Part 10

With skilful fingers thin and old, Fearing to break the glint of gold That with his work the gliding light Blends by the houses growing dim, The visionary roper weaves Out of the heart of the eddying eves, And draws the horizons unto him.

Horizons? Those of red sunsets: Furies, hatred, fights, regrets, Sobs of beings broken-hearted, Horizons of the days departed, Writhen, golden, overcast; Horizons of the living past.

Of old--the life of strayed somnambulists, When the right hand of God to Canaans blue The road of gold through gloaming deserts drew, Through morns and evenings swayed with shifting mists.

Of old--exasperated life careering Hanging from stallions' manes, lighting the dense Darkness with heels that flashed out gleams immense, Towards immensity immensely rearing.

Of old--it was a life of burning leaven; When the Red Cross of Hell and Heaven's White Through miles of marshalled mail that shed the light Marched each through blood towards its victory's heaven.

Of old--it was a foaming, livid life, Living and dead, with tocsin bells and crime, Edicts and massacres reddening the time, With mad and splendid death above the strife.

Between the flax and osiers, On the road where nothing stirs, Along the houses growing dim, The visionary roper weaves Out of the heart of the eddying eves, And draws the horizon unto him.

Horizons? There they linger yet: Toil, and science, struggle, fret. Horizons? There at even-chime, They in their mirrors show the mourning Image of the present time.

Now, a mass of fires that belch defiance, Where wise men, leagued in mighty storm and stress, Hurl the gods down to change the nothingness Whereunto strives the force of human science.

Now, lo! a room that ruthless thought has swept, Weighed and exactly measured, and men swear The firmament is arched by empty air; And Death is in glass bottles corked and kept.

Now, lo! a glowing furnace, and resistance Of matter molten in fire's dragon dens; New strengths are forged, far mightier than men's, To swallow up the night, and time, and distance.

Here, lo! a palace tiredly built, and lying Beneath a century's weight, bowed down and yellow, And whence, in terror, mighty voices bellow, Invoking thunder towards adventure flying.

Upon the regular road, with eyes Fixed where the silent sunset dies, And leaves the houses drear and dim, The visionary roper weaves Out of the heart of the eddying eves, And draws the horizons unto him.

Horizons? Where yon sunset beams: Combats, hopes, awakenings, gleams; The horizons he can see defined In the future of his mind, Far beyond the shores that swim Sketched in the sky of sunsets dim.

Up yonder--in the calm skies hangs a red Staircase of double gold with steps of blue, With Dream and Science mounting it, the two Who separately climb to one stair-head.

The lightning clash of contraries expires; Doubt's mournful fist its fingers opes, while wed Essential laws that had been wont to shed In horal doctrines their fragmentary fires.

Up yonder--mind more strong and subtle darts Its violence past death and what is seen. And universal love sheds a serene And mighty silence over tranquil hearts.

The God in every human heart, above, Unfolds, expands, and his own being sees In those who sometimes fell upon their knees To worship sacred grief and humble love.

Up yonder--living peace is burning bright, And shedding on these lands, down evening's slope A bliss that kindles, like the brands of hope, In the air's ash the great stars of the night.

At the dike's foot that wearily Curves along the sinuous sea Towards the distant eddying spaces, The visionary roper paces Along the houses growing dim, And drinks the horizons into him.

SAINT GEORGE.

By a broad flash the fog was split, And Saint George, with gold and jewels lit, Came down the slope of it, With feathers foaming from his crest, Riding a charger with a milky breast, And in its mouth no bit.

With diamonds decked the two Made of their fall a path of pity to This earth of ours from Heaven's blue.

Heroes with helpful virtues dowered, Sonorous with courage, heroes crystalline, O through my heart now let the radiance shine That from his aureolar sword is showered! O let me hear the silver prattle Of the wind around his coat of mail, And around his spurs in battle; Saint George, who shall prevail, He who has heard the cries of my distress, And comes to save from scaith My poor arms stretched unto his great prowess!

Like a loud cry of faith, He holds his lance at rest, Saint George; He passes, I behold A victory as of a haggard gold, I see his forehead with the Chrism blessed: Saint George of duty, Bright with his heart's and his own beauty.

Sound, all ye voices of my hope! Sound in myself, and on the sun-swept slope, And high roads, and the shaded avenue! And, gleams of silver between stones, be you Joy, and you pebbles white with waters ope Your eyes, and look Up through the brook Whose ripples o'er you roll, And, landscape with thy crimson lakes, be thou The mirror of the flights of flame that now Saint George takes to my soul!

Against the black dragon's teeth, Against the pustules of a leprous skin He is the glaive and the miraculous sheath. Charity on his cuirass burns, and in His courage is the bounding overthrow Of instinct swart with sin.

Fire golden-sifted, fire that wheels, And eddying stars in which his glory lies, Flashed from his charger's galloping heels, Dazzle my memory's eyes.

The beautiful ambassador is he From the white country that with marble glows, Where in the parks, on the sea's strand, and on the tree Of goodness, kindness gently grows.

The port, he knows it, where the vessels ride, With angels filled, upon a rippling tide; And the long evenings lighting islands fair But motionless upon their waters, where, And in eyes also, firmaments are seen.

This kingdom hath the Virgin for its Queen, And St. George is the humble joy of her palace, In the air his falchion glimmers like a chalice; Saint George with his devouring light, Who like a fire of gold dispels my spirit's night.

He knows how far my feet have wandered, He knows the strength that I have squandered, And with what fogs my brain has fought, He knows what keen assassin knives Have cut black crosses in my thought, He knows my scorn of rich men's lives, He knows the mask of wrath and folly Upon the dregs of my melancholy.

I was a coward in my flight Out of the world in my sick, vain defiance; I have lifted, under the roofs of night, The golden marbles of a hostile science To the barred summits of black oracles; But the King of the Night is Death; And man but in the dawning's breath His enigmatic effort spells; When flowers unclose, prayer too uncloses, With the scent of prayer their lips are sweet, And the white sun on a nacreous water-sheet Is a kiss that on man's lips reposes; Dawn is a counsel to be bold, And he who hearkens is tenfold Saved from the marsh that never yet cleansed sin.

Saint George in cuirass glittering With leaps of fire sprung Unto my soul through the fresh morning; He was beautiful with faith and young;

And more to me he bent As he beheld me penitent; As from an intimate golden phial He filled me with his soaring; Though he was proud unto my sight, I laid the sweet flowers of my trial In his pale hand of blest restoring; Then signed he, ere he did depart, My brow with his lance's cross of gold, Bade me be of good cheer and bold, And soared, and bore to God my heart.

IN THE NORTH.

Two ancient mariners from the Northern Main One autumn eve came sailing home again, From Sicily and its deceitful islands, Carrying a shoal of sirens On board.

Sharpened with pride they sail into their bay; Among the mists that mark the homeward way They cut their passage like a sword; Under a mournful and monotonous gale, One autumn evening of a sadness pale, Into their northern fjord they sail.

From the safe shore the burghers of the haven Gaze listless, cold, and craven: And on the masts, and in the ropes, behold The sirens covered with gold Biting, like vines, Their bodies' sinuous lines.

The burghers gaze with closed and sullen mouth, Nor see the ocean booty of the south, Brought in the fog's despite; The vessel seems a basket silver-white, Laden with flesh and fruit and gold for home, Advancing borne on wings of foam.

The sirens sing, and in the cordage they With arms stretched out in lyres, And lifted breasts like fires, Sing and sing a lay Before the rolling eve, Which reaps upon the sea the lights of day; The sirens sing, and cleave Around the masts as curves the handle of the urn And still the citizens, uncouth and taciturn, Hear not the song.

They do not know their friends away so long-- The ancient mariners twain--nor understand The vessel is of their own land, Neither the foc-jibs of their own Making, nor the sails themselves have sewn; Of this deep dream they fathom naught, Which makes the sea glad with its journeyings, Since it was not the lie of all the things That in their village to their youth were taught. And the ship passes by the harbour mole, Luring them to the wonder of its soul, But none will gather them the fruits Of flesh and gold that load the trellised shoots.

THE TOWN.

Every road goes to the town.

Under the mist that the sun illumes, She, where her terraces arise And taper to the terraced skies, Herself as from a dream exhumes.

Yonder glimmer looking down, Bridges trimmed with iron lace, Leaps in air and caught in space; Blocks and columns like the head Of a Gorgon gashed and red; O'er the suburbs chimneys tower; Gables open like a flower, Under stagnant roofs that frown.

This is the many-tentacled town, This is the flaming octopus, The ossuary of all of us. At the country's end she waits, Feeling towards the old estates.

Meteoric gas-lamps line Docks where tufted masts entwine; Still they burn in noontides cold, Monster eggs of viscous gold; Never seems the sun to shine: Mouth as it is of radiance, shut By reeking smoke and driving smut.

A river of pitch and naphtha rolls By wooden bridges, mortared moles; And the raw whistles of the ships Howl with fright in the fog that grips: With a red signal light they peer Towards the sea to which they steer.

Quays with clashing buffers groan; Carts grate o'er the cobble-stone; Cranes are cubes of shadow raising, And slipping them in cellars blazing; Bridges opening lift a vast Gibbet till the ships have passed; Letters of brass inscribe the world, On roofs, and walls, and shop-fronts curled, Face to face in battle massed.

Wheels file and file, the drosky plies, Trains are rolling, effort flies; And like a prow becalmed, the glare Of gilded stations here and there; And, from their platforms, ramified Rails beneath the city glide, In tunnels and in craters, whence They storm in network flashing thin Out into hubbub, dust, and din.

This is the many-tentacled town.

The street, with eddies tied like ropes Around its squares, runs out and gropes Along the city up and down, And runs back far enlaced, and lined With crowds inextricably twined, Whose mad feet beat the flags beneath, Whose eyes are filled with hate, whose teeth Snatch at the time they cannot catch.

Dawn, eve, and night, lost in the press, They welter in their weariness, And cast to chance the bitter seed Of labour that no gain can breed. And dens black with inanity Where poisoned sits the clerk and fasts; And banks wide open to the blasts Of the winds of their insanity.

Outside, in wadding of the damp, Red lights in streaks, like burning rags, Straggle from reeking lamp to lamp. And alcohol goads life that lags. The bar upon the causey masses Its tabernacle of looking-glasses, Reflecting drunken louts and hags. To and fro a young girl passes, And sells lights to the lolling men; Debauch buys famine in her den; And carnal lust ignited sallies To dance to death in rotten alleys.

Lust roars and leaps from breast to breast, Whipped to a rage uproarious, To a blind crush of limbs in quest Of the pleasure of gold and phosphorus; And in and out wan women fare, With sexual symbols in their hair. The atmosphere of reeking dun At times recedes towards the sun, As though a loud cry called to Peace To bid the deafening noises cease; But all the city puffs and blows With such a violent snort and flush, That the dying seek in vain the hush Of silence that eyes need to close.

Such is the day--and when the eves With ebony hammers carve the skies, Over the plain the city heaves Its shimmer of colossal lies; Her haunting, gilt desires arise; Her radiance to the stars is cast; She gathers her gas in golden sheaves; Her rails are highways flying fast To the mirage of happiness That strength and fortune seem to bless; Like a great army swell her walls; And all the smoke she still sends down Reaches the fields in radiant calls.

This is the many-tentacled town, This is the burning octopus, The ossuary of all of us, The carcase with solemn candles lit.

And all the long ubiquitous Roads and pathways reach to it.

THE MUSIC-HALL.

Under the enormous fog Whose wings the city arteries clog, 'Mid ringing plaudits, at the back Of a radiant hall their Orients they unpack.

The acrobat on airy trestles poises; Great suns of strass shine o'er the scene; Clashing their fists stand cymbal-players, lean Breakers of cries and noises;

And when the ballet-corps with painted faces In a thicket of perplexing steps appear, Tangling and disentangling labyrinthine paces, The hall, hung with its gorgeous chandelier, That o'er a surging sea of faces glares, The hall with heavy velvet clad, With balconies like pad on pad, Is like a belly that a woman bares.

Swarming battalions of flesh and thighs March under arches flowered with thousand dyes; Lace, petticoats, throats, legs, and hips: Teams of rut whose breasts, though bridled, yet Are bounding, yoke by yoke the coiled dance trips, Blue with paint and raw with sweat.

Hands, vainly opening, seem to seize Only invisible desire that flees; A dancer, darting legs her tights leave bare, Stiffens obscenity in the air; Another with swimming eyes and flanks that writhe Shrinks like a trampled beast above the loud Flare of the footlights swaying with the lithe Lust of the gloating crowd.

O blasphemy vociferously hurled In crying gold on the Beauty of the world! Atrocious feint of Art, while Art sublime Is lying massacred and sunk in slime! O noisy pleasure singing as it treads On tortured ugliness that twists and cries; Pleasure against Joy's grain that nurtures heads With alcohol, with alcohol men's eyes; O pleasure whose rank mouth calls out for flowers, And vomits the vile ferment it devours!

Pleasure of old, heroic, calm, and bare, Walked with calm hands and forehead clear as air; The wind and the sun danced in his heart, he pressed Divine, harmonious life, to his warm breast; His breast that breathed it in was Beauty's source; He knew no law that dared call Beauty coarse; Sunrise and sunset, springs with mosses grassed, And the green bough that brushed him as he passed, Thrilled to his deep soul through his flesh, and were The kiss of things that love makes lovelier.

Now senile and debauched, he licks and eats Sin that beguiles him with her poisoned teats; Now in his garden of anomalies Bibles, codes, texts, and rules he multiplies, And ravishes the faith he then denies. His loves are gold. His hatreds? Flights unto Beauty that grows still lovelier, still more true, Opening in starry flowers in heavens blue. Look where he haunts these halls of monstrous art, Whose burning windows to the heavens dart A restlessness by gazing still renewed: Here is the beast transformed to a multitude.

Filled with contagion thousand eyes deflect To find a million more they may infect; One mind to thousands casts its brazier fire, To be consumed the more in sick desire, To breed new vices, unimagined Hell. The conscience changes, and the brain as well; Another race is bred from putrid spawn, A writhen black totality, a sum Of ciphers spreading in a weltering scum, That outrages the healthfulness of Dawn.

O shames and crimes of crowds that reek and stain The city like a bellowing hurricane; Gulfed in the plaster boxes tier on tier Of theatres and halls obscene and blear!

The stage is like a fan unfurled. Enamelled minarets grotesquely curled. Houses and terraces and avenues. Under the limelight's changing hues, First in slow rhythms, then with violent sweep, Gathering swift kisses, touching breasts that leap, Meet the Bayaderes with swaying hips; Negro boys, whose heads with plumes are tipped, With their foam-coloured teeth in lips Like a red vulva open ripped, Move all as pushed along in sluggish poses. A drum beats, an obstinate horn cries long, A raw fife tickles a stupid song, And at the last, for the final apotheosis, A mad assault over the boards is sweeping, Gold and throats and thighs in stages heaping In curled entanglements; and then all closes With garments splitting offering rounded shapes And vice half hid in flowers like tempting grapes.

And the orchestra dies, or suddenly halts, And climbs, and swells, and rolls in whipped assaults; Out of the violins wriggle spasms dark; Lascivious dogs in the tempest seem to bark Of heavy brasses and of strong bassoons; A manifold desire swells, sickens, swoons, Revives, and with such heavy violence heaves, The sense cries out, and helpless reels, And prostitutes itself to a spasm that relieves.

And midnight peals. The dense crowd pours and at the doors unfurls. The hall is closed--and on the black causeways, Gaudy beneath the gaslamps' leering gaze, Red in the fog like flesh, await the girls.

THE BUTCHER'S STALL.

Hard by the docks, soon as the shadows fold The dizzy mansion-fronts that soar aloft, When eyes of lamps are burning soft, The shy, dark quarter lights again its old Allurement of red vice and gold.

Women, blocks of heaped, blown meat, Stand on low thresholds down the narrow street, Calling to every man that passes; Behind them, at the end of corridors, Shine fires, a curtain stirs And gives a glimpse of masses Of mad and naked flesh in looking-glasses. Hard by the docks. The street upon the left is ended by A tangle of high masts and shrouds that blocks A sheet of sky; Upon the right a net of grovelling alleys Falls from the town--and here the black crowd rallies To reel to rotten revelry.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

Far-sailing melancholy mariners Who, wet with spray, through grey mists peer, Cradled among the rigging cabin-boys, and they who steer Hallucinated by the blue eyes of the vast sea-spaces, All dream of it, evoke it when the evening falls; Their raw desire to madness galls; The wind's soft kisses hover on their faces; The wave awakens rolling images of soft embraces; And their two arms implore, Stretched in a frantic cry towards the shore.

And they of offices and shops, the city tribes, Merchants precise, keen reckoners, haggard scribes, Who sell their brains for hire, and tame their brows, When the keys of desks are hanging on the wall, Feel the same galling rut at even-fall, And run like hunted dogs to the carouse. Out of the depths of dusk come their dark flocks, And in their hearts debauch so rudely shocks Their ingrained greed and old accustomed care, That they are racked and ruined by despair.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

Come from what far sea-isles or pestilent parts? Come from what feverish or methodic marts? Their eyes are filled with bitter, cunning hate, They fight their instincts that they cannot sate; Around red females who befool them, they Herd frenzied till the dawn of sober day. The panelling is fiery with lewd art; Out of the wall nitescent knick-knacks dart; Fat Bacchuses and leaping satyrs in Wan mirrors freeze an unremitting grin; Flowers sicken on the gaming-tables where The warming bowls twist fire of light blue hair; A pot of paint curds on an etagere; A cat is catching flies on cushioned seats; A drunkard lolls asleep on yielding plush, And women come, and o'er him bending, brush His closed, red lids with their enormous teats.

And women with spent loins and sleeping croups Are piled on sofas and arm-chairs in groups, With sodden flesh grown vague, and black and blue With the first trampling of the evening's crew. One of them slides a gold coin in her stocking; Another yawns, and some their knees are rocking; Others by bacchanalia worn out, Feeling old age, and, sniffing them, Death's snout, Stare with wide-open eyes, torches extinct, And smooth their legs with hands together linked.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

According to the jingle of the purses The women mingle promises with curses; A tranquil cynicism, a tired pleasure Is meted duly to the money's measure.

The kiss grows weary, and the game grows tame. Often when fist with fist together clashes, In the wind of oaths and insults still the same, Some gaiety out of the blasphemy flashes,

But soon sinks, and you hear, In the silence dank and drear, A halting steeple near Sounding, sick with pity, In the darkness over the city.

Yet in those months by festivals sanctified, St. Peter in summer, in winter Christmastide, The ancient quarter of dirt and light Soars up to sin and pounces on its joys, Fermenting with wild songs and boisterous noise Window by window, flight by flight, With vice the house-fronts glow Down from the garret to the grids below. Everywhere rage roars, and couples heats. In the great hall to which the sailors throng, Pushing some jester of the streets, Convulsed in obscene mimicry, along, The wines of foam and gold leap from their sheath; Women fall underneath Mad, brawling drunkards; loosened ruts Flame, arms unite, and body body butts; Nothing is seen but instincts slaked and lit afresh, Breasts offered, bellies taken, and the fire Of haggard eyes in sheaves of brandished flesh.