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diff --git a/old/67441-h/67441-h.htm b/old/67441-h/67441-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index e89b478..0000000 --- a/old/67441-h/67441-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2494 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" -"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> - <head> <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover" /> -<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> -<title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Indian Ass, by Harold Acton. -</title> -<style type="text/css"> - -a:link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - - link {background-color:#ffffff;color:blue;text-decoration:none;} - -a:visited {background-color:#ffffff;color:purple;text-decoration:none;} - -a:hover {background-color:#ffffff;color:#FF0000;text-decoration:underline;} - -.big {font-size: 130%;} - -body{margin-left:4%;margin-right:6%;background:#ffffff;color:black;font-family:"Times New Roman", serif;font-size:medium;} - -.c {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.cb {text-align:center;text-indent:0%;font-weight:bold;} - -.fint {text-align:center;text-indent:0%; -margin-top:2em;} - -.figcenter {margin:3% auto 3% auto;clear:both; -text-align:center;text-indent:0%;} - -.footnote {width:95%;margin:auto 3% 1% auto;font-size:0.9em;} - -.label {position:relative;left:-.5em;top:0;text-align:left;font-size:.8em;} - -.fnanchor {vertical-align:30%;font-size:.8em;} - - h1 {margin-top:5%;text-align:center;clear:both; -font-weight:bold;} - - h2 {margin-top:4%;margin-bottom:2%;text-align:center;clear:both; - font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;} - - h3 {margin:4% auto 2% auto;text-align:center;clear:both;} - - hr {width:90%;margin:2em auto 2em auto;clear:both;color:black;} - - hr.full {width: 60%;margin:2% auto 2% auto;border-top:1px solid black; -padding:.1em;border-bottom:1px solid black;border-left:none;border-right:none;} - - img {border:none;} - -.letra {font-size:250%;float:left;margin-top:-1.5%;} - - p {margin-top:.2em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.2em;text-indent:4%;} - -.pagenum {font-style:normal;position:absolute; -left:95%;font-size:55%;text-align:right;color:gray; -background-color:#ffffff;font-variant:normal;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;text-indent:0em;} -.x-bookmaker .pagenum {display: none;} - -.pdd {padding-left:1em;text-indent:-1em; -text-indent:-2%;margin-left:2%;} - -.rt {text-align:right;} - -small {font-size: 70%;} - -.smcap {font-variant:small-caps;font-size:100%;} - -table {margin:2% auto;border:none;} - -th {padding-top:1em;padding-bottom:.25em;} - -div.poetry {text-align:center;} -div.poem {font-size:100%;margin:auto auto;text-indent:0%; -display: inline-block; text-align: left;} -.poem .stanza {margin-top: 1em;margin-bottom:1em;} -.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i6dtts {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; -letter-spacing:.5em;} - -.poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i15 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.iq {display: block; margin-left: -.45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} - -.poem span.ig { -margin:auto auto;} - -.poem span.ih { -margin:auto .1em;} - -</style> - </head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Indian Ass, by Harold Acton</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: An Indian Ass</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Harold Acton</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 19, 2022 [eBook #67441]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INDIAN ASS ***</div> -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" height="500" alt="" /></a> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1">{1}</a></span>  </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2">{2}</a></span>  </p> - -<p class="cb">AN INDIAN ASS<br /><br /><br /> - -<i>By the same author</i><br /><br /> - -AQUARIUM <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3">{3}</a></span>  </p> - -<h1>AN INDIAN ASS</h1> - -<p class="cb">BY<br /> -<br /> -HAROLD ACTON<br /> -</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Most merrily, I’ll be sworn;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">For many an honest Indian ass<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Goes for an Unicorn.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i1">Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight!<br /></span> -<span class="i3">He tickles this age that can<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte<br /></span> -<span class="i3">And Leda’s goose a swan.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="cb"> -<img src="images/colophon.png" -width="125" -alt="" /><br /> -<br /> -DUCKWORTH<br /> -3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span><br /> -<br /><small> -<i>First published in 1925</i><br /> -<i>All rights reserved</i><br /> -<br /> -<br /> -Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London<br /></small> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table cellpadding="2"> -<tr><td class="rt" colspan="3"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#LAMENT_FOR_ADONIS">Lament for Adonis</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_7">7</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#WHEN_FRIGATES_FROM_LONG_VOYAGES">When Frigates from Long Voyages</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_13">13</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#CAPRICCIO_ESPAGNOL">Capriccio Espagnol</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_15">15</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#TREPAK">Trépak</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_18">18</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#THE_INVESTITURE_OF_A_SPINSTER_HOB-GOBLIN">The Investiture of a Spinster Hob-Goblin</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_20">20</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#THE_WERE-WOLF">The Were-Wolf</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_21">21</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#HILARITY">Hilarity</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_22">22</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#THE_GODS">The Gods</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_26">26</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#AS_DMITRI_KARAMAZOFF_SANG_ON_THE_WAY_TO_CHAOS">As Dmitri Karamazoff Sang on the Way to Chaos</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_27">27</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#IN_THE_TRAIN_DE_LUXE">In the Train de Luxe</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_31">31</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#THE_PRODIGAL_SON">The Prodigal Son</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_33">33</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#VENTILATION">Ventilation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_38">38</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#AFTER">After</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_40">40</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#GREEN_GROW_THE_RUSHES_O">Green Grow the Rushes, O</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_43">43</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#WORDS">Words</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_44">44</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#GREENNESS_UNSECRETED">Greenness Unsecreted</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_46">46</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#BACK-STREETS">Back Streets</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_48">48</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#WERTHER-INTROSPECTION">Werther-Introspection</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_49">49</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#ON_THE_THEME_OF_OPHELIAS_MADNESS">On the Theme of Ophelia’s Madness</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_51">51</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#THESE_CONSOLATIONS">These Consolations</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_53">53</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6">{6}</a></span></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#IN_THE_MONTH_OF_ATHYR">In the Month of Athyr</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_55">55</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#DISCOVERIES">Discoveries</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_56">56</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#OLD_WOMAN">Old Woman</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_57">57</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#COLD_JOINTS">Cold Joints I</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_59">59</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#II">Cold Joints II</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_60">60</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#III">Cold Joints III</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_61">61</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#INVOCATION">Invocation</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_63">63</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#LAME_LADY">Lame Lady</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_64">64</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#CONVERSATIONS_AND_CRUMBLING">Conversations and Crumbling</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_66">66</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="pdd" colspan="2"><a href="#INTERMEZZO">Intermezzo</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_69">69</a></td></tr> - -<tr><th colspan="3"><a href="#THREE_TRANSLATIONS_FROM_THE_FRENCH">THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="rt"><a href="#Ia">I</a></td><td class="pdd"><a href="#Ia">The Gibbet</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_71">71</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="rt"><a href="#IIa">II</a></td><td class="pdd"><a href="#IIa">Saint</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_73">73</a></td></tr> -<tr><td class="rt"><a href="#IIIa">III</a></td><td class="pdd"><a href="#IIIa">Hérodiade</a></td><td class="rt" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_74">74</a></td></tr> - -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="LAMENT_FOR_ADONIS" id="LAMENT_FOR_ADONIS"></a><i>Lament for Adonis</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">N</span>OW fogs enfold the sea<br /></span> -<span class="ih">And berries fall from eaves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The cat’s eyes glitter green into the dark.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The sloping hills of myrrh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The trees with tender anise overweighed,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The pointed flag-leaves stir<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Only to weep again,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Only to sob and mourn Adonis dead.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Throughout this dolorous night of cloudy jade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even the hornless dragon of the sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The green and golden sequined basilisk,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The water-scorpion and the python-king<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like sad eclipses trail about the land.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The crane, the ibis and the mango-bird,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The jungle-fowl, the heron and the roc,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The badger and three-footed tortoise join<br /></span> -<span class="i2">In pouring out their eyes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O Cypris violet-stoled, O wrapped in purple woof<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Arise and beat your azure-veined breasts!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Small jewelled nipples, bleed!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For I have seen you make that curved mouth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A bed of balsam, bed of crisp lush flowers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose poor crushed frozen lips compactly closed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lie, flakes of ice, where once were flakes of fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their loveliness a thing of agony.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moon has slanted off, and querulous ghosts<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hover along the brink of treacherous voids<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And leap into this night of blinded eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Blind now to pleasure’s lapping ecstasies);<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This peacock-throated night whose stifling cries<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shudder and crack: ’tis Misery who calls<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Woe” to the black solemnities of sky<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For loveliest Adonis—he is dead.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Low on the hills he lies, the lovely bleeding one,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His throat aflash with faint stunned strands of light.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Low on the hills he lies and breathes his life away<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And from his thigh of milk-white agate gashed,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Slit by the cruel tusk,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The ruby blood drips down his skin of snow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath his brows stars set in crystal deep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Once memories, hungers glinted in their pools),<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are glazed dim, opaque and lustreless,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The blue orbs burn no more beneath translucent lids.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His locks are wet with the clear drops of night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The rose has fled his lip: the very kiss hangs dead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The kiss that Cypris never will forego.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And when the bitter white wind breaks the morn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His gathered hounds bay gloom about his corpse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The green-haired Nereids of the marsh make moan,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Frail flowers dabble pollened cheeks with tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From vavicel to calyx petals weep....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long spiral tufts of drooping galingale,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The shadowy deer-grass and the swallow-wort<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sob through their bat’s wing tissues tremulous,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The poplars weeping amber in the vales,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The orchises and sandal-trees, lament.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But Aphrodite with unbraided hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And tragic thorn-pierced feet so delicate,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Calls through the woodlands and again, again.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O, more than music’s many stringèd charms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His lulling name reverberates afar<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where faint sails clasp the ribbands of the sea.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But round his navel leaps the thick dark blood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His chest is lapped in scarlet from the thighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Now purpled are those limbs afore as white<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As veils of snow unflecked by merest breeze.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Cypris was fair: whilst her Adonis lived<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The light would melt her body into song,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But with Adonis has her beauty died,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Died as a vaporous melody on a lute.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Woe, woe, for Cypris!” all the mountains call,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The oak-trees answer: “For Adonis, woe!”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For Aphrodite all the rivers weep,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The wells bewail Adonis on the hills.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Echo resounds “Ai, ai ... Adonis dead ...<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Most beautiful Adonis ... he is dead.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As Venus saw the wasting limbs, the wound<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gashed in the whiteness of her loved one’s thighs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She clasped him to her, moaning supply warm<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Against his chilled inertness:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Farewell, Adonis; once, as I was telling<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Deluding tales of happiness, the morrow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When I had thought that joy had come for dwelling,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Came sorrow.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“The almoner of death, the silent creeper,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Has snared my love, and I shall see him never,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I, manacled in miseries, a weeper<br /></span> -<span class="i2">For ever.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“A widowed goddess with her beauty setting<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Like a gold sun to rise no longer, never,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose love, with Acheron, is fast forgetting<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Her for ever.”<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For each blood drop the Paphian sheds a tear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And tears and blood on earth are turned to flowers:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The ruby blood brings forth the pursy rose,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tears bring forth the air-white wind-flower,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For loveliest Adonis—he is dead.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">No seemly couch, this lonely bed of leaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For dead Adonis: beautiful in death<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As one that stumbles on a slumber, falls<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On downy-wingèd doze of braided air.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Your bed let him possess, O Cytherea,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lay him to sleep on couch of twisted gold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The couch that yearns for wan Adonis’ limbs.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cast on him drooping eyes of jasmine-flowers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nay, all the flowers have faded in his death,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As keen swift lovely murmurs drowned on breeze.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sprinkle his limbs with bakkaris and myrrh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nay, perished all the perfumes in his death,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All flushed soft legendary scents dissolve—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Disquieting erotic memories.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The torches on the lintel all are quenched<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Hymenæus rends the bridal crown.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No more the song is “Hymen”: a new song<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Graces grieve like mournful Autumn boughs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The toneless sound that means a broken heart:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Woe, for Adonis, son of Cinyrus!”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To him the Muses chant their starry music,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And painted insects floating motionless<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At their weird sound, unconscious of the day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bright feathered wings hung in the gloom of thought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mimic the melancholy atmosphere<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And dry words start and rattle in the throat,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shudder in sorrow; but he does not heed.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The bending vault of stars,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Of cool green quiet stars,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where clouds but catch the palest tinge of day,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Is tangled with the sea;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moonlight tossed and thrown by jostling waves<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Refrain from dirges, cease,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">O Cypris, your lament.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Again you must bewail another year!<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="WHEN_FRIGATES_FROM_LONG_VOYAGES" id="WHEN_FRIGATES_FROM_LONG_VOYAGES"></a><i>When Frigates from Long Voyages</i> ...</h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">W</span>HEN frigates from long voyages<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Drift into harbour, then I see<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whirled momentary mirages<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of inspissated greenery—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mazed mangroves casting their aerial roots,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And diamond water-shoots<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Embroidering the air.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in the drowsy hanging-gardens there<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Roam slowly-swaying elephants;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fulgurant phœnix with her sycophants,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those trailing-plumèd birds of paradise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sits on a cactus thorn.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gleaming in the ruby-veinèd morn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lie pools of liquid amber for the indolent crocodile<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To flounder in and dolorously smile.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Spick diving gannets, speckled pelicans,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flutter with feather-footed ptarmigans.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Orange-liveried marmosets<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Climb slender cypress minarets.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Strange garrisons<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of emerald-mailed chameleons,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And peacocks, fans outspread as gonfalons,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shrill-voiced as amazons;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Coiled dinosaurs that lap the hydromel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From many a mauve-lipped shell....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The unicorns are neighing from afar,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where hills of cinnabar<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Loom high<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like venomous Borgia-philtres on the sky.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="CAPRICCIO_ESPAGNOL" id="CAPRICCIO_ESPAGNOL"></a><i>Capriccio Espagnol</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Y entre puente y otro puente<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Zaragoza es my tierra.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">O</span>F blood blown-dry brown velvet, baldaquins,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Words guttural—then soft as dulcimers:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of rays of rapid light through fishes’ fins<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Prisoned in tanks profound where nothing stirs;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of nights that ooze weird sounds, and starry eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On lattice fixed and bulging balconies:—<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Of these my brain built castles rapidly,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And tolled metallic like a beaten bell<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of hard green copper; straggling aimlessly<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Over ravine and granite citadel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Were cities unpremeditated, dry,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As draughts of space inhaled from scorching sky.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Through these Cathedrals rose like cachalots<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Twisted of height and gloom and sudden glow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their glossy floors reflect the crimson clots<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Of vestment swirling, swishing to and fro—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And when the beadle taps his ponderous mace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Faint echoes rustle from the Altar’s lace.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Within the town: feeble electric light<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Among the dusty foliage of the trees,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like gentle cheeks against the steely night,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i2">With boughs of thick smooth silver; jubilees<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of saints are frequent—in their thoughtfulness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The citizens will give their saint a dress.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">They lift her from the gilded canopy,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Studded in far Peru, on which she stands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sumptuous, realistic, in each eye<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A gaping jewel; sprouting from her hands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are paper flowers—in their thoughtfulness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They give their saint a new magenta dress.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The ceremony done, and people doff<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Their piety: serrated streets resound<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With gossip, vacuous laughter, idle scoff.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Like strips of tape the scattered crowds confound,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mantillas and a rout of dusky hair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stray thoughts jerk off and clatter in the air....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Austere this land, and yet it utters flesh:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The longing ache of contact, lids like song<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And lips like speech melodious: a mesh<br /></span> -<span class="i2">For Don Juans and sanguine passions; strong<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This earth of sprinkled blood, the seed of gold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose tainted glitters dazzle young and old!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Jagged umber ridges freaked with lines of snow,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Bitumen lakes, austere as faded fire,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And vague waste lands where gypsies squatting low<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i2">Croon winged abandoned musics that expire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like bruised sweet herbs, gushed madness, agonies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of lances hurled at pulseless arteries.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s thigh<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Legioned, remote and abstract, yet withal<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Evocative of an infinity—<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Beauty becoming metaphysical—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This Phœnix-land breeds new birds in the brain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From ash, for I have never been to Spain.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="TREPAK" id="TREPAK"></a><i>Trépak</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HE trees sprawl up like trumpets in the night,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Great ghosts of once-viridian: but now,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fibred with brittle tufts of massy snow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They creak with burdened whiteness, for the bright<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blue-prismed stalactites like wounds of light<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are pendulous from their pagoda-boughs.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And when a wind whirs in among the trees,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As some Silenus fumbling frantic hands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into a cleft of honey, they cast off<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A whittling dust of little hispid stars.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The moon is hungry. Lo! the moon has thinned<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To finger-nail’s fine fringe; she is forlorn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With thought of Spring’s flown hollow spells of joy,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When the now-passionless statue of her mind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Was tremulous with passion, nescient lips<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stammered lush ingenuities of love.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then Summer crackled like a yawn of fire:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The big-lipped consummation of desire.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A starved, lean-ribbed dog with rheumy eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yelps up at her, his poor thin thread of voice<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nigh snaps, and trails its note into a growl,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then tumbles, frozen stark, amongst the snow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The barbèd minutes shiver chillily<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In wait for something.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i10">Ho! who’s this, a man?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In this torn catafalque of barren boughs?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A patriarchal bearded brittle-bones<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Daft, dazed with drink, shuffles his slipshod feet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Scattering sprays of crisply sparkling snow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Death clanks his rusty mail and flaps his wings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ogling, draws the man into a dance:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“No more the malady of life unlived<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With no grand-opera effects; no more<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Heroic sunsets, agonies of rose<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To wear you faint; no more the whirlpool’s mist<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of good and evil. It shall be revealed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There is no meaning, no significance<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In all this clamour, in this viscous trail<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of sentimental sanatoriums.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those frowning stoic caryatides,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who contemplate in decorous solitude<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This elegant Golgotha of futile birth,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Are fraudulent mountebanks; unmanicured,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Life’s pointed nails grapple and tear your flanks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Without a murmur trembling from your lips,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O broken vessel sprayed with broken light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Come to oblivion’s arms; sepulchral night,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Inchoate truth await you—they are kind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Close your red lashless eyelids. Death is fair....”<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THE_INVESTITURE_OF_A_SPINSTER_HOB-GOBLIN" id="THE_INVESTITURE_OF_A_SPINSTER_HOB-GOBLIN"></a><i>The Investiture of a Spinster Hob-Goblin</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">O</span>H have you heard the chaunt of snails<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Tilting upon a big brown leaf,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And held the insect world in fief<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And pared the devil’s gilded nails?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And have you parlied with the rose,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And seen the ballet of the bats<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And watched the sloths, our acrobats,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Performing at our antic-shows?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And have you drunk the tears of stars,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And bathed in bubbles of the moon,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And heard the gay grasshoppers croon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who use their bodies as guitars?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then, if you’ve seen the phœnix land<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Or if a satyr’s beard you’ve sawn,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And filed the eye-brows of a faun,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We will admit you to our band.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The hedonistic unicorns,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Who drive our chariots through the sky,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Will lead you to our empery<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of languid dappled damson dawns.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THE_WERE-WOLF" id="THE_WERE-WOLF"></a><i>The Were-Wolf</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">A</span>LL in the hush of a green night,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">He left the downy marriage-bed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In a chill sweat, his face chalk-white,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">His voice spoke hoarsely of the dead.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The young wife, wakened by his howls,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Clutched bed-post dumb with fright, surprise;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like lepers huddled under cowls,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Red films lay on her husband’s eyes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“I am become a wolf,” he said,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">“And I will to the churchyard-site<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To throttle graves, to raise the dead.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Strange flesh will be my fare to-night!”<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And barking at the slice of moon<br /></span> -<span class="i2">He scampered nimbly on all fours.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She never saw him more; one noon<br /></span> -<span class="i2">She spied the imprint of wolf’s claws.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="HILARITY" id="HILARITY"></a><i>Hilarity</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">C</span>OME, let us sing the world’s hilarity,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Now that a silence overspreads the hills,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each crevice, muscle, wimpling in a haze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blue-ragged fustian of twilight: come<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And crack the sky with laughter, mounting shrill,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let it dissolve the æther, let it break<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In bubbles, circles ever-bosoming,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As when a trout has troubled a still pool.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Scatter it like a hungry pack of hounds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Worry and tear and grind it into strips,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ravish and tread on it, then let it be<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To crawl before us like the ooze of oil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A worm of shame, a mean and squamous thing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Hysteria, guide us! Let our laughter heave,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swell shriek on shriek, till it engender fear<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like peacocks in abandoned palaces<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose sharp and melancholy discords ring<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And rinse like lightning through the vaulted roofs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At sunset hour, when skies are smeared with blood.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Come, drown the viol’s pallid amber notes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Submerge the fevered pluckings at the lute,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Let no soft rippling cadences be spilled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But beat a riot out upon the drums.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fescennine gongs shall kindle us to blaze,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thus our fumes, well ballasted, will steer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Towards the placid stars and make them reel.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Our lives are cratered with great pocks and scabs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Meticulously morselled into pangs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Birth-scream, death-rattle, straggling years between,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of childhood and uneasy puberty,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of adolescence and maturity,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Resolve tormented into slow decay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Crabbed, agued, rheumatic, cough our lives away.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And some, less fortunate, cough up their blood.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then let us sing the world’s hilarity!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With plunging pistons let our laughter press,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lumbering in massed squadrons, vitriol<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To blister the anæmic orb of moon.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And there are many hours before the dawn.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hilewort, nightshade, agrimony-wand<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Surrender to the fingers of the breeze,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lay bare their throats, let loose their floating hair.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Some luckless women bear their children blind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And some hare-lipped and others lunatick<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With soft and fumbling brains and shifting eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who dandle curly flowers, their lolling tongues<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Clicking and moist with unrestrained saliva.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perhaps ’twere better that they were born blind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Never to see the ugliness of man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mirrors of his noisome, clammy thoughts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like night-grown fungi pushing on the air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But hold sweet music palpable, and sounds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tones, undertones: a paradise of hues,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And glowing forms in silk embroideries.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The silence, too, will seem a rhythmic motion,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A saraband for snow-white feet to tread,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And not a tortured cripple crouching low<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Amongst the blotting shadows of his soul,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To nurse his agony with evil oaths,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The blight-scarred sickly vapours of remorse,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sputtered and writhing from his twisted lips.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Were a revolver fired with loud report,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The only music welcome to our ears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The poor blind man would tremble, clutch a chair....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Day after day the limbs of man are gnawed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And flayed by every manner of disease,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Eaten of lice, they seem the spawn of slugs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And cancer slowly scrabbles at their vitals.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The small-pox ploughs their faces into ruts<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And scurvy furrows, strange deformities<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Distend and hunch them into monstrous shapes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like shadows gripping at realities,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To scrape a livid grave amongst the slime.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some calcined ashen white with leprosy<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Will scream for terror at their dreadful hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The touch of which would seem to cause decay<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The roots they tear, the pappy fruit they pluck,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And prowling beasts will turn in haste and flee<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before their weary footsteps through the night.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Our quickened hearts have grated on themselves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We groin with lappered morphews of the mind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our wanton mirth has frozen into sorrow,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And we had thought to fashion of our joy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Round crackling pearls to pelt our wine-drenched loves.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But we were to have sung hilarity!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Our clowns are turned into tragedians,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Pierrot’s chalk-white face is crinkled up<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With bitter weeping; roguish Harlequin,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His apple cheeks all wet and blobbed with tears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Wanders the streets of Bergamo alone.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And floating through the utter silences,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Our sobs well hugely, spasms echoing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To jeer and mock at us, abortive fools,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who came to sing the world’s hilarity.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THE_GODS" id="THE_GODS"></a><i>The Gods</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">L</span>IGHTNING zigzags and again<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Comets reel like tipsy girls,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bulbous clouds let down the rain,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Little silver chains of pearls.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Through the frenzied city beats<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A bourdon-drumming, heavy, low.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In long and apoplectic streets<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The gods are passing to and fro.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I watch them walk among the crowds,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Their beards a-glittering with stars,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Until they merge into the clouds<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Among the chimney’s fat cigars.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">While lovers in their foolishness<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Lisp out the night with hopes and fears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whilst into void and emptiness<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Time clatters off and disappears.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="AS_DMITRI_KARAMAZOFF_SANG_ON_THE_WAY_TO_CHAOS" id="AS_DMITRI_KARAMAZOFF_SANG_ON_THE_WAY_TO_CHAOS"></a><i>As Dmitri Karamazoff sang on the way to Chaos</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">E</span>IGHT days without a sun: but I am calm<br /></span> -<span class="ih">And cultivate my tulips fixedly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I watch them flick their flighty freckled tongues<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mocking and sweetly monstrous blares of time.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(We weep to see you haste away so soon!)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The gas is near extinct upon the plush,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like the last birds its flares have ebbed away.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Blue witness of the Second Empire, gas!—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In cabriolets we echoed through the night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And caracoled with busselled courtesans—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You lit the boulevards and avenues,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While Paul Verlaine, a candle in his hand,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would totter up to bed and watch the moon<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Comme un point sur un i</i>—so orotund....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through fumes and crapulous velleities.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But now the batteries like headaches beat<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Against the temples of humanity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A network of pure electricity<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Installed for quick transmission through the world<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pours a perpetual electric day.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Men plough their fields by searchlights from the skies,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By searchlights blatant, geometrical,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As fingers from each god-like aeroplane<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pointed to each created mass of flesh<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Accusing and forewarning.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O empresses of jade who slumber on your cushions,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who slumber delicately on your cushions!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If we were moulded of a subtle stone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Instead of being merely flesh and bone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We’d imitate your cool and elegant curves.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To chill green jade our hot and shattered nerves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would clot or petrify or fossilize—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And moss to moist the finnèd lids of eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lush velvet soaking on the irises<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Looped round with tiredness and its swollen reds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would grow about our damask four-post beds.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We would be green, an ecstasy of green!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As small sea-violets, virgin forest’s green,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where trees like coral sponges dab the air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And through each weft you hear a piece of wind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A tiny concertina-push of sound<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And then an inrush, sobbing gently inward.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Why do we drown in customs, why become<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lost dying flames and strangers to the skies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose beams with clouds like wingèd chariots fly?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why do we climb the towers which break our knees,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Horrible towers from which, when we look down<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We wish to hurl ourselves?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O, then the ant-like herd below would feel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A gentle spray of entrails—they’d recoil!—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perhaps one woman faints: we do not care,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The worm has not become our paramour,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The worm has not yet pierced our winding-sheets.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then why not, like Empedocles,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lower our limbs into volcano-craters,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And make the world believe that mighty God<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Translated us into His company<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On dolphins’ backs across a nectar lake,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To share the glory of His attributes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His love like myrrh and incense and the fruits<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That dangle from exotic herbs and trees<br /></span> -<span class="i0">All gold and ripe as from Hesperides?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">An architect of ruin onion-eyed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Has cast the die of quick finality<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Among the cheese-mites in this gap of time.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through Chaos: murmurs, stumblings, hordes that rend<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fabric which is called reality.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The light, which was a sluice of molten gold,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The crystal winds, disperse in empty air.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The deep red empty holes which were our eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sense only burstings of electric globes.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Louder the heat, like vitriol, wounds our ears<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Burning with dull blue thunder.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And then—a tune upon the piccolo,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">One of the musical Unemployed, I know,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or some stray angel with pink sugar wings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trying to see the cheerful side of things!<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="IN_THE_TRAIN_DE_LUXE" id="IN_THE_TRAIN_DE_LUXE"></a><i>In the Train de Luxe</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">“I</span>T is dangerous to lean out of the window.”<br /></span> -<span class="ih">No doubt, when meteors shoot athwart the night.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No doubt, no doubt; and yet it haunts the sight.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I read, re-read this ponderous advice<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In French and English; play a game of dice<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With mental clouds through cannonades of hours,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With foamless islands legioned with lush flow’rs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Prismatic juicy glades bee-pasturing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“In case of danger you must pull the ring.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A girl arranges a mellifluous grin:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Eternal teas and afternoons begin<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To lurk within the forests of the mind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With vividness that cuts it like a wind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And while my nostrils draw the vital air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They quiver to discern the sweat of hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In awkward crevices! <i>Signal d’Alarme</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Recalls the fact that I am safe from harm.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I count, re-count each pendulum and beat.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pardie! the train has swollen in the heat;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Freighted with smuts he heaves his metal breasts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor heeds the broad and burning moon’s behests.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(The moon is lingering and luminous.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mired in a wrinkling silk diaphanous<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">She floats a supple pose upon the air<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And whispers invitations.)<br /></span> -<span class="i15">“I don’t care!”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The train replies; although his body glows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He is austere as tempest-sifted snows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pursuing moral dumb-bell exercise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To muscle-burst criterion; he defies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flesh and its shuddering spurts of harlotry.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pavilioned on hills of chastity,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“I do not care a damn,” the train replies.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THE_PRODIGAL_SON" id="THE_PRODIGAL_SON"></a><i>The Prodigal Son</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HE young man yawned with feigned inconsequence<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Of manner; boredom exquisite; a fence<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To hide the quick explosions in his soul.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He sucked at his surroundings, and the whole<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grim agony of his dull youth returned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The blue fins of his sullen eyelids burned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He could have mouthed a curse, an oath obscene:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For horror at the glib familiar scene<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A clayey lump stuck blistered in his throat.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Chrysallic faces, garlic, myosote,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And rows of beans and artichokes, a field<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Interminably patterned, jigged and reeled<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Along the corridors of memory.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Is childhood happy? dismal fallacy!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And yet I am not one of those who think<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That lilies smell not, orange-flowers stink.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Here had the best hours coolly leaked away<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like driblets from a tap, a disarray<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of tumbled hispid stars; a clean dry sleep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of stunted senses, where he could not weep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For ignorance. And ever shone the moon;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The warm sky twinkled like a chopped lagoon.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“This world is but a foggy circumstance,”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He thought, “where timid mortals must advance<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">To claim their rights and drain what cup of joy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It has to offer, now no longer boy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll cease to play the rôle of Tantalus,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But leave this place, discharge a blunderbuss<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Against my present drawling mode of life.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’m still too young to bear the plague of wife,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And though ’tis true, when all fine things be said,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’m welcome to a partner for my bed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To kiss a gaping throat of flaccid silk;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I fear her plump white breasts would hold no milk<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To suckle babes on, after I had done<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With kissing at her nipples; one by one<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each new-born babe would wither up and die.”<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He picked his teeth and fetched a windy sigh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Informed his father of his bold resolve,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who told him of the cost it would involve:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So, settling up accounts, he bade farewell<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To all the damned of his domestic hell.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Oh <i>wagon-lits</i> and tickets bought from Cook’s,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Surpassing all the fairy-tales in books!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Warm exhalations, streets with spicy smells<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And oh, the Poe-like harmonies of bells!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Venice and Ruskin and <i>The Deadly Lamps</i>,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pulsing cafés and patchouli’d vamps<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With sticky flowers in their copper hair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The languid music throbbing on the air!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The Watteau <i>fêtes galantes</i>, the bistre-brown<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sombrero’d poets, yet without a crown<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To purchase food; the graceful unwashed hands<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And flung-proud gestures of these Southern lands!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The tiny shiny shoes with pointed tips<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And carmine-rouged pursed petulance of lips!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But all the while the young man’s pockets burned,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all the while he piteously yearned<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For lucre; many azure nights he’d lain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With shirt-front soaked and squelching in champagne<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And pleasures, money, all are volatile,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For after belching Pol-Roger the bile<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Will wreak revenge.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i10">And thus it came about<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That when his full supply had given out,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The harlots would no longer share his bed;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Since he could pay no cash, they, laughing, said:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“One sucks the orange, throws away the peel.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The young man’s vanity forbade him kneel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As penitent before his father’s glare,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before the well-staged patronising stare<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of his familiar family—poor things—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How they would love to clip his phœnix-wings!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So he became a labourer and slept<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In musty garrets where the grey mice crept,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">With cobwebs and the gibbering of bats<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And scuttling cockroaches, and lice, and rats<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who dragged their heavy bellies on the floor<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thud, thud and thud; the creaking of the door<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In twilight cavernous, the broken pane<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through which the hiss and crackle of the rain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would slant in rivulets across the planks,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The thunder tramped, the lightning played his pranks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a young leopard prancing from the skies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Divinely, whilst the tough wind slapped its thighs.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Through dismal days he sweated at the plough.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And half a crust beneath an apple-bough<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Became his nourishment, and so he thinned<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In figure-line; the sweltering east wind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And thick-flamed sun had bronzed his body quite....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And often through the oozing hours of night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He’d sing a sparkling catch of better times—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No longer pedant à propos of rhymes,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He’d hum or whistle: “Gosh, she looks immense,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You never met a girl like sweet Hortense,”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With genuine emotion in his throat.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But soon he was reduced to pawning coat<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And hat; dismissed for superflux of dreams<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or bathing on hot afternoons in streams<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When there was corn to reap, or hay to store<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In soporific barns; and all the more<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">He dreamt of silken harlots, velvet wine.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A tender farmer let him tend the swine.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">With weighty flanks well caked in slime, a sow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grunted and suckled farrow, whilst a cow<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lowed like a mellow snore; a mastiff whined<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To demonstrate sheer vacancy of mind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Shall I arise and go? ’tis not too late<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To gain an entrance to my father’s gate.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The young man shook his head and muttered “No,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor shall arise, nor to my father go.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He had acquired a preference to dine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On scraps amongst the confidential swine.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="VENTILATION" id="VENTILATION"></a><i>Ventilation</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">O</span>PEN the window! now that breezes play<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Over the wrinkled hills; the sweltering day<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fused by the wedge-shaped engines of the sun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With heat intensive, split as flowers spun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of glass to myriad particles minute<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With spot-like swiftness, hovers chilled and mute.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Now that no far voice cleaves the air or blurs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No plash, no fall of oars, no rumour stirs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And life itself has long outbreathed its lungs—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Or so it seems, for no dim amorous tongues<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trouble the foliage, and the moon is full,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unflecked by wind-froth); all seems sorrowful<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With beauty exanimate, a beauty dead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A subterranean silence where vague dread<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Puckers the brooding soul until it weeps<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Terrible heavy tears. The garden sleeps....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sleeps as the desolate magnificence<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of Angkor with its grave mute eloquence<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where blistering suns, invectives of the wind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hurl vainly; frenzied storms undisciplined<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beat, plunge inanely at the steadfast walls.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And no sad throat of nightingale enthralls<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The quickly-pulsing heart with turbulent song.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">So massive has the stillness grown, so strong<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A blood-vessel would burst, a muscle snap,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">A sane malt mind would rave, grow weak as pap....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh aching ears, have you too heard the lips<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of silence utter some apocalypse<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To slake the agony of my desires,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To scatter them like ashes of the pyres<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of calcined and cremated limbs? but hark<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In the faint failing distances what spark<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of flashed sound quivers? hold your breath, what flush<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of fluid moan? The sluice is opened; rush<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And avalanche of panic-writhing cries.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some soul in anguish is it? vague surmise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As of some tragedy—I shudder, shake<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With fear....<br /></span> -<span class="i6">It is the peacocks by the lake!<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="AFTER" id="AFTER"></a><i>After</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HE sky is very blue to-day,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">And the soft turf yields<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To each well-fitting shoe; so they<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bring their bananas and sandwiches<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To munch on the battle-fields.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O, why has Nature taken such a sheen,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Why does the grass grow green,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So cruelly green?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O, surely it must wither in the spate<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of clashing contumacious worlds of agony and hate!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How can the sun keep pace so? why not reel,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">White steel,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or stagger ankleted with yawning fire<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Neath the tremendous byre?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But the absurd courageous clouds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Look on, look on<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In bustling business crowds,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They con<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A Masse-Mensch imaginary power.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They do not cower<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before the charabancs’ toot toot a toot<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And men who bring their sandwiches to boot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And break beer-bottles where men’s souls were torn<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span><span class="i0">By invisible billion hands ... where agony was born.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">There is a lady in an orange gown.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">(Did not those shrieks hang airily down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Suspended for eternity to hear,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A thousand tired stars over a shattered town<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Not formed enough to speak, but formed enough to shriek<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And formed enough to make men fear?)<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Not so. The roses dangle deep asleep,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Men play Bo-peep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With poor worn-out banalities,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sentimentalities,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tepid-with-languor-lilies<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And daffodillies.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We shall have each wind-melody dictated<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And by Puccini orchestrated,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And from innumerable Noah’s arks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those little gasps of men make little gasp remarks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And puff Abdullas in their elegant central parks.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A cross ... a cross ... and row on row the same<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Small cross without a name,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each silhouette so slim<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, God, how ghastlily trim!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And down beneath the skeletons are piled.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">... But now a child<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Discovering some fraction of a bomb,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Adventure-wild,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Performs a jig with exquisite aplomb<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Over, who knows? a corpse or mandrake root<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(What matters it?) the charabancs toot-toot,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sky’s so very blue to-day<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And the soft turf yields<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To each well-fitting shoe: and they<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bring their bananas and sandwiches<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To munch on the battle-fields.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="GREEN_GROW_THE_RUSHES_O" id="GREEN_GROW_THE_RUSHES_O"></a><i>Green grow the Rushes, O</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">A</span>ND do the rushes grow so green<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Upon this chill All Hallows’ E’en<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That voices as a lutany<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Surge through my window-panes to die?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For in this room of rot and rust<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These dark red circles filled with dust,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These sodden and lead-heavy eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Long stunned with muted symphonies,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Are racked with the old hunger, hung<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With memory’s hard ice-flakes, stung<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By each note-star in crystal set<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To glint and pierce this lazaret.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">O, why not let me wallow, bleed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Riot and guzzle in red greed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And leave my doom-gripped body tossed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into an agony of frost?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Cruel, marauding throats, begone!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before I hurl my curse upon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Your youth, oh loathsome things, to try<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Torturing me with purity!<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="WORDS" id="WORDS"></a><i>Words</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">I</span>N long prim rows the formal words distend,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Stuffed birds with loosely-fitting beaks, they glare<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With beady eyes pathetically vague<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath their sober domes of dusty glass.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(Pale frigid flute-voiced children promenade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To suck the air into their fading lungs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Native to soot: the tortoise-shell effect<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of sunsets barred by buildings smug and bare<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sleek pat streets of asphalt: gamins drab<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whose nightingales the Cockney sparrows are.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When furry frost hangs white about the chin,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These too will cough a dirge, no doubt, and die!)<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O words, assert yourselves! from long prim rows<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Trip out and weave new patterns with the clouds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That preen their swan-wings spread upon the air,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Then loll like tufts of lilac heavily;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lush coolness, limpid nebulousness; where<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The dove-tame zephyrs leap in shapely loops<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To fill the windy trammel of a skirt,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or must we oil you with celebral sweat?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When levers, springs and cogs are oiled you’ll come<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Naked and unembarrassed by the moon.<br /></span> -<span class="i6dtts">. . . . . . . . .<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The words have answered, lo, the words advance<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No longer blocked in patterns, dribble out<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In pleasant drops, with bird-quick flickers trip<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into a dissonance or discord: so,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sharp darts of dappled sound to cleave the ear.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some strut, and laughing madly, stridently,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">These crack their wind-swift fingers, or like ants<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Waving antennæ, struggle bravely on<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath their heavy burdens, one or two<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Twinkle, then flutter off like hueless leaves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or dart and flash like wagtails on a pool,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some fired with sulphurous glow, and some askew<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sway perilously, like a drunkard’s hat.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But what are these with puckered, pointed ears<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That flit among the crowds like strips of tape?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They seem to stumble into tragedies.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Oh, we shall twine you merry wreaths,” they say,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Gay wreaths, festoons of entrails for your brow!”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their eyes like little glasses of liqueur<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glitter and frighten me: within, without,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Words with hot breath hiss subtly venomous,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A million droning insects in my ears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A million mottled thrushes in my mind.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="GREENNESS_UNSECRETED" id="GREENNESS_UNSECRETED"></a><i>Greenness Unsecreted</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">I</span>N ombre gateways I had loitered, stopped<br /></span> -<span class="ih">To speak unto my nearest brother, Toad,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Within the forest where the cobras propped<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Green twists on frothy treetops, their abode:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Toad, I salute you! in your chilly eye<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I see the mignonette of modesty.”<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">He did not answer, crouching like a sin,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Steeped in a lethargy too dull to pierce,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Centuple wisdom folded in his skin—<br /></span> -<span class="i2">He stared with humble stare that was not fierce,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And yet within that stare I seemed to know<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The stare that maddened Hieronymo.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I followed then a wedge of thoughtful cranes<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Who fled across the silence drearily<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From desolations and eternal rains<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Across the frozen ridge of Rhodope,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The stars grown piteous of my misery<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dropped golden tears into the poem-sea.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I have since dived, bathed in the poem-sea,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">In spilt genethliacs of amber wine<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mellowed to milk, like turtle-feathers free<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Floating and flurry on the teasing brine,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Below, I saw those youths that died of love<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And wandered with them in the myrtle grove.<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">And when I rose a slender oaten pipe<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Made music in the entrails of my ears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rich bandaliers of fruit grown pulpy-ripe<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Moistened the membranes and dissolved my fears,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I could remember at her day of birth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How Flora with her daisies strewed the earth.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But man still chased his jet-black butterflies,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And looking up, as from a rippled cloud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Shunned me with viscous terror in his eyes,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Then fell a-triply sewing at his shroud,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lest I should mar the self-fomenting strife<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And cultivated void that was his life.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="c"><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> These two lines are derived from Pope.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span></p></div> - -<h2><a name="BACK-STREETS" id="BACK-STREETS"></a><i>Back-Streets</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">I</span>NANE perspective stretched behind the street:<br /></span> -<span class="ih">A wall, a yard, a wall, a yard, a wall,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Patterned interminably, patterned neat<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With intervals of oblongs squat and tall.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A full moon dims the stars and here and there<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Glints on a bulging square of window-pane.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soon clinging sodden moistures glut the air<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And mists fall heavier than autumn rain.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Only one room of all these rooms is lit.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Perhaps somebody watches, dreams absurd<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sentimental dreams, and from this pit<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The ponderous bourdon of some heart is stirred.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Men live their packed exasperated lives,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Callous and unfamiliar, yet each knows,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In all these sordid chiaroscuro hives,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">His neighbour’s pleasures and his neighbour’s woes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Through gutters of stagnations and defeats,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Immense black ruins with the beds unmade,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Interminable agonising streets,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">I walk alone, a stranger, and afraid<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="WERTHER-INTROSPECTION" id="WERTHER-INTROSPECTION"></a><i>Werther-Introspection</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="iq">“Talk to me somewhat quickly,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or my imagination will carry me<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To see her in the shameful act of sin.”<br /></span> -<span class="i10"><i>Duchess of Malfi.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HE morning drums upon the window-pane,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The evening drums upon the window-pane,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I wait and wait and fumble in my brain....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">All night I’ve lain with soul that could not rest.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At dusk strange hands were tearing at my heart<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In a prim polar silence.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The stags and does may frolic in the woods<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And leap beyond the stars, for aught I care,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beyond those furbished clots of frigid light,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Abstract and sad detached identities,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where they may anguish, fossilize or freeze.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">All night I’ve lain upon the charming rack<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You manufactured: I shall not despair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or coax a courteous isolated tear.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But I shall hear my agonizing laughter<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Echoing far from floor to trembling rafter<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In brittle carillons like metal bells,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And hear my bleached emaciated yells<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Burgeon in petalled peals, flamboyant, bright<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">As merry moons in petticoats of white<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To hide their cancer and their leprosy.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Then: “Patience, rebel, calm!” the darkness said,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“You’ll never choke time’s throat of beaten lead.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I did not heed.... I knew that my heart bled.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Near the pellucid lake—ah God, there stirred<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No animalculus, and an absurd<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Decorous silence humped its back and purred.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="ON_THE_THEME_OF_OPHELIAS_MADNESS" id="ON_THE_THEME_OF_OPHELIAS_MADNESS"></a><i>On the Theme of Ophelia’s Madness</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">“A</span>ND will he not come again?”<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Ophelia wanders out into the rain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That makes soft music on her yellow hair.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“O, shall I then surrender to despair?”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In vain she begs the strutting chanticleer<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Tullia’s intellectual marmosyte,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">King Oberon a-lying on his bier<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Leda’s downy swan.<br /></span> -<span class="i15">Throughout the night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She listens to the noise of dead men’s bones,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sad subterranean murmurs drowned in sea-weed,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Slow-drifting down jade silences....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">—She hopes to screw some answer from their groans!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But there’s a seal upon their lipless mouths.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“By all the moons that in the peacock’s tail<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Rival the heaven’s moon,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I conjure a reply; has any seen<br /></span> -<span class="i2">My lover’s sandal-shoon?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He wears a fluted cockle-hat,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A staff of briar-wood,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">His hair’s coiled thick in a flaxen mat,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And like a river in flood<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The crisp locks tumble on his poll.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She cried but there came no answer at all<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Save, God ha’ mercy on his soul!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“By molewarp’s brain and by pismire’s gall,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Will he whom I love return again?”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pale grey rain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For pity’s sake,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Breathed her asleep in a lullaby,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Till slothful Charon in his barge rowed by<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ferried her gently over the Stygian lake.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THESE_CONSOLATIONS" id="THESE_CONSOLATIONS"></a><i>These Consolations</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">I</span> SHALL console myself by being absurd<br /></span> -<span class="ih">And sit among the rank, unwholesome dews,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And watch each whining pheasant and each bird<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Guzzle the very-human bearded grain:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I shall not weep beneath the dismal yews<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But to the milk-white turtles tune my pain.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Where spiny pines diffuse a noxious shade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll wage a series of intestine wars,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The listening wolves grow milder in the glade<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath the incense of the breathing Spring,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Whilst every shepherd polishes his sores<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll languish into life, and living, sing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The women teem their babes; the sative plants<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quiver as Cynthia fills her silver horn,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The spicy forest and her sycophants,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fiery-pointed organons of sense,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Attempt to catch the sound as it is born<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, as it dies, the hush is thick and tense.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">But even so the tensity can vex<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What I had hoped had blackened into jet,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like raven-feathers in the moon’s reflex,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The feeble eyes of our aspiring thoughts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But even so the tensity can fret,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I must grope in unsuspected orts....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">I shall console myself with being fed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On hollow sapless tales and other slips,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And to the pallid nations of the dead<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I’ll wander, and as soon as I arise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A liquid film will glaze upon my lips,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Upon my pores, impatient for the skies.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="IN_THE_MONTH_OF_ATHYR" id="IN_THE_MONTH_OF_ATHYR"></a><i>In the Month of Athyr</i><a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HESE ruins seem a womb of cringing air,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">So thin that the ears tingle, flickering,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And every barren plant is withering,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ready to snap, like glass, for sheer despair ...<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And through the ether mountains loom like bones<br /></span> -<span class="i2">So hollow you could scrape a melody<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Sounding like water from them, oozily<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To this sun-stricken desert-world of groans.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The light is cruel: it is hard to read<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The letters on these stones, but, lo, the words:<br /></span> -<span class="i2">“<i>Lord Jesus Christ</i>” and further “<i>soul</i>”; what birds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Erased the script with droppings? and what weed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Has wrested from these crevices a home?<br /></span> -<span class="i2">“<i>In month of Athyr</i>” ... “<i>Lucius fell asleep</i>”....<br /></span> -<span class="i2">His age is mentioned: he was young; and deep<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath the damaged parts, as in a foam<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of centuries I see, disfigured, “<i>tears</i>.”<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Then “<i>tears</i>” again, “<i>for us his friends who weep</i>”....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lucius was much belovèd, it appears.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">In grey November ... Lucius fell asleep....<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="c"><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> The ancient Egyptian November (derived from a poem by C. P. -Cavafy).<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span></p></div> - -<h2><a name="DISCOVERIES" id="DISCOVERIES"></a><i>Discoveries</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">W</span>E have discovered many things<br /></span> -<span class="ih">To suit our moods, to give us wings:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">More than an Aristotle-tome<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In crimson splash of a fowl’s comb,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In silver-boled unleaving trees<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like organ-pipes along the breeze;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sometimes the notes run sharp and false<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When rooks and twigs join in the valse<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of smooth and swaying treetop spun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like yarn across the copper sun....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But there are times when you would cry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To hear the trees’ low melody.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And we have watched the hemlock spray<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And smelt dank wafture of decay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The fume from tawny bellied leaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In spirals where the autumn grieves.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With froth of flowers we have been rich—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The globuled frog-spawn on the ditch<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Was mottled with our wonder; vast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Moist moans of raping bees’ repast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Have sluiced our languid afternoons<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like ripples crawling on lagoons.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But we have not discovered yet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How to erase, how to forget<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sheer vividness of solitude,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">How to obliterate each mood<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To dim Antarctic memories,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Merged icebergs twinkling in chopped seas.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="OLD_WOMAN" id="OLD_WOMAN"></a><i>Old Woman</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">G</span>AUNT woman with pinched, palsied hands,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Cramped fingers once their nimble slaves,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Did your poor feet once print the sands<br /></span> -<span class="i2">With lovely dimpled curves like waves?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I’m told men once would march to wars,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Your name upon their lips, would kneel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Rapt by your eyes that fleered the stars,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Where passions leapt like sparks from steel.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I’m told snow hawthorn massed in bloom<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Could not cool whiter than your hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or candles crackling up the gloom<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Of churches in chill twilit lands.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Gaunt woman, why so tense your mouth?<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Is it your blistered heart that speaks?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Did colour fluid as the South<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Light those emaciated cheeks?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">I’m told your voice once trembled clear<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And frail withal as linnet’s wings....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And now your voice is but the mere<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Vague echo of forgotten things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“<i>Once lovers bruised each blue-veined breast</i><br /></span> -<span class="i2"><i>And charred my body as ’twere coal.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Now I would lay me down to rest.</i><br /></span> -<span class="i2"><i>May Christ receive my wrinkled soul!</i>”<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="COLD_JOINTS" id="COLD_JOINTS"></a><i>Cold Joints</i></h2> - -<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">I</span>N mental constipation shivering,<br /></span> -<span class="ih">He went into the fields, where he could sing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To ease the sobbing of his plangent mind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With desolate, cracked voice, for they were kind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The sky an ashen cup of neutral air;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Black specks of surly rooks whirred cawing there<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sombre clots of writhing, stunted trees<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stretched withered fingers, creaking traceries<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of mazed arms multitudinous; their moan<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A memory that he was not alone.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Upon the gravel path small frosted stars<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Glittered and bleared; the rusty railing-bars<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Were furred with silver lichen as the down<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bristled upon a dead man’s throat; a crown<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of Gothic spires through lustrous distance crept.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The world and all its wedge-shaped engines slept.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Disturbed, he heard the crunch of footsteps fast<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And looking up, he saw two men that passed.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Good-morning, Mr. Gosling.” “Oh, good-day!”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Bit nippy weather!” then strode on their way<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With patch-work quilted minds and bowler hats,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With Sunday journal, gloves and yellow spats,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into the distance ... while the echoes bear<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“Bit nippy weather” drifting down the air.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">U</span>P, silver man nid-nodding by the hearth!<br /></span> -<span class="ih">The languid summer has trailed out her days....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For this night leave your bible, leave your path<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of selfish righteousness; delay your praise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of God till He has given you a seat<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Amongst the flapping angels. (Fire and sleete<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And candle-light<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Christ receive thy soul.)<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Well, these are facts, even if impolite—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As trite and boring as the price of coal.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lyke-wake dirge comes after; now you live—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Too old for fornication—that is true.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But you may love the slender fleeting things,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The terrible music of the slipping hours,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If sordid Life has nothing else to give.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In each clock-tick there is a something new—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unsatiated sweet imaginings,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pianola dreams or orchidaceous flowers!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And though you shiver in a slow decay,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You still have guts and marrow, though your limbs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be well-nigh licked of blood, you need not stay<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For ever by the fire and croon cracked hymns!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The children gloze and fleech him all in vain—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The taxi throbs outside.<br /></span> -<span class="i15">“I hope the rain<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Won’t spoil the fireworks.”<br /></span> -<span class="i15">Granpa’s left behind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With baby and the adenoided nurse.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The maid moves in to draw the window blind.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Her lips compressed have never known a curse.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Amazed, she sees frail drops are trickling down<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What she had ever held to be a mask.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Half-pitying the old exhausted man<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So infantine, yet sitting all alone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As in blue forest depths a mossy stone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where toads crouch like the voice in gramophone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She brings him crumpets and a cup of tea.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">“H</span>E’S got hot lips when he plays jazz.”<br /></span> -<span class="ih">How trite and obvious; of course he has!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sex blossoms on the lips as well as other parts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">If not, he is unworthy of an entrance to our hearts.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And you invite spontaneous destruction<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For splitting chips which form so tiresome an obstruction<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To our imaginative possibilities.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">No half-dissembled grey tranquillities<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of mental judgment! We want elephants,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tough-grained calamities, to clamber up on;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To travel petulantly bump-a-bump, to sup on<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Champagne and slippery flesh of oysters,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And conversational quips and roysters<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With childishly garrulous termagants.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And in their company you’ll find it pays<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To polish up the petals of a phrase!<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="INVOCATION" id="INVOCATION"></a><i>Invocation</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">U</span>PON this flat, misshapen day<br /></span> -<span class="ih">My weary sullen thoughts grow grey—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grey waters, and grey, sunless cliffs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bleak gaiety of flowers, whiffs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of loneliness, ah loneliness<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To ever clasp in my caress.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And shall I, poor mazed lunatic,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">When memories come crowding thick,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dangle a silly mandrake-root,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Swinging upon Time’s parachute?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Can thoughts have colours, colours thoughts,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or do I wander midst the orts<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of half-forgotten nightmare-pyres?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">We poets have exchanged our lyres<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For heart-strings. We have souls to save<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From boredom; come then, let’s be brave<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sing the baser passions, sing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Until the blood jerked up will ring<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A matins for our lusts and shames,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And men will tingle at our names.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="LAME_LADY" id="LAME_LADY"></a><i>Lame Lady</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">A</span> POOR lame lady limps along<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Low sloping fields of tender green,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She’d love to break into a song<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Or dance, a figure slim, serene.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">All nature seems a parquet floor<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To please the sense, to please the eye,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And Lazarus forgets each sore<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Beneath the thickly-coated sky.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The poor lame lady senses whole<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The shafts of coloured warmth arise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A thirsty solitude of soul<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Looms in her vague pathetic eyes.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">The hollow spells of Spring are fleet<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And quick thoughts clatter through her head....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“An awkward duck with webbèd feet!...<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Ah! better far to lie a-bed.”<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">In bed her lameness will not leer,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">For Sleep’s compassionate and kind,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And she will dance and sing and hear<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The crooning of a phantom wind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For then her body’s cage-doors wide<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Are opened, and the spirit free<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Flutters, and in a burst of pride<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Dances before Eternity.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="CONVERSATIONS_AND_CRUMBLING" id="CONVERSATIONS_AND_CRUMBLING"></a><i>Conversations and Crumbling</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">“W</span>ELL, here we are. I venture to believe<br /></span> -<span class="ih">We have not met since Venice ... seven years....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My sons were killed, and I was left to grieve<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With Adelaide and Fanny ... they are dears.”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I look around and find two fleshy ears<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dangling a pair of ear-rings ... it’s a phase....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But all the same I wish that they’d wear stays.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">When Regent Street is up I always feel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That London Bridge is also falling down,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Symbolic hulks of granite, orange peel,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And somebody who’s losing half-a-crown....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It is so queer, so queer, to live in town....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And then I see myself and purse my lips<br /></span> -<span class="i0">“With no more conscience than a snake has hips.”<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Yes, here am I bathed in a maudlin smile!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And here are: you, he, it, and everyone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Except the person who’s alone worth while.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Calmly I rise with broken threads, I run<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stirred by my own intrinsic power to sun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Self-consciousness to flesh-burst—I’ve begun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With unabated sarcasm to rise<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In self-opinion, sinking with closed eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A subtle crepitation in the air<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As if the nomad camels would return,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As if the burly lion left his lair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To have his hair curled daintily. I burn.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You do not listen: “there’s so much to learn<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From scientific data, palimpsest....”<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I tell you they will crumble with the rest.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Before the wolf returns to Regent Street,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before he digs up fashionable tombs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before the nightingale with music sweet<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Pierces the Piccadilly catacombs,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Before the screech-owl adds to ruin-glooms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The merry robin-redbreast and the wren<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Will trill their notes in Bayswater again.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“The worst of influenza’s over now,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But rents are high ... the weather is not cold<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Considering the month of year, but how<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The war has broken through our lives! how old”....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Above her grave time soon will rake the mould:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Already she is smouldering away,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Already she is fettled for decay.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Pleasures and vanities, regrets, desires<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dumped on a dung-heap where the lilies grow....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And these shall be their own sad funeral-pyres,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Destruction totters and his steps are slow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The miles to Babylon? I do not know.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But this I know: these folk on gilded chairs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Had better kneel and say their hopeless prayers.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="footnote"><p class="c"><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> A line from “Louisville Lou”: a certain fox-trot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span></p></div> - -<h2><a name="INTERMEZZO" id="INTERMEZZO"></a><i>Intermezzo</i></h2> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">T</span>HAT sinister, that sombre poet-waif<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Presses his brow against the window-pane,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">(That window-pane of cruel, wicked glass),<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Watching the sour and curdled flakes of snow.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With eyes like pale grey membranes fixed and glazed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ever he stares upon snow-silent fields,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sweating skies that lean towards the earth<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Like a great toper leaning at a bar.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ever the mournful cries of mountain-apes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Echo, re-echo, and abysmally,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ever the sour snow falls. And where’s the moon?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It must hang high, oh, somewhere in the heavens.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And somewhere, waking in the middle night<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Soft longing arms spread out in love’s embrace<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Find nothing, no one; in a dazed despair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grope for a form to clasp, to touch, and then<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fall limply back in dismal loneliness.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perpetual Penelopes unspin<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The webs they spun meticulous at day.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Somewhere the honey-throated nightingale<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is voiceless for the burden of his love,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And somewhere it is good to be alive....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">That sinister, that sombre poet-waif<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So tired to tears and tearless, with those eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Airily floating in eternal stare,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Bartered his soul for void philosophies.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But suddenly he flings a weary laugh<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And walks into the jangling painted world.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="THREE_TRANSLATIONS_FROM_THE_FRENCH" id="THREE_TRANSLATIONS_FROM_THE_FRENCH"></a>THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH<br /><br /> -<small>(<span class="smcap">For Edith Sitwell</span>)</small></h2> - -<h2><a name="Ia" id="Ia"></a>I</h2> - -<p class="c"><i>The Gibbet</i></p> - -<p class="c">(<span class="smcap">Derived from Aloysius Bertrand</span>)</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">O</span>H, do I hear the night-raped wind<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Who screams in travail, do I hear<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The blunt ropes of the gibbet grind,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">The hanged man’s writhing sigh so drear?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Oh, can it be some cricket’s song<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Vibrating shrill amongst the weeds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And sterile moss? throughout the long<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Finned languid hours when summer bleeds<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Outstretched and pallid on a bier.<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Oh, can it be some spot-swift fly<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who winds his horn round each deaf ear?<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Some beetle plucking stealthily<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">A morsel of corrupting flesh,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">A trailing wisp, a bleeding hair,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Until his spirit, fed and fresh,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Will bid him frisk upon the air?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Oh, can it be some spider squat<br /></span> -<span class="i2">Who sings and sows at half an ell<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of satin, for a new cravat<br /></span> -<span class="i2">To deck his strangled throat in Hell?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">It is the clock which tinkles down<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The hour to the crumbling town.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">It is a hanged man’s carcass spun<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With crimson by the setting sun.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="IIa" id="IIa"></a>II</h2> - -<p class="c"><i>Saint</i></p> - -<p class="c">(<span class="smcap">After Mallarmé</span>)</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">H</span>IGH at a window<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Of old gilded sandalwood<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where once the viol<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mingled with dulcimer,<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Sits the Saint pallid,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The missal of parchment<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Lies open where vespers<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And complines were chaunted:<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">At monstrance-glazing<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grazed by the Angel’s<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Harp curved by winging<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aloft on the twilight<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">For her delicate fingers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">On instrument’s plumage<br /></span> -<span class="i0">She balances soft,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A musician of silence.<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<h2><a name="IIIa" id="IIIa"></a>III</h2> - -<p class="c"><i>Hérodiade</i></p> - -<p class="c"><span class="smcap">Translated from Mallarmé</span></p> - -<p class="c"><i>Scene</i></p> - -<p class="c">The Nurse—Hérodiade</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="ig"><span class="letra">N</span>URSE. You live, Princess? or do I see your shade?<br /></span> -<span class="ih">Your fingers at my lips and all their rings<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cease to proceed in an unlearned-of age....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Recede</span>.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The immaculate blond torrent of my hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Freezes my limbs with horror when it bathes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Their solitude, and interlaced with light<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My hair’s immortal. Me a kiss would murder,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Would kill, if beauty were not death, oh woman....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Driven by what allurement, should I know?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">What morn forgotten by the prophets pours<br /></span> -<span class="i0">O’er dying distances, these dismal feasts?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And you have seen me enter, nurse of winter,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The heavy prison built of stone and iron<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where aged lions drag the centuries,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And fatal, I advanced, with shielded hands,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Through desert-perfume of these ancient kings:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But have you still beheld my very dread?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I stop to dream of exiles, and I strip,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As near a pond whose gush of water welcomes,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">The pallid lilies in me, smitten, charmed<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My eyes pursue the languor of the wreck<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Descend, in silence, through my reverie,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The lions part my indolence of robe<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And gaze on feet whose curves would calm the sea.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Quiet the shudder of your crumbling flesh,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And mimicking the fashions of my hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So fierce that makes you fear their shock of manes,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Come, help, as thus you dare no longer see me,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Within a mirror nonchalantly combing.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> My child, unless you wish to sample myrrh<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gay in its sealèd bottles, would you prove<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The grave funereal virtue of the essence<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Ravished from roses’ dim senility?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> Leave there those perfumes! Nurse, do you not know<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I hate them, do you wish me then, to feel<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My languid frame drown in their drunkenness?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I crave: my hair of flowers not created<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To strew oblivion of human anguish,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But gold, for ever virgin of the spices,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In cruel flashes and in heavy pallor,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Will mark the sterile chilliness of metals,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Having reflected you, my native jewels,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Vases and arms, from solitary childhood.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> Pardon, oh queen, for age eclipsed the plea<br /></span> -<span class="i0">With which you deign to vindicate my mind<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Grown sallow as an old or gloomy book....<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> Enough! before me hold this mirror. Mirror!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Cold water frozen hard within your frame<br /></span> -<span class="i0">By weariness; how often, dream-tormented<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And searching for my memories, like leaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath the hole profound within your ice,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In you I seemed a shadow, but, what horror<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At dusk when in your fountain I have known<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The nudity of my dishevelled dream!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nurse, am I beautiful?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">In truth, a star</span>,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But this tress tumbles....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Check in your offence</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Which chills my blood towards its source, and quell<br /></span> -<span class="i0">This gesture of notorious irreligion:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Tell me, in grim emotion what sure demon<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Throws you this kiss, these perfumes, should I breathe it?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And, oh my heart, this hand still sacrilegious,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Since I believe you wished to touch me, say<br /></span> -<span class="i0">They are a day which will not be extinguished<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Without calamity upon the tower....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh day Hérodiade beholds with dread!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> Indeed, a strange day, from which heaven guard you!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You wander, lonely shadow, recent passion,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Looking within you, premature in terror:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Even as an immortal exquisite,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">And hideously beautiful, my child<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> Were you not about to touch me?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> I would belong to him, for whom the Fates<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Reserve your secrets.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Oh! be silent!</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Sometimes</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">He’ll come, perchance?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">I pray you, do not listen</span>,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Innocent stars!<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> How else, ’mid sombre terrors<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To dream a suppliant, more implacable,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That god the treasure of your grace attends!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For whom, devoured of agony, you guard<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The mystery, vain splendour of your being?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> For me.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sad flower seen with atony</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">In water, doleful flower that grows alone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Nor has anxiety but cloudy sound.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> Go, keep your pity with your irony.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> Expound however: no, ingenuous child,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Some day this scorn triumphant will diminish....<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> But who would touch me, reverenced of lions?<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Besides, I want no human thing; if, chiselled,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You see me with eyes lost in Paradise,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">’Tis when I call to mind your milk of yore.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> Oh lamentable victim to its fate!<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> Yes, it is for myself, deserted, that I flower!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Gardens of amethyst, you know too well—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Fled without end into the wise abysms<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Dazzled and dazed; you unawared-of golds<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Who guard your antique mellowness of light<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Beneath the sombre slumber of a soil<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Primordial and primitive; and you<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Oh stones from which my pure and jewel eyes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Borrow their melody of clarity;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">You, metals, which surrender to my hair<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A fatal splendour and its massive gait!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Woman who speak of mortal, as for you,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Created in malignant centuries,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Born for the spite of caverns sybilline!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">According as from calyx of my clothes<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The white thrill of my nudity emerge,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Aroma of the fierce, the savage joys—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Woman who speak of mortal! prophesy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That if the tepid azure of the summer,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To whom the woman natively unveils,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Sees me in starlike shivering chastity,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">I die!<br /></span> -<span class="i6">I love the dread of being virgin<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And I desire to live the terror of my hair—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To sense, inviolate reptile, on my couch<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At evening, stir within my useless flesh<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The frigid sparkle of your pallid lucence,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">O you who die calcined with chastity,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">White night of icicles and cruel snow!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And your lone sister, oh eternal sister,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">My dream will mount towards you airily:<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Already as the rare limpidity<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of one who dreamt it, in my native-land<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Monotonous, I think myself alone,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And all around me lives in the idolatry<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That in a mirror’s dozing calm reflects<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hérodiade of clear and diamond gaze....<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Yea, last of spells! I feel it, I’m alone.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> And will you die then, Madam?<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 4em;">Grandmother, no,</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">Be calm: withdrawing, pardon this flint heart,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But, if you wish, first close the shutters fast,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Seraphic azure smiles within the pane’s<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Profundity. I loathe the lovely azure.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The waters lull themselves and, over there,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Do you not know a country where the sky,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">So sinister, has all the heated looks<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Of Venus who is burning in the leaves<br /></span> -<span class="i0">At evening? I’ll thither ...<br /></span> -<span class="i15">Light these tapers,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Mere childishness, you say, whose nimble flames<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Weep a strange weeping ’mid the empty gold<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And ...<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Nurse.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Now?</span><br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span><span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hérodiade.</span> <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Farewell.</span><br /></span> -<span class="i0">You lie, oh naked flower of my lips!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">For I await a thing unheard of yet.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perhaps unconscious of their mystery,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Unconscious of your cries, you hurl the sobs<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Supreme and bruisèd of an infancy<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Perceiving dimly ’mid its reveries<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Those frozen gems that separate at last.<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="fint">Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London</p> - -<hr class="full" /> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INDIAN ASS ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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