<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1><ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" /> HE DEFEAT OF YOUTH AND OTHER POEMS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> BY ALDOUS HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL."</h1>
<h2>CONTENTS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<table summary="Table of Contents">
<tr>
<td class="right" colspan="2">Page</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Defeat of Youth</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#defeat">5</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Song of Poplars</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#song">16</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Reef</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#reef">17</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Winter Dream</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#winter">19</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Flowers</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#flowers">20</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Elms</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#elms">21</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Out of the Window</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#out">21</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Inspiration</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#inspiration">22</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Summer Stillness</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#summer">23</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Anniversaries</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#anniversaries">23</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Italy</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#italy">25</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Alien</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#alien">26</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A Little Memory</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#little">27</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Waking</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#waking">28</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>By the Fire</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#fire">29</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Valedictory</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#valedictory">31</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Love Song</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#love">32</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Private Property</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#private">33</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Revelation</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#revelation">34</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Minoan Porcelain</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#minoan">34</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Decameron</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#decameron">35</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>In Uncertainty to a Lady</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#uncertainty">35</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Crapulous Impression</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#crapulous">36</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Life Theoretic</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#life">37</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Complaint of a Poet Manqué</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#complaint">37</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Social Amenities</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#social">38</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Topiary</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#topiary">38</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>On the Bus</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#bus">39</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Points and Lines</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#points">39</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Panic</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#panic">40</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Return from Business</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#return">40</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Stanzas</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#stanzas">41</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Poem</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#poem">42</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Scenes of the Mind</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#scenes">43</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>L'Après-Midi D'un Faune</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#faune">44</SPAN></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Louse-Hunters</td>
<td class="right"><SPAN href="#louse">48</SPAN></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="defeat">THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<h3>I. UNDER THE TREES.</h3>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" />
<span class="smcap">here</span> had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes<br/>
Of this and this occasion, sisterly<br/>
In their resemblances, each effigy<br/>
Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape's<br/>
White rounded firmness, and each body alert<br/>
With such swift loveliness, that very rest<br/>
Seemed a poised movement: ... phantoms that impressed<br/>
But a faint influence and could bless or hurt<br/>
No more than dreams. And these ghost things were she;<br/>
For formless still, without identity,<br/>
Not one she seemed, not clear, but many and dim.<br/>
One face among the legions of the street,<br/>
Indifferent mystery, she was for him<br/>
Something still uncreated, incomplete.</p>
<h3>II.</h3>
<p class="poem">
Bright windy sunshine and the shadow of cloud<br/>
Quicken the heavy summer to new birth<br/>
Of life and motion on the drowsing earth;<br/>
The huge elms stir, till all the air is loud<br/>
With their awakening from the muffled sleep<br/>
Of long hot days. And on the wavering line<br/>
That marks the alternate ebb of shade and shine,<br/>
Under the trees, a little group is deep<br/>
In laughing talk. The shadow as it flows<br/>
Across them dims the lustre of a rose,<br/>
Quenches the bright clear gold of hair, the green<br/>
Of a girl's dress, and life seems faint. The light<br/>
Swings back, and in the rose a fire is seen,<br/>
Gold hair's aflame and green grows emerald bright.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>III.</h3>
<p class="poem">She leans, and there is laughter in the face<br/>
She turns towards him; and it seems a door<br/>
Suddenly opened on some desolate place<br/>
With a burst of light and music. What before<br/>
Was hidden shines in loveliness revealed.<br/>
Now first he sees her beautiful, and knows<br/>
That he must love her; and the doom is sealed<br/>
Of all his happiness and all the woes<br/>
That shall be born of pregnant years hereafter.<br/>
The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter—<br/>
And love flows in on him, its vastness pent<br/>
Within his narrow life: the pain it brings,<br/>
Boundless; for love is infinite discontent<br/>
With the poor lonely life of transient things.</p>
<h3>IV.</h3>
<p class="poem">Men see their god, an immanence divine,<br/>
Smile through the curve of flesh or moulded clay,<br/>
In bare ploughed lands that go sloping away<br/>
To meet the sky in one clean exquisite line.<br/>
Out of the short-seen dawns of ecstasy<br/>
They draw new beauty, whence new thoughts are born<br/>
And in their turn conceive, as grains of corn<br/>
Germ and create new life and endlessly<br/>
Shall live creating. Out of earthly seeds<br/>
Springs the aerial flower. One spirit proceeds<br/>
Through change, the same in body and in soul—<br/>
The spirit of life and love that triumphs still<br/>
In its slow struggle towards some far-off goal<br/>
Through lust and death and the bitterness of will.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>V.</h3>
<p class="poem">One spirit it is that stirs the fathomless deep<br/>
Of human minds, that shakes the elms in storm,<br/>
That sings in passionate music, or on warm<br/>
Still evenings bosoms forth the tufted sleep<br/>
Of thistle-seeds that wait a travelling wind.<br/>
One spirit shapes the subtle rhythms of thought<br/>
And the long thundering seas; the soul is wrought<br/>
Of one stuff with the body—matter and mind<br/>
Woven together in so close a mesh<br/>
That flowers may blossom into a song, that flesh<br/>
May strangely teach the loveliest holiest things<br/>
To watching spirits. Truth is brought to birth<br/>
Not in some vacant heaven: its beauty springs<br/>
From the dear bosom of material earth.</p>
<h3>VI. IN THE HAY-LOFT.</h3>
<p class="poem">The darkness in the loft is sweet and warm<br/>
With the stored hay ... darkness intensified<br/>
By one bright shaft that enters through the wide<br/>
Tall doors from under fringes of a storm<br/>
Which makes the doomed sun brighter. On the hay,<br/>
Perched mountain-high they sit, and silently<br/>
Watch the motes dance and look at the dark sky<br/>
And mark how heartbreakingly far away<br/>
And yet how close and clear the distance seems,<br/>
While all at hand is cloud—brightness of dreams<br/>
Unrealisable, yet seen so clear,<br/>
So only just beyond the dark. They wait,<br/>
Scarce knowing what they wait for, half in fear;<br/>
Expectance draws the curtain from their fate.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>VII.</h3>
<p class="poem">The silence of the storm weighs heavily<br/>
On their strained spirits: sometimes one will say<br/>
Some trivial thing as though to ward away<br/>
Mysterious powers, that imminently lie<br/>
In wait, with the strong exorcising grace<br/>
Of everyday's futility. Desire<br/>
Becomes upon a sudden a crystal fire,<br/>
Defined and hard:—If he could kiss her face,<br/>
Could kiss her hair! As if by chance, her hand<br/>
Brushes on his ... Ah, can she understand?<br/>
Or is she pedestalled above the touch<br/>
Of his desire? He wonders: dare he seek<br/>
From her that little, that infinitely much?<br/>
And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek.</p>
<h3>VIII. MOUNTAINS.</h3>
<p class="poem">A stronger gust catches the cloud and twists<br/>
A spindle of rifted darkness through its heart,<br/>
A gash in the damp grey, which, thrust apart,<br/>
Reveals black depths a moment. Then the mists<br/>
Shut down again; a white uneasy sea<br/>
Heaves round the climbers and beneath their feet.<br/>
He strains on upwards through the wind and sleet,<br/>
Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously<br/>
Lifting his weight. And if he should let go,<br/>
What would he find down there, down there below<br/>
The curtain of the mist? What would he find<br/>
Beyond the dim and stifling now and here,<br/>
Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind?<br/>
Oh, there were nameless depths: he shrank with fear.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>IX.</h3>
<p class="poem">The hills more glorious in their coat of snow<br/>
Rise all around him, in the valleys run<br/>
Bright streams, and there are lakes that catch the sun,<br/>
And sunlit fields of emerald far below<br/>
That seem alive with inward light. In smoke<br/>
The far horizons fade; and there is peace<br/>
On everything, a sense of blessed release<br/>
From wilful strife. Like some prophetic cloak<br/>
The spirit of the mountains has descended<br/>
On all the world, and its unrest is ended.<br/>
Even the sea, glimpsed far away, seems still,<br/>
Hushed to a silver peace its storm and strife.<br/>
Mountains of vision, calm above fate and will,<br/>
You hold the promise of the freer life.</p>
<h3>X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.</h3>
<p class="poem">London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk<br/>
Before the panes, rich but a while ago<br/>
With the charred gold and the red ember-glow<br/>
Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk<br/>
Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns<br/>
A blank to all enquiry: but at nights<br/>
The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites<br/>
The darkness inward, curious of what burns<br/>
With such a coloured life when all is dead—<br/>
The daylight world outside, with overhead<br/>
White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze<br/>
Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream<br/>
Of glittering traffic—all that the nights erase,<br/>
Colour and speed, surviving but in dream.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XI.</h3>
<p class="poem">Outside the dusk, but in the little room<br/>
All is alive with light, which brightly glints<br/>
On curving cup or the stiff folds of chintz,<br/>
Evoking its own whiteness. Shadows loom,<br/>
Bulging and black, upon the walls, where hang<br/>
Rich coloured plates of beauties that appeal<br/>
Less to the sense of sight than to the feel,<br/>
So moistly satin are their breasts. A pang,<br/>
Almost of pain, runs through him when he sees<br/>
Hanging, a homeless marvel, next to these,<br/>
The silken breastplate of a mandarin,<br/>
Centuries dead, which he had given her.<br/>
Exquisite miracle, when men could spin<br/>
Jay's wing and belly of the kingfisher!</p>
<h3>XII.</h3>
<p class="poem">In silence and as though expectantly<br/>
She crouches at his feet, while he caresses<br/>
His light-drawn fingers with the touch of tresses<br/>
Sleeked round her head, close-banded lustrously,<br/>
Save where at nape and temple the smooth brown<br/>
Sleaves out into a pale transparent mist<br/>
Of hair and tangled light. So to exist,<br/>
Poised 'twixt the deep of thought where spirits drown<br/>
Life in a void impalpable nothingness,<br/>
And, on the other side, the pain and stress<br/>
Of clamorous action and the gnawing fire<br/>
Of will, focal upon a point of earth—even thus<br/>
To sit, eternally without desire<br/>
And yet self-known, were happiness for us.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XIII.</h3>
<p class="poem">She turns her head and in a flash of laughter<br/>
Looks up at him: and helplessly he feels<br/>
That life has circled with returning wheels<br/>
Back to a starting-point. Before and after<br/>
Merge in this instant, momently the same:<br/>
For it was thus she leaned and laughing turned<br/>
When, manifest, the spirit of beauty burned<br/>
In her young body with an inward flame,<br/>
And first he knew and loved her. In full tide<br/>
Life halts within him, suddenly stupefied.<br/>
Sight blackness, lightning-struck; but blindly tender<br/>
He draws her up to meet him, and she lies<br/>
Close folded by his arms in glad surrender,<br/>
Smiling, and with drooped head and half closed eyes.</p>
<h3>XIV.</h3>
<p class="poem">"I give you all; would that I might give more."<br/>
He sees the colour dawn across her cheeks<br/>
And die again to white; marks as she speaks<br/>
The trembling of her lips, as though she bore<br/>
Some sudden pain and hardly mastered it.<br/>
Within his arms he feels her shuddering,<br/>
Piteously trembling like some wild wood-thing<br/>
Caught unawares. Compassion infinite<br/>
Mounts up within him. Thus to hold and keep<br/>
And comfort her distressed, lull her to sleep<br/>
And gently kiss her brow and hair and eyes<br/>
Seems love perfected—templed high and white<br/>
Against the calm of golden autumn skies,<br/>
And shining quenchlessly with vestal light.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XV.</h3>
<p class="poem">But passion ambushed by the aerial shrine<br/>
Comes forth to dance, a hoofed obscenity,<br/>
His satyr's dance, with laughter in his eye,<br/>
And cruelty along the scarlet line<br/>
Of his bright smiling mouth. All uncontrolled,<br/>
Love's rebel servant, he delights to beat<br/>
The maddening quick dry rhythm of goatish feet<br/>
Even in the sanctuary, and makes bold<br/>
To mime himself the godhead of the place.<br/>
He turns in terror from her trance-calmed face,<br/>
From the white-lidded languor of her eyes,<br/>
From lips that passion never shook before,<br/>
But glad in the promise of her sacrifice:<br/>
"I give you all; would that I might give more."</p>
<h3>XVI.</h3>
<p class="poem">He is afraid, seeing her lie so still,<br/>
So utterly his own; afraid lest she<br/>
Should open wide her eyes and let him see<br/>
The passionate conquest of her virgin will<br/>
Shine there in triumph, starry-bright with tears.<br/>
He thrusts her from him: face and hair and breast,<br/>
Hands he had touched, lips that his lips had pressed,<br/>
Seem things deadly to be desired. He fears<br/>
Lest she should body forth in palpable shame<br/>
Those dreams and longings that his blood, aflame<br/>
Through the hot dark of summer nights, had dreamed<br/>
And longed. Must all his love, then, turn to this?<br/>
Was lust the end of what so pure had seemed?<br/>
He must escape, ah God! her touch, her kiss.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XVII. IN THE PARK.</h3>
<p class="poem">Laughing, "To-night," I said to him, "the Park<br/>
Has turned the garden of a symbolist.<br/>
Those old great trees that rise above the mist,<br/>
Gold with the light of evening, and the dark<br/>
Still water, where the dying sun evokes<br/>
An echoed glory—here I recognize<br/>
Those ancient gardens mirrored by the eyes<br/>
Of poets that hate the world of common folks,<br/>
Like you and me and that thin pious crowd,<br/>
Which yonder sings its hymns, so humbly proud<br/>
Of holiness. The garden of escape<br/>
Lies here; a small green world, and still the bride<br/>
Of quietness, although an imminent rape<br/>
Roars ceaselessly about on every side."</p>
<h3>XVIII.</h3>
<p class="poem">I had forgotten what I had lightly said,<br/>
And without speech, without a thought I went,<br/>
Steeped in that golden quiet, all content<br/>
To drink the transient beauty as it sped<br/>
Out of eternal darkness into time<br/>
To light and burn and know itself a fire;<br/>
Yet doomed—ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!—<br/>
To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime<br/>
Of living glorious in the denser air<br/>
Of our material earth. A strange despair,<br/>
An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet<br/>
And tender as an unpassionate caress,<br/>
Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit<br/>
Grown almost conscious of youth's feebleness!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XIX.</h3>
<p class="poem">He spoke abrupt across my dream: "Dear Garden,<br/>
A stranger to your magic peace, I stand<br/>
Beyond your walls, lost in a fevered land<br/>
Of stones and fire. Would that the gods would harden<br/>
My soul against its torment, or would blind<br/>
Those yearning glimpses of a life at rest<br/>
In perfect beauty—glimpses at the best<br/>
Through unpassed bars. And here, without, the wind<br/>
Of scattering passion blows: and women pass<br/>
Glitter-eyed down putrid alleys where the glass<br/>
Of some grimed window suddenly parades—<br/>
Ah, sickening heart-beat of desire!—the grace<br/>
Of bare and milk-warm flesh: the vision fades,<br/>
And at the pane shows a blind tortured face."</p>
<h3>XX. SELF-TORMENT.</h3>
<p class="poem">The days pass by, empty of thought and will:<br/>
His thought grows stagnant at its very springs,<br/>
With every channel on the world of things<br/>
Dammed up, and thus, by its long standing still,<br/>
Poisons itself and sickens to decay.<br/>
All his high love for her, his fair desire,<br/>
Loses its light; and a dull rancorous fire,<br/>
Burning darkness and bitterness that prey<br/>
Upon his heart are left. His spirit burns<br/>
Sometimes with hatred, or the hatred turns<br/>
To a fierce lust for her, more cruel than hate,<br/>
Till he is weary wrestling with its force:<br/>
And evermore she haunts him, early and late,<br/>
As pitilessly as an old remorse.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>XXI.</h3>
<p class="poem">Streets and the solitude of country places<br/>
Were once his friends. But as a man born blind,<br/>
Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find<br/>
The world a desert and men's larval faces<br/>
So hateful, he would wish to seek again<br/>
The darkness and his old chimeric sight<br/>
Of beauties inward—so, that fresh delight,<br/>
Vision of bright fields and angelic men,<br/>
That love which made him all the world, is gone.<br/>
Hating and hated now, he stands alone,<br/>
An island-point, measureless gulfs apart<br/>
From other lives, from the old happiness<br/>
Of being more than self, when heart to heart<br/>
Gave all, yet grew the greater, not the less.</p>
<h3>XXII. THE QUARRY IN THE WOOD.</h3>
<p class="poem">Swiftly deliberate, he seeks the place.<br/>
A small wind stirs, the copse is bright in the sun:<br/>
Like quicksilver the shine and shadow run<br/>
Across the leaves. A bramble whips his face,<br/>
The tears spring fast, and through the rainbow mist<br/>
He sees a world that wavers like the flame<br/>
Of a blown candle. Tears of pain and shame,<br/>
And lips that once had laughed and sung and kissed<br/>
Trembling in the passion of his sobbing breath!<br/>
The world a candle shuddering to its death,<br/>
And life a darkness, blind and utterly void<br/>
Of any love or goodness: all deceit,<br/>
This friendship and this God: all shams destroyed,<br/>
And truth seen now.<br/>
<span class="poem1">Earth fails beneath his feet.</span></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="song">SONG OF POPLARS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="S" />
<span class="smcap">hepherd</span>, to yon tall poplars tune your flute:<br/>
Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill,<br/>
The slow blue rumour of the hill;<br/>
Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold,<br/>
And the great sky be mute.</p>
<p class="poem">Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold<br/>
Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind,<br/>
In airy leafage of the mind,<br/>
Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales<br/>
That fade not nor grow old.</p>
<p class="poem">"Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires<br/>
Springing in dark and rusty flame,<br/>
Seek you aught that hath a name?<br/>
Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony<br/>
Of undefined desires?</p>
<p class="poem">"Say, are you happy in the golden march<br/>
Of sunlight all across the day?<br/>
Or do you watch the uncertain way<br/>
That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs<br/>
Over the heaven's wide arch?</p>
<p class="poem">"Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift<br/>
The sharpness of your trembling spears?<br/>
Or do you seek, through the grey tears<br/>
That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue,<br/>
A deeper, calmer rift?"</p>
<p class="poem">So; I have tuned my music to the trees,<br/>
And there were voices, dim below<br/>
Their shrillness, voices swelling slow<br/>
In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry<br/>
And then vast silences.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="reef">THE REEF <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/m.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="M" />
<span class="smcap">y</span> green aquarium of phantom fish,<br/>
Goggling in on me through the misty panes;<br/>
My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains;<br/>
My few clear quiet autumn days—I wish</p>
<p class="poem">I could leave all, clearness and mistiness;<br/>
Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still.<br/>
Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill<br/>
The hollows in the woods; I am grown less</p>
<p class="poem">Than human, listless, aimless as the green<br/>
Idiot fishes of my aquarium,<br/>
Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come<br/>
And look at me and drift away, nought seen</p>
<p class="poem">Or understood, but only glazedly<br/>
Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows,<br/>
Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows<br/>
Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply</p>
<p class="poem">Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find<br/>
Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight<br/>
Scattered largely by the profuse wind,<br/>
And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight.</p>
<p class="poem">Free, newly born, on roads of music and air<br/>
Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place<br/>
Where all the shining threads of water race,<br/>
Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There,</p>
<p class="poem">On the red fretted ramparts of a tower<br/>
Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break<br/>
An endless sequence of joy and speed and power:<br/>
Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">Shall create an instant's shining constellation<br/>
Upon the blue; and all the air shall be<br/>
Full of a million wings that swift and free<br/>
Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation.</p>
<p class="poem">Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond<br/>
All isles however magically sleeping<br/>
In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned<br/>
Save by blind eyes; beyond the laughter and weeping</p>
<p class="poem">That brood like a cloud over the lands of men.<br/>
Movement, passion of colour and pure wings,<br/>
Curving to cut like knives—these are the things<br/>
I search for:—passion beyond the ken</p>
<p class="poem">Of our foiled violences, and, more swift<br/>
Than any blow which man aims against time,<br/>
The invulnerable, motion that shall rift<br/>
All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme,</p>
<p class="poem">Or note, or colour. And the body shall be<br/>
Quick as the mind; and will shall find release<br/>
From bondage to brute things; and joyously<br/>
Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace,</p>
<p class="poem">Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted.<br/>
And love consummate, marvellously blending<br/>
Passion and reverence in a single spring<br/>
Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted,</p>
<p class="poem">But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown<br/>
The new life with its ageless starry fire.<br/>
I go to seek that reef, far down, far down<br/>
Below the edge of everyday's desire,</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">Beyond the magical islands, where of old<br/>
I was content, dreaming, to give the lie<br/>
To misery. They were all strong and bold<br/>
That thither came; and shall I dare to try?</p>
<h2 id="winter">WINTER DREAM <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/o.gif" width-obs="100" height-obs="100" alt="O" />
<span class="smcap">h</span> wind-swept towers,<br/>
Oh endlessly blossoming trees,<br/>
White clouds and lucid eyes,<br/>
And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant<br/>
With who knows what of subtlety<br/>
And magical curves and limbs—<br/>
White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts<br/>
Mother-of-pearled with light.</p>
<p class="poem">And oh the April, April of straight soft hair,<br/>
Falling smooth as the mountain water and brown;<br/>
The April of little leaves unblinded,<br/>
Of rosy nipples and innocence<br/>
And the blue languor of weary eyelids.</p>
<p class="poem">Across a huge gulf I fling my voice<br/>
And my desires together:<br/>
Across a huge gulf ... on the other bank<br/>
Crouches April with her hair as smooth and straight and brown<br/>
As falling waters.<br/>
Oh brave curve upwards and outwards.<br/>
Oh despair of the downward tilting—<br/>
Despair still beautiful<br/>
As a great star one has watched all night<br/>
Wheeling down under the hills.<br/>
Silence widens and darkens;<br/>
Voice and desires have dropped out of sight.<br/>
I am all alone, dreaming she would come and kiss me.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="flowers">THE FLOWERS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="D" />
<span class="smcap">ay</span> after day,<br/>
At spring's return,<br/>
I watch my flowers, how they burn<br/>
Their lives away.</p>
<p class="poem">The candle crocus<br/>
And daffodil gold<br/>
Drink fire of the sunshine—<br/>
Quickly cold.</p>
<p class="poem">And the proud tulip—<br/>
How red he glows!—<br/>
Is quenched ere summer<br/>
Can kindle the rose.</p>
<p class="poem">Purple as the innermost<br/>
Core of a sinking flame,<br/>
Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder<br/>
To the dust whence they came.</p>
<p class="poem">Day after day<br/>
At spring's return,<br/>
I watch my flowers, how they burn<br/>
Their lives away,<br/>
Day after day ...</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="elms">THE ELMS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/f.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="F" />
<span class="smcap">ine</span> as the dust of plumy fountains blowing<br/>
Across the lanterns of a revelling night,<br/>
The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing<br/>
Powder the trees—so vaporously light,<br/>
They seem to float, billows of emerald foam<br/>
Blown by the South on its bright airy tide,<br/>
Seeming less trees than things beatified,<br/>
Come from the world of thought which was their home.</p>
<p class="poem">For a while only. Rooted strong and fast,<br/>
Soon will they lift towards the summer sky<br/>
Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery.<br/>
Their immaterial season quickly past,<br/>
They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die,<br/>
Since every earth to earth returns at last.</p>
<h2 id="out">OUT OF THE WINDOW <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">n</span> the middle of countries, far from hills and sea,<br/>
Are the little places one passes by in trains<br/>
And never stops at; where the skies extend<br/>
Uninterrupted, and the level plains<br/>
Stretch green and yellow and green without an end.<br/>
And behind the glass of their Grand Express<br/>
Folk yawn away a province through,<br/>
With nothing to think of, nothing to do,<br/>
Nothing even to look at—never a "view"<br/>
In this damned wilderness.<br/>
But I look out of the window and find<br/>
Much to satisfy the mind. <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</SPAN></span><br/>
Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled<br/>
In a motion orderly and staid,<br/>
Sweep, as we pass, across the field<br/>
Like a drilled army on parade.<br/>
And here's a market-garden, barred<br/>
With stripe on stripe of varied greens ...<br/>
Bright potatoes, flower starred,<br/>
And the opacous colour of beans.<br/>
Each line deliberately swings<br/>
Towards me, till I see a straight<br/>
Green avenue to the heart of things,<br/>
The glimpse of a sudden opened gate<br/>
Piercing the adverse walls of fate ...<br/>
A moment only, and then, fast, fast,<br/>
The gate swings to, the avenue closes;<br/>
Fate laughs, and once more interposes<br/>
Its barriers.<br/>
<span class="poem1">The train has passed.</span></p>
<h2 id="inspiration">INSPIRATION <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/n.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="N" />
<span class="smcap">oonday</span> upon the Alpine meadows<br/>
Pours its avalanche of Light<br/>
And blazing flowers: the very shadows<br/>
Translucent are and bright.<br/>
It seems a glory that nought surpasses—<br/>
Passion of angels in form and hue—<br/>
When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses<br/>
Leaps a lightning of sudden blue.<br/>
Dimming the sun-drunk petals,<br/>
Bright even unto pain,<br/>
The grasshopper flashes, settles,<br/>
And then is quenched again.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="summer">SUMMER STILLNESS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" />
<span class="smcap">he</span> stars are golden instants in the deep<br/>
Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set:<br/>
The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep<br/>
Seeming so motionless that I forget<br/>
The hollow booming bridges, where it slides,<br/>
Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,<br/>
Towards a sea whose unreturning tides<br/>
Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song.</p>
<h2 id="anniversaries">ANNIVERSARIES <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/o.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="O" />
<span class="smcap">nce</span> more the windless days are here,<br/>
Quiet of autumn, when the year<br/>
Halts and looks backward and draws breath<br/>
Before it plunges into death.<br/>
Silver of mist and gossamers,<br/>
Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold,<br/>
Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs<br/>
Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,<br/>
That over and over slowly falls<br/>
From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air<br/>
Like tattered flags along the walls<br/>
Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.<br/>
Once more ... Within its flawless glass<br/>
To-day reflects that other day,<br/>
When, under the bracken, on the grass,<br/>
We who were lovers happily lay<br/>
And hardly spoke, or framed a thought <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</SPAN></span><br/>
That was not one with the calm hills<br/>
And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,<br/>
Our gusty passions, our burning wills<br/>
Dissolved in boundlessness, and we<br/>
Were almost bodiless, almost free.</p>
<p class="poem">The wind has shattered silver and gold.<br/>
Night after night of sparkling cold,<br/>
Orion lifts his tangled feet<br/>
From where the tossing branches beat<br/>
In a fine surf against the sky.<br/>
So the trance ended, and we grew<br/>
Restless, we knew not how or why;<br/>
And there were sudden gusts that blew<br/>
Our dreaming banners into storm;<br/>
We wore the uncertain crumbling form<br/>
Of a brown swirl of windy leaves,<br/>
A phantom shape that stirs and heaves<br/>
Shuddering from earth, to fall again<br/>
With a dry whisper of withered rain.</p>
<p class="poem">Last, from the dead and shrunken days<br/>
We conjured spring, lighting the blaze<br/>
Of burnished tulips in the dark;<br/>
And from black frost we struck a spark<br/>
Of blue delight and fragrance new,<br/>
A little world of flowers and dew.<br/>
Winter for us was over and done:<br/>
The drought of fluttering leaves had grown<br/>
Emerald shining in the sun,<br/>
As light as glass, as firm as stone.<br/>
Real once more: for we had passed <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</SPAN></span><br/>
Through passion into thought again;<br/>
Shaped our desires and made that fast<br/>
Which was before a cloudy pain;<br/>
Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined<br/>
In a fair statue, strong and free,<br/>
Twin bodies flaming into mind,<br/>
Poised on the brink of ecstasy.</p>
<h2 id="italy">ITALY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" />
<span class="smcap">here</span> is a country in my mind,<br/>
Lovelier than a poet blind<br/>
Could dream of, who had never known<br/>
This world of drought and dust and stone<br/>
In all its ugliness: a place<br/>
Full of an all but human grace;<br/>
Whose dells retain the printed form<br/>
Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm<br/>
From some pure body newly risen;<br/>
Where matter is no more a prison,<br/>
But freedom for the soul to know<br/>
Its native beauty. For things glow<br/>
There with an inward truth and are<br/>
All fire and colour like a star.<br/>
And in that land are domes and towers<br/>
That hang as light and bright as flowers<br/>
Upon the sky, and seem a birth<br/>
Rather of air than solid earth.</p>
<p class="poem">Sometimes I dream that walking there<br/>
In the green shade, all unaware<br/>
At a new turn of the golden glade,<br/>
I shall see her, and as though afraid <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</SPAN></span><br/>
Shall halt a moment and almost fall<br/>
For passing faintness, like a man<br/>
Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan<br/>
Brimming his narrow soul with all<br/>
The illimitable world. And she,<br/>
Turning her head, will let me see<br/>
The first sharp dawn of her surprise<br/>
Turning to welcome in her eyes.<br/>
And I shall come and take my lover<br/>
And looking on her re-discover<br/>
All her beauty:—her dark hair<br/>
And the little ears beneath it, where<br/>
Roses of lucid shadow sleep;<br/>
Her brooding mouth, and in the deep<br/>
Wells of her eyes reflected stars ...</p>
<p class="poem">Oh, the imperishable things<br/>
That hands and lips as well as words<br/>
Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings,<br/>
Oh wheeling galaxies of birds ...!</p>
<h2 id="alien">THE ALIEN <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="A" />
<span class="smcap">petal</span> drifted loose<br/>
From a great magnolia bloom,<br/>
Your face hung in the gloom,<br/>
Floating, white and close.</p>
<p class="poem">We seemed alone: but another<br/>
Bent o'er you with lips of flame,<br/>
Unknown, without a name,<br/>
Hated, and yet my brother.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">Your one short moan of pain<br/>
Was an exorcising spell:<br/>
The devil flew back to hell;<br/>
We were alone again.</p>
<h2 id="little">A LITTLE MEMORY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="W" />
<span class="smcap">hite</span> in the moonlight,<br/>
Wet with dew,<br/>
We have known the languor<br/>
Of being two.</p>
<p class="poem">We have been weary<br/>
As children are,<br/>
When over them, radiant,<br/>
A stooping star,</p>
<p class="poem">Bends their Good-Night,<br/>
Kissed and smiled:—<br/>
Each was mother,<br/>
Each was child.</p>
<p class="poem">Child, from your forehead<br/>
I kissed the hair,<br/>
Gently, ah, gently:<br/>
And you were</p>
<p class="poem">Mistress and mother<br/>
When on your breast<br/>
I lay so safely<br/>
And could rest.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="waking">WAKING <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="D" />
<span class="smcap">arkness</span> had stretched its colour,<br/>
Deep blue across the pane:<br/>
No cloud to make night duller,<br/>
No moon with its tarnish stain;<br/>
But only here and there a star,<br/>
One sharp point of frosty fire,<br/>
Hanging infinitely far<br/>
In mockery of our life and death<br/>
And all our small desire.</p>
<p class="poem">Now in this hour of waking<br/>
From under brows of stone,<br/>
A new pale day is breaking<br/>
And the deep night is gone.<br/>
Sordid now, and mean and small<br/>
The daylight world is seen again,<br/>
With only the veils of mist that fall<br/>
Deaf and muffling over all<br/>
To hide its ugliness and pain.</p>
<p class="poem">But to-day this dawn of meanness<br/>
Shines in my eyes, as when<br/>
The new world's brightness and cleanness<br/>
Broke on the first of men.<br/>
For the light that shows the huddled things<br/>
Of this close-pressing earth,<br/>
Shines also on your face and brings<br/>
All its dear beauty back to me<br/>
In a new miracle of birth.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">I see you asleep and unpassioned,<br/>
White-faced in the dusk of your hair—<br/>
Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned<br/>
That it filled me once with despair<br/>
To look on its exquisite transience<br/>
And think that our love and thought and laughter<br/>
Puff out with the death of our flickering sense,<br/>
While we pass ever on and away<br/>
Towards some blank hereafter.</p>
<p class="poem">But now I am happy, knowing<br/>
That swift time is our friend,<br/>
And that our love's passionate glowing,<br/>
Though it turn ash in the end,<br/>
Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way<br/>
Through temporal stuff, nor else could be<br/>
More than a nothing. Into day<br/>
The boundless spaces of night contract<br/>
And in your opening eyes I see<br/>
Night born in day, in time eternity.</p>
<h2 id="fire">BY THE FIRE <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="W" />
<span class="smcap">e</span> who are lovers sit by the fire,<br/>
Cradled warm 'twixt thought and will,<br/>
Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs<br/>
In the equipoise of all desire,<br/>
Sit and listen to the still<br/>
Small hiss and whisper of green logs<br/>
That burn away, that burn away<br/>
With the sound of a far-off falling stream<br/>
Of threaded water blown to steam,<br/>
Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey.<br/>
Vapours blue as distance rise <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</SPAN></span><br/>
Between the hissing logs that show<br/>
A glimpse of rosy heat below;<br/>
And candles watch with tireless eyes<br/>
While we sit drowsing here. I know,<br/>
Dimly, that there exists a world,<br/>
That there is time perhaps, and space<br/>
Other and wider than this place,<br/>
Where at the fireside drowsily curled<br/>
We hear the whisper and watch the flame<br/>
Burn blinkless and inscrutable.<br/>
And then I know those other names<br/>
That through my brain from cell to cell<br/>
Echo—reverberated shout<br/>
Of waiters mournful along corridors:<br/>
But nobody carries the orders out,<br/>
And the names (dear friends, your name and yours)<br/>
Evoke no sign. But here I sit<br/>
On the wide hearth, and there are you:<br/>
That is enough and only true.<br/>
The world and the friends that lived in it<br/>
Are shadows: you alone remain<br/>
Real in this drowsing room,<br/>
Full of the whispers of distant rain<br/>
And candles staring into the gloom.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="valedictory">VALEDICTORY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">had</span> remarked—how sharply one observes<br/>
When life is disappearing round the curves<br/>
Of yet another corner, out of sight!—<br/>
I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night"<br/>
And "a good journey to you," on her face<br/>
Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs<br/>
Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace<br/>
Of clouded thought in those brown eyes,<br/>
Always so happily clear of hows and ifs—<br/>
My poor bleared mind!—and haunting whys.</p>
<p class="poem">There I stood, holding her farewell hand,<br/>
(Pressing my life and soul and all<br/>
The world to one good-bye, till, small<br/>
And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand<br/>
Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).<br/>
And I saw that she had grown aware,<br/>
Queer puzzled face! of other things<br/>
Beyond the present and her own young speed,<br/>
Of yesterday and what new days might breed<br/>
Monstrously when the future brings<br/>
A charger with your late-lamented head:<br/>
Aware of other people's lives and will,<br/>
Aware, perhaps, aware even of me ...<br/>
The joyous hope of it! But still<br/>
I pitied her; for it was sad to see<br/>
A goddess shorn of her divinity.<br/>
In the midst of her speed she had made pause,<br/>
And doubts with all their threat of claws,<br/>
Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness,<br/>
Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</SPAN></span><br/>
"Live, only live! For you were meant<br/>
Never to know a thought's distress,<br/>
But a long glad astonishment<br/>
At the world's beauty and your own.<br/>
The pity of you, goddess, grown<br/>
Perplexed and mortal."<br/>
<span class="poem1">Yet ... yet ... can it be</span><br/>
That she is aware, perhaps, even of me?</p>
<p class="poem">And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare,<br/>
My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air;<br/>
And the question rumbles in the void:<br/>
Was she aware, was she after all aware?</p>
<h2 id="love">LOVE SONG <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/d.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="D" />
<span class="smcap">ear</span> absurd child—too dear to my cost I've found—<br/>
God made your soul for pleasure, not for use:<br/>
It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse,<br/>
Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound<br/>
Full upon life, and on the rind of things<br/>
Rubs its sleek self and utters purr and snore<br/>
And all the gamut of satisfied murmurings,<br/>
Content with that, nor wishes anything more.</p>
<p class="poem">A happy infant, daubed to the eyes in juice<br/>
Of peaches that flush bloody at the core,<br/>
Naked you bask upon a south-sea shore,<br/>
While o'er your tumbling bosom the hair floats loose.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">The wild flowers bloom and die; the heavens go round<br/>
With the song of wheeling planetary rings:<br/>
You wriggle in the sun; each moment brings<br/>
Its freight for you; in all things pleasures abound.</p>
<p class="poem">You taste and smile, then this for the next pass over;<br/>
And there's no future for you and no past,<br/>
And when, absurdly, death arrives at last,<br/>
'Twill please you awhile to kiss your latest lover.</p>
<h2 id="private">PRIVATE PROPERTY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="A" />
<span class="smcap">ll</span> fly—yet who is misanthrope?—<br/>
The actual men and things that pass<br/>
Jostling, to wither as the grass<br/>
So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,<br/>
Or poetry's kaleidoscope,<br/>
Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)<br/>
Each owns a paradise of glass<br/>
Where never a yearning heliotrope<br/>
Pursues the sun's ascent or slope;<br/>
For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.</p>
<p class="poem">Like fauns embossed in our domain,<br/>
We look abroad, and our calm eyes<br/>
Mark how the goatish gods of pain<br/>
Revel; and if by grim surprise<br/>
They break into our paradise,<br/>
Patient we build its beauty up again.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="revelation">REVELATION <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/a.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="A" />
<span class="smcap">t</span> your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx,<br/>
I taste a strange apocalypse:<br/>
Your subtle taper finger-tips<br/>
Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks,<br/>
I know the wiles and each iynx<br/>
That brought me passionate to your lips:<br/>
I know you bare as laughter strips<br/>
Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks</p>
<p class="poem">Pure knowledge from this tainted well,<br/>
And now hears voices yet unheard<br/>
Within it, and without it sees<br/>
That world of which the poets tell<br/>
Their vision in the stammered word<br/>
Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies.</p>
<h2 id="minoan">MINOAN PORCELAIN <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/h.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="H" />
<span class="smcap">er</span> eyes of bright unwinking glaze<br/>
All imperturbable do not<br/>
Even make pretences to regard<br/>
The justing absence of her stays,<br/>
Where many a Tyrian gallipot<br/>
Excites desire with spilth of nard.<br/>
The bistred rims above the fard<br/>
Of cheeks as red as bergamot<br/>
Attest that no shamefaced delays<br/>
Will clog fulfilment, nor retard<br/>
Full payment of the Cyprian's praise<br/>
Down to the last remorseful jot.<br/>
Hail priestess of we know not what<br/>
Strange cult of Mycenean days!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="decameron">THE DECAMERON <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/n.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="N" />
<span class="smcap">oon</span> with a depth of shadow beneath the trees<br/>
Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes:<br/>
Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits<br/>
Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine<br/>
Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine:<br/>
Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots,<br/>
Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots<br/>
Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline.</p>
<p class="poem">Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry,<br/>
Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound;<br/>
Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly,<br/>
Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground<br/>
Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found<br/>
Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die.</p>
<h2 id="uncertainty">IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">am</span> not one of those who sip,<br/>
Like a quotidian bock,<br/>
Cheap idylls from a languid lip<br/>
Prepared to yawn or mock.</p>
<p class="poem">I wait the indubitable word,<br/>
The great Unconscious Cue.<br/>
Has it been spoken and unheard?<br/>
Spoken, perhaps, by you ...?</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="crapulous">CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /><br/> <span class="smaller">(To J.S.)</span></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="S" />
<span class="smcap">till</span> life, still life ... the high-lights shine<br/>
Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine<br/>
Stands firmly solid in the glasses,<br/>
Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes<br/>
The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light.<br/>
The fruits metallically gleam,<br/>
Globey in their heaped-up bowl,<br/>
And there are faces against the night<br/>
Of the outer room—faces that seem<br/>
Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul.</p>
<p class="poem">And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,<br/>
Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:<br/>
And out of the frozen welter of sound<br/>
Your voice came quietly, quietly.<br/>
"What about God?" you said. "I have found<br/>
Much to be said for Totality.<br/>
All, I take it, is God: God's all—<br/>
This bottle, for instance ..." I recall,<br/>
Dimly, that you took God by the neck—<br/>
God-in-the-bottle—and pushed Him across:<br/>
But I, without a moment's loss<br/>
Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: "Check!"</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="life">THE LIFE THEORETIC <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="W" />
<span class="smcap">hile</span> I have been fumbling over books<br/>
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,<br/>
Other young men have been battling with the days<br/>
And others have been kissing the beautiful women.<br/>
They have brazen faces like battering-rams.<br/>
But I who think about books and such—<br/>
I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,<br/>
And the women palsy me with fear.<br/>
But when it comes to fumbling over books<br/>
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,<br/>
Why, there I am.<br/>
But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,<br/>
Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.</p>
<h2 id="complaint">COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="W" />
<span class="smcap">e</span> judge by appearance merely:<br/>
If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.<br/>
So I grew the hair so long on my head<br/>
That my mother wouldn't know me,<br/>
Till a woman in a night-club said,<br/>
As I was passing by,<br/>
"Hullo, here comes Salome ..."</p>
<p class="poem">I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,<br/>
And, oh Salome; there I was—<br/>
Positively jewelled, half a vampire,<br/>
With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily<br/>
Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire<br/>
Over the brink of the crag of sense,<br/>
Looking down from perilous eminence <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</SPAN></span><br/>
Into a gulf of windy night.<br/>
And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,<br/>
And I'm not a poet: but never despair!<br/>
I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.</p>
<h2 id="social">SOCIAL AMENITIES <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">am</span> getting on well with this anecdote,<br/>
When suddenly I recall<br/>
The many times I have told it of old,<br/>
And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall<br/>
Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note<br/>
Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck—<br/>
The whole thing sticks in my throat,<br/>
And my face all tingles and pricks with shame<br/>
For myself and my hearers.<br/>
These are the social pleasures, my God!<br/>
But I finish the story triumphantly all the same.</p>
<h2 id="topiary">TOPIARY <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/f.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="F" />
<span class="smcap">ailing</span> sometimes to understand<br/>
Why there are folk whose flesh should seem<br/>
Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,<br/>
Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,<br/>
Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;<br/>
Why there are men without any legs,<br/>
Whizzing along on little trollies<br/>
With long long arms like apes':<br/>
Failing to see why God the Topiarist<br/>
Should train and carve and twist<br/>
Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes:<br/>
Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</SPAN></span><br/>
That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind,<br/>
Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind,<br/>
Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.</p>
<h2 id="bus">ON THE BUS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/s.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="S" />
<span class="smcap">itting</span> on the top of the 'bus,<br/>
I bite my pipe and look at the sky.<br/>
Over my shoulder the smoke streams out<br/>
And my life with it.<br/>
"Conservation of energy," you say.<br/>
But I burn, I tell you, I burn;<br/>
And the smoke of me streams out<br/>
In a vanishing skein of grey.<br/>
Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body!<br/>
I am a harp of twittering strings,<br/>
An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand,<br/>
And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident.<br/>
Droll phenomena!</p>
<h2 id="points">POINTS AND LINES <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">nstants</span> in the quiet, small sharp stars,<br/>
Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed<br/>
Baffles even the grasp of time.<br/>
Oh that I might reflect them<br/>
As swiftly, as keenly as they shine.<br/>
But I am a pool of waters, summer-still,<br/>
And the stars are mirrored across me;<br/>
Those stabbing points of the sky<br/>
Turned to a thread of shaken silver,<br/>
A long fine thread.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="panic">PANIC <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" />
<span class="smcap">he</span> eyes of the portraits on the wall<br/>
Look at me, follow me,<br/>
Stare incessantly:<br/>
I take it their glance means nothing at all?<br/>
—Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ...</p>
<p class="poem">Out in the gardens by the lake<br/>
The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake;<br/>
Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn,<br/>
Each of them sounds his mournful horn:<br/>
Shrill peals that waver and crack and break.<br/>
What can have made the peacocks wake?</p>
<h2 id="return">RETURN FROM BUSINESS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/e.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="E" />
<span class="smcap">venings</span> in trains,<br/>
When the little black twittering ghosts<br/>
Along the brims of cuttings,<br/>
Against the luminous sky,<br/>
Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought<br/>
Save that one is young and setting,<br/>
Headlong westering,<br/>
And there is no recapture.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="stanzas">STANZAS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/t.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="T" />
<span class="smcap">hought</span> is an unseen net wherein our mind<br/>
Is taken and vainly struggles to be free:<br/>
Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind<br/>
New fetters on our hoped-for liberty:<br/>
And action bears us onward like a stream<br/>
Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course;<br/>
Glorious—and yet its headlong currents seem<br/>
Backwaters of some nobler purer force.</p>
<p class="poem">There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought,<br/>
That stoop to carry the grace of a girl's breast;<br/>
And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought<br/>
In airy metal, that they seem possessed<br/>
Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift<br/>
The shoulder of a goddess towards the light;<br/>
And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift,<br/>
Piercing the spirit deeply with delight.</p>
<p class="poem">Would I might make these miracles my own!<br/>
Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form,<br/>
Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone,<br/>
Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm<br/>
On noonday flowers, speaking the song of birds<br/>
Among the branches, whispering the fall of rain,<br/>
Beyond all thought, past action and past words,<br/>
I would live in beauty, free from self and pain.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="poem">POEM <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/b.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="B" />
<span class="smcap">ooks</span> and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;<br/>
And magic words lay ripening in my soul<br/>
Till their much-whispered music turned a wine<br/>
Whose subtlest power was all in my control.</p>
<p class="poem">These things were mine, and they were real for me<br/>
As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast:<br/>
For I could love a phrase, a melody,<br/>
Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed.</p>
<p class="poem">I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes<br/>
Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid;<br/>
Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise<br/>
Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed.</p>
<p class="poem">But a time came when, turning full of hate<br/>
And weariness from my remembered themes,<br/>
I wished my poet's pipe could modulate<br/>
Beauty more palpable than words and dreams.</p>
<p class="poem">All loveliness with which an act informs<br/>
The dim uncertain chaos of desire<br/>
Is mine to-day; it touches me, it warms<br/>
Body and spirit with its outward fire.</p>
<p class="poem">I am mine no more: I have become a part<br/>
Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs<br/>
To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart<br/>
Were still a winter of frosty gossamers.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2 id="scenes">SCENES OF THE MIND <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">have</span> run where festival was loud<br/>
With drum and brass among the crowd<br/>
Of panic revellers, whose cries<br/>
Affront the quiet of the skies;<br/>
Whose dancing lights contract the deep<br/>
Infinity of night and sleep<br/>
To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire.<br/>
And I have found my heart's desire<br/>
In beechen caverns that autumn fills<br/>
With the blue shadowiness of distant hills;<br/>
Whose luminous grey pillars bear<br/>
The stooping sky: calm is the air,<br/>
Nor any sound is heard to mar<br/>
That crystal silence—as from far,<br/>
Far off a man may see<br/>
The busy world all utterly<br/>
Hushed as an old memorial scene.<br/>
Long evenings I have sat and been<br/>
Strangely content, while in my hands<br/>
I held a wealth of coloured strands,<br/>
Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins<br/>
Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains<br/>
New life at the lamp's round pool of gold;<br/>
Each sinks again when I withhold<br/>
The quickening radiance, to a wan<br/>
And shadowy oblivion<br/>
Of what it was. And in my mind<br/>
Beauty or sudden love has shined<br/>
And wakened colour in what was dead<br/>
And turned to gold the sullen lead<br/>
Of mean desires and everyday's<br/>
Poor thoughts and customary ways. <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</SPAN></span><br/>
Sometimes in lands where mountains throw<br/>
Their silent spell on all below,<br/>
Drawing a magic circle wide<br/>
About their feet on every side,<br/>
Robbed of all speech and thought and act,<br/>
I have seen God in the cataract.<br/>
In falling water and in flame,<br/>
Never at rest, yet still the same,<br/>
God shows himself. And I have known<br/>
The swift fire frozen into stone,<br/>
And water frozen changelessly<br/>
Into the death of gems. And I<br/>
Long sitting by the thunderous mill<br/>
Have seen the headlong wheel made still,<br/>
And in the silence that ensued<br/>
Have known the endless solitude<br/>
Of being dead and utterly nought.<br/>
Inhabitant of mine own thought,<br/>
I look abroad, and all I see<br/>
Is my creation, made for me:<br/>
Along my thread of life are pearled<br/>
The moments that make up the world.</p>
<h2 id="faune">L'APRÈS-MIDI D'UN FAUNE <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /><br/> <span class="smaller">(From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.)</span></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/i.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="I" />
<span class="smcap">would</span> immortalize these nymphs: so bright<br/>
Their sunlit colouring, so airy light,<br/>
It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream?<br/>
My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem<br/>
A subtle tracery of branches grown<br/>
The tree's true self—proving that I have known <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</SPAN></span><br/>
No triumph, but the shadow of a rose.<br/>
But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose<br/>
They bodied forth your senses' fabulous thirst?<br/>
Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first,<br/>
As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring,<br/>
Beget: the other, sighing, passioning,<br/>
Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon?<br/>
No, through this quiet, when a weary swoon<br/>
Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay<br/>
Of morning, cool against the encroaching day,<br/>
There is no murmuring water, save the gush<br/>
Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush<br/>
Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed<br/>
Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed<br/>
Upon the air, with that calm breath of art<br/>
That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly,<br/>
Where inspiration seeks its native sky.<br/>
You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake,<br/>
The sun's own mirror which I love to take,<br/>
Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell<br/>
<i>How here I cut the hollow rushes, well<br/>
Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold<br/>
Of distant lawns about their fountain cold<br/>
A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave;<br/>
And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave<br/>
These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly<br/>
Or dive.</i> Noon burns inert and tawny dry,<br/>
Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away<br/>
From me who seek in song the real A.<br/>
Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight,<br/>
O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light,<br/>
With, lilies, one of you for innocence.<br/>
Other than their lips' delicate pretence, <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</SPAN></span><br/>
The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers,<br/>
My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers<br/>
The bitten print of some immortal's kiss.<br/>
But hush! a mystery so great as this<br/>
I dare not tell, save to my double reed,<br/>
Which, sharer of my every joy and need,<br/>
Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we<br/>
Falsely confuse the beauties that we see<br/>
With the bright palpable shapes our song creates:<br/>
My flute, as loud as passion modulates,<br/>
Purges the common dream of flank and breast,<br/>
Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed,<br/>
Of every empty and monotonous line.</p>
<p class="poem">Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign,<br/>
A reed once more beside our trysting-lake.<br/>
Proud of my music, let me often make<br/>
A song of goddesses and see their rape<br/>
Profanely done on many a painted shape.<br/>
So when the grape's transparent juice I drain,<br/>
I quell regret for pleasures past and feign<br/>
A new real grape. For holding towards the sky<br/>
The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie<br/>
Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it.<br/>
<span class="poem2">Tell o'er</span><br/>
Remembered joys and plump the grape once more.<br/>
<i>Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam<br/>
Who cool no mortal fever in the stream<br/>
Crying to the woods the rage of their desire:<br/>
And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire<br/>
Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly.<br/>
I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie, </i><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</SPAN></span><br/><i>
Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet,<br/>
Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet.<br/>
I seize and run with them, nor part the pair,<br/>
Breaking this covert of frail petals, where<br/>
Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play<br/>
'Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day.</i><br/>
I love that virginal fury—ah, the wild<br/>
Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled,<br/>
Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear<br/>
Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear!<br/>
Contagiously through my linked pair it flies<br/>
Where innocence in either, struggling, dies,<br/>
Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew.<br/>
<i>Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew<br/>
So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide<br/>
Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied.<br/>
For as I leaned to stifle in the hair<br/>
Of one my passionate laughter (taking care<br/>
With a stretched finger, that her innocence<br/>
Might stain with her companion's kindling sense<br/>
To touch the younger little one, who lay<br/>
Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey<br/>
Slips from me, freed by passion's sudden death,<br/>
Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath.</i></p>
<p class="poem">Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist<br/>
A rope to drag me to those joys I missed.<br/>
See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red<br/>
To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled;<br/>
So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire,<br/>
Flows for the swarming legions of desire.<br/>
At evening, when the woodland green turns gold <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</SPAN></span><br/>
And ashen grey, 'mid the quenched leaves, behold!<br/>
Red Etna glows, by Venus visited,<br/>
Walking the lava with her snowy tread<br/>
Whene'er the flames in thunderous slumber die.<br/>
I hold the goddess!<br/>
<span class="poem1">Ah, sure penalty!</span></p>
<p class="poem">But the unthinking soul and body swoon<br/>
At last beneath the heavy hush of noon.<br/>
Forgetful let me lie where summer's drouth<br/>
Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth<br/>
Dream planet-struck by the grape's round wine-red star.</p>
<p class="poem">Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are.</p>
<h2 id="louse">THE LOUSE-HUNTERS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /><br/> <span class="smaller">(From the French of Rimbaud).</span></h2>
<p class="poem">
<ANTIMG class="floatl" src="images/w.gif" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" alt="W" />
<span class="smcap">hen</span> the child's forehead, full of torments red,<br/>
Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams,<br/>
His two big sisters come unto his bed,<br/>
Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams.</p>
<p class="poem">They set him at a casement, open wide<br/>
On seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs,<br/>
And through his curls, all wet with dew, they slide<br/>
Those terrible searching finger-tips of theirs.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="poem">He hears them breathing, softly, fearfully,<br/>
Honey-sweet ruminations, slow respired:<br/>
Then a sharp hiss breaks time and melody—<br/>
Spittle indrawn, old kisses new-desired.</p>
<p class="poem">Down through the perfumed silences he hears<br/>
Their eyelids fluttering: long fingers thrill,<br/>
Probing a lassitude bedimmed with tears,<br/>
While the nails crunch at every louse they kill.</p>
<p class="poem">He is drunk with Languor—soft accordion-sigh,<br/>
Delirious wine of Love in Idleness;<br/>
Longings for tears come welling up and die,<br/>
As slow or swift he feels their magical caress.</p>
<p><ANTIMG class="spaced" src="images/blackwell.gif" width-obs="400" height-obs="273" alt="B. H. Blackwell,
Oxford." /></p>
<h2 class="end">THIS THIRD OF THE INITIATES SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS, WAS PRINTED IN OXFORD AT THE VINCENT WORKS, AND FINISHED IN JUNE, MCMXVIII. <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> PUBLISHED BY B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET, OXFORD, AND SOLD IN AMERICA BY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., NEW YORK.</h2>
<h2 class="end"> <ANTIMG class="floatl" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" src="images/i.gif" alt="I" /> NITIATES <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> A SERIES OF POETRY BY PROVED HANDS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf2.gif" height-obs="16" width-obs="18" alt="" /> UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE ART, BOARDS, THREE SHILLINGS NET.</h2>
<div class="ads">
<p><i>NOW READY</i></p>
<ol>
<li>IN THE VALLEY OF VISION
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> BY GEOFFREY
FABER, AUTHOR OF "INTERFLOW."</li>
<li>SONNETS AND POEMS
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf4.gif" height-obs="16" width-obs="13" alt="" /> BY ELEANOR
FARJEON, AUTHOR OF "NURSERY RHYMES OF LONDON TOWN."</li>
<li>THE DEFEAT OF YOUTH, AND OTHER POEMS
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> BY ALDOUS
HUXLEY, AUTHOR OF "THE BURNING WHEEL."</li>
</ol>
<p><i>IN PREPARATION</i></p>
<ol>
<li value="4">SONGS FOR SALE
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> AN ANTHOLOGY
OF VERSE, EDITED BY E. B. C. JONES FROM BOOKS ISSUED RECENTLY BY B. H.
BLACKWELL.</li>
<li>CLOWNS' HOUSES
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> BY EDITH
SITWELL, EDITOR OF "WHEELS."</li>
</ol></div>
<h2 class="end"> <ANTIMG class="floatl" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" src="images/t.gif" alt="T" /> HE SHELDONIAN SERIES OF REPRINTS AND RENDERINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN ALL LANGUAGES <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> EDITED BY REGINALD HEWITT, M.A.</h2>
<p><i>FIRST THREE BOOKS</i></p>
<div class="ads">
<ol>
<li>SONGS AND SAYINGS OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, MINNESAENGER
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> ENGLISHED
BY FRANK BETTS.</li>
<li>THE FUNERAL ORATION OF PERICLES
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> ENGLISHED
BY THOMAS HOBBES OF MALMESBURY.</li>
<li>BALLADES OF FRANCOIS VILLON
<ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" /> INTERPRETED
INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY PAUL HOOKHAM.</li>
</ol></div>
<p class="end">¶ The series is limited in the case of each volume to an edition
of five hundred copies on hand-made paper, printed in two
colours in Dolphin old style type, and published at two shillings
and sixpence net.</p>
<p class="big">OXFORD <ANTIMG src="images/leaf5.gif" height-obs="16" width-obs="16" alt="" />
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.</p>
<h2 class="end"> <ANTIMG class="floatl" height-obs="100" width-obs="100" src="images/a.gif" alt="A" /> DVENTURERS ALL <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> A SERIES OF YOUNG POETS UNKNOWN TO FAME <ANTIMG src="images/leaf.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="30" alt="" /> UNIFORM VOLUMES IN DOLPHIN OLD STYLE TYPE IN ART WRAPPERS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf2.gif" height-obs="16" width-obs="18" alt="" /> TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET EACH.</h2>
<p class="end">¶ "Beautiful little books ... containing poetry, real poetry."—<i>The New Witness.</i></p>
<p class="end">I., II., III. and IV. [<i>Out of print.</i>]</p>
<div class="ads">
<ol>
<li value="5">THE IRON AGE <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY FRANK BETTS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILBERT MURRAY.</li>
<li>THE TWO WORLDS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY SHERARD VINES.</li>
<li>THE BURNING WHEEL <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY A. L. HUXLEY.</li>
<li>A VAGABOND'S WALLET <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY STEPHEN REID-HEYMAN.</li>
<li>OP. I. <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS. [<i>Out of print.</i>]</li>
<li>LYRICAL POEMS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY DOROTHY PLOWMAN.</li>
<li>THE WITCHES' SABBATH <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN.</li>
<li>A SCALLOP SHELL OF QUIET <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
POEMS BY FOUR WOMEN. INTRODUCED BY MARGARET L. WOODS.</li>
<li>AT A VENTURE <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
POEMS BY EIGHT YOUNG WRITERS.</li>
<li>ALDEBARAN <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY M. ST. CLARE BYRNE.</li>
<li>LIADAIN AND CURITHIR <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY MOIREEN FOX.</li>
<li>LINNETS IN THE SLUMS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY MARION PRYCE.</li>
<li>OUT OF THE EAST <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY VERA AND MARGARET LARMINIE.</li>
<li>DUNCH <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY SUSAN MILES.</li>
<li>DEMETER AND OTHER POEMS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY ELEANOR HILL.</li>
<li>CARGO <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY S. BARRINGTON GATES.</li>
<li>DREAMS AND JOURNEYS <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY FREDEGOND SHOVE.</li>
<li>THE PEOPLE'S PALACE <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
BY SACHEVERELL SITWELL.</li>
<li>GALLEYS LADEN <ANTIMG src="images/leaf3.gif" height-obs="13" width-obs="18" alt="" />
POEMS BY FOUR WRITERS.</li>
</ol></div>
<p class="big">OXFORD <ANTIMG src="images/leaf2.gif" height-obs="16" width-obs="18" alt="" />
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.</p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />