Part 2

Lulled by your visions without number, We seek our beds content and void of pain, And dreaming drowse and dreaming slumber And dreaming wake to see the day again.

A MEMORIAL

(F.T.)

The cord broke, and the tent Slipped, and the silken roof Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament. Yet cared we not; how should we care? Knowing that labourless now he breathes A golden paradisal air Where with more certain craft he wreathes Bright braids of words more wise and fair Than ever his earthly fabrics were, That his unwavering eyes made fresh, Purged and regarbed in fadeless flesh, What he then darkly guessed behold, And watch with an abiding joy The eternal mysteries unfold Which do his now transfigured songs evermore employ.

Brother, yet great thy power; Thou stood'st as on a tower Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields; In thy alembic song Imagination strong Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields. This thy reward well-won, For every morning's sun Found thy heart's firm allegiance still unshaken; No temporal ache or smart Drave Beauty from thy heart, And by thy mighty mistress never wast forsaken.

Yes; for though stringent was the test, When that thy trial was bitterest, Steadfast thou did'st remain; unshod The harrows of Pain thy feet once trod, Humiliate as thy sad song tells Before the vault's white sentinels. Friendless and faint thou sojourned'st there, A bowed, brave, timid wanderer, A lonely nomad of the spirit, Who did a triple curse inherit, Hunger, regret and memory. Yet never did they vanquish thee; When nighest broken, most alone, Thy unassuagèd thoughts could clamber To beauty on her ageless throne; Thou wert as one in torture chamber Who sees the blue through an open casement And hammers his soul to endure the time Of his corporeal abasement; Nor writhed'st at thine or others' fault, But with grim tenderness did salt Thy cicatrices with a rhyme. Not the most sable flame of gloom Could penetrate thy inmost room; But through the walls thy spirit sucked Into that cloistral hermitage Stray lovely things, moonbeams and snows The far sky shed into thy cage, And, from the very gutter plucked, A lost and mired campestral rose.

Ended that purgatorial period, Filled was thy wallet and thy feet were shod, The leaden weights were moved, the rack withdrawn, Thou didst traverse the dewy fields of dawn, Watch sunsets blazoning over upland turf, Pull poppies from the frontiers of the surf, Dwelled'st with love and human eyes Vigilant, calm and wise. But still as when thy bark did ride Derelict on the city's tide, As then for penury now for pride Thy bodily senses were denied; Though they cried out and would not sleep, Ascetic thou didst armour them Lest acid pleasure should eat thine art's pure gem. Hourly the tempter's ambuscades But thou didst guard the gates and keep Thy senses' hungry colonnades Accessible but to Beauty's ministers, Unlit by any ruby flame but hers. Immuring so thy spirit eager Within a body frail and meagre, Far from the meads of earthly milk and honey, Yet franchised of more wondrous territories, Like those poor Bedouin of Arabia the Stony Who roam spare-fed and hollow-eyed but free By day to wander and by night to camp In vast serenity, Compassed by God's great silent glories The sun's gold splendour and the moon's white lamp, Folded and safe from harm Beneath the mighty sky's protecting arm.

Ha! but the Titan's ardour Wherewith thou scour'dst the vast, To spoil the starry larder Of fruits of heavenly taste! Urania's fiercest servant, With thirst as furnace fervent And serene burning brow, Worthy of thy great lineage, thou Drankest without a shudder In proud humility Milk from that vast primæval udder That swells for such as thee, Milk from the fountains of the Universe That cowards deem infected with a curse, That flushes him who drinks Nor shrinks The exalted anguish of diurnal draughts To a clear vision, more intolerable In its blissful pain, than love's most ardent shafts, Of the seats where she doth dwell, She, whom thou didst confess Enticed Thee hot to her throne to press For the greater glory of Christ To uplift the curtains of her closed eyes.

Not all was for thy learning Nor any mortal's else; Only for thy discerning Sporadic syllables Of those supernal glances Coffer of which her marble countenance is, Yet vain was not the adventure, Reluctant though the prize, Thou gainedst a debenture On the fringe of Beauty's eyes; Such fragmentary trophy As some cross-tunic'd knight From Saladin or Sophy May have won in sword's despite, Not the dear polar shrines Held captive by the Paynim But still as fruit of wars Some stone from Sion's lines, Some relic that might sain him Of life's uncounted scars.

Self-dedicated anchorite, Never disdainful of the dust, But conscious of the overcoming night That must engulph the blooms and berries of lust, And unforgetful of the enveloping day beyond; Though a sweet show was spread for thy delight Resolved not to be so fond As, in ephemeral gauds caparisoned, To station feet upon a world of vapour Soft as a dream and fleeting as a taper; Thou thoughtest nevertheless that thou shouldst occupy Thyself, as it seemed to thee, most worthily Until the rapid hour when thou shouldst die; So, in a world of seemings, Of shadows and of dreamings, Busied thyself to fashion and record Unto the greater glory of thy Lord, For thy proud lady Beauty His Most excellent and humble handmaid is. Says one thy service was too ceremonial, Thy vestments irised overmuch, thy ritual Too elaborate and thy rubric too obscure, Therefore thy gift of chant and orison Beneath the perfect service men have done. O but thy notes were pure, And in a day like this we now endure No fault it was in thee to set thy camp Remote, aloof, aloof, In a far fastness proof 'Gainst the mephitic odours of the swamp. Which being so, no gain 'Twere to explain An exquisiteness too meticulous; Let us but say it pleased thee thus, Dowered with imagination heavy-fruited, To raise a column garlanded and fluted For Him thy heavenly abacus. This was thine offering thou didst make In founded hope that He The craftsman's best would take Well knowing its unobscure sincerity.

The cord broke and the tent Slipped and the silken roof Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament. We still in this terrene abode Forlorn must tread the difficult road, And all meek thanks and all belief Hardly suffice to rampart grief. For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic And are her temples now delivered over To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic In places hallowed by that celestial lover. Save only two or three With undivided minds like thee, None now remains that girds The peregrinal loin, None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue, But counterfeiters of her imaged coin, Iconoclasts, breakers of carven words, Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung, Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans, And pismire artisans Labouring to make Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face As might the surface of a stagnant lake.

Yet we should anger not, Nor let that be forgot, The testament of stateliest worth He left us when he fled the earth. The mausoleum made of rhyme, Fair in its unfrequented field, Which shall invulnerably shield His memory to the end of Time; The house with curtain-flaming halls And roof of gold and jewelled walls For which the fisher sank his net Into the deepest pools of speech, Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet That a less venturous could not reach, The hunter tracked the metaphor On many a foamy silver coast A hundred leagues beyond the most Fabulous Tellurian shore.

Magnificent he was and mild, Glad to be still and glad to speak, Daring yet delicate as a child, Faithful, compassionate and holy, And, being human, strong and weak, And full of hope and melancholy. No more than we, able to shed Man's nature he inherited, Neither sin's garrison to kill, Yet at the last with constancy so great As the world's vanities to abnegate, Sternly to will the sacrifice of will Upon the altars of the Uncreate, So that he lived before he died As one who hourly to himself denied All joys save those that cannot pall, Who having nothing yet had all.

FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND

I

When I was a boy there was a friend of mine, We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, Stupid old animals who never understood And never had an impulse and said "you must be good."

We slank like stoats and fled like foxes, We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes, Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame-- O the surprise when the postman came!

We stole eggs and apples and made fine hay In people's houses when people were away, We broke street lamps and away we ran, Then I was a boy but now I am a man.

Now I am a man and don't have any fun, I hardly ever shout and I never never run, And I don't care if he's dead that friend of mine, For then I was a boy and now I am a swine.

II

We met again the other night With people; you were quite polite, Shook my hand and spoke awhile Of common things with cautious smile; Paid the usual debt men owe To fellows whom they used to know. But, when our eyes met full, yours dropped, And sudden, resolute, you stopped, Moving with hurried syllables To make remarks to some one else. I caught them not, to me they said: "Let the dead past bury its dead, Things were very different then, Boys are fools and men are men." Several times the other night You did your best to be polite; When in the conversation's round You heard my tongue's familiar sound You bent in eager pose my way To hear what I had got to say; Trying, you thought with some success, To hide the chasm's nakedness. But on your eyes hard films there lay; No mock-interest, no pretence Could veil your blank indifference; And if thoughts came recalling things Far-off, far-off, from those old springs When underneath the moon and sun Our separate pulses beat as one, Vagrant tender thoughts that asked Admittance found the portal masked; You spurned them; when I'd said my say, With laugh and nod you turned away To toss your friends some easy jest That smote my brow and stabbed my breast. Foolish though it be and vain I am not master of my pain, And when I said good-night to you I hoped we should not meet again, And wondered how the soul I knew Could change so much; have I changed too?

III

There was a man whom I knew well Whose choice it was to live in hell; Reason there was why that was so But what it was I do not know.

He had a room high in a tower, And sat there drinking hour by hour, Drinking, drinking all alone With candles and a wall of stone.

Now and then he sobered down, And stayed a night with me in town. If he found me with a crowd, He shrank and did not speak aloud.

He sat in a corner silently, And others of the company Would note his curious face and eye, His twitching face and timid eye.

When they saw the eye he had They thought perhaps that he was mad. I knew he was clear and sane But had a horror in his brain.

He had much money and one friend And drank quite grimly to the end. Why he chose to die in hell I did not ask, he did not tell.

LINES

When London was a little town Lean by the river's marge, The poet paced it with a frown, He thought it very large.

He loved bright ship and pointing steeple And bridge with houses loaded And priests and many-coloured people ... But ah, they were not woaded!

Not all the walls could shed the spell Of meres and marshes green, Nor any chaffering merchant tell The beauty that had been:

The crying birds at fall of night, The fisher in his coracle, And grim on Ludgate's windy height, An oak-tree and an oracle.

Sick for the past his hair he rent And dropt a tear in season; If he had cause for his lament We have much better reason.

For now the fields and paths he knew Are coffined all with bricks, The lucid silver stream he knew Runs slimy as the Styx;

North and south and east and west, Far as the eye can travel, Earth with a sombre web is drest That nothing can unravel.

And we must wear as black a frown, Wail with as keen a woe That London was a little town Five hundred years ago.

* * * * *

Yet even this place of steamy stir, This pit of belch and swallow, With chrism of gold and gossamer The elements can hallow.

I have a room in Chancery Lane, High in a world of wires, Whence fall the roofs a ragged plain Wooded with many spires.

There in the dawns of summer days I stand in adoration, While London's robed in rainbow haze And gold illumination.

The wizard breezes waft the rays Shot by the waking sun, A myriad chimneys softly blaze, A myriad shadows run.

Round the wide rim in radiant mist The gentle suburbs quiver, And nearer lies the shining twist Of Thames, a holy river

Left and right my vision drifts, By yonder towers I linger, Where Westminster's cathedral lifts Its belled Byzantine finger,

And here against my perchèd home Where hold wise converse daily The loftier and the lesser dome, St. Paul's and the Old Bailey.

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 perfumèd 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 FUGITIVE

Flying his hair and his eyes averse, Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. How could we clear 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.

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.

IN A CHAIR

He room is full of the peace of night, The small flames murmur and flicker and sway, Within me is neither shadow, nor light, Nor night, nor twilight, nor dawn, nor day.

For the brain strives not to the goal of thought, And the limbs lie wearied, and all desire Sleeps for a while, and I am naught But a pair of eyes that gaze at a fire.

A DAY

I. MORNING

The village fades away Where I last night came Where they housed me and fed me And never asked my name.

The sun shines bright, my step is light, I, who have no abode, Jeer at the stuck, monotonous Black posts along the road.

II. MIDDAY

The wood is still, As here I sit My heart drinks in The peace of it.

A something stirs I know not where Some quiet spirit In the air.

O tall straight stems! O cool deep green! O hand unfelt! O face unseen!

III. EVENING

The evening closes in, As down this last long lane I plod; there patter round First heavy drops of rain.

Feet ache, legs ache, but now Step quickens as I think Of mounds of bread and cheese And something hot to drink.

IV. NIGHT

Ah! sleep is sweet, but yet I will not sleep awhile Nor for a space forget The toil of that last mile;

But lie awake and feel The cool sheets' tremulous kisses O'er all my body steal ... Is sleep as sweet as this is?

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 eared 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]