No More Learning

PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
mind and you are our Sargasso
Sea, YO|UR
London has swept about you this
score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee :
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you lacking someone else.
Youhavebeensecondalways. Tragical? No. Youpreferredittotheusualthing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, Oneaveragemind withonethoughtless,
each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you
sit
Hours,
floated up.
where something might have
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
17
2
? You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away :
Trophies fished up ; some curious sugges-
tion
;
Factthatleadsnowhere andatalefor ;
two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with some-
thing else
That might prove useful and yet never
proves,
That never fits a corner or shows
use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of
days :
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old
work
;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays, These are your riches, your great store ;
and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous
things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new
brighter stuff :
18
? In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No!
there is nothing ! and all,
In the whole
Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you.
? MY Listen !
N. Y.
City, my beloved, my white ! Ah, slender,
Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me !
NowdoIknowthatIammad,
For here are a million people surly with
traffic ; This is no maid.
Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one.
My City, my beloved,
Thou art a maid with no breasts,
Thou art slender as a silver reed. Listen to me, attend me !
And I will breathe into thee a soul, And thou shalt live for ever.
20
? A GIRL
tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms, THE
The tree has grown in my breast
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.
Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
Achild sohigh youare,
And all this is folly to the world.
21
? 'PHASELLUS ILLE"
papier-mache, which you see, THISmy friends,
Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors. Its mind was made up in " the seventies," Nor hath it ever since changed that con-
coction.
It works to represent that school of thought Which brought the hair-cloth chair to such
perfection,
Nor will the horrid threats of Bernard Shaw
Shake up the stagnant pool of its convic-
tions
Nay, should the deathless voice of all the
world
Speak once again for its sole stimulation, Twould not move it one jot from left to
right.
Come Beauty barefoot from the Cyclades, She'd find a model for St Anthony
In this thing's sure decorum and behaviour.
22
;
? AN OBJECT
thing, that hath a code and THISnot a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now Disturbeth his reflections.
? QUIES
is another of our ancient loves.
Pass and be silent, Rullus, for THIS
the day
Hath lacked a something since this
lady passed ;
Hath lacked a something. Twas but
marginal.
24
? THE SEAFARER (From the early A nglo-Saxon text)
I for my own self song's truth reckon,
MAY
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh
days Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, And dire sea-surge, and there I oft
spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs.
Coldly
afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains are ; chafing sighs
Hew my heart round and hunger begot Mere-wearymood. Lestmanknownot That he on dry land loveliest liveth,
List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea, Weathered the winter, wretched outcast
Deprived of my kinsmen ; 25
? Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-
scur flew,
There I heard naught save the harsh sea And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan
cries,
Did for my games the gannet's clamour, Sea-fowls' loudness was for me laughter, The mews' singing all my mead-drink. Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on
the stern
In icy feathers ; full oft the eagle screamed
With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector
May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in win-
some life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy busi-
ness,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary
oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north, Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth
then
26
? Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I on high streams
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone. Moaneth alway my mind's lust
That I fare forth, that I afar hence Seek out a foreign fastness.
For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,
Not though he be given his good, but will
have in his youth greed ;
Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to
the faithful
But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare Whatever his lord will.
He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-
having
Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's
delight
Nor any whit else save the wave's
slash,
Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth
on tjie water.
27
? Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,
Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,
All this admonisheth man eager of mood, The heart turns to travel so that he then
thinks
On flood-ways to be far departing. Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow, The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows
not
He the prosperous man what some per- form
Where wandering them widest draweth. So that but now my heart burst from my
breast-lock,
My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,
Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer, Whets for the whale-path the heart
irresistibly,
O'er tracks of ocean ; seeing that anyhow
My lord deems to me this dead life 28
? On loan and on land, I believe not
That any earth-weal eternal standeth Save there be somewhat calamitous That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain. Disease or oldness or sword-hate
Beats out the breath from doom-gripped
body.
And for this, every earl whatever, for those
speaking after-
Laud of the living, boasteth some last
word,
That he will work ere he pass onward, Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his
malice,
Daring ado, . . .
So that all men shall honour him after
And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the
English,
Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast, Delight mid the doughty.
Days little durable, And all arrogance of earthen riches,
There come now no kings nor Caesars Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.
29
? Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights un- durable !
Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth. Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed
low.
Earthly glory ageth and seareth.
No man at all going the earth's gait,
But age fares against him, his face paleth, Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone
companions,
Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,
Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose
life ceaseth,
Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,
Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart, And though he strew the grave with gold, His born brothers, their buried bodies Be an unlikely treasure hoard.
? ECHOES
I
GUIDO ORLANDO, SINGING
me praise thine empery,
Thou art the flower to me
Nay, by Love's pallor Of all good loving.
Worthy to reap men's praises Is he who'd gaze upon
Truth's mazes.
In like commend is he,
Who, loving fixedly, Love so refineth,
Till thou alone art she
In whom love's vested ;
As branch hath fairest flower Where fruit's suggested.
of
Lady Valour,
BEFITS
Past all disproving ;
? This great joy comes to me,
To me observing
How swiftly thou hast power
To pay my serving.
? ECHOES II*
keep'st thy rose-leaf
Till the rose-time will be over, THOU
Think'st thou that Death will kiss thee ?
Think'st thou that the Dark House Will find thee such a lover
As I ? Will the new roses miss thee ?
Prefer my cloak unto the cloak of dust 'Neath which the last year lies,
For thou shouldst more mistrust Time than my eyes.
*
Asclepiades, Julianus ^Egyptus.
33
? AN IMMORALITY
ING we for love and idleness,
S Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land, There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my sweet, Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men's believing.
34
? DIEU ! QU'IL LA FAIT
!
From Charles UOrleans For music
that mad'st her well regard
GOD her,
How she is so fair and bonny ;
For the great charms that are upon her Ready are all folk to reward her.
Who could part him from her borders When spells are alway renewed on her ? God ! that mad'st her well regard her, How she is so fair and bonny.
From here to there to the sea's border, Dame nor damsel there's not any Hath of perfect charms so many. Thoughts of her are of dream's order : God ! that mad'st her well regard her.
35
? SALVE PONTIFEX (A. C. S. )
after one they leave thee,
ONE Priest of
High lacchus,
Intoning thy melodies as winds intone
The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days. And the sands are many
And the seas beyond the sands are one In ultimate, so we here being many
Are unity ; nathless thy compeers,
Knowing thy melody, Lulled with the wine of thy music
Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel
O'er all the mysteries, High Priest of lacchus.
For the lines of life lie under thy fingers, And above the vari-coloured strands Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude Of the blue waves of heaven,
And even as Triplex Sisterhood
Thoufingerest the threads knowing neither 36
? Cause nor the ending,
High Priest of lacchus, Draw'st forth a multiplicity
Of strands, and, beholding
The colour thereof, raisest thy voice Towards the sunset,
O High Priest of lacchus !
And out of the secrets of the inmost
mysteries
Thou chantest strange far-sourced canti-
cles :
O High Priest of lacchus !
Life and the ways of Death her Twin-born sister, that is life's counter-
part,
And of night and the winds of night ;
Silent voices ministering to the souls
Of hamadryads that hold council con-
cealed
In streams and tree-shadowing Forests on hill slopes,
O High Priest of lacchus, All the manifold mystery
Thou makest a wine of song, 37
? And maddest thy following even With visions of great deeds
And their futility,
O High Priest of lacchus !
Though thy co-novices are bent to the
scythe
Of the magian wind that is voice of Perse-
phone,
Leaving thee solitary, master of initiating Maenads that come through the
Vine-entangled ways of the forest Seeking, out of all the world,
Madness of lacchus,
That being skilled in the secrets of the
double cup
They might turn the dead of the world
Into paeans,
O High Priest of lacchus,
Wreathed with the glory of thy years of
creating
Entangled music, Breathe !
Now that the evening cometh upon thee,
38
? Breathe upon us, that low-bowed and exultant
Drink wine of lacchus, that since the
conquering
Hath been chiefly contained in the
numbers
Of them that, even as thou, have woven Wicker baskets for grape clusters Wherein is concealed the source of the
vintage,
O High Priest of lacchus,
Breathe thou upon us
Thy magic in parting ! Even as they thy co-novices,
At being mingled with the sea, While yet thou madest thy canticles
Serving upright before the altar That is bound about with shadows
Of dead years wherein thy lacchus Looked not upon the hills, that being Uncared for, praised not him in entirety.
High Priest of lacchus,
Being now near to the border of the
sands
39
? Where the sapphire girdle of the sea Encinctureth the maiden
Persephone, released for the spring,
Look !
The wonder of the thrice encinctured
mystery
Whereby thou being full of years art
young,
Loving even this lithe Persephone That is free for the seasons of plenty ;
Whereby thou being young art old And shalt stand before this Persephone
Whom thou lovest,
In darkness, even at that time
That she being returned to her hus-
band
Shall be queen and a maiden no longer, Wherein thou being neither old nor
young
Standing on the verge of the sea Shalt pass from being sand,
O High Priest of lacchus,
And becoming wave
Shalt encircle all sands,
40
Breathe upon us
? Being transmuted through all The girdling of the sea.
O High Priest of lacchus, Breathe thou upon us !
Note. This apostrophe was written three years before Swinburne's death.
? in me as the eternal moods
of the bleak wind, and not
BE
As transient things are
gaiety of flowers. Have me in the strong loneliness
of sunless cliffs And of grey waters.
Let the gods speak softly of us In days hereafter,
The shadowy flowers of Orcus Remember Thee.
42
? THE NEEDLE
or the stellar tide will slip
away. COME,
Eastward avoid the hour of its
Now !
soul !
decline,
for the needle trembles in my
Here have we had our vantage, the good hour.
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.
Come now, before this power
That bears us up, shall turn against the
pole.
Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be.
O Love, come now, this land turns evil
slowly.
The waves bore in, soon will they bear
away.
43
? The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it.
Move we and take the tide, with its next
favour, Abide
Under some neutral force Until this course turneth aside.
44
? SUB MARE
is, and is not, I am sane enough, IT Since you have come this place has
hovered round me,
This fabrication built of autumn roses, Then there's a goldish colour, different.
And one gropes in these things as delicate Algae reach up and out beneath
Pale slow green surgings of the under-
wave,
'Mid these things older than the names
they have,
These things that are familiars of the god.
45
? PLUNGE
WOULD bathe myself in strangeness : These comforts heaped upon me,
smother me !
I burn, I scald so for the new,
New friends, new faces, Places !
Oh to be out of this, This that is all I wanted
save the new.
And you,
Love, you the much, the more de-
sired !
Do I not loathe all walls, streets,
stones,
All mire, mist, all fog,
All ways of traffic ?
You, I would have flow over me like
water,
Oh, but far out of this !
Grass, and low fields, and hills, And sun,
I
? Oh, sun enough !
Out and alone, among some Alien people !
47
? A VIRGINAL
no ! Go from me. I have left
NO,
lesser brightness,
For my surrounding atir has a new light-
ness
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound
me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of
aether
As with sweet leaves ; as with a subtle
clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her near- ness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no ! flavour,
her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with
;
;
Go from me. I have still the
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
? Green come the shoots, aye April in the
branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand
she staunches,
Hath of the tress a likeness of the savour : As white their bark, so white this lady's
hours.
49
? Ah PAN
bow
all,
maidens
PAN IS DEAD isdead. GreatPanisdead.
your heads, ye And weave ye him his coronal.
!
There is no summer in the leaves, And withered are the sedges ;
How shall we weave a coronal, Or gather floral pledges ?
That I may not say, Ladies. Death was ever a churl.
That I may not say, Ladies. How should he show a reason, That he has taken our Lord away Upon such hollow season ?
? THE PICTURE*
eyes of this dead lady speak to
THE me,
For here was love, was not to be
drowned out,
And here desire, not to be kissed away.
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
* " Venus Reclining," by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-93).
? OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO
THIS man knew out the secret ways
of love,
No man could paint such things
who did not know.
And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian,
"" And you are here, who are The Isles
to me.
And here's the thing that lasts the whole
thing out :
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
? THE RETURN
EE, they return ; ah, see the tentative
s Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the
uncertain Wavering !
See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened ;
As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind,
These were the
and half turn back "
Wing'd-with-Awe," Inviolable.
Gods of the winged shoe ! With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air !
Haie ! Haie !
These were the swift to harry ;
53
;
? These the keen-scented ; These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men !
54
? EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE
I
DEUX MOVEMENTS
1. Temple qui fut. 2. Poissonsd'or.
ASOUL curls back,
Their souls like petals,
Thin, long, spiral,
Like those of a chrysanthemum curl
Smoke-like up and back from the Vavicel, the calyx,
Pale green, pale gold, transparent, Green of plasma, rose-white, Spirate like smoke,
Curled,
Vibrating,
Slowly, waving slowly.
55
? O Flower animate !
O calyx !
O crowd of foolish people !
2
The petals !
On the tip of each the figure
Delicate.
See, they dance, step to step. Flora to festival,
Twine, bend, bow,
Frolic involve ye.
Woven the step,
Woven the tread, the moving. Ribands they move,
Wave, bow to the centre. Pause, rise, deepen in colour, And fold in drowsily.
? II
FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN
high, floating and welling
satin,
Pushed at the gauze above it.
The notes beat upon this,
Beat and indented it ;
Rain dropped and came and fell upon this, Hail and snow,
My sight gone in the flurry !
And then across the white silken,
Bellied up, as a sail bellies to the wind,
Over the fluid tenuous, diaphanous, Over this curled a wave, greenish, Mounted and overwhelmed it.
This membrane floating above,
And bellied out by the up-pressing soul.
Then came a mer-host,
And after them legion of Romans, The usual, dull, theatrical !
57
Their BREAST
beneath the
soul, moving Plied the gold threads,
? THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T. E. HULME
PREFATORY NOTE
IN publishing his Complete Poetical Works at thirty,* Mr Hulme has set an enviable
example to many of his contemporaries who have had less to say.
They are reprinted here for good
for good custom, a custom out of Tuscany and of Provence ; and
thirdly, for convenience, seeing their small- ness of bulk ; and for good memory,
seeing that they recall certain evenings and meetings of two years gone, dull enough at the time, but rather pleasant to look back upon.
* Mr Pound has grossly exaggerated my age. T. E. H.
58
fellowship ;
? As for the " School of Images/' which
may or may not have existed, its principles
were not so interesting as those of the
""
inherent dynamists or of Les Unani-
mistes, yet they were probably sounder than those of a certain French school
which attempted to dispense with verbs
altogether ; or of the Impressionists who
brought forth :
"
Pink pigs blossoming upon the hillside" ;
or of the Post-Impressionists who beseech their ladies to let down slate-blue hair
over their raspberry-coloured flanks. Ardoise rimed richly ah, richly and
rarely rimed ! with framboise.
As for the future, Les Imagistes, the
descendants of the forgotten school of 1909, have that in their keeping.
I refrain from publishing my proposed Historical Memoir of their forerunners,
because Mr Hulme has threatened to print the original propaganda.
59
E. P.
? AUTUMN
ATOUCH of cold in the Autumn
night-
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a
hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.
60
? MANA ABODA
Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary vibration, the feigned ecstasy of an arrested im- pulse unable to reach its natural end.
ABODA, whose bent form
The sky in arched circle is, MANA
Seems ever for an unknown grief to mourn.
Yet on a day I heard her cry :
"
poets
Josephs all, not tall enough to try. "
1 weary of the roses and the singing
61
? ABOVE THE DOCK
BOVE the quiet dock in mid night, k
Tangled in the tall mast's corded
height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far
away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after
play.
? THE EMBANKMENT
(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night. )
in finesse of fiddles found I
ecstasy, ONCE,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy. Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in
comfort lie.
? wood E~;HTHEARTED
CONVERSION
i walked into . the
If valley
In the time of hyacinths,
Till beauty like a scented cloth
Cast over, stifled me. I was bound Motionless and faint of breath
By loveliness that is her own eunuch.
Now pass I to the final river Ignominiously, in a sack, without sound, As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorus.
FINIS
PRINTED BY NF. II. L AND CO. , LTD. , EDINBURGH.
? Mr. Ezra Pound leapt into fame with 11Personae"and"Exultations. " More
recently he has been translating and expounding the Troubadours ; but in
this stimulating volume he reappears
as a writer of poems as beautiful,
thoughtful and provocative as any he
has produced. Appended are poems by Mr. T. E. Hulme, the meta-
physician, who achieves great rhyth- mical beauty in curious verse-forms.