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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79071 ***
+
+
+
+
+                                SAMPHIRE
+
+
+
+
+                                SAMPHIRE
+
+
+                                  +by+
+                          +John Cowper Powys+
+
+
+                                  “Half way down
+  Hangs one that gathers Samphire, dreadful trade!
+  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.”
+                        King Lear. Act IV. Scene VI.
+
+
+                         [Illustration: TS logo]
+
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                             THOMAS SELTZER
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                           Copyright, 1922, by
+                         +Thomas Seltzer, Inc.+
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+
+                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                       DEDICATED TO LLEWELYN POWYS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                        PAGE
+  +The Ultimate+                           1
+  +Demogorgon+                             4
+  +The Old Pier-Post+                      6
+  +The Castle of Gathore+                  9
+  +The Twilight of the Gods+              13
+  +The Face+                              16
+  +The Heron’s Nest+                      19
+  +Lubberlu+                              22
+  +The Old Satyr to the Young Platonist+  25
+  +Youth and Age+                         28
+  +Metaphysic+                            31
+  +The Malice-Dance+                      34
+  +Candle Light+                          36
+  +The Eclipse+                           39
+  +The Rider+                             43
+  +William Corby+                         45
+  +To a Certain Lady+                     47
+  +The “Disaster”+                        49
+  +November+                              51
+  +Bon Espoir Y Gist Au Fond!+            52
+
+
+
+
+                                SAMPHIRE
+
+
+
+
+THE ULTIMATE
+
+
+  So this is the ultimate--
+  That we bleed with our backs to the wall,
+  While the rats and weasels of fate
+  Eat at our liver and gall;
+  Eat at our hearts with teeth of bane,
+  And tug at the sick white roots of pain
+  Where every man’s alone,
+  And scrape a tune on the deep nerve-string
+  That is love and life and everything,
+  And gnaw our flesh to the bone.
+
+  Is this the ultimate?
+  No! This is nothing at all!
+  _Some_ human dramas stop with this;
+  With this some curtains fall.
+  But the play that the high gods love
+  In their Theatre of Space
+  Has the mind, the mind for the stage thereof
+  And the soul for its dancing place!
+  Oh shapes of terror and fear,
+  Oh shapes of loathing and lust,
+  That gibber and jibe at us _here_
+  Ye break earth’s shallow crust.
+  Far back that stage recedes--
+  Who knows where that stairway goes?
+  Who knows where that passage leads?
+  And that door? Who knows? Who knows?
+
+  For the rats that again and again
+  Gnaw at each rib and joint
+  Of the vessel of our pain
+  Stop gasping at this point;
+  And in crowds they flee from the ship
+  That steers for the open sea
+  And turns the prow of its bleeding lip
+  Towards eternity!
+
+
+
+
+DEMOGORGON
+
+
+  I am the Devil of Notre Dame.
+  Salaam!
+  I dance my dance and I work my charm.
+  Salaam!
+  I cling to terror by the hair of her head,
+  I have taken Medusa to my bed.
+  I hug the Nightmare until she is dead.
+  Salaam!
+  Hush! By the Lord’s side I have stood--
+  Touch wood!
+  Before Orion rose out of the sky
+  Rose I!
+  Before the Hunter hunted the Ram
+  I am
+  I am the Demon of Socrates
+  On your knees!
+
+  The oldest of the Eumenides--
+  The she-ape of Mephistopheles--
+  The deadly wind in Dodona’s trees--
+  The poisonous smoke ’twixt the Pythia’s knees--
+  I am more terrible than these!
+
+  In Jotunheim, Loki I’m called--
+    Scald!
+  I am Asmódéus in Babylon.
+  In Egypt I am Osiris’ son
+  I am many and I am One.
+
+  At the Beginning I stood by the Lord
+  God!
+  At the last I shall be the Worm of the Pit
+  Uncurled
+  Who swallows Him and who swallows It
+  His World!
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD PIER-POST
+
+
+  I am the sea-ward-looking one,
+  Covered with weed and slime--
+  “Fresh fish for sale!”--of a row of posts,
+  That rotted by centuries nod like ghosts
+  To the ebb and flow of time.
+  Sea-tangle and sea-scum
+  Will the Christ never come?
+
+  Two lovers that met at this ocean-mart,
+  With kissings and clingings pale
+  Breaking the shell of a human heart
+  And tearing its bleeding core apart,--
+  --“Fresh fish, fresh fish for sale!”--
+
+  Left a tress of shining hair on me;
+  And two sea-gulls that once were mates
+  But were wrenched away by the blinding spray
+  And the unrelenting fates,
+
+  Left a feather on me, a shining feather,
+  With sea-scum covered and scales
+  Of the mackerel bright they had caught together,
+  --“Fresh fish for sale!”--in the wild storm-weather
+  And the fury of the gales.
+
+  And the terrible ultimate thought of one
+  Who had scooped at the shingle of things
+  Till he’d taken the light from the kindly sun--
+  --“Fresh fish for sale!”--and to death had done
+  The light that the sweet moon brings,
+
+  Graved itself on the grey sea-mark
+  Wherewith with eyeless stare
+  I frown at the twilight and face the dark--
+  --“Fresh fish for sale!”--and with forehead stark
+  Confront a world’s despair.
+
+  A shining tress, a feather, a thought--
+  With these I create a soul,
+  A soul that is not to be sold or bought;
+  Yes; I who am nought and less than nought--
+  --“Fresh fish for sale!”--have _something_ caught
+  From the waters as they roll!
+
+  Yes; I, the sea-ward-looking one,
+  Covered with weed and slime,
+  Have gathered a soul to rest upon
+  As I rock to the rhythm of time.
+  Bright hair, bright feather, brain-disease
+  Blotting the sun and moon--
+  If an old sea-pier steals a soul from these,
+  Christ _must_ be coming soon!
+
+
+
+
+THE CASTLE OF GATHORE
+
+
+  There is a place none knows but I--
+  The Castle of Gathore!
+  Black murky pools about it lie.
+  And the trees are sick with its mystery;
+  And dead things are its floor.
+
+  Each tree with twisted root entwines
+  The bones of older trees.
+  Moon after moon above them shines--
+  Beyond the moon--the Zodiac signs!
+  Beyond _them_--the Immensities!
+
+  None would think that ever such pools could be!
+  Black morgues of leafy doom,
+  Where century after century
+  Old forests find their tomb.
+
+  Oh terrible steps of leaf-mould sod
+  Such as man never saw
+  That mount up--holy Mother of God!--
+  To the Castle of Gathore!
+
+  And I alone--yes only I--
+  Under Algol and Altair--
+  When a new-born moon was in the sky
+  Climbed up that mossy stair.
+
+  Old Cypress-roots of long decay
+  Troubled my noiseless tread;
+  Old Yews made midnight of the day
+  As they met above my head.
+
+  Out of the trees, tier above tier,
+  Mossed stone above mossed stone,
+  Buttress on buttress, it towered there,
+  A Nightmare image, a thing of fear,
+  Revealed to me alone!
+
+  My home! My home! To my heart I said--
+  My home! To my soul I cried--
+  From here have been wafted those airs of the dead
+  That have driven my true love from my bed,
+  And my true love from my side!
+
+  This is what divides me from him and her
+  And the blessed light of the sun;
+  Till the eyes of Algol and of Altair
+  Are my only benison!
+
+  This is what they guessed when in dumb surprise
+  They turned and let me pass--
+  This is what they saw behind my eyes
+  Like a phantom in a glass!
+
+  They saw those towers; they saw those trees;
+  And I am alone once more--
+  Alone with the Immensities
+  And the Castle of Gathore!
+
+
+
+
+THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
+
+
+  In a long sad row the old gods come;
+  They come and bow to me.
+  Like candle-flames in a raftered room,
+  Like trees in an avenue of doom,
+  They bend in unity.
+
+  And a sound comes from them, a terrible sound,
+  Like the wind in a tamarisk grove,
+  Or a howl from some treacherous marshy ground
+  Where the swamp-demons move.
+
+  And in that moan is the cracking of sticks
+  Where Behemoth stalks thro’ the trees;
+  And in that moan is the flame that licks
+  The knees of Rameses:
+
+  And in that moan rocks Nineveh
+  With her golden roofs and floors!
+  And in that moan quakes Babylon
+  With her columned corridors!
+
+  From my little green seat of piled-up sods
+  Like a dwarf on a churchyard mound
+  I watch that row of bowing Gods
+  And I hear that terrible sound.
+
+  They nod and mutter; they sway and bend
+  Like monoliths of stone,
+  Like huge gaunt birds on a branches’ end,
+  And as they bend they moan.
+
+  They shiver like monstrous skeleton leaves;
+  They rattle like gibbets stark;
+  They reel like ruined autumn sheaves
+  In the stubble of the dark.
+
+  Their eye-sockets are hollow and deep;
+  Their foreheads are cliffs of doom;
+  And they bleat at me like gigantic sheep
+  That are herded in a tomb.
+
+  And very slowly I lift my head--
+  And slowly I lift my hand
+  --And a row of horny beetles dead
+  Lie scattered in the sand!
+
+
+
+
+THE FACE
+
+
+  In the hollow spaces I see a face
+  As I go whistling to my Dear,
+  And in those lineaments I trace
+  The ultimate Fear.
+
+  Throned on the dark that face I see,
+  As I go whistling to my Doll;
+  Of human terror the apogee--
+  Fol-de-rol!
+
+  The wreckage of the whole damned race,
+  As I go whistling to my white bird,
+  Is in that wavering ghastly face
+  That speaks no word!
+
+  Is that face moulded by treachery
+  As I go whistling to my Poll,
+  And carved by lust out of lechery?
+  Fol-lol-de-rol!
+
+  Has it woven itself out of ancient sorrows
+  As I go whistling to my maid,
+  Out of all the To-days that to all the To-morrows
+  Shriek--“betrayed!”
+
+  I like not to see that face in the night,
+  As I go whistling to my own:
+  A terrible face for the sweet moonlight
+  To shine upon!
+
+  But as long as those lips utter no sound,
+  As I go whistling to my Troll,
+  All is yet well above the ground,
+  Fol-lol-de-rol!
+
+  Oh white, white lips that hang so mute,
+  As I go whistling to my Love,
+  That ultimate Fear would be absolute
+  If you should move!
+
+
+
+
+THE HERON’S NEST
+
+
+  The World-Mother sits on her sky-blue eggs--
+  “A mare’s nest!” cries the minstrel, laughing.
+  “Her wings are lovely--but what of her legs?”
+  Cries the youngest page to the courtiers scoffing.
+
+  “A wicked bird,” cries the mitred priest--
+  “To lay blue eggs and to sit on them!
+  Blue is no colour for bird or beast
+  Blue is the colour of our Lady’s hem.”
+
+  “A shameless bird!” cries the old queen mother,
+  “Eggs should be mottled white, not blue.”
+  “A pox on the bird!” cries the old king’s brother--
+  “There’s no such bird!” cry the courtier crew.
+
+  Home from hunting returned the King--
+  White as a young birch-tree was he.
+  “Ye are all of you plotting a curséd thing!
+  And evil is your conspiracy!
+
+  “I have seen the World-Mother upon her nest;
+  I have seen those eggs, blue as the sky;
+  And for what I have seen I would give the rest
+  Of my kingdom; and willingly die!”
+
+  And the minstrel winked at the youngest page;
+  And the old queen pinched the fool;
+  And the mitred priest to hide his rage
+  Grinned at them like a ghoul.
+
+  “Down on your knees to the great World-Mother!
+  ’Tis I, your King, who begs.”
+  But they stood stock-still and stared at each other--“The
+  King is mad,” cried the old king’s brother.
+  “I’ve traveled the world from one end to another--
+  Those eggs are Heron’s eggs!”
+
+  From the walls of the Madhouse upon the hill,
+  When this traveler came to be crowned
+  At the Queen’s and the Priest’s and the Courtier’s will,
+  There fell a curious sound--
+  A sound that was like the flapping of wings;
+  And a radiant voice that was like the King’s!
+
+
+
+
+LUBBERLU
+
+
+  “Green were her eyes,--yellow were her eyes--
+  Her eyes were like withered sedge!”
+  --“This is holy Mass and the hour flies
+  And there is red in the church-yard hedge.
+
+  “Raise me aloft my taper’s flame,
+  Light me my candles three,
+  For I must call on the Baby’s name
+  Who is born to young Mary!”--
+
+  “O father, I see a blood-red streak
+  In the reeds where first I caught her--
+  And I hear a cry makes my heart weak--
+  And turns my bones to water.
+
+  “The marsh-bittern and lone curlew
+  That cry comes not from them--”
+  --“Bring me bread and wine my Lubberlu,
+  And hold my vestments’ hem!
+
+  “The candles burn--The oxen kneel.
+  Boy, bring me my holy book--
+  Born is the King of Israel!”
+  --“Oh father, my father, look!
+
+  “She is pressing her face ’gainst the window-pane,
+  Where the saints stare in a row
+  And her lips are red with the morning’s stain
+  And her cheeks are white like snow!”--
+
+  --“’Tis Christmas morn and the mass unsung
+  For the Baby of young Mary!”--
+  But the idiot-boy from his side had sprung.
+  At the window prone was he.
+
+  And the oxen knelt in their frozen shed
+  And the sheep in their hurdled pen;
+  But Lubberlu lay stark and dead,
+  He never will come again.
+
+  They sign his breast and they sign his brow
+  With the cross to which they pray--
+  But two lost souls are flying now
+  Over the reeds and over the snow,
+  Over the hills and away.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD SATYR TO THE YOUNG PLATONIST
+
+
+  Go and get a monk for a lover,
+  And let me quietly sit
+  On this warm stone which the lichens cover.
+  I have had enough of it!
+
+  Did the high gods carve your polished flanks
+  And make liquid your hazel eyes,
+  That two should stand on a river’s banks
+  And offer up the scurvy thanks
+  Of being over wise?
+
+  Let me alone. I have heard your tale,
+  How Love is this and how Love is that.
+  Is not milk still white in the pail
+  And wine still red in the vat?
+
+  I would have gathered you moschatel,
+  Wood-spurge, wood-sorel, wood-saxifrage!
+  When the moon rode forth I’d have taught you to tell
+  Every star in her equipage!
+
+  Because I’d loved you with satyr passion
+  Were that a reason I should not keep
+  Tenderness in my goat-foot fashion,
+  And watch beside your sleep?
+
+  The oldest of Centaurs is my brother--
+  The wild wood-ways are in my blood--
+  My mother was the great earth-mother--
+  Yet I can love you as well as another
+  For all my satyrhood!
+
+  Go find your friend. I have pride of my own,
+  But every noon I’ll sit
+  On this warm lichen-covered stone,
+  And perhaps you’ll come back to it!
+
+  Perhaps when they _talk_ of Love one day
+  In their high platonic hall,
+  You will curse their chatter and flee away
+  And find your Satyr’s grave and say,
+  “His love was best of all!”
+
+
+
+
+YOUTH AND AGE
+
+
+  “O wanton youth, this wind was not
+  Over common highways blown
+  From gardens far from here--God wot!
+  It has caught that plaintive tone.
+  Listen! But ah! It touches you not!
+  Listen! But ah! I had forgot--
+  The heart of youth is stone.
+
+  “Did you not know such places were?
+  Lovely are they and few,
+  The gardens that breathe such perfumed air!
+  Listen! But what care you?
+  Over many a moon-lit terraced spot
+  It has come to claim its own
+  Over Marjoram and Melilot,
+  Over London Pride and Bergamot,
+  It has come to trouble, doubt it not,
+  All hearts save those of stone!”
+
+  --“I like not this breath in the swaying grasses!
+  I like not that shadow on the rustling trees!
+  I _suspect_ that wind as it softly passes
+  Back to its garden of memories!
+  Your walled-up pansies are faded and sere;
+  Your dark parterres of cypress-green
+  Make the very lizards listen in fear
+  Of phantom footsteps and forms unseen.
+  Your fountains are choked with hemlock weeds,
+  The toad croaks there and the night-owls call.
+  There are wandering dandelion-seeds
+  Where red rose-petals were wont to fall!
+  Oh woe-begone one, you can tempt me not
+  With your proud sad gardens, your wind that sighs,
+  Your Mignonette and your Melilot!
+  The heart of youth is wise.”
+
+
+
+
+METAPHYSIC
+
+
+  Dearie I! When I up and follows
+  Grand-dad Cooper’s cross-cut road,
+  The road that from Hawk’s Hill to Green Lane Hollows
+  Is nought but rabbits and cuckoos and swallows
+  And fields with turnip sowed,
+
+  Dearie I! the road that over
+  Badger’s Warren and Turnstile Hill
+  Skirts park-fence by Witham’s Cover,
+  Where old man Rob caught young Nell’s lover,
+  And leads to Dead Man’s Mill,
+
+  Dearie I! I do stop and hear
+  Out of wind a terrible sound;
+  And Almighty, he do whisper clear
+  Like a girt wold owl long-side my ear--
+  “Nancy girl, this be holy ground!”
+
+  Dearie I! And he says to me--
+  “You’ve been here, Nancy, long ere this!”
+  And he lifts the veil of his mystery
+  From the face of his abyss.
+
+  And high Hawk Hill and Green Lane Hollows
+  Grow only dreams that I have dreamed;
+  And Grand-dad’s road with its cuckoos and swallows,
+  The road an old fox-bitch still follows,
+  Is a fairy-place that only seemed!
+
+  And Dead Man’s Mill grows doubly dead,
+  For its old-time pond of terribleness,
+  And him it drowned, like mists are fled!
+  And nought bides there but nothingness!
+  Gone, gone--all gone--shadows and dreams!
+  Dearie I! and ’twere Grand-dad’s road
+  Whereon a’ drove Squire Withy’s teams
+  And many a turnip-load!
+
+
+
+
+THE MALICE-DANCE
+
+
+  An intolerable singing
+  From an ancient haunted lawn
+  Where the ghost-moths whitely winging
+  Cross a moon-dial forlorn,
+  Drew me from you as you trifled
+  With the jasmin in your hair,
+  Dreaming that your beauty rifled
+  All my sense and held me there;
+  But I left you; and, escaping
+  With a lost tune in my head,
+  Set my memory reshaping
+  The old dances of the dead.
+  And the intolerable singing
+  Heard across that haunted lawn,
+  Drew me to the ghost-moths winging,
+  Round that moon-dial forlorn.
+  Over me the clouds were running
+  Races with the naked stars,
+  And dark Yews were making cunning
+  Love to whispering Deodars.
+  And the ghost-moths drugged my reason,
+  And I danced to that old tune
+  Malice dances full of treason
+  Round that dial of the moon!
+
+
+
+
+CANDLE LIGHT
+
+
+  Hush, true Love, as we sit and think
+  And talk to shadows and watch the coals
+  Redden up from beyond the brink
+  Of the common reach of our souls.
+
+  Do you not catch a cry in the air?
+  No! That is the wind in the chimney calling!
+  That is a curtain fluttering there!
+  That is a dead branch falling!
+
+  Burning wood when candles are lit
+  Has a bitter-sweet breath that can carry far;
+  That can carry two lovers from where they sit
+  To the edge of the sea and over it
+  Where the unknown islands are.
+
+  Burning wood has a wizard spell
+  Full of old sad stories and long-dead things;
+  Like myrrh and cassia is that smell,
+  From the sepulchres of kings.
+
+  And whenever lovers like you and me
+  Sit together of a winter’s night,
+  There’s a cry on the wind, there’s a cry on the sea
+  There’s a tongue in the candlelight.
+
+  And a great host gathers out of the dark
+  From wild far places, from sunk sea-walls,
+  From fallen roofs where hyænas bark
+  From ruined tents and kraals.
+
+  It gathers towards us while you and I
+  Talk to old shadows and sit and stare,
+  And let time and space and the world go by
+  Like smoke upon the air.
+
+  And as we gaze at the reddening coals
+  Lost in that amorous host are we;
+  That vast procession of lovers’ souls
+  Drowns our identity.
+
+  A procession, divided like Plato’s dream,
+  But rushing together on a winter’s night,
+  When the casement shakes and the red coals gleam
+  And we kiss by candle light!
+
+
+
+
+THE ECLIPSE
+
+
+  I said, Tonight is her plenilune,
+  And the wise astronomers held their peace,
+  I said, Tonight this naked moon
+  To her prisoned passion will give release;
+  And she shall gather the forests to her
+  And draw the oceans up to her breast.
+  The mountain-torrents shall leap to undo her,
+  And the virgin valleys shall be at rest:
+  And the fish from their fathomless feeding-ground
+  In finny circles shall upward move,
+  And the furry things at the lightest sound
+  Shall make the forest ache with love!
+  And fallen boughs that for centuries
+  Have dreamed, I said, of such a night
+  Shall feel in their mossy mortuaries
+  The living touch of her liquid light!
+  Great promontories, where dawn by dawn
+  Cormorants seeking the open sea
+  With yearning jet-black necks up-borne
+  Steer to the shoals of immensity,
+  Shall thrill as they feel that naked shape
+  Draw near with its luminous languorous power,
+  And over continent and cape
+  Float like an amorous lotus-flower.
+  Now, I said, with that moon at full,
+  While the wise astronomers kept them still,
+  Maids will grow more than beautiful,
+  And starved love-longings will have their will!
+  Now, I said, in this perfect night,
+  Lips that have paled and pined for passion
+  Will take at last their full delight
+  Mouth upon mouth in sweet lunar fashion!
+  Tonight is the night, I said to them all,
+  While the wise astronomers held their peace,
+  That Christ’s own cloak on Love shall fall
+  And let mortal longings have full release!
+  Then I looked up. Oh pity, oh loss
+  Irremediable! For behold the shade
+  Of our own dark planet crept across,
+  And on that glory its image laid.
+  Treachery in the heavens! It grew--
+  That shadow of evil and suppression
+  Larger and larger with the smouldering hue
+  Of the old intolerable repression!
+  It grew like some monstrous shadow of doom
+  Crossing the threshold of a happy king
+  Who begins to reck that his bridal-room
+  Will be the place of his murdering!
+  Terribly, inch by inch it grew.
+  Carved with the ruinous runic scrolls
+  Of our ancient woe and well I knew
+  Betrayed once more were our human souls.
+  Treachery in the heavens! From land
+  And sea and every forest way,
+  From frightened pastures and darkened sand
+  Rose up a cry of wild dismay--
+  And Christ bent down and hid His head;
+  And the haters of love laughed in their bed;
+  And “The Law is the law,” the astronomers said!
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDER
+
+
+  On the horses of desire
+  Over the tossing trees
+  I have hunted the Pillar of
+      Fire
+  To his inmost fastnesses.
+
+  On the eagles of despair
+  Where the thunders meet,
+  I have hunted the Powers of
+      the Air
+  To their last retreat.
+
+  Over chasm and over crag
+  On the horned moon riding,
+  I have hunted the night-hag
+  To her furthest hiding.
+
+  On the lions of exultation
+  I ride to my doom!
+  No tears of human desolation
+  Shall find my tomb.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM CORBY
+
+
+  I drive my cows to Corby;
+  On sweet spring-grass they’re fed;
+  But it’s Madge who nestles wantonly
+  In William Corby’s bed.
+
+  I drive my sheep to Corby,
+  And the gold-dust’s on the willow;
+  But it’s Nellie’s winsome curls that lie
+  On William Corby’s pillow.
+
+  I drive my geese to Corby
+  When the bind-weed’s in the wheat;
+  But it’s Bess who cuddles warm and sly
+  ’Neath William Corby’s sheet.
+
+  I drive my pigs to Corby;
+  And the hips and haws are red;
+  But none but me will mind o’ he
+  When William Corby’s dead!
+
+
+
+
+TO A CERTAIN LADY
+
+
+  They tore her scarlet gown.
+  “What’s in a kiss?” she said--
+  But they hunted her up and they hunted her down
+  From end to end of their moral town,
+  Till they left her there for dead.
+
+  But the bleeding throat of her cry
+  Was heard in another place;
+  And those who are older than earth or sky--
+  The austere ones of eternity ...
+  They knew her of their race.
+
+  “What’s this?” they said. “For a kiss?” said they;
+  And they took the red from the dawn,
+  And they took the dance from the salt-sea spray,
+  And they took the purple out of the day,
+  And the yellow out of the corn.
+
+  “Give her life, give her love, give her peace,” they said.
+  “Give her back her scarlet gown;
+  Or with ashes of death upon every head
+  Dead you shall skip to the tune of the dead
+  In your moral modern town!”
+
+
+
+
+THE “DISASTER”
+
+
+  Without rudder, without sail
+  Drifts my soul, the brig “Disaster,”
+  And the madness of the gale
+  Takes the place of mate or master!
+
+  Covered is its ghostly keel
+  With sea-slime, sea-weed, sea-crust;
+  And its bulkheads groan and reel;
+  And its bolts are caked with rust;
+
+  Storm-tossed sea-gulls phantom-white
+  On the spars of the “Disaster”
+  Scream while the great winds of night
+  Drive the derelict still faster.
+
+  And the drowned men floating deep
+  Leagues beneath that churning sea,
+  Mutter in their careless sleep,
+  “The brig ‘Disaster’ goes merrily!”
+
+  And the brig “Disaster” drives right on,
+  Without captain, without mate,
+  Top-sails, bowsprit, compass gone,
+  Lost--exultant, desolate!
+
+
+
+
+NOVEMBER
+
+
+  I will come back to you and you to me;
+  When the poplar-trees blow white and the rooks fly home,
+  And the fishermen draw their nets out of the sea;
+  I will come back to you and you to me.
+
+  When across the flooded weirs the wild-fowl fly,
+  When the dead leaves fall from each remembered tree,
+  When over the withered grass the plovers cry,
+  I will come back to you and you to me.
+
+
+
+
+BON ESPOIR Y GIST AU FOND!
+
+
+  One shimmering opal is all the air
+  And the sun like a young girl’s loosened hair
+  Covers with pools of liquid yellow
+  Window-sill, floor, and bed and pillow!
+  And I touch the secret--yet have it not.
+  It is--God! I’ve forgotten what--
+  Yet the lovely madness wherewith we’re mad,
+  For no king’s penny is to be had!
+  Ha! Monsieur Maggot and my Lord Rat
+  More’s in this business than you guess at!
+
+  The road-dust sleeps in the summer-heat
+  And the hot noon drowses on ripened-wheat,
+  And from weed to weed in the burnt-up grass
+  Heavy-winged butterflies flutter past.
+  Ha! Monsieur Maggot! Ha! my Lord Rat,
+  There’s more in this business than you guess at!
+
+  The moon floats high like a silver barge,
+  And the bracken ferns grow strange and large,
+  And the bull-rushes forget to shiver
+  As she pours her magic on meadow and river;
+  And the tall pond-reeds, where the cattle cross,
+  Stand silent; and silent dreams the moss;
+  And the hazel-wood as the owl hoots by,
+  Is too moon-tranced to heed his cry--
+  Ha! Monsieur Maggot and my Lord Rat,
+  Here’s something for you to squinny at!
+  We pine and pine--but by Holy Rood
+  There’s something here not understood--
+  And we are not yet the Devil’s food!
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
+  _Italics_ and +Smallcaps+
+p. 20 removed opening quote before “And evil”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79071 ***