Beyond enraged idleness to enraged idleness.
With no more hours of hope, and none of regret,
Before each sun may rise, you salute it for set:
Trudge, body!
MUSIC AT NIGHT
Voices in gentle harmony
Rise from the slopes above the midnight sea,
And every sound comes true and clear,
And the song’s old:
It charms the wisest ear –
Night and the sea and music bind
Such forced perfection on the darkened mind
That, ah now, with that dying fall
All truth seems told
And one light shines for all –
The Moon, who from the hill-top streams
On each white face and throat her absent beams.
The song-enchanted fellows send
Their chords of gold
Rippling beyond time’s end.
They link arms and all evils fly:
The flesh is tamed, the spirit circles high.
Each angel softly sings his part
Not proud, not bold,
Dream-ecstasied in heart.
But lamp-light glitters through the trees:
Lamp-light will check these minor harmonies,
And soon the busy Sun will rise
And blaze and scold
From the same hill-top skies.
WITHOUT PAUSE
Without cause and without
Pause blankness follows, turning
Man once more into
An autumn elm or
Ash in autumn mist,
His arms upraised, no
Heart or head, moreover
Nothing heard but now
This constant dropping always
Of such heavy drops
Distilled on finger-tips
From autumn mist and
Nowhere immanence or end
Or pause or cause,
But all is blankness
Seeming headache, yet not
Headache, yet not heartache:
Wanting heart and head,
The tree man – false,
Because the angry sap
Has faded down again
To tree roots dreading
Cold, and these abandoned
Leaves lie fallen flat
To make mould for
The pretty primroses that
Spring again in Spring
With little faces blank,
And sap again then
Rising proves the pain
Of Spring a fancy
Not attempted, no: so,
Until the frantic trial,
Blankness only made for
Pondering and tears against
That sudden lurch-away.
THE CLOCK MAN
The clocks are ticking with good will:
They make a cheerful sound.
I am that temporizer still
Who sends their hands around,
By fresh experiments with birth and age
Teasing the times each time to further courage.
You who are grateful for your birth
To hours that ticked you free
(And gratefully relapse to earth)
Your thanks are due to me –
Which I accept, inured to shame, and mock
My vows to timelessness, sworn with the clock.
THE COMMONS OF SLEEP
That ancient common-land of sleep
Where the close-herded nations creep
On all fours, tongue to ground –
Be sure that every night or near
I, sheep-like too, go wandering there
And wake to have slept sound.
How comfortable can be misrule
Of dream that whirls the antic spool
Of sense-entangling twist,
Where proud in idiot state I sit
At skirmish of ingenious wit,
My nape by fairies kissed.
‘From the world’s loving-cup to drink,
In sleep, can be no shame,’ I think.
‘Sleep has no part in shame.’
But to lie down in hope to find
Licence for devilishness of mind –
Will sleeping bear the blame?
For at such welcome dream extends
Its hour beyond where sleeping ends
And eyes are washed for day,
Till mind and mind’s own honour seem
That nightmare dream-within-the-dream
Which brings the most dismay.
Then lamps burn red and glow-worm green
And naked dancers grin between
The rusting bars of love.
Loud and severe the drunken jokes
Go clanging out in midnight strokes.
I weep: I wake: I move.
WHAT TIMES ARE THESE?
Against the far slow fields of white,
A cloud came suddenly in sight
And down the valley passed,
Compact and grey as bonfire smoke –
This one cloud only, like a joke,
It flew so fast.
And more: the shape, no inexact
Idle half-likeness but a fact
Which all my senses knew,
Was a great dragon’s and instead
Of fangs it had the scoffing head
Of an old Jew.
What times are these that visions bear
So plainly down the morning air
With wings and scales and beard?
I stared, and quick, a swirl of wind
Caught at his head: he writhed and thinned,
He disappeared.
The last that stayed were the wide wings
And long tail barbed with double stings:
These drifted on alone
Over the watch-tower and the bay
So out to open sea, where they
Did not fade soon.
I knew him well, the Jew, for he
Was honest Uncle Usury
Who lends you blood for blood:
His dragon’s claws were keen and just
To bleed the body into dust,
As the bond stood.
What times are these – to be allowed
This ancient vision of grey cloud
Gone in a casual breath?
The times of the torn dragon-wing
Still threatening seaward and the sting
Still poised for death.
From Collected Poems
(1938)
THE CHRISTMAS ROBIN
The snows of February had buried Christmas
Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded
The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,
Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.
Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding
Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused
And ‘Christmas trees!’ cried suddenly together,
Christmas was there again, as in December.
We velveted our love with fantasy
Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,
Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down
As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.
But he knew better, did the Christmas robin –
The murderous robin with his breast aglow
And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:
He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.
CERTAIN MERCIES
Now must all satisfaction
Appear mere mitigation
Of an accepted curse?
Must we henceforth be grateful
That the guards, though spiteful,
Are slow of foot and wit?
That by night we may spread
Over the plank bed
A thin coverlet?
That the rusty water
In the unclean pitcher
Our thirst quenches?
That the rotten, detestable
Food i
s yet eatable
By us ravenous?
That the prison censor
Permits a weekly letter?
(We may write: ‘We are well.’)
That, with patience and deference,
We do not experience
The punishment cell?
That each new indignity
Defeats only the body,
Pampering the spirit
With obscure, proud merit?
THE CUIRASSIERS OF THE FRONTIER
Goths, Vandals, Huns, Isaurian mountaineers,
Made Roman by our Roman sacrament,
We can know little (as we care little)
Of the Metropolis: her candled churches,
Her white-gowned pederastic senators,
The cut-throat factions of her Hippodrome,
The eunuchs of her draped saloons.
Here is the frontier, here our camp and place –
Beans for the pot, fodder for horses,
And Roman arms. Enough. He who among us
At full gallop, the bowstring to his ear,
Lets drive his heavy arrows, to sink
Stinging through Persian corslets damascened,
Then follows with the lance – he has our love.
The Christ bade Holy Peter sheathe his sword,
Being outnumbered by the Temple guard.
And this was prudence, the cause not yet lost
While Peter might persuade the crowd to rescue.
Peter renegued, breaking his sacrament.
With us the penalty is death by stoning,
Not to be made a bishop.
In Peter’s Church there is no faith nor truth,
Nor justice anywhere in palace or court.
That we continue watchful on the rampart
Concerns no priest. A gaping silken dragon,
Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God.
We, not the City, are the Empire’s soul:
A rotten tree lives only in its rind.
CALLOW CAPTAIN
The sun beams jovial from an ancient sky,
Flooding the round hills with heroic spate.
A callow captain, glaring, sword at thigh,
Trots out his charger through the camp gate.
Soon comes the hour, his marriage hour, and soon
He fathers children, reigns with ancestors
Who, likewise serving in the wars, won
For a much-tattered flag renewed honours.
A wind ruffles the book, and he whose name
Was mine vanishes; all is at an end.
Fortunate soldier: to be spared shame
Of chapter-years unprofitable to spend,
To ride off into reticence, nor throw
Before the story-sun a long shadow.
THE STRANGER
He noted from the hill top,
Fixing a cynic eye upon
The stranger in the distance
Up the green track approaching,
She had a sure and eager tread;
He guessed mere grace of body
Which would not for unloveliness
Of cheek or mouth or other feature
Retribution pay.
He watched as she came closer,
And half-incredulously saw
How lovely her face also,
Her hair, her naked hands.
Come closer yet, deception!
But closer as she came, the more
Unarguable her loveliness;
He frowned and blushed, confessing slowly,
No, it was no cheat.
To find her foolish-hearted
Would rid his baffled thought of her;
But there was wisdom in that brow
Of who might be a Muse.
Then all abashed he dropped his head:
For in his summer haughtiness
He had cried lust at her for whom
Through many deaths he had kept vigil,
Wakeful for her voice.
THE SMOKY HOUSE
He woke to a smell of smoke.
The house was burning.
His room-mates reassured him:
‘Smouldering, not burning.’
‘Break no window,’ they warned,
‘Make no draught:
Nobody wants a blaze.’
Choking, they laughed
At such a stubborn fellow
Unresigned to smoke,
To sore lungs and eyes –
For them a joke –
Yet who would not consent,
At a cry or curse,
That water on the smoulder
Made the smoke worse.
VARIABLES OF GREEN
Grass-green and aspen-green,
Laurel-green and sea-green,
Fine-emerald-green,
And many another hue:
As green commands the variables of green
So love my loves of you.
THE GOBLET
From this heroic skull buried
Secretly in a tall ant-castle,
Drawn out, stripped of its jawbone, blanched
In sun all the hot summer,
Mounted with bands of hammered gold,
The eye-holes paned with crystal –
From this bright skull, a hero’s goblet now,
What wine is to drink?
A dry draught, medicinal,
Not the sweet must that flowed
Too new between these lips
When here were living lips,
That pampered tongue
When here was tasting tongue.
That passionate man, his rival
In endless love and battle,
Who overcame him at the end?
Or I, the avenging heir? I taste
Wine from a dead man’s head
Whose griefs were not my own?
If I this skull a goblet made
It was a pious duty, nothing more.
Here is clean bone, and gold and crystal,
So may the ghost sigh gratitude
To drink his death, as I would mine.
FIEND, DRAGON, MERMAID
The only Fiend, religious adversary,
Ceased in the end to plague me, dying
By his own hand on a scarred mountain-top
Full in my sight. His valedictory
Was pity for me as for one whose house,
Swept and garnished, now lay open
As hospice for a score of lesser devils:
I had no better friend than him, he swore.
His extreme spasms were of earthquake force –
They hurled me without sense on the sharp rocks;
The corpse, ridiculous – that long, thin neck,
Those long, thin, hairy legs, the sawdust belly –
This same was Hell’s prince in his prime,
And lamed me in his fall.
Next of the ancient dragon I was freed
Which was an emanation of my fears
And in the Fiend’s wake followed always.
An acid breeze puffed at his wings: he flew
Deathward in cloudy blue and gold, frightful,
Yet showing patches of webbed nothingness
Like soap-bubbles before they burst –
Which was a cause for smiling.
Furious, he glared: ‘Confess, my dragon glory
Was a resplendency that seared the gaze –
All else mere candle-light and glowing ember!’
The mermaid last, with long hair combed and coiled
And childish-lovely face, swam slowly by.
She called my name, pleading an answer,
Yet knew that though my blood is salty still
It swings to other tides than the old sea.
‘Greedy mermaid, are there no mariners
To plunge into green water when you sing,
That you should stretch your arms for me?
Fain to forget all winds and weathers
And perish in your beauty?’ So she turned
With tears, affecting innocence:
‘Proud heart, where shall you find again
So kind a breast as pillow for your woes,
Or such soft lips? Your peace was my love’s care.’
‘Peace is no dream of mariners,’ I said.
She dived; and quit of dragon, Fiend and her
I turned my gaze to the encounter of
The later genius, who of my pride and fear
And love
No monster made but me.
FRAGMENT OF A LOST POEM
O the clear moment, when from the mouth
A word flies, current immediately
Among friends; or when a loving gift astounds
As the identical wish nearest the heart;
Or when a stone, volleyed in sudden danger,
Strikes the rabid beast full on the snout!
Moments in never….
GALATEA AND PYGMALION
Galatea, whom his furious chisel
From Parian stone had by greed enchanted,
Fulfilled, so they say, Pygmalion’s longings:
Stepped from the pedestal on which she stood,
Bare in his bed laid her down, lubricious,
With low responses to his drunken raptures,
Enroyalled his body with her demon blood.
Alas, Pygmalion had so well plotted
The articulation of his woman monster
That schools of eager connoisseurs beset
Her single person with perennial suit;
Whom she (a judgement on the jealous artist)
Admitted rankly to a comprehension
Of themes that crowned her own, not his repute.
THE DEVIL’S ADVICE TO STORY-TELLERS
Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,
Keep probability – some say – in view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross of probabilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or love.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do –
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world perhaps;
People this world, by chance created so,
With random persons whom you do not know –
The teashop sort, or travellers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise