Part 2

Flame passes under us, And sparks that unknot the flesh, Sorrow, splitting bone from bone-- Splendour athwart our eyes, And rifts in the splendour-- Sparks and scattered light.

Many warned of this. Men said: There are wrecks on the fore-beach. Wind will beat your ship. There is no shelter in that headland. It is useless waste, that edge, That front of rock. Sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers-- None venture to that spot.

IV

But hail-- As the tide slackens, As the wind beats out, We hail this shore. We sing to you, Spirit between the headlands And the further rocks.

Though oak-beams split, Though boats and sea-men flounder, And the strait grind sand with sand And cut boulders to sand and drift--

Your eyes have pardoned our faults. Your hands have touched us. You have leaned forward a little And the waves can never thrust us back From the splendour of your ragged coast.

TEMPLE--THE CLIFF

I

Great, bright portal, Shelf of rock, Rocks fitted in long ledges, Rocks fitted to dark, to silver-granite, To lighter rock-- Clean cut, white against white.

High--high--and no hill-goat Tramples--no mountain-sheep Has set foot on your fine grass. You lift, you are the world-edge, Pillar for the sky-arch.

The world heaved-- We are next to the sky. Over us, sea-hawks shout, Gulls sweep past. The terrible breakers are silent From this place.

Below us, on the rock-edge, Where earth is caught in the fissures Of the jagged cliff, A small tree stiffens in the gale, It bends--but its white flowers Are fragrant at this height.

And under and under, The wind booms. It whistles, it thunders, It growls--it presses the grass Beneath its great feet.

II

I said: Forever and forever must I follow you Through the stones? I catch at you--you lurch. You are quicker than my hand-grasp.

I wondered at you. I shouted--dear--mysterious--beautiful-- White myrtle-flesh.

I was splintered and torn. The hill-path mounted Swifter than my feet.

Could a dæmon avenge this hurt, I would cry to him--could a ghost, I would shout--O evil, Follow this god, Taunt him with his evil and his vice.

III

Shall I hurl myself from here, Shall I leap and be nearer you? Shall I drop, beloved, beloved, Ankle against ankle? Would you pity me, O white breast?

If I woke, would you pity me, Would our eyes meet?

Have you heard, Do you know how I climbed this rock? My breath caught, I lurched forward-- I stumbled in the ground-myrtle.

Have you heard, O god seated on the cliff, How far toward the ledges of your house, How far I had to walk?

IV

Over me the wind swirls. I have stood on your portal And I know-- You are further than this, Still further on another cliff.

MID-DAY

The light beats upon me. I am startled-- A split leaf crackles on the paved floor-- I am anguished--defeated.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods. My thoughts are spent As the black seeds. My thoughts tear me. I dread their fever-- I am scattered in its whirl. I am scattered like The hot shrivelled seeds.

The shrivelled seeds Are spilt on the path. The grass bends with dust. The grape slips Under its crackled leaf: Yet far beyond the spent seed-pods, And the blackened stalks of mint, The poplar is bright on the hill, The poplar spreads out, Deep-rooted among trees.

O poplar, you are great Among the hill-stones, While I perish on the path Among the crevices of the rocks.

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

ARIZONA

THE WINDMILLS

The windmills, like great sunflowers of steel, Lift themselves proudly over the straggling houses; And at their feet the deep blue-green alfalfa Cuts the desert like the stroke of a sword.

Yellow melon flowers Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees; A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel Against the scoured metallic sky.

The houses, doubled-roofed for coolness, Cower amid the manzanita scrub. A man with jingling spurs Walks heavily out of a vine-bowered doorway, Mounts his pony, rides away.

The windmills stare at the sun. The yellow earth cracks and blisters. Everything is still.

In the afternoon The wind takes dry waves of heat and tosses them, Mingled with dust, up and down the streets, Against the belfry with its green bells:

And, after sunset, when the sky Becomes a green and orange fan, The windmills, like great sunflowers on dried stalks, Stare hard at the sun they cannot follow.

Turning, turning, forever turning In the chill night-wind that sweeps over the valley, With the shriek and the clank of the pumps groaning beneath them, And the choking gurgle of tepid water.

MEXICAN QUARTER

By an alley lined with tumble-down shacks And street-lamps askew, half-sputtering, Feebly glimmering on gutters choked with filth and dogs Scratching their mangy backs: Half-naked children are running about, Women puff cigarettes in black doorways, Crickets are crying. Men slouch sullenly Into the shadows: Behind a hedge of cactus, The smell of a dead horse Mingles with the smell of tamales frying.

And a girl in a black lace shawl Sits in a rickety chair by the square of an unglazed window, And sees the explosion of the stars Softly poised on a velvet sky. And she is humming to herself:-- "Stars, if I could reach you, (You are so very clear that it seems as if I could reach you) I would give you all to Madonna's image, On the grey-plastered altar behind the paper flowers, So that Juan would come back to me, And we could live again those lazy burning hours Forgetting the tap of my fan and my sharp words. And I would only keep four of you, Those two blue-white ones overhead, To hang in my ears; And those two orange ones yonder, To fasten on my shoe-buckles."

A little further along the street A man sits stringing a brown guitar. The smoke of his cigarette curls round his head, And he, too, is humming, but other words: "Think not that at your window I wait; New love is better, the old is turned to hate. Fate! Fate! All things pass away; Life is forever, youth is for a day. Love again if you may Before the stars are blown out of the sky And the crickets die; Babylon and Samarkand Are mud walls in a waste of sand."

RAIN IN THE DESERT

The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning Its altar-fires of pinyon and of toyon for the day.

The old priests sleep, white-shrouded, Their pottery whistles lie beside them, the prayer-sticks closely feathered; On every mummied face there glows a smile.

The sun is rolling slowly Beneath the sluggish folds of the sky-serpents, Coiling, uncoiling, blue-black, sparked with fires.

The old dead priests Feel in the thin dried earth that is heaped about them, Above the smell of scorching oozing pinyon, The acrid smell of rain.

And now the showers Surround the mesa like a troop of silver dancers: Shaking their rattles, stamping, chanting, roaring, Whirling, extinguishing the last red wisp of light.

CLOUDS ACROSS THE CANYON

Shadows of clouds March across the canyon, Shadows of blue hands passing Over a curtain of flame.

Clutching, staggering, upstriking, Darting in blue-black fury, To where pinnacles, green and orange, Await.

The winds are battling and striving to break them: Thin lightnings spit and flicker, The peaks seem a dance of scarlet demons Flitting amid the shadows.

Grey rain-curtains wave afar off, Wisps of vapour curl and vanish. The sun throws soft shafts of golden light Over rose-buttressed palisades.

Now the clouds are a lazy procession; Blue balloons bobbing solemnly Over black-dappled walls,

Where rise sharp-fretted, golden-roofed cathedrals Exultantly, and split the sky with light.

THE UNQUIET STREET

By day and night this street is not still: Omnibuses with red tail-lamps, Taxicabs with shiny eyes, Rumble, shunning its ugliness. It is corrugated with wheel-ruts, It is dented and pockmarked with traffic, It has no time for sleep. It heaves its old scarred countenance Skyward between the buildings And never says a word.

On rainy nights It dully gleams Like the cold tarnished scales of a snake: And over it hang arc-lamps, Blue-white death-lilies on black stems.

IN THE THEATRE

Darkness in the theatre: Darkness and a multitude Assembled in the darkness. These who every day perform The unique tragi-comedy Of birth and death; Now press upon each other, Directing the irresistible weight of their thoughts to the stage.

A great broad shaft of calcium light Cleaves, like a stroke of a sword, the darkness: And, at the end of it, A tiny spot which is the red nose of a comedian Marks the goal of the spot-light and the eyes which people the darkness.

SHIPS IN THE HARBOUR

Like a flock of great blue cranes Resting upon the water, The ships assemble at morning, when the grey light wakes in the east.

Weary, no longer flying, Over the hissing spindrift, through the ravelled clutching sea; No longer over the tops of the waves spinning along north-eastward, In a great irregular wedge before the trade-wind far from land.

But drowsy, mournful, silent, Yet under their bulged projecting bows runs the silver foam of the sunlight, And rebelliously they shake out their plumage of sails, wet and heavy with the rain.

THE EMPTY HOUSE

Out from my window-sill I lean, And see a straight four-storied row Of houses.

Once, long ago, These had their glory: they were built In the fair palmy days before The Civil War when all the seas Saw the white sails of Yankee ships Scurrying home with spice and gold. And many of these houses hung Proud wisps of crêpe upon their doors On hearing that some son had died At Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg, Their offering to the Union side.

But man's forever drifting will Again took hold of him--again The fashionable quarter shifted: soon, Before some plastering had dried, Society packed up, went away. Now, could you see these houses, You would not think they ever had a prime: A grim four-storied serried row Of rooms to let--at any time Tenants are moving in or out. Families drifting down or struggling still To keep their heads up and not drown. A tragic busy pettiness Has settled on them all, But one. And in that one, when I came here, A family lived, but with its trunks packed up, And now that family's gone.

Its shutterless blindless windows let you look inside And see the sunlight chequering the bare floor With patterns from the window-frames All day. Its backyard neatly swept, Contains no crammed ash-barrels and no lines For clothes to flap about on; It does not look by day as if it had Ever a living soul beneath its roof. It seems to mark a gap in the grim line, No house at all, but an unfinished shell.

But when the windows up and down those faces With yellow glimmer of gas, blaze forth; I know it is the only house that lives In all that grim four-storied row. The others are mere shelves, overcrowded layers, Of warring, separate personalities; A jangle and a tangle of emotions, Without a single meaning running through them; But it, the empty house, has mastered all its secrets. Behind its silent swarthy face, Eyelessly proud, It watches, it is master; It sees the other houses still incessantly learning The lesson it remembers, And which it can repeat the last dim syllable of.

THE SKATERS

_To A. D. R._

Black swallows swooping or gliding In a flurry of entangled loops and curves; The skaters skim over the frozen river. And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface, Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.

F. S. FLINT

EASTER

Friend we will take the path that leads down from the flagstaff by the pond through the gorse thickets; see, the golden spikes have thrust their points through, and last year's bracken lies yellow-brown and trampled. The sapling birch-groves have shown no leaf, and the wistarias on the desolate pergola are shorn and ashen. We lurch on, and, stumbling, touch each other. You do not shrink, friend. There you, and I here, side by side, we go, jesting. We do not seek, we do not avoid, contact.

Here is the road, with the budding elm-trees lining it, and there the low gate in the wall; on the other side, the people. Are they not aliens? You and I for a moment see them shabby of limb and soul, patched up to make shift. We laugh and strengthen each other; But the evil is done.

Is not the whole park made for them, and the bushes and plants and trees and grasses, have they not grown to their standard? The paths are worn to the gravel with their feet; the green moss will not carpet them. The flags of the stone steps are hollowed; and you and I must strive to remain two and not to merge in the multitude. It impinges on us; it separates us; we shrink from it; we brave through it; we laugh; we jest; we jeer; and we save the fragments of our souls.

Between two clipped privet hedges now; we will close our eyes for life's sake to life's patches. Here, maybe, there is quiet; pass first under the bare branches, beyond is a pool flanked with sedge, and a swan among water-lilies. But here too is a group of men and women and children; and the swan has forgotten its pride; it thrusts its white neck among them, and gobbles at nothing; then tires of the cheat and sails off; but its breast urges before it a sheet of sodden newspaper that, drifting away, reveals beneath the immaculate white splendour of its neck and wings a breast black with scum.

Friend, we are beaten.

OGRE

Through the open window can be seen the poplars at the end of the garden shaking in the wind, a wall of green leaves so high that the sky is shut off.

On the white table-cloth a rose in a vase --centre of a sphere of odour-- contemplates the crumbs and crusts left from a meal: cups, saucers, plates lie here and there.

And a sparrow flies by the open window, stops for a moment, flutters his wings rapidly, and climbs an aerial ladder with his claws that work close in to his soft, brown-grey belly.

But behind the table is the face of a man.

The bird flies off.

CONES

The blue mist of after-rain fills all the trees;

the sunlight gilds the tops of the poplar spires, far off, behind the houses.

Here a branch sways and there a sparrow twitters.

The curtain's hem, rose-embroidered, flutters, and half reveals a burnt-red chimney pot.

The quiet in the room bears patiently a footfall on the street.

GLOOM

I sat there in the dark of the room and of my mind thinking of men's treasons and bad faith, sinking into the pit of my own weakness before their strength of cunning. Out over the gardens came the sound of some one playing five-finger exercises on the piano.

Then I gathered up within me all my powers until outside of me was nothing: I was all-- all stubborn, fighting sadness and revulsion.

And one came from the garden quietly, and stood beside me. She laid her hand on my hair; she laid her cheek on my forehead,-- and caressed me with it; but all my being rose to my forehead to fight against this outside thing. Something in me became angry; withstood like a wall, and would allow no entrance; I hated her.

"What is the matter with you, dear?" she said. "Nothing," I answered, "I am thinking." She stroked my hair and went away; and I was still gloomy, angry, stubborn.

Then I thought: she has gone away; she is hurt; she does not know what poison has been working in me.

Then I thought: upstairs, her child is sleeping; and I felt the presence of the fields we had walked over, the roads we had followed, the flowers we had watched together, before it came.

She had touched my hair, and only then did I feel it; And I loved her once again.

And I came away, full of the sweet and bitter juices of life; and I lit the lamp in my room, and made this poem.

TERROR

Eyes are tired; the lamp burns, and in its circle of light papers and books lie where chance and life have placed them.

Silence sings all around me; my head is bound with a band; outside in the street a few footsteps; a clock strikes the hour.

I gaze, and my eyes close, slowly:

I doze; but the moment before sleep, a voice calls my name in my ear, and the shock jolts my heart: but when I open my eyes, and look, first left, and then right ...

no one is there.

CHALFONT SAINT GILES

The low graves are all grown over with forget-me-not, and a rich-green grass links each with each. Old family vaults, some within railings, stand here and there, crumbling, moss-eaten, with the ivy growing up them and diagonally across the top projecting slab. And over the vaults lean the great lilac bushes with their heart-shaped leaves and their purple and white blossom. A wall of ivy shuts off the darkness of the elm-wood and the larches.

Walk quietly along the mossy paths; the stones of the humble dead are hidden behind the blue mantle of their forget-me-nots; and before one grave so hidden a widow kneels, with head bowed, and the crape falling over her shoulders.

The bells for evening church are ringing, and the people come gravely and with red, sun-burnt faces through the gates in the wall.

Pass on; this is the church-porch, and within the bell-ringers, men of the village in their Sunday clothes, pull their bob-major on the red and white grip of the bell-ropes, that fly up, and then fall snakily. They stand there given wholly to the rhythm and swing of their traditional movements.

And the people pass between them into the church; but we are too sad and too reverent to enter.

WAR-TIME

If I go out of the door, it will not be to take the road to the left that leads past the bovine quiet of houses brooding over the cud of their daily content, even though the tranquillity of their gardens is a lure that once was stronger; even though from privet hedge and mottled laurel the young green peeps, and the daffodils and the yellow and white and purple crocuses laugh from the smooth mould of the garden beds to the upright golden buds of the chestnut trees. I shall not see the almond blossom shaming the soot-black boughs.

But to the right the road will lead me to greater and greater disquiet; into the swift rattling noise of the motor-'busses, and the dust, the tattered paper-- the detritus of a city-- that swirls in the air behind them. I will pass the shops where the prices are judged day by day by the people, and come to the place where five roads meet with five tram-routes, and where amid the din of the vans, the lorries, the motor-'busses, the clangorous tram-cars, the news is shouted, and soldiers gather, off-duty.

Here I can feel the heat of Europe's fever; and I can make, as each man makes the beauty of the woman he loves, no spring and no woman's beauty, while that is burning.

D. H. LAWRENCE

ERINNYES

There has been so much noise, Bleeding and shouting and dying, Clamour of death.

There are so many dead, Many have died unconsenting, Their ghosts are angry, unappeased.

So many ghosts among us, Invisible, yet strong, Between me and thee, so many ghosts of the slain.

They come back, over the white sea, in the mist, Invisible, trooping home, the unassuaged ghosts Endlessly returning on the uneasy sea.

They set foot on this land to which they have the right, They return relentlessly, in the silence one knows their tread, Multitudinous, endless, the ghosts coming home again.

They watch us, they press on us, They press their claim upon us, They are angry with us.

What do they want? We are driven mad, Madly we rush hither and thither: Shouting, "Revenge, Revenge," Crying, "Pour out the blood of the foe," Seeking to appease with blood the insistent ghosts.

Out of blood rise up new ghosts, Grey, stern, angry, unsatisfied, The more we slay and are slain, the more we raise up new ghosts against us.

Till we are mad with terror, seeing the slain Victorious, grey, grisly ghosts in our streets, Grey, unappeased ghosts seated in the music-halls. The dead triumphant, and the quick cast down, The dead, unassuaged and angry, silencing us, Making us pale and bloodless, without resistance.

* * * * *

What do they want, the ghosts, what is it They demand as they stand in menace over against us? How shall we now appease whom we have raised up?

Since from blood poured out rise only ghosts again, What shall we do, what shall we give to them? What do they want, forever there on our threshold?

Must we open the doors, and admit them, receive them home, And in the silence, reverently, welcome them, And give them place and honour and service meet?

For one year's space, attend on our angry dead, Soothe them with service and honour, and silence meet, Strengthen, prepare them for the journey hence, Then lead them to the gates of the unknown, And bid farewell, oh stately travellers, And wait till they are lost upon our sight.

Then we shall turn us home again to life Knowing our dead are fitly housed in death, Not roaming here disconsolate, angrily.

And we shall have new peace in this our life, New joy to give more life, new bliss to live, Sure of our dead in the proud halls of death.

PERFIDY

Hollow rang the house when I knocked at the door, And I lingered on the threshold with my hand Upraised to knock and knock once more: Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor, Hollow re-echoed my heart.

The low-hung lamps stretched down the road With shadows drifting underneath, With a music of soft, melodious feet Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet The low-hung light of her eyes.

The golden lamps down the street went out, The last car trailed the night behind, And I in the darkness wandered about With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt In the dying lamp of my love.

Two brown ponies trotting slowly Stopped at the dim-lit trough to drink. The dark van drummed down the distance slowly, And city stars so high and holy Drew nearer to look in the streets.

A hasting car swept shameful past. I saw her hid in the shadow, I saw her step to the curb, and fast Run to the silent door, where last I had stood with my hand uplifted. She clung to the door in her haste to enter, Entered, and quickly cast It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.

AT THE WINDOW

The pine trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter; While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede Winding about their dimness the mists' grey cerements, after The street-lamps in the twilight have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window and whisper a word as they pass To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two eyes of darkness That watch forever earnestly from behind the window glass.

IN TROUBLE AND SHAME

I look at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.