Part 4

Be perfect--for I love thee more in thought Than thou canst reach in every trivial day. Since days are as the flowers on a wreath That wither while we bind them each to each. Only the soul is timeless, and no round of days Can wall it in a little space of ground. Sometimes our minds are cheated by the clock And crave love, wisdom, joy within an hour, But the patient spirit stands Waiting the last fulfilment. Around thy soul my thoughts are as garlands Or as an endless rosary. Be perfect! lest my psalm should falter And my hands part from the unriveted faith With Amen scarcely sighed.

1917

Bodies heaving like waves, Sighing through the dishevelled tresses of foam, The massive whiteness of limbs flung out of shadow, Splashed with ecstasial moonlight, Sculptured voluptuously in ephemeral marbles. Lingering touch of fingers, Cooler than the curving ringlets of spray Fluting the new-blown petals of a shell, And kisses murmuring as the lips of darkness Against the ivory forehead of the moon.

1919

Your face to me is like a beautiful city Dreaming forever by the rough wild sea, And I the ship upon a wilderness of waves Heavily laden with memories.... I roam over all the earth Making rhymes of you, and singing songs, Because your face will never let me rest, Because I can not frame it in a star Surrounded with my cloudy reveries, Because I may not pluck it like a flower To breathe the incense of its perfumed soul-- Your face is like the carved hilt of a sword Whose sheath is in my breast!

1918

Oh! why will you not let me love you Well enough? You have plucked my blossoms, Gathered the leaves And revived them with water; But all the tortuous roots Delving for your spirit In subterranean passions With a blind unresting desire, Have you felt them, have you known? In the blackest night of sleep Though I be sunk a thousand fathoms In the cerulean depths of slow oblivion, My soul still swims toward you Against the envious pressure of the tide.... You who are so tired, so filled with sleep That you would brush a rose-leaf from your cheek Lest its heaviness should stir your rest, How can you shoulder the weight of my great burden That is too vast for me to bear alone? I tell you Love is no little thing, No moth-winged Cupid painted on the air, No thin flute music petaling the silence As leaves that flutter from a cherry tree. It is the thought that broods upon its death, The dread of mountains looking to the storm Ere shrieks of lightning cleave their breasts in twain. It is the fire that pillars up the stars To mix its flame with their eternal gold. Oh, listen to me! You shall hear my message sung from sphere to sphere As star-dust pouring a path through Heaven. You shall know me In the pensive shadows of trees, In the luminary phantoms Reflected in the stillness of a lake; In the arrows of sunlight shot through meshing leaves And quivering in the moss; In the abandoned play of breakers Showering their crystals to the moon; In the folly of rainbow dolphins. I only ask of you To be the diver in my deepest pool, To bring from out its blue obscurity The things my life has moulded unaware, Treasures my passion and my hunger fashioned In loneliness of prayer unlit by life, Created out of nothing save myself Within the blind fast silence of the soul.

1918

My devotion kneels to you, Holding a candle to illumine your face. My loneliness is your shadow Along the solitary roads. My passion is a book between your hands Whose leaves are as the leaves of violets, A volume of pressed flowers Scenting your fingers though you read it not. And my white faith Is a silken surplice clothing you in peace.

1919

ISLANDS

As launched upon the loneliness of time We float and dream of what the waves conceal, Each like a thought that rolls with rapid zeal Succeeded by a breaker of fierce crime, Or curling passion, or a rhythm of rhyme, Or indolent ripple sighing at the keel-- Beyond us, though our fretted longings reel, The lulled horizon sleeps, the still hours climb-- So toss our weary ships, till from afar Our visioned island rises suddenly, Where palaces like cloudy colours are, With scented gardens terraced to the sea, The silver steps to our appointed star Where gleam the spires that pierce eternity.

1917

Many things I'd find to charm you, Books and scarves and silken socks, All the seven rainbow colours Black and white with 'broidered clocks. Then a stick of polished whalebone And a coat of tawny fur, And a row of gleaming bottles Filled with rose-water and myrrh. Rarest brandy of the 'fifties, Old liqueurs in leather kegs, Golden Sauterne, copper sherry And a nest of plover's eggs. Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper, Little boxes cut in jade; Handkerchiefs of finest cambric, Damask cloths and dim brocade. Six musicians of the Magyar, Madness making harmony; And a bed austere and narrow With a quilt from Barbary. You shall have a bath of amber, A Venetian looking-glass, And a crimson-chested parrot On a lawn of terraced grass. Then a small Tanagra statue Found anew in ruins old, Or an azure plate from Persia, Or my hair in plaits of gold; Or my scalp that like an Indian You shall carry for a purse, Or my spilt blood in a goblet ... Or a volume of my verse.

1916

LAMPLIGHT AND STARLIGHT

LAMP-POSTS

The eternal flame of laughter and desire Breaks the long darkness with a little glance, Till all the gloom is radiant in a dance Of yellow hopefulness, reflecting fire That dreams from Heaven's lamps as we aspire Sadly toward their jubilance--Romance Of faery glitter in the streets of chance-- Those beacon-trees that blossom from the mire Within the fog of our despairing gloom; In the glum alleys, down the haunted night Through tunnelling of subterranean doom, Among the grovelling shadows, kingly bright, They bear their coronets of golden bloom To front our anguish with their brave delight.

1917

LONDON

Richer than fields of corn that fire in summer, Strange as the moon on forest rising sudden, More fearful and beloved than peace or silence, Heart with my heart at pace in throbbing fever, Calling towards me with a voice incessant. Thou that begot me: From whose streets triumphant I, coloured fiercely with thy passion, wakened! I sucked red wine, not milk, from thy gaunt bosom, My senses in thy fearfulness found beauty, And honey in thine oaths and lamentations. I played about thy feet that know not resting And bathed me in the sweat of thine endeavour.

When on thy gala-nights the thronged lamps glitter, Sparkle like sequins, and the plumes of shadow With curling smoke, with rain and rippling gutter Are tossed in feathered gaiety about thee-- Thick grow the crowded streets in coloured pageant, Kaleidoscope of people, circling, crossing, Till the brain frenzies to a thousand patterns, While the ears buzz with noises of their laughter; Shouts hoarse and coarse and shrill in one great roaring, As of the angry ocean in her travail ... They haunt me in the tranquil of the forest, Those faces pain has marked and toil has mangled; Pangs greater than the lonely Crucifixion Here crucified each day with lust and hunger, Hung up unlovely in the open market; Made gay with paper garlands, covered over With tinsel loincloth, painted like a puppet, Lest the elect in passing should be startled, Lest they should smear the blameless brow of honour! With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward, And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour Lie underneath the feet forever dancing. Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle, Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal, Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels. I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken, The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows; The faces red as fire and dead as ashes, A million faces scattered like confetti, All changing, whirling, trodden into nothing. There Beauty wanders strange, an-hungered, weary, Throned on a dust-heap, or triumphant reeling In mad disorder from the couch of chaos.

O ragged Beauty, through the mournful houses, How frail the feet that lead the dawn towards us, Blushed in the sunrise with a great ambition, Spent in the evening like a rose of fever, Fainting before us paler than a lily. While here each day self-satisfied and placid Moves opulent among the groves of summer; The larks delight, the laughter of the thrushes, The kindly peasants in their ruddy orchard, Please for a while until the spirit sickens And turns her panting to her ancient lover.

Oh, well I know the quickening of the pulses, Joy bursting through disgust as field and pasture Grow fewer, paler, till the eager houses Like hungry animals eat up the spaces And close upon the miles that God created, With triumph of man's greed. As warriors listening To the far rhythm in the drums of battle, As seamen hear the mighty tide-wave bursting, I feel the scamper of your feet approaching And your great starving arms and strangling fingers That drag me back to my perverted Heaven!

1914

Slowly the pale feet of morning Tread out the ashes of midnight still burning with feverous lamplight, Colourless, cold, as the rainclad Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out sea-ward. Slowly the fingers of dawn-light Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium, Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion. Smoothly the wild hair of darkness Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep veils. Patiently, Morning, the priestess Drones out a psalm for the souls that we damned in the blackness, Gashed with the daggers of street-lights, Crushing the poisonous berries of sinister kisses,-- Morning with healing and kindness Folds up the dresses dishevelled with terror and laughter, Sweeps up the rags of our shadows That danced in a red smoke of dreams on the walls of oblivion.

1919

What have I to do with them, The red athletes in their snow-white clothes? They are sun lovers and moon haters, Toiling or playing in the fields Whereon no shadows lie, Pensively, whispering together-- They are space lovers and haters of the stars, Soundly they sleep by night nor ever see The tiaraed brows of darkness. I weary of their striving upward and onward, Away from the green hush of twilight, Where silence drips from the trees, Away from the solemn avenues Where the ghosts blow by Along with a drift of leaves.

Let us linger awhile Far away from the frets and wars of the world, From the strong men With their strident hymning voices and marching feet-- Let us walk alone For the love of our own shadows Stretching their length on lawns of powdered silver, With behind us the sky's grey curtain Drawn backward from the moon.... Let us sit by the fireside And hear the wind's shrill orchestras, Fiddle and fife and flute, And omened bagpipe screaming.... Let us lie abed and dream Through the long summer's morning Of trivial things, and beautiful.... Let us dance with Folly when midnight knocks on his golden gong; Let us run through pools of wine And be splashed with purple. Let us, being sick, make merry, And rejoice when we are weary. Let us sit by our grave as at a banquet, Drinking to Death.

What have we to do with them, Sons of the sun and the soil, Daughters of the hearth and the field? They that remake the world Melting our idols for silver, Our goblets for gold; Tearing our temples down To build their red brick villages.

The doomed world faints into mist, World of our indolence and dreams, And the faces and bodies we love Sink through oblivion, and are seen Dimly, as divers through the waters. Old worlds and new worlds! Let us slip between them, And float on the stream that floweth nowhither-- Our red ambitions burn To a blue smoke of forgetting; Our moonshine faints on the tide that goeth out, As the sun leers to the tide that cometh in.

1918

Among the crumbling arches of decay Where all around the red new buildings crept, Where huge machines had rolled the past away, And the dead princes lay accursed and slept;

Among the ruins I beheld a man Who heeded not the engines as they neared, Painting dead carnivals upon a fan, He smiled and trifled with his pointed beard.

And here and there were flung a mess of things, Tokens and fripperies and faded dresses, Kept from the courtships of a thousand kings, Tossed roses for the tossing of caresses.

A carven sabre hung upon the wall, A toy thing, with no rust of blood upon it, A tray of glasses, an embroidered shawl, A muff, a bottle and a feathered bonnet.

And mirrors flashed their argent memories Out of the shadows where they laughed and gleamed, While ghostly faces of past vanities Come back to dream there where they once had dreamed.

The stranger turned his head and bowed to me And waved me vaguely to a gilded chair. I spoke: "You are a connoisseur, I see, You really have a fine collection there."

He bowed to me again, and in his hand Dangled a string of gems, they caught my eye With beckoning lights--I could not understand-- His fingers seemed to touch them like a sigh

So much he loved their frail inconsequence. I spoke of progress conquering decay, And tired the stillness with my common sense Loud-spoken in the jargon of the day.

But I have never met so queer a man, "I better love my memories," he said, "Look at those painted figures on the fan, How delicate and wistful are the dead."

1917

As a nun's face from her black draperies So full of mystery the moon looks down. She dreams of a passion that shall outlive time, Of Beauty's face beheld unveiled and close, Of God Who blows the worlds like bubbles up, Smiling away, to watch them swell and die. She dreams of music played among the stars When the slow tongues of silence are unloosed. Above the city glittering giddily, Above the jostling heads of man she moves, Strange as a dreamer walking in her sleep.

1912

The sun is lord of life and colour, Blood of the rose and hyacinth, Hair of the sea and forests, Crown of the cornfields, Body of the hills. The moon is the harlot of Death, Slaughterer of the Sun, Priestess and poisoner she goes With all her silver flock of wandering souls, Her chant of wailing waters, The bed of shimmering dust from which she comes Bound all around with bandages of mist.... The living are as blossoms and fruit on the tree, The dead are as lilies and wind on the marshes; The living are as cherries that bow to the morning Beckoning to the loitering stranger, The wind, to sing them his eerie ballads. The dead are as frozen skeleton branches Whereon the stillness perches like an owl.... The dead are as snows on the cherry orchard.

1918

BAHAMA ISLANDS

I

All down the somnolent street where pale tinged houses dream The negroes go, black faces crowding together; And between the palm leaves dancing with lethargic gestures, The bright long water spreads, green as a parrot's wing-- We have rest here and a monotony of wheels, A peaceful noise like bees that moan in June-- And the sun rusts not, but his brazen heraldries Tarnished with evening are burnished with the dawn. Yet pain comes stabbing in the night with silver knife through the window, A blanched moon full of fear and the burden of desire-- And nothing rids us utterly of grief, We who have pilgrim souls that will not sleep.

II

Moonlight planting the world with lilies, so hushed it seems and scented, But in the chapel is a droning where the negroes chant their hymns And we in aureoled loneliness go down the street contented, With hearts that beat for pleasure to the rhythm of our limbs.

1917

THOUGHTS OF LONDON

Oh, have I bartered and forgotten thee, Selling thy tarnished twilights for gold sun, Relinquishing thy dreams that used to run A ragged troop along thy streets with me? Cast off the glitter of thy jewelry, Thy lamp-light, starlight, colours crudely spun, The eloquent ugliness, the roofs of dun, The fogs that swathe in bands of mystery? Mother of dreams and laughter and despair! Thy joy my Heaven is, my Hell thy pain, Thy labyrinthian streets wind everywhere, Thy sins and passions baffle me again; And all my hopes thy lamps that flick and glare, And all my griefs thy beggars in the rain.

1918

STREETS

I am going Up and down the roads and alleys Through the forests of the city, Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams. My mind shall wander through the streets Whistling to a vague adventure, Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer And casting them away. Dusk is creeping through the town Lighting the lamps and loitering, Leaving smoky clouds of shadow, Hovering clouds of peace; And behind her race the winds Whining to the scent of darkness, Scattering the dust With their swift hounds' feet.... I am a hunter in the city's jungle, Exploring all her secret mysteries. I know her well, The moaning highways, And whispering alleys, The chimney-dishevelled roofs Where the moon walks delicately As a stray spectral cat; The little forlorn squares Where one tree stands Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers Over the benches where the people sit And stir not from their sullen postures, Staring out where evening passes With such a sauntering dreamy step. I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands, Fluttered with flags and child imaginings, Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy, Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts. Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate Picks up the littered wreck of holiday To mount the dust heap where our memories lie Sprawled in a mess of ruins.... I know her monotone of gloomy mansions, Repeating each in each a dull despair, Indifferent and dignified; Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold, With dismal silences of velvet carpets, Where starving souls are kept Feeding upon each other's isolations, Not daring to escape.... Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me With their crude temples built in praise of lust, Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears, Their hats atilt like halos on their heads....

I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd, Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust.... I love the memory-crusted taverns In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune Until the dawn, Like a white minstrel stopped to sing Fantastic serenades, and called me forth Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning Dew-prismed shone the sun.... I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses Are bathed in vitriol twilights, Spitting smoke, Or making oaths and mouths at one another.... While between The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin.... Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes I see the flickering pallor of the lamps, Reflective of the solitude of stars.... And I am thrilled With horror and the hope for tragedies....

But, they surround my heart these weary streets, Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths, And through them pass forever Those shadow figures trudging through the grey Like penitent souls through haunted corridors.... Ah, Grief, thou wanderer, Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet! Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes, Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears, And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer. Through all the winding mazes of the city Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen, And thou dost stand before the gate of brass, And by the iron door, Under the windows where we sit and wait For some sweet promise to unfold itself From the shut scrolls of sleep, And at the dusty curtain that divides Glory from Death, And lover from the lover....

Now in my room I sit And round me falls the darkness In rustling folds of peace. But round my heart I know No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound To shut the city out. For I shall feel the rush of streets Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos, Piercing the night's remote divinity. And I shall never rid me of these scars That time and man have cut into my thought, Never shake off my shoulders The burden of the city's pain. Oh, never shall we escape thee, Mother of mutiny and want, Thou beautiful mistress of Grief.... Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights Beating with ineloquent hands The tambourines of time, The drums of war; Fevering our minds With the swollen traffic of thoughts, The wheels and rattle of an endless search....

Tired I am with wandering, Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds, More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey, Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars!...

1918

Laughter and singing come with the morning, When Life doth mask his face with a gilded visor, And dons his arrogant clothes. But in the night, When the unsheathed moon stands naked and pale, We too put off our opulent disguise And stand alone in the baffling darkness, Fighting with our sins, Weeping for our loneliness, That moon-like gropes forever through the desolate air.

1918

In the night I hear my loneliness calling The long shrill note of the seabird's cry Over the fuming spite of breakers, Over the brumous, sulky tides. All the ocean is craving Heavenward, And the wild sky crushes downward toward the sea, Where the clouds stoop their passionate bodies, And the waves rear their supplicating hands. Mine eyes grow tired of looking outward forever, Away from the firelight and my sleeping idols, To where the darkness is shattered with gusts of white, Wings of ship, and bird, and cloud, and wave, Flashing their signals of unrest.-- My longing is a warm thing in a cold street, Taking refuge by the chinks of lighted doors-- My longing is a pale ghost stepping into the sunlight That falls in golden curtains sumptuous and hushed-- My longing is a fiddler making a thin tune through the silence, Through the heavy pauses of sleep.-- Ah! Stop up my ears lest I hear my longing call, Lest I hear my loneliness crying!

1918

SUNDAY