and bright;<br />
Sudden they flare out—gleaming red like blood—<br />
For now the darkness turns to swelling light,<br />
Great torches gild each shadow, tear the sky,<br />
As drums tear through the silence of the night;<br />
Breaking its crystal quiet—making us cry<br />
Or catch our sobbing breath in sudden fear.<br />
A shadow stumbles, and the jewels shower<br />
On to the pavers with a sharp sweet sound.<br />
They mingle with the fountain drops that flower<br />
Up in a scarlet bloom above the ground,<br />
A beauteous changing blossom; then they rain<br />
On to the broad mysterious terraces,<br />
Where sea-gods rise to watch in cold disdain<br />
Before those vast vermillion palaces,<br />
—Watch where the slumbering coral gods of noon,<br />
Drunk with the sudden golden light and flare<br />
Of flaming torches, try to pluck and tear<br />
That wan enchanted lotus flower, the moon,<br />
Down from its calm still waters; thus they fall,<br />
Like flowing plumes, the fountains of our festival.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Slowly the torches die. They echo long,<br />
These last notes of a Bacchanalian song,<br />
Of drifting drowsy beauty, born of sleep,<br />
—Vast as the sea, as changing and as deep.<br />
In thanksgiving for shelt'ring summer skies<br />
Still, far away, a fervent red light glows.<br />
Small winds brush past against our lips and eyes,<br />
Caress them like a laughing summer rose,<br />
And rainbow moths flit by, in circling flight.<br />
A harp sobs out its crystal syruppings;<br />
Faintly it sounds, as the poor petal-wings,<br />
Fragile yet radiant, of a butterfly<br />
Beating against the barriers of night.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then from the Ocean came the Syren song,<br />
Heavy with perfume, yet faint as a sigh,<br />
Kissing our minds, and changing right from wrong;<br />
Chaining our limbs; making our bodies seem<br />
Inert and spellbound, dead as in a dream.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Bound by the silver fetters of your voice<br />
To this new slavery of dreams,<br />
We, listening, rejoice.<br />
The magic strains<br />
Swell in this darkness star-devoid.<br />
The music streams<br />
Upon the world in patterns passionate yet clear,<br />
And stains<br />
Each soul. The mind, decoyed<br />
By thoughts that grind and tear<br />
Away old values,<br />
Is sent down other thoughts<br />
So subtly swift,<br />
That in their fleeting passage<br />
They can cut adrift our souls<br />
Upon a sea of wonder and of fear.<br />
Within the arid minds of men<br />
This music sounds but once, for then<br />
They hear no other song.<br />
In it, tumultuous rush of wings,<br />
The glamour of old lovely things<br />
In deserts buried long,<br />
The grace of beasts that bound and leap<br />
With movements blithe and strong<br />
—Of those that creep<br />
Away in hissing-reptile rage—<br />
All these, all these are found.<br />
They hear<br />
The secrets, solved, of each dead age,<br />
Each mystery is clear.<br />
For in this music's flow, the din<br />
Of spheres that tear and speed and spin<br />
Through pulsing space is heard,<br />
And all things men have loved and feared<br />
Are mirror'd in each sound.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="song"></a>
SONG<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Our hidden voices, wreathed with love's soft flowers,<br />
Wind-toss'd thro' valleys, tremble across seas<br />
To turbann'd cities; touch tall lonely towers,<br />
Call to you thro' the sky, the wind, the trees.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Misted and golden as the hanging moon,<br />
That like a summer fruit floats from the sky,<br />
Thrills out our distant age-enchanted tune,<br />
—Nor will it let you pass our beauty by.<br />
But if it should not reach to stir your mind,<br />
Then hold a summer rose against the ear,<br />
Till through its crimson sweetness you can hear<br />
The falling flow of rhythm—so designed<br />
That from this secret island, like a star<br />
Shining above a shrouded world, our song<br />
Cleaves through the darkest night and echoes long,<br />
Bidding you follow whether near or far.<br />
Come hither where the mermaids churn the foam,<br />
Lashing their tails across the calm, or dive<br />
To groves and gardens of bright flowers; then roam<br />
Beneath the shade of stone-branched trees, or drive<br />
Some slow sea-monster to its musselled home.<br />
Here, as a ladder, they climb up and down<br />
The rainbow's steep refracted steps of light,<br />
Till, when the dusk sends down its rippling frown,<br />
They quiver back to us in silver flight.<br />
The moon sails down once more; our mermaids bring<br />
Rich gifts of ocean fruit. Again we sing.<br />
Enchantment, love, vague fear, and memories<br />
That cling about us like the fumes of wine<br />
With myriad love-enhancing mysteries<br />
We pour out in one song—intense—divine,<br />
Down the deep moonlit chasms of the waves<br />
Our song floats on the opiate breeze. Why seek<br />
To goad your carven galleys, fast-bound slaves<br />
Who search each sweeping line of bay and creek,<br />
Only to stagger on a hidden rock, or find<br />
The limp dead sails swept off by sudden wind?<br />
Thus always you must search the cruel sea,<br />
For if you find us mankind shall be free!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But when you sleep we grasp you by the hand,<br />
And to the trickling honey of the flute<br />
We lead you to a distant shimmering land<br />
Where lotus-eaters munch their golden fruit,<br />
Then fall upon the fields of summer flowers<br />
In drunken sunlit slumber, while a fawn<br />
Prances and dances round them.<br />
Oh, those hours<br />
When through the crystal valleys of the dawn<br />
Down from the haunted forests of the night<br />
There dash the dew-drenched centaurs on their way,<br />
Mad with the sudden rush of golden light<br />
—Affright the lotus-eaters, as they sway<br />
Towards the woodlands in a stumbling flight.<br />
In these deep groves we follow through the cool<br />
Shadow of high columnar trees, to find<br />
The fallen sky within a forest pool<br />
That's faintly veiled and fretted by a wind,<br />
Lest our white flashing limbs should turn you blind.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
* * * * *<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
As the sweet sound of bells that fall and fade<br />
In watery circles on the verge of night,<br />
So rounded ripples spread beneath the shade<br />
Of flowing branches dripping with green light.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Thus do we wander; but when day is spent<br />
We grope our way thro' vast tall palaces,<br />
Palaces sinister and somnolent,<br />
Where lurk dim fears and unknown menaces.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
These high pale walls and this pale shining floor<br />
Seem built of bones, by ages planed and ground<br />
To a white smoothness.<br />
On this rock-bound shore<br />
The bodies of dead sailors oft are found.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
These sombre arches pierce the sullen sky.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
These pillars are the pillars of the night.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Of what avail your strife and agony?<br />
Why seek to search and struggle for the light?<br />
Our music chains you: binds your limbs from flight.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="prospect"></a>
PROSPECT ROAD<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Gigantic houses, tattered by all time,<br />
Raise their immense and ruined bulk and height<br />
In one unending universal street,<br />
Against a strange and sunken yellow sky<br />
—Like sunset trickling through into the sea,<br />
Down to the depths—yellow and grey and green.<br />
Blind windows face the interminable road;<br />
Innumerable those windows seem to stretch<br />
All smeared and stained and stamped with time and blood,<br />
—Stains that seem faces—horrid twitching masks<br />
Moving their lewd derisive lips and tongues,<br />
Spitting out treacheries with vampire lips—<br />
Or eyes that gaze from far blank-stretching walls<br />
—The tortured eyes of those who see their death<br />
Approaching æon-by-æon along this road.<br />
Behind the walls sound voices whispering<br />
Of dire and hidden, carefully hidden, thoughts—<br />
Cruel, wicked and unfathomable things<br />
That lie behind this infamy of stone.<br />
Then clamour, shrieking voices, or a pause<br />
That falls like lead through the suspended air;<br />
Broken by laughter—rending piercing sounds<br />
That seem to tear the fabric of our minds.<br />
Slinking along these wicked, stricken walls,<br />
I reached a shining distant point of light.<br />
And glory came—vast and unending light,<br />
Rays—flashing, writhing rays of light.<br />
And then the music sounded. Ah, that sound!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Cadences rose and fell unendingly—<br />
Quivering, shining waves of sound and sight—<br />
Sounds of the universe—the cries of space<br />
And planets tumbling wildly round our world<br />
—Showing the meaning of the meaningless.<br />
"God and eternity"—strange flashing sounds<br />
The whirl of time, "Melchisedec"—"Glory of God"<br />
And space—the universe—like framing words—<br />
"Gog and Magog"—"Infinity"—the rush of waters<br />
And the sky comes down.<br />
Down with the splintering stars.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
1916-1919.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><a id="book2"></a></p>
<h2>
BOOK II
<br />
GREEN FLY<br />
</h2>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="warhorses"></a>
WAR-HORSES<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
How they come out<br />
—These Septuagenarian Butterflies—<br />
After resting<br />
For four years!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Surely they are more spirited<br />
Than ever?<br />
Their enamelled wings<br />
Are rusty with waiting<br />
—Their eyelids<br />
Sag a little<br />
Like those of a bloodhound;<br />
But they swim gaily into the limelight.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Oh, these war-horses!<br />
They have seen it through.<br />
Theirs has been a splendid part!<br />
The waiting—the weariness!<br />
For the Queens of Sheba<br />
Are used to courts and feasting;<br />
But for four years<br />
Platitudes have remained<br />
Uncoined,<br />
For there have been few parties<br />
And only<br />
Three stout meals<br />
A day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now<br />
They have come out.<br />
They have preened<br />
And dried themselves<br />
After their blood-bath.<br />
Old men seem a little younger,<br />
And tortoise-shell combs<br />
Are longer than ever;<br />
Earrings weigh down aged ears;<br />
And Golconda has given them of its best.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
They have seen it through!<br />
Theirs is the triumph,<br />
And, beneath<br />
The carved smile of the Mona Lisa<br />
False teeth,<br />
Rattle<br />
Like machine guns,<br />
In anticipation<br />
Of food and platitudes.<br />
Les Veilles Dames Sans Merci!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="churchparade"></a>
CHURCH-PARADE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The flattened sea is harsh and blue—<br />
Lies stiff beneath—one tone, one hue,<br />
While concertina waves unfold<br />
The painted shimmering sands of gold.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Each bird that whirls and wheels on high<br />
Must strangle, stifle in, its cry,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
For nothing that's of Nature born<br />
Should seem so on the Sabbath morn.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The terrace glitters hard and white,<br />
Bedaubed and flecked with points of light<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
That flicker at the passers-by—<br />
Reproachful as a curate's eye.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And china flowers, in steel-bound beds,<br />
Flare out in blues and flaming reds;<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Each blossom, rich and opulent,<br />
Stands like a soldier; and its scent<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Is turned to camphor in the air.<br />
No breath of wind would ever dare<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
To make the trees' plump branches sway,<br />
Whose thick green leaves hang down to pray.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The stiff, tall churches vomit out<br />
Their rustling masses of devout,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Tall churches whose stained Gothic night<br />
Refuses to receive the light!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Watch how the stately walk along<br />
Toward the terrace, join the throng<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
That paces carefully up and down<br />
Above a cut-out cardboard town!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
With prayer-book rigid in each hand,<br />
They look below at sea and sand.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The round contentment in their eyes<br />
Betrays their favourite fond surmise,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
That all successful at a trade<br />
Shall tread an eternal Church-Parade,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And every soul that's sleek and fat<br />
Shall gain a heavenly top-hat.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From out the Church's Gothic night,<br />
Past beds of blossoms china-bright,<br />
Beneath the green trees' porous shade,<br />
We watch the sea-side Church-Parade.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="mrskinfoot"></a>
AT THE HOUSE OF MRS. KINFOOT<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
At the house of Mrs. Kinfoot<br />
Are collected<br />
Men and women<br />
Of all ages.<br />
They are supposed<br />
To sing, paint, or to play the piano.<br />
In the drawing-room<br />
The fireplace is set<br />
With green tiles<br />
Of an acanthus pattern.<br />
The black curls of Mrs. Kinfoot<br />
Are symmetrical.<br />
—Descended, it is said,<br />
From the Kings of Ethiopia—<br />
But the British bourgeoisie has triumphed.<br />
Mr. Kinfoot is bald<br />
And talks<br />
In front of the fireplace<br />
With his head on one side,<br />
And his right hand<br />
In his pocket.<br />
The joy of catching tame elephants,<br />
And finding them to be white ones,<br />
Still gleams from the jungle-eyes<br />
Of Mrs. Kinfoot,<br />
But her mind is no jungle<br />
Of Ethiopia,<br />
But a sound British meadow.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Listen then to the gospel of Mrs. Kinfoot:<br />
"The world was made for the British bourgeoisie,<br />
They are its Swiss Family Robinson;<br />
The world is not what it was.<br />
We cannot understand all this unrest!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Adam and Eve were born to evening dress<br />
In the southern confines<br />
Of Belgravia.<br />
Eve was very artistic, and all that,<br />
And felt the fall<br />
Quite dreadfully.<br />
Cain was such a man of the world<br />
And belonged to every club in London;<br />
His father simply adored him,<br />
—But had never really liked Abel,<br />
Who was rather a milk-sop.<br />
Nothing exists which the British bourgeoisie<br />
Does not understand;<br />
Therefore there is no death<br />
—And, of course, no life.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The British bourgeoisie<br />
Is not born,<br />
And does not die,<br />
But, if it is ill,<br />
It has a frightened look in its eyes.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The War was splendid, wasn't it?<br />
Oh yes, splendid, splendid."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Mrs. Kinfoot is a dear,<br />
And so artistic.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="greenfly"></a>
GREEN-FLY<br />
</h3>
<p class="t3b">
I.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Like ninepins houses stand up square<br />
In lines; their windows mouths to bite<br />
At servants, who lean out to stare<br />
At anything that moves in sight.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Where once was green-limbed tree or ledge<br />
Of greener moss or flowery lane,<br />
Set back behind a private hedge<br />
Each house repeats itself again.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Each house repeats itself again,<br />
But smaller still and yet more dry;<br />
For—just as those who live within—<br />
So have these houses progeny.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Throughout each dusty endless year,<br />
Whose days seem merely wet or fine,<br />
These children constantly appear<br />
In an unending dusty line.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
As, on a rose that is ill-grown<br />
Nature, insulted and defied,<br />
Showers down a blight, so sends she down<br />
On houses, those who live inside.<br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
II.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Within each high, well-papered room,<br />
Compressed, all darkness lay,<br />
Darkness of night, and crypt, and tomb,<br />
Nor ever entered day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But through the endless black there crept,<br />
With groping hand and groping thought,<br />
With eyes that blinked, but never wept,<br />
And minds that fell, but never fought,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The wonderless, the hard, the nice,<br />
Who scurry at a ray of light,<br />
Then, like a flock of frightened mice,<br />
Career back into night.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From out this damning dreadful dark<br />
(While history, thundering, rolls by)<br />
They wait for an anæmic lark<br />
To sing from weak blue sky.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Or if a dog is hurt, why then<br />
They see the evil, and they cry.<br />
But yet they watch ten million men<br />
Go out to end in agony!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Their own strange God they have set up,<br />
Of clay, of iron, and mothéd hide;<br />
Whose eyes, each convex as a cup,<br />
Reflect the herd endeified.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Their twisted feet in boots He made<br />
To walk the narrow asphalt way,<br />
And gave each room a curtain's shade<br />
To muffle out the light of day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
For this God understands their need;<br />
Created lids for each pale eye;<br />
He sculped each mouth to say "Agreed,"<br />
And gives them coffins if they die.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
When, if for punishment they go<br />
To other lands, why, it should be<br />
The judgment that, down there below,<br />
They see this world as they might see!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
A world of contrast, shade and light—<br />
Clashing romance and cruelty,<br />
But stricken with the dreadful blight<br />
Of fear to feel and fear to cry.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Where for a moment lives are filled<br />
With love or hate—where born of pain<br />
The children grow up—to be killed!<br />
Where freedom—dead—is born again.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Wherein life's pattern crude and shrill<br />
Is weft by neither foe nor friend,<br />
But by some rough colossal will<br />
Towards some vast invisible end.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But in those houses dark there creep,<br />
With bodies wrapt in woollen dress,<br />
With eyes that blink but never weep,<br />
The sentimental wonderless!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="deluxe"></a>
DE LUXE<br />
</h3>
<p class="t3b">
I.<br />
</p>
<p class="t3">
HYMN.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Above from plaster-mountains,<br />
Wine-shadowed by the sea,<br />
Spurt white-wool clouds, as fountains<br />
Whirl from a rockery.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
These clouds were surely given<br />
To keep the hills from harm,<br />
For when a cloud is riven<br />
The fatted rain falls warm.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Through porous leaves the sun drops<br />
Each dripping stalactite<br />
Of green. The chiselled tree-tops<br />
Seem cut from malachite.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Stiff leaves with ragged edges<br />
(Each one a wooden sword)<br />
Are carved to prickly hedges,<br />
On which, with one accord,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Their clock-work songs of calf-love<br />
Stout birds stop to recite,<br />
From cages which the sun wove<br />
Of shade and latticed light.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Each brittle booth and joy-store<br />
Shines brightly. Below these<br />
The ocean at a toy shore<br />
Yaps like a Pekinese.<br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
II.<br />
</p>
<p class="t3">
NURSERY RHYME.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The dusky king of Malabar<br />
Is chief of Eastern Potentates;<br />
Yet he wears no clothes except<br />
The jewels that decency dictates.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
A thousand Malabaric wives<br />
Roam beneath green-tufted palms;<br />
Revel in the vileness<br />
That Bishop Heber psalms.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From honey-combs of light and shade<br />
They stop to watch black bodies dart<br />
Into the sea to search for pearls.<br />
By means of diabolic art<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Magicians keep the sharks away;<br />
Mutter, utter, each dark spell,<br />
So that if a thief should steal,<br />
One more black would go to Hell.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But Mrs. Freudenthal, in furs,<br />
From brioche dreams to mild surprise<br />
Awakes; the music throbs and purrs.<br />
The cellist, with albino eyes,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Rivets attention; is, in fact,<br />
The very climax; pink eyes flash<br />
Whenever nervous and pain-racked<br />
He hears the drums and cymbols clash.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Mrs. Freudenthal day-dreams<br />
—Ice-spoon half-way to her nose—<br />
Till the girl in ochre screams,<br />
Hits out at the girl in rose.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
This is not at all the way<br />
To act in large and smart hotels;<br />
Angrily the couples sway,<br />
Eagerly the riot swells.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Girls who cannot act with grace<br />
Should learn behaviour; stay at home;<br />
A convent is the proper place.<br />
Why not join the Church of Rome?<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
A waiter nearly drops the tray<br />
—Twenty tea-cups in one hand.<br />
Now the band joins in the fray,<br />
Fighting for the Promised Land.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Mrs. Freudenthal resents<br />
The scene; and slowly rustles out,<br />
But the orchestra relents,<br />
Waking from its fever bout.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><a id="book3"></a></p>
<h2>
BOOK III
<br />
PROMENADES<br />
</h2>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="nocturne"></a>
NOCTURNE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The valleys that were known in sunlit hours<br />
Are vast and vague as seas;<br />
Wan as the blackthorn flowers<br />
That quiver in the first spring-scented breeze:<br />
Far as the frosted hollows of the moon.<br />
The sighing woods are still—<br />
Wrapp'd in their age-long boon<br />
Of mystery and sleep. A naked hill,<br />
Loud and discordant, looms against the sky,<br />
And little lights like stars<br />
Break the monotony<br />
Of blue and silver, black and grey. Strange bars<br />
Of light resemble silver masks, and leer<br />
Across the forest lane.<br />
Tall nettles, rank from rain,<br />
Scent all the woods with some ancestral fear.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Trees rustle by the water. A voice sings<br />
Faintly, to ward off fright.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The water breathes pale rings<br />
Of sad, wan light;<br />
Faintly they grow,<br />
Then merge into the night:<br />
The last poor twisted echo takes to flight.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> W. H. DAVIES.<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="catcher"></a>
THE LAMENT OF THE MOLE-CATCHER<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
An old, sad man who catches moles<br />
Went lonely down the lane—<br />
All lily-green were the lanes and knolls,<br />
But sorrow numbed his brain.<br />
He paid no heed to flower or weed<br />
As he went his lonely way.<br />
No note he heard from any bird<br />
That sang, that sad spring day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
"I trap'd the moles for forty years<br />
Who could not see the sky,<br />
I reckoned not blind blood or tears,<br />
And the Lord has seen them die.<br />
For forty years I've sought to slay<br />
The small, the dumb, the blind,<br />
But now the Lord has made me pay,<br />
And I am like their kind.<br />
I cannot see or lane or hill,<br />
Or flower or bird or moon;<br />
Lest life shall lay me lower still,<br />
O Lord—come take it soon."<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="beginning"></a>
THE BEGINNING<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Great spheres of fire, to which the sun is nought,<br />
Pass thund'ring round our world. A golden mist—<br />
The margin to the universe—falls round<br />
The verges of our vision. Rocks ablaze<br />
Leap upward to the sun, or fall beneath<br />
The rush of our rapidity, that seems<br />
Catastrophy, and not the joyous birth<br />
Of yet another star. The air is full<br />
Of clashing colour, full of sights and sounds<br />
Too plain and loud for men to heed or hear,<br />
The cosmic cries of pain that follow birth:<br />
A multi-coloured world.<br />
The scorching heat<br />
Surpasses all the equatorial days:<br />
Steam rises from the surface of the sea.<br />
Gigantic rainbow mists resemble forms<br />
That bring to mind strange elemental sprites<br />
Exulting in the chaos of creation.<br />
They glide above the tumult-ridden sea<br />
Which now is shaken as are autumn leaves;<br />
Great hollows open and reveal its depths—<br />
Devoid of any form of life or death.<br />
Till wave on wave it gathers strength again<br />
And shakes a mountain, splits it to the base<br />
(Still weak from struggle as a new-born babe).<br />
Then night comes on, and shows the flaming path<br />
Of all the rocks that vainly seek the sun.<br />
Broad as the arch of space, a myriad moons<br />
Sail slowly by the sea; the glowing world<br />
Shows up the pallor of their ivory.<br />
The din grows greater from the universe:<br />
There rises up the smell of fire and iron,—<br />
Not dreary like the smell of burnt-out things,<br />
But like the smell of some gigantic forge—<br />
Cheerful, of good intent, and full of life.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Now all the joyous cries of sea and earth,<br />
The universal harmonies of birth,<br />
Rise up to haunt the slumber of their God.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="theend"></a>
THE END<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Round the great ruins crawl those things of slime<br />
Green ruins lichenous and scarred by moss—<br />
An evil lichen that proclaims world doom,<br />
Like blood dried brown upon a dead man's face.<br />
And nothing moves save those monstrosities,<br />
Armoured and grey, and of a monster size.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now, a thing passed through the cloying air<br />
With flap and clatter of its scaly wings—<br />
As if the whole world echoed from some storm.<br />
One scarce could see it in the dim green light<br />
Till suddenly it swooped and made a dart<br />
And brushed away one of those things of slime,<br />
Just as a hawk might sweep upon its prey.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
It seems as if the light grows dimmer yet—<br />
No radiance from the dreadful green above,<br />
Only a lustrous light or iridescence<br />
As if from off a carrion-fly,—surrounds<br />
That vegetation which is never touched<br />
By any breeze. The air is thick, and brings<br />
The tainted subtle sweetness of decay.<br />
Where, yonder, lies the noisome river-course,<br />
There shows a faintly phosphorescent glow.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Long writhing bodies fall and twist and rise,<br />
And one can hear them playing in the mud.<br />
Upon the ruined walls there gleam and shine<br />
The track of those grey vast monstrosities—<br />
As some gigantic snail had crawled along.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
All round the shining bushes waver lines<br />
Suggesting shadows, slight and grey, but full<br />
Of that which makes one nigh to dead with fear.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Watch how those awful shadows culminate<br />
And dance in one long wish to hurt the world.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
A world that now is past all agony!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="fountains"></a>
FOUNTAINS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
"The graven fountain-masks suffer and weep.<br />
Carved with a smile, the poor mouths clutch<br />
At a half-remembered song,<br />
Striving to forget the agony of ever laughing."<br />
SACHEVERELL SITWELL.<br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="poem">
Some fountains sing of love<br />
In full and flute-like notes that charge the night<br />
With all the red-mouthed essence of the rose;<br />
Then turn to voices murmuring above,<br />
Among the trees,<br />
Of hidden sweet delight.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Another fountain flows<br />
With the faint music of a first spring breeze;<br />
Each falling drop is jewelled by the moon<br />
To some fine luminous ecstasy of light.<br />
It sings of noon,<br />
Of sunlit blossoms on a first spring day<br />
And all things sweet and pleasant to the sight.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Another fountain sings<br />
Of the cool pleasures of those moonlit hours<br />
When dappled sylvan things<br />
Trample through thickets and through secret bowers<br />
To prance and play,<br />
Or, squatting round in rings,<br />
To wreathe their horned heads with wan sweet flowers<br />
Till dawn comes grey and sweeps them to the wood.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Another fountain sobs<br />
Its song of passions that have passed away.<br />
Then with a sound like threatening rolling drums, it throbs<br />
And bursts into a flood<br />
Of fierce wild music; and its savage spray<br />
Becomes the blood<br />
Renewed, of crimes long past.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Another fountain sings its song of fear,<br />
Of rustics flying fast<br />
Before some foe—<br />
A deadly, unknown foe that comes so near<br />
They feel his panting breath,<br />
And run for many a lengthy, panic mile.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Those graven fountain-masks are white with woe!<br />
Carved with a happy smile<br />
They strive to weep...<br />
End their eternal laughing—for awhile<br />
To lose themselves in sleep<br />
Or in the silver peacefulness of death.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="songfauns"></a>
SONG OF THE FAUNS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
When the woods are white beneath the moon<br />
And grass is wet with crystal dew,<br />
When in the pool<br />
So clear and cool<br />
The moon reflects itself anew,<br />
We raise ourselves from daylight's swoon,<br />
We shake away<br />
The sleep of day,<br />
Out from our bosky homes we spring;<br />
Horns wreathed with flowers,<br />
Throughout the hours<br />
Of moonlight, worshipping we sing.<br />
Pale iv'ry goddess, whose wan light<br />
Looks down upon us worshipping—<br />
Each dappled faun<br />
Who shuns the dawn,<br />
Is here, and rarest gifts we bring—<br />
The feathers of the birds of night<br />
Wrought to a crown<br />
Of softest down<br />
We offer you, and crystal bright,<br />
The dew within a lily cup<br />
Reflecting stars<br />
In shining bars;<br />
All things most strange we offer up—<br />
Rich gifts of fruit and honeyed flowers<br />
To place within your secret bowers.<br />
We shake down apples from the trees,<br />
And pears, and plums with velvet skin;<br />
Up to the sky<br />
We cast these high<br />
And pray you'll stoop to net them in.<br />
We dance: then fall upon our knees<br />
And pray and sing—all this to show<br />
The love that all loyal fauns must owe<br />
To you, white goddess of the night.<br />
But no more play,<br />
We must away,<br />
The eastern sky is growing bright.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="cruelty"></a>
"A SCULPTOR'S CRUELTY"<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The faun runs through the forest of the noon,<br />
Then leaps into some lovely shrouded glade<br />
Splashed with hot light. He dances in the shade<br />
Of tower-like trees, whose branches sway and swoon<br />
Beneath their weight of green. No breath of air<br />
Ruffles the vivid blossom or the moss<br />
On which he pirouettes, all is so fair!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
He leaps about; then, tired and at a loss<br />
For what to do, he roams the wood—espies<br />
A figure like himself—but stiff and grey!<br />
Lacking the hairy chest and dappled thighs<br />
That are his pride. "But surely this can play<br />
And scamper, dance and snuffle through the day<br />
As well as me?" So he comes near and eyes<br />
The lichened features of a faun of stone.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Oh! it is sad to be so young—alone!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="pierrotold"></a>
PIERROT OLD
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The harvest moon is at its height,<br />
The evening primrose greets its light<br />
With grace and joy: then opens up<br />
The mimic moon within its cup.<br />
Tall trees, as high as Babel tower,<br />
Throw down their shadows to the flower—<br />
Shadows that shiver—seem to see<br />
An ending to infinity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The Pagan Pan has now unbent<br />
And stoops to sniff the night-stock scent<br />
That brings a memory sad and old,<br />
When he was young, and free, and bold,<br />
To play his pipe in forests black,<br />
Or follow in some goatherd's track<br />
Who, fill'd with panic fear, then flees<br />
Through all the terror-threatening trees.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Huge silver moths, like ghosts of flowers,<br />
Hover about the warm dark bowers,<br />
And wait to breathe the lime-tree scent<br />
That perfum'd many a compliment<br />
Address'd to beauties young and gay,<br />
Their faces powdered by the ray<br />
Of that same moon that looks upon<br />
Their dreary lichen-cover'd tomb.<br />
The dryads throw their water wide<br />
And strive to stem the surging tide<br />
That dashes up the fountain base,<br />
Hoping to catch the moon's pale face—<br />
A game now played without a score<br />
For three good centuries or more.<br />
And all the earth smells warm and sweet<br />
—A fitting place for fairy feet.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now a figure white and frail<br />
Leaps out into the moonlight pale.<br />
From wakeful thoughts, old age and grief,<br />
He finds in this strange world relief.<br />
Yet all the shadow, scent and sound,<br />
Poor Pierrot's mind do sad confound.<br />
Watch how he dances to the moon<br />
While singing some faint fragrant tune!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But Pierrot now is tired and sad<br />
—Remembers all the evenings mad<br />
He spent with that fantastic band<br />
So gaily wand'ring o'er the land.<br />
They all are dead—and at an end,<br />
And he is left without a friend.<br />
For tho' the hours can pass away,<br />
Poor Pierrot still must grieve and stay.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Upon the dewy grass he lies:<br />
The perfumes stir strange memories.<br />
Once more he hears a laughing cry<br />
That brings great tear-drops to his eye.<br />
That step—that look—that voice—that smile.<br />
Ah! they've been buried a long while!<br />
And who's the man in pantaloons,<br />
And he who sings such festive tunes?<br />
Why, it's that laughing man of sin,<br />
That roguish rascal Harlequin!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Forgiving Pierrot hides his head<br />
Deep in the grass and mourns the dead;<br />
Forgetting all the pranks they play'd,<br />
And how he was himself betray'd.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The butterfly lives but one day,<br />
But Pierrot still seems doom'd to stay.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
He falls asleep there, tragic-white,<br />
And wakes to find the bleak daylight.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="night"></a>
NIGHT<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
All the dim terrors dwelling far below,<br />
Interr'd by many thousand years of life,<br />
Arise to revel in this evil dark:<br />
The wail forlorn of dogs that mourn for men—<br />
A shuffling footfall on a creaking board,<br />
The handle of a door that shakes and turns—<br />
A door that opens slightly, not enough:<br />
The rustling sigh of silk along a floor,<br />
The knowledge of being watched by one long dead,<br />
By something that is outside Nature's pale.<br />
The unheard sounds that haunt an ancient house:<br />
The feel of one who listens in the dark,<br />
Listens to that which happened long ago,<br />
Or what will happen after we are dust.<br />
The awful waiting for a near event,<br />
Or for a crash to rend the silence deep<br />
Enveloping a house that always waits—<br />
A house that whispers to itself and weeps.<br />
The murmur of the yew, or woodland cries,<br />
A sombre note of music on the breeze;<br />
A shudder from the ivy that entwines<br />
The horror that is felt within its grip.<br />
The sound of prowling things that walk abroad,<br />
The nauseous flapping of Night's bat-like wings—<br />
These are the signs the gods have given us<br />
To know the limit of our days and powers.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> MARGARET GREVILLE<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="carcassonne"></a>
FROM CARCASSONNE<br />
</h3>
<p class="t3b">
I<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Now night,<br />
The sighing night,<br />
Descends to hide and heal<br />
The crimson wounds<br />
Ripped in the sky,<br />
Where the high helmet-towers<br />
(With clouds as streaming feathers)<br />
Have torn the Heavens<br />
In their incessant sunset battle.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Below,<br />
Upon the mound,<br />
Small golden flowers<br />
Release their daylight slowly<br />
At the Night's behest,<br />
Till they become pale discs<br />
That quiver<br />
When the evening wind<br />
Draws his thin fingers<br />
Down the dew-drenched grass<br />
—As an old harper,<br />
Who awakes<br />
From drunken sunlit slumber,<br />
Blindly plucks<br />
His silver-sounding strings,<br />
Making the sound<br />
That, further, darker down<br />
The trees make,<br />
When they draw back<br />
Their upturned leaves<br />
In fountain-foaming hurry.<br />
</p>
<p><br /></p>
<p class="t3b">
II<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The curling, hump-backed dolphins,<br />
Drunk with purple fumes<br />
Of wine-stained sunset,<br />
Plunge through the wider waters of the night—<br />
Waters that well down every narrow street<br />
In darkening billows,<br />
Till they become quiet, full—<br />
Canals that, mirror-like,<br />
Reflect each sound<br />
Of snarling song<br />
In all the town.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And as the dolphins dive<br />
There splashes back<br />
Upon their goat-eared riders,<br />
Dislodged in sudden fury,<br />
The foaming froth of summer-cooling winds<br />
—Issuing from where the northern trees<br />
Bellow their resined breath<br />
Across the seas<br />
To ripple through far fields<br />
Of twilight flowers—<br />
Sweeping across<br />
To where these old high towers<br />
Of Carcassonne<br />
Still stand to break their flow.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Neptune, from his high pedestal,<br />
Can watch the waters of the night<br />
Rise, further, further,<br />
And the faun-riders sink below<br />
The conquering, cool tide.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="progress"></a>
PROGRESS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The city's heat is like a leaden pall—<br />
Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air<br />
Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare<br />
Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall<br />
Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,<br />
Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,<br />
Of silver bodies bathing in a pool,<br />
Or trees that whisper in some far, small town<br />
Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that gold<br />
Was merely metal, not a grave of mould<br />
In which men bury all that's fine and fair.<br />
When they could chase the jewelled butterfly<br />
Through the green bracken-scented lanes, or sigh<br />
For all the future held so rich and rare;<br />
When, though they knew it not, their baby cries<br />
Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="prodigal"></a>
THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
I lay awake in that dim room of fear<br />
Which seemed to hold the essence of the night,<br />
Clutched in the grip of its tall sentient walls:<br />
Dark walls and high, that stretch for ever up—<br />
Up to the darkness, vague and menacing,<br />
As if no light could ever penetrate<br />
That mist of shadows, only cast a gloom<br />
More cavernous upon the atmosphere<br />
That seems to thicken into cloudy shapes,<br />
Substantiate—then disappear and die.<br />
And all the room is full of whisperings;<br />
Of moving things that hope I do not heed;<br />
And sudden gusts of wind blow cold upon<br />
My head, lifting the heavy mantle of the air,<br />
Revealing for an instant some vague thought<br />
Snatched from the haunting lumberland of dreams.<br />
Far in the distance, from the open night,<br />
Sounds an insistent hooting from the wood;<br />
The owl is calling to its kindred things.<br />
The bat emits its sinful piercing note—<br />
So high one cannot hear it, only feel<br />
The rhythm beat within the shrinking ear.<br />
A faint breeze blows in from the countryside,<br />
Rustling the curtains with the forest's breath,<br />
Stirring the grass of many an unknown tomb,<br />
Some new—some immemorably old,<br />
Whose dwellers never heard an owl at night,<br />
Only the reptile sounds and beating wings<br />
Of some forefather of that bird of night—<br />
Some flapping scaly monster with huge wings.<br />
Then, sudden, through the rustling of the room<br />
Silence shrills out its startling trumpet call<br />
Of terror, and the house is frozen still.<br />
Despair dropp'd down like rain upon my heart,<br />
Catching my breath and clutching at my throat.<br />
Fear magnified my senses, and my brain<br />
Could hear beyond the threshold of this world.<br />
Then through the threatening silence of the house,<br />
The silent waiting for the coming play—<br />
There came that halting well-remembered tread,<br />
The dreadful limp, and dragging of the feet,<br />
That cruel sin-white face looked through the door!<br />
And in my scream—that rent the trembling air,<br />
Reaching the woods and tainting them with death,<br />
Filling the fountain with strange ripplings<br />
That make the moon's reflection but a mask<br />
Like to that face of shame—my soul passed out—<br />
Out of my ashen lips, to find its end.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="london"></a>
LONDON SQUARES<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
To-night this city seems delirious. The air<br />
Is fever'd, hot and heavy—yet each street,<br />
Each tortuous lane and slumb'ring stone-bound square<br />
Smells of the open woods, so wild and sweet.<br />
Through the dim spaces, where each town-bred tree<br />
Sweeps out, mysterious and tall and still,<br />
The country's passionate spirit—old and free—<br />
Flings off the fetters of the calm and chill.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
There in the garden, fauns leap out and sing—<br />
Chant those strange sun-born songs from far away!<br />
With joyous ecstasy in this new spring,<br />
They cast the coats and top-hats of the day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
There by the railings, where the women pace<br />
With painted faces, passionless and dead,<br />
Out of the dark, Pan shows his leering face,<br />
Mocks their large hats and faces painted red.<br />
Then as they walk away, he mocks their lives,<br />
Racking each wearied soul with lost desires,<br />
And—cruelty more subtle—he contrives<br />
With aching memories of love's first fires<br />
To tune their hearts up to a different key.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
So, when they sleep, the withered years unfold<br />
—Again, as children round a mother's knee<br />
They listen to their future as foretold<br />
—A future rich and innocent and gay.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then wake up to the agony of day!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="tears"></a>
TEARS
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Silence o'erwhelms the melody of Night,<br />
Then slowly drips on to the woods that sigh<br />
For their past vivid vernal ecstasy.<br />
The branches and the leaves let in the light<br />
In patterns, woven 'gainst the paler sky<br />
—Create mysterious Gothic tracery<br />
Between those high dark pillars, that affright<br />
Poor weary mortals who are wand'ring by.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Silence drips on the woods like sad faint rain<br />
Making each frail tired sigh a sob of pain;<br />
Each drop that falls, a hollow painted tear<br />
Such as are shed by Pierrots when they fear<br />
Black clouds may crush their silver lord to death.<br />
The world is waxen; and the wind's least breath<br />
Would make a hurricane of sound. The earth<br />
Smells of the hoarded sunlight that gave birth<br />
To the gold-glowing radiance of that leaf<br />
Which falls to bury from our sight its grief.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> VIOLET GORDON-WOODHOUSE<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="clavichords"></a>
CLAVICHORDS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Its pure and dulcet tone<br />
So clear and cool<br />
Rings out—tho' muffled by the centuries<br />
Passed by;<br />
Each note<br />
A distant sigh<br />
From some dead lovely throat.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
A sad cascade of sound<br />
Floods the dim room with faded memories<br />
Of beauty that has gone<br />
Like the reflected rhythm in some dusk blue pool,<br />
Of dancing figures (long laid in the ground)—<br />
Like moonlit skies<br />
Or some far song harmonious and sublime—<br />
Breaking the leaden slumber of the night.<br />
A perfume, faint yet fair<br />
As of an old press'd blossom that's reborn<br />
Seeming to flower alone<br />
Within the arid wilderness of Time.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The music fills the air<br />
Soft as the outspread fluttering wings<br />
Of flower-bright butterflies<br />
That dive and float<br />
Through the sweet rose-flushed hours of summer dawn.<br />
The rippling sound of silver strings<br />
Break o'er our senses as small foaming waves<br />
Break over rocks,<br />
And into hidden caves<br />
Of silent waters—never to be found—<br />
Waters as clear and glistening as gems.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And in this ancient pool of melodies,<br />
So soothing, deep,<br />
We search for strange lost images and diadems<br />
And old drowned pleasures,<br />
—Each one shining bright<br />
And rescued from the crystal depths of sleep.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
As the far sun-kissed sails of some full-rigged boat,<br />
Blown by a salt cool breeze,<br />
—Laden with age-old treasures<br />
And rich merchandise—<br />
Fade into evening on the foam-flecked seas—<br />
So this last glowing note<br />
Hovers awhile—then dies.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="promenades"></a>
PROMENADES<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Long promenades against the sea<br />
Kaleidoscopic, chattering!<br />
Pavilions rising from the sea,<br />
On which a fawning, flattering,<br />
Hot crush of orientals move,<br />
And sell their cheap and tawdry wares,<br />
To other Jews, and aldermen,<br />
And rich, retired, provincial mayors.<br />
Oh! many colours in the sun;<br />
Copper and gold predominate!<br />
Parasols, held 'gainst the sun<br />
Throw down their shadows incohate<br />
On leering faces looking sly—<br />
All shining with the heat of June.<br />
The shifting masses move and talk<br />
And whistle tunes all out of tune.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Long promenades against the sea,<br />
And oranges and mandolines!<br />
Pavilions rising from the sea<br />
And penny-in-the-slot machines!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="clownpondi"></a>
CLOWN PONDI<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
When youth and strength had changed my blood to fire<br />
And every day passed long and glorious,<br />
Another link in the eternal chain<br />
Of life, I turned my love of luring and my sense<br />
For all the unfathomable ways of God,<br />
My burning sense for laughter and my joy<br />
In crowds, in tumult, and in blazing lights,<br />
To make my fellows see these qualities.<br />
Thus I became "Clown Pondi," and my fame<br />
Grew high in every theatre in the land.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
I seem'd to draw fresh vigour from the crowds—<br />
Loving the sea of faces, eyes with tears,<br />
And gaping mouths wide open—loosely hung;<br />
The acrid, opalescent haze of smoke,<br />
Hanging above the auditorium.<br />
And over it the crowded galleries<br />
That float far up, like painted prows of ships—<br />
All overweighted and alive with men.<br />
I loved the limelight, hard and white and strong,<br />
The throbbing music and the theatre's scent,<br />
That artificial, paper, printed scent<br />
That sweeps across the footlights to the stalls.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then was I pleased to strut about the stage,<br />
With face dead white, and strangely purple nose—<br />
Flamboyant in the garb of foolery—<br />
To run about too quickly—and fall down;<br />
To make queer noises—inarticulate<br />
Strange sounds and oaths, the signal for my share<br />
Of cackling laughter.<br />
Thus the years pass'd by<br />
And—all unheeding—swept away my youth,<br />
Till, one sad night, I heard a voice near-by:<br />
"Ah! Poor old man! It's shocking they should laugh;<br />
Mock his bent legs, and poor old toothless jaws!"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And then old-age rush'd down upon my head,<br />
Each sombre year roll'd past in solemn time;<br />
In true perspective—to the jingling tune<br />
That was my exit; and so near came death,<br />
Holding a mirror to my ridicule,<br />
That show'd each line beneath the smearing paint,<br />
Each wrinkle underneath the dab of rouge,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
That in my sudden hopelessness I wept.<br />
But as I left the stage with dragging feet,<br />
With body bent with age, and crouching low,<br />
I heard the applauding people pause and say,<br />
"Who but Clown Pondi could amuse us so?"<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="lausiac"></a>
LAUSIAC THEME<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
SERAPION-THE-SINDONITE<br />
Wore a cloth about his loins.<br />
This Christian Recondite<br />
Never carried coins.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Never did he ask for bread;<br />
Revelled in his own distress.<br />
High of spirit, low of head,<br />
With no other dress<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Than a loin-cloth, Serapion<br />
Was free from greed and gluttony<br />
Progressed in the direction<br />
Of impassivity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Serapion, though ascetic,<br />
Could not keep within his cell—<br />
Spiritual athletic,<br />
Who wrestled with Hell—<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
This Sindonitic holy man<br />
Converted, overcome by pity,<br />
Thais, the famous courtesan,<br />
To Christianity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Thais was not thin or frail<br />
But full of figure. Flesh and blood<br />
Rose up in riot—made her rail<br />
At a selfless God.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From Theban windows, far above,<br />
She plays and sings to a guitar<br />
With low voice: the light of love<br />
Beckons like a star.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Eagerly she welcomed in<br />
The unexpected Sindonite;<br />
But he spoke to her of sin—<br />
Set her soul alight.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
So they went together out<br />
To the crowded, garish street,<br />
Where he taught her how to flout<br />
Fumes of wine and meat.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
To the Thebaid they go—<br />
Where she stands each Christian test,<br />
Plaiting palm-leaves to and fro,<br />
Sure of heaven's rest.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
In the desert they both died,<br />
Thais and the holy man.<br />
They were buried side by side,<br />
Ascetic and courtesan.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="metamorphosis"></a>
METAMORPHOSIS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The woods that ever love the moon, rest calm and white<br />
Beneath a mist-wrapp'd hill:<br />
An owl, horned wizard of the night,<br />
Flaps through the air so soft and still;<br />
Moaning, it wings its flight<br />
Far from the forest cool,<br />
To find the star-entangled surface of a pool,<br />
Where it may drink its fill<br />
Of stars; a blossom-laden breeze<br />
Scatters its treasures—each a fallen moon<br />
Among the waiting trees—<br />
Bears back the faded shadow-scents of noon.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The whispering wood is full of dim, vague fears.<br />
The rustling branches sway<br />
And listen for some sound from far away—<br />
A silver piping down the Pagan years<br />
Since Time's first joyous birth—<br />
The listening trees all sigh,<br />
The moment of their hornèd king is nigh.<br />
Then, peal on peal, there sounds the fierce wild mirth<br />
Of Pan their master, lord and king,<br />
And round him in a moonlit ring<br />
His court, so wan and sly!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But then the trees closed round and hid from sight<br />
Their deeds—the voices seemed to die.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
An owl, horned wizard of the night,<br />
Flaps through the air so soft and still.<br />
Moans, as it wings its flight<br />
Toward the mist-wrapp'd hill.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="gipsyqueen"></a>
THE GIPSY QUEEN<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
A ragged Gipsy walked the road,<br />
Her eyes blazed fierce and strong,<br />
But she gazed at me as on she strode,<br />
She fiercely gazed, and long.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
"Give me a penny, sir," she said,<br />
"To buy me drink and buy me bread,<br />
For I've nothing had to eat or drink,<br />
And at night I never sleep a wink.<br />
Cold is the snow and wet the rain,<br />
But my soul died when my love was slain!"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
"Fair Gipsy, in some southern clime,<br />
I've seen your face before<br />
In some far other distant time,<br />
But whom are you weeping for?"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
"'Twas Antony I loved," she said,<br />
"For him, in vain, I shed these tears,<br />
But my loved Antony is dead—<br />
Is dead these long two thousand years;<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then I was mighty Egypt's pride,<br />
Fear'd both by friend and foe—<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Yet they believe Cleopatra died<br />
Two thousand years ago!"<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="blackmass"></a>
BLACK MASS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The atmosphere is charged with hidden things<br />
—Thoughts that are waiting—wanting to revive<br />
Primeval terrors from their present graves<br />
—Those half-thoughts hidden from the mind of man.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The fear of those bright, countless stars that shine<br />
Celestially serene on summer nights,<br />
—And those, too far for human eye to see—<br />
That make men feel as small and ill at ease<br />
As do the thoughts of immortality;<br />
The fear of seas that stretch beyond our sight<br />
Unspoilt by any memory of a ship—<br />
Strange, silent seas that lap the unknown shores<br />
Of some far-distant, undiscovered land;<br />
The curious fear of caves and horrid depths<br />
Where lurk those monsters that we hide away<br />
And bury in our self-complacency.<br />
The dread of all that waits unseen, yet heard;<br />
The fear of moonlight falling on a face;<br />
The sound of sobs at night, the fear of laughter;<br />
The misty terror lurking in a wood<br />
Which night has wrapped in her soft robe of sighs.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The horror that is felt where man is not,<br />
In lonely lands all dotted with squat trees<br />
That seem to move in the grey twilight breeze<br />
—Or sit and watch you like malicious cripples,<br />
Intent on every movement, every thought—<br />
Where stones, like evil fungi, raise their bulk<br />
Cover'd with lichen older than the hills—<br />
A warning for the ages yet to come;<br />
Stones that have seen the sun, and moon, and stars,<br />
Deflect their course for very weariness.<br />
These fears are gathered, press'd into a room<br />
Vibrating with the wish to damage man;<br />
To put a seal upon his mind and soul—<br />
These fears are fused into a living flame.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The room is filled with men of evil thoughts,<br />
And some poor timid ones, on evil bent.<br />
They stand in anxious, ghastly expectation.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The guttering light is low, and follows them<br />
With subtle shadows tall beyond belief:<br />
Vast elemental shapes that make men feel<br />
Like dusty atoms blown by wayward winds<br />
About the world: shadows that sway and swing.<br />
And sigh and talk, as if themselves alive.<br />
Small shadows cringe about the room incredibly,<br />
Grotesque and dwarf-like in their attitudes;<br />
Malignant, mocking things that caper round—<br />
Triumphant heralds of an evil reign.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Secret and swift they flit about the wall;<br />
Noiseless, they drag their feet about the floor,<br />
And murmur subtle infamies of love,<br />
Sweet-sounding threats, and bribes, and baleful thoughts.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Yet all are waiting, evilly alert...<br />
Yet all are waiting—watching for events.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Silence has ceased to be a negative,<br />
Becomes a thing of substance—fills the room<br />
And clings like ivy to the listening walls.<br />
The flickering light flares up—then gutters out.<br />
The shadows seem to shiver and expand<br />
To active, evil things that breathe and live.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now they whirl and dance in ecstasy.<br />
The highest moment of their mass is near.<br />
We only feel the swaying of the shades,<br />
—Rhythm of wicked music that escapes<br />
Our consciousness, tho' we have known it long—<br />
The music of the evil things of Night<br />
Scarcely remembered from some dim, vast world—<br />
The things that haunted us when we were young<br />
And nearer to our past realities.<br />
Like scaly snakes, the hymn to evil writhes<br />
Through the sub-conscious basis of our mind.<br />
Eddies of icy breath, or hot as flame,<br />
Twist into all the corners of the room,<br />
Filling our veins with fire like red-hot iron,<br />
And wicked as the Prince of Evil Things.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Faintly his glowing presence is revealed to us<br />
Amid the chorus of his satellites.<br />
The consummation of our awful hopes.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="pierrotwar"></a>
PIERROT AT THE WAR<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The leaden years have dragged themselves away;<br />
The blossoms of the world lie all dash'd down<br />
And flattened by the hurricane of death:<br />
The roses fallen, and their fragrant breath<br />
Has passed beyond our senses—and we drown<br />
Our tragic thoughts: confine them to the day.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Pierrot was happy here two years ago,<br />
Singing through all the summer-scented hours,<br />
Dancing throughout the warm moon-haunted night.<br />
Swan-like his floating sleeves, so long and white,<br />
Sailed the blue waters of the dusk. Wan flowers,<br />
Like moons, perfumed the crystal valley far below.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now these moonlit sleeves lie on the ground,<br />
Trampled and torn from many a deadly fight.<br />
With fingers clenched, and face a mask of stone,<br />
He gazes at the sky—left all alone—<br />
Grimacing under every rising light:<br />
His body waits the peace his soul has found.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>April</i>, 1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="springhours"></a>
SPRING HOURS<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The air is silken—soft and dark—<br />
Calm as the waters of some blue, far sea;<br />
Sweet as a youthful dream,<br />
The trees stand cold and stark,<br />
Yet full of the new life which makes each tree<br />
To tremble with delight; sets free<br />
The summer rapture of the stream.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now the clouds disperse and drift away,<br />
Splashing the woods with patches of pale light,<br />
Sail off like silver ships, and then display<br />
The dazzling myriad blossoms of the night.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Ah! It is worth full many a sun-gilt hour<br />
To see the heavens bursting into flower.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p>
<a id="book4"></a>
<a id="babel"></a>
</p>
<h2>
BOOK IV
<br />
WAR POEMS<br />
</h2>
<p><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
"THEREFORE IS THE NAME OF IT CALLED BABEL"<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
And still we stood and stared far down<br />
Into that ember-glowing town,<br />
Which every shaft and shock of fate<br />
Had shorn unto its base. Too late<br />
Came carelessly Serenity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Now torn and broken houses gaze<br />
On to the rat-infested maze<br />
That once sent up rose-silver haze<br />
To mingle through eternity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The outlines once so strongly wrought,<br />
Of city walls, are now a thought<br />
Or jest unto the dead who fought...<br />
Foundation for futurity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The shimmering sands where once there played<br />
Children with painted pail and spade<br />
Are dreary desolate—afraid<br />
To meet night's dark humanity,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Whose silver cool remakes the dead,<br />
And lays no blame on any head<br />
For all the havoc, fire, and lead,<br />
That fell upon us suddenly,<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
When all we came to know as good<br />
Gave way to Evil's fiery flood,<br />
And monstrous myths of iron and blood<br />
Seem to obscure God's clarity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Deep sunk in sin, this tragic star<br />
Sinks deeper still, and wages war<br />
Against itself; strewn all the seas<br />
With victims of a world disease<br />
—And we are left to drink the lees<br />
Of Babel's direful prophecy.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>January</i>, 1916.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="harlequinade"></a>
TWENTIETH-CENTURY HARLEQUINADE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Fate, malign dotard, weary from his days,<br />
Too old for memory, yet craving pleasure,<br />
Now finds the night too long and bitter cold<br />
—Reminding him of death—the sun too hot.<br />
The beauty of the universe he hates,<br />
Yet stands regarding earthly carnivals:<br />
The clatter and the clang of car and train,<br />
The hurrying throng of homeward-going men,<br />
The cries of children, colour of the streets,<br />
Their whistling and their shouting and their joy,<br />
The lights, the trees, the fanes and towers of churches,<br />
Thanksgiving for the sun, the moon, the earth,<br />
The labour, love, and laughter of our lives.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
He thinks they mock his age with ribaldry.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
From far within his æon-battered brain<br />
Well up those wanton wistful images<br />
That first beguiled the folk of Bergamo.<br />
Now like himself, degraded and distress'd,<br />
They sink to ignominy; but the clown<br />
Remains, reminder of their former state,<br />
And still earns hurricanes of hoarse applause.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
This dotard now decides to end the earth<br />
(Wrecked by its own and his futility).<br />
Recalls the formula of world-broad mirth<br />
—A senseless hitting of those unaware,<br />
Unnecessary breaking of their chattels.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The pantomime of life is near its close:<br />
The stage is strewn with ends and bits of things,<br />
With mortals maim'd or crucified, and left<br />
To gape at endless horror through eternity.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
The face of Fate is wet with other paint<br />
Than that incarnadines the human clown:<br />
Yet still he waves a bladder, red as gold,<br />
And still he gaily hits about with it,<br />
And still the dread revealing limelight plays<br />
Till the whole sicken'd scene becomes afire.<br />
Antic himself falls on the funeral pyre<br />
Of twisted, tortured, mortifying men.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>March</i>, 1916.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> HELEN<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="generation"></a>
THIS GENERATION<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Their youth was fevered—passionate, quick to drain<br />
The last few pleasures from the cup of life<br />
Before they turn'd to suck the dregs of pain<br />
And end their young-old lives in mortal strife.<br />
They paid the debts of many a hundred year<br />
Of foolishness and riches in alloy.<br />
They went to death; nor did they shed a tear<br />
For all they sacrificed of love and joy.<br />
Their tears ran dry when they were in the womb,<br />
For, entering life—they found it was their tomb.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> FRANCIS MEYNELL<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="sheepsong"></a>
SHEEP-SONG<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
From within our pens,<br />
Stout built,<br />
We watch the sorrows of the world.<br />
Imperturbably<br />
We see the blood<br />
Drip and ooze on to the walls.<br />
Without a sigh<br />
We watch our lambs<br />
Stuffed and fattened for the slaughter....<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
In our liquid eyes lie hidden<br />
The mystery of empty spaces<br />
All the secrets of the vacuum.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Yet we can be moved;<br />
When the head-sheep bleats,<br />
We bleat with him;<br />
When he stampedes<br />
—Heavy with foot-rot—<br />
We gallop after him<br />
Until<br />
In our frenzy<br />
We trip him up<br />
—And a new sheep leads us.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We are the greatest sheep in the world;<br />
There are no sheep like us.<br />
We come of an imperial bleat;<br />
Our voices,<br />
Trembling with music,<br />
Call to our lambs oversea.<br />
With us they crash across continents.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
We will not heed the herdsmen,<br />
For they warned us,<br />
"Do not stampede";<br />
Yet we were forced to do so.<br />
Never will we trust a herdsman again.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then the black lamb asked,<br />
Saying, "Why did we start this glorious Gadarene descent?"<br />
And the herd bleated angrily,<br />
"We went in with clean feet,<br />
And we will come out with empty heads.<br />
We gain nothing by it,<br />
Therefore<br />
It is a noble thing to do.<br />
We are stampeding to end stampedes.<br />
We are fighting for lambs<br />
Who are never likely to be born.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
When once a sheep gets its blood up<br />
The goats will remember...."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But the herdsman swooped down<br />
Shouting,<br />
"Get back to your pens there."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>September</i>, 1918.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="lament"></a>
THE POET'S LAMENT.<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Before the dawning of the death-day<br />
My mind was a confusion of beauty.<br />
Thoughts fell from it in riot<br />
Of colour,<br />
In wreaths and garlands of flowers and fruit...<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Then the red dawn came<br />
—And no thought came to me<br />
Except anger<br />
And bitter reproach.<br />
God filled my mouth<br />
With the burning pebbles of hatred,<br />
And choked my soul<br />
With a whirl-wind of fury.<br />
He made my tongue<br />
A flaming sword<br />
To cut and wither<br />
The white soft edges<br />
Of their anæmic souls.<br />
I ridiculed them,<br />
I despised them,<br />
I loathed them<br />
... But they had stolen my soul away.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Yes, they had stolen my soul from me.<br />
My heart jumps up into my mouth<br />
In fury;<br />
They have stolen my soul away.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But we will wait,<br />
And later words will come<br />
—Words that in their burning flight<br />
Shall scorch and flay,<br />
Or flare like fireworks<br />
Above their heads.<br />
In those days my soul shall be restored to me<br />
And they shall remember,<br />
They shall remember!<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="judas"></a>
JUDAS AND THE PROFITEER<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Judas descended to this lower Hell<br />
To meet his only friend—the profiteer—<br />
Who, looking fat and rubicund and well,<br />
Regarded him, and then said with a sneer,<br />
"Iscariot, they did you! Fool! to sell<br />
For silver pence the body of God's Son,<br />
Whereas for maiming men with sword and shell<br />
I gain at least a golden million."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But Judas answered: "You deserve your gold;<br />
It's not His body but His soul you've sold!"<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p><a id="rhapsode"></a></p>
<p class="noindent">
<i>To</i> H. W. MASSINGHAM
</p>
<h3>
RHAPSODE<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Why should we sing to you of little things—<br />
You who lack all imagination?<br />
Why should we sing to you of your poor joys,<br />
That you may see beauty through a poet's mind—<br />
Beauty where there was none before?<br />
Why should we heed your miserable opinions,<br />
And your paltry fears?<br />
Why listen to your tales and narratives—<br />
Long lanes of boredom along which you<br />
Amble amiably all the dull days<br />
Of your unnecessary lives?<br />
We know you now—and what you wish to be told:<br />
That the larks are singing in the trenches,<br />
That the fruit trees will again blossom in the spring,<br />
That Youth is always happy;<br />
But you know the misery that lies<br />
Under the surface—<br />
And we will dig it up for you!<br />
We shall sing to you<br />
Of the men who have been trampled<br />
To death in the circus of Flanders;<br />
Of the skeletons that gather the fruit<br />
From the ruined orchards of France;<br />
And of those left to rot under an Eastern sun—<br />
Whose dust mingles with the sand<br />
Of distant, strange deserts,<br />
And whose bones are crushed against<br />
The rocks of unknown seas;<br />
All dead—dead,<br />
Defending you and what you stand for.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
You hope that we shall tell you that they found their<br />
happiness in fighting,<br />
Or that they died with a song on their lips,<br />
Or that we shall use the old familiar phrases<br />
With which your paid servants please you in the Press:<br />
But we are poets,<br />
And shall tell the truth.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
You, my dear sir,<br />
You are so upset<br />
At being talked to in this way<br />
That when night<br />
Has coffin'd this great city<br />
Beneath the folds of the sun's funeral pall,<br />
You will have to drink a little more champagne,<br />
And visit a theatre or perhaps a music-hall.<br />
What you need (as you rightly say, my dear sir) is CHEERING-UP.<br />
There you will see vastly funny sketches<br />
Of your fighting countrymen;<br />
And they will be represented<br />
As those of whom you may be proud.<br />
For they cannot talk English properly,<br />
Or express themselves but by swearing;<br />
Or perhaps they may be shown as drunk.<br />
But they will all appear cheerful,<br />
And you will be pleased;<br />
And as you lurch amiably home, you will laugh,<br />
And at each laugh<br />
Another countryman will be dead!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
When Christ was slowly dying on that tree—<br />
Hanging in agony upon that hideous Cross—<br />
Tortured, betrayed, and spat upon,<br />
Loud through the thunder and the earthquake's roar<br />
Rang out<br />
Those blessed humble human words of doubt:<br />
"My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?"<br />
But near by was a cheerfully chattering group<br />
Of sects,<br />
Of Pharisees and Sadducees,<br />
And all were shocked—<br />
Pained beyond measure.<br />
And they said:<br />
"At least he might have died like a hero<br />
With an oath on his lips,<br />
Or the refrain from a comic song—<br />
Or a cheerful comment of some kind.<br />
It was very unpleasant for all of us—<br />
But we had to see it through.<br />
I hope people will not think we have gone too far—<br />
Or behaved badly in any way."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
There in the street below a drunken man reels home,<br />
And as he goes<br />
He sings with sentiment:<br />
"Keep the home fires burning!"<br />
And the constable helps him on his way.<br />
But we—<br />
We should be thrown into prison,<br />
Or cast into an asylum,<br />
For we want—<br />
PEACE!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>September</i>, 1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="poem">
<i>To</i> SIEGFRIED SASSOON<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="abraham"></a>
THE MODERN ABRAHAM<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
His purple fingers clutch a large cigar—<br />
Plump, mottled fingers, with a ring or two.<br />
He rests back in his fat armchair. The war<br />
Has made this change in him. As he looks through<br />
His cheque-book with a tragic look he sighs:<br />
"Disabled Soldiers' Fund" he reads afresh,<br />
And through his meat-red face peer angry eyes—<br />
The spirit piercing through its mound of flesh.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
They should not ask me to subscribe again!<br />
Consider me and all that I have done—<br />
I've fought for Britain with my might and main;<br />
I make explosives—and I gave a son.<br />
My factory, converted for the fight<br />
(I do not like to boast of what I've spent),<br />
Now manufactures gas and dynamite,<br />
Which only pays me seventy per cent.<br />
And if I had ten other sons to send<br />
I'd make them serve my country to the end,<br />
So all the neighbours should flock round and say:<br />
"Oh! look what Mr. Abraham has done.<br />
He loves his country in the elder way;<br />
Poor gentleman, he's lost another son!"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="trap"></a>
THE TRAP<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The world is young and green.<br />
Its woods are golden beneath the May-time sun;<br />
But within its trap of steel the rabbit plunges<br />
Madly to and fro.<br />
It will bleed to death<br />
Slowly,<br />
Slowly,<br />
Unless there is some escape.<br />
Why will not someone release it?<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
And presently a kindly passer-by<br />
Stoops down.<br />
The rabbit's eye glints at him—<br />
Gleaming from the impenetrable obscurity of its prison.<br />
He stoops and lifts the catch<br />
(He cannot hold it long, for the spring is heavy).<br />
The rabbit could now be free,<br />
But it does not move;<br />
For from the darkness of its death-hutch<br />
The world looks like another brightly baited trap.<br />
So, remaining within its steel prison,<br />
It argues thus:<br />
"Perhaps I may bleed to death,<br />
But it will probably take a long time,<br />
And, at any rate,<br />
I am secure<br />
From the clever people outside.<br />
Besides, if I did come out now<br />
All the people who thought I was a lion<br />
Would see, by the trap-mark on my leg,<br />
That I am only an unfortunate rabbit,<br />
And this might promote disloyalty among the children.<br />
When the clamp closed on my leg<br />
It was a ruse<br />
To kill me.<br />
Probably the lifting of it betrays the same purpose!<br />
If I come out now<br />
They will think they can trap rabbits<br />
Whenever they like.<br />
How do I know they will not snare me<br />
Again next year?<br />
Besides, it looks to me from here..."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But the catch drops down,<br />
For the stranger is weary.<br />
From within the hutch<br />
A thin stream of blood<br />
Trickles on to the grass<br />
Outside,<br />
And leaves a brown stain on its brightness.<br />
But the dying rabbit is happy,<br />
Saying:<br />
"I knew it was only a trap!"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>April</i>, 1918.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="poem">
<i>To</i> RODERICK MEIKLEJOHN<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="eternal"></a>
THE ETERNAL CLUB<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Warming their withered hands, the dotards say:<br />
"In our youth men were happy till they died.<br />
What is it ails the young men of to-day—<br />
To make them bitter and dissatisfied?"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Two thousand years ago it was the same:<br />
"Poor Joseph! How he'll feel about his son!<br />
I knew him as a child—his head aflame<br />
With gold. He seemed so full of life and fun.<br />
And even as a young man he was fine,<br />
Converting tasteless water into wine.<br />
Then something altered him. He tried to chase<br />
The money-changers from the Temple door.<br />
White ringlets swung and tears shone in their poor<br />
Aged eyes. He grew so bitter and found men<br />
For friends as discontented—lost all count<br />
Of caste—denied his father, faith, and then<br />
He preached that dreadful Sermon on the Mount!<br />
But even then he would not let things be;<br />
For when they nailed him high up on the tree,<br />
And gave him vinegar and pierced his side,<br />
He asked God to forgive them—still dissatisfied!"<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="heaven"></a>
HEAVEN<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
A theatre rises dark and mute and drear<br />
Among those houses that stand clustering round.<br />
Passing this pleasure-house, I seem'd to hear<br />
The distant rhythm of some lauding sound,<br />
The hot applause that greeted every night<br />
The favourite song, or girl, or joke, or fight.<br />
The laughter of the young and strong and gay<br />
Who greeted life—then laid their lives away.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Do they, then, watch the same old blatant show,<br />
Forgetting all death's wrench and all its pain<br />
And all their courage shown against the foe?<br />
Is this the heaven that they died to gain?<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="pedlar"></a>
THE BLIND PEDLAR<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
I stand alone through each long day<br />
Upon these pavers; cannot see<br />
The wares spread out upon this tray<br />
—For God has taken sight from me!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Many a time I've cursed the night<br />
When I was born. My peering eyes<br />
Have sought for but one ray of light<br />
To pierce the darkness. When the skies<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Rain down their first sweet April showers<br />
On budding branches; when the morn<br />
Is sweet with breath of spring and flowers,<br />
I've cursed the night when I was born.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But now I thank God, and am glad<br />
For what I cannot see this day<br />
—The young men crippled, old, and sad,<br />
With faces burnt and torn away;<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Or those who, rich and old,<br />
Have battened on the slaughter,<br />
Whose faces, gorged with blood and gold,<br />
Are creased in purple laughter!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>January</i>, 1919.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="moloch"></a>
WORLD-HYMN TO MOLOCH<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Holy Moloch, blessed lord,<br />
Hatred to our souls impart.<br />
Put the heathen to the sword,<br />
Wound and pierce each contrite heart.<br />
Never more shall darkness fall<br />
But it seems a funeral pall;<br />
Never shall the red sun rise<br />
But to red and swollen eyes.<br />
In the centuries that roll,<br />
Slowly grinding out our tears,<br />
Often thou hast taken toll;<br />
Never till these latter years<br />
Have all nations lost the fray;<br />
Lead not thou our feet astray.<br />
Never till the present time<br />
Have we offered all we hold,<br />
With one gesture, mad, sublime,<br />
Sons and lovers, lands and gold.<br />
Must we then still pray to thee,<br />
Moloch, for a victory?<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Eternal Moloch, strong to slay,<br />
Do not seek to heal or save.<br />
Lord, it is the better way<br />
Swift to send them to the grave.<br />
Those of us too old to go<br />
Send our sons to face the foe,<br />
But, O lord! we must remain<br />
Here, to pray and sort the slain.<br />
In every land the widows weep,<br />
In every land the children cry.<br />
Other gods are lulled to sleep,<br />
All the starving peoples die.<br />
What is left to offer you?<br />
Thou, O Sacred King of Death!<br />
God of Blood and Lord of Guile,<br />
Do not let us waste our breath,<br />
Cast on us thy crimson smile.<br />
Moloch, lord, we pray to thee,<br />
Send at least one victory.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
All the men in every land<br />
Pray to thee through battle's din,<br />
Swiftly now to show thy hand,<br />
Pray that soon one side may win.<br />
Under sea and in the sky,<br />
Everywhere our children die;<br />
Laughter, happiness and light<br />
Perished in a single night.<br />
In every land the heaving tides<br />
Wash the sands a dreadful red,<br />
In every land the tired sun hides<br />
Under heaps and hills of dead.<br />
In spite of all we've offered up<br />
Must we drink and drain the cup?<br />
Everywhere the dark floods rise,<br />
Everywhere our hearts are torn.<br />
Every day a new Christ dies,<br />
Every day a devil's born.<br />
Moloch, lord, we pray to thee,<br />
Send at least one victory.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="armchair"></a>
ARMCHAIR<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
If I were still of handsome middle-age<br />
I should not govern yet, but still should hope<br />
To help the prosecution of this war.<br />
I'd talk and eat (though not eat wheaten bread),<br />
I'd send my sons, if old enough, to France,<br />
Or help to do my share in other ways.<br />
All through the long spring evenings, when the sun<br />
Pursues its primrose path towards the hills,<br />
If fine, I'd plant potatoes on the lawn;<br />
If wet, write anxious letters to the Press.<br />
I'd give up wine and spirits, and with pride<br />
Refuse to eat meat more than once a day,<br />
And seek to rob the workers of their beer.<br />
The only way to win a hard-fought war<br />
Is to annoy the people in small ways,<br />
Bully or patronise them, as you will!<br />
I'd teach poor mothers, who have seven sons<br />
—All fighting men of clean and sober life—<br />
How to look after babies and to cook;<br />
Teach them to save their money and invest;<br />
Not to bring children up in luxury<br />
—But do without a nursemaid in the house!<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
If I were old, or only seventy,<br />
Then should I be a great man in his prime.<br />
I should rule army corps; at my command<br />
Men would rise up, salute me, and attack<br />
—And die. Or I might also govern men<br />
By making speeches with my toothless jaws,<br />
Chattering constantly; and men should say,<br />
"One grand old man is still worth half his pay!"<br />
That day I'd send my grandsons out to France<br />
—And wish I'd got ten other ones to send<br />
(One cannot sacrifice too much, I'd say).<br />
Then would I make a noble toothless speech,<br />
And all the listening Parliament would cheer.<br />
"Gentlemen, we will never end this war<br />
Till all the younger men with martial mien<br />
Have entered capitals; never make peace<br />
Till they are cripples, on one leg, or dead!"<br />
Then would the Bishops all go mad with joy,<br />
Cantuar, Ebor, and the other ones,<br />
Be overwhelmed with pious ecstasy.<br />
In thanking Him we'd got a Christian—<br />
An Englishman—still worth his salt—to talk,<br />
In every pulpit they would preach and prance;<br />
And our great Church would work, as heretofore,<br />
To bring this poor old nation to its knees.<br />
Then we'd forbid all liberty, and make<br />
Free speech a relic of our impious past;<br />
And when this war is finished, when the world<br />
Is torn and bleeding, cut and bruised to death,<br />
Then I'd pronounce my peace terms—to the poor!<br />
But as it is, I am not ninety yet,<br />
And so must pay my reverence to these men—<br />
These grand old men, who still can see and talk,<br />
Who sacrifice each other's sons each day.<br />
O Lord! let me be ninety yet, I pray.<br />
Methuselah was quite a youngster when<br />
He died. Now, vainly weeping, we should say:<br />
"Another great man perished in his prime!"<br />
O let me govern, Lord, at ninety-nine!"<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>August</i>, 1917.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="ragtime"></a>
RAGTIME<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The lamps glow here and there, then echo down<br />
The vast deserted vistas of the town—<br />
Each light the echo'd note of some refrain<br />
Repeated in the city's fevered brain.<br />
Yet all is still, save when there wanders past<br />
—Finding the silence of the night too long—<br />
Some tattered wretch, who, from the night outcast,<br />
Sings, with an aching heart, a comic song.<br />
The vapid parrot-words flaunt through the night—<br />
Silly and gay, yet terrible. We know<br />
Men sang these words in many a deadly fight,<br />
And threw them—laughing—to a solemn foe;<br />
Sang them where tattered houses stand up tall and stark,<br />
And bullets whistle through the ruined street,<br />
Where live men tread on dead men in the dark,<br />
And skulls are sown in fields once sown with wheat.<br />
Across the sea, where night is dark with blood<br />
And rockets flash, and guns roar hoarse and deep,<br />
They struggle through entanglements and mud,<br />
They suffer wounds—and die—<br />
But here they sleep.<br />
From far away the outcast's vacuous song<br />
Re-echoes like the singing of a throng;<br />
His dragging footfalls echo down the street,<br />
And turn into a myriad marching feet.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
<i>December</i>, 1916.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<h3>
<a id="peace"></a>
PEACE CELEBRATION<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
Now we can say of those who died unsung,<br />
Unwept for, torn, "Thank God they were not blind<br />
Or mad! They've perished strong and young,<br />
Missing the misery we elders find<br />
In missing them." With such a platitude<br />
We try to cheer ourselves. And for each life<br />
Laid down for us, with duty well-imbued,<br />
With song-on-lip, in splendid soldier strife—<br />
For sailors, too, who willingly were sunk—<br />
We'll shout "Hooray!"—<br />
And get a little drunk.<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="poem">
<i>To</i> SACHEVERELL<br />
</p>
<h3>
<a id="nextwar"></a>
THE NEXT WAR<br />
</h3>
<p class="poem">
The long war had ended.<br />
Its miseries had grown faded.<br />
Deaf men became difficult to talk to.<br />
Heroes became bores.<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
Those alchemists<br />
Who had converted blood into gold,<br />
Had grown elderly.<br />
But they held a meeting,<br />
Saying,<br />
"We think perhaps we ought<br />
To put up tombs<br />
Or erect altars<br />
To those brave lads<br />
Who were so willingly burnt,<br />
Or blinded,<br />
Or maimed,<br />
Who lost all likeness to a living thing,<br />
Or were blown to bleeding patches of flesh<br />
For our sakes.<br />
It would look well.<br />
Or we might even educate the children."<br />
</p>
<p class="poem">
But the richest of these wizards<br />
Coughed gently;<br />
And he said,<br />
"I have always been to the front<br />
—In private enterprise—<br />
I yield in public spirit<br />
To no man.<br />
I think yours is a very good idea<br />
—A capital idea—<br />
And not too costly.<br />
But it seems to me<br />
That the cause for which we fought<br />
Is again endangered.<br />
What more fitting memorial for the fallen<br />
Than that their children<br />
Should fall for the same cause?"<br />
Rushing eagerly into the street,<br />
The kindly old gentlemen cried<br />
To the young:<br />
"Will you sacrifice<br />
Through your lethargy<br />
What your fathers died to gain?<br />
Our cause is in peril.<br />
The world must be made safe for the young!"<br />
And the children<br />
Went....<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /></p>
<p class="t3">
PRINTED BY<br />
BILLING AND SONS, LTD.<br />
GUILDFORD, ENGLAND<br />
</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 61368 ***</div>
</body>
</html>
|
