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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39783 ***
+
+CANZONI & RIPOSTES
+
+OF
+
+EZRA POUND
+
+
+WHERETO ARE APPENDED THE
+
+COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF
+
+T.E. HULME
+
+
+LONDON
+
+ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET
+
+M CM XIII
+
+
+
+
+CANZONI
+
+TO
+
+OLIVIA AND DOROTHY SHAKESPEAR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ CANZON: THE YEARLY SLAIN
+ CANZON: THE SPEAR
+ CANZON: TO BE SUNG BENEATH A WINDOW
+ CANZON: OF INCENSE
+ CANZONE: OF ANGELS
+ TO OUR LADY OF VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
+ TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI
+ SONNET IN TENZONE
+ SONNET: CHI È QUESTA?
+ BALLATA, FRAGMENT
+ CANZON: THE VISION
+ OCTAVE
+ SONNET: THE TALLY-BOARD
+ BALLATETTA
+ MADRIGALE
+ ERA MEA
+ THRENOS
+ THE TREE
+ PARACELSUS IN EXCELSIS
+ DE AEGYPTO
+ LI BEL CHASTEUS
+ PRAYER FOR HIS LADY'S LIFE (FROM PROPERTIUS)
+ PSYCHE OF EROS
+ "BLANDULA, TENULLA, VAGULA"
+ ERAT HORA
+ EPIGRAMS. I.
+ II. (THE SEA OF GLASS)
+ LA NUVOLETTA
+ ROSA SEMPITERNA
+ THE GOLDEN SESTINA
+ ROME (FROM DU BELLAY)
+ HER IMAGE (FROM LEOPARDI)
+ VICTORIAN ECLOGUES. I.
+ II. SATIEMUS
+ III. ABELARD
+ A PROLOGUE
+ MAESTRO DI TOCAR
+ ARIA
+ L'ART
+ SONG IN THE MANNER OF HOUSMAN
+ HEINE, TRANSLATIONS FROM
+ UND DRANG
+
+
+
+
+CANZONI
+
+
+
+ CANZON: THE YEARLY SLAIN
+
+ (WRITTEN IN REPLY TO MANNING'S "KORÈ.")
+
+
+
+ "Et huiusmodi stantiae usus est fere in omnibus
+ cantionibus suis Arnaldus Danielis et nos eum secuti
+ sumus."
+ DANTE, _De Vulgari Eloquio_, II. 10.
+
+
+
+
+
+ I
+
+ Ah! red-leafed time hath driven out the rose
+ And crimson dew is fallen on the leaf
+ Ere ever yet the cold white wheat be sown
+ That hideth all earth's green and sere and red;
+ The Moon-flower's fallen and the branch is bare,
+ Holding no honey for the starry bees;
+ The Maiden turns to her dark lord's demesne.
+
+ II
+
+ Fairer than Enna's field when Ceres sows
+ The stars of hyacinth and puts off grief,
+ Fairer than petals on May morning blown
+ Through apple-orchards where the sun hath shed
+ His brighter petals down to make them fair;
+ Fairer than these the Poppy-crowned One flees,
+ And Joy goes weeping in her scarlet train.
+
+ III
+
+ The faint damp wind that, ere the even, blows
+ Piling the west with many a tawny sheaf,
+ Then when the last glad wavering hours are mown
+ Sigheth and dies because the day is sped;
+ This wind is like her and the listless air
+ Wherewith she goeth by beneath the trees,
+ The trees that mock her with their scarlet stain.
+
+ IV
+
+ Love that is born of Time and comes and goes!
+ Love that doth hold all noble hearts in fief!
+ As red leaves follow where the wind hath flown,
+ So all men follow Love when Love is dead.
+ O Fate of Wind! O Wind that cannot spare,
+ But drivest out the Maid, and pourest lees
+ Of all thy crimson on the wold again,
+
+ V
+
+ Korè my heart is, let it stand sans gloze!
+ Love's pain is long, and lo, love's joy is brief!
+ My heart erst alway sweet is bitter grown;
+ As crimson ruleth in the good green's stead,
+ So grief hath taken all mine old joy's share
+ And driven forth my solace and all ease
+ Where pleasure bows to all-usurping pain.
+
+ VI
+
+ Crimson the hearth where one last ember glows!
+ My heart's new winter hath no such relief,
+ Nor thought of Spring whose blossom he hath known
+ Hath turned him back where Spring is banished.
+ Barren the heart and dead the fires there,
+ Blow! O ye ashes, where the winds shall please,
+ But cry, "Love also is the Yearly Slain."
+
+ VII
+
+ Be sped, my Canzon, through the bitter air!
+ To him who speaketh words as fair as these,
+ Say that I also know the "Yearly Slain."
+
+
+
+ CANZON: THE SPEAR
+
+
+ I
+
+ 'Tis the clear light of love I praise
+ That steadfast gloweth o'er deep waters,
+ A clarity that gleams always.
+ Though man's soul pass through troubled waters,
+ Strange ways to him are openèd.
+ To shore the beaten ship is sped
+ If only love of light give aid.
+
+ II
+
+ That fair far spear of light now lays
+ Its long gold shaft upon the waters.
+ Ah! might I pass upon its rays
+ To where it gleams beyond the waters,
+ Or might my troubled heart be fed
+ Upon the frail clear light there shed,
+ Then were my pain at last allay'd.
+
+ III
+
+ Although the clouded storm dismays
+ Many a heart upon these waters,
+ The thought of that far golden blaze
+ Giveth me heart upon the waters,
+ Thinking thereof my bark is led
+ To port wherein no storm I dread;
+ No tempest maketh me afraid.
+
+ IV
+
+ Yet when within my heart I gaze
+ Upon my fair beyond the waters,
+ Meseems my soul within me prays
+ To pass straightway beyond the waters.
+ Though I be alway banished
+ From ways and woods that she doth tread,
+ One thing there is that doth not fade,
+
+ V
+
+ Deep in my heart that spear-print stays,
+ That wound I gat beyond the waters,
+ Deeper with passage of the days
+ That pass as swift and bitter waters,
+ While a dull fire within my head
+ Moveth itself if word be said
+ Which hath concern with that far maid.
+
+ VI
+
+ My love is lovelier than the sprays
+ Of eglantine above clear waters,
+ Or whitest lilies that upraise
+ Their heads in midst of moated waters.
+ No poppy in the May-glad mead
+ Would match her quivering lips' red
+ If 'gainst her lips it should be laid.
+
+ VII
+
+ The light within her eyes, which slays
+ Base thoughts and stilleth troubled waters,
+ Is like the gold where sunlight plays
+ Upon the still o'ershadowed waters.
+ When anger is there mingled
+ There comes a keener gleam instead,
+ Like flame that burns beneath thin jade.
+
+ VIII
+
+ Know by the words here mingled
+ What love hath made my heart his stead,
+ Glowing like flame beneath thin jade.
+
+
+
+ CANZON
+
+ TO BE SUNG BENEATH A WINDOW
+
+
+ I
+
+ Heart mine, art mine, whose embraces
+ Clasp but wind that past thee bloweth
+ E'en this air so subtly gloweth,
+ Guerdoned by thy sun-gold traces,
+ That my heart is half afraid
+ For the fragrance on him laid;
+ Even so love's might amazes!
+
+ II
+
+ Man's love follows many faces,
+ My love only one face knoweth;
+ Towards thee only my love floweth,
+ And outstrips the swift stream's paces.
+ Were this love well here displayed,
+ As flame flameth 'neath thin jade
+ Love should glow through these my phrases.
+
+ III
+
+ Though I've roamed through many places,
+ None there is that my heart troweth
+ Fair as that wherein fair groweth
+ One whose laud here interlaces
+ Tuneful words, that I've essayed.
+ Let this tune be gently played
+ Which my voice herward upraises.
+
+ IV
+
+ If my praise her grace effaces,
+ Then 'tis not my heart that showeth,
+ But the skilless tongue that soweth
+ Words unworthy of her graces.
+ Tongue, that hath me so betrayed,
+ Were my heart but here displayed,
+ Then were sung her fitting praises.
+
+
+
+ CANZON: OF INCENSE
+
+
+ I
+
+ Thy gracious ways,
+ O Lady of my heart, have
+ O'er all my thought their golden glamour cast;
+ As amber torch-flames, where strange men-at-arms
+ Tread softly 'neath the damask shield of night,
+ Rise from the flowing steel in part reflected,
+ So on my mailed thought that with thee goeth,
+ Though dark the way, a golden glamour falleth.
+
+ II
+
+ The censer sways
+ And glowing coals some art have
+ To free what frankincense before held fast
+ Till all the summer of the eastern farms
+ Doth dim the sense, and dream up through the light,
+ As memory, by new-born love corrected--
+ With savour such as only new love knoweth--
+ Through swift dim ways the hidden pasts recalleth.
+
+ III
+
+ On barren days,
+ At hours when I, apart, have
+ Bent low in thought of the great charm thou hast,
+ Behold with music's many-stringed charms
+ The silence groweth thou. O rare delight!
+ The melody upon clear strings inflected
+ Were dull when o'er taut sense thy presence floweth,
+ With quivering notes' accord that never palleth.
+
+ IV
+
+ The glowing rays
+ That from the low sun dart, have
+ Turned gold each tower and every towering mast;
+ The saffron flame, that flaming nothing harms
+ Hides Khadeeth's pearl and all the sapphire might
+ Of burnished waves, before her gates collected:
+ The cloak of graciousness, that round thee gloweth,
+ Doth hide the thing thou art, as here befalleth.
+
+ V
+
+ All things worth praise
+ That unto Khadeeth's mart have
+ From far been brought through perils over-passed,
+ All santal, myrrh, and spikenard that disarms
+ The pard's swift anger; these would weigh but light
+ 'Gainst thy delights, my Khadeeth! Whence protected
+ By naught save her great grace that in him showeth,
+ My song goes forth and on her mercy calleth.
+
+ VI
+
+ O censer of the thought that golden gloweth,
+ Be bright before her when the evening falleth.
+
+ VII
+
+ Fragrant be thou as a new field one moweth,
+ O song of mine that "Hers" her mercy calleth.
+
+
+
+ CANZONE: OF ANGELS
+
+
+ I
+
+ He that is Lord of all the realms of light
+ Hath unto me from His magnificence
+ Granted such vision as hath wrought my joy.
+ Moving my spirit past the last defence
+ That shieldeth mortal things from mightier sight,
+ Where freedom of the soul knows no alloy,
+ I saw what forms the lordly powers employ;
+ Three splendours, saw I, of high holiness,
+ From clarity to clarity ascending
+ Through all the roofless, tacit courts extending
+ In aether which such subtle light doth bless
+ As ne'er the candles of the stars hath wooed;
+ Know ye herefrom of their similitude.
+
+ II
+
+ Withdrawn within the cavern of his wings,
+ Grave with the joy of thoughts beneficent,
+ And finely wrought and durable and clear,
+ If so his eyes showed forth the mind's content,
+ So sate the first to whom remembrance clings,
+ Tissued like bat's wings did his wings appear,
+ Not of that shadowy colouring and drear,
+ But as thin shells, pale saffron, luminous;
+ Alone, unlonely, whose calm glances shed
+ Friend's love to strangers though no word were said,
+ Pensive his godly state he keepeth thus.
+ Not with his surfaces his power endeth,
+ But is as flame that from the gem extendeth.
+
+ III
+
+ My second marvel stood not in such ease,
+ But he, the cloudy pinioned, winged him on
+ Then from my sight as now from memory,
+ The courier aquiline, so swiftly gone!
+ The third most glorious of these majesties
+ Give aid, O sapphires of th' eternal see,
+ And by your light illume pure verity.
+ That azure feldspar hight the microcline,
+ Or, on its wing, the Menelaus weareth
+ Such subtlety of shimmering as beareth
+ This marvel onward through the crystalline,
+ A splendid calyx that about her gloweth,
+ Smiting the sunlight on whose ray she goeth.
+
+ IV
+
+ The diver at Sorrento from beneath
+ The vitreous indigo, who swiftly riseth,
+ By will and not by action as it seemeth,
+ Moves not more smoothly, and no thought surmiseth
+ How she takes motion from the lustrous sheath
+ Which, as the trace behind the swimmer, gleameth
+ Yet presseth back the aether where it streameth.
+ To her whom it adorns this sheath imparteth
+ The living motion from the light surrounding;
+ And thus my nobler parts, to grief's confounding,
+ Impart into my heart a peace which starteth
+ From one round whom a graciousness is cast
+ Which clingeth in the air where she hath past.
+
+ V--TORNATA
+
+ Canzon, to her whose spirit seems in sooth
+ Akin unto the feldspar, since it is
+ So clear and subtle and azure, I send thee, saying:
+ That since I looked upon such potencies
+ And glories as are here inscribed in truth,
+ New boldness hath o'erthrown my long delaying,
+ And that thy words my new-born powers obeying--
+ Voices at last to voice my heart's long mood--
+ Are come to greet her in their amplitude.
+
+
+
+ TO OUR LADY OF VICARIOUS ATONEMENT
+
+ (BALLATA)
+
+
+ I
+
+ Who are you that the whole world's song
+ Is shaken out beneath your feet
+ Leaving you comfortless,
+ Who, that, as wheat
+ Is garnered, gather in
+ The blades of man's sin
+ And bear that sheaf?
+ Lady of wrong and grief,
+ Blameless!
+
+ II
+
+ All souls beneath the gloom
+ That pass with little flames,
+ All these till time be run
+ Pass one by one
+ As Christs to save, and die;
+ What wrong one sowed,
+ Behold, another reaps!
+ Where lips awake our joy
+ The sad heart sleeps
+ Within.
+
+ No man doth bear his sin,
+ But many sins
+ Are gathered as a cloud about man's way.
+
+
+
+ TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI
+
+
+ Dante and I are come to learn of thee,
+ Ser Guido of Florence, master of us all,
+ Love, who hath set his hand upon us three,
+ Bidding us twain upon thy glory call.
+ Harsh light hath rent from us the golden pall
+ Of that frail sleep, _His_ first light seigniory,
+ And we are come through all the modes that fall
+ Unto their lot who meet him constantly.
+ Wherefore, by right, in this Lord's name we greet thee,
+ Seeing we labour at his labour daily.
+ Thou, who dost know what way swift words are crossed
+ O thou, who hast sung till none at song defeat thee,
+ Grant! by thy might and hers of San Michele,
+ Thy risen voice send flames this pentecost.
+
+
+
+ SONNET IN TENZONE
+
+
+ LA MENTE
+
+ "O Thou mocked heart that cowerest by the door
+ And durst not honour hope with welcoming,
+ How shall one bid thee for her honour sing,
+ When song would but show forth thy sorrow's store?
+ What things are gold and ivory unto thee?
+ Go forth, thou pauper fool! Are these for naught?
+ Is heaven in lotus leaves? What hast thou wrought,
+ Or brought, or sought, wherewith to pay the fee?"
+
+
+ IL CUORE
+
+ "If naught I give, naught do I take return.
+ '_Ronsard me celebroit!_' behold I give
+ The age-old, age-old fare to fairer fair
+ And I fare forth into more bitter air;
+ Though mocked I go, yet shall her beauty live
+ Till rimes unrime and Truth shall truth unlearn."
+
+
+
+ SONNET: CHI È QUESTA?
+
+
+ Who is she coming, that the roses bend
+ Their shameless heads to do her passing honour?
+ Who is she coming with a light upon her
+ Not born of suns that with the day's end end?
+ Say is it Love who hath chosen the nobler part?
+ Say is it Love, that was divinity,
+ Who hath left his godhead that his home might be
+ The shameless rose of her unclouded heart?
+ If this be Love, where hath he won such grace?
+ If this be Love, how is the evil wrought,
+ That all men write against his darkened name?
+ If this be Love, if this ...
+ O mind give place!
+ What holy mystery e'er was noosed in thought?
+ Own that thou scan'st her not, nor count it shame!
+
+
+
+ BALLATA, FRAGMENT
+
+
+ II
+
+ Full well thou knowest, song, what grace I mean,
+ E'en as thou know'st the sunlight I have lost.
+ Thou knowest the way of it and know'st the sheen
+ About her brows where the rays are bound and crossed,
+ E'en as thou knowest joy and know'st joy's bitter cost.
+ Thou know'st her grace in moving,
+ Thou dost her skill in loving,
+ Thou know'st what truth she proveth,
+ Thou knowest the heart she moveth,
+ O song where grief assoneth!
+
+
+
+ CANZON: THE VISION
+
+
+ I
+
+ When first I saw thee 'neath the silver mist,
+ Ruling thy bark of painted sandal-wood,
+ Did any know thee? By the golden sails
+ That clasped the ribbands of that azure sea,
+ Did any know thee save my heart alone?
+ O ivory woman with thy bands of gold,
+ Answer the song my luth and I have brought thee!
+
+ II
+
+ Dream over golden dream that secret cist,
+ Thy heart, O heart of me, doth hold, and mood
+ On mood of silver, when the day's light fails,
+ Say who hath touched the secret heart of thee,
+ Or who hath known what my heart hath not known
+ O slender pilot whom the mists enfold,
+ Answer the song my luth and I have wrought thee!
+
+ III
+
+ When new love plucks the falcon from his wrist,
+ And cuts the gyve and casts the scarlet hood,
+ Where is the heron heart whom flight avails?
+ O quick to prize me Love, how suddenly
+ From out the tumult truth has ta'en his own,
+ And in this vision is our past unrolled.
+ Lo! With a hawk of light thy love hath caught me.
+
+ IV
+
+ And I shall get no peace from eucharist,
+ Nor doling out strange prayers before the rood,
+ To match the peace that thine hands' touch entails;
+ Nor doth God's light match light shed over me
+ When thy caught sunlight is about me thrown,
+ Oh, for the very ruth thine eyes have told,
+ Answer the rune this love of thee hath taught me.
+
+ V
+
+ After an age of longing had we missed
+ Our meeting and the dream, what were the good
+ Of weaving cloth of words? Were jewelled tales
+ An opiate meet to quell the malady
+ Of life unlived? In untried monotone
+ Were not the earth as vain, and dry, and old,
+ For thee, O Perfect Light, had I not sought thee?
+
+ VI
+
+ Calais, in song where word and tone keep tryst
+ Behold my heart, and hear mine hardihood!
+ Calais, the wind is come and heaven pales
+ And trembles for the love of day to be.
+ Calais, the words break and the dawn is shown.
+ Ah, but the stars set when thou wast first bold,
+ Turn! lest they say a lesser light distraught thee.
+
+ VII
+
+ O ivory thou, the golden scythe hath mown
+ Night's stubble and my joy. Thou royal souled,
+ Favour the quest! Lo, Truth and I have sought thee
+
+
+
+ OCTAVE
+
+
+ Fine songs, fair songs, these golden usuries
+ A Her beauty earns as but just increment,
+ And they do speak with a most ill intent
+ Who say they give when they pay debtor's fees.
+
+ I call him bankrupt in the courts of song
+ Who hath her gold to eye and pays her not,
+ Defaulter do I call the knave who hath got
+ Her silver in his heart, and doth her wrong.
+
+
+
+ SONNET
+
+
+ If on the tally-board of wasted days
+ They daily write me for proud idleness,
+ Let high Hell summons me, and I confess,
+ No overt act the preferred charge allays.
+
+ To-day I thought--what boots it what I thought?
+ Poppies and gold! Why should I blurt it out?
+ Or hawk the magic of her name about
+ Deaf doors and dungeons where no truth is bought?
+
+ Who calls me idle? I have thought of her.
+ Who calls me idle? By God's truth I've seen
+ The arrowy sunlight in her golden snares.
+
+ Let him among you all stand summonser
+ Who hath done better things! Let whoso hath been
+ With worthier works concerned, display his wares!
+
+
+
+ BALLATETTA
+
+
+ The light became her grace and dwelt among
+ Blind eyes and shadows that are formed as men
+ Lo, how the light doth melt us into song:
+
+ The broken sunlight for a healm she beareth
+ Who hath my heart in jurisdiction.
+ In wild-wood never fawn nor fallow fareth
+ So silent light; no gossamer is spun
+ So delicate as she is, when the sun
+ Drives the clear emeralds from the bended grasses
+ Lest they should parch too swiftly, where she passes.
+
+
+
+ MADRIGALE
+
+
+ Clear is my love but shadowed
+ By the spun gold above her,
+ Ah, what a petal those bent sheaths discover!
+
+ _The olive wood hath hidden her completely._
+ _She was gowned that discreetly_
+ _The leaves and shadows concealed her completely._
+
+ Fair is my love but followed
+ In all her goings surely
+ By gracious thoughts, she goeth so demurely.
+
+
+
+ ERA MEA
+
+
+ Era mea
+ In qua terra
+ Dulce myrti floribus,
+ Rosa amoris
+ Via erroris
+ Ad te coram
+ Veniam?
+
+
+ ANGLICÈ REDDITA
+
+ Mistress mine, in what far land,
+ Where the myrtle bloweth sweet
+ Shall I weary with my way-fare,
+ Win to thee that art as day fair,
+ Lay my roses at thy feet?
+
+
+
+ THRENOS
+
+
+ No more for us the little sighing,
+ No more the winds at twilight trouble us.
+
+ Lo the fair dead!
+
+ No more do I burn.
+ No more for us the fluttering of wings
+ That whirred in the air above us.
+
+ Lo the fair dead!
+
+ No more desire flayeth me,
+ No more for us the trembling
+ At the meeting of hands.
+
+ Lo the fair dead!
+
+ No more for us the wine of the lips,
+ No more for us the knowledge.
+
+ Lo the fair dead!
+
+ No more the torrent,
+ No more for us the meeting-place
+ (Lo the fair dead!)
+ Tintagoel.
+
+
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ PARACELSUS IN EXCELSIS
+
+
+ "Being no longer human why should I
+ Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
+ Men have I known, and men, but never one
+ Was grown so free an essence, or become
+ So simply element as what I am.
+ The mist goes from the mirror and I see!
+ Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath--
+ Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace,
+ And we, that are grown formless, rise above--
+ Fluids intangible that have been men,
+ We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
+ Some overflowing river is run mad,
+ In us alone the element of calm!"
+
+
+
+ DE AEGYPTO
+
+
+ I even I, am he who knoweth the roads
+ Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.
+
+ I have beheld the Lady of Life,
+ I, even I, who fly with the swallows.
+
+ Green and gray is her raiment,
+ Trailing along the wind.
+
+ I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
+ Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.
+
+ Manus animam pinxit,
+ My pen is in my hand
+
+ To write the acceptable word....
+ My mouth to chant the pure singing!
+
+ Who hath the mouth to receive it,
+ The song of the Lotus of Kumi?
+
+ I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
+ Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.
+
+ I am flame that riseth in the sun,
+ I, even I, who fly with the swallows.
+
+ The moon is upon my forehead,
+ The winds are under my lips.
+
+ The moon is a great pearl in the waters of sapphire,
+ Cool to my fingers the flowing waters.
+
+ I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
+ Through the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.
+
+ I will return to the halls of the flowing,
+ Of the truth of the children of Ashu.
+
+ I, even I, am he who knoweth the roads
+ Of the sky, and the wind thereof is my body.
+
+
+
+ LI BEL CHASTEUS
+
+
+ That castle stands the highest in the land
+ Far seen and mighty. Of the great hewn stones
+ What shall I say? And deep foss way
+ That far beneath us bore of old
+ A swelling turbid sea
+ Hill-born and tumultuous
+ Unto the fields below, where
+ Staunch villein and
+ Burgher held the land and tilled
+ Long labouring for gold of wheat grain
+ And to see the beards come forth
+ For barley's even time.
+
+ But archèd high above the curl of life
+ We dwelt amid the ancient boulders,
+ Gods had hewn and druids turned
+ Unto that birth most wondrous, that had grown
+ A mighty fortress while the world had slept,
+ And we awaited in the shadows there
+ When mighty hands had laboured sightlessly
+ And shaped this wonder 'bove the ways of men.
+ Me seems we could not see the great green waves
+ Nor rocky shore by Tintagoel
+ From this our hold,
+ But came faint murmuring as undersong,
+ E'en as the burghers' hum arose
+ And died as faint wind melody
+ Beneath our gates.
+
+
+
+ PRAYER FOR HIS LADY'S LIFE
+
+ FROM PROPERTIUS, ELEGIAE, LIB. III, 26
+
+
+ Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
+ Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
+ So many thousand beauties are gone down to Avernus
+ Ye might let one remain above with us.
+
+ With you is Iope, with you the white-gleaming Tyro,
+ With you is Europa and the shameless Pasiphae,
+ And all the fair from Troy and all from Achaia,
+ From the sundered realms, of Thebes and of aged Priamus;
+ And all the maidens of Rome, as many as they were,
+ They died and the greed of your flame consumes them.
+
+ _Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,_
+ _Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness._
+ _So many thousand fair are gone down to Avernus,_
+ _Ye might let one remain above with us._
+
+
+
+ SPEECH FOR PSYCHE IN THE GOLDEN BOOK OF APULEIUS
+
+
+ All night, and as the wind lieth among
+ The cypress trees, he lay,
+ Nor held me save as air that brusheth by one
+ Close, and as the petals of flowers in falling
+ Waver and seem not drawn to earth, so he
+ Seemed over me to hover light as leaves
+ And closer me than air,
+ And music flowing through me seemed to open
+ Mine eyes upon new colours.
+ O winds, what wind can match the weight of him!
+
+
+
+ "BLANDULA, TENULLA, VAGULA."
+
+
+ What hast thou, O my soul, with paradise?
+ Will we not rather, when our freedom's won,
+ Get us to some clear place wherein the sun
+ Lets drift in on us through the olive leaves
+ A liquid glory? If at Sirmio
+ My soul, I meet thee, when this life's outrun,
+ Will we not find some headland consecrated
+ By aery apostles of terrene delight,
+ Will not our cult be founded on the waves,
+ Clear sapphire, cobalt, cyanine,
+ On triune azures, the impalpable
+ Mirrors unstill of the eternal change?
+
+ Soul, if She meet us there, will any rumour
+ Of havens more high and courts desirable
+ Lure us beyond the cloudy peak of Riva?
+
+
+
+ ERAT HORA
+
+
+ "Thank you, whatever comes." And then she turned
+ And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
+ Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
+ Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
+ One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
+ May not make boast of any better thing
+ Than to have watched that hour as it passed.
+
+
+
+ EPIGRAMS
+
+
+ I
+
+ O ivory, delicate hands!
+ O face that hovers
+ Between "To-come" and "Was,"
+ Ivory thou wast,
+ A rose thou wilt be.
+
+ II
+
+ (THE SEA OF GLASS)
+
+ I looked and saw a sea
+ roofed over with rainbows,
+ In the midst of each
+ two lovers met and departed;
+ Then the sky was full of faces
+ with gold glories behind them.
+
+
+
+
+ LA NUVOLETTA
+
+ Dante to an unknown lady, beseeching her not to
+ interrupt his cult of the dead Beatrice. From "Il
+ Canzoniere," Ballata II.
+
+
+ Ah little cloud that in Love's shadow lief
+ Upon mine eyes so suddenly alightest,
+ Take some faint pity on the heart thou smitest
+ That hopes in thee, desires, dies, in brief.
+
+ Ah little cloud of more than human fashion
+ Thou settest a flame within my mind's mid space
+ With thy deathly speech that grieveth;
+
+ Then as a fiery spirit in thy ways
+ Createst hope, in part a rightful passion,
+ Yet where thy sweet smile giveth
+ His grace, look not! For in Her my faith liveth.
+
+ Think on my high desire whose flame's so great
+ That nigh a thousand who were come too late,
+ Have felt the torment of another's grief.
+
+
+
+ ROSA SEMPITERNA
+
+
+ A rose I set within my "Paradise"
+ Lo how his red is turned to yellowness,
+ Not withered but grown old in subtler wise
+ Between the empaged rime's high holiness
+ Where Dante sings of that rose's device
+ Which yellow is, with souls in blissfulness.
+ Rose whom I set within my paradise,
+ Donor of roses and of parching sighs,
+ Of golden lights and dark unhappiness,
+ Of hidden chains and silvery joyousness,
+ Hear how thy rose within my Dante lies,
+ O rose I set within my paradise.
+
+
+
+ THE GOLDEN SESTINA
+
+ FROM THE ITALIAN OF PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA
+
+
+ In the bright season when He, most high Jove,
+ From welkin reaching down his glorying hand,
+ Decks the Great Mother and her changing face,
+ Clothing her not with scarlet skeins and gold
+ But with th' empurpling flowers and gay grass,
+ When the young year renewed, renews the sun,
+
+ When, then, I see a lady like the sun,
+ One fashioned by th' high hand of utmost Jove,
+ So fair beneath the myrtles on gay grass
+ Who holdeth Love and Truth, one by each hand,
+ It seems, if I look straight, two bands of gold
+ Do make more fair her delicate fair face.
+
+ Though eyes are dazzled, looking on her face
+ As all sight faileth that looks toward the sun,
+ New metamorphoses, to rained gold,
+ Or bulls or whitest swans, might fall on Jove
+ Through her, or Phoebus, his bag-pipes in hand,
+ Might, mid the droves, come barefoot o'er our grass,
+
+ Alas, that there was hidden in the grass
+ A cruel shaft, the which, to wound my face,
+ My Lady took in her own proper hand.
+ If I could not defend me 'gainst that sun
+ I take no shame, for even utmost Jove
+ Is in high heaven pierced with darts of gold.
+
+ Behold the green shall find itself turned gold
+ And spring shall be without her flowers and grass,
+ And hell's deep be the dwelling place of Jove
+ Ere I shall have uncarved her holy face
+ From my heart's midst, where 'tis both Sun and sun
+ And yet she beareth me such hostile hand!
+
+ O sweet and holy and O most light hand,
+ O intermingled ivory and gold,
+ O mortal goddess and terrestrial sun
+ Who comest not to foster meadow grass,
+ But to show heaven by a likened face
+ Wert sent amongst us by th' exalted Jove,
+
+ I still pray Jove that he permit no grass
+ To cover o'er thy hands, thy face, thy gold
+ For heaven's sufficed with a single sun.
+
+
+
+ ROME
+
+ FROM THE FRENCH OF JOACHIM DU BELLAY
+
+ "Troica Roma resurges."
+ PROPERTIUS.
+
+
+ O thou new comer who seek'st Rome in Rome
+ And find'st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman;
+ Arches worn old and palaces made common,
+ Rome's name alone within these walls keeps home.
+
+ Behold how pride and ruin can befall
+ One who hath set the whole world 'neath her laws,
+ All-conquering, now conquered, because
+ She is Time's prey and Time consumeth all.
+
+ Rome that art Rome's one sole last monument,
+ Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town,
+ Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent,
+ Remains of Rome. O world, thou unconstant mime!
+ That which stands firm in thee Time batters down,
+ And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift time.
+
+
+
+ HER MONUMENT, THE IMAGE CUT THEREON
+
+ FROM THE ITALIAN OF LEOPARDI
+
+ (Written 1831-3 circa)
+
+
+ Such wast thou,
+ Who art now
+ But buried dust and rusted skeleton.
+ Above the bones and mire,
+ Motionless, placed in vain,
+ Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years,
+ Sole guard of grief
+ Sole guard of memory
+ Standeth this image of the beauty sped.
+
+ O glance, when thou wast still as thou art now,
+ How hast thou set the fire
+ A-tremble in men's veins; O lip curved high
+ To mind me of some urn of full delight,
+ O throat girt round of old with swift desire,
+ O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways
+ Not once but many a day
+ Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye,
+ That ye were once! of all the grace ye had
+ That which remaineth now
+ Shameful, most sad
+ Finds 'neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place!
+
+ And still when fate recalleth,
+ Even that semblance that appears amongst us
+ Is like to heaven's most 'live imagining.
+ All, all our life's eternal mystery!
+ To-day, on high
+ Mounts, from our mighty thoughts and from the fount
+ Of sense untellable, Beauty
+ That seems to be some quivering splendour cast
+ By the immortal nature on this quicksand,
+ And by surhuman fates
+ Given to mortal state
+ To be a sign and an hope made secure
+ Of blissful kingdoms and the aureate spheres;
+ And on the morrow, by some lightsome twist,
+ Shameful in sight, abject, abominable
+ All this angelic aspect can return
+ And be but what it was
+ With all the admirable concepts that moved from it
+ Swept from the mind with it in its departure.
+
+ Infinite things desired, lofty visions
+ 'Got on desirous thought by natural virtue,
+ And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas
+ The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind
+ Turns hardy pilot ... and if one wrong note
+ Strike the tympanum,
+ Instantly
+ That paradise is hurled to nothingness.
+
+ O mortal nature,
+ If thou art
+ Frail and so vile in all,
+ How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense;
+ Yet if thou art
+ Noble in any part
+ How is the noblest of thy speech and thought
+ So lightly wrought
+ Or to such base occasion lit and quenched?
+
+
+
+
+ VICTORIAN ECLOGUES
+
+
+
+ I
+
+ EXCUSES
+
+
+ Ah would you turn me back now from the flowers,
+ You who are different as the air from sea is,
+ Ah for the pollen from our wreath of hours,
+ You who are magical, not mine as she is,
+ Say will you call us from our time of flowers?
+
+ You whom I loved and love, not understanding,
+ Yea we were ever torn with constant striving,
+ Seeing our gods are different, and commanding
+ One good from them, and in my heart reviving
+ Old discords and bent thought, not understanding.
+
+ We who have wept, we who have lain together
+ Upon the green and sere and white of every season,
+ We who have loved the sun but for the weather
+ Of our own hearts have found no constant reason,
+ What is your part, now we have come together?
+
+ What is your pain, Dear, what is your heart now
+ A little sad, a little.... Nay, I know not
+ Seeing I never had and have no part now
+ In your own secret councils wherein blow not
+ My roses. My vineyard being another heart now?
+
+ You who were ever dear and dearer being strange,
+ How shall I "go" who never came anear you?
+ How could I stay, who never came in range
+ Of anything that halved; could never hear you
+ Rightly in your silence; nay, your very speech was strange.
+
+ You, who have loved not what I was or will be,
+ You who but loved me for a thing I could be,
+ You who love not a song whate'er its skill be
+ But only love the cause or what cause should be,
+ How could I give you what I am or will be?
+
+ Nay, though your eyes are sad, you will not hinder,
+ You, who would have had me only near not nearer,
+ Nay though my heart had burned to a bright cinder
+ Love would have said to me: "Still fear her,
+ Pain is thy lot and naught she hath can hinder,"
+
+ So I, for this sad gladness that is mine now,
+ Who never spoke aright in speaking to you,
+ Uncomprehending anything that's thine now,
+ E'en in my spoken words more wrong may do you
+ In looking back from this new grace that's mine now.
+
+ _Sic semper finis deest._
+
+
+
+ II
+
+ SATIEMUS
+
+
+ What if I know thy speeches word by word?
+ And if thou knew'st I knew them wouldst thou speak?
+ What if I know thy speeches word by word,
+ And all the time thou sayest them o'er I said,
+ "Lo, one there was who bent her fair bright head,
+ Sighing as thou dost through the golden speech."
+ Or, as our laughters mingle each with each,
+ As crushed lips take their respite fitfully,
+ What if my thoughts were turned in their mid reach
+ Whispering among them, "The fair dead
+ Must know such moments, thinking on the grass;
+ On how white dogwoods murmured overhead
+ In the bright glad days!"
+ How if the low dear sound within thy throat
+ Hath as faint lute-strings in its dim accord
+ Dim tales that blind me, running one by one
+ With times told over as we tell by rote;
+ What if I know thy laughter word by word
+ Nor find aught novel in thy merriment?
+
+
+
+ III
+
+ ABELARD
+
+ "_Pere Esbaillart a Sanct Denis._"
+ VILLON.
+
+
+ "Because my soul cried out, and only the long ways
+ Grown weary, gave me answer and
+ Because she answered when the very ways were dumb
+ With all their hoarse, dry speech grown faint and chill.
+ Because her answer was a call to me,
+ Though I have sinned, my God, and though thy angels
+ Bear no more now my thought to whom I love;
+ Now though I crouch afraid in all thy dark
+ Will I once cry to thee:
+ Once more! Once more my strength!
+ Yea though I sin to call him forth once more,
+ Thy messengers for mine, Their wings my power!
+ And let once more my wings fold down above her,
+ Let their cool length be spread
+ Over her feet and head
+ And let thy calm come down
+ To dwell within her, and thy gown of peace
+ Clothe all her body in its samite.
+ O Father of all the blind and all the strong,
+ Though I have left thy courts, though all the throng
+ Of thy gold-shimmering choir know me not,
+ Though I have dared the body and have donned
+ Its frail strong-seeming, and although
+ Its lightening joy is made my swifter song,
+ Though I have known thy stars, yea all, and chosen one.
+ Yea though I make no barter, and repent no jot,
+ Yet for the sunlight of that former time
+ Grant me the boon, O God,
+ Once more, once more, or I or some white thought
+ Shall rise beside her and, enveloping
+ All her strange glory in its wings of light,
+ Bring down thy peace upon her way-worn soul.
+ Oh sheathe that sword of her in some strong case,
+ The doe-skin scabbard of thy clear Rafael!
+ Yea let thy angels walk, as I have seen
+ Them passing, or have seen their wings
+ Spread their pavilions o'er our twin delight.
+ Yea I have seen them when the purple light
+ Hid all her garden from my drowsy eyes.
+
+
+
+ A PROLOGUE
+
+
+ SCENE--IN THE AIR
+
+ _The Lords of the Air_:
+
+ What light hath passed us in the silent ways?
+
+ _The Spirits of Fire_:
+
+ We are sustainèd, strengthened suddenly.
+
+ _The Spirits of Water_:
+
+ Lo, how the utmost deeps are clarified!
+
+ _The Spirits Terrene_:
+
+ What might is this more potent than the spring?
+ Lo, how the night
+ Which wrapped us round with its most heavy cloths
+ Opens and breathes with some strange-fashioned brighness!
+
+
+ IN HEAVEN
+
+ _Christ, the eternal Spirit in Heaven speaketh thus,
+ over the child of Mary_:
+
+ O star, move forth and write upon the skies,
+ "This child is born in ways miraculous."
+ * * * * *
+ O windy spirits, that are born in Heaven,
+ Go down and bid the powers of Earth and Air
+ Protect his ways until the Time shall come.
+ * * * * *
+ O Mother, if the dark of things to be
+ Wrap round thy heart with cloudy apprehensions,
+ Eat of thy present corn, the aftermath
+ Hath its appointed end in whirling light.
+ Eat of thy present corn, thou so hast share
+ In mightier portents than Augustus hath.
+ * * * * *
+ In every moment all to be is born,
+ Thou art the moment and need'st fear no scorn.
+
+ _Echo of the Angels singing "Exultasti"_:
+
+ Silence is born of many peaceful things,
+ Thus is the starlight woven into strings
+ Whereon the Powers of peace make sweet accord.
+ Rejoice, O Earth, thy Lord
+ Hath chosen Him his holy resting-place.
+
+ Lo, how the winged sign
+ Flutters above that hallowed chrysalis.
+
+
+ IN THE AIR
+
+ _The invisible Spirit of the Star answers them_:
+
+ Bend in your singing, gracious potencies,
+ Bend low above your ivory bows and gold!
+ That which ye know but dimly hath been wrought
+ High in the luminous courts and azure ways:
+ Bend in your praise;
+ For though your subtle thought
+ Sees but in part the source of mysteries,
+ Yet are ye bidden in your songs, sing this:
+
+ _"Gloria! gloria in excelsis_
+ _Pax in terra nunc natast."_
+
+ _Angels continuing in song_:
+
+ Shepherds and kings, with lambs and frankincense
+ Go and atone for mankind's ignorance:
+ Make ye soft savour from your ruddy myrrh.
+ Lo, how God's son is turned God's almoner.
+ Give ye this little
+ Ere he give ye all.
+
+
+ ON EARTH
+
+ _One of the Magi_:
+
+ How the deep-voicèd night turns councillor!
+ And how, for end, our starry meditations
+ Admit us to his board!
+
+ _A Shepherd_:
+
+ Sir, we be humble and perceive ye are
+ Men of great power and authority,
+ And yet we too have heard.
+
+
+
+ DIANA IN EPHESUS
+
+ (_Lucina dolentibus_:)
+
+
+ "Behold the deed! Behold the act supreme!
+ With mine own hands have I prepared my doom,
+ Truth shall grow great eclipsing other truth,
+ And men forget me in the aging years."
+
+ _Explicit._
+
+
+
+ MAESTRO DI TOCAR
+
+ (W.R.)
+
+
+ You, who are touched not by our mortal ways
+ Nor girded with the stricture of our bands,
+ Have but to loose the magic from your hands
+ And all men's hearts that glimmer for a day,
+ And all our loves that are so swift to flame
+ Rise in that space of sound and melt away.
+
+
+
+ ARIA
+
+
+ My love is a deep flame
+ that hides beneath the waters.
+
+ --My love is gay and kind,
+ My love is hard to find
+ as the flame beneath the waters.
+
+ The fingers of the wind
+ meet hers
+ With a frail
+ swift greeting.
+ My love is gay
+ and kind
+ and hard
+ of meeting,
+ As the flame beneath the waters
+ hard of meeting.
+
+
+
+ L'ART
+
+
+ When brightest colours seem but dull in hue
+ And noblest arts are shown mechanical,
+ When study serves but to heap clue on clue
+ That no great line hath been or ever shall,
+ But hath a savour like some second stew
+ Of many pot-lots with a smack of all.
+ 'Twas one man's field, another's hops the brew,
+ Twas vagrant accident not fate's fore-call.
+ Horace, that thing of thine is overhauled,
+ And "Wood notes wild" weaves a concocted sonnet.
+ Here aery Shelley on the text hath called,
+ And here, Great Scott, the Murex, Keats comes on it.
+ And all the lot howl, "Sweet Simplicity!"
+ 'Tis Art to hide our theft exquisitely.
+
+
+
+ SONG IN THE MANNER OF HOUSMAN
+
+
+ O Woe, woe,
+ People are born and die,
+ We also shall be dead pretty soon
+ Therefore let us act as if we were
+ dead already.
+
+ The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
+ But he dies also, presently.
+ Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
+ Woeful is this human lot.
+ _Woe! woe, etcetera_....
+
+ London is a woeful place,
+ Shropshire is much pleasanter.
+ Then let us smile a little space
+ Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
+ _Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera_....
+
+
+
+ TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE
+
+
+ VON "DIE HEIMKEHR"
+
+
+ I
+
+ Is your hate, then, of such measure?
+ Do you, truly, so detest me?
+ Through all the world will I complain
+ Of _how_ you have addressed me.
+
+ O ye lips that are ungrateful,
+ Hath it never once distressed you,
+ That you can say such _awful_ things
+ Of _any_ one who ever kissed you?
+
+
+ II
+
+ So thou hast forgotten fully
+ That I so long held thy heart wholly,
+ Thy little heart, so sweet and false and small
+ That there's no thing more sweet or false at all.
+
+ Love and lay thou hast forgotten fully,
+ And my heart worked at them unduly.
+ I know not if the love or if the lay were better stuff,
+ But I know now, they both were good enough.
+
+
+ III
+
+ Tell me where thy lovely love is,
+ Whom thou once did sing so sweetly,
+ When the fairy flames enshrouded
+ Thee, and held thy heart completely.
+
+ All the flames are dead and sped now
+ And my heart is cold and sere;
+ Behold this book, the urn of ashes,
+ 'Tis my true love's sepulchre.
+
+
+ IV
+
+ I dreamt that I was God Himself
+ Whom heavenly joy immerses,
+ And all the angels sat about
+ And praised my verses.
+
+
+ V
+
+ The mutilated choir boys
+ When I begin to sing
+ Complain about the awful noise
+ And call my voice too thick a thing.
+
+ When light their voices lift them up,
+ Bright notes against the ear,
+ Through trills and runs like crystal,
+ Ring delicate and clear.
+
+ They sing of Love that's grown desirous,
+ Of Love, and joy that is Love's inmost part,
+ And all the ladies swim through tears
+ Toward such a work of art.
+
+
+ VI
+
+ This delightful young man
+ Should not lack for honourers,
+ He propitiates me with oysters,
+ With Rhine wine and liqueurs.
+
+ How his coat and pants adorn him!
+ Yet his ties are more adorning,
+ In these he daily comes to ask me:
+ Are you feeling well this morning?
+
+ He speaks of my extended fame,
+ My wit, charm, definitions,
+ And is diligent to serve me,
+ Is detailed in his provisions.
+
+ In evening company he sets his face
+ In most spiritu_el_ positions,
+ And declaims before the ladies
+ My _god-like_ compositions.
+
+ O what comfort is it for me
+ To find him such, when the days bring
+ No comfort, at my time of life when
+ All good things go vanishing.
+
+
+ _TRANSLATOR TO TRANSLATED_
+
+ _O Harry Heine, curses be,_
+ _I live too late to sup with thee!_
+ _Who can demolish at such polished ease_
+ _Philistia's pomp and Art's pomposities!_
+
+
+ VII
+
+ SONG FROM DIE HARZREISE
+
+ I am the Princess Ilza
+ In Ilsenstein I fare,
+ Come with me to that castle
+ And we'll be happy there.
+
+ Thy head will I cover over
+ With my waves' clarity
+ Till thou forget thy sorrow,
+ O wounded sorrowfully.
+
+ Thou wilt in my white arms there,
+ Nay, on my breast thou must
+ Forget and rest and dream there
+ For thine old legend-lust.
+
+ My lips and my heart are thine there
+ As they were his and mine.
+ His? Why the good King Harry's,
+ And he is dead lang syne.
+
+ Dead men stay alway dead men,
+ Life is the live man's part,
+ And I am fair and golden
+ With joy breathless at heart.
+
+ If my heart stay below there,
+ My crystal halls ring clear
+ To the dance of lords and ladies
+ In all their splendid gear.
+
+ The silken trains go rustling,
+ The spur-clinks sound between,
+ The dark dwarfs blow and bow there
+ Small horn and violin.
+
+ Yet shall my white arms hold thee,
+ That bound King Harry about.
+ Ah, I covered his ears with them
+ When the trumpet rang out.
+
+
+
+ UND DRANG
+
+ Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone?
+
+ BINYON.
+
+
+ I
+
+ I am worn faint,
+ The winds of good and evil
+ Blind me with dust
+ And burn me with the cold,
+ There is no comfort being over-man;
+ Yet are we come more near
+ The great oblivions and the labouring night,
+ Inchoate truth and the sepulchral forces.
+
+
+ II
+
+ Confusion, clamour, 'mid the many voices
+ Is there a meaning, a significance?
+
+ That life apart from all life gives and takes,
+ This life, apart from all life's bitter and life's sweet,
+ Is good.
+
+ Ye see me and ye say: exceeding sweet
+ Life's gifts, his youth, his art,
+ And his too soon acclaim.
+
+ I also knew exceeding bitterness,
+ Saw good things altered and old friends fare forth,
+ And what I loved in me hath died too soon,
+ Yea I have seen the "gray above the green";
+ Gay have I lived in life;
+ Though life hath lain
+ Strange hands upon me and hath torn my sides,
+ Yet I believe.
+ * * * * *
+ Life is most cruel where she is most wise.
+
+
+ III
+
+ The will to live goes from me.
+ I have lain
+ Dull and out-worn
+ with some strange, subtle sickness.
+ Who shall say
+ That love is not the very root of this,
+ O thou afar?
+
+ Yet she was near me,
+ that eternal deep.
+ O it is passing strange that love
+ Can blow two ways across one soul.
+ * * * * *
+ And I was Aengus for a thousand years,
+ And she, the ever-living, moved with me
+ And strove amid the waves, and
+ would not go.
+
+
+ IV
+
+ ELEGIA
+
+
+ "_Far buon tempo e trionfare_"
+
+
+ "I have put my days and dreams out of mind'
+ For all their hurry and their weary fret
+ Availed me little. But another kind
+ Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind,
+ Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses
+ Wind and unwind as vainly.
+ * * * * *
+ I have lived long, and died,
+ Yea I have been dead, right often,
+ And have seen one thing:
+ The sun, while he is high, doth light our wrong
+ And none can break the darkness with a song.
+
+ To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours:
+ Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not,
+ Nor all our fears and our anxieties
+ Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar.
+
+ The deed blots out the thought
+ And many thoughts, the vision;
+ And right's a compass with as many poles
+ As there are points in her circumference,
+ 'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even,
+ And all things save sheer right are vain enough.
+ The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun,
+ And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever.
+
+ All things in season and no thing o'er long!
+ Love and desire and gain and good forgetting,
+ Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!
+
+
+ V
+
+ How our modernity,
+ Nerve-wracked and broken, turns
+ Against time's way and all the way of things,
+ Crying with weak and egoistic cries!
+ * * * * *
+ All things are given over,
+ Only the restless will
+ Surges amid the stars
+ Seeking new moods of life,
+ New permutations.
+ * * * * *
+ See, and the very sense of what we know
+ Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain
+ Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no pattern.
+
+
+ VI
+
+ I thought I had put Love by for a time
+ And I was glad, for to me his fair face
+ Is like Pain's face.
+ A little light,
+ The lowered curtain and the theatre!
+ And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act
+ Something that broke the jest! A little light,
+ The gold, and half the profile!
+ The whole face
+ Was nothing like you, yet that image cut
+ Sheer through the moment.
+
+
+ VIb
+
+ I have gone seeking for you in the twilight,
+ Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue,
+ Here where they pass between their teas and teas.
+ Is it such madness? though you could not be
+ Ever in all that crowd, no gown
+ Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown.
+
+ Yet I am fed with faces, is there one
+ That even in the half-light mindeth me.
+
+
+ VII
+
+ THE HOUSE OF SPLENDOUR
+
+ 'Tis Evanoe's,
+ A house not made with hands,
+ But out somewhere beyond the worldly ways
+ Her gold is spread, above, around, inwoven,
+ Strange ways and walls are fashioned out of it.
+
+ And I have seen my Lady in the sun,
+ Her hair was spread about, a sheaf of wings,
+ And red the sunlight was, behind it all.
+
+ And I have seen her there within her house,
+ With six great sapphires hung along the wall,
+ Low, panel-shaped, a-level with her knees,
+ And all her robe was woven of pale gold.
+
+ There are there many rooms and all of gold,
+ Of woven walls deep patterned, of email,
+ Of beaten work; and through the claret stone,
+ Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light.
+
+ Here am I come perforce my love of her,
+ Behold mine adoration
+ Maketh me clear, and there are powers in this
+ Which, played on by the virtues of her soul,
+ Break down the four-square walls of standing time.
+
+
+ VIII
+
+ THE FLAME
+
+ 'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
+ Provençe knew;
+ 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses,
+ Provençe knew.
+ We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom,
+ Drink our immortal moments; we "pass through."
+ We have gone forth beyond your bonds and borders,
+ Provençe knew;
+ And all the tales they ever writ of Oisin
+ Say but this:
+ That man doth pass the net of days and hours.
+ Where time is shrivelled down to time's seed corn
+ We of the Ever-living, in that light
+ Meet through our veils and whisper, and of love.
+
+ O smoke and shadow of a darkling world,
+ Barters of passion, and that tenderness
+ That's but a sort of cunning! O my Love,
+ These, and the rest, and all the rest we knew.
+
+ 'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
+ 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses,
+ 'Tis not "of days and nights" and troubling years,
+ Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray;
+ There _is_ the subtler music, the clear light
+
+ Where time burns back about th' eternal embers.
+ We are not shut from all the thousand heavens:
+ Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen,
+ Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid,
+ Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysophrase.
+
+ Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee
+ Nature herself's turned metaphysical,
+ Who can look on that blue and not believe?
+
+ Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl,
+ O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor,
+ Through all thy various mood I know thee mine;
+
+ If I have merged my soul, or utterly
+ Am solved and bound in, through aught here on earth,
+ There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou,
+ Who call'st about my gates for some lost me;
+ I say my soul flowed back, became translucent.
+ Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands,
+ This thing that moves as man is no more mortal.
+ If thou hast seen my shade sans character,
+ If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments,
+ That glass to all things that o'ershadow it,
+ Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped
+ Your grasp, I have eluded.
+
+
+ IX
+
+ (HORAE BEATAE INSCRIPTIO)
+
+ How will this beauty, when I am far hence,
+ Sweep back upon me and engulf my mind!
+
+ How will these hours, when we twain are gray,
+ Turned in their sapphire tide, come flooding o'er us!
+
+
+ X
+
+ (THE ALTAR)
+
+ Let us build here an exquisite friendship,
+ The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love
+ Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder;
+ Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy.
+
+
+ IX
+
+ (AU SALON)
+
+ Her grave, sweet haughtiness
+ Pleaseth me, and in like wise
+ Her quiet ironies.
+ Others are beautiful, none more, some less.
+
+
+ I suppose, when poetry comes down to facts,
+ When our souls are returned to the gods
+ and the spheres they belong in,
+ Here in the every-day where our acts
+ Rise up and judge us;
+
+ I suppose there are a few dozen verities
+ That no shift of mood can shake from us:
+
+ One place where we'd rather have tea
+ (Thus far hath modernity brought us)
+ "Tea" (Damn you!)
+ Have tea, damn the Caesars,
+ Talk of the latest success, give wing to some scandal,
+ Garble a name we detest, and for prejudice?
+ Set loose the whole consummate pack
+ to bay like Sir Roger de Coverley's
+
+ This our reward for our works,
+ sic crescit gloria mundi:
+ Some circle of not more than three
+ that we prefer to play up to,
+
+ Some few whom we'd rather please
+ than hear the whole aegrum vulgrus
+ Splitting its beery jowl
+ a-meaowling our praises.
+
+ Some certain peculiar things,
+ cari laresque, penates,
+ Some certain accustomed forms,
+ the absolute unimportant.
+
+
+ XII
+
+ (AU JARDIN)
+
+ O You away high there,
+ you that lean
+ From amber lattices upon the cobalt night,
+ I am below amid the pine trees,
+ Amid the little pine trees, hear me!
+
+ "The jester walked in the garden."
+ Did he so?
+ 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.
+ And I loved a love once,
+ Over beyond the moon there,
+ I 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."
+ Did he so?
+
+
+
+
+ RIPOSTES OF EZRA POUND
+
+
+ Gird on thy star, We'll have this out with fate
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+
+ WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ SILET
+ IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM
+ APPARUIT
+ THE TOMB AT AKR ÇAAR
+ PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
+ N.Y.
+ A GIRL
+ "PHASELLUS ILLE"
+ AN OBJECT
+ QUIES
+ THE SEAFARER
+ ECHOES: I.
+ ECHOES: II.
+ AN IMMORALITY
+ DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT
+ SALVE PONTIFEX
+ DORIA [Greek]
+ THE NEEDLE
+ SUB MARE
+ PLUNGE
+ A VIRGINAL
+ PAN IS DEAD
+ THE PICTURE
+ OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO
+ THE RETURN
+ EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE
+ I. DEUX MOVEMENTS
+ II. FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN
+
+
+ THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T.E. HULME
+
+ PREFATORY NOTE
+ AUTUMN
+ MANA ABODA
+ ABOVE THE DOCK
+ THE EMBANKMENT
+ CONVERSION
+
+
+
+ RIPOSTES
+
+
+
+ SILET
+
+
+ When I behold how black, immortal ink
+ Drips from my deathless pen--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!
+
+
+
+ IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM
+
+ _On a certain one's departure_
+
+
+ "Time's bitter flood"! Oh, that's all very well,
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ 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 æther
+ parted before thee.
+
+ Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, casting
+ a-loose the cloak of the body, camest
+ 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, loveliest
+ 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?
+
+
+
+ THE TOMB AT AKR ÇAAR
+
+
+ "I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched
+ 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.
+
+ O 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;
+ I 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'? Was I not thee and Thee?
+
+ And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
+ And I am torn against the jagged dark,
+ 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."
+
+
+
+ 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:
+ Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
+ Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
+ Great minds have sought you--lacking someone else.
+ You have been second always. Tragical?
+ No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
+ One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
+ One average mind--with one thought less, each year.
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ N.Y.
+
+
+ My City, my beloved, my white!
+ Ah, slender,
+ Listen! 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.
+
+
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ "PHASELLUS ILLE"
+
+
+ This _papier-mâché_, 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 OBJECT
+
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ 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. Coldly afflicted,
+ My feet were by frost benumbed.
+ Chill its chains are; chafing sighs
+ Hew my heart round and hunger begot
+ Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not
+ 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,
+ 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--
+ He the prosperous man--what some perform
+ Where wandering them widest draweth.
+ So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,
+ My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
+ Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.
+ On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,
+ Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,
+ Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,
+ O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow
+ My lord deems to me this dead life
+ 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 Cæsars
+ 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,
+ Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,
+ Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,
+ Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,
+ Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,
+ And though he strew the grave with gold,
+ His born brothers, their buried bodies
+ Be an unlikely treasure hoard.
+
+
+
+ ECHOES
+
+
+ I
+
+ GUIDO ORLANDO, SINGING
+
+
+ Befits me praise thine empery,
+ Lady of Valour,
+ Past all disproving;
+ Thou art the flower to me--
+ Nay, by Love's pallor--
+ Of all good loving.
+
+ Worthy to reap men's praises
+ Is he who'd gaze upon
+ Truth's mazes.
+ In like commend is he,
+ Who, loving fixedly,
+ Love so refineth,
+
+ Till thou alone art she
+ In whom love's vested;
+ As branch hath fairest flower
+ Where fruit's suggested.
+
+ This great joy comes to me,
+ To me observing
+ How swiftly thou hast power
+ To pay my serving.
+
+
+
+ II[1]
+
+
+ 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 Ægyptus.
+
+
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ SALVE PONTIFEX
+
+ (A.C.S.)
+
+
+ One after one they leave thee,
+ High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Intoning thy melodies as winds intone
+ The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days.
+ And the sands are many
+ And the seas beyond the sands are one
+ In ultimate, so we here being many
+ Are unity; nathless thy compeers,
+ Knowing thy melody,
+ Lulled with the wine of thy music
+ Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel
+ O'er all the mysteries,
+ High Priest of Iacchus.
+ For the lines of life lie under thy fingers,
+ And above the vari-coloured strands
+ Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude
+ Of the blue waves of heaven,
+ And even as Triplex Sisterhood
+ Thou fingerest the threads knowing neither
+ Cause nor the ending,
+ High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Draw'st forth a multiplicity
+ Of strands, and, beholding
+ The colour thereof, raisest thy voice
+ Towards the sunset,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus!
+ And out of the secrets of the inmost mysteries
+ Thou chantest strange far-sourced canticles:
+ O High Priest of Iacchus!
+ Life and the ways of Death her
+ Twin-born sister, that is life's counterpart,
+ And of night and the winds of night;
+ Silent voices ministering to the souls
+ Of hamadryads that hold council concealèd
+ In streams and tree-shadowing
+ Forests on hill slopes,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ All the manifold mystery
+ Thou makest a wine of song,
+ And maddest thy following even
+ With visions of great deeds
+ And their futility,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus!
+ Though thy co-novices are bent to the scythe
+ Of the magian wind that is voice of Persephone,
+ Leaving thee solitary, master of initiating
+ Mænads that come through the
+ Vine-entangled ways of the forest
+ Seeking, out of all the world,
+ Madness of Iacchus,
+ That being skilled in the secrets of the double cup
+ They might turn the dead of the world
+ Into pæans,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Wreathed with the glory of thy years of creating
+ Entangled music,
+ Breathe!
+ Now that the evening cometh upon thee,
+ Breathe upon us, that low-bowed and exultant
+ Drink wine of Iacchus, that since the conquering
+ Hath been chiefly containèd in the numbers
+ Of them that, even as thou, have woven
+ Wicker baskets for grape clusters
+ Wherein is concealèd the source of the vintage,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Breathe thou upon us
+ Thy magic in parting!
+ Even as they thy co-novices,
+ At being mingled with the sea,
+ While yet thou madest thy canticles
+ Serving upright before the altar
+ That is bound about with shadows
+ Of dead years wherein thy Iacchus
+ Looked not upon the hills, that being
+ Uncared for, praised not him in entirety.
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Being now near to the border of the sands
+ Where the sapphire girdle of the sea
+ Encinctureth the maiden
+ Persephone, released for the spring,
+ Look! Breathe upon us
+ The wonder of the thrice encinctured mystery
+ Whereby thou being full of years art young,
+ Loving even this lithe Persephone
+ That is free for the seasons of plenty;
+ Whereby thou being young art old
+ And shalt stand before this Persephone
+ Whom thou lovest,
+ In darkness, even at that time
+ That she being returned to her husband
+ Shall be queen and a maiden no longer,
+ Wherein thou being neither old nor young
+ Standing on the verge of the sea
+ Shalt pass from being sand,
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ And becoming wave
+ Shalt encircle all sands,
+ Being transmuted through all
+ The girdling of the sea.
+
+ O High Priest of Iacchus,
+ Breathe thou upon us!
+
+
+ _Note._--This apostrophe was written three years
+ before Swinburne's death.
+
+
+
+ DORIA [Greek]
+
+
+ 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.
+
+
+
+ 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
+ Algae reach up and out beneath
+ Pale slow green surgings of the under-wave,
+ 'Mid these things older than the names they have,
+ These things that are familiars of the god.
+
+
+
+ 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
+
+
+ No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately,
+ I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
+ For my surrounding air has a new lightness;
+ Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
+ And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;
+ As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness.
+ 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 tress a likeness of the savour:
+ As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.
+
+
+
+ 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?
+
+
+
+ THE PICTURE[1]
+
+
+ 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] "Venus Reclining," by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-93).
+
+
+
+ OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO
+
+
+ This man knew out the secret ways of love,
+ No man could paint such things who did not know.
+
+ And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian,
+ And you are here, who are "The Isles" to me.
+
+ And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
+ The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.
+
+
+
+ THE RETURN
+
+
+ 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 wingèd 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.
+
+
+
+ EFFECTS OF MUSIC UPON A COMPANY OF PEOPLE
+
+
+ I
+
+ DEUX MOVEMENTS
+
+ 1. Temple qui fut.
+ 2. Poissons d'or.
+
+
+ 1
+
+ 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!
+
+ 2
+
+ The petals!
+ On the tip of each the figure
+ Delicate.
+ See, they dance, step to step.
+ Flora to festival,
+ Twine, bend, bow,
+ Frolic involve ye.
+ Woven the step,
+ Woven the tread, the moving.
+ Ribands they move,
+ Wave, bow to the centre.
+ Pause, rise, deepen in colour,
+ And fold in drowsily.
+
+
+ II
+
+ FROM A THING BY SCHUMANN
+
+
+ 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!
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF T.E. HULME
+
+
+
+ PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+ In publishing his _Complete Poetical Works_
+ at thirty,[1] Mr Hulme has set an enviable
+ example to many of his contemporaries
+ who have had less to say.
+
+ They are reprinted here for good
+ fellowship; for good custom, a custom
+ out of Tuscany and of Provence; and
+ thirdly, for convenience, seeing their smallness
+ of bulk; and for good memory,
+ seeing that they recall certain evenings
+ and meetings of two years gone, dull
+ enough at the time, but rather pleasant
+ to look back upon.
+
+ As for the "School of Images," which
+ may or may not have existed, its principles
+ were not so interesting as those of the
+ "inherent dynamists" or of _Les Unanimistes_,
+ yet they were probably sounder
+ than those of a certain French school
+ which attempted to dispense with verbs
+ altogether; or of the Impressionists who
+ brought forth:
+
+ "Pink pigs blossoming upon the hillside";
+
+ or of the Post-Impressionists who beseech
+ their ladies to let down slate-blue hair
+ over their raspberry-coloured flanks.
+
+ _Ardoise_ rimed richly--ah, richly and rarely
+ rimed!--with _framboise_.
+
+ As for the future, _Les Imagistes_, the
+ descendants of the forgotten school of
+ 1909, have that in their keeping.
+
+ I refrain from publishing my proposed
+ _Historical Memoir_ of their forerunners,
+ because Mr Hulme has threatened to
+ print the original propaganda.
+
+ E.P.
+
+
+ [1] Mr Pound has grossly exaggerated my age.--T.E.H.
+
+
+
+ AUTUMN
+
+
+ A touch of cold in the Autumn night--
+ I walked abroad,
+ And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
+ Like a red-faced farmer.
+ I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
+ And round about were the wistful stars
+ With white faces like town children.
+
+
+
+ MANA ABODA
+
+ Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary vibration,
+ the feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse unable to
+ reach its natural end.
+
+
+ Mana Aboda, whose bent form
+ The sky in archèd circle is,
+ Seems ever for an unknown grief to mourn.
+ Yet on a day I heard her cry:
+ "I weary of the roses and the singing poets--
+ Josephs all, not tall enough to try."
+
+
+
+ ABOVE THE DOCK
+
+
+ Above the quiet dock in mid night,
+ Tangled in the tall mast's corded height,
+ Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
+ Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.
+
+
+
+ THE EMBANKMENT
+
+ (The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a
+ cold, bitter night.)
+
+
+ Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
+ In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
+ Now see I
+ That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
+ Oh, God, make small
+ The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
+ That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
+
+
+
+ CONVERSION
+
+
+ Lighthearted I walked into the valley wood
+ In the time of hyacinths,
+ Till beauty like a scented cloth
+ Cast over, stifled me. I was bound
+ Motionless and faint of breath
+ By loveliness that is her own eunuch.
+
+ Now pass I to the final river
+ Ignominiously, in a sack, without sound,
+ As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorus.
+
+
+ FINIS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Canzoni & Ripostes, by Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39783 ***