Chapter 6

So, by a jealous lightlessness beset That might have oppressed the dragons of old time Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted City, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting, Rent in the stuff of a material dark, Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through wicked airs and deadly dews That make the laden robber grin askance At the good places in his black romance, And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose Go pinched and pined to bed Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.

Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, The old Father-River flows, His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot In the squalor of the universal shore: His voices sounding through the gruesome air As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: The while his children, the brave ships, No more adventurous and fair, Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, But infamously enchanted, Huddle together in the foul eclipse, Or feel their course by inches desperately, As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, From sinister reach to reach out—out—to sea.

And Death the while— Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, Death in his threadbare working trim— Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, And with expert, inevitable hand Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: Thus signifying unto old and young, However hard of mouth or wild of whim, ’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to part From books and women and talk and drink and art. And you go humbly after him To a mean suburban lodging: on the way To what or where Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: And you—how should you care So long as, unreclaimed of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down To the black job of burking London Town?

V _Allegro maëstoso_

SPRING winds that blow As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents, grey and living green, It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, An estuary of the joy of being? Why should the lovely leafage of the Park Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? —Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides, Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, In the divine conviction robed and crowned The globe fulfils his immemorial round But as the marrying-place of all things made!

There is no man, this deifying day, But feels the primal blessing in his blood. There is no woman but disdains— The sacred impulse of the May Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins— To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, On her inviolable quest: These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, But all desirable and frankly fair, As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, And in the knowledge went imparadised! For look! a magical influence everywhere, Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

Praise God for giving Through this His messenger among the days His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan— Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned, But the gay genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour!— Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails, By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme, Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song; The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, And life, and all for which life lives to long, Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.

RHYMES AND RHYTHMS

1889–1892

_PROLOGUE_

_Something is dead_ . . . _The grace of sunset solitudes_, _the march_ _Of the solitary moon_, _the pomp and power_ _Of round on round of shining soldier-stars_ _Patrolling space_, _the bounties of the sun_— _Sovran_, _tremendous_, _unimaginable_— _The multitudinous friendliness of the sea_, _Possess no more—no more_.

_Something is dead_ . . . _The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks_ _And spreads_, _the burden of Winter heavier weighs_, _His melancholy close and closer yet_ _Cleaves_, _and those incantations of the Spring_ _That made the heart a centre of miracles_ _Grow formal_, _and the wonder-working bours_ _Arise no more—no more_.

_Something is dead_ . . . _’Tis time to creep in close about the fire_ _And tell grey tales of what we were_, _and dream_ _Old dreams and faded_, _and as we may rejoice_ _In the young life that round us leaps and laughs_, _A fountain in the sunshine_, _in the pride_ _Of God’s best gift that to us twain returns_, _Dear Heart_, _no more—no more_.

I _To_ H. B. M. W.

WHERE forlorn sunsets flare and fade On desolate sea and lonely sand, Out of the silence and the shade What is the voice of strange command Calling you still, as friend calls friend With love that cannot brook delay, To rise and follow the ways that wend Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street A roaring reach of death and life, Of vortices that clash and fleet And ruin in appointed strife, Hark to it calling, calling clear, Calling until you cannot stay From dearer things than your own most dear Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow, Out of the sight of lamp and star, It calls you where the good winds blow, And the unchanging meadows are: From faded hopes and hopes agleam, It calls you, calls you night and day Beyond the dark into the dream Over the hills and far away

II _To_ R. F. B.

WE are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.

East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease— (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)—

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.

Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark; Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;

We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones; The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;

Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night;

And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;

And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;

And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?

For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set;

And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave.

III

A DESOLATE shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk— The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: Growling, hideous and hoarse, Tales of unnumbered Ships, Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance, In some vile alley of the night Waylaid and bludgeoned— Dead.

Deep cellared in primeval ooze, Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, They lie where the lean water-worm Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, Thus fouled and desecrate, The summons of the Trumpet, and the while These Twain, their murderers, Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, Hang at the heels of their children—She aloft As in the shining streets, He as in ambush at some accomplice door.

The stalwart Ships, The beautiful and bold adventurers! Stationed out yonder in the isle, The tall Policeman, Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers About him in the ancient vacancy, Tells them this way is safety—this way home.

IV

IT came with the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less, And many a man has died; For life upon life took hold and passed, Strong in a fate set free, Out of the deep into the dark On for the years to be.

Between the gloom of a waning moon And the song of an ebbing tide, Chance upon chance of love and death Took wing for the world so wide. O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, Wave out of wave of the sea And who shall reckon what lives may live In the life that we bade to be?

V

WHY, my heart, do we love her so? (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Why does the great sea ebb and flow?— Why does the round world spin? Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me my life renew: What is it worth unless I win, Love—love and you?

Why, my heart, when we speak her name (Geraldine, Geraldine!) Throbs the word like a flinging flame?— Why does the Spring begin? Geraldine, Geraldine, Bid me indeed to be: Open your heart, and take us in, Love—love and me.

VI

ONE with the ruined sunset, The strange forsaken sands, What is it waits, and wanders, And signs with desparate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight— Calls as its chance were vain? The cry of a gull sent seaward Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset, It walks them as its own, These dreary and desolate reaches . . . But O, that it walked alone!

VII

THERE’S a regret So grinding, so immitigably sad, Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . . Do you not know it yet?

For deeds undone Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due, Till there seems naught so despicable as you In all the grin o’ the sun.

Like an old shoe The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie About the beach of Time, till by and by Death, that derides you too—

Death, as he goes His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray, With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way; And then—and then, who knows

But the kind Grave Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, In that black bridewell working out his term, Hanker and grope and crave?

‘Poor fool that might— That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, Think of it, here and thus made over to me In the implacable night!’

And writhing, fain And like a triumphing lover, he shall take His fill where no high memory lives to make His obscene victory vain.

VIII _To_ A. J. H.

TIME and the Earth— The old Father and Mother— Their teeming accomplished, Their purpose fulfilled, Close with a smile For a moment of kindness, Ere for the winter They settle to sleep.

Failing yet gracious, Slow pacing, soon homing, A patriarch that strolls Through the tents of his children, The Sun, as he journeys His round on the lower Ascents of the blue, Washes the roofs And the hillsides with clarity; Charms the dark pools Till they break into pictures; Scatters magnificent Alms to the beggar trees; Touches the mist-folk, That crowd to his escort, Into translucencies Radiant and ravishing: As with the visible Spirit of Summer Gloriously vaporised, Visioned in gold!

Love, though the fallen leaf Mark, and the fleeting light And the loud, loitering Footfall of darkness Sign to the heart Of the passage of destiny, Here is the ghost Of a summer that lived for us, Here is a promise Of summers to be.

IX

‘AS like the Woman as you can’— (_Thus the New Adam was beguiled_)— ‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’— (_God in the Garden heard and smiled_). ‘Your father perished with his day: ‘A clot of passions fierce and blind, ‘He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way: ‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.

‘The Brute that lurks and irks within, ‘How, till you have him gagged and bound, ‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’ (_God in the Garden laughed and frowned_). ‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood ‘In which the race is bid to be, ‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: ‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity!

‘Take for your mate no gallant croup, ‘No girl all grace and natural will: ‘To work her mission were to stoop, ‘Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill. ‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’— (_God in the Garden laughed outright_)— ‘The true refining touch may take, ‘Till both attain to Life’s last height.

‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense. ‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just, ‘Beyond the appeal of Violence, ‘Incapable of common Lust, ‘In mental Marriage still prevail’— (_God in the Garden hid His face_)— ‘Till you achieve that Female-Male ‘In Which shall culminate the race.’

X

MIDSUMMER midnight skies, Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining, sensitive silver of the sea Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn; And all so solemnly still I seem to hear The breathing of Life and Death, The secular Accomplices, Renewing the visible miracle of the world.

The wistful stars Shine like good memories. The young morning wind Blows full of unforgotten hours As over a region of roses. Life and Death Sound on—sound on . . . And the night magical, Troubled yet comforting, thrills As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart Of the wood’s dark wonderment Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks With exquisite visitants: Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires With living looks intolerable, regrets Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been— Beautiful, miserable, distraught— The Law no man may baffle denied and slew.

The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades, What grace, what glamour, what wild will, Transfigure the shadows? Whose, Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?

Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air Teems with them even to the gleaming ends Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you At last—dear love, at last!— Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.

XI

GULLS in an aëry morrice Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . The full sea, sleepily basking, Dreams under skies of dream.

Gulls in an aëry morrice Circle and swoop and close . . . Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the morning blows.

Gulls, in an aëry morrice Frolicking, float and fade . . . O, the way of a bird in the sunshine, The way of a man with a maid!

XII

SOME starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers For ungirt loins and lamps unlit; In front, the unmanageable years, The trap upon the Pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie, And with me quicken and control Some memory that shall magnify The universal Soul.

XIII _To_ James McNeill Whistler

UNDER a stagnant sky, Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble to a broken tune (Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world.

What of the incantation That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore To take and wear the night Like a material majesty? That touched the shafts of wavering fire About this miserable welter and wash— (River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)— Into long, shining signals from the panes Of an enchanted pleasure-house, Where life and life might live life lost in life For ever and evermore?

O Death! O Change! O Time! Without you, O, the insuperable eyes Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!

XIV _To_ J. A. C.

FRESH from his fastnesses Wholesome and spacious, The North Wind, the mad huntsman, Halloas on his white hounds Over the grey, roaring Reaches and ridges, The forest of ocean, The chace of the world. Hark to the peal Of the pack in full cry, As he thongs them before him, Swarming voluminous, Weltering, wide-wallowing, Till in a ruining Chaos of energy, Hurled on their quarry, They crash into foam!

Old Indefatigable, Time’s right-hand man, the sea Laughs as in joy From his millions of wrinkles: Laughs that his destiny, Great with the greatness Of triumphing order, Shows as a dwarf By the strength of his heart And the might of his hands.

Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message:— ‘Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.’

XV

YOU played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong; And was it really I and you? O, since the end of life’s to live And pay in pence the common debt, What should it cost us to forgive Whose daily task is to forget?

You babbled in the well-known voice— Not new, not new the words you said. You touched me off that famous poise, That old effect, of neck and head. Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle’s ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed.

XVI

SPACE and dread and the dark— Over a livid stretch of sky Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train Of huge, primeval presences Stooping beneath the weight Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; While in the haunting loneliness The far sea waits and wanders with a sound As of the trailing skirts of Destiny, Passing unseen To some immitigable end With her grey henchman, Death.

What larve, what spectre is this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear? What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced, in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes In hugger-mugger through eternity?

Life—life—let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!

Life—give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fight I may be snatched and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream.

XVII CARMEN PATIBULARE _To_ H. S.

TREE, Old Tree of the Triple Crook And the rope of the Black Election, ’Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule Can never achieve perfection: So ‘It’s O, for the time of the new Sublime And the better than human way, When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his own And the Wolf shall have his day!’

For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam And the power of provocation, You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit Till your fruit is mere stupration: And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise, And how can we choose but fall, So long as the Hangman makes us dread, And the Noose floats free for all?’