Chapter 2

That you are cut, torn, mangled, torn by the stress and beat, no stronger than the strips of sand along your ragged beach.

II

But we bring violets, great masses--single, sweet, wood-violets, stream-violets, violets from a wet marsh.

Violets in clumps from hills, tufts with earth at the roots, violets tugged from rocks, blue violets, moss, cliff, river-violets.

Yellow violets' gold, burnt with a rare tint-- violets like red ash among tufts of grass.

We bring deep-purple bird-foot violets.

We bring the hyacinth-violet, sweet, bare, chill to the touch-- and violets whiter than the in-rush of your own white surf.

III

For you will come, you will yet haunt men in ships, you will trail across the fringe of strait and circle the jagged rocks.

You will trail across the rocks and wash them with your salt, you will curl between sand-hills-- you will thunder along the cliff-- break--retreat--get fresh strength-- gather and pour weight upon the beach.

You will draw back, and the ripple on the sand-shelf will be witness of your track. O privet-white, you will paint the lintel of wet sand with froth.

You will bring myrrh-bark and drift laurel-wood from hot coasts! when you hurl high--high-- we will answer with a shout.

For you will come, you will come, you will answer our taut hearts, you will break the lie of men's thoughts, and cherish and shelter us.

ACON

I

Bear me to Dictaeus, and to the steep slopes; to the river Erymanthus.

I choose spray of dittany, cyperum, frail of flower, buds of myrrh, all-healing herbs, close pressed in calathes.

For she lies panting, drawing sharp breath, broken with harsh sobs, she, Hyella, whom no god pities.

II

Dryads haunting the groves, nereids who dwell in wet caves, for all the white leaves of olive-branch, and early roses, and ivy wreaths, woven gold berries, which she once brought to your altars, bear now ripe fruits from Arcadia, and Assyrian wine to shatter her fever.

The light of her face falls from its flower, as a hyacinth, hidden in a far valley, perishes upon burnt grass.

Pales, bring gifts, bring your Phoenician stuffs, and do you, fleet-footed nymphs, bring offerings, Illyrian iris, and a branch of shrub, and frail-headed poppies.

NIGHT

The night has cut each from each and curled the petals back from the stalk and under it in crisp rows;

under at an unfaltering pace, under till the rinds break, back till each bent leaf is parted from its stalk;

under at a grave pace, under till the leaves are bent back till they drop upon earth, back till they are all broken.

O night, you take the petals of the roses in your hand, but leave the stark core of the rose to perish on the branch.

PRISONERS

It is strange that I should want this sight of your face-- we have had so much: at any moment now I may pass, stand near the gate, do not speak-- only reach if you can, your face half-fronting the passage toward the light.

Fate--God sends this as a mark, a last token that we are not forgot, lost in this turmoil, about to be crushed out, burned or stamped out at best with sudden death.

The spearsman who brings this will ask for the gold clasp you wear under your coat. I gave all I had left.

Press close to the portal, my gate will soon clang and your fellow wretches will crowd to the entrance-- be first at the gate.

Ah beloved, do not speak. I write this in great haste-- do not speak, you may yet be released. I am glad enough to depart though I have never tasted life as in these last weeks.

It is a strange life, patterned in fire and letters on the prison pavement. If I glance up it is written on the walls, it is cut on the floor, it is patterned across the slope of the roof.

I am weak--weak-- last night if the guard had left the gate unlocked I could not have ventured to escape, but one thought serves me now with strength.

As I pass down the corridor past desperate faces at each cell, your eyes and my eyes may meet.

You will be dark, unkempt, but I pray for one glimpse of your face-- why do I want this? I who have seen you at the banquet each flower of your hyacinth-circlet white against your hair.

Why do I want this, when even last night you startled me from sleep? You stood against the dark rock, you grasped an elder staff.

So many nights you have distracted me from terror. Once you lifted a spear-flower. I remember how you stooped to gather it-- and it flamed, the leaf and shoot and the threads, yellow, yellow-- sheer till they burnt to red-purple in the cup.

As I pass your cell-door do not speak. I was first on the list-- They may forget you tried to shield me as the horsemen passed.

STORM

You crash over the trees, you crack the live branch-- the branch is white, the green crushed, each leaf is rent like split wood.

You burden the trees with black drops, you swirl and crash-- you have broken off a weighted leaf in the wind, it is hurled out, whirls up and sinks, a green stone.

SEA IRIS

I

Weed, moss-weed, root tangled in sand, sea-iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken, and you print a shadow like a thin twig.

Fortunate one, scented and stinging, rigid myrrh-bud, camphor-flower, sweet and salt--you are wind in our nostrils.

II

Do the murex-fishers drench you as they pass? Do your roots drag up colour from the sand? Have they slipped gold under you-- rivets of gold?

Band of iris-flowers above the waves, you are painted blue, painted like a fresh prow stained among the salt weeds.

HERMES OF THE WAYS

The hard sand breaks, and the grains of it are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it, the wind, playing on the wide shore, piles little ridges, and the great waves break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways of the sea, I know him of the triple path-ways, Hermes, who awaits.

Dubious, facing three ways, welcoming wayfarers, he whom the sea-orchard shelters from the west, from the east weathers sea-wind; fronts the great dunes.

Wind rushes over the dunes, and the coarse, salt-crusted grass answers.

Heu, it whips round my ankles!

II

Small is this white stream, flowing below ground from the poplar-shaded hill, but the water is sweet.

Apples on the small trees are hard, too small, too late ripened by a desperate sun that struggles through sea-mist.

The boughs of the trees are twisted by many bafflings; twisted are the small-leafed boughs.

But the shadow of them is not the shadow of the mast head nor of the torn sails.

Hermes, Hermes, the great sea foamed, gnashed its teeth about me; but you have waited, were sea-grass tangles with shore-grass.

PEAR TREE

Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted, O silver, higher than my arms reach you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened so staunch a white leaf, no flower ever parted silver from such rare silver;

O white pear, your flower-tufts thick on the branch bring summer and ripe fruits in their purple hearts.

CITIES

Can we believe--by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street, each patterned alike, no grace to lighten a single house of the hundred crowded into one garden-space.

Crowded--can we believe, not in utter disgust, in ironical play-- but the maker of cities grew faint with the beauty of temple and space before temple, arch upon perfect arch, of pillars and corridors that led out to strange court-yards and porches where sun-light stamped hyacinth-shadows black on the pavement.

That the maker of cities grew faint with the splendour of palaces, paused while the incense-flowers from the incense-trees dropped on the marble-walk, thought anew, fashioned this-- street after street alike.

For alas, he had crowded the city so full that men could not grasp beauty, beauty was over them, through them, about them, no crevice unpacked with the honey, rare, measureless.

So he built a new city, ah can we believe, not ironically but for new splendour constructed new people to lift through slow growth to a beauty unrivalled yet-- and created new cells, hideous first, hideous now-- spread larve across them, not honey but seething life.

And in these dark cells, packed street after street, souls live, hideous yet-- O disfigured, defaced, with no trace of the beauty men once held so light.

Can we think a few old cells were left--we are left-- grains of honey, old dust of stray pollen dull on our torn wings, we are left to recall the old streets?

Is our task the less sweet that the larve still sleep in their cells? Or crawl out to attack our frail strength: You are useless. We live. We await great events. We are spread through this earth. We protect our strong race. You are useless. Your cell takes the place of our young future strength.

Though they sleep or wake to torment and wish to displace our old cells-- thin rare gold-- that their larve grow fat-- is our task the less sweet?

Though we wander about, find no honey of flowers in this waste, is our task the less sweet-- who recall the old splendour, await the new beauty of cities?

_The city is peopled with spirits, not ghosts, O my love:_

_Though they crowded between and usurped the kiss of my mouth their breath was your gift, their beauty, your life._

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes | | | | Page 10: torse _sic_ | | Page 11: lower case amended to title case ("your shoulders | | are level" amended to "Your shoulders are level"). | | Page 14: tassle amended to tassel | | Page 15: scavanger's amended to scavenger's | | Page 16: chickory amended to chicory | | Page 26: fragant amended to fragrant | | Page 30: lower case amended to title case ("they say there | | is no hope" amended to "They say there is no hope"). | | Page 46: larve _sic_ | | | | "The City is peopled" did not appear with a title in the | | original edition. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+