Part 2

O full of candour and compassion, Whom love and worship both would praise, Love cannot frame nor worship fashion The image of your fearless ways!

How show your noble brow's dark pallor, Your chivalrous casque of ebon hair, Your eyes' bright strength, your lips' soft valour, Your supple shoulders and hands that dare?

Our souls when naïvely you examine, Your sword of innocence, flaming, huge, Sweeps over us, and there is famine Within the ports of subterfuge.

You hate contempt and love not laughter; With your sharp spear of virgin will You harry the wicked strong; but after, O huntress who could never kill,

Should they be trodden down or pierced, Swift, swift, you fly with burning cheek To place your beauty's shield reversed Above the vile defenceless weak!

EPILOGUE

Than farthest stars more distant, A mile more, A mile more, A voice cries on insistent: "You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too; But numb at last And dumb at last, Whatever port you cling to, You must come at last to a hill.

"And never a man you'll find there To take your hand And shake your hand; But when you go behind there You must make your hand a sword

"To fence with a foeman swarthy, And swink there Nor shrink there, Though cowardly and worthy Must drink there one reward."

DIALOGUE

THE ONE

The dead man's gone, the live man's sad, the dying leaf shakes on the tree, The wind constrains the window-panes and moans like moaning of the sea, And sour's the taste now culled in haste of lovely things I won too late, And loud and loud above the crowd the Voice of One more strong than we.

THE OTHER

This Voice you hear, this call you fear, is it unprophesied or new? Were you so insolent to think its rope would never circle you? Did you then beastlike live and walk with ears and eyes that would not turn? Who bade you hope your service 'scape in that eternal retinue?

THE ONE

No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind, I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind, Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desired To make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind.

THE OTHER

Ignorance, then, was all your fault and filmèd eyes that could not know, That half discerned and never learned the temporal way that men must go; You set the image of the world high for your heart's idolatry, Though with your lips you called the world a toy, a ghost, a passing show.

THE ONE

No, no; this is not true; my lips spoke only what my heart believed. Called I the world a toy; I spoke not echo-like or self-deceived. But that I thought the toy was mine to play with, and the passing show Would sate at least my passing lusts, and did not, therefore am I grieved.

What did I do that I must bear this lifelong tyranny of my fate, That I must writhe in bonds unsought of accidental love and hate? Had chance but joined different dice, but once or twice, but once or twice, All lovely things that I desired I should have held before too late.

Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize, But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise. Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise.

THE OTHER

No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay, No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way, Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men, That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may.

Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum; Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come; Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied; Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb.

O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue, All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung, Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all, Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung.

STARLIGHT

Last night I lay in an open field And looked at the stars with lips sealed; No noise moved the windless air, And I looked at the stars with steady stare.

There were some that glittered and some that shone With a soft and equal glow, and one That queened it over the sprinkled round, Swaying the host with silent sound.

"Calm things," I thought, "in your cavern blue, I will learn and hold and master you; I will yoke and scorn you as I can, For the pride of my heart is the pride of a man."

Grass to my cheek in the dewy field, I lay quite still with lips sealed, And the pride of a man and his rigid gaze Stalked like swords on heaven's ways.

But through a sudden gate there stole The Universe and spread in my soul; Quick went my breath and quick my heart, And I looked at the stars with lips apart.

SONG

There is a wood where the fairies dance All night long in a ring of mushrooms daintily, By each tree bole sits a squirrel or a mole, And the moon through the branches darts.

Light on the grass their slim limbs glance, Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, But they never break their hearts.

They never grieve at all for sands that run, They never know regret for a deed that's done, And they never think of going to a shed with a gun At the rising of the sun.

CREPUSCULAR

No creature stirs in the wide fields. The rifted western heaven yields The dying sun's illumination. This is the hour of tribulation When, with clear sight of eve engendered, Day's homage to delusion rendered, Mute at her window sits the soul.

Clouds and skies and lakes and seas, Valleys and hills and grass and trees, Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her Limbs of one lordless challenger, Who, without deigning taunt or frown. Throws a perennial gauntlet down: "Come conquer me and take thy toll."

No cowardice or fear she knows, But, as once more she girds, there grows An unresignèd hopelessness From memory of former stress. Head bent, she muses whilst he waits: How with such weapons dint his plates? How quell this vast and sleepless giant Calmly, immortally defiant, How fell him, bind him, and control With a silver cord and a golden bowl?

FOR MUSIC

Death in the cold grey morning Came to the man where he lay; And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered And the dawn was grey.

And the face of the man was grey in the dawn, And the watchers by the bed Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves, That the man was dead.

THE FUGITIVE

Flying his hair and his eyes averse, Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. How could our song his charms rehearse? Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

High on a down we found him last, Shy as a hare, he fled as fast; How could we clasp him or ever he passed? Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

How could we cling to his limbs that shone, Ravish his cheeks' red gonfalon, Or the wild-skin cloak that he had on? Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

For the wind of his feet still straightly shaping, He loosed at our breasts from his eyes escaping One crooked swift glance like a javelin leaping. Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

And his feet passed over the sunset land From the place forlorn where a forlorn band Watching him flying we still did stand. Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.

Vanishing now who would not stay To the blue hills on the verge of day. O soft! soft! Music play, Fading away, (Fleet are his feet And his heart apart) Fading away.

ECHOES

There is a far unfading city Where bright immortal people are; Remote from hollow shame and pity, Their portals frame no guiding star But blightless pleasure's moteless rays That follow their footsteps as they dance Long lutanied measures through a maze Of flower-like song and dalliance.

There always glows the vernal sun, There happy birds for ever sing, There faint perfumed breezes run Through branches of eternal spring; There faces browned and fruit and milk And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses In galleys gowned with gold and silk Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.

Coyness is not, nor bear they thought, Save of a shining gracious flow; All natural joys are temperate sought. For calm desire there they know, A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind; They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels, Nor blow about on anger's wind, Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals.

Folk in the far unfading city, Burning with lusts my senses are, I am torn with love and shame and pity, Be to my heart a guiding star: Wise youths and maidens in the sun, With eyes that charm and lips that sing, And gentle arms that rippling run, Shed on my heart your endless spring!

THE MIND OF MAN

I

Beneath my skull-bone and my hair, Covered like a poisonous well, There is a land: if you looked there What you saw you'd quail to tell. You that sit there smiling, you Know that what I say is true.

My head is very small to touch, I feel it all from front to back, An earèd round that weighs not much, Eyes, nose-holes, and a pulpy crack: Oh, how small, how small it is! How could countries be in this?

Yet, when I watch with eyelids shut, It glimmers forth, now dark, now clear, The city of Cis-Occiput, The marshes and the writhing mere, The land that every man I see Knows in himself but not in me.

II

Upon the borders of the weald (I walk there first when I step in) Set in green wood and smiling field, The city stands, unstained of sin; White thoughts and wishes pure Walk the streets with steps demure.

In its clean groves and spacious halls The quiet-eyed inhabitants Hold innocent sunny festivals And mingle in decorous dance; Things that destroy, distort, deface, Come never to that lovely place.

Never could evil enter thither, It could not live in that sweet air, The shadow of an ill deed must wither And fall away to nothing there. You would say as there you stand That all was beauty in the land.

* * * * *

But go you out beyond the gateway, Cleave you the woods and pass the plain, Cross you the frontier down, and straightway The trees will end, the grass will wane, And you will come to a wilderness Of sticks and parchèd barrenness.

The middle of the land is this, A tawny desert midmost set, Barren of living things it is, Saving at night some vampires flit That nest them in the farther marish Where all save vilest things must perish.

Here in this reedy marsh of green And oily pools, swarm insects fat And birds of prey and beasts obscene, Things that the traveller shudders at, All cunning things that creep and fly To suck men's blood until they die.

Rarely from hence does aught escape Into the world of outer light, But now and then some sable shape Outward will dash in sudden flight; And men stand stonied or distraught To know the loathly deed or thought.

But, ah! beyond the marsh you reach A purulent place more vile than all, A festering lake too foul for speech, Rotten and black, with coils acrawl, Where writhe with lecherous squeakings shrill Horrors that make the heart stand still.

There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies, The mere alive with slimy worms, With perverse terrible infamies, And murders and repulsive forms That have no name, but slide here deep, Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.

A REASONABLE PROTESTATION

[_To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of dogmatic statement_]

Not, I suppose, since I deny Appearance is reality, And doubt the substance of the earth Does your remonstrance come to birth; Not that at once I both affirm 'Tis not the skin that makes the worm And every tactile thing with mass Must find its symbol in the grass And with a cool conviction say Even a critic's more than clay And every dog outlives his day. This kind of vagueness suits your view, You would not carp at it; for you Did never stand with those who take Their pleasures in a world opaque. For you a tree would never be Lovely were it but a tree, And earthly splendours never splendid If by transience unattended. Your eyes are on a farther shore Than any of earth; nor do adore As godhead God's dead hieroglyph. Nor would you be perturbed if Some prophet with a voice of thunder And avalanche arm should blast and founder The logical pillars that maintain This visible world which loads the brain, Loads the brain and withers the heart And holds man from his God apart.

But still with you remains the craving For some more solid substance, having Surface to touch, colour to see, And form compact in symmetry. You are not satisfied with these Vague throbbings, nameless ecstasies, Nor can your spirit find delight In an amorphic great white light. Not with such sickles can you reap; If a dense earth you cannot keep You want a dense heaven as substitute With trees of plump celestial fruit, Red apples, golden pomegranates, And a river flowing by tall gates Of topaz and of chrysolite And walls of twenty cubits height.

Frank, you cry out against the age! Nor you nor I can disengage Ourselves from that in which we live Nor seize on things God does not give. Thirsty as you, perhaps, I long For courtyards of eternal song, Even as yours my feet would stray In a city where 'tis always day And a green spontaneous leafy garden With God in the middle for a warden; But though I hope with strengthening faith To taste when I have traversed death The unimaginable sweetness Of certitude of such concreteness, How should I draw the hue and scope Of substances I only hope Or blaze upon a paper screen The evidence of things not seen? This art of ours but grows and stirs Experience when it registers, And you know well as I know well This autumn of time in which we dwell Is not an age of revelations Solid as once, but intimations That touch us with warm misty fingers Leaving a nameless sense that lingers That sight is blind and Time's a snare And earth less solid than the air And deep below all seeming things There sits a steady king of kings A radiant ageless permanence, A quenchless fount of virtue whence We draw our life; a sense that makes A staunch conviction nothing shakes Of our own immortality. And though, being man, with certain glee I eat and drink, though I suffer pain, And love and hate and love again Well or in mode contemptible, Thus shackled by the body's spell I see through pupils of the beast Though it be faint and blurred with mist A Star that travels in the East. I see what I can, not what I will. In things that move, things that are still; Thin motion, even cloudier rest, I see the symbols God hath drest. The moveless trees, the trees that wave The clouds that heavenly highways have, Horses that run, rocks that are fixt, Streams that have rest and motion mixt, The main with its abiding flux, The wind that up my chimney sucks A mounting waterfall of flame, Sticks, straws, dust, beetles and that same Old blazing sun the Psalmist saw A testifier to the law: Divinely to the heart they speak Saying how they are but weak, Wan will-o'-the-wisps on the crystal sea; But stays that sea still dark to me.

Did I now glibly insolent Chart the ulterior firmament, Would you not know my words were lies, Where not my testimonial eyes Mortal or spiritual lodge, Mere uncorroborated fudge? Praise me, though praise I do not want, Rather, that I have cast much cant, That what I see and feel I write, Read what I can in this dim light Granted to me in nether night. And though I am vague and shrink to guess God's everlasting purposes, And never save in perplext dream Have caught the least clear-shapen gleam Of the great kingdom and the throne In the world that lies behind our own, I have not lacked my certainties, I have not haggard moaned the skies, Nor waged unnecessary strife Nor scorned nor overvalued life. And though you say my attitude Is questioning, concede my mood Does never bring to tongue or pen Accents of gloomy modern men Who wail or hail the death of God And weigh and measure man the clod, Or say they draw reluctant breath And musically mourn that Death Is a queen omnipotent of woe And Life her lean cicisbeo, Abject and pale, whom vampire-like She playeth with ere she shall strike, And pose sad riddles to the Sphinx With raven quills in purple inks, Then send the boy to fetch more drinks.

IN THE PARK

This dense hard ground I tread. These iron bars that ripple past, Will they unshaken stand when I am dead And my deep thoughts outlast?

Is it my spirit slips, Falls, like this leaf I kick aside; This firmness that I feel about my lips, Is it but empty pride?

Mute knowledge conquers me; I contemplate them as they are, Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee, Less hard, more transient far

Than those unbodied hues The sunset flings on the calm river; And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes And my hands with empire quiver.

Now light the ground I tread, I walk not now but rather float; Clear but unreal is the scene outspread, Pitiful, thin, remote.

Poor vapour is the grass, So frail the trees and railings seem, That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass Through them, as in a dream.

Godlike I fear no changes; Shatter the world with thunders loud, Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges Of dark and ruddy cloud.

IN AN ORCHARD

Airy and quick and wise In the shed light of the sun, You clasp with friendly eyes The thoughts from mine that run.

But something breaks the link; I solitary stand By a giant gully's brink In some vast gloomy land.

Sole central watcher, I With steadfast sadness now In that waste place descry 'Neath the awful heavens how

Your life doth dizzy drop A little foam of flame From a peak without a top To a pit without a name.

THE SHIP

There was no song nor shout of joy Nor beam of moon or sun, When she came back from the voyage Long ago begun; But twilight on the waters Was quiet and grey, And she glided steady, steady and pensive, Over the open bay.

Her sails were brown and ragged, And her crew hollow-eyed, But their silent lips spoke content And their shoulders pride; Though she had no captives on her deck, And in her hold There were no heaps of corn or timber Or silks or gold.

ODE: IN A RESTAURANT

In this dense hall of green and gold, Mirrors and lights and steam, there sit Two hundred munching men; While several score of others flit Like scurrying beetles over a fen, With plates in fanlike spread; or fold Napkins, or jerk the corks from bottles, Ministers to greedy throttles. Some make noises while they eat, Pick their teeth or shuffle their feet, Wipe their noses 'neath eyes that range Or frown whilst waiting for their change. Gobble, gobble, toil and trouble. Soul! this life is very strange, And circumstances very foul Attend the belly's stormy howl. How horrible this noise! this air how thick! It is disgusting ... I feel sick... Loosely I prod the table with a fork, My mind gapes, dizzies, ceases to work...

* * * * *

The weak unsatisfied strain Of a band in another room; Through this dull complex din Comes winding thin and sharp! The gnat-like mourning of the violin, The faint stings of the harp. The sounds pierce in and die again, Like keen-drawn threads of ink dropped into a glass Of water, which curl and relax and soften and pass. Briefly the music hovers in unstable poise, Then melts away, drowned in the heavy sea of noise. And I, I am now emasculate. All my forces dissipate; Conquered by matter utterly, Moving not, willing not, I lie, Like a man whom timbers pin When the roof of a mine falls in.

Halt! ... as a cloud condenses I press my mind, recover Dominion of my senses. With newly flowing blood I lift, and now float over The restaurant's expanses Like a draggled sea-gull over dreary flats of mud. An effort ... ah ... I urge and push, And now with greater strength I flush, The hall is full of my pinions' rush; No drooping now, the place is mine, Beating the walls with shattering wings, Over the herd my spirit swings, In triumph shouts "Aha, you swine! Grovel before your lord divine! I, only I, am real here! ..." Through the uncertain firmament, Still bestial in their dull content. The despicable phantoms leer... Hogs! even now in my right hand I hold at my will the thunderbolts Measured not in mortal volts, Would crash you to annihilation! Lit with a new illumination, What need I of ears and eyes Of flesh? Imperious I will rise, Dominate you as a god Who only does not trouble to wield the rod Of death, or kick your weak spheroid Like a football through the void!

* * * * *

Ha! was it but a dream? And did it merely seem? Ha! not yet free of your cage, Soul, spite of all your rage? Come now, this foe engage! With explosion of your might Oh heave, oh leap and flash up, soul. Like a stabbing scream in the night! Hurl aside this useless bowl Of a body... But there comes a shock A soft, tremendous shock Of contact with the body; I lose all power, And fall back, back, like a solitary rower Whose prow that debonair the waves did ride Is suddenly hurled back by an iron tide. O sadness, sadness, feel the returning pain Of touch with unescapable mortal things again! The cloth is linen, the floor is wood, My plate holds cheese, my tumbler toddy; I cannot get free of the body, And no man ever could.

* * * * *

Self! do not lose your hold on life, Nor coward seek to shrink the strife Of body and spirit; even now (Not for the first time), even now Clear in your ears has rung the message That tense abstraction is the passage To nervelessness and living death. Never forget while you draw breath That all the hammers of will can never Your chainèd soul from matter sever; And though it be confused and mixed, This is the world in which you're fixed. Never despise the things that are. Set your teeth upon the grit. Though your heart like a motor beat, Hold fast this earthly star, The whole of it, the whole of it.