Part 1

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THE SILVER NET

To HILDA.

_Hope is a net of silver thread Cast in the swirling stream of life, Where prey with scales of gold and red Is ever hidden, ever rife; Put oft upon the rocky bed, The net is rended in the strife._

_Thus ’tis we often toil in vain, Yet never weary of our dream; And looking fondly in the stream, We mend our net and try again._

THE SILVER NET

POEMS BY LOUIS VINTRAS

LONDON · AT THE UNICORN VII CECIL COURT · MCMIII

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. VISION 1

II. ALONE 2

III. BETROTHAL 4

IV. ‘... AND THERE WAS NO MORE SEA’ 5

V. ASPIRATIONS 6

VI. IN THE HEART OF A ROSE 8

VII. A STRANGER 9

VIII. EVOLUTION 11

IX. NOCTURNE 12

X. THE CITY OF ANGUISH 13

XI. MAGDALENE 14

XII. FABLE 15

XIII. CONFESSION 18

XIV. THE MYSTIC GARDEN 19

XV. THE RING 22

XVI. ISHTAR 23

XVII. ILLUSION 25

XVIII. THE IDOL 26

XIX. TINTAGEL 27

XX. BUT IN HER EYES THERE IS NO LIGHT 29

XXI. ROSES TWO 30

XXII. AT YOUR FEET 36

XXIII. PROPOSAL 37

XXIV. A RIVER IMPRESSION 38

XXV. TRIUMPH 39

XXVI. VIOLETS 41

XXVII. EROTEME 42

XXVIII. THE EYE 43

XXIX. SHADOWS 46

XXX. THE PALACE OF DESIRES 47

XXXI. LINEAGE 50

XXXII. THE EARTH REGAINED 51

XXXIII. ENVOI 52

VISION

Great ships, with spreading wings of dazzling white, I see for ever passing in the night, Bearing away dead souls Of men and women, whom I meet each day Still living in the clay.

ALONE

Evening made a violet darkness in the thickness of the wood, All was silent, all was still; And the man of many pleasures felt upon him steal a mood That was stronger than his will. In the sky each glowing star assumed a different coloured flame, But the flames they gave no light. He was cold at heart and weary and a numbing sense of shame Made him fearful of the night. Though alone, he felt that hidden in the bushes and the trees Many eyes were watching him. When he tried to move he wavered, and he fell upon his knees, And his sight with tears was dim. While he knelt, he knew not how long, in the grass a blue-bell glowed, Glowed with light amid the dew. As he watched with straining eyes, from which the tears no longer flowed, The blue flower grew and grew; Vaguely human in its outline, half a flower, half a child, High now as his kneeling self, And the flower-child bent to him with an impulse strange and wild, And he felt the little elf Kiss his lips and heard it softly, softly call him by his name, In a voice unearthly, sad. ‘I’m your child and I was born of your first love and born in shame; I am dead and _she_ is mad.’ Something like a shudder shook the stately trees, the plants, the weeds, As the man rose up again-- In the mystery of this wood the leaves, the blossoms were the deeds, Living deeds of mortal men. Pale, he seized the fancy-creature savagely, and hurled it down, Trampled it into the earth. Then he heard a woman sobbing and the rustle of a gown.... And he laughed--just sound, no mirth.

BETROTHAL

The steamer glided like a car of silver o’er the sea; Above the dying worlds revolved their dark and crumbling wrecks, Dead as the groping shadows of our shipmates on the decks-- All dead save you and me.

And yet amid this lie two fates were sealed, two souls set free; Hands met and lips touched lips in rapturous spite of death and night, And lo! at once each ghost, each world was touched with life and light, Kindled by you and me.

‘AND THERE WAS NO MORE SEA’

_Revelation_, xxi. 1.

The white-crested wave swirls by in the night With many a shriek and a moan! ’Tis the soul of a thief in its whirlpool plight-- Not water, but flesh and bone.

And this soul is torn and rent by the reef, And the frantic waves they fight For the milk-white blood this soul of a thief Sheds on the rocks each night.

And sinners laugh at the pangs and doles Foretold in Holy Writ, But the beautiful waves are dead men’s souls And the sea is the bottomless pit.

ASPIRATIONS

O human dreams unrealisable! Fire-tinged, gemmated, luring, damning dreams, Born but to shame the everlasting soul, Caged in its flesh-bound dungeon! Dreams of beauty, Growing to sinhood, fruits of seed-thoughts, Fallen in times primordial from the Godhead, Sweet with almighty innocence, divine With ignorance of nakedness and form, To germinate on life’s warm flesh and live In many purple passions! Such your dreams, O man, from Genesis to Revelation! The harlot and the harlequin are types Of your desires; her love is like his garb, Motley and false. Then sweep your pantheons Clean of these cobwebs. In the crystal disc, By which the hag Philosophy slumbers, Behold the play.

The nubile maiden seeks Mad stars that dance at night in lonely wells. A withered pope mumbling his benediction, _Urbi et orbi_, is absorbed the while With thoughts of Rome eternal, his by right, Now lost to God and him, because the king’s. And so the peaceful blessing wavers, dies E’er it has even drifted o’er the town-- Alas! then, for the world.

A graceful girl, Royal with the pageantry of silk and ermine, Cursed with the name of Highness, brow ablaze With diamonds, cutting deep into the skin, Passes with dewy lips and swooning eyes, Some stalwart soldier of her bodyguard.

The young man slowly dying in a ward, Sees, with the envious smile of bankrupt life, The pretty nurse who hovers round his bed With all life’s restless rustle in her skirts.

O, who shall ever sing, O tortured man, The Babylons of your imagination, The castles built on clouds, the women loved In thought, the frantic thirst for beauteous life, Your wild despairs at every wreck, as Death Draws ever near to cool your red-hot soul For an eternity of peace!

IN THE HEART OF A ROSE

As I strolled through the close, in the heart of a rose, I espied of a woman the figure divine, In a rose, ruby stained, as a chalice with wine.

And the opening rose did her beauty disclose; Her red lips she upraised to my lips, wove her arms Round my neck, bound me fast with her spells and her charms.

And this woman I chose from the heart of the rose, Chose to share all my dreamland of love and of power, Stole my soul and imprisoned my soul in the flower.

A STRANGER

‘Yes, I was Desdemona yesterday,’ She said to me a-sudden as we stood beside An antique vase of porphyry, Gazing upon the swaying crowd below. ‘Arms nervous, eastern eyes which flashed fierce fires, The coruscation of estival nights Glowing amid the all-encircling dark, These made my joy; The coiling hatred of the devil-snake, My pain. I saw the twitching of Othello’s hands, And died at twenty past eleven. To-morrow, in Verona, at a mask, I meet love’s arch-type glorified beyond Mere human manhood to Apollo’s self; And I, this magnificent lover’s love, Shall be a maiden in her fourteenth year For just three hours. ’Tis thus I live, and hate, and love, and die Night after night, In a superb and shameless prostitution, Leaving self in my wardrobe, a disguise Worn only in the daylight of the world To hide these many souls. Ghosts, born in gardens where the poet treads, Resolve themselves into my being: Alone, I merely stand in this death carnival Which you call life--a stranger.’

EVOLUTION

She rests among the roses red and gay, Wrapt in the golden mantle of her hair, While in her eyes--two mirrors blue and fair-- All girlhood’s winsome charms and wonders play. Love to the shimmering sunbeams spreads his wings, And speeding through the skies with laughing eyes, Comes to the rosy bower where beauty sighs, Presses his lips upon her lips and sings.

O symbol towering o’er our downward strife, In Heaven born, like Heaven immutable, Gift of the dreamy spheres to grosser earth, Wherein is shadowed forth to-morrow’s birth, The unknown made to man attainable-- Love opening with a kiss the book of life!

NOCTURNE

The big, cold moon, and the red glow-lights by the lines, The panting steam, and the luggage cars Wending their fugue-like course through a wood of pines, And around the immutable stars....

THE CITY OF ANGUISH

About the city clouds eternal hang And pallid shadows wander through the mist, Who to the moaning tempest eager list. The night is eerie with the mournful clang Of bells funereal. There is no name Written upon this city’s crumbling walls, And those who live within its cheerless halls Are forlorn lovers of the goddess Fame.

Tread gently, stranger, in this hallowed place, And if among the crowd perchance you meet Some long-forgotten and once-cherished face, Say not a word, extend no hand to greet Your friend, grant him at least oblivion’s grace, For pity’s sake be silent and retreat.

MAGDALENE

Now she lay on the white marble flags, and her hair Made a soft cloud of gold, through the cloud here and there Peeped the warm, rosy skin. And her eyes were as dreams Dreamt in youth by a god, while her kiss-craving lips, Red with love, haunted men. In her pallid despair She had come from her palace, she knelt at my feet And her tears as they fell burnt my flesh. Then she spoke-- Whispered sins music made like a nun’s clinking beads. Magdalene, Magdalene, glowing shame of the world! Just a touch of my lips on her brow crimson tinged, And her head like a child’s lay at rest on my breast. Lullaby, Magdalene, yours my kiss and my song.

FABLE

They met beside a babbling stream, Old Death, young Love; Dawn threw its ochre-tinted gleam Through the leaves above. ‘Father, you look as sad as life,’ Said Love to Death. ‘Boy, keep your taunts for human strife, Nor waste your breath.’ He dipped his scythe in the crystal tide, Shook off the spray: ‘If youth for work has too much pride, Go on your way.’ Love bit the end of a blade of grass And bending low: ‘To-day you meet a pretty lass, Dear Death, I trow.’ The Mower chuckled: ‘She is fair, Fair as a flower. I shall be rich with golden hair Before an hour.’ ‘Some girl whose lot it was to pine, Drowned in a pool, Leaving her pale-faced babe to whine And grow ... a fool.’ ‘No forlorn girl, no treacherous smiles Of a passing churl; Her mother baffled all your wiles And kept the girl, Stainless for me to bear above In the month of May,’ Made answer Death to the stripling Love In the dawn of day. ‘Each mortal mother and mortal Eve They play our game, And we might sleep from morn till eve ’Twould be the same. Your tale, good sir, is very sad But hardly new.’ Old Death sat down beside the lad: ‘The tale is true, The house is near, around the door Vine branches creep....’ But ere the Wanderer could say more He fell asleep. So now the saucy imp was blithe; Holding his breath, The sable cloak and glittering scythe He took from Death And laugh gaily skipped away, Upon his quest. He pushed the door with vine leaves gay, The ghostly guest; The mother led him to the room With curtains blue, Where the girl was waiting for her doom And left the two. He sat him down beside the lass And took her hand, She smiled and thought that in the glass Would stop the sand. But he kissed her lips, the pretty lad, He kissed her eyes.... When came the Mower grim and sad To claim his prize-- Having at last from his trance awoke-- He found instead His scythe wrapt in his sable cloak On the silken bed.

CONFESSION

‘I love,’ she said, ‘a child of Eve, I love to love; Loving, beloved, my heart content, I soar above All other hopes in life and all the fears of death.

‘I love, my beauty and my innocence I give To my beloved, and laugh, and am content to live, And sing my passion with the nightingales and thrushes.

‘I love, I love. Have all your human dogmas power Closer to bind my thoughts to him! God gave the flower Its perfume, and the bird its song, and me my love.’

THE MYSTIC GARDEN

Many coloured suns diffused their gorgeous rainbows through the air O’er a garden strange and fair, Trees and flowers on every side extended far and far away, Like vast armies in array. As I walked within this garden where the earth was mixed with bone, My foot stumbled o’er a stone And the stone in twain was cloven, and a lurid flame was kindled, Which arising slowly mingled With the suns which were revolving in the glory of their noon, Through the skies of burning June. On I strolled and saw a lily which was whiter than the snow; Kissed the lily bending low. As my lips devoutly touched it, lo! it vanished into space; Rose a woman’s haloed face, Where the lily had been basking in the multicoloured day-- Just a vision gold and grey-- And I knew it was the Virgin by the pity in her eyes, Azure-tinted from the skies. While I gazed upon the visage, while I wondered at its pain, ’Twas a flower once again. Then I turned me from the lily to a fragrant brier tree, Bloom-bespattered, fair to see, Culled a rose, and in its place beheld the thorn-crowned Saviour’s head, The sad brow bedewed with red, With the lips so kind and pallid, parted in their constant prayer. Then upon the perfumed air Played his voice: ‘When death, the angel, touches human clay, as you Touched the rose, then God anew, Free, arises from the dust of mortal man, as I arose From the humble brier rose, As my Mother from the lily, as the Spirit from the stone, The first woman from the bone.’ And the vision slowly faded and I fell upon my knees ’Mid the flowers and the trees, Crossed my hands and bent my forehead, doing reverence all the day To the God within my clay.

THE RING

But a tiny ring of gold, Just a link; Wear it and your heart is sold, Strange to think.

’Till it glitters on your hand You are free.... Shall I cast it on the sand, In the sea?

Which was Judas’ greater sin, Kiss or gold? Love must end where sales begin, I am told.

We will have no ring, no kiss To deceive-- When you hear the serpent hiss, Think of Eve.

ISHTAR

The vanity of Art rebuking Nature, Such she, Whose whirlpool eyes, where eddying mysteries seethe and clash, And false red lips Make loveliness sublime of human clay. And men forget the altar and their vows When they have felt the glamour of her gaze, Or held her hand, or touched her lips.

Ah! listen to the treacherous music, hear Her voice, Awakening slumbering echoes in the soul’s abyss, Her silver song As she unclasps her girdle with a smile; And having reaped the evil, scarcely leaves Enough of whiteness or of righteousness To robe a bishop or a pope.

Her laugh has rocked wild cities to their ruin. The Gods, When banished from their temples, left this parting bane, This blue-eyed sin, This Ishtar--pallid Eponym of lust-- That when we meet her in our squares and streets, Bartering her beauty, we may yet recall The graven images of Babylon.

ILLUSION

The friends throw rice and confetti, wave handkerchiefs, and hail Love’s triumph, as away the well-appointed brougham hies: The husband is a man of wealth, and old, and sad, and pale; The youthful bride has full red lips and mocking violet eyes.

THE IDOL

I am an idol made of bronze And sit within a silver shrine, Attended by a shaven bonze, In a temple made of serpentine.

I sit thus through the burning day, Through nights of gold-tipped indigo, While at my feet the people pray And lithesome virgins come and go.

But not for me their sidelong glance, As reverently they wave their hands, For watching their religious dance A youthful, blue-eyed shepherd stands.

And I, the idol wrought in bronze, To be that youth of low degree, Would sacrifice my shaven bonze, My temple, my eternity.

TINTAGEL

I sat within Tintagel’s fabled walls, Amid the scattered stones of human works Crumbling upon the granite mount of God, As life upon the rock Eternity. And sitting there I heard two voices speak, The busy Ocean and the slothful Past; They whispered good King Arthur’s magic name, The Past was sad, the heartless Ocean laughed. Poor King, he lived for many happy years In his illusion, ’till all knowledge came Soul-stirring to this ruler of mankind, Who only knew the lying half of man. One blast of heavenly fire will kill the oak, One touch of knowledge broke this kingly heart; And so he donned his armour, took his sword Excalibur, and put his helmet on, And fought his way to Heaven, told his God How wicked men had ridden through his dream, Played with the devil at his Table-round, Their souls for stakes. He told of all their sins, The treacherous kiss of queenly Guinevere, Eyes swimming with the sight of Lancelot, How Merlin hoary with the frost of years, In Vivien’s lovely arms one day betrayed His life-long gathered lore of elfin charms, How Gawain lied, how knightly vows were broken As readily as lances in a tourney, And how these reckless Christian paladins Were thieves of honour, and the peerless dames All sin and loveliness. And God was silent.

BUT IN HER EYES THERE IS NO LIGHT

You see her in a ball-room, at the play, And in the street you meet her every day, Pale as the pearls she wears about her neck.

Silent she sits at table by your side, Smiling she walks with you at eventide, Pale as the pearls she wears about her neck.

She haunts your thoughts by day, your dreams by night.... But in her wondering eyes there is no light, No more than in the pearls about her neck.

ROSES TWO

A DIALOGUE.

JULIE, seventeen. AURIOL, sixteen. _Any place; any time._

AURIOL

Julie, I have a secret for your ear.

JULIE

What have you, little cousin, with such things As secrets?

AURIOL

Tut, a girl has many thoughts She knows are better kept....

JULIE

Yet longs to tell.

AURIOL

Yes, pretty secrets have a double joy, The keeping and the breaking; and I think They’re like old Saxe, more valued when they’re broken.

JULIE (_eagerly_)

Yes, darling, I agree, so....

AURIOL

It is hard, Awfully hard to break. The story runs Something like this: the giver was a man....

JULIE

Giver of what?

AURIOL

Ah! do not interrupt; For if, at once, I told you what he gave Where would the story be. We’ll call him _he_-- The abstract always has a secret charm-- The other person ... she, you see, was I.... That is....

JULIE

Do not explain.

AURIOL

It might mislead.

JULIE

I like historians with imagination, And Truth when she has draped her nakedness.

AURIOL

It was last evening ... you remember, dear, How fine it was last evening, how the stars....

JULIE

Oh! never mind the stars.

AURIOL

Poor little things! And yet they’re very troublesome, I grant, Prying upon this world of ours, at night, Just when good people want to say their prayers, Or gather dewy roses in the garden.

JULIE

Sweet, are not afraid to go alone Rose-gathering, when the fairies are abroad?

AURIOL

I did not say I was alone.

JULIE

So he...?

AURIOL

Was there. (_Producing a rose which she has held concealed._) And see, Julie, the lovely rose He gave me; but I cannot quite remember His words. Ah! yes, he said the rose was love’s Dear symbol, and was made to be a gift From those who love to those they love, that I Was Beauty.... Do you catch his meaning, dear?

JULIE

I think the gentleman was quite explicit.

AURIOL

One cannot be too careful in such matters.

JULIE

Especially with a stranger ... and a man.

AURIOL

Lothario is not a stranger.

JULIE

Ah! Lothario indeed. So it was he?

AURIOL

Julie, you should say ‘Mr.,’ if you please.

JULIE

Traitors their titles forfeit.

AURIOL

He is not A traitor. See how fair his rose has kept: And symbols die, they say, when vows are broken.

JULIE (_taking a faded rose from her bosom_)

True, this poor rose he gave me, three days since, Is withered.

AURIOL

Are you sure he gave it you? (_Sadly_) These roses look like sisters.

JULIE

Merely cousins. Yes, he gave it to me. (_Sighs._) Three days is all A man’s love and a rose’s life can last.

AURIOL

But he swore that I was his only love.

JULIE

That’s what they always say.

AURIOL

How do you know?

JULIE

My ... brother told me so.

AURIOL

It is too bad.... He stole a kiss.

JULIE

That’s what they always do.

AURIOL

How do you know?

JULIE

My brother told me so.

AURIOL

I think that men are knaves.

JULIE

May be they are; Yet, Auriol, ’tis not perhaps their fault, For women keep the goodness to themselves. Come, we must not waste time on faded flowers, Nor lose our tempers on a faded heart. We’ll give these rosy petals to the wind, (_They throw the flowers away_) Lest it should take our thoughts and toy with them. When comes Lothario, with honeyed words, To claim his pledge of you or me, we’ll send The swain to parley with the mocking wind, Tell him that since he makes a sport of love, ’Tis wrong to run two hares at once. Now, sweet, Let’s go and listen to the piping birds And hear their music, being tired of words.

AT YOUR FEET