Part 2

The eyes of the portraits on the wall Look at me, follow me, Stare incessantly: I take it their glance means nothing at all? --Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all....

Out in the gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, Each of them sounds his mournful horn: Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. What can have made the peacocks wake?

STANZAS.

Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: And action bears us onward like a stream Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course; Glorious--and yet its headlong currents seem But backwaters of some diviner force.

There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought, That stoop to carry the grace of a girl’s breast; And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought In airy metal, that they seem possessed Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift The shoulder of a god towards the light; And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift, Piercing the spirit deeply with delight.

Would I might make these miracles my own! Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form; Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone; Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm On noonday flowers; speaking the song of birds Among the branches; whispering the fall of rain; Beyond all thought, past action and past words, I would live in beauty, free from self and pain.

POEM.

Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; And magic words lay ripening in my soul Till their much-whispered music turned a wine Whose subtlest power was all in my control.

These things were mine, and they were real for me As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast: For I could love a phrase, a melody, Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed.

I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid; Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed.

But a time came when, turning full of hate And weariness from my remembered themes, I wished my poet’s pipe could modulate Beauty more palpable than words and dreams.

All loveliness with which an act informs The dim uncertain chaos of desire Is mine to day; it touches me, it warms Body and spirit with its outward fire.

I am mine no more: I have become a part Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart Were still a winter of frosty gossamers.

SCENES OF THE MIND.

I have run where festival was loud With drum and brass among the crowd Of panic revellers, whose cries Affront the quiet of the skies; Whose dancing lights contract the deep Infinity of night and sleep To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. And I have found my heart’s desire In beechen caverns that autumn fills With the blue shadowiness of distant hills; Whose luminous grey pillars bear The stooping sky: calm is the air, Nor any sound is heard to mar That crystal silence--as from far, Far off a man may see The busy world all utterly Hushed as an old memorial scene. Long evenings I have sat and been Strangely content, while in my hands I held a wealth of coloured strands, Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains New life at the lamp’s round pool of gold; Each sinks again when I withhold The quickening radiance, to a wan And shadowy oblivion Of what it was. And in my mind Beauty or sudden love has shined And wakened colour in what was dead And turned to gold the sullen lead Of mean desires and everyday’s Poor thoughts and customary ways. Sometimes in lands where mountains throw Their silent spell on all below, Drawing a magic circle wide About their feet on every side, Robbed of all speech and thought and act, I have seen God in the cataract. In falling water and in flame, Never at rest, yet still the same, God shows himself. And I have known The swift fire frozen into stone, And water frozen changelessly Into the death of gems. And I Long sitting by the thunderous mill Have seen the headlong wheel made still, And in the silence that ensued Have known the endless solitude Of being dead and utterly nought. Inhabitant of mine own thought, I look abroad, and all I see Is my creation, made for me: Along my thread of life are pearled The moments that make up the world.

L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE.

(From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.)

I would immortalize these nymphs; so bright Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, It floats like drowsy down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown The tree’s true self--proving that I have known, Thinking it love, the blushing of a rose. But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose They bodied forth your senses’ fabulous thirst? Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? No; through this quiet, when a weary swoon Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, There is no murmuring water, save the gush Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed Upon the air, with that calm breath of art That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, Where inspiration seeks its native sky. You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, The sun’s own mirror which I love to take, Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well_ _Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold_ _Of distant lawns about their fountain cold_ _A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave;_ _And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave_ _These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly_ _Or dive_. Noon burns inert and tawny dry, Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away From me who seek in song the real A. Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight, O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, With, lilies, one of you for innocence. Other than their lips’ delicate pretence, The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers The bitten print of some immortal’s kiss. But hush! a mystery so great as this I dare not tell, save to my double reed, Which, sharer of my every joy and need, Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we Falsely confuse the beauties that we see With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: My flute, as loud as passion modulates, Purges the common dream of flank and breast, Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, Of every empty and monotonous line.

Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. Proud of my music, let me often make A song of goddesses and see their rape Profanely done on many a painted shape. So when the grape’s transparent juice I drain, I quell regret for pleasures past and feign A new real grape. For holding towards the sky The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. Tell o’er Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam_ _Who cool no mortal fever in the stream_ _Crying to the woods the rage of their desire:_ _And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire_ _Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly._ _I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie,_ _Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet,_ _Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet._ _I seize and run with them, nor part the pair,_ _Breaking this covert of frail petals, where_ _Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play_ _’Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ I love that virginal fury--ah, the wild Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. _Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew_ _So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide_ _Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied._ _For as I leaned to stifle in the hair_ _Of one my passionate laughter (taking care_ _With a stretched finger, that her innocence_ _Might stain with her companion’s kindling sense_ _To touch the younger little one, who lay_ _Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey_ _Slips from me, freed by passion’s sudden death_ _Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._

Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, Flows for the swarming legions of desire. At evening, when the woodland green turns gold And ashen grey, ’mid the quenched leaves, behold! Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, Walking the lava with her snowy tread Whene’er the flames in thunderous slumber die. I hold the goddess! Ah, sure penalty!

But the unthinking soul and body swoon At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. Forgetful let me lie where summer’s drouth Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth Dream planet-struck by the grape’s round wine-red star.

Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.

MOLE.

Tunnelled in solid blackness creeps The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps, He knows not which, but tunnels on Through ages of oblivion; Until at last the long constraint Of each hand-wall is lost, and faint Comes daylight creeping from afar, And mole-work grows crepuscular. Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees Men as strange as walking trees? And far horizons smoking blue, And chasing clouds for ever new; Green hills, like lighted lamps aglow Or quenched beneath the cloud-shadow; Quenching and blazing turn by turn, Spring’s great green signals fitfully burn. Mole travels on, but finds the steering A harder task of pioneering Than when he thridded through the strait Blind catacombs that ancient fate Had carved for him. Stupid and dumb And blind and touchless he had come A way without a turn; but here, Under the sky, the passenger Chooses his own best way; and mole Distracted wanders, yet his hole Regrets not much wherein he crept, But runs, a joyous nympholept, This way and that, by all made mad-- River nymph and oread, Ocean’s daughters and Lorelei, Combing the silken mystery, The glaucous gold of her rivery tresses-- Each haunts the traveller, each possesses The drunken wavering soul awhile; Then with a phantom’s cock-crow smile Mocks craving with sheer vanishment. Mole-eyes grow hawk’s: knowledge is lent In grudging driblets that pay high Unconscionable usury. To unrelenting life. Mole learns To travel more secure; the turns Of his long way less puzzling seem, And all those magic forms that gleam In airy invitation cheat Less often than they did of old. The earth slopes upward, fold by fold Of quiet hills that meet the gold Serenity of western skies. Over the world’s edge with clear eyes Our mole transcendent sees his way Tunnelled in light: he must obey Necessity again and thrid Close catacombs as erst he did, Fate’s tunnellings, himself must bore Through the sunset’s inmost core. The guiding walls to each-hand shine Luminous and crystalline; And mole shall tunnel on and on, Till night let fall oblivion.

TWO REALITIES.

A waggon passed with scarlet wheels And a yellow body, shining new. “Splendid!” said I. “How fine it feels To be alive, when beauty peels The grimy husk from life.” And you

Said, “Splendid!” and I thought you’d seen That waggon blazing down the street; But I looked and saw that your gaze had been On a child that was kicking an obscene Brown ordure with his feet.

Our souls are elephants, thought I, Remote behind a prisoning grill, With trunks thrust out to peer and pry And pounce upon reality; And each at his own sweet will

Seizes the bun that he likes best And passes over all the rest.

QUOTIDIAN VISION.

There is a sadness in the street, And sullenly the folk I meet Droop their heads as they walk along, Without a smile, without a song. A mist of cold and muffling grey Falls, fold by fold, on another day That dies unwept. But suddenly, Under a tunnelled arch I see On flank and haunch the chestnut gleam Of horses in a lamplit steam; And the dead world moves for me once more With beauty for its living core.

THE MIRROR.

Slow-moving moonlight once did pass Across the dreaming looking-glass, Where, sunk inviolably deep, Old secrets unforgotten sleep Of beauties unforgettable. But dusty cobwebs are woven now Across that mirror, which of old Saw fingers drawing back the gold From an untroubled brow; And the depths are blinded to the moon, And their secrets forgotten, for ever untold.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LAFORGUE.

Youth as it opens out discloses The sinister metempsychosis Of lilies dead and turned to roses Red as an angry dawn. But lilies, remember, are grave-side flowers, While slow bright rose-leaves sail Adrift on the music of happiest hours; And those lilies, cold and pale, Hide fiery roses beneath the lawn Of the young bride’s parting veil.

PHILOSOPHY.

“God needs no christening,” Pantheist mutters, “Love opens shutters On heaven’s glistening, Flesh, key-hole listening, Hear what God utters”.... Yes, but God stutters.

PHILOCLEA IN THE FOREST.

I.

’Twas I that leaned to Amoret With: “What if the briars have tangled Time, Till, lost in the wood-ways, he quite forget How plaintive in cities at midnight sounds the chime Of bells slow-dying from discord to the hush whence they rose and met?

“And in the forest we shall live free, Free from the bondage that Time has made To hedge our soul from its liberty; We shall not fear what is mighty, and unafraid Shall look wide-eyed at beauty, nor shrink from its majesty.”

But Amoret answered me again: “We are lost in the forest, you and I; Lost, lost, not free, though no bonds restrain; For no spire rises for comfort, no landmark in the sky, And the long glades as they curve from sight are dark with a nameless pain.

And Time creates what he devours,-- Music that sweetly dreams itself away, Frail-swung leaves of autumn and the scent of flowers, And the beauty of that poised moment, when the day Hangs ’twixt the quiet of darkness and the mirth of the sunlit hours.”

II.

Mottled and grey and brown they pass, The wood-moths, wheeling, fluttering; And we chase and they vanish; and in the grass Are starry flowers, and the birds sing Faint broken songs of the dying spring. And on the beech-hole, smooth and grey, Some lover of an older day Has carved in time-blurred lettering One world only:--“Alas.”

III.

Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play, When shimmeringly, glimpse by glimpse Seen through the leaves, the silken figures sway In measured dance. Never at shut of day, When Time perversely loitering limps Through endless twilights, should your strings Whisper of light remembered things That happened long ago and far away: Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play....

And you, pale marble statues, far descried Where vistas open suddenly, I bid you shew yourselves no more, but hide Your loveliness, lest too much glorified By western radiance slantingly Shot down the glade, you turn from stone To living gods, immortal grown, And, ageless, mock my beauty’s fleeting pride, You pale, relentless statues, far descried....

BOOKS AND THOUGHTS.

Old ghosts that death forgot to ferry Across the Lethe of the years-- These are my friends, and at their tears I weep and with their mirth am merry. On a high tower, whose battlements Give me all heaven at a glance, I lie long summer nights in trance, Drowsed by the murmurs and the scents That rise from earth, while the sky above me Merges its peace with my soul’s peace, Deep meeting deep. No stir can move me, Nought break the quiet of my release: In vain the windy sunlight raves At the hush and gloom of polar caves.

THE HIGHER SENSUALISM.

There’s a church by a lake in Italy Stands white on a hill against the sky; And a path of immemorial cobbles Leads up and up, where the pilgrim hobbles Past a score or so of neat reposories, Where you stop and breathe and tell your rosaries To the shrined terra-cotta mannikins, That expound with the liveliest quirks and grins Known texts of Scripture. But no long stay Should the pilgrim make upon his way; But as means to the end these shrines stand here To guide to something holier, The church on the hill top.

Your heaven’s so With a path leading up to it past a row Of votary Priapulids; At each you pause and tell your beads Along the quintuple strings of sense: Then on, to face Heaven’s eminence, New stimulated, new inspired.

FORMAL VERSES.

I.

Mother of all my future memories, Mistress of my new life, which but to-day Began, when I beheld, deep in your eyes, My own love mirrored and the warm surprise Of the first kiss swept both our souls away,

Your love has freed me; for I was oppressed By my own devil, whose unwholesome breath Tarnished my youth, leaving to me at best Age lacking comfort of a soul at rest And weariness beyond the hope of death.

II.

Ah, those were days of silent happiness! I never spoke, and had no need to speak, While on the windy down-land, cheek by cheek, The slow-driven sun beheld us. Each caress Had oratory for its own defence; And when I kissed or felt her fingers press, I envied not Demosthenes his Greek, Nor Tully for his Latin eloquence.

PERILS OF THE SMALL HOURS.

When life burns low as the fire in the grate And all the evening’s books are read, I sit alone, save for the dead And the lovers I have grown to hate.

But all at once the narrow gloom Of hatred and despair expands In tenderness: thought stretches hands To welcome to the midnight room

Another presence:--a memory Of how last year in the sunlit field, Laughing, you suddenly revealed Beauty in immortality.

For so it is; a gesture strips Life bare of all its make-believe. All unprepared we may receive Our casual apocalypse.

Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to night, And love comes, dimming spirit’s sight, When body plays interpreter.

RETURN TO AN OLD HOME.

In this wood--how the hazels have grown!-- I left a treasure all my own Of childish kisses and laughter and pain; Left, till I might come back again To take from the familiar earth My hoarded secret and count its worth. And all the spider-work of the years, All the time-spun gossamers, Dewed with each succeeding spring; And the piled up leaves the Autumns fling To the sweet corruption of death on death.... At the sudden stir of my spirit’s breath All scattered. New and fair and bright As ever it was, before my sight The treasure lay, and nothing missed. So having handled all and kissed, I put them back, adding one new And precious memory of you.

_Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford._