Poems Read online

  Long-builded hopes thus far have taught my

  Obstinate heart a sedate deportment.

  Still beauty calls as once in the mazes of

  Boyhood. The bird-like soul quivers. Into her

  Flash darts of unfulfill’d desire and

  Pierce with a bright, unabated anguish.

  Armed thus with anguish, joy met us even in

  Youth—who forgets? This side of the terminus,

  Then, now, and always, thus, and only

  Thus, were the doors of delight set open.

  BALLADE OF DEAD GENTLEMEN

  Where, in what bubbly land, below

  What rosy horizon dwells to-day

  That worthy man Monsieur Cliquot

  Whose widow has made the world so gay?

  Where now is Mr Tanqueray?

  Where might the King of Sheba be

  (Whose wife stopped dreadfully long away)?

  Mais où sont messieurs les maris?

  Say where did Mr Beeton go

  With rubicund nose and whiskers grey

  To dream of dumplings long ago,

  Of syllabubs, soups, and entremets?

  In what dim isle did Twankey lay

  His aching head? What murmuring sea

  Lulls him after the life-long fray?

  Mais où sont messieurs les maris?

  How Mr Grundy’s cheeks may glow

  By a bathing-pool where lovelies play,

  I guess, but shall I ever know?

  Where—if it comes to that, who, pray—

  Is Mr Masham? Sévigné

  And Mr Siddons and Zebedee

  And Gamp and Hemans, where are they?

  Mais où sont messiuers les maris?

  Princesses all, beneath your sway

  In this grave world they bowed the knee;

  Libertine airs in Elysium say

  Mais où sont messieurs les maris?

  THE ADAM UNPARADISED

  Faltering, with bowed heads, our altered parents

  Slowly descended from their holy hill,

  All their good fortune left behind and done with,

  Out through the one-way pass

  Into the dangerous world, these strange countries.

  No rumour in Eden had reached the human pair

  Of things not men, yet half like men, that wandered

  The earth beyond its walls;

  But now they heard the mountains stirred and shaken,

  All the heap’d crags re-echoing, the deep tarns

  And caverns shuddering and the abysmal gorges

  With dismal drums of Dwarfs;

  Or, some prodigious night, waked by a thumping

  Shock as of piles being driven two miles away,

  Ran till the sunrise shone upon the bouncing

  Monopods at their heels;

  Or held their breath, hiding, and saw their elders,

  The race of giants—the bulldozer’s pace,

  Heads like balloons, toad-thick, ungainly torsos—

  Dotting the plain like ricks.

  They had more to fear once Cain had killed a quarter

  Of human kind and stolen away, and the womb

  Of an unsmiling Hominid to the turncoat

  Had littered ominous sons.

  A happy noise of liquid shapes, a lapping

  Of small waves up and up the hills till all

  Was smooth and silver, the clear Flood ascended

  Ending that crew; but still

  Memory, not built upon a fake from Piltdown,

  Reaches us. We know more than bones can teach.

  Eve’s body’s language, Seth within her quickening,

  Taught him the sickening fear.

  He passed the word. Before we’re born we have heard it.

  Long-silenced ogres boom, voices like gongs

  Reverberate in the mind, a Dwarf-drum rolls,

  Trolls wind unchancy horns.

  THE ADAM AT NIGHT

  Except at the making of Eve Adam slept

  Not at all (as men now sleep) before the Fall;

  Sin yet unborn, he was free from that dominion

  Of the blind brother of death who occults the mind.

  Instead, when stars and twilight had him to bed

  And the dutiful owl, whirring over Eden, had hooted

  A warning to the other beasts to be hushed till morning

  And curbed their plays that the Man should be undisturbed,

  He would lie, relaxed, enormous, under a sky

  Starry as never since; he would set ajar

  The door of his mind. Into him thoughts would pour

  Other than day’s. He rejoined Earth, his mother.

  He melted into her nature. Gradually he felt

  As though through his own flesh the elusive growth,

  The hardening and spreading of roots in the deep garden;

  In his veins, the wells filling with the silver rains,

  And, thrusting down far under his rock-crust,

  Finger-like, rays from the heavens that probed, bringing

  To bloom the gold and diamond in his dark womb.

  The seething, central fires moved with his breathing.

  He guided his globe smoothly in the heaven, riding

  At one with his planetary peers around the Sun;

  Courteously he saluted the hard virtue of Mars

  And Venus’ liquid glory as he spun between them.

  Over Man and his mate the Hours like waters ran

  Till darkness thinned in the east. The treble lark,

  Carolling, awoke the common people of Paradise

  To yawn and scratch, to bleat and whinny, in the dawn.

  Collected now in themselves, human and erect,

  Lord and Lady walked on the dabbled sward,

  As if two trees should arise dreadfully gifted

  With speech and motion. The Earth’s strength was in each.

  SOLOMON

  Many a column of cedar was in Solomon’s hall,

  Much jade of China on the inlaid wall.

  Cast aloft by the fountains with their soft foam,

  A tremor of light was dancing in the emerald dome.

  The popinjays on their perches without stopping praised

  The unspeakable Name. The flamingoes and the peacocks blazed.

  Incense richly darkened the day. Princes stood

  Waiting—a motley diapason of robes hotly hued.

  Like the column of a palm-tree, like a dolomite tower,

  Like the unbearable noon-day in the glare of its power,

  So solemn and so radiant was Solomon to behold,

  Men feared his immense forehead and his beard of gold.

  At his entry on the dais there went round

  Flash of diamond, rustle of raiment, and a sighing sound

  From among his ladies. They were wrung with desire,

  Enslaving the heart. Musicians plucked the grave wire.

  Like thunder at a distance came from under his feet

  The rumble of captive Jinn and of humbled Efreet;

  Column and foundation trembled; to Solomon’s ring

  Hell’s abyss was obedient, and to the spells of the King.

  By his bed lay crouching many a deadly Jinn;

  He erected glory on their subjected sin,

  By adamant will he was seeking the Adamite state,

  The flame-like monarchy of Man. But he came late.

  He was wrong. It was possible no longer. Among leaves

  Bird-shaken, dew-scattering, it would have wakened Eve’s

  Maiden-cool laughter, could that lady have foretold

  All his tragic apparatus—wives, magic, and gold.

  THE LATE PASSENGER

  The sky was low, the sounding rain was falling dense and dark,

  And Noah’s sons were standing at the window of the Ark.

  The beasts were in, but Japhet said, ‘I see one creature more

  Belated and unmated there come knocking at the d
oor.’

  ‘Well let him knock,’ said Ham, ‘Or let him drown or learn to swim.

  We’re overcrowded as it is; we’ve got no room for him.’

  ‘And yet it knocks, how terribly it knocks,’ said Shem, ‘Its feet

  Are hard as horn—but oh the air that comes from it is sweet.’

  ‘Now hush,’ said Ham, ‘You’ll waken Dad, and once he comes to see

  What’s at the door, it’s sure to mean more work for you and me.’

  Noah’s voice came roaring from the darkness down below,

  ‘Some animal is knocking. Take it in before we go.’

  Ham shouted back, and savagely he nudged the other two,

  ‘That’s only Japhet knocking down a brad-nail in his shoe.’

  Said Noah, ‘Boys, I hear a noise that’s like a horse’s hoof.’

  Said Ham, ‘Why, that’s the dreadful rain that drums upon the roof.’

  Noah tumbled up on deck and out he put his head;

  His face went grey, his knees were loosed, he tore his beard and said,

  ‘Look, look! It would not wait. It turns away. It takes its flight.

  Fine work you’ve made of it, my sons, between you all to-night!

  ‘Even if I could outrun it now, it would not turn again

  —Not now. Our great discourtesy has earned its high disdain.

  ‘Oh noble and unmated beast, my sons were all unkind;

  In such a night what stable and what manger will you find?

  ‘Oh golden hoofs, oh cataracts of mane, oh nostrils wide

  With indignation! Oh the neck wave-arched, the lovely pride!

  ‘Oh long shall be the furrows ploughed across the hearts of men

  Before it comes to stable and to manger once again,

  ‘And dark and crooked all the ways in which our race shall walk,

  And shrivelled all their manhood like a flower with broken stalk,

  ‘And all the world, oh Ham, may curse the hour when you were born;

  Because of you the Ark must sail without the Unicorn.’

  THE TURN OF THE TIDE

  Breathless was the air over Bethlehem. Black and bare

  Were the fields; hard as granite the clods;

  Hedges stiff with ice; the sedge in the vice

  Of the pool, like pointed iron rods.

  And the deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem. It was shed

  Wider each moment on the land;

  Through rampart and wall into camp and into hall

  Stole the hush; all tongues were at a stand.

  At the Procurator’s feast the jocular freedman ceased

  His story, and gaped. All were glum.

  Travellers at their beer in a tavern turned to hear

  The landlord; their oracle was dumb.

  But the silence flowed forth to the islands and the North

  And smoothed the unquiet river bars

  And levelled out the waves from their revelling and paved

  The sea with cold reflected stars.

  Where the Caesar on Palatine sat at ease to sign,

  Without anger, signatures of death,

  There stole into his room and on his soul a gloom,

  And his pen faltered, and his breath.

  Then to Carthage and the Gauls, past Parthia and the Falls

  Of Nile and Mount Amara it crept;

  The romp and war of beast in swamp and jungle ceased,

  The forest grew still as though it slept.

  So it ran about the girth of the planet. From the Earth

  A signal, a warning, went out

  And away behind the air. Her neighbours were aware

  Of change. They were troubled with a doubt.

  Salamanders in the Sun that brandish as they run

  Tails like the Americas in size

  Were stunned by it and dazed; wondering, they gazed

  Up at Earth, misgiving in their eyes.

  In Houses and Signs Ousiarchs divine

  Grew pale and questioned what it meant;

  Great Galactal lords stood back to back with swords

  Half-drawn, awaiting the event,

  And a whisper among them passed, ‘Is this perhaps the last

  Of our story and the glories of our crown?

  —The entropy worked out?—The central redoubt

  Abandoned? The world-spring running down?’

  Then they could speak no more. Weakness overbore

  Even them. They were as flies in a web,

  In their lethargy stone-dumb. The death had almost come;

  The tide lay motionless at ebb.

  Like a stab at that moment, over Crab and Bowman,

  Over Maiden and Lion, came the shock

  Of returning life, the start and burning pang at heart,

  Setting Galaxies to tingle and rock;

  And the Lords dared to breathe, and swords were sheathed

  And a rustling, a relaxing began,

  With a rumour and noise of the resuming of joys,

  On the nerves of the universe it ran.

  Then pulsing into space with delicate, dulcet pace

  Came a music, infinitely small

  And clear. But it swelled and drew nearer and held

  All worlds in the sharpness of its call.

  And now divinely deep, and louder, with the sweep

  And quiver of inebriating sound,

  The vibrant dithyramb shook Libra and the Ram,

  The brains of Aquarius spun round;

  Such a note as neither Throne nor Potentate had known

  Since the Word first founded the abyss,

  But this time it was changed in a mystery, estranged,

  A paradox, an ambiguous bliss.

  Heaven danced to it and burned. Such answer was returned

  To the hush, the Favete, the fear

  That Earth had sent out; revel, mirth and shout

  Descended to her, sphere below sphere.

  Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost,

  His beard, Niagara-like, unfroze;

  Monsters in the Sun rejoiced; the Inconstant One,

  The unwedded Moon, forgot her woes.

  A shiver of re-birth and deliverance on the Earth

  Went gliding. Her bonds were released.

  Into broken light a breeze rippled and woke the seas,

  In the forest it startled every beast.

  Capripods fell to dance from Taproban to France,

  Leprechauns from Down to Labrador,

  In his green Asian dell the Phoenix from his shell

  Burst forth and was the Phoenix once more.

  So death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless’d

  Nothing greater could be heard

  Than a dry wind in the thorn, the cry of the One new-born,

  And cattle in stall as they stirred.

  PART II

  THE BACKWARD GLANCE

  EVOLUTIONARY HYMN

  Lead us, Evolution, lead us

  Up the future’s endless stair:

  Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.

  For stagnation is despair:

  Groping, guessing, yet progressing,

  Lead us nobody knows where.

  Wrong or justice in the present,

  Joy or sorrow, what are they

  While there’s always jam to-morrow,

  While we tread the onward way?

  Never knowing where we’re going,

  We can never go astray.

  To whatever variation

  Our posterity may turn

  Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,

  Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,

  Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,

  Towards that unknown god we yearn.

  Ask not if it’s god or devil,

  Brethren, lest your words imply

  Static norms of good and evil

  (As in Plato) throned on high;

  Such scholastic, inelastic,

  Abstrac
t yardsticks we deny.

  Far too long have sages vainly

  Glossed great Nature’s simple text;

  He who runs can read it plainly,

  ‘Goodness—what comes next.’

  By evolving, Life is solving

  All the questions we perplexed.

  On then! Value means survival—

  Value. If our progeny

  Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,

  That will prove its deity

  (Far from pleasant, by our present

  Standards, though it well may be).

  PRELUDE TO SPACE

  An Epithalamium

  So Man, grown vigorous now,

  Holds himself ripe to breed,

  Daily devises how

  To ejaculate his seed

  And boldly fertilize

  The black womb of the unconsenting skies.

  Some now alive expect

  (I am told) to see the large,

  Steel member grow erect,

  Turgid with the fierce charge

  Of our whole planet’s skill,

  Courage, wealth, knowledge, concentrated will;

  Straining with lust to stamp

  Our likeness on the abyss—

  Bombs, gallows, Belsen camp,

  Pox, polio, Thais’ kiss

  Or Judas’, Moloch’s fires

  And Torquemada’s (sons resemble sires).

  Shall we, when the grim shape

  Roars upward, dance and sing?

  Yes: if we honour rape,

  If we take pride to fling

  So bountifully on space

  The sperm of our long woes, our large disgrace.

  SCIENCE-FICTION CRADLESONG

  By and by Man will try

  To get out into the sky,

  Sailing far beyond the air

  From Down and Here to Up and There.

  Stars and sky, sky and stars

  Make us feel the prison bars.

  Suppose it done. Now we ride

  Closed in steel, up there, outside;

  Through our port-holes see the vast

  Heaven-scape go rushing past.

  Shall we? All that meets the eye

  Is sky and stars, stars and sky.

  Points of light with black between

  Hang like a painted scene

  Motionless, no nearer there

  Than on Earth, everywhere

  Equidistant from our ship.

  Heaven has given us the slip.

  Hush, be still. Outer space

  Is a concept, not a place.

  Try no more. Where we are