Soft! Do not frighten her—tread gently—so …
Pile up the lumps of sticky common clay,
Tools of your trade, tools that you understand,
Mould, shape and build with ever-loving hand,
Be swift—be swift—for beauty will not stay.
And at the end? The sculptured stone—who’ll buy?
Some rich man, proud of purse and flair;
“Fine piece of work! ’Twill give the place an air.”
How shall he understand your desperate sigh:
Not this, I saw—not this.
On rubbish heap, discarded clay says—Why?
I that once lived for beauty’s kiss
And now, discarded, on an ashpit lie.
So why?—I ask—
Why have I lived?
From me was beauty formed.
And now
Oh why—oh why?
A Wandering Tune
HAIR like a mist and eyes so wide apart and grey
That do not smile
But look far out as though they see
Once in a while
Things that Humanity,
The rank and file,
Shall never glimpse—they are so far away.
There in the crowded street they see
The desert sands and sometimes hear
An endless tune, now far, now near.
The piper pipes. The wandering tune
Floats out and upward to the moon
And stirs the palm trees in the breeze
And stirs the heart that listens yet …
Oh, wandering tune that wakes again
Forgotten longing and dead pain
And will not let the heart forget.
Oh, wandering tune
Beneath the moon,
Now far, now near—
That endless tune
Beneath the moon.
Places
Ctesiphon
SPEAK softly, let me sit and, dreaming, see
A golden arch uprising to the skies,
See it so clearly through my closed eyes
That, once again, I stand there quietly …
There, where Men built for glory, there shall be
Only bare beauty left, unheeding, wise,
Scornful of Midget Man who wars and dies,
Who builds and toils and suffers endlessly …
There shall remain at last the crumbling clay,
The loneliness of naked beauty bared,
The wild birds flying forth from sanctuary …
Let me remember one enchanted day …
And all the loveliness of beauty shared.
Speak softly, let me sit and, dreaming, see.
In Baghdad
GREEN
Green melons
Round
Oblong
Numbers piled up
Green and round …
Innocent round melons saying nothing,
Nothing at all.
In the corner there are melons gashed and split
With naked pink flesh
And thousands of flies settling on them.
Thousands of flies
Ugh!
God sees the world like a round green melon,
And then he sees the flies
Buzzing and settling …
But, being merciful,
He looks away and says,
“I will try not to think of these human beings …”
Allah is very merciful.
An Island
I HAVE sat dreaming in a quiet place …
The green leaves met above my head,
A river rustled in its bed,
And all around
Was sweet and stealthy woodland sound.
Such was a bower within the wood
To fit a hidden secret mood …
And yet my eyes looked out and saw
Not the dark sweetness of the wood
But far off misty hills of blue
Seen from a hillside where there grew
Genista flowers and Iris white
(Do you remember our delight?)
And from that hillside where we lay
On that thrice blessed halcyon day
We saw—above all mortal ills
The misty everlasting hills …
“I will lift up mine eyes and see—”
And dream that you are there with me.
The Nile
DO you remember water like molten silver gleaming?
And white sails that crept slowly past?
Stealthily, silently, as though they knew
They might disturb our sweet enchanted dreaming …
My heart, that night, was silent too
Or did it stir? Stir and awake from its long dreaming?
It was so quiet that I scarcely knew …
I only know next morn the sands were golden
And that day broke for us alone.
It came and brought us joy—and now is gone.
But there remain in that enchanted land
Our footprints in the golden endless sand …
Dartmoor
I SHALL not return again the way I came,
Back to the quiet country where the hills
Are purple in the evenings, and the tors
Are grey and quiet, and the tall standing stones
Lead out across the moorland till they end
At water’s edge.
It is too gentle, all that land,
It will bring back
Such quiet dear remembered things,
There, where the longstone lifts its lonely head,
Gaunt, grey, forbidding,
Ageless, however worn away;
There, even, grows the heather …
Tender, kind,
The little streams are busy in the valleys,
The rivers meet by the grey Druid bridge,
So quiet,
So quiet,
Not as death is quiet, but as life can be quiet
When it is sweet.
To a Cedar Tree
DO you remember Lebanon?
The stillness and the snows?
The cool cold glare
And a blue sky—pitiless—
Or sometimes grey and heavy with unfallen snow?
In the summers that were of polished brown hills
(But always the stillness—the mountain tops)
Here Solomon’s men came to hew and fell the cedars
And the trees were taken to stand
Proudly in the temple of God …
But they had been nearer to God,
Had lived with God in the hills,
Had whispered to God in the stillness;
They had been proud then and unafraid.
And you, my Cedar tree, in my garden by the Thames,
Brought in a ship and planted in a strange land
Near to the river
With farm lands all around,
Close to the toil and the labour of men,
Stately you grew, your branches wide,
Gracious you stand
With smooth clipped lawn all around you
And an English herbaceous border
Flaunting its bloom on a summer’s day.
You are a part of England now:
“Tea will be served on the lawn
Under the Cedar tree.”
But do you remember Lebanon?
Beloved tree—do you remember Lebanon?
Calvary
ON Calvary, in midday’s burning heat,
What thoughts in Mary’s heart, as pale she stands?
What echoed words, remembered words, that beat
From out the past, and make her clench her hands?
Gold, frankincense and myrrh … The Sages kneel,
And simple shepherds all agog with joy,
With Angels praising God who doth reveal
His love for men in Christ, the newborn boy …
Where now the inc
ense? Where the kingly gold?
For Jesus only bitter myrrh and woe.
Here hangs no kingly figure—just a son
In pain and dying …
How shall Mary know
That with his sigh: “’Tis finished …” all is told?
Then—at that moment—Christ’s Reign has begun!
Love Poems and Others
Count Fersen to the Queen
IN the North the snows are falling,
In the North the birds are calling,
But my heart that lives for loving
Shall not hear its mate reply.
In the North white streams are flowing,
In the North the flowers are blowing,
But my heart that is a lover’s
Shall not know a second Spring …
Hers the ring upon my finger,
Now I pray may death not linger,
Say of me “He was a Lover,”
Lived and died to serve a Queen.
Beatrice Passes
WHERE she passes, there is Light
After Night …
A smile that follows on a sigh
As she goes by …
With her footsteps comes a sound
All round,
As of wild and woodland things
Gently stirring fragile things
When Beatrice passes by …
With her presence comes a calm
Full of balm …
Where she steps the flowers abound
On holy ground …
At her touch the trembling trees,
Even these,
Put forth tender buds that break,
Blossoming for her sweet sake
Who is Light and Love …
At her coming there is Life
After strife!
Larks are singing in the sky
When she draws nigh!
At her voice the quivering Earth
Knows rebirth,
Stirs me to a sudden cry!
Then she passes—passes by,
Leaving (so to me it seems)
Only darkness filled with dreams …
Undine
UNDINE, straight and gold and white …
Shimmering tresses, braided bright …
Lips, not scarlet—Scarlet? No,
Cool and pale as water’s flow.
Cool and pale against my heart
All thy body, and thou art
Like a lily on the lake
Where no man his thirst shall slake.
And thy petals tightly curled
Hold the jewel of the world,
Looking in thy deep green eyes
Far I see it where it lies
Hidden by the water’s play,
Grave sweet soul behind the gay.
Now I know no jewel’s there
So forever thou art fair …
So forever,
Loving never,
Thou art fair, Undine,
So fair …
Unforgettably, so fair …
Hawthorn Trees in Spring
A Lament of Women
HOW heavy are the hawthorn trees,
Weighed down with blossom,
Laden with heavy perfume,
Like the bodies and souls of women
Heavy with fruit of men’s desire
Or with their own desire in Spring.
Up in the sky, divorced from earth,
The aeroplanes pass
Roaring along on their gallant adventures;
They are the souls of men
Set free from earth,
Set free from the load of blossom
And the cloying perfumes of Spring,
They fly and are free.
Yet at the last they must return,
Fall back to earth,
Gliding down presently and skimming the ground
Or falling in vivid flame,
Yet still returning to earth.
And there shall Earth
Gather them once again in her inmost womb
And in due course
The trees shall be laden again
With leaves and blossom and fruit.
How heavy are the hawthorn trees …
How heavy … how achingly sweet.
Shall there never be peace?
And cold clear air?
With never a scent or a breath
Of the growing clustering flowering earth?
How heavy are the hawthorn trees in Spring,
How painfully, achingly sweet …
The Lament of the Tortured Lover
I HAVE said I adore you;
I have said it—I have said it.
Said it against your throat
Where the pulses beat
And under the curve of your breast …
Outside the moon rides high in the sky,
A lemon moon,
A moon the colour of honey
Made by the bees from lime trees.
O pale lemon-coloured moon,
You were worshipped five thousand years ago,
The temples they built you are dust
Or buried under the earth,
But you are still the moon
Riding high and proud in the sky …
I am sick of words
Of everlasting meaningless words.
I love you—I love you—that parrot cry.
Cannot flesh take flesh in silence?
But no—you will not have it so.
You were made for incense,
For burning words,
Words—words—words—going on through the night …
While I worship the pulse in your throat
And the curve of your breast …
In twenty years your face will be haggard,
Your sagging breasts will not stir my desire—
But the moon will be still the moon …
And I?
What am I?
I am a man who loves you
Desperately, blindly.
I am a man in the street
Seeing the moon …
I am an old man in a club
Ringing the bell and saying “Old brandy.”
I am curled up in my mother’s womb
Knowing nothing of all this extraordinary business
Called Life,
Unhurt by the torture of beauty,
Unconscious as yet that beauty is …
I am all these things and always have been
And ever shall be.
O moon, ride high in the sky tonight,
Ride high,
Ride high …
What Is Love?
LOVE is a white flame—And a smouldering smoky fire
It is a green tree—And a grey cathedral spire
Love is an ecstasy—pure—It stirs in mud and slime
It is youth and delight—It is cold and sublime
There is none shall say
What Love is—or is not,
And which of us shall say:
“Dwell!” or “Depart!”
Love will not stay
And will not leave the heart
At our desire or plea.
But oh! for me
This would I pray
That Love might be a tree
Rooted in time—for all eternity.
To M.E.L.M. in Absence
NOW is the winter past, but for my part
Still winter stays until we meet again.
Dear love, I have your promise and your heart
But lacking touch and sight, spring buds bring pain.
Friendship is ours, and still in absence grows.
No dearer friend I own, so close, so kind.
Knowledge is yours, from you to me it flows
And I have loved your wise and gentle mind.
Beauty we share, a white magnolia tree
Rooted in England brings you to my side
And Roman columns rising
from the sea
Must surely bring remembrance with the tide.
So in my winter, love, I dream of spring
Enclosed within the circle of your ring …
Remembrance
IF I should leave you in the days to come—
God grant that may not be—
But yet if so,
Your love for me must fade I know.
You will remember—and you will forget.
But oh! imperishable—strong
My love for you shall burn and glow
Deep in your heart—your whole life long,
Unknown, unseen, but living still in bliss
So you shall bear me with you all the days.
Forget then what you will.
I died—but not my love for you,
That lives for aye—though dumb,
Remember this
If I should leave you in the days to come.
A Choice
I AM tired of the past that clings around my feet,
I am tired of the past that will not let life be sweet,
I would cut it away with a knife and say
Let me be myself—reborn—today.
But I am afraid of the past—that it will creep back to my feet
And look in my face and say, “You laugh and eat
But I am here with you yet …
You would not remember—but I will not let you forget …”
What is or is not courage? Who shall say?
Shall I be brave or base if I cut the past away?
Sometimes I have dreamed that you have stood and said:
“I too have sometimes longed to be freed from the dead
Burden of our remembrance, free from your sorrow.”
Let there be no yesterday and no tomorrow,
Let there be for us only today,
Ride it—ride it through Time and away.
My Flower Garden
THERE is no knowing
What time shall bring,
What then is growing
This day of Spring?
Love that is lonely,
Love far away,
Ah! could I only
See you for a day.
Love-that-lies-bleeding
And love-in-the-mist,
Tulips that need you
Still staying unkist.
You are my heart, love,