Part 3

Suddenly Shutting our lips upon a jest As we are sipping thoughts from little glasses, A gun bursts thunder and the echoing streets Quiver with startled terrors-- How swift runs fear: quicksilver that is free! Now every muscle weakens, every pulse Is set at gallop-pace and every nerve Stretched taut with horror and a wild revolt.... How sweetly spins the world to noise of music, How sweet to live life's arrogant adventure! Live in a vain world wracked with a thousand pangs, Limp in a dull street housed with crumbling dreams, To breathe and eat and sleep and love and sigh A little longer, oh a little year! Forgotten prayers rise up in resurrection, And resolutions of new wondrous lives Choke up our hearts and fling us to our knees.... Worms creep in dreadful hunger from the ground, The lurid silent people loved by death, And peer into our eyes with sly forebodings To drag our body's glory from the light. Though all the world should fall into their cells And lie within their larders shelf on shelf-- Yet will I toss the sheets of dust away, Yet _will I_ be the mistress of the sun!

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1 A. M.

Look how they struggle in a mist of fire, Those hunchbacked chimneys and distorted domes-- Now gloat on Hell, the colour seems to roar, An army fierce upon its own destruction, A famished monster tearing in its claws Gigantic foods to glut its lean desire Digesting all the world!... Look at the eager people open-mouthed That stand as foolish rabbits hypnotised By the uncoiling rhythm of a snake, Their earth adoring senses caught awhile In the red whirlwind of ascending wings; Their spirits straining upward upon strings Like kites and air balloons, but more grotesque, Lacking the ephemeral beauty of a toy-- Yet for an hour Dyed with the colour that their drabness fears They kiss the feet of beauty as she passes Starwards, tremendous in a coat of fire.

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3 A. M.

The dawn seems drained of blood so colourless-- Slowly the river moves as though in sleep While silent barges Slide from the mist like dreams; The intricate patterns of the scaffolding Are drawn against the sky More delicate than lace. All the shimmering lights Have shrunk away from morning As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail.... I am alone, most utterly alone, More lonely than the last man in the world Straying amid the dust of vanished lives. More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven Who stands beside that nebulous cold river Dividing sleep from death, Eternity from time.... Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn, She brings no feverous memories of night And sheds no tears.

Only two hours ago Fire walked in crimson armour through the city Piercing the night's black tent with glittering javelins, While shrieks and whispered omens flew like bats Among the silver foliage of the stars.... But rage has left no furrow in the sky, No wake of sparks across the placid water.... This is the ominous and sacred hour When priest-like the world kneels Bowed low toward the empty throne of day-- Soon will the herald trumpet-blast be heard And the flamingo messengers will come Flocking from out the burnished cage of sunrise.... This is the hour of nothing, Colourless and chill Oblivion's hands are folded on the world, As sits an idol holding in his fingers A scentless lotus carven out of stone.

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4 A. M.

Leaving the dun river with hurried tapping feet And up the long uncomfortable street With eyes uninterested yet forced to see and read The dingy notices once sharp and bright with greed, Now drear with want, that swear the Queen's Hotel And Brown's Hotel and King's are doing well-- A soldier and a beggar mock me as I go, The light steals after me, emerging slow And pale from the dim alleys shadow-crouched. I hurried by the drunkard as he slouched From lamp-post unto lamp-post.... Then I saw Caught in the mirror of a tailor's door My own reflection as I hurried past, My flaring colours and my face aghast-- The scarlet tassel of my hat that hung Limp as a spent flame, and my skirt that clung About my knees and fluttered at the back: An injured moth, with sulphur stripes and black, My bag flamboyant as a pillar-box; My frayed gilt fringe of hair and tarnished locks. Jagged and crude and swift I seemed to pass Painted too brightly on that temperate glass. ... An omnibus from sudden corner reels: Silence lies mangled underneath the wheels.

1915

O flattery, imposture, battle show, What banners have you woven from the parted raiment, What crimes from Calvary, what endless flow Of blood from blood, revenge, exacted payment!

How have you turned the simple truth to lies Made capital from creeds and missed their beauty, Exalted vainly with self-pitying sighs The wrongs enacted in the name of duty.

And ever quoting God for your excuse, Bribing divinity to cloak your shame, You train the spirit for material use, You sacrifice men's hearts to feed your flame.

When shall the world be rid of these bald priests, Pig-snouted with their gilded wolfish ears, The scarlet cardinals of drunken feasts Whose hands are washed in blood, whose feet in tears?

1916

What will happen to the beggar, and the sinner, and the sad, And the drunk that drinks for sorrow, and the maimed, and mad; What will happen to the starving, and the rebel run from drilling, Cowardly, afraid of fighting, and the child who stole a shilling? They shall go to prison black With a striped shirt on the back, Feast on bread and water there In a cell, without a care. They shall learn at least their duty, Never tempted more of beauty-- They shall walk in rows and praise the Lord, And one or two shall hang upon a cord-- And two or three shall die of grief alone-- (And this is well, for sinners should atone,) And five or six shall curse the God that made them, (And this is wicked, for the priests forbade them,) And those that grew from dust shall go to dust Downtrodden. Saith the preacher:--"God is just."

1917

If I were what I would be, and could break The buttressed fortress of stupidity Where laws are sentinels, and lies the masonry, Surrounded with inertia, weedy lake, Where centuries of mud lie curdled, and the fake Grandeur of cardboard turrets, solemn puppetry-- The gods are blinking at us sleepily, Tired of our games, the muddles that we make, The bloodshed, idol worshipping, the chess Of king, queen, castle, bishop, knight and pawn-- The rigid squares of black and white, they dress With their perpetual challenge--faded, worn, Are all the creeds and praises you profess To weary gods that stretch themselves and yawn.

1917

HOLY RUSSIA

The ghostly blood of thee is in my veins, Back through the centuries of death and birth, Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains, My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth.

And ever as in dreams I seem to see Those streets and people with their colours cold; Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea, The tides of restless passion ages old.

I know thy humours and their contradiction, I know thy fevers and hallucinations, I see beneath the painted mask of fiction Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations.

And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes Into the sick world's travail and her grief, Dost thou from thy long battling surmise The end of battle and the world's relief?

While we are creeping in our crooked ways Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds Where Ignorance walks royally through days That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds.

While we still cry to God for strength to kill, Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves, And grind young bones for the commercial mill, And build munition works among the graves.

Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag," "The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!" Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates brag-- They boast of murder and they reek of shame!...

Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God, And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet, Feeling beneath the burden and the rod His justice and Her pity in the street.

Justice and Pity, crying in the wind-- We only hear the guns that never cease, The flapping of our flags has made us blind! We may not see the sacred gods of peace.

But thou dost build fanatic temples for them, And thou dost pave the road with sanity, And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them, Who died to puff a monarch's vanity.

I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers, The drum that life has snatched away from death, And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears, And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath.

PEACE! But a cynic whispered in my ear How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown That lay amid the dust--and I could hear A hum of money-changing in the town.

I feared that afterwards, when all is won, We shall forget the meaning of thy deed-- And man will creep as he has always done Along the little gutters of his greed.

1917

How deeply nurtured is your foolishness, Calling destruction great and slaughter brave, Making large triumph of a little grave, Imperial purple of a mourning dress, The gun an emblem of your godliness-- A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave, A medal or a bayonet, or rave Of singing, marching in the forward press Of hatred to the banging of a band; Your country's honour and the world's release. Are _they_ not strong in courage who withstand The armies of your folly and shall cease To tarnish with spilt life their motherland? Cowards--or martyrs--crucified for peace.

1917

Of all who died in silence far away Where sympathy was busy with other things, Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay, Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings.

The little dead who knew so large a love, Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying.

Of all the tenderness that flowed to them, A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast, Stars were they to her night, and she the stem From which they flowered--now barren and left unblessed.

Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands, Now stifled in the darkness of a grave With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands.

No more!--And we, the mourners, dare not wear The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain, But must don purple and bright standards bear, Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train.

We dare not weep who must be brave in battle-- "Another death--another day--another inch of land-- The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ... The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand....

Of all who died in darkness far away Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now, His arms held crosswise to the budding day, The passion-red roses clustering his brow.

1917

And afterwards, when honour has made good, And all you think you fight for shall take place, A late rejoicing to a crippled race; The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food, The eagles fly to their forsaken brood, Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace Shall spread a blush across the haggard face Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.

In victory will you have conquered Hate, And stuck old Folly with a bayonet And battered down the hideous prison gate? Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet, Glutted with gold and dust and empty state, The incense of our anguish and our sweat?

1917

Pity the slain that laid away their lives, Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves, Thin little children and widowed wives, And the broken soldier who survives.

Pity the woman whose body was sold For a little bread or a little gold, And a little fire to keep out the cold, So tired, and fearful of growing old.

Pity the people in the grey street Before the dawn trooping with listless feet Down to their work in the dust and the heat, For a little bread and a little meat.

Pity the criminal sentenced to die, Loving life so, with the world in his eye, In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry Of love that will call when he may not reply.

Pity them all, the imperative faces That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces, Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places, With indolent postures and frivolous graces.

Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin That batters the door and staggers in.... The streets surround with clamour and din,

Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity, Force us to sigh and arrange a committee, Tea-party charity danced to a ditty....

The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave, A rebel flag on a rebel grave, But to us the strong alone are brave, And only the rich are worthy to save!

Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled, Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled, Flags that blow where the dead are hurled, Tattered and dripping with blood of the world!

1918

FLAME

You have understood so little of me, and my adoration That shone upon my forehead, like a crown of curious stones, You turned into a cap and bells for Folly's coronation And made a foolish tinkling from my laughter and my moans.

You have led me through the market like an ass upon the halter, You have fed me upon thistles; I was driven by the crowd; But my faith in what I am, my conceit, you cannot alter; I was proud in pomp and purple, as a clown I leave you proud!

A greater pride than sits upon a throne for mere adorning, A fiercer strength than in the gods of wood that cannot bow; I tore my purple into rags and knelt to bear your scorning, And I am rebel leader to a band of beggars now.

In the twilight of my love I stand and strew the bitter ashes; They are blown into my eyes again, the fires that shone for you; In the blushing of the sunset their ghostly fervour flashes As they sink for everlasting in the darkness and the dew.

Your heart is as a moonstone hieroglyphed with secret letters; You have never read my passion, as I never learnt their sign, But I praise your haunting beauty and I bear the bruise of fetters And I reel from your remembrance as I spill the ancient wine. All those women I have envied with their pink and foolish faces, Moths that have out-distanced me in circling round your head, For the strangeness of your kisses and the curse of your embraces And the frenzy of pursuing where your despot feet have led.

I will shout, and tear the darkness; I will snuff the candles sacred With the rage of my abasement, with the blast of my farewell; I will smile with cynic softness, but my tears are dropping acrid And sizzling in a gutter down the white-hot streets of Hell!

1914

Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day, And mild the heavens, burnt out like an ash. Hungry and strange along the shadowed dusk Walks Melancholy, and with bitter mouth Sucks the last juices from the sun's ripe fruit. Now can I sing the sickly lines of love And of love's failure, spell my sorrows out In the sad spaces of the gloaming night, And stooping, huddled, hide me in the dark. My words were fireless in the flaming sun, And all the throats of flowers from their content Puffed back my pinings proudly in my face And bade me give them tunes to make them dance.... Lean, hungry, like my love the moon looks down From the white solitudes of Heaven. All aghast And sterile as the arms of my desire She flings her light despairing on the sky. The night is strange and still, for dropping tears, Or burying hatred in a deep-dug grave.

1914

Washed at my feet by the curded foam of sluggish waves, As the rain splinters and the mud gleams with malicious light, Like a frail shell, million tinged and quaintly wrought The thought of you, which held against mine ear Hums all the echoed melodies of your soul; The sigh of wearied life, the ebbing sweet of love, The little tunes of wine mixed with the chants of death, The following of beauty's fugitive limbs Whose classic feet, and rapturous pale breast Gleam on the clouds and foam, Call to her lovers.-- Thus standing in the blasting of the wind, And numb with ceaseless drip of moments from the cloud Of lowering hours, I toy with this strange relic of the sea, Turned with such perfectness from her tumultuous wheels, Thoughts of you million tinged and quaintly wrought.

1916

My poems cannot laugh. They are the voice Of birds that mourn and cry above the sea, And this wild joy my love has brought to me Lies dumb and knows not how it shall rejoice.

I am most weary of the petulant songs I sing, Most tired of tunes that only learn to weep, And long to turn my dreams from their pale sleep Into a gentle minstrelsy with harp of silver string;

To fashion for my love one perfect verse Symmetrically threaded by beauty word on word, Flowing and flashing like the luted laughter of a bird To bless the soul with music which I ravished with a curse.

But as a coward in the general gloom I mimic fortune with my tunes of ill, Nor pipe despite her wistful mirth and trill Of love that moves with music into Doom;

Of love that thrills with joy the graveyard cold, And like a gay canary in a cage Mocks at his prison, and with flippant rage Flaunts his bright wing to fill the gloom with gold.

1916

On the hill there is a tavern, long-loved, well-remembered, Where all the sleepy afternoon the little tables dream, And the cool green bottles ranged, laugh and gleam with golden highlights, And the waiters wrangle, and the flies, with murmurs merged and mixed. We will go there, you and I, to wake the nodding contentment, And toast our fancies reverently with red wine and with white wine, And with eyes mesmerised to the horizon gazing, Dream our iridescent dreams and sigh our shadowy sighs.

1916

Oh canst thou not hear in my heart all its whispering fears Whose wind-like voices Flutter the leaves of my hope and bow them with tears While the body rejoices. Till all the pomp and beauty of day, the Cardinal Sun Trailing his scarlet vesture Leaves after light the pale hills sullen and dun, Turns with a gesture Colour and glory to smoke that is deathly and grey. I follow the shadows of sorrow That press so close to the dancing heels of the day And darken the morrow. The world turns pale and cold, for I seem to see Beyond its golden visor The leering skull that derides at our lives and me Being older than life and wiser.... I hear the cry of the world that writhes to the lash of the whip Beyond the sound of the treetops singing To the wind's persuasive violins and bells of dews that drip, Or rush of feathers winging.... Dost thou fear death as I? Ah no, but thy lips are against my cheek Murmuring tenderly The perfumed lies stolen from spring that wistfully through the bleak Windows of frost so slenderly Steals her little ghost's flute. Thou tellest of things that might be If life were as kind as a lover, If we were beloved of the world and the world of we. Thy white words hover Dove-like in rose leaf evenings over the nest Silvering heaven With rustle of lovers that nestle together for rest. If I could have given My tired lips to kisses and my body to sleep and to thee, Ah then and then only The dust were as gentleness mingling thy beauty with me And death were not lonely.

1916

As in the silence the clear moonlight drips Among the fields that love her drowsily, These passionate moments trickle on through time, From soul to languorous soul. Like mad musicians upon fretted harps, The senses play upon the poignant nerves,-- And colours clothe our mood As smoke against the light, as shimmering prisms Irised with pallors of an opal's heart In which the glittered pattern of desire Smoulders and changes.... O love, thou nightingale-throated singer, Thread on thy jewelled chords from start to star And keep thy silver delicate delight Out of the flush and lustre that makes mad. Let thy fairy feet Go tripping down a scarcely scented path, Between an avenue of breathless flowers. The hours glide by as swans across a lake, Across the luminous waters of desire, And beat as wings the rustle of soft words, As love bends down, Breathing his adoration on a fainting mouth.

1917

I can but give thee unsubstantial things Wrapt as in rose-leaves between thought and thought, No gems or garments marvellously wrought On ivory spools with rare embroiderings. Nor for thy fingers precious, fabled rings That cardinals have worn, and queens have bought With blood and beauty. I have only sought A song that hovers on illusive wings.

Accept from me a dream that hath no art, I give my empty hands for thee to hold, Take thou the gift of silence for my part, With all the deeper things I have not told. Yet if thou canst, decipher in my heart Its passions writ in hieroglyphs of gold.

1917

I

I have no other friend but thee, But while I tell thee all my thought Thine ears are buzzing with gossip of dreams, Soothsayings and sighs, and little things-- How canst thou listen to me?

II

Perchance I roamed under the old moon too long, And when my cheek grew pale I laid it against thine to feel the blood beat back Responsive in the double rose of joy-- But I feel thee shifting away into loneliness Where the ghost moon glides between us....

III

When at a masquerade I meet thee in the shrill indifferent throng, Our faces painted each in some disguise Of varnished revelry; I whisper in thine ear Fables, and flatteries, and inconsequent tales, Trivial as the dust that whirls about our feet, And shower the multicoloured streamers high Where Folly is king of midnight-- Suddenly dost thou snatch thy mask aside, And thy still face looks out, Weary and overwise Where the mad pretence avails not.

IV

Long ago we walked together in a garden; It was evening and the leaves fell down; Silently we passed over the dead, the fallen, Over flowers and branches that were withered there-- And the air was weary with the scent of other days, A fragrance faint and pensive. The sighing of the leaves beneath our feet Were as old dreams retold, Stirred from the golden quilt of memory, And farewells rang their whispering bells, Tolling the days away. But peace lay folded between our hands As we thought of the vanishing years And of love dying in the arms of love.

V

Sometimes I look into the glass And see my face without the conquering light That gave me glamour when I gave thee love. Fain would I bathe in the fountains of beauty, To glitter with the crystals of her sparkling desire, And touch with my feet the floors of a bright paven Hell, And rear my head among the lilies of Heaven. I would be for thee As a ring of white flowers on the sward, As a red fire playing to thy breath, As a flock of kingfishers Surprised from the dark fringe of rushes! Remember only this, My will toward all loveliness, and look Deep in thyself for my reflected soul.

VI