Part 2

From this all-but sleep She started into life again; the sky Was full of a strange tumult suddenly— Beating of mighty wings and shrill-voiced fear And the hoarse scream of rapine following near. In the high windlessness above her flew, Dazzlingly white on the untroubled blue, A splendid swan, with outstretched neck and wing Spread fathom wide, and closely following An eagle, tawny and black. This god-like pair Circled and swooped through the calm of upper air, The eagle striking and the white swan still ’Scaping as though by happy miracle The imminent talons. For the twentieth time The furious hunter stooped, to miss and climb A mounting spiral into the height again. He hung there poised, eyeing the grassy plain Far, far beneath, where the girls’ upturned faces Were like white flowers that bloom in open places Among the scarcely budded woods. And they Breathlessly watched and waited; long he lay, Becalmed upon that tideless sea of light, While the great swan with slow and creaking flight Went slanting down towards safety, where the stream Shines through the trees below, with glance and gleam Of blue aerial eyes that seem to give Sense to the sightless earth and make it live. The ponderous wings beat on and no pursuit: Stiff as the painted kite that guards the fruit, Afloat o’er orchards ripe, the eagle yet Hung as at anchor, seeming to forget His uncaught prey, his rage unsatisfied. Still, quiet, dead . . . and then the quickest-eyed Had lost him. Like a star unsphered, a stone Dropped from the vault of heaven, a javelin thrown, He swooped upon his prey. Down, down he came, And through his plumes with a noise of wind-blown flame Loud roared the air. From Leda’s lips a cry Broke, and she hid her face—she could not see him die, Her lovely, hapless swan. Ah, had she heard, Even as the eagle hurtled past, the word That treacherous pair exchanged. “Peace,” cried the swan; “Peace, daughter. All my strength will soon be gone, Wasted in tedious flying, ere I come Where my desire hath set its only home.” “Go,” said the eagle, “I have played my part, Roused pity for your plight in Leda’s heart (Pity the mother of voluptuousness). Go, father Jove; be happy; for success Attends this moment.” On the queen’s numbed sense Fell a glad shout that ended sick suspense, Bidding her lift once more towards the light Her eyes, by pity closed against a sight Of blood and death—her eyes, how happy now To see the swan still safe, while far below, Brought by the force of his eluded stroke So near to earth that with his wings he woke A gust whose sudden silvery motion stirred The meadow grass, struggled the sombre bird Of rage and rapine. Loud his scream and hoarse With baffled fury as he urged his course Upwards again on threshing pinions wide. But the fair swan, not daring to abide This last assault, dropped with the speed of fear Towards the river. Like a winged spear, Outstretching his long neck, rigid and straight, Aimed at where Leda on the bank did wait With open arms and kind, uplifted eyes And voice of tender pity, down he flies. Nearer, nearer, terribly swift, he sped Directly at the queen; then widely spread Resisting wings, and breaking his descent ’Gainst his own wind, all speed and fury spent, The great swan fluttered slowly down to rest And sweet security on Leda’s breast. Menacingly the eagle wheeled above her; But Leda, like a noble-hearted lover Keeping his child-beloved from tyrannous harm, Stood o’er the swan and, with one slender arm Imperiously lifted, waved away The savage foe, still hungry for his prey. Baffled at last, he mounted out of sight And the sky was void—save for a single white Swan’s feather moulted from a harassed wing That down, down, with a rhythmic balancing From side to side dropped sleeping on the air. Down, slowly down over that dazzling pair, Whose different grace in union was a birth Of unimagined beauty on the earth: So lovely that the maidens standing round Dared scarcely look. Couched on the flowery ground Young Leda lay, and to her side did press The swan’s proud-arching opulent loveliness, Stroking the snow-soft plumage of his breast With fingers slowly drawn, themselves caressed By the warm softness where they lingered, loth To break away. Sometimes against their growth Ruffling the feathers inlaid like little scales On his sleek neck, the pointed finger-nails Rasped on the warm, dry, puckered skin beneath; And feeling it she shuddered, and her teeth Grated on edge; for there was something strange And snake-like in the touch. He, in exchange, Gave back to her, stretching his eager neck, For every kiss a little amorous peck; Rubbing his silver head on her gold tresses, And with the nip of horny dry caresses Leaving upon her young white breast and cheek And arms the red print of his playful beak. Closer he nestled, mingling with the slim Austerity of virginal flank and limb His curved and florid beauty, till she felt That downy warmth strike through her flesh and melt The bones and marrow of her strength away. One lifted arm bent o’er her brow, she lay With limbs relaxed, scarce breathing, deathly still; Save when a quick, involuntary thrill Shook her sometimes with passing shudderings, As though some hand had plucked the aching strings Of life itself, tense with expectancy. And over her the swan shook slowly free The folded glory of his wings, and made A white-walled tent of soft and luminous shade To be her veil and keep her from the shame Of naked light and the sun’s noonday flame.

Hushed lay the earth and the wide, careless sky. Then one sharp sound, that might have been a cry Of utmost pleasure or of utmost pain, Broke sobbing forth, and all was still again.

THE BIRTH OF GOD

NIGHT is a void about me; I lie alone; And water drips, like an idiot clicking his tongue, Senselessly, ceaselessly, endlessly drips Into the waiting silence, grown Emptier for this small inhuman sound. My love is gone, my love who is tender and young. O smooth warm body! O passionate lips! I have stretched forth hands in the dark and nothing found: The silence is huge as the sky—I lie alone— My narrow room, a darkness that knows no bound.

How shall I fill this measureless Deep void that the taking away Of a child’s slim beauty has made? Slender she is and small, but the loneliness She has left is a night no stars allay, And I am cold and afraid.

Long, long ago, cut off from the wolfish pack, From the warm, immediate touch of friends and mate, Lost and alone, alone in the utter black Of a forest night, some far-off, beast-like man, Cowed by the cold indifferent hate Of the northern silence, crouched in fear, When through his bleared and suffering mind A sudden tremor of comfort ran, And the void was filled by a rushing wind, And he breathed a sense of something friendly and near, And in privation the life of God began.

Love, from your loss shall a god be born to fill The emptiness, where once you were, With friendly knowledge and more than a lover’s will To ease despair? Shall I feed longing with what it hungers after, Seeing in earth and sea and air A lover’s smiles, hearing a lover’s laughter, Feeling love everywhere?

The night drags on. Darkness and silence grow, And with them my desire has grown, My bitter need. Alas, I know, I know that here I lie alone.

ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

BENEATH the sunlight and blue of all-but Autumn The grass sleeps goldenly; woodland and distant hill Shine through the gauzy air in a dust of golden pollen, And even the glittering leaves are almost still.

Scattered on the grass, like a ragman’s bundles carelessly dropped, Men sleep outstretched or, sprawling, bask in the sun; Here glows a woman’s bright dress and here a child is sitting, And I lie down and am one of the sleepers, one

Like the rest of this tumbled crowd. Do they all, I wonder, Feel anguish grow with the calm day’s slow decline, Longing, as I, for a shattering wind, a passion Of bodily pain to be the soul’s anodyne?

SYMPATHY

THE irony of being two . . . ! Grey eyes, wide open suddenly, Regard me and enquire; I see a face Grave and unquiet in tenderness. Heart-rending question of women—never answered: “Tell me, tell me, what are you thinking of?” Oh, the pain and foolishness of love! What can I do but make my old grimace, Ending it with a kiss, as I always do?

MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM

DIAPHENIA, drunk with sleep, Drunk with pleasure, drunk with fatigue, Feels her Corydon’s fingers creep— Ring-finger, middle finger, index, thumb— Strummingly over the smooth sleek drum Of her thorax. Meanwhile Händel’s Gigue Turns in Corydon’s absent mind To Yakka-Hoola. She can find No difference in the thrilling touch Of one who, now, in everything Is God-like. “Was there ever such Passion as ours?” His pianoing Gives place to simple arithmetic’s Simplest constatations:—six Letters in Gneiss and three in Gnu: Luncheon to-day cost three and two; In a year—he couldn’t calculate Three-sixty-five times thirty-eight, Figuring with printless fingers on Her living parchment. “Corydon! I faint, faint, faint at your dear touch. Say, is it possible . . . to love too much?”

FROM THE PILLAR

SIMEON, the withered stylite, Sat gloomily looking down Upon each roof and skylight In all the seething town.

And in every upper chamber, On roofs, where the orange flowers Make weary men remember The perfume of long-dead hours,

He saw the wine-drenched riot Of harlots and human beasts, And how celestial quiet Was shattered by their feasts.

The steam of fetid vices From a thousand lupanars, Like smoke of sacrifices, Reeked up to the heedless stars.

And the saint from his high fastness Of purity apart Cursed them and their unchasteness, And envied them in his heart.

JONAH

A CREAM of phosphorescent light Floats on the wash that to and fro Slides round his feet—enough to show Many a pendulous stalactite Of naked mucus, whorls and wreaths And huge festoons of mottled tripes And smaller palpitating pipes Through which a yeasty liquor seethes.

Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God’s goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

SWAN, Swan, Yesterday you were The whitest of things in this dark winter. To-day the snow has made of your plumes An unwashed pocket handkercher, An unwashed pocket handkercher . . . “Lancashire, to Lancashire!”— Tune of the antique trains long ago: Each summer holiday a milestone Backwards, backwards:— Tenby, Barmouth, and year by year All the different hues of the sea, Blue, green and blue. But on this river of muddy jade There swims a yellow swan, And along the bank the snow lies dazzlingly white.

A MELODY BY SCARLATTI

HOW clear under the trees, How softly the music flows, Rippling from one still pool to another Into the lake of silence.

A SUNSET

OVER against the triumph and the close— Amber and green and rose— Of this short day, The pale ghost of the moon grows living-bright Once more, as the last light Ebbs slowly away. Darkening the fringes of these western glories The black phantasmagories Of cloud advance With noiseless footing—vague and villainous shapes, Wrapped in their ragged fustian capes, Of some grotesque romance. But overhead where, like a pool between Dark rocks, the sky is green And clear and deep, Floats windlessly a cloud, with curving breast Flushed by the fiery west, In god-like sleep . . . And in my mind opens a sudden door That lets me see once more A little room With night beyond the window, chill and damp, And one green-lighted lamp Tempering the gloom, While here within, close to me, touching me (Even the memory Of my desire Shakes me like fear), you sit with scattered hair; And all your body bare Before the fire Is lapped about with rosy flame. . . . But still, Here on the lonely hill, I walk alone; Silvery green is the moon’s lamp overhead, The cloud sleeps warm and red, And you are gone.

LIFE AND ART

YOU have sweet flowers for your pleasure; You laugh with the bountiful earth In its richness of summer treasure: Where now are your flowers and your mirth? Petals and cadenced laughter, Each in a dying fall, Droop out of life; and after Is nothing; they were all.

But we from the death of roses That three suns perfume and gild With a kiss, till the fourth discloses A withered wreath, have distilled The fulness of one rare phial, Whose nimble life shall outrun The circling shadow on the dial, Outlast the tyrannous sun.

FIRST PHILOSOPHER’S SONG

A POOR degenerate from the ape, Whose hands are four, whose tail’s a limb, I contemplate my flaccid shape And know I may not rival him,

Save with my mind—a nimbler beast Possessing a thousand sinewy tails, A thousand hands, with which it scales, Greedy of luscious truth, the greased

Poles and the coco palms of thought, Thrids easily through the mangrove maze Of metaphysics, walks the taut Frail dangerous liana ways

That link across wide gulfs remote Analogies between tree and tree; Outruns the hare, outhops the goat; Mind fabulous, mind sublime and free!

But oh, the sound of simian mirth! Mind, issued from the monkey’s womb, Is still umbilical to earth, Earth its home and earth its tomb.

SECOND PHILOSOPHER’S SONG

IF, O my Lesbia, I should commit, Not fornication, dear, but suicide, My Thames-blown body (Pliny vouches it) Would drift face upwards on the oily tide With the other garbage, till it putrefied.

But you, if all your lovers’ frozen hearts Conspired to send you, desperate, to drown— Your maiden modesty would float face down, And men would weep upon your hinder parts.

’Tis the Lord’s doing. Marvellous is the plan By which this best of worlds is wisely planned. One law He made for woman, one for man: We bow the head and do not understand.

FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG

A MILLION million spermatozoa, All of them alive: Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah Dare hope to survive.

And among that billion minus one Might have chanced to be Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne— But the One was Me.

Shame to have ousted your betters thus, Taking ark while the others remained outside! Better for all of us, froward Homunculus, If you’d quietly died!

NINTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG

GOD’S in His Heaven: He never issues (Wise Man!) to visit this world of ours. Unchecked the cancer gnaws our tissues, Stops to lick chops and then again devours.

Those find, who most delight to roam ’Mid castles of remotest Spain, That there’s, thank Heaven, no place like home; So they set out upon their travels again.

Beauty for some provides escape, Who gain a happiness in eyeing The gorgeous buttocks of the ape Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

And some to better worlds than this Mount up on wings as frail and misty As passion’s all-too-transient kiss (Though afterwards—oh, _omne animal triste_!)

But I, too rational by half To live but where I bodily am. Can only do my best to laugh. Can only sip my misery dram by dram.

While happier mortals take to drink, A dolorous dipsomaniac, Fuddled with grief I sit and think, Looking upon the bile when it is black.

Then brim the bowl with atrabilious liquor! We’ll pledge our Empire vast across the flood: For Blood, as all men know, than Water’s thicker, But water’s wider, thank the Lord, than Blood.

MORNING SCENE

LIGHT through the latticed blind Spans the dim intermediate space With parallels of luminous dust To gild a nuptial couch, where Goya’s mind Conceived those agonising hands, that hair Scattered, and half a sunlit bosom bare, And, imminently above them, a red face Fixed in the imbecile earnestness of lust.

VERREY’S

HERE, every winter’s night at eight, Epicurus lies in state, Two candles at his head and two Candles at his feet. A few Choice spirits watch beneath the vault Of his dim chapel, where default Of music fills the pregnant air With subtler requiem and prayer Than ever an organ wrought with notes Spouted from its tubal throats. Black Ethiopia’s Holy Child, The Cradled Bottle, breathes its mild Meek spirit on the ravished nose, The palate and the tongue of those Who piously partake with me Of this funereal agape.

FRASCATI’S

BUBBLE-BREASTED swells the dome Of this my spiritual home, From whose nave the chandelier, Schaffhausen frozen, tumbles sheer. We in the round balcony sit, Lean o’er and look into the pit Where feed the human bears beneath, Champing with their gilded teeth. What negroid holiday makes free With such priapic revelry? What songs? What gongs? What nameless rites? What gods like wooden stalagmites? What steam of blood or kidney pie? What blasts of Bantu melody? Ragtime. . . . But when the wearied Band Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand. And there we sit in blissful calm, Quietly sweating palm to palm.

FATIGUE

THE mind has lost its Aristotelian elegance of shape: there is only a darkness where bubbles and inconsequent balloons float up to burst their luminous cheeks and vanish.

A woman with a basket on her head: a Chinese lantern quite askew: the vague bright bulging of chemists’ window bottles; and then in my ears the distant noise of a great river of people. And phrases, phrases—

It is only a question of saddle-bags,

Stane Street and Gondibert,

Foals in Iceland (or was it Foals in aspic?).

As that small reddish devil turns away with an insolent jut of his hindquarters, I become aware that his curling pug’s tail is an electric bell-push. But that does not disquiet me so much as the sight of all these polished statues twinkling with high lights and all of them grotesque and all of them colossal.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

THE machine is ready to start. The symbolic beasts grow resty, curveting where they stand at their places in the great blue circle of the year. The Showman’s voice rings out. “Montez, mesdames et messieurs, montez. You, sir, must bestride the Ram. You will take the Scorpion. Yours, madame, is the Goat. As for you there, blackguard boy, you must be content with the Fishes. I have allotted you the Virgin, mademoiselle.” . . . “Polisson!” “Pardon, pardon. Evidemment, c’est le Sagittaire qu’on demande. Ohé, les dards! The rest must take what comes. The Twins shall counterpoise one another in the Scales. So, so. Now away we go, away.”

Ha, what keen air. Wind of the upper spaces. Snuff it deep, drink in the intoxication of our speed. Hark how the music swells and rings. . . . sphery music, music of every vagabond planet, every rooted star; sound of winds and seas and all the simmering millions of life. Moving, singing . . . so with a roar and a rush round we go and round, for ever whirling on a ceaseless Bank Holiday of drunken life and speed.

But I happened to look inwards among the machinery of our roundabout, and there I saw a slobbering cretin grinding at a wheel and sweating as he ground, and grinding eternally. And when I perceived that he was the author of all our speed and that the music was of his making, that everything depended on his grinding wheel, I thought I would like to get off. But we were going too fast.

BACK STREETS

BACK streets, gutters of stagnating darkness where men breathe something that is not so much air as a kind of rarefied slime. . . . I look back down the tunnelled darkness of a drain to where, at the mouth, a broader, windier water-way glitters with the gay speed and motion of sunlit life. But around all is dimly rotting; and the inhabitants are those squamous, phosphorescent creatures that darkness and decay beget. Little men, sheathed tightly in clothes of an exaggeratedly fashionable cheapness, hurry along the pavements, jaunty and at the same time furtive. There is a thin layer of slime over all of them. And then there are the eyes of the women, with their hard glitter that is only of the surface. They see acutely, but in a glassy, superficial way, taking in the objects round them no more than my western windows retain the imprint of the sunset that enriches them.

Back streets, exhalations of a difficulty puberty, I once lived on the fringes of them.

LAST THINGS