Poems Read online

  Then presently amidst it all

  I saw a living creature crawl.

  Forward it crept and pushed its snout

  Between the bars, and with sad eyes

  Into my quiet room looked out,

  As men looked out upon the skies;

  And from its scalding throat there came

  A faint voice hissing like a flame:

  ‘This is the end, the stratosphere,

  The rim of the world where all life dies,

  The vertigo of space, the fear

  Of nothingness; before me lies

  Blank silence, distances untold

  Of unimaginable cold.

  ‘Faint lights that fitfully appear

  Far off in that immense abyss

  Are but reflections cast from here,

  There is no other fire but this,

  This speck of life, this fading spark

  Enisled amid the boundless dark.

  ‘Blind Nature’s measureless rebuke

  To all we value, I received

  Long since (though wishes bait the hook

  With tales our ancestors believed)

  And now can face with fearless eye

  Negation’s final sovereignty.’

  INFATUATION

  Body and soul most fit for love can best

  Withstand it. I am ill, and cannot rest,

  Therefore I’m caught. Disease is amorous, health

  At love’s door has the pass both in and out.

  Want cannot choose but grub with needy snout

  In ravenous dreams, let temperance wait on wealth.

  Don’t think of her tonight . . . the very strain

  Wears the will down; then in she comes by stealth.

  How am I made that such a thing can trouble

  My fancy for a day? Her brain’s a bubble,

  Her soul, a traveller’s tale. Her every thrust

  And trick I understand . . . the mould so mean,

  And she the thousandth copy, comes between

  My thoughts and me . . . unfrank, unfit for trust,

  Yet ignorant in her cunning, a blind tool,

  When nature bids her, labouring as she must.

  Back to my book. Read. Read. Don’t think upon her,

  Where every thought is hatred and dishonour.

  I do not love her, like her, wish her well.

  Is it mere lust? But lust can quench his thirst

  In any water; rather, at the first,

  There was one moment when I could not tell

  The thing she surely is. I stood unarmed

  That moment, and the stroke that moment fell.

  She stood, an image lost as soon as seen,

  Like beauty in a vision half-caught between

  Two aimless and long-lumbering dreams of night.

  The thing I seek for was not anywhere

  At any time on earth. That huntress air

  And morning freshness was not hers by right.

  She spoke, she smiled; put out what seemed the flame,

  Left me the cold charred sticks, the ashes white.

  And from these sprang the dream I dare not chase,

  Lest, the long hunt being over, I embrace

  My shadow. (Furies wait upon that bed)

  It plucks me at the elbow . . . ‘love can reach

  That other soul of hers . . . charity teach

  Atrophied powers once more to raise the head,

  Sweet charity.’ But she can never learn;

  And what am I, whose voice should wake the dead?

  How could she learn, who never since her birth

  Looked out of her desires and saw the earth

  Unshadowed by herself. She knows that man

  Has whimsies, and will talk, and take concern

  With wonderings and desires that serve no turn

  Of woman. She would ape, (for well she can),

  The rapt disciple at her need, till mask

  Was needless . . . And all ends where it began.

  Her holiest moods are gaudy desecrations

  Of poor half holy things: her exaltations

  Are frothed from music, moonlight, wine and dance;

  Love is to her a dream of bridal dresses,

  Friendship, a tittering hour of girl’s caresses,

  Virtue, a steady purpose to advance,

  Honoured, and safe, by the old well-proven roads,

  No loophole left to passion or to chance.

  I longed last night to make her know the truth

  That none of them has told her. Flushed with youth,

  Dazed with a half-hour triumph, she held the crowd.

  She loved the boys that buzzed on her like flies,

  She loved the envy in the women’s eyes,

  Faster she talked. I longed to cry aloud,

  ‘What, has no brother told you yet, with whom

  With what, you share the power that makes you proud?’

  Could she have looked so noble, and no seed

  Of spirit in her at all? But mother-greed

  Has linked her boy-like splendour to the yoke.

  Venus infernal taught such voice and eyes

  To bear themselves abroad for merchandise . . .

  Horrible woman-nature, at one stroke

  Making the beauty, bending beauty down

  To ruthless tasks, before the spirit awoke.

  Thank heaven, though I were meshed and made secure,

  Its odds, she’d never have me. I am poor . . .

  Thank heaven, for if she did, what comes behind!

  Can I not see her now, marked with my name,

  Among my friends (shame not to hide my shame),

  And her glib tongue runs on and rambles blind

  Through slippery paths, revealing and revealing,

  While they for my sake cover it and are kind.

  Kind? Let them look at home. Which of them all

  Knows how his act or word next hour may fall?

  Into them, too, this might have come, unbidden,

  Unlooked for. For each one of us, down below

  The caldron brews in the dark. We do not know

  By whom, or on what fields, we are reined and ridden.

  There are not acts; spectators of ourselves

  We wait and watch the event, the cause is hidden.

  All power in man is mummery: good report

  A fable: this apparent mind, the sport

  For mumbling dynasts old as wind and tide.

  Talk, posture, gild it over . . . still the motion

  That moves us is not ours, but in the ocean

  Of hunger and bleak fear, like buoys we ride,

  And seem to move ourselves, and in the waves

  Lifting and falling take our shame and pride.

  VOWELS AND SIRENS

  Chosen to seduce you,

  Those dove-like vowels;

  Deuro—Kudos—Odusseus.

  Opening the bay, his prow

  Appeared. Air rang with

  Siren voices;

  The hero, bound, in anguish,

  Strove to retract his choice.

  Nothing of solace

  For lovers’ longings

  They breathed. Of vanished knowledge

  Was their intemperate song,

  A music that resembled

  Some earlier music

  That men are born remembering.

  What all the gods refuse—

  The backward journey

  To the steep river’s

  Hid source, the great returning—

  The Sirens feigned to give.

  Cool voices, lying

  Words abuse us,

  Cooing Kudos Achaiôn,

  Warbling their half-true news.

  THE PRUDENT JAILER

  Always the old nostalgia? Yes.

  We still remember times before

  We had learned to wear the prison dress

  Or steel rings rubbed our ankles sore.

  Escap
ists? Yes. Looking at bars

  And chains, we think of files; and then

  Of black nights without moon or stars

  And luck befriending hunted men.

  Still when we hear the trains at night

  We envy the free travellers, whirled

  In how few moments past the sight

  Of the blind wall that bounds our world.

  Our Jailer (well he may) prefers

  Our thoughts should keep a narrower range.

  ‘The proper study of prisoners

  Is prison,’ he tells us. Is it strange?

  And if old freedom in our glance

  Betrays itself, he calls it names

  ‘Dope’—‘Wishful thinking’—or ‘Romance’,

  Till tireless propaganda tames.

  All but the strong whose hearts they break,

  All but the few whose faith is whole.

  Stone walls cannot a prison make

  Half so secure as rigmarole.

  AUBADE

  Eight strokes sound from within. The crowd, assembled

  Outside, stare at the gate (it disregards them).

  What lure brings them so early, under driving

  Smoke-grey cloud with a hint of rain, before their

  Day’s work? Might pity draw them? Was the motive

  Self-pleased—say, Pharisaical—delight in

  Earth’s old lex talionis? Easy answers,

  Yet both short of the truth perhaps. The sharpest

  Cause might be that amid the swirl of phantoms—

  Film, broadcast, propaganda, picture-thinking—

  Death, like cancer or crime or copulation,

  Stands out real; and the soul with native hunger

  (Called sensationalism in cultured circles)

  Seeks food ev’n in the dingiest of quarters.

  I, snugged down in a bed, in warm refinement,

  Dare not judge what attraction called and kept them,

  Packed thus, waiting an hour or so to see the

  Jail’s black flag running up between the chimneys.

  PATTERN

  Some believe the slumber

  Of trees is in December

  When timber’s naked under sky

  And squirrel keeps his chamber.

  But I believe their fibres

  Awake to life and labour

  When turbulence comes roaring up

  The land in loud October,

  And plunders, strips, and sunders

  And sends the leaves to wander

  And undisguises prickly shapes

  Beneath the golden splendour.

  Then form returns. In warmer,

  Seductive days, disarming

  Its firmer will, the wood grew soft

  And put forth dreams to murmur.

  Into earnest winter

  With spirit alert it enters;

  The hunter wind and the hound frost

  Have quelled the green enchanter.

  AFTER ARISTOTLE

  Virtue, thou whom men with toil

  Seek as their most precious spoil,

  Gladly here in Greece for thy

  Beauty, Virgin, men will die

  And will live laborious days

  And pass, unwearying, hard assays;

  So arch-potent is thy touch

  Upon mortal hearts, and such

  Thy unfading fruit; by far

  More esteemed than riches are;

  Dearer than, and loved beyond

  Our father kind, our mother fond;

  Dearer even than the deep-

  Dark eyes of the god of Sleep.

  Swift as hounds in chase of thee

  Leda’s twin-born progeny

  And Heracles, whom Zeus begot,

  To their last hour fainted not;

  Following through labours long

  Thee who mak’st thy lovers strong;

  So for thee Achilles and

  Aias sought the silent land.

  And now of late the nursling of

  Atarneus town for thy dear love

  Thought it not much to throw away

  The sunlight of our mortal day.

  Therefore all the daughters nine

  Of Mnemosyne divine

  Beyond the reach of death will raise

  His name in song, nor from his praise

  Disjoin the lauds of Zeus who best

  Champions the truth of host to guest

  And hallows the fine cords that tie

  Friendship indissolubly.

  REASON

  Set on the soul’s acropolis the reason stands

  A virgin, arm’d, commercing with celestial light,

  And he who sins against her has defiled his own

  Virginity: no cleansing makes his garment white;

  So clear is reason. But how dark imagining,

  Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:

  Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep

  Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.

  Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains

  Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.

  Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,

  Who make in me a concord of the depth and height?

  Who make imagination’s dim exploring touch

  Ever report the same as intellectual sight?

  Then could I truly say, and not deceive,

  Then wholly say, that I BELIEVE.

  TO ANDREW MARVELL

  Marvell, they say your verse is faint

  Beside the range of Donne’s;

  Too clear for them, too free from taint

  Of noise, your music runs.

  Their sultry minds can ill conceive

  How godlike power should dwell

  Except where lungs with torment heave

  And giant muscles swell.

  The better swordsman with a smile

  His cool passado gives;

  Smooth is the flooding of the Nile

  By which all Egypt lives.

  Sweetness and strength from regions far

  Withdrawn and strange you bring,

  And look no stronger than a star,

  No graver than the spring.

  LINES WRITTEN IN A COPY OF MILTON’S WORKS

  Alas! the happy beasts at pasture play

  All, all alike; all of one mind are they;

  By Nature with indifferent kindness blessed,

  None loves a special friend beyond the rest;

  No sparrow lacks a friend with whom to roam

  All day for seeds till evening bids them home;

  Whom if with cunning beak the cruel kite

  Or peasant’s arrow snatch from him tonight,

  With a new friend next day, content, he wings his flight.

  Not so is Man, who in his fellows finds

  (Hard fate!) discordant souls and alien minds!

  To him, though searching long, will scarce be shown

  One heart amidst a thousand like his own;

  Or if, at last relenting, fate shall send

  In answer to his prayer, the authentic friend,

  Him in some unsuspected hour, some day

  He never dreaded, Death will snatch away

  And leave behind a loss that time can ne’er allay.

  Who now can charm to rest each eating care?

  Who now the secrets of my bosom share?

  Who now can while away with the delight

  Of his discourse the livelong winter night,

  When cracking nuts and hissing apples roast

  Upon the hearth and from his southern coast

  The wet wind in the elm-tree branches roars

  And makes one vast confusion out of doors?

  Alone I walk the fields and plains, alone

  The dark vales with dense branches overgrown.

  Here, as day fades, I wait, and all around

  I hear the rain that falls with sullen sound.

&
nbsp; SCHOLAR’S MELANCHOLY

  The mind too has her fossils to record her past,

  Cold characters, immobile, of what once was new

  And hot with life. Old papers, as we rummage through

  Neglected drawers, still show us where the pen, fast, fast,

  Ate up the sheets: and wondering, we remember vast

  Designs and knowledge gathered, and intent to do

  What we were able then to have done . . . something drew

  A sponge across that slate. The ferly would not last.

  Though Will can stretch his viaduct with level thrust

  High above shagg’d woods, quaking swamp, and desert dust

  Of changing times, yet he must dig for his material

  In local quarries of the varying moment—must

  Use wattle and daub in countries without stone, and trust

  To basest matter the proud arches’ form imperial.

  PART III

  A LARGER WORLD

  WORMWOOD

  Thou only art alternative to God, oh, dark

  And burning island among spirits, tenth hierarch,

  Wormwood, immortal Satan, Ahriman, alone

  Second to Him to whom no second else were known,

  Being essential fire, sprung of His fire, but bound

  Within the lightless furnace of thy Self, bricked round

  To rage in the reverberated heat from seven

  Containing walls: hence power thou hast to rival heaven.

  Therefore, except the temperance of the eternal love

  Only thy absolute lust is worth the thinking of.

  All else is weak disguising of the wishful heart,

  All that seemed earth is Hell, or Heaven. God is: thou art:

  The rest, illusion. How should man live save as glass

  To let the white light without flame, the Father, pass

  Unstained: or else—opaque, molten to thy desire,

  Venus infernal starving in the strength of fire!

  Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this.

  VIRTUE’S INDEPENDENCE

  I have scraped clean the plateau from the filthy earth,

  Earth the unchaste, the fruitful, the great grand maternal,

  Sprawling creature, lolling at random and supine

  The broad-faced, sluttish helot, the slave wife

  Grubby and warm, who opens unashamed

  Her thousand wombs unguarded to the lickerous sun.

  Now I have scoured my rock clean from the filthy earth

  On it no root can strike and no blade come to birth,