Poems Read online

  Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,

  Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.

  Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,

  Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,

  Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged

  Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die

  Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.

  Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune

  Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;

  Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears . . .

  You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.

  2

  Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?

  Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,

  Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.

  Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll

  Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;

  But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,

  Scarred with old wounds, the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,

  Will limp to their stations for the last defence. Make it your hope

  To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;

  For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die

  His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong

  Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,

  And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.

  Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits

  Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,

  Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals

  Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.

  Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;

  You that have Vichy-water in your veins and worship the event,

  Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).

  PAN’S PURGE

  I dreamt that all the planning of peremptory humanity

  Had crushed Nature finally beneath the foot of Man;

  Birth-control and merriment, Earth completely sterilized,

  Bungalow and fun-fair, had fulfilled our Plan;

  But the lion and the unicorn were sighing at the funeral,

  Crying at the funeral,

  Sobbing at the funeral of the god Pan.

  And the elephant was crying. The pelican in his piety

  Struck his feathered bosom till the blood ran,

  And howling at humanity the owl and iguanodon,

  The bittern and the buffalo, their dirge began,

  But dangerously, suddenly, a strange ecstatic shuddering,

  A change that set me shuddering

  Through all the wailful noises of the beasts ran.

  No longer were they sorrowful, but stronger and more horrible,

  It had only been a rumour of the death of Pan.

  The scorpions and the mantichores and corpulent tarantulas

  Were closing in around me, hissing Long live Pan!

  And forth with rage unlimited the Northwind drew his scimitar,

  In wrath with ringing scimitar

  He came, with sleet and shipwreck, for the doom of Man.

  And now, descending, ravening, loud and large, the avalanche,

  And after it the earthquake, was loosed upon Man.

  Towering and cloven-hoofed, the power of Pan came over us,

  Stamped, bit, tore, broke. It was the end of Man;

  Except where saints and savages were kept from his ravaging,

  And crept out when the ravaging

  Was ended, on an empty earth. The new world began.

  A small race—a smiling heaven—an round the silences

  Returned; there was comfort for corrected Man.

  Flowered turf had swallowed up the towered cities; following

  His flocks and herds where nameless, untainted rivers ran,

  Leisurely he pondered, at his pleasure wandering,

  Measurelessly wandering . . .

  Clear, on the huge pastures, the young voice of Man.

  NARNIAN SUITE

  1

  March for Strings, Kettledrums, and Sixty-Three Dwarfs

  With plucking pizzicato and the prattle of the kettledrum

  We’re trotting into battle mid a clatter of accoutrement;

  Our beards are big as periwigs and trickle with opopanax,

  And trinketry and treasure twinkle out on every part of us—

  (Scrape! Tap! The fiddle and the kettledrum).

  The chuckle-headed humans think we’re only petty poppetry

  And all our battle-tackle nothing more than pretty bric-a-brac;

  But a little shrub has prickles, and they’ll soon be in a pickle if

  A scud of dwarfish archery has crippled all their cavalry—

  (Whizz! Twang! The quarrel and the javelin).

  And when the tussle thickens we can writhe and wriggle under it;

  Then dagger-point’ll tickle ’em, and grab and grip’ll grapple ’em,

  And trap and trick’ll trouble ’em and tackle ’em and topple ’em

  Till they’re huddled, all be-diddled, in the middle of our caperings—

  (Dodge! Jump! The wriggle and the summersault).

  When we’ve scattered ’em and peppered ’em with pebbles from our catapults

  We’ll turn again in triumph and by crannies and by crevices

  Go back to where the capitol and cradle of our people is,

  Our forges and our furnaces, the caverns of the earth—

  (Gold! Fire! The anvil and the smithying).

  2

  March for Drum, Trumpet, and Twenty-One Giants

  With stumping stride in pomp and pride

  We come to thump and floor ye;

  We’ll bump your lumpish heads to-day

  And tramp your ramparts into clay,

  And as we stamp and romp and play

  Our trump’ll blow before us—

  (crescendo)

  Oh tramp it, tramp it, tramp it, trumpet, trumpet blow before us!

  We’ll grind and break and bind and take

  And plunder ye and pound ye!

  With trundled rocks and bludgeon blow,

  You dunderheads, we’ll dint ye so

  You’ll blunder and run blind, as though

  By thunder stunned, around us—

  By thunder, thunder, thunder, thunder stunned around us!

  Ho! tremble town and tumble down

  And crumble shield and sabre!

  Your kings will mumble and look pale,

  Your horses stumble or turn tail,

  Your skimble-scamble counsels fail,

  So rumble drum belaboured—

  (diminuendo)

  Oh rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble drum belaboured!

  THE MAGICIAN AND THE DRYAD

  MAGICIAN

  Out of your dim felicity of leaves, oh Nymph appear,

  Answer me in soft-showery voice, attempt the unrooted dance

  —My art shall sponsor the enormity. Now concentrate,

  Arouse, where in your vegetative heart it drowses deep

  In seminal sleep, your feminine response. Conjuro te

  Per Hecates essentiam et noctis silentia,

  Breaking by Trivia’s name your prison of bark. Beautiful, awake.

  DRYAD

  Risen from the deep lake of my liberty, into your prison

  She has come, cruel commander.

  MAGICIAN

  I have given speech to the dumb.

  Will you not thank me, silver lady?

  DRYAD

  Oh till now she drank

  With thirst of myriad mouths the bursting cataracts of the sun,

/>   The drizzle of gentler stars, an indivisible small rain.

  Wading the dark earth, made of earth and light, cradled in air,

  All that she was, she was all over. Now the mask you call

  A Face has blotted out the ambient hemisphere’s embrace;

  Her light is screwed into twin nodules of tormenting sight;

  Searing divisions tear her into five. She cannot hear

  But only see, the moon; earth has no taste; she cannot breathe

  At every branch vibrations of the sky. For a dome of severance,

  A helmet, a dark, rigid box of bone, has overwhelmed

  Her hair . . . that was her lungs . . . that was her nerves . . . that kissed the air.

  Crushed in a brain, her thought that circled coolly in every vein

  Turns into poison, thickens like a man’s, ferments and burns.

  She was at peace when she was in her unity. Oh now release

  And let her out into the seamless world, make her forget.

  MAGICIAN

  Be free. Relapse. And so she vanishes. And now the tree

  Grows barer every moment. The leaves fall. A killing air,

  Sighing from the country of Man, has withered it. The tree will die.

  THE TRUE NATURE OF GNOMES

  Paracelsus somewhere in his writings tells us

  A gnome moves through earth like an arrow in the air,

  At home like a fish within the seamless, foamless

  Liberty of the water that yields to it everywhere.

  Beguiled with pictures, I fancied in my childhood

  Subterranean rivers beside glimmering wharfs,

  Hammers upon anvils, pattering and yammering,

  Torches and tunnels, the cities of the dwarfs;

  But in perfect blackness underneath the surface,

  In a silence unbroken till the planet cracks,

  Their sinewy bodies through the dense continuum

  Move without resistance and leave no tracks.

  Gravel, marl, blue clay—all’s one to travel in;

  Only one obstacle can impede a gnome—

  A cave or a mine-shaft. Not their very bravest

  Would venture across it for a short cut home.

  There is the unbridgeable. To a gnome the air is

  Utter vacuity. If he thrust out his face

  Into a cavern, his face would break in splinters,

  Bursting as a man would burst in interstellar space.

  With toiling lungs a gnome can breathe the soil in,

  Rocks are like a headwind, stiff against his chest,

  Chief ’midst his pleasures is the quiet leaf mould,

  Like air in meadowy valleys when the wind’s at rest.

  Like silvan freshness are the lodes of silver,

  Cold, clammy, fog-like, are the leaden veins

  Those of gold are prodigally sweet like roses,

  Gems stab coolly like the small spring rains.

  THE BIRTH OF LANGUAGE

  How near his sire’s careering fires

  Must Mercury the planet run;

  What wave of heat must lave and beat

  That shining suburb of the Sun

  Whose burning flings supernal things

  Like spindrift from his stormy crown;

  He throws and shakes in rosy flakes

  Intelligible virtues down,

  And landing there, the candent air

  A transformation on them brings,

  Makes each a god of speech with rod

  Enwreathed and sandals fledged with wings.

  Due west (the Sun’s behest so runs)

  They seek the wood where flames are trees;

  In crimson shade their limbs are laid

  Besides the pure quicksilver seas,

  Where thick with notes of liquid throats

  The forest melody leaps and runs

  Till night lets robe the lightless globe

  With darkness and with distant suns.

  Awake they spring and shake the wing;

  And on the trees whose trunks are flames

  They find like fruit (with rind and root

  And fronds of fire) their proper names.

  They taste. They burn with haste. They churn

  With upright plumes the sky’s abyss;

  Far, far below, the arbours glow

  Where once they felt Mercurial bliss.

  They ache and freeze through vacant seas

  Of night. Their nimbleness and youth

  Turns lean and frore; their meaning more,

  Their being less. Fact shrinks to truth.

  They reach this Earth. There each has birth

  Miraculous, a word made breath,

  Lucid and small for use in all

  Man’s daily needs; but dry like death.

  So dim below these symbols show,

  Bony and abstract every one.

  Yet if true verse but lift the curse,

  They feel in dreams their native Sun.

  THE PLANETS

  Lady LUNA, in light canoe,

  By friths and shallows of fretted cloudland

  Cruises monthly; with chrism of dews

  And drench of dream, a drizzling glamour,

  Enchants us—the cheat! changing sometime

  A mind to madness, melancholy pale,

  Bleached with gazing on her blank count’nance

  Orb’d and ageless. In earth’s bosom

  The shower of her rays, sharp-feathered light

  Reaching downward, ripens silver,

  Forming and fashioning female brightness,

  —Metal maidenlike. Her moist circle

  Is nearest earth. Next beyond her

  MERCURY marches;—madcap rover,

  Patron of pilf’rers. Pert quicksilver

  His gaze begets, goblin mineral,

  Merry multitude of meeting selves,

  Same but sundered. From the soul’s darkness,

  With wreathèd wand, words he marshals,

  Guides and gathers them—gay bellwether

  Of flocking fancies. His flint has struck

  The spark of speech from spirit’s tinder,

  Lord of language! He leads forever

  The spangle and splendour, sport that mingles

  Sound with senses, in subtle pattern,

  Words in wedlock, and wedding also

  Of thing with thought. In the third region

  VENUS voyages . . . but my voice falters;

  Rude rime-making wrongs her beauty,

  Whose breasts and brow, and her breath’s sweetness

  Bewitch the worlds. Wide-spread the reign

  Of her secret sceptre, in the sea’s caverns,

  In grass growing and grain bursting,

  Flower unfolding, and flesh longing,

  And shower falling sharp in April.

  The metal copper in the mine reddens

  With muffled brightness, like muted gold,

  By her fingers form’d. Far beyond her

  The heaven’s highway hums and trembles,

  Drums and dindles, to the driv’n thunder

  Of SOL’S chariot, whose sword of light

  Hurts and humbles; beheld only

  Of eagle’s eye. When his arrow glances

  Through mortal mind, mists are parted

  And mild as morning the mellow wisdom

  Breathes o’er the breast, broadening eastward

  Clear and cloudless. In a clos’d garden

  (Unbound her burden) his beams foster

  Soul in secret, where the soil puts forth

  Paradisal palm, and pure fountains

  Turn and re-temper, touching coolly

  The uncomely common to cordial gold;

  Whose ore also, in earth’s matrix,

  Is print and pressure of his proud signet

  On the wax of the world. He is the worshipp’d male,

  The earth’s husband, all-beholding,

  Arch-chemic eye. But other country


  Dark with discord dins beyond him,

  With noise of nakers, neighing of horses,

  Hammering of harness. A haughty god

  MARS mercenary, makes there his camp

  And flies his flag; flaunts laughingly

  The graceless beauty, grey-eyed and keen,

  —Blond insolence—of his blithe visage

  Which is hard and happy. He hews the act,

  The indifferent deed with dint of his mallet

  And his chisel of choice; achievement comes not

  Unhelped by him;—hired gladiator

  Of evil and good. All’s one to Mars,

  The wrong righted, rescued meekness,

  Or trouble in trenches, with trees splintered

  And birds banished, banks fill’d with gold

  And the liar made lord. Like handiwork

  He offers to all—earns his wages

  And whistles the while. White-feathered dread

  Mars has mastered. His metal’s iron

  That was hammered through hands into holy cross,

  Cruel carpentry. He is cold and strong,

  Necessity’s son. Soft breathes the air

  Mild, and meadowy, as we mount further

  Where rippled radiance rolls about us

  Moved with music—measureless the waves’

  Joy and jubilee. It is JOVE’S orbit,

  Filled and festal, faster turning

  With arc ampler. From the Isles of Tin

  Tyrian traders, in trouble steering

  Came with his cargoes; the Cornish treasure

  That his ray ripens. Of wrath ended

  And woes mended, of winter passed

  And guilt forgiven, and good fortune

  Jove is master; and of jocund revel,

  Laughter of ladies. The lion-hearted,

  The myriad-minded, men like the gods,

  Helps and heroes, helms of nations

  Just and gentle, are Jove’s children,

  Work his wonders. On his wide forehead

  Calm and kingly, no care darkens

  Nor wrath wrinkles: but righteous power

  And leisure and largess their loose splendours

  Have wrapped around him—a rich mantle

  Of ease and empire. Up far beyond

  Goes SATURN silent in the seventh region,

  The skirts of the sky. Scant grows the light,

  Sickly, uncertain (the Sun’s finger

  Daunted with darkness). Distance hurts us,

  And the vault severe of vast silence;

  Where fancy fails us, and fair language,

  And love leaves us, and light fails us

  And Mars fails us, and the mirth of Jove