THE SEAFARER
From the early Anglo-Saxon text
MAY I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft.
From the early Anglo-Saxon text
MAY I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft.
Pound-Ezra-Umbra-The-Early-Poems-of-Ezra-Pound
LAUDANTES DECEM PULCHRITU- DINIS JOHANNAE TEMPLI
I
WHEN your beauty is grown old in all men's songs, And my uncertain words are lost amid that throng,
Then you will know the truth of my words,
And mayhap dreaming of those
Who sigh your praises in their songs,
You will think kindly then of these mad words.
II
I am torn, torn with thy beauty, O Rose of the sharpest thorn !
O Rose of the crimson beauty,
Why hast thou awakened the sleeper?
Why hast thou awakened the heart within me, O Rose of the crimson thorn ?
Ill
The unappeasable loveliness
is calling to me out of the wind,
And because your name
is written upon the ivory doors,
The wave in my heart is as a green wave, unconfined, Tossing the white foam toward you ;
And the lotus that pours
Her fragrance into the purple cup, Is more to be gained with the foam
Than are you with these words of mine. 45
? IV
He speaks to the moonlight concerning her
Pale hair that the moon has shaken Down over the dark breast of the sea,
magic her beauty has shaken
About the heart of me ;
Out of you have I woven a dream
That shall walk in the lonely vale
Betwixt the high hill and the low hill, Until the pale stream
Of the souls of men quench and grow still.
V
Voices speaking to the sun
Red leaf that art blown upward and out and over The green sheaf of the world,
And through the dim forest and under
The shadowed arches and the aisles,
We, who are older than thou art,
Met and remembered when his eyes beheld her
In the garden of the peach-trees, In the day of the blossoming.
VI
1 stood on the hill of Yrma
when the winds were a-hurrying,
With the grasses a-bending I followed them,
Through the brown grasses of Ahva unto the green of Asedon.
I have rested with the voices
in the gardens of Ahthor,
? I have lain beneath the peach-trees
in the hour of the purple :
Because I had awaited in
the garden of the peach-trees, Because I had feared not
in the forest of my mind, Mine eyes beheld the vision of the blossom
There in the peach-gardens past Asedon.
winds of Yrma, let her again come unto me,
Whose hair ye held unbound in the gardens of Ahthor !
VII
Because of the beautiful white shoulders and the rounded breasts
1 can in no wise forget my beloved of the peach-trees, And the little winds that speak when the dawn is
unfurled
And the rose-colour in the grey oak-leaf's fold
When it first comes, and the glamour that rests
On the little streams in the evening ; all of these Call me to her, and all the loveliness in the world Binds me to my beloved with strong chains of gold.
VIII
If the rose-petals which have fallen upon my eyes And if the perfect faces which I see at times
When my eyes are closed
Faces fragile, pale, yet flushed a little, like petals of roses :
If these things have confused my memories of her So that I could not draw her face
47
? Even if I had skill and the colours,
Yet because her face is so like these things
They but draw me nearer unto her in my thought
And thoughts of her come upon my mind gently, As dew upon the petals of roses.
IX
He speaks to the rain
O pearls that hang on your little silver chains, The innumerable voices that are whispering
Among you as you are drawn aside by the wind, Have brought to my mind the soft and eager speech Of one who hath great loveliness,
Which is subtle as the beauty of the rains That hang low in the moonshine and bring
The May softly among us, and unbind
The streams and the crimson and white flowers and
reach
Deep down into the secret places.
The glamour of the soul hath come upon me, And as the twilight comes upon the roses.
Walking silently among them,
So have the thoughts of my heart
Gone out slowly in the twilight
Toward my beloved,
Toward the crimson rose, the fairest.
? AUX BELLES DE LONDRES
I AM aweary with the utter and beautiful weariness And with the ultimate wisdom and with things terrene,
I am aweary with your smiles and your laughter, And the sun and the winds again
Reclaim their booty and the heart o' me.
FRANCESCA
You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands.
Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf, Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again, Alone.
49
? PRAYER
DAY and night are never weary,
Nor yet is God of creating
For day and night their torch-bearers
The half light of the dawn and the evening.
So, when I weary of praising the dawn and the sunset, Let me be no more counted among the immortals ;
But number me amid the wearying ones, Let me be a man as the herd,
And as the slave that is given in barter.
THE TREE
I STOOD still and was a tree amid the wood, Knowing the truth of things unseen before ; Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing ; Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.
? ON HIS OWN FACE IN A GLASS
O STRANGE face there in the glass !
O ribald company, O saintly host,
O sorrow-swept my fool, What answer? O ye myriad
That strive and play and pass,
Jest, challenge, counterlie ! I? I? I?
And ye?
THE EYES
REST Master, for we be a-weary, weary And would feel the fingers of the wind Upon these lids that lie over us
Sodden and lead-heavy.
Rest brother, for lo ! the dawn is without !
The yellow flame paleth And the wax runs low.
Free us, for without be goodly colours, Green of the wood-moss and flower colours, And coolness beneath the trees.
Free us, for we perish In this ever-flowing monotony Of ugly print marks, black Upon white parchment.
Free us, for there is one Whose smile more availeth
Than all the age-old knowledge of thy books : And we would look thereon.
l
5
? NILS LYKKE
INFINITE memories.
Why are you forever calling and murmuring in the dark there ?
And reaching out your hands between me and my beloved ?
And why are you forever casting The black shadow of your beauty
On the white face of my beloved
And glinting in the pools of her eyes ?
? PLANH FOR THE YOUNG ENGLISH KING
That is, Prince Henry Plantagenet, elder brother to Richard " Occur de Lion"
From the Prover^al of Bertrans de Born " Si tuit li dol elh plor elh marrimen. "
IF all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world Were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King. Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world overshadowed, soiled and overcast, Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.
Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O'er much hath ta'en Sir Death that deadly warrior
In taking from them the young English King, Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
'Las ! Never was nor will be in this world The balance for this loss in ire and sadness !
O skilful Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier That any folk e'er had, hast from us taken ;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King,
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure That he should live than many a living dastard That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.
53
? From this faint world, how full of bitterness Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful, Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day 'vails less than yestere'en,
Let each man visage this young English King That was most valiant 'mid all worthiest men !
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.
Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness To come to earth to draw us from misventure, Who drank of death for our salvacioun,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is, And bid go in with honoured companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.
54
? ALBA 1
From the Provencal
IN a garden where the whitethorn spreads her leaves My lady hath her love lain close beside her, Tillthewardercriesthedawn Ahdawnthatgrieves! Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Please God that night, dear night should never cease, Nor that my love should parted be from me, Norwatchcry'Dawn' Ahdawnthatslayethpeace! Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Fair friend and sweet, thy lips ! Our lips again ! Lo, in the meadow there the birds give song !
Ours be the love and Jealousy's the pain !
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
"Sweet friend and fair take we our joy again
Down in the garden, where the birds are loud,
Till the warder's reed astrain
Cry God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Of that sweet wind that comes from Far-Away Have I drunk deep of my Beloved's breath,
Yea ! of my Love's that is so dear and gay.
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
Envoi
Fair is this damsel and right courteous,
And many watch her beauty's gracious ways, Her heart toward love is no wise traitorous.
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon ! 1 VideautemQuiaPauper
55
? PLANH
Of White Thoughts he saw in a Forest
HEAVY with dreams,
Thou who art wiser than love,
Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows
In the pine wood,
And they are white, like the clouds in the sky's forest
Ere the stars arise to their hunting ;
White Poppy, who art wiser than love, 1 am come for peace, yea from the hunting Am I come to thee for peace.
Out of a new sorrow it is,
That my hunting hath brought me.
White Poppy, heavy with dreams,
Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows And it is white they are
But if one should look at me with the old hunger in
her eyes,
How will I be answering her eyes?
For I have followed the white folk of the forest.
Aye ! It's a long hunting
And it's a deep hunger I have when I see them
a-gliding
And a-flickering there, where the trees stand apart.
But oh, it is sorrow and sorrow When love dies-down in the heart.
56
? AU JARDIN From Canzoni
YOU away high there,
you that lean From amber lattices upon the cobalt night,
1 am below amid the pine trees, Amid the little pine trees, hear me !
" The jester walked in the garden. "
Well, there's no use your loving me That way, Lady ;
For I've nothing but songs to give you.
I am set wide upon the world's ways
To say that life is, some way, a gay thing, But you never string two days upon one wire
But there'll come sorrow of it.
Over beyond the moon there,
And I loved a love once. 1 loved a love once,
And, may be, more times,
But she danced like a pink moth in the shrubbery.
Oh, I know you women from the "other folk," And it'll all come right,
O* Sundays.
"The jester walked in the garden. "
57
Did he so?
Did he so ?
? OBOES
From Poetry and Drama for February 1912
I
FOR A BEERY VOICE
WHY should we worry about to-morrow, When we may all be dead and gone ? Haro! Haro!
Ha-a-ah-rro ! There'll come better men
Who will do, will they not ?
The noble things that we forgot. If there come worse,
what better thing Than to leave them the curse of our ill-doing !
Haro! Haro!
Ha-ah-ah-rro !
II AFTER HEINE
And have you thoroughly kissed my lips ? There was no particular haste,
And are you not ready when evening's come ? There's no particular haste.
You've got the whole night before you,
Heart's-all-beloved-my-own ;
In an uninterrupted night one can Get a good deal of kissing done.
? RIPOSTES
SILET
WHEN I behold how black, immortal ink
Dripsfrommydeathlesspen ah,well-away! Why should we stop at all for what I think ?
There is enough in what I chance to say.
It is enough that we once came together; What is the use of setting it to rime ?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather, Or gather may of harsh northwindish time ?
It is enough that we once came together; What if the wind have turned against the rain ? It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again ;
And who are we, who know that last intent, To plague to-morrow with a testament !
VERONA, 1911
IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM On a certain onis departure
u TIME'S bitter flood "
But where's the old friend hasn't fallen off,
Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped fame ?
I know your circle and can fairly tell
What you have kept and what you've left behind : I know my circle and know very well
How many faces I'd have out of mind.
59
!
Oh, that's all very well,
? THE TOMB AT AKR AAR
" I AM thy soul, Nikoptis.
These five millennia, and thy dead eyes Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame, Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.
See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues ; But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs. And there is no new thing in all this place.
I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed, Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine. And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee.
thou unmindful !
How should I forget !
Even the river many days ago, The river, thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
1 have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips, Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels ?
How ' came I in ' ?
And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark, 60
Was
I not thee and Thee
?
I have watched
? And no light beats upon me, and you say No word, day after day.
Oh ! I could get me out, despite the marks And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields. . . .
Yet it is quiet here : I do not go. "
61
? PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
YOUR mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee :
Ideals, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Greatmindshavesoughtyou lackingsomeoneelse.
Youhavebeensecondalways. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing :
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
Oneaveragemind withonethoughtless,eachyear. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away :
Trophies fished up ; some curious suggestion ; Fact that leads nowhere ; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something 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:
In the slow float of differing light and deep, No ! there is nothing ! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you.
62
? N. Y.
MY City, my beloved, my white ! Ah, slender,
Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me !
Now do I know that I am mad,
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.
MADISON AVE. , 1910
A GIRL
THE tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, 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.
A child so high you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
63
Listen !
? "PHASELLUS ILLE"
THIS papier-m&chd, which you see, my friends, Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors.
Its mind was made up in " the seventies,"
Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction.
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 convictions ;
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.
AN
THIS thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now Disturbeth his reflections.
QUIES
THIS is another of our ancient loves.
Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day
Hath lacked a something since this lady passed ; Hath lacked a something. 'Twas but marginal.
64
OBJECT
?
THE SEAFARER
From the early Anglo-Saxon text
MAY I for my own self song's truth reckon,
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.
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 ;
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 winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
E
65
Coldly afflicted,
? 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,
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 the water,
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
Hetheprosperousman whatsomeperform
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.
66
? 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 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 Csesars
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone. Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable ! 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,
67
? 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.
THE CLOAK i
THOU keep'st thy rose-leaf
Till the rose-time will be over,
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.
1
Asclepiades, Julianus -^Egyptus.
68
? BE in me as the eternal moods
of the bleak wind, and not
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.
69
? APPARUIT
GOLDEN rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.
Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where
thou afar, moving in the glamorous sun, drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue
golden about thee.
Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there,
open lies the land, yet the steely going
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded asther
parted before thee.
Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, cast
ing a-loose the cloak of the body, earnest
straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned light
faded about thee.
Half the graven shoulder, the throat aflash with strands of light inwoven about it, loveli
est of all things, frail alabaster, ah me !
swift in departing.
Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect,
gone as wind ! The cloth of the magical hands !
Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning dar'dst to assume this ?
70
? THE NEEDLE
COME, or the stellar tide will slip away. Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, Now ! for the needle trembles in my soul !
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.
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.
SUB MARE
IT is, and is not, I am sane enough,
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 Algce reach up and out, beneath
Pale slow green surgings of the underwave,
'Mid these things older than the names they have,
These things that are familiars of the god.
? PLUNGE
I 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 desired !
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,
Oh, sun enough !
Out, and alone, among some Alien people !
? A VIRGINAL
Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness.
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness ;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether ;
As with sweet leaves
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no ! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
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 trees a likeness of the savour :
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
No,no!
;
as with a subtle clearness.
? PAN IS DEAD
" PAN is dead. Great Pan is dead.
Ah ! bow your heads, ye maidens all, 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 ?
74
? AN IMMORALITY
SING we for love and idleness, 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.
DIEU ! QU'IL LA FAIT
From Charles D'Orleans For Music
GOD ! that mad'st her well regard 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.
75
? THE PICTURE*
THE eyes of this dead lady speak to 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.
1
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.
Venus Reclining, by Jacopo del Sellaio (14. 42-1493).
? THE RETURN
SEE, they return ; ah, see the tentative
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,
and half turn back ;
These were the " 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 ;
These the keen-scented ;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men !
77
? EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE I
DEUX MOUVEMENTS
1 . Temple qui fut
2. Poissons d'or
A SOUL 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. O Flower animate !
O calyx !
O crowd of foolish people !
The petals !
On the tip of each the figure Delicate.
See, they dance, step to step. Flora to festival,
78
? 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
Breast high, floating and welling Their soul, moving beneath the satin,
Plied the gold threads, 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 ! 79
? PHANOPOEIA I
ROSE WHITE, YELLOW, SILVER
THE swirl of light follows me through the square, The smoke of incense
Mounts from the four horns of my bed-posts,
The water-jet of gold light bears us up through the ceilings;
Lapped in the gold-coloured flame I descend through the aether.
The silver ball forms in my hand, It falls and rolls to your feet.
II
SALTUS
The swirling sphere has opened
and you are caught up to the skies,
You are englobed in my sapphire.
lo! lo!
You have perceived the blades of the flame The flutter of sharp-edged sandals.
The folding and lapping brightness Has held in the air before you.
You have perceived the leaves of the flame. 80
? Ill
CONCAVA VALLIS
The wire-like bands of colour involute mount
from my fingers ;
I have wrapped the wind round your shoulders
And the molten metal of your shoulders bends into the turn of the wind,
AOI!
The whirling tissue of light
is woven and grows solid beneath us ;
The sea-clear sapphire of air, the sea-dark clarity, stretches both sea-cliff and ocean.
8r
? THE ALCHEMIST Chantfor the Transmutation of Metals
SAIL of Claustra, Aelis, Azalais,
As you move among the bright trees ;
As your voices, under the larches of Paradise Make a clear sound,
Sail of Claustra, Aelis, Azalais,
Raimona, Tibors, Berangere, 'Neath the dark gleam of the sky ;
Under night, the peacock-throated, Bring the saffron-coloured shell,
Bring the red gold of the maple,
Bring the light of the birch tree in autumn
Mirals, Cembelins, Audiarda,
Elain, Tireis, Alcmena
'Mid the silver rustling of wheat,
Agradiva, Anhes, Ardenca,
Remember this fire.
From the plum-coloured lake, in stillness, From the molten dyes of the water
Bring the burnished nature of fire ;
Briseis, Lianor, Loica,
From the wide earth and the olive,
From the poplars weeping their amber, By the bright flame of the fishing torch
Remember this fire. Midonz, with the gold of the sun, the leaf of the
poplar, by the light of the amber,
Midonz, daughter of the sun, shaft of the tree, silver
of the leaf, light of the yellow of the amber, 82
? Midonz, gift of the God, gift of the light, gift of the amber of the sun,
Give light to the metal. Anhes of Rocacoart, Ardenca, Aemelis,
From the power of grass,
From the white, alive in the seed,
From the heat of the bud,
From the copper of the leaf in autumn,
From the bronze of the maple, from the sap in the
bough ;
Lianor, loanna, Loica,
By the stir of the fin,
By the trout asleep in the gray-green of water ;
Vanna, Mandetta, Viera, Alodetta, Picarda, Manuela From the red gleam of copper,
Ysaut, Ydone, slight rustling of leaves,
Vierna, Jocelynn, daring of spirits,
By the mirror of burnished copper,'
O Queen of Cypress, Out of Erebus, the flat-lying breadth,
Breath that is stretched out beneath the world :
Out of Erebus, out of the flat waste of air, lying
beneath the world ;
Out of the brown leaf-brown colourless
Bring the imperceptible cool. Elain, Tireis, Alcmena,
Quiet this metal !
Let the manes put off their terror, let them put off
their aqueous bodies with fire.
Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
Selvaggia, Guiscarda, Mandetta,
Rain flakes of gold on the water,
83
? Azure and flaking silver of water, Alcyon, Phaetona, Alcmena,
Pallor of silver, pale lustre of Latona,
By these, from the malevolence of the dew
Guard this alembic.
Elain, Tireis, Allodetta
Quiet this metal.
CANTUS PLANUS
THE black panther lies under his rose tree And the fawns come to sniff at his sides :
Evoe, Evoe, Evoe Baccho, O ZAGREUS, Zagreus, Zagreus,
The black panther lies under his rose tree.
|| Hesper adest. Hesper|| adest.
Hesper adest. || ||
? TRANSLATIONS
? FROM THE SONNETS OF GUIDO CAVALCAbTI
CHE PER GLI OCCHI M1EI PASSASTE AL CORE
You, who do breech mine eyes and touch the heart, And start the mind from her brief reveries.
Might pluck my life and agony apart.
Saw you how love assaileth her with sighs,
And lays about him with so brute a might
That all my wounded senses turn to flight. There's a new face upon the seigniory,
And new is the voice that maketh loud my grief.
Love, who hath drawn me down through devious ways, Hath from your noble eyes so swiftly come !
'Tis he hath hurled the dart, wherefrom my pain,
First shot's resultant ! and in flanked amaze
See how my affrighted soul recoileth from That sinister side wherein the heart lies slain.
VOI,
87
? IO VIDI GLI OCCHI DOVE AMOR SI MISE
I SAW the eyes, where Amor ook his place,
When love's might bound me with the fear thereof, Look out at me as they were weary of love.
I say : The heart rent him as he looked on this, And were't not that my Lady lit her grace,
Smiling upon me with her eyes grown glad,
Then were my speech so dolorously clad That Love should mourn amid his victories.
The instant that she deigned to bend her eyes Toward me, a spirit from high heaven rode
And chose my thought the place of his abode,
With such deep parlance of love's verities, That all Love's powers did my sight accost As though I'd won unto his heart's mid-most.
88
? O DONNA iMIA, NON VEDESTU COLUI
O LADY mine, doth not thy sight allege
Him who hath set his hand upon my heart, When dry words rattle in my throat and start And shudder for the terror of his edge?
He was Amor, who since he found you, dwells Ever with me, and he was come from far ;
An archer is he as the Scythians are
Whose only joy is killing someone else.
My sobbing eyes are drawn upon his wrack, And such harsh sighs upon my heart he casteth
That I depart from that sad me he wasteth,
With Death drawn close upon my wavering track, Leading such tortures in his sombre train
As, by all custom, wear out other men.
? GLI MIEI FOLLI OCCHI, CHE'N PRIMA GUARDARO
LADY, my most rash eyes, the first who used
To look upon thy face, the power-fraught, Were, Lady, those by whom I was accused
In that proud keep where Amor holdeth court.
And there before him was their proof adduced,
And judgment wrote me down: "Bondslave" to thee,
Though still I stay Grief's prisoner, unloosed, And Fear hath lien upon the heart of me.
For the which charges, and without respite, They dragged me to a place where a sad horde Of such as Jove and whom Love tortureth Cried out, all pitying as I met their sight,
" Now art thou servant unto such a Lord Thou'lt have none other one save only Death. "
90
? TU M'HAI SI PIENA DI DOLOR LA MENTE
THOU fill'st my mind with griefs so populous That my soul irks him to be on the road. Mine eyes cry out, " We cannot bear the load Of sighs the grievous heart sends upon us. "
Love, sensitive to thy nobility,
Saith, " Sorrow is mine that thou must take thy death From this fair lady who will hear no breath
In argument for aught save pitying thee.
I
WHEN your beauty is grown old in all men's songs, And my uncertain words are lost amid that throng,
Then you will know the truth of my words,
And mayhap dreaming of those
Who sigh your praises in their songs,
You will think kindly then of these mad words.
II
I am torn, torn with thy beauty, O Rose of the sharpest thorn !
O Rose of the crimson beauty,
Why hast thou awakened the sleeper?
Why hast thou awakened the heart within me, O Rose of the crimson thorn ?
Ill
The unappeasable loveliness
is calling to me out of the wind,
And because your name
is written upon the ivory doors,
The wave in my heart is as a green wave, unconfined, Tossing the white foam toward you ;
And the lotus that pours
Her fragrance into the purple cup, Is more to be gained with the foam
Than are you with these words of mine. 45
? IV
He speaks to the moonlight concerning her
Pale hair that the moon has shaken Down over the dark breast of the sea,
magic her beauty has shaken
About the heart of me ;
Out of you have I woven a dream
That shall walk in the lonely vale
Betwixt the high hill and the low hill, Until the pale stream
Of the souls of men quench and grow still.
V
Voices speaking to the sun
Red leaf that art blown upward and out and over The green sheaf of the world,
And through the dim forest and under
The shadowed arches and the aisles,
We, who are older than thou art,
Met and remembered when his eyes beheld her
In the garden of the peach-trees, In the day of the blossoming.
VI
1 stood on the hill of Yrma
when the winds were a-hurrying,
With the grasses a-bending I followed them,
Through the brown grasses of Ahva unto the green of Asedon.
I have rested with the voices
in the gardens of Ahthor,
? I have lain beneath the peach-trees
in the hour of the purple :
Because I had awaited in
the garden of the peach-trees, Because I had feared not
in the forest of my mind, Mine eyes beheld the vision of the blossom
There in the peach-gardens past Asedon.
winds of Yrma, let her again come unto me,
Whose hair ye held unbound in the gardens of Ahthor !
VII
Because of the beautiful white shoulders and the rounded breasts
1 can in no wise forget my beloved of the peach-trees, And the little winds that speak when the dawn is
unfurled
And the rose-colour in the grey oak-leaf's fold
When it first comes, and the glamour that rests
On the little streams in the evening ; all of these Call me to her, and all the loveliness in the world Binds me to my beloved with strong chains of gold.
VIII
If the rose-petals which have fallen upon my eyes And if the perfect faces which I see at times
When my eyes are closed
Faces fragile, pale, yet flushed a little, like petals of roses :
If these things have confused my memories of her So that I could not draw her face
47
? Even if I had skill and the colours,
Yet because her face is so like these things
They but draw me nearer unto her in my thought
And thoughts of her come upon my mind gently, As dew upon the petals of roses.
IX
He speaks to the rain
O pearls that hang on your little silver chains, The innumerable voices that are whispering
Among you as you are drawn aside by the wind, Have brought to my mind the soft and eager speech Of one who hath great loveliness,
Which is subtle as the beauty of the rains That hang low in the moonshine and bring
The May softly among us, and unbind
The streams and the crimson and white flowers and
reach
Deep down into the secret places.
The glamour of the soul hath come upon me, And as the twilight comes upon the roses.
Walking silently among them,
So have the thoughts of my heart
Gone out slowly in the twilight
Toward my beloved,
Toward the crimson rose, the fairest.
? AUX BELLES DE LONDRES
I AM aweary with the utter and beautiful weariness And with the ultimate wisdom and with things terrene,
I am aweary with your smiles and your laughter, And the sun and the winds again
Reclaim their booty and the heart o' me.
FRANCESCA
You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands.
Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf, Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again, Alone.
49
? PRAYER
DAY and night are never weary,
Nor yet is God of creating
For day and night their torch-bearers
The half light of the dawn and the evening.
So, when I weary of praising the dawn and the sunset, Let me be no more counted among the immortals ;
But number me amid the wearying ones, Let me be a man as the herd,
And as the slave that is given in barter.
THE TREE
I STOOD still and was a tree amid the wood, Knowing the truth of things unseen before ; Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing ; Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.
? ON HIS OWN FACE IN A GLASS
O STRANGE face there in the glass !
O ribald company, O saintly host,
O sorrow-swept my fool, What answer? O ye myriad
That strive and play and pass,
Jest, challenge, counterlie ! I? I? I?
And ye?
THE EYES
REST Master, for we be a-weary, weary And would feel the fingers of the wind Upon these lids that lie over us
Sodden and lead-heavy.
Rest brother, for lo ! the dawn is without !
The yellow flame paleth And the wax runs low.
Free us, for without be goodly colours, Green of the wood-moss and flower colours, And coolness beneath the trees.
Free us, for we perish In this ever-flowing monotony Of ugly print marks, black Upon white parchment.
Free us, for there is one Whose smile more availeth
Than all the age-old knowledge of thy books : And we would look thereon.
l
5
? NILS LYKKE
INFINITE memories.
Why are you forever calling and murmuring in the dark there ?
And reaching out your hands between me and my beloved ?
And why are you forever casting The black shadow of your beauty
On the white face of my beloved
And glinting in the pools of her eyes ?
? PLANH FOR THE YOUNG ENGLISH KING
That is, Prince Henry Plantagenet, elder brother to Richard " Occur de Lion"
From the Prover^al of Bertrans de Born " Si tuit li dol elh plor elh marrimen. "
IF all the grief and woe and bitterness,
All dolour, ill and every evil chance
That ever came upon this grieving world Were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King. Worth lieth riven and Youth dolorous,
The world overshadowed, soiled and overcast, Void of all joy and full of ire and sadness.
Grieving and sad and full of bitterness
Are left in teen the liegemen courteous,
The joglars supple and the troubadours.
O'er much hath ta'en Sir Death that deadly warrior
In taking from them the young English King, Who made the freest hand seem covetous.
'Las ! Never was nor will be in this world The balance for this loss in ire and sadness !
O skilful Death and full of bitterness,
Well mayst thou boast that thou the best chevalier That any folk e'er had, hast from us taken ;
Sith nothing is that unto worth pertaineth
But had its life in the young English King,
And better were it, should God grant his pleasure That he should live than many a living dastard That doth but wound the good with ire and sadness.
53
? From this faint world, how full of bitterness Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful, Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish
And each to-day 'vails less than yestere'en,
Let each man visage this young English King That was most valiant 'mid all worthiest men !
Gone is his body fine and amorous,
Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.
Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness To come to earth to draw us from misventure, Who drank of death for our salvacioun,
Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous
And humble eke, that the young English King
He please to pardon, as true pardon is, And bid go in with honoured companions
There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.
54
? ALBA 1
From the Provencal
IN a garden where the whitethorn spreads her leaves My lady hath her love lain close beside her, Tillthewardercriesthedawn Ahdawnthatgrieves! Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Please God that night, dear night should never cease, Nor that my love should parted be from me, Norwatchcry'Dawn' Ahdawnthatslayethpeace! Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Fair friend and sweet, thy lips ! Our lips again ! Lo, in the meadow there the birds give song !
Ours be the love and Jealousy's the pain !
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
"Sweet friend and fair take we our joy again
Down in the garden, where the birds are loud,
Till the warder's reed astrain
Cry God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
" Of that sweet wind that comes from Far-Away Have I drunk deep of my Beloved's breath,
Yea ! of my Love's that is so dear and gay.
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon !
Envoi
Fair is this damsel and right courteous,
And many watch her beauty's gracious ways, Her heart toward love is no wise traitorous.
Ah God ! Ah God ! That dawn should come so soon ! 1 VideautemQuiaPauper
55
? PLANH
Of White Thoughts he saw in a Forest
HEAVY with dreams,
Thou who art wiser than love,
Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows
In the pine wood,
And they are white, like the clouds in the sky's forest
Ere the stars arise to their hunting ;
White Poppy, who art wiser than love, 1 am come for peace, yea from the hunting Am I come to thee for peace.
Out of a new sorrow it is,
That my hunting hath brought me.
White Poppy, heavy with dreams,
Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding
And a-passing out and in through the shadows And it is white they are
But if one should look at me with the old hunger in
her eyes,
How will I be answering her eyes?
For I have followed the white folk of the forest.
Aye ! It's a long hunting
And it's a deep hunger I have when I see them
a-gliding
And a-flickering there, where the trees stand apart.
But oh, it is sorrow and sorrow When love dies-down in the heart.
56
? AU JARDIN From Canzoni
YOU away high there,
you that lean From amber lattices upon the cobalt night,
1 am below amid the pine trees, Amid the little pine trees, hear me !
" The jester walked in the garden. "
Well, there's no use your loving me That way, Lady ;
For I've nothing but songs to give you.
I am set wide upon the world's ways
To say that life is, some way, a gay thing, But you never string two days upon one wire
But there'll come sorrow of it.
Over beyond the moon there,
And I loved a love once. 1 loved a love once,
And, may be, more times,
But she danced like a pink moth in the shrubbery.
Oh, I know you women from the "other folk," And it'll all come right,
O* Sundays.
"The jester walked in the garden. "
57
Did he so?
Did he so ?
? OBOES
From Poetry and Drama for February 1912
I
FOR A BEERY VOICE
WHY should we worry about to-morrow, When we may all be dead and gone ? Haro! Haro!
Ha-a-ah-rro ! There'll come better men
Who will do, will they not ?
The noble things that we forgot. If there come worse,
what better thing Than to leave them the curse of our ill-doing !
Haro! Haro!
Ha-ah-ah-rro !
II AFTER HEINE
And have you thoroughly kissed my lips ? There was no particular haste,
And are you not ready when evening's come ? There's no particular haste.
You've got the whole night before you,
Heart's-all-beloved-my-own ;
In an uninterrupted night one can Get a good deal of kissing done.
? RIPOSTES
SILET
WHEN I behold how black, immortal ink
Dripsfrommydeathlesspen ah,well-away! Why should we stop at all for what I think ?
There is enough in what I chance to say.
It is enough that we once came together; What is the use of setting it to rime ?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather, Or gather may of harsh northwindish time ?
It is enough that we once came together; What if the wind have turned against the rain ? It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again ;
And who are we, who know that last intent, To plague to-morrow with a testament !
VERONA, 1911
IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM On a certain onis departure
u TIME'S bitter flood "
But where's the old friend hasn't fallen off,
Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped fame ?
I know your circle and can fairly tell
What you have kept and what you've left behind : I know my circle and know very well
How many faces I'd have out of mind.
59
!
Oh, that's all very well,
? THE TOMB AT AKR AAR
" I AM thy soul, Nikoptis.
These five millennia, and thy dead eyes Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame, Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.
See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues ; But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs. And there is no new thing in all this place.
I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed, Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine. And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee.
thou unmindful !
How should I forget !
Even the river many days ago, The river, thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
1 have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips, Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels ?
How ' came I in ' ?
And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark, 60
Was
I not thee and Thee
?
I have watched
? And no light beats upon me, and you say No word, day after day.
Oh ! I could get me out, despite the marks And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields. . . .
Yet it is quiet here : I do not go. "
61
? PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
YOUR mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee :
Ideals, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Greatmindshavesoughtyou lackingsomeoneelse.
Youhavebeensecondalways. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing :
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
Oneaveragemind withonethoughtless,eachyear. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away :
Trophies fished up ; some curious suggestion ; Fact that leads nowhere ; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something 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:
In the slow float of differing light and deep, No ! there is nothing ! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you.
62
? N. Y.
MY City, my beloved, my white ! Ah, slender,
Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me !
Now do I know that I am mad,
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.
MADISON AVE. , 1910
A GIRL
THE tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, 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.
A child so high you are,
And all this is folly to the world.
63
Listen !
? "PHASELLUS ILLE"
THIS papier-m&chd, which you see, my friends, Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors.
Its mind was made up in " the seventies,"
Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction.
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 convictions ;
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.
AN
THIS thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now Disturbeth his reflections.
QUIES
THIS is another of our ancient loves.
Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day
Hath lacked a something since this lady passed ; Hath lacked a something. 'Twas but marginal.
64
OBJECT
?
THE SEAFARER
From the early Anglo-Saxon text
MAY I for my own self song's truth reckon,
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.
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 ;
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 winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
E
65
Coldly afflicted,
? 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,
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 the water,
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
Hetheprosperousman whatsomeperform
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.
66
? 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 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 Csesars
Nor gold-giving lords like those gone. Howe'er in mirth most magnified,
Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,
Drear all this excellence, delights undurable ! 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,
67
? 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.
THE CLOAK i
THOU keep'st thy rose-leaf
Till the rose-time will be over,
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.
1
Asclepiades, Julianus -^Egyptus.
68
? BE in me as the eternal moods
of the bleak wind, and not
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.
69
? APPARUIT
GOLDEN rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.
Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where
thou afar, moving in the glamorous sun, drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue
golden about thee.
Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there,
open lies the land, yet the steely going
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded asther
parted before thee.
Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, cast
ing a-loose the cloak of the body, earnest
straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned light
faded about thee.
Half the graven shoulder, the throat aflash with strands of light inwoven about it, loveli
est of all things, frail alabaster, ah me !
swift in departing.
Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect,
gone as wind ! The cloth of the magical hands !
Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning dar'dst to assume this ?
70
? THE NEEDLE
COME, or the stellar tide will slip away. Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, Now ! for the needle trembles in my soul !
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.
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.
SUB MARE
IT is, and is not, I am sane enough,
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 Algce reach up and out, beneath
Pale slow green surgings of the underwave,
'Mid these things older than the names they have,
These things that are familiars of the god.
? PLUNGE
I 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 desired !
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,
Oh, sun enough !
Out, and alone, among some Alien people !
? A VIRGINAL
Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness.
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness ;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether ;
As with sweet leaves
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no ! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
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 trees a likeness of the savour :
As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
No,no!
;
as with a subtle clearness.
? PAN IS DEAD
" PAN is dead. Great Pan is dead.
Ah ! bow your heads, ye maidens all, 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 ?
74
? AN IMMORALITY
SING we for love and idleness, 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.
DIEU ! QU'IL LA FAIT
From Charles D'Orleans For Music
GOD ! that mad'st her well regard 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.
75
? THE PICTURE*
THE eyes of this dead lady speak to 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.
1
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.
Venus Reclining, by Jacopo del Sellaio (14. 42-1493).
? THE RETURN
SEE, they return ; ah, see the tentative
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,
and half turn back ;
These were the " 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 ;
These the keen-scented ;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men !
77
? EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE I
DEUX MOUVEMENTS
1 . Temple qui fut
2. Poissons d'or
A SOUL 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. O Flower animate !
O calyx !
O crowd of foolish people !
The petals !
On the tip of each the figure Delicate.
See, they dance, step to step. Flora to festival,
78
? 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
Breast high, floating and welling Their soul, moving beneath the satin,
Plied the gold threads, 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 ! 79
? PHANOPOEIA I
ROSE WHITE, YELLOW, SILVER
THE swirl of light follows me through the square, The smoke of incense
Mounts from the four horns of my bed-posts,
The water-jet of gold light bears us up through the ceilings;
Lapped in the gold-coloured flame I descend through the aether.
The silver ball forms in my hand, It falls and rolls to your feet.
II
SALTUS
The swirling sphere has opened
and you are caught up to the skies,
You are englobed in my sapphire.
lo! lo!
You have perceived the blades of the flame The flutter of sharp-edged sandals.
The folding and lapping brightness Has held in the air before you.
You have perceived the leaves of the flame. 80
? Ill
CONCAVA VALLIS
The wire-like bands of colour involute mount
from my fingers ;
I have wrapped the wind round your shoulders
And the molten metal of your shoulders bends into the turn of the wind,
AOI!
The whirling tissue of light
is woven and grows solid beneath us ;
The sea-clear sapphire of air, the sea-dark clarity, stretches both sea-cliff and ocean.
8r
? THE ALCHEMIST Chantfor the Transmutation of Metals
SAIL of Claustra, Aelis, Azalais,
As you move among the bright trees ;
As your voices, under the larches of Paradise Make a clear sound,
Sail of Claustra, Aelis, Azalais,
Raimona, Tibors, Berangere, 'Neath the dark gleam of the sky ;
Under night, the peacock-throated, Bring the saffron-coloured shell,
Bring the red gold of the maple,
Bring the light of the birch tree in autumn
Mirals, Cembelins, Audiarda,
Elain, Tireis, Alcmena
'Mid the silver rustling of wheat,
Agradiva, Anhes, Ardenca,
Remember this fire.
From the plum-coloured lake, in stillness, From the molten dyes of the water
Bring the burnished nature of fire ;
Briseis, Lianor, Loica,
From the wide earth and the olive,
From the poplars weeping their amber, By the bright flame of the fishing torch
Remember this fire. Midonz, with the gold of the sun, the leaf of the
poplar, by the light of the amber,
Midonz, daughter of the sun, shaft of the tree, silver
of the leaf, light of the yellow of the amber, 82
? Midonz, gift of the God, gift of the light, gift of the amber of the sun,
Give light to the metal. Anhes of Rocacoart, Ardenca, Aemelis,
From the power of grass,
From the white, alive in the seed,
From the heat of the bud,
From the copper of the leaf in autumn,
From the bronze of the maple, from the sap in the
bough ;
Lianor, loanna, Loica,
By the stir of the fin,
By the trout asleep in the gray-green of water ;
Vanna, Mandetta, Viera, Alodetta, Picarda, Manuela From the red gleam of copper,
Ysaut, Ydone, slight rustling of leaves,
Vierna, Jocelynn, daring of spirits,
By the mirror of burnished copper,'
O Queen of Cypress, Out of Erebus, the flat-lying breadth,
Breath that is stretched out beneath the world :
Out of Erebus, out of the flat waste of air, lying
beneath the world ;
Out of the brown leaf-brown colourless
Bring the imperceptible cool. Elain, Tireis, Alcmena,
Quiet this metal !
Let the manes put off their terror, let them put off
their aqueous bodies with fire.
Let them assume the milk-white bodies of agate. Let them draw together the bones of the metal.
Selvaggia, Guiscarda, Mandetta,
Rain flakes of gold on the water,
83
? Azure and flaking silver of water, Alcyon, Phaetona, Alcmena,
Pallor of silver, pale lustre of Latona,
By these, from the malevolence of the dew
Guard this alembic.
Elain, Tireis, Allodetta
Quiet this metal.
CANTUS PLANUS
THE black panther lies under his rose tree And the fawns come to sniff at his sides :
Evoe, Evoe, Evoe Baccho, O ZAGREUS, Zagreus, Zagreus,
The black panther lies under his rose tree.
|| Hesper adest. Hesper|| adest.
Hesper adest. || ||
? TRANSLATIONS
? FROM THE SONNETS OF GUIDO CAVALCAbTI
CHE PER GLI OCCHI M1EI PASSASTE AL CORE
You, who do breech mine eyes and touch the heart, And start the mind from her brief reveries.
Might pluck my life and agony apart.
Saw you how love assaileth her with sighs,
And lays about him with so brute a might
That all my wounded senses turn to flight. There's a new face upon the seigniory,
And new is the voice that maketh loud my grief.
Love, who hath drawn me down through devious ways, Hath from your noble eyes so swiftly come !
'Tis he hath hurled the dart, wherefrom my pain,
First shot's resultant ! and in flanked amaze
See how my affrighted soul recoileth from That sinister side wherein the heart lies slain.
VOI,
87
? IO VIDI GLI OCCHI DOVE AMOR SI MISE
I SAW the eyes, where Amor ook his place,
When love's might bound me with the fear thereof, Look out at me as they were weary of love.
I say : The heart rent him as he looked on this, And were't not that my Lady lit her grace,
Smiling upon me with her eyes grown glad,
Then were my speech so dolorously clad That Love should mourn amid his victories.
The instant that she deigned to bend her eyes Toward me, a spirit from high heaven rode
And chose my thought the place of his abode,
With such deep parlance of love's verities, That all Love's powers did my sight accost As though I'd won unto his heart's mid-most.
88
? O DONNA iMIA, NON VEDESTU COLUI
O LADY mine, doth not thy sight allege
Him who hath set his hand upon my heart, When dry words rattle in my throat and start And shudder for the terror of his edge?
He was Amor, who since he found you, dwells Ever with me, and he was come from far ;
An archer is he as the Scythians are
Whose only joy is killing someone else.
My sobbing eyes are drawn upon his wrack, And such harsh sighs upon my heart he casteth
That I depart from that sad me he wasteth,
With Death drawn close upon my wavering track, Leading such tortures in his sombre train
As, by all custom, wear out other men.
? GLI MIEI FOLLI OCCHI, CHE'N PRIMA GUARDARO
LADY, my most rash eyes, the first who used
To look upon thy face, the power-fraught, Were, Lady, those by whom I was accused
In that proud keep where Amor holdeth court.
And there before him was their proof adduced,
And judgment wrote me down: "Bondslave" to thee,
Though still I stay Grief's prisoner, unloosed, And Fear hath lien upon the heart of me.
For the which charges, and without respite, They dragged me to a place where a sad horde Of such as Jove and whom Love tortureth Cried out, all pitying as I met their sight,
" Now art thou servant unto such a Lord Thou'lt have none other one save only Death. "
90
? TU M'HAI SI PIENA DI DOLOR LA MENTE
THOU fill'st my mind with griefs so populous That my soul irks him to be on the road. Mine eyes cry out, " We cannot bear the load Of sighs the grievous heart sends upon us. "
Love, sensitive to thy nobility,
Saith, " Sorrow is mine that thou must take thy death From this fair lady who will hear no breath
In argument for aught save pitying thee.
