Part 3

Not, I suppose, since I deny Appearance is reality, And doubt the substance of the earth Does your remonstrance come to birth; Not that at once I both affirm 'Tis not the skin that makes the worm And every tactile thing with mass Must find its symbol in the grass And with a cool conviction say Even a critic's more than clay And every dog outlives his day. This kind of vagueness suits your view, You would not carp at it; for you Did never stand with those who take Their pleasures in a world opaque. For you a tree would never be Lovely were it but a tree, And earthly splendours never splendid If by transience unattended. Your eyes are on a farther shore Than any of earth; you not adore As godhead God's dead hieroglyph, Nor would you be perturbed if Some prophet with a voice of thunder And avalanche arm should blast and founder The logical pillars that maintain This visible world which loads the brain, Loads the brain and withers the heart And holds man from his God apart.

But still with you remains the craving For some more solid substance, having Surface to touch, colour to see, And form compact in symmetry. You are not satisfied with these Vague throbbings, utterless ecstasies, Void finds your spirit of delight This great indefinite white light, Not with such sickles can you reap; If a dense earth you cannot keep You want a dense heaven as substitute With trees of plump celestial fruit, Red apples, golden pomegranates, And a river flowing by tall gates Of topaz and of chrysolite And walls of twenty cubits height.

Frank, you cry out against the age! Nor you nor I can disengage Ourselves from that in which we live Nor seize on things God does not give. Thirsty as you, perhaps, I long For courtyards of eternal song, Even as yours my feet would stray In a city where 'tis always day And a green spontaneous leafy garden With God in the middle for a warden; But though I trust with strengthening faith I'll taste when I have traversed death The unimaginable sweetness Of certitude of such concreteness, How should I draw the hue and scope Of substances I only hope Or blaze upon a mortal screen The evidence of things not seen? This art of ours but grows and stirs Experience when it registers, And you know well as I know well This autumn of time in which we dwell Is not an age of revelations Solid as once, but intimations That touch us with warm misty fingers Leaving a nameless sense that lingers That sight is blind and Time's a snare And earth less solid than the air And deep below all seeming things There sits a steady king of kings A radiant ageless permanence, A quenchless fount of virtue whence We draw our life; a sense that makes A staunch conviction nothing shakes Of our own immortality. And though, being man, with certain glee I eat and drink, though I suffer pain, And love and hate and love again Well or in mode contemptible, Thus shackled by the body's spell I see through pupils of the beast Though it be faint and blurred with mist A Star that travels in the East.

I see what I can, not what I will In things that move, things that are still, Thin motion, even cloudier rest, I see the symbols God hath drest The moveless trees, the trees that wave The clouds that heavenly highways have, Horses that run, rocks that are fixt, Streams that have rest and motion mixt, The main with its abiding flux, The wind that up my chimney sucks A mounting waterfall of flame, Sticks, straws, dust, beetles and that same Old blazing sun the Psalmist saw A testifier to the law. Divinely to the heart they speak Saying how they are but weak Wan will o' the wisps o'er the crystal sea; But stays that sea still dark to me.

Did I now glibly insolent Chart the ulterior firmament, Would you not know my words were lies, Where not my testimonial eyes Mortal or spiritual lodge, Mere uncorroborated fudge? Praise me, though praise I do not want, Rather, that I have cast much cant, That what I see and feel I write Read what I can in this dim light Granted to me in nether night. And though I am vague and shrink to guess God's everlasting purposes, And never save in perplext dream Have caught the least authentic gleam Of the great kingdom and the throne In the world that lies behind our own, I have not lacked my certainties, I have not haggard moaned the skies, Now waged unnecessary strife Nor scorned nor overvalued life. And though you say my attitude Is questioning, concede my mood Does never bring to tongue or pen Accents of gloomy modern men Who wail or hail the death of God And weigh and measure man the clod, Or say they draw reluctant breath And musically mourn that Death Is a queen omnipotent of woe And Life her lean cicisbeo, Abject and pale, whom vampire-like She playeth with ere she shall strike, And pose sad riddles to the Sphinx With raven quills in purple inks,... Then send the boy to fetch more drinks.

EPILOGUE

Than farthest stars more distant, A mile more, A mile more, A voice cries on insistent: "You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too; But numb at last And dumb at last, Whatever port you cling to, You must come at last to a hill.

"And never a man you'll find there To take your hand And shake your hand; But when you go behind there You must make your hand a sword

"To fence with a foeman swarthy, And swink there Nor shrink there, Though cowardly and worthy Must drink there one reward."

TWELVE

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

TOUT ENTIÈRE

This morning in my attic high The Demon came to visit me, And seeking faults in my reply, He said: "I would inquire of thee,

"Of all the beauties which compose Her charming body's potent spell, Of all the objects black and rose Which make the thing you love so well,

"Which is the sweetest?" O my soul! Thou didst rejoin: "How tell of parts, When all I know is that the whole Works magic in my heart of hearts?

"Where all is fair, how should I say What single grace is my delight? She shines on me like break of day And she consoles me as the night.

"There flows through all her perfect frame A harmony too exquisite That weak analysis should name The numberless accords of it.

"O mystic metamorphosis! My separate senses all are blent; Within her breath soft music is, And in her voice a subtle scent!"

THE ALCHEMY OF GRIEF

One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright, One gives thee weeds to mourn withal; And what to one is burial Is to the other life and light.

The unknown Hermes who assists And alway fills my heart with fear Makes me the mighty Midas' peer The saddest of the alchemists.

Through him I make gold changeable To dross, and paradise to hell; Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.

A stark dead body I love well, And in the gleaming fields on high I build immense sarcophagi.

SPLEEN

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid Upon the spirit aching for the light And all the wide horizon's line is hid By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank, Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin, Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain, And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;--

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air, Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument, File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful, Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent, Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

My heart was like a bird and took to flight, Around the rigging circling joyously; The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky Like a great angel drunken with the light.

"What is yon isle, sad and funereal?" "Cythera famed in deathless song," said they, "The gay old bachelors' Eldorado-Nay, Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"

Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings! The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills Scentlike above thy level seas and fills Our souls with languor and all amorous things.

Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers Held holy by all men for evermore, Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,

And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:-- Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies, A rocky waste rent by discordant cries: Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.

No shady temple was it, close enshrined I' the trees; no flower-crowned priestess hither came With her young body burnt by secret flame, Baring her breast to the caressing wind;

But when so close to the land's edge we drew Our canvas scared the sea-fowl--gradually We knew it for a three-branched gallows tree Like a black cypress stark against the blue.

A rotten carcase hung, whereon did sit A swarm of foul black birds; with writhe and shriek Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife-like beak Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it.

The eyes were holes; the belly opened wide Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs; The grim birds, gorged with dreadful delicacies, Had dug and furrowed it on every side.

Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout, And in the midst of these there turned about One, the chief hangman, larger than the rest....

Lone Cytherean! now all silently Thou sufferest these insults to atone For those old infamous sins that thou hast known, The sins that locked the gate o' the grave to thee.

Mine are thy sorrows, ludicrous corse; yea, all Are mine! I stood thy swaying limbs beneath, And, like a bitter vomit, to my teeth There rose old shadows in a stream of gall.

O thou unhappy devil, I felt afresh, Gazing at thee, the beaks and jaws of those Black savage panthers and those ruthless crows, Who loved of old to macerate my flesh.

The sea was calm, the sky without a cloud; Henceforth for me all things that came to pass Were blood and darkness,--round my heart, alas! There clung that allegory, like a shroud.

Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust Found I on Venus island desolate.... Ah, God! the courage and strength to contemplate My body and my heart without disgust.

THE CRACKED BELL

'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long, To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist, The distant memories which slowly throng, Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.

Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell Who, spite of age alert and confident, Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.

For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care, She strives with songs to people the cold air It happens often that her feeble cries

Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies Wounded, forgotten, 'neath a mound of slain And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in pain.

THE OFFENDED MOON

O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale! Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind, Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail,

Dost see the poet, weary-eyed and pale, Or lovers on their happy beds reclined, Showing white teeth in sleep, or vipers twined, 'Neath the dry sward; or in a golden veil

Stealest thou with faint footfall o'er the grass As of old, to kiss from twilight unto dawn The faded charms of thine Endymion?...

"O child of this sick century, I see Thy grey-haired mother leering in her glass And plastering the breast that suckled thee!"

TO THEODORE DE BANVILLE,

1842

So proud your port, your arm so powerful, With such a grip you grip the goddess' hair, That one might take you, from your casual air, For a young ruffian flinging down his trull.

Your clear eye flashing with precocity, You have displayed yourself proud architect Of fabrics so audaciously correct That we may guess what your ripe prime will be.

Poet, our blood ebbs out through every pore; Is it, perchance, the robe the Centaur bore, Which made a sullen streamlet of each vein,

Was three times dipped within the venom fell Of those old reptiles fierce and terrible Whom, in his cradle, Hercules had slain?

MUSIC

Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea, Bears me towards my pale Star: in clear space, or 'neath a vaporous canopy On-floating, I set sail.

With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown, I climb the ridgèd steeps Of those high-pilèd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown, Veiling its starry deeps.

I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form, Of a great ship in pain, Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm

Upon the vasty main Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare Mirror of my despair.

THE CATS

The lover and the stern philosopher Both love, in their ripe time, the confident Soft cats, the house's chiefest ornament, Who like themselves are cold and seldom stir.

Of knowledge and of pleasure amorous, Silence they seek and Darkness' fell domain; Had not their proud souls scorned to brook his rein, They would have made grim steeds for Erebus.

Pensive they rest in noble attitudes Like great stretched sphinxes in vast solitudes Which seem to sleep wrapt in an endless dream;

Their fruitful loins are full of sparks divine, And gleams of gold within their pupils shine As 'twere within the shadow of a stream.

THE SADNESS OF THE MOON

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly, Like a beauty who on mounded cushions rests, And with her light hand fondles lingeringly, Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.

On her soft satined avalanches' height Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white Visions which rise athwart the blue like flowers.

When sometimes in her perfect indolence She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence, Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,

Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through, Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue, And in his heart's depths hides it from the sun.

MOESTA ET ERRABUNDA

Agatha, tell me, does thy heart not ache, Plunged in this squalid city's filthy sea, For another ocean where the splendours break Blue, clear, and deep as is virginity. Agatha, tell me, does thy heart not ache?

The sea, the sea unending, comforts us! What demon gave the hoarse old sea who sings To her mumbling hurricanes' organ thunderous The god-like power to cradle sorrowful things? The sea, the sea unending, comforts us.

Carry me, wagon, bear me, barque, away! Far! Far! For here the mud is made of tears! Does Agatha's sad heart not sometimes say: "O far from shudderings and crimes and fears, Carry me, wagon; bear me barque, away?"

How far thou art, O scented paradise, O paradise where all is love and joy, Where all is worthy love 'neath the azure skies, And the heart drowns in bliss without alloy! How far thou art, O scented paradise!

But the green paradise of childish loves, The games, the songs, the kisses and the flowers, The laughing draughts of wine in hidden groves, The violins throbbing through the twilight hours, --But the green paradise of childish loves,

The artless paradise of stealthy joys, Is that already leagues beyond Cathay? And can one, with a little plaintive noise, Bring it again that is so far away-- The artless paradise of stealthy joys?

THE OWLS

'Neath their black yews in solemn state The owls are sitting in a row Like foreign gods; and even so Blink their red eyes; they meditate.

Quite motionless they hold them thus Until at last the day is done, And driving down the slanting sun, The sad night is victorious.

They teach the wise who gives them ear That in this world he most should fear All things which loud or restless be.

Who, dazzled by a passing shade, Follows it, never will be free Till the dread penalty be paid.

FINIS