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diff --git a/old/67441-0.txt b/old/67441-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ebbdf71..0000000 --- a/old/67441-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2318 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Indian Ass, by Harold Acton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: An Indian Ass - -Author: Harold Acton - -Release Date: February 19, 2022 [eBook #67441] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust - Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INDIAN ASS *** - - - - - - AN INDIAN ASS - - _By the same author_ - - - AQUARIUM - - - - - AN INDIAN ASS - - BY - - HAROLD ACTON - - “Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass - Most merrily, I’ll be sworn; - For many an honest Indian ass - Goes for an Unicorn. - - Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight! - He tickles this age that can - Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte - And Leda’s goose a swan.” - - - [Illustration] - - DUCKWORTH - - 3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C. - - - _First published in 1925_ - _All rights reserved_ - - - Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -LAMENT FOR ADONIS 7 - -WHEN FRIGATES FROM LONG VOYAGES 13 - -CAPRICCIO ESPAGNOL 15 - -TRÉPAK 18 - -THE INVESTITURE OF A SPINSTER HOB-GOBLIN 20 - -THE WERE-WOLF 21 - -HILARITY 22 - -THE GODS 26 - -AS DMITRI KARAMAZOFF SANG ON THE WAY TO CHAOS 27 - -IN THE TRAIN DE LUXE 31 - -THE PRODIGAL SON 33 - -VENTILATION 38 - -AFTER 40 - -GREEN GROW THE RUSHES, O 43 - -WORDS 44 - -GREENNESS UNSECRETED 46 - -BACK STREETS 48 - -WERTHER-INTROSPECTION 49 - -ON THE THEME OF OPHELIA’S MADNESS 51 - -THESE CONSOLATIONS 53 - -IN THE MONTH OF ATHYR 55 - -DISCOVERIES 56 - -OLD WOMAN 57 - -COLD JOINTS I 59 - -COLD JOINTS II 60 - -COLD JOINTS III 61 - -INVOCATION 63 - -LAME LADY 64 - -CONVERSATIONS AND CRUMBLING 66 - -INTERMEZZO 69 - - -THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH - -I THE GIBBET 71 - -II SAINT 73 - -III HÉRODIADE 74 - - - - - _Lament for Adonis_ - - - Now fogs enfold the sea - And berries fall from eaves, - The cat’s eyes glitter green into the dark. - The sloping hills of myrrh, - The trees with tender anise overweighed, - The pointed flag-leaves stir - Only to weep again, - Only to sob and mourn Adonis dead. - - Throughout this dolorous night of cloudy jade - Even the hornless dragon of the sea, - The green and golden sequined basilisk, - The water-scorpion and the python-king - Like sad eclipses trail about the land. - The crane, the ibis and the mango-bird, - The jungle-fowl, the heron and the roc, - The badger and three-footed tortoise join - In pouring out their eyes. - - O Cypris violet-stoled, O wrapped in purple woof - Arise and beat your azure-veined breasts! - Small jewelled nipples, bleed! - For I have seen you make that curved mouth - A bed of balsam, bed of crisp lush flowers, - Whose poor crushed frozen lips compactly closed - Lie, flakes of ice, where once were flakes of fire, - Their loveliness a thing of agony. - The moon has slanted off, and querulous ghosts - Hover along the brink of treacherous voids - And leap into this night of blinded eyes - (Blind now to pleasure’s lapping ecstasies); - This peacock-throated night whose stifling cries - Shudder and crack: ’tis Misery who calls - “Woe” to the black solemnities of sky - For loveliest Adonis--he is dead. - - Low on the hills he lies, the lovely bleeding one, - His throat aflash with faint stunned strands of light. - Low on the hills he lies and breathes his life away - And from his thigh of milk-white agate gashed, - Slit by the cruel tusk, - The ruby blood drips down his skin of snow. - Beneath his brows stars set in crystal deep - (Once memories, hungers glinted in their pools), - Are glazed dim, opaque and lustreless, - The blue orbs burn no more beneath translucent lids. - His locks are wet with the clear drops of night, - The rose has fled his lip: the very kiss hangs dead, - The kiss that Cypris never will forego. - - And when the bitter white wind breaks the morn, - His gathered hounds bay gloom about his corpse, - The green-haired Nereids of the marsh make moan, - Frail flowers dabble pollened cheeks with tears, - From vavicel to calyx petals weep.... - Long spiral tufts of drooping galingale, - The shadowy deer-grass and the swallow-wort - Sob through their bat’s wing tissues tremulous, - The poplars weeping amber in the vales, - The orchises and sandal-trees, lament. - - But Aphrodite with unbraided hair - And tragic thorn-pierced feet so delicate, - Calls through the woodlands and again, again. - O, more than music’s many stringèd charms, - His lulling name reverberates afar - Where faint sails clasp the ribbands of the sea. - But round his navel leaps the thick dark blood, - His chest is lapped in scarlet from the thighs, - Now purpled are those limbs afore as white - As veils of snow unflecked by merest breeze. - - Cypris was fair: whilst her Adonis lived - The light would melt her body into song, - But with Adonis has her beauty died, - Died as a vaporous melody on a lute. - “Woe, woe, for Cypris!” all the mountains call, - The oak-trees answer: “For Adonis, woe!” - For Aphrodite all the rivers weep, - The wells bewail Adonis on the hills. - Echo resounds “Ai, ai ... Adonis dead ... - Most beautiful Adonis ... he is dead.” - As Venus saw the wasting limbs, the wound - Gashed in the whiteness of her loved one’s thighs, - She clasped him to her, moaning supply warm - Against his chilled inertness: - - “Farewell, Adonis; once, as I was telling - Deluding tales of happiness, the morrow, - When I had thought that joy had come for dwelling, - Came sorrow. - - “The almoner of death, the silent creeper, - Has snared my love, and I shall see him never, - I, manacled in miseries, a weeper - For ever. - - “A widowed goddess with her beauty setting - Like a gold sun to rise no longer, never, - Whose love, with Acheron, is fast forgetting - Her for ever.” - - For each blood drop the Paphian sheds a tear, - And tears and blood on earth are turned to flowers: - The ruby blood brings forth the pursy rose, - The tears bring forth the air-white wind-flower, - For loveliest Adonis--he is dead. - - No seemly couch, this lonely bed of leaves - For dead Adonis: beautiful in death - As one that stumbles on a slumber, falls - On downy-wingèd doze of braided air. - - Your bed let him possess, O Cytherea, - Lay him to sleep on couch of twisted gold, - The couch that yearns for wan Adonis’ limbs. - Cast on him drooping eyes of jasmine-flowers, - Nay, all the flowers have faded in his death, - As keen swift lovely murmurs drowned on breeze. - Sprinkle his limbs with bakkaris and myrrh, - Nay, perished all the perfumes in his death, - All flushed soft legendary scents dissolve-- - Disquieting erotic memories. - - The torches on the lintel all are quenched - And Hymenæus rends the bridal crown. - No more the song is “Hymen”: a new song - The Graces grieve like mournful Autumn boughs, - The toneless sound that means a broken heart: - “Woe, for Adonis, son of Cinyrus!” - To him the Muses chant their starry music, - And painted insects floating motionless - At their weird sound, unconscious of the day, - Bright feathered wings hung in the gloom of thought - Mimic the melancholy atmosphere - And dry words start and rattle in the throat, - Shudder in sorrow; but he does not heed. - - The bending vault of stars, - Of cool green quiet stars, - Where clouds but catch the palest tinge of day, - Is tangled with the sea; - The moonlight tossed and thrown by jostling waves - Refrain from dirges, cease, - O Cypris, your lament. - Again you must bewail another year! - - - - - _When Frigates from Long Voyages_ ... - - - When frigates from long voyages - Drift into harbour, then I see - Whirled momentary mirages - Of inspissated greenery-- - Mazed mangroves casting their aerial roots, - And diamond water-shoots - Embroidering the air. - And in the drowsy hanging-gardens there - Roam slowly-swaying elephants; - The fulgurant phœnix with her sycophants, - Those trailing-plumèd birds of paradise, - Sits on a cactus thorn. - And gleaming in the ruby-veinèd morn - Lie pools of liquid amber for the indolent crocodile - To flounder in and dolorously smile. - Spick diving gannets, speckled pelicans, - Flutter with feather-footed ptarmigans. - Orange-liveried marmosets - Climb slender cypress minarets. - Strange garrisons - Of emerald-mailed chameleons, - And peacocks, fans outspread as gonfalons, - Shrill-voiced as amazons; - Coiled dinosaurs that lap the hydromel - From many a mauve-lipped shell.... - The unicorns are neighing from afar, - Where hills of cinnabar - Loom high - Like venomous Borgia-philtres on the sky. - - - - - _Capriccio Espagnol_ - - - “Y entre puente y otro puente - Zaragoza es my tierra.” - - - Of blood blown-dry brown velvet, baldaquins, - Words guttural--then soft as dulcimers: - Of rays of rapid light through fishes’ fins - Prisoned in tanks profound where nothing stirs; - Of nights that ooze weird sounds, and starry eyes - On lattice fixed and bulging balconies:-- - - Of these my brain built castles rapidly, - And tolled metallic like a beaten bell - Of hard green copper; straggling aimlessly - Over ravine and granite citadel - Were cities unpremeditated, dry, - As draughts of space inhaled from scorching sky. - - Through these Cathedrals rose like cachalots - Twisted of height and gloom and sudden glow. - Their glossy floors reflect the crimson clots - Of vestment swirling, swishing to and fro-- - And when the beadle taps his ponderous mace - Faint echoes rustle from the Altar’s lace. - - Within the town: feeble electric light - Among the dusty foliage of the trees, - Like gentle cheeks against the steely night, - With boughs of thick smooth silver; jubilees - Of saints are frequent--in their thoughtfulness - The citizens will give their saint a dress. - - They lift her from the gilded canopy, - Studded in far Peru, on which she stands, - Sumptuous, realistic, in each eye - A gaping jewel; sprouting from her hands - Are paper flowers--in their thoughtfulness - They give their saint a new magenta dress. - - The ceremony done, and people doff - Their piety: serrated streets resound - With gossip, vacuous laughter, idle scoff. - Like strips of tape the scattered crowds confound, - Mantillas and a rout of dusky hair, - Stray thoughts jerk off and clatter in the air.... - - Austere this land, and yet it utters flesh: - The longing ache of contact, lids like song - And lips like speech melodious: a mesh - For Don Juans and sanguine passions; strong - This earth of sprinkled blood, the seed of gold, - Whose tainted glitters dazzle young and old! - - Jagged umber ridges freaked with lines of snow, - Bitumen lakes, austere as faded fire, - And vague waste lands where gypsies squatting low - Croon winged abandoned musics that expire - Like bruised sweet herbs, gushed madness, agonies - Of lances hurled at pulseless arteries. - - Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s thigh - Legioned, remote and abstract, yet withal - Evocative of an infinity-- - Beauty becoming metaphysical-- - This Phœnix-land breeds new birds in the brain - From ash, for I have never been to Spain. - - - - - _Trépak_ - - - The trees sprawl up like trumpets in the night, - Great ghosts of once-viridian: but now, - Fibred with brittle tufts of massy snow, - They creak with burdened whiteness, for the bright - Blue-prismed stalactites like wounds of light - Are pendulous from their pagoda-boughs. - And when a wind whirs in among the trees, - As some Silenus fumbling frantic hands - Into a cleft of honey, they cast off - A whittling dust of little hispid stars. - The moon is hungry. Lo! the moon has thinned - To finger-nail’s fine fringe; she is forlorn - With thought of Spring’s flown hollow spells of joy, - When the now-passionless statue of her mind - Was tremulous with passion, nescient lips - Stammered lush ingenuities of love. - Then Summer crackled like a yawn of fire: - The big-lipped consummation of desire. - A starved, lean-ribbed dog with rheumy eyes - Yelps up at her, his poor thin thread of voice - Nigh snaps, and trails its note into a growl, - Then tumbles, frozen stark, amongst the snow. - The barbèd minutes shiver chillily - In wait for something. - - Ho! who’s this, a man? - In this torn catafalque of barren boughs? - A patriarchal bearded brittle-bones - Daft, dazed with drink, shuffles his slipshod feet - Scattering sprays of crisply sparkling snow. - Death clanks his rusty mail and flaps his wings - And ogling, draws the man into a dance: - - “No more the malady of life unlived - With no grand-opera effects; no more - Heroic sunsets, agonies of rose - To wear you faint; no more the whirlpool’s mist - Of good and evil. It shall be revealed - There is no meaning, no significance - In all this clamour, in this viscous trail - Of sentimental sanatoriums. - Those frowning stoic caryatides, - Who contemplate in decorous solitude - This elegant Golgotha of futile birth, - Are fraudulent mountebanks; unmanicured, - Life’s pointed nails grapple and tear your flanks - Without a murmur trembling from your lips, - O broken vessel sprayed with broken light, - Come to oblivion’s arms; sepulchral night, - Inchoate truth await you--they are kind. - Close your red lashless eyelids. Death is fair....” - - - - - _The Investiture of a Spinster Hob-Goblin_ - - - Oh have you heard the chaunt of snails - Tilting upon a big brown leaf, - And held the insect world in fief - And pared the devil’s gilded nails? - - And have you parlied with the rose, - And seen the ballet of the bats - And watched the sloths, our acrobats, - Performing at our antic-shows? - - And have you drunk the tears of stars, - And bathed in bubbles of the moon, - And heard the gay grasshoppers croon, - Who use their bodies as guitars? - - Then, if you’ve seen the phœnix land - Or if a satyr’s beard you’ve sawn, - And filed the eye-brows of a faun, - We will admit you to our band. - - The hedonistic unicorns, - Who drive our chariots through the sky, - Will lead you to our empery - Of languid dappled damson dawns. - - - - - _The Were-Wolf_ - - - All in the hush of a green night, - He left the downy marriage-bed - In a chill sweat, his face chalk-white, - His voice spoke hoarsely of the dead. - - The young wife, wakened by his howls, - Clutched bed-post dumb with fright, surprise; - Like lepers huddled under cowls, - Red films lay on her husband’s eyes. - - “I am become a wolf,” he said, - “And I will to the churchyard-site - To throttle graves, to raise the dead. - Strange flesh will be my fare to-night!” - - And barking at the slice of moon - He scampered nimbly on all fours. - She never saw him more; one noon - She spied the imprint of wolf’s claws. - - - - - _Hilarity_ - - - Come, let us sing the world’s hilarity, - Now that a silence overspreads the hills, - Each crevice, muscle, wimpling in a haze, - Blue-ragged fustian of twilight: come - And crack the sky with laughter, mounting shrill, - Let it dissolve the æther, let it break - In bubbles, circles ever-bosoming, - As when a trout has troubled a still pool. - - Scatter it like a hungry pack of hounds, - Worry and tear and grind it into strips, - Ravish and tread on it, then let it be - To crawl before us like the ooze of oil, - A worm of shame, a mean and squamous thing. - - Hysteria, guide us! Let our laughter heave, - Swell shriek on shriek, till it engender fear - Like peacocks in abandoned palaces - Whose sharp and melancholy discords ring - And rinse like lightning through the vaulted roofs - At sunset hour, when skies are smeared with blood. - Come, drown the viol’s pallid amber notes, - Submerge the fevered pluckings at the lute, - Let no soft rippling cadences be spilled, - But beat a riot out upon the drums. - Fescennine gongs shall kindle us to blaze, - And thus our fumes, well ballasted, will steer - Towards the placid stars and make them reel. - - Our lives are cratered with great pocks and scabs, - Meticulously morselled into pangs, - Birth-scream, death-rattle, straggling years between, - Of childhood and uneasy puberty, - Of adolescence and maturity, - Resolve tormented into slow decay, - Crabbed, agued, rheumatic, cough our lives away. - And some, less fortunate, cough up their blood. - - Then let us sing the world’s hilarity! - With plunging pistons let our laughter press, - Lumbering in massed squadrons, vitriol - To blister the anæmic orb of moon. - And there are many hours before the dawn. - The hilewort, nightshade, agrimony-wand - Surrender to the fingers of the breeze, - Lay bare their throats, let loose their floating hair. - - Some luckless women bear their children blind - And some hare-lipped and others lunatick - With soft and fumbling brains and shifting eyes, - Who dandle curly flowers, their lolling tongues - Clicking and moist with unrestrained saliva. - Perhaps ’twere better that they were born blind, - Never to see the ugliness of man, - The mirrors of his noisome, clammy thoughts, - Like night-grown fungi pushing on the air, - But hold sweet music palpable, and sounds, - Tones, undertones: a paradise of hues, - And glowing forms in silk embroideries. - The silence, too, will seem a rhythmic motion, - A saraband for snow-white feet to tread, - And not a tortured cripple crouching low - Amongst the blotting shadows of his soul, - To nurse his agony with evil oaths, - The blight-scarred sickly vapours of remorse, - Sputtered and writhing from his twisted lips. - - Were a revolver fired with loud report, - The only music welcome to our ears, - The poor blind man would tremble, clutch a chair.... - - Day after day the limbs of man are gnawed - And flayed by every manner of disease, - Eaten of lice, they seem the spawn of slugs, - And cancer slowly scrabbles at their vitals. - The small-pox ploughs their faces into ruts - And scurvy furrows, strange deformities - Distend and hunch them into monstrous shapes, - Like shadows gripping at realities, - To scrape a livid grave amongst the slime. - Some calcined ashen white with leprosy - Will scream for terror at their dreadful hands, - The touch of which would seem to cause decay - The roots they tear, the pappy fruit they pluck, - And prowling beasts will turn in haste and flee - Before their weary footsteps through the night. - - Our quickened hearts have grated on themselves, - We groin with lappered morphews of the mind, - Our wanton mirth has frozen into sorrow, - And we had thought to fashion of our joy - Round crackling pearls to pelt our wine-drenched loves. - But we were to have sung hilarity! - - Our clowns are turned into tragedians, - And Pierrot’s chalk-white face is crinkled up - With bitter weeping; roguish Harlequin, - His apple cheeks all wet and blobbed with tears, - Wanders the streets of Bergamo alone. - And floating through the utter silences, - Our sobs well hugely, spasms echoing - To jeer and mock at us, abortive fools, - Who came to sing the world’s hilarity. - - - - - _The Gods_ - - - Lightning zigzags and again - Comets reel like tipsy girls, - Bulbous clouds let down the rain, - Little silver chains of pearls. - - Through the frenzied city beats - A bourdon-drumming, heavy, low. - In long and apoplectic streets - The gods are passing to and fro. - - I watch them walk among the crowds, - Their beards a-glittering with stars, - Until they merge into the clouds - Among the chimney’s fat cigars. - - While lovers in their foolishness - Lisp out the night with hopes and fears, - Whilst into void and emptiness - Time clatters off and disappears. - - - - - _As Dmitri Karamazoff sang on the way to Chaos_ - - - Eight days without a sun: but I am calm - And cultivate my tulips fixedly, - I watch them flick their flighty freckled tongues - Mocking and sweetly monstrous blares of time. - (We weep to see you haste away so soon!) - The gas is near extinct upon the plush, - Like the last birds its flares have ebbed away. - Blue witness of the Second Empire, gas!-- - In cabriolets we echoed through the night - And caracoled with busselled courtesans-- - You lit the boulevards and avenues, - While Paul Verlaine, a candle in his hand, - Would totter up to bed and watch the moon - _Comme un point sur un i_--so orotund.... - Through fumes and crapulous velleities. - - But now the batteries like headaches beat - Against the temples of humanity; - A network of pure electricity - Installed for quick transmission through the world - Pours a perpetual electric day. - Men plough their fields by searchlights from the skies, - By searchlights blatant, geometrical, - As fingers from each god-like aeroplane - Pointed to each created mass of flesh - Accusing and forewarning. - - O empresses of jade who slumber on your cushions, - Who slumber delicately on your cushions! - If we were moulded of a subtle stone - Instead of being merely flesh and bone, - We’d imitate your cool and elegant curves. - To chill green jade our hot and shattered nerves - Would clot or petrify or fossilize-- - And moss to moist the finnèd lids of eyes, - Lush velvet soaking on the irises - Looped round with tiredness and its swollen reds - Would grow about our damask four-post beds. - We would be green, an ecstasy of green! - As small sea-violets, virgin forest’s green, - Where trees like coral sponges dab the air, - And through each weft you hear a piece of wind, - A tiny concertina-push of sound - And then an inrush, sobbing gently inward. - - Why do we drown in customs, why become - Lost dying flames and strangers to the skies - Whose beams with clouds like wingèd chariots fly? - Why do we climb the towers which break our knees, - Horrible towers from which, when we look down - We wish to hurl ourselves? - O, then the ant-like herd below would feel - A gentle spray of entrails--they’d recoil!-- - Perhaps one woman faints: we do not care, - The worm has not become our paramour, - The worm has not yet pierced our winding-sheets. - - Then why not, like Empedocles, - Lower our limbs into volcano-craters, - And make the world believe that mighty God - Translated us into His company - On dolphins’ backs across a nectar lake, - To share the glory of His attributes, - His love like myrrh and incense and the fruits - That dangle from exotic herbs and trees - All gold and ripe as from Hesperides? - - An architect of ruin onion-eyed - Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry - Has cast the die of quick finality - Among the cheese-mites in this gap of time. - Through Chaos: murmurs, stumblings, hordes that rend - The fabric which is called reality. - The light, which was a sluice of molten gold, - The crystal winds, disperse in empty air. - - The deep red empty holes which were our eyes - Sense only burstings of electric globes. - Louder the heat, like vitriol, wounds our ears - Burning with dull blue thunder. - And then--a tune upon the piccolo, - One of the musical Unemployed, I know, - Or some stray angel with pink sugar wings - Trying to see the cheerful side of things! - - - - - _In the Train de Luxe_ - - - “It is dangerous to lean out of the window.” - No doubt, when meteors shoot athwart the night. - No doubt, no doubt; and yet it haunts the sight. - I read, re-read this ponderous advice - In French and English; play a game of dice - With mental clouds through cannonades of hours, - With foamless islands legioned with lush flow’rs, - Prismatic juicy glades bee-pasturing. - - “In case of danger you must pull the ring.” - A girl arranges a mellifluous grin: - Eternal teas and afternoons begin - To lurk within the forests of the mind - With vividness that cuts it like a wind. - And while my nostrils draw the vital air, - They quiver to discern the sweat of hair - In awkward crevices! _Signal d’Alarme_ - Recalls the fact that I am safe from harm. - - I count, re-count each pendulum and beat. - Pardie! the train has swollen in the heat; - Freighted with smuts he heaves his metal breasts, - Nor heeds the broad and burning moon’s behests. - (The moon is lingering and luminous. - Mired in a wrinkling silk diaphanous - She floats a supple pose upon the air - And whispers invitations.) - “I don’t care!” - The train replies; although his body glows, - He is austere as tempest-sifted snows, - Pursuing moral dumb-bell exercise - To muscle-burst criterion; he defies - Flesh and its shuddering spurts of harlotry. - Pavilioned on hills of chastity, - “I do not care a damn,” the train replies. - - - - - _The Prodigal Son_ - - - The young man yawned with feigned inconsequence - Of manner; boredom exquisite; a fence - To hide the quick explosions in his soul. - He sucked at his surroundings, and the whole - Grim agony of his dull youth returned, - The blue fins of his sullen eyelids burned, - He could have mouthed a curse, an oath obscene: - For horror at the glib familiar scene - A clayey lump stuck blistered in his throat. - Chrysallic faces, garlic, myosote, - And rows of beans and artichokes, a field - Interminably patterned, jigged and reeled - Along the corridors of memory. - - “Is childhood happy? dismal fallacy! - And yet I am not one of those who think - That lilies smell not, orange-flowers stink.” - Here had the best hours coolly leaked away - Like driblets from a tap, a disarray - Of tumbled hispid stars; a clean dry sleep - Of stunted senses, where he could not weep - For ignorance. And ever shone the moon; - The warm sky twinkled like a chopped lagoon. - “This world is but a foggy circumstance,” - He thought, “where timid mortals must advance - To claim their rights and drain what cup of joy - It has to offer, now no longer boy - I’ll cease to play the rôle of Tantalus, - But leave this place, discharge a blunderbuss - Against my present drawling mode of life. - I’m still too young to bear the plague of wife, - And though ’tis true, when all fine things be said, - I’m welcome to a partner for my bed, - To kiss a gaping throat of flaccid silk; - I fear her plump white breasts would hold no milk - To suckle babes on, after I had done - With kissing at her nipples; one by one - Each new-born babe would wither up and die.” - - He picked his teeth and fetched a windy sigh, - Informed his father of his bold resolve, - Who told him of the cost it would involve: - So, settling up accounts, he bade farewell - To all the damned of his domestic hell. - - Oh _wagon-lits_ and tickets bought from Cook’s, - Surpassing all the fairy-tales in books! - Warm exhalations, streets with spicy smells - And oh, the Poe-like harmonies of bells! - Venice and Ruskin and _The Deadly Lamps_, - The pulsing cafés and patchouli’d vamps - With sticky flowers in their copper hair, - The languid music throbbing on the air! - The Watteau _fêtes galantes_, the bistre-brown - Sombrero’d poets, yet without a crown - To purchase food; the graceful unwashed hands - And flung-proud gestures of these Southern lands! - The tiny shiny shoes with pointed tips - And carmine-rouged pursed petulance of lips! - But all the while the young man’s pockets burned, - And all the while he piteously yearned - For lucre; many azure nights he’d lain - With shirt-front soaked and squelching in champagne - And pleasures, money, all are volatile, - For after belching Pol-Roger the bile - Will wreak revenge. - - And thus it came about - That when his full supply had given out, - The harlots would no longer share his bed; - Since he could pay no cash, they, laughing, said: - “One sucks the orange, throws away the peel.” - The young man’s vanity forbade him kneel - As penitent before his father’s glare, - Before the well-staged patronising stare - Of his familiar family--poor things-- - How they would love to clip his phœnix-wings! - - So he became a labourer and slept - In musty garrets where the grey mice crept, - With cobwebs and the gibbering of bats - And scuttling cockroaches, and lice, and rats - Who dragged their heavy bellies on the floor - Thud, thud and thud; the creaking of the door - In twilight cavernous, the broken pane - Through which the hiss and crackle of the rain - Would slant in rivulets across the planks, - The thunder tramped, the lightning played his pranks - Like a young leopard prancing from the skies - Divinely, whilst the tough wind slapped its thighs. - - Through dismal days he sweated at the plough. - And half a crust beneath an apple-bough - Became his nourishment, and so he thinned - In figure-line; the sweltering east wind - And thick-flamed sun had bronzed his body quite.... - And often through the oozing hours of night - He’d sing a sparkling catch of better times-- - No longer pedant à propos of rhymes, - - He’d hum or whistle: “Gosh, she looks immense, - You never met a girl like sweet Hortense,” - With genuine emotion in his throat. - But soon he was reduced to pawning coat - And hat; dismissed for superflux of dreams - Or bathing on hot afternoons in streams - When there was corn to reap, or hay to store - In soporific barns; and all the more - He dreamt of silken harlots, velvet wine. - A tender farmer let him tend the swine. - - With weighty flanks well caked in slime, a sow - Grunted and suckled farrow, whilst a cow - Lowed like a mellow snore; a mastiff whined - To demonstrate sheer vacancy of mind. - “Shall I arise and go? ’tis not too late - To gain an entrance to my father’s gate.” - The young man shook his head and muttered “No, - Nor shall arise, nor to my father go.” - He had acquired a preference to dine - On scraps amongst the confidential swine. - - - - - _Ventilation_ - - - Open the window! now that breezes play - Over the wrinkled hills; the sweltering day - Fused by the wedge-shaped engines of the sun - With heat intensive, split as flowers spun - Of glass to myriad particles minute - With spot-like swiftness, hovers chilled and mute. - - Now that no far voice cleaves the air or blurs, - No plash, no fall of oars, no rumour stirs, - And life itself has long outbreathed its lungs-- - (Or so it seems, for no dim amorous tongues - Trouble the foliage, and the moon is full, - Unflecked by wind-froth); all seems sorrowful - With beauty exanimate, a beauty dead, - A subterranean silence where vague dread - Puckers the brooding soul until it weeps - Terrible heavy tears. The garden sleeps.... - Sleeps as the desolate magnificence - Of Angkor with its grave mute eloquence - Where blistering suns, invectives of the wind - Hurl vainly; frenzied storms undisciplined - Beat, plunge inanely at the steadfast walls. - And no sad throat of nightingale enthralls - The quickly-pulsing heart with turbulent song. - - So massive has the stillness grown, so strong - A blood-vessel would burst, a muscle snap, - A sane malt mind would rave, grow weak as pap.... - Oh aching ears, have you too heard the lips - Of silence utter some apocalypse - To slake the agony of my desires, - To scatter them like ashes of the pyres - Of calcined and cremated limbs? but hark - In the faint failing distances what spark - Of flashed sound quivers? hold your breath, what flush - Of fluid moan? The sluice is opened; rush - And avalanche of panic-writhing cries. - Some soul in anguish is it? vague surmise - As of some tragedy--I shudder, shake - With fear.... - It is the peacocks by the lake! - - - - - _After_ - - - The sky is very blue to-day, - And the soft turf yields - To each well-fitting shoe; so they - Bring their bananas and sandwiches - To munch on the battle-fields. - - O, why has Nature taken such a sheen, - Why does the grass grow green, - So cruelly green? - O, surely it must wither in the spate - Of clashing contumacious worlds of agony and hate! - How can the sun keep pace so? why not reel, - White steel, - Or stagger ankleted with yawning fire - Neath the tremendous byre? - But the absurd courageous clouds - Look on, look on - In bustling business crowds, - They con - A Masse-Mensch imaginary power. - They do not cower - Before the charabancs’ toot toot a toot - And men who bring their sandwiches to boot, - And break beer-bottles where men’s souls were torn - By invisible billion hands ... where agony was born. - There is a lady in an orange gown. - - (Did not those shrieks hang airily down, - Suspended for eternity to hear, - A thousand tired stars over a shattered town - Not formed enough to speak, but formed enough to shriek - And formed enough to make men fear?) - - Not so. The roses dangle deep asleep, - Men play Bo-peep - With poor worn-out banalities, - Sentimentalities, - Tepid-with-languor-lilies - And daffodillies. - We shall have each wind-melody dictated - And by Puccini orchestrated, - And from innumerable Noah’s arks - Those little gasps of men make little gasp remarks - And puff Abdullas in their elegant central parks. - - A cross ... a cross ... and row on row the same - Small cross without a name, - Each silhouette so slim - And, God, how ghastlily trim! - And down beneath the skeletons are piled. -... But now a child - Discovering some fraction of a bomb, - Adventure-wild, - Performs a jig with exquisite aplomb - Over, who knows? a corpse or mandrake root - (What matters it?) the charabancs toot-toot, - The sky’s so very blue to-day - And the soft turf yields - To each well-fitting shoe: and they - Bring their bananas and sandwiches - To munch on the battle-fields. - - - - - _Green grow the Rushes, O_ - - - And do the rushes grow so green - Upon this chill All Hallows’ E’en - That voices as a lutany - Surge through my window-panes to die? - - For in this room of rot and rust - These dark red circles filled with dust, - These sodden and lead-heavy eyes - Long stunned with muted symphonies, - - Are racked with the old hunger, hung - With memory’s hard ice-flakes, stung - By each note-star in crystal set - To glint and pierce this lazaret. - - O, why not let me wallow, bleed, - Riot and guzzle in red greed, - And leave my doom-gripped body tossed - Into an agony of frost? - - Cruel, marauding throats, begone! - Before I hurl my curse upon - Your youth, oh loathsome things, to try - Torturing me with purity! - - - - - _Words_ - - - In long prim rows the formal words distend, - Stuffed birds with loosely-fitting beaks, they glare - With beady eyes pathetically vague - Beneath their sober domes of dusty glass. - (Pale frigid flute-voiced children promenade - To suck the air into their fading lungs, - Native to soot: the tortoise-shell effect - Of sunsets barred by buildings smug and bare - And sleek pat streets of asphalt: gamins drab - Whose nightingales the Cockney sparrows are. - When furry frost hangs white about the chin, - These too will cough a dirge, no doubt, and die!) - O words, assert yourselves! from long prim rows - Trip out and weave new patterns with the clouds - That preen their swan-wings spread upon the air, - Then loll like tufts of lilac heavily; - Lush coolness, limpid nebulousness; where - The dove-tame zephyrs leap in shapely loops - To fill the windy trammel of a skirt, - Or must we oil you with celebral sweat? - When levers, springs and cogs are oiled you’ll come - Naked and unembarrassed by the moon. - - * * * * * - - The words have answered, lo, the words advance - No longer blocked in patterns, dribble out - In pleasant drops, with bird-quick flickers trip - Into a dissonance or discord: so, - Sharp darts of dappled sound to cleave the ear. - Some strut, and laughing madly, stridently, - These crack their wind-swift fingers, or like ants - Waving antennæ, struggle bravely on - Beneath their heavy burdens, one or two - Twinkle, then flutter off like hueless leaves, - Or dart and flash like wagtails on a pool, - Some fired with sulphurous glow, and some askew - Sway perilously, like a drunkard’s hat. - But what are these with puckered, pointed ears - That flit among the crowds like strips of tape? - They seem to stumble into tragedies. - “Oh, we shall twine you merry wreaths,” they say, - “Gay wreaths, festoons of entrails for your brow!” - Their eyes like little glasses of liqueur - Glitter and frighten me: within, without, - Words with hot breath hiss subtly venomous, - A million droning insects in my ears, - A million mottled thrushes in my mind. - - - - - _Greenness Unsecreted_ - - - In ombre gateways I had loitered, stopped - To speak unto my nearest brother, Toad, - Within the forest where the cobras propped - Green twists on frothy treetops, their abode: - “Toad, I salute you! in your chilly eye - I see the mignonette of modesty.” - - He did not answer, crouching like a sin, - Steeped in a lethargy too dull to pierce, - Centuple wisdom folded in his skin-- - He stared with humble stare that was not fierce, - And yet within that stare I seemed to know - The stare that maddened Hieronymo. - - I followed then a wedge of thoughtful cranes - Who fled across the silence drearily - From desolations and eternal rains - Across the frozen ridge of Rhodope, - The stars grown piteous of my misery - Dropped golden tears into the poem-sea. - - I have since dived, bathed in the poem-sea, - In spilt genethliacs of amber wine - Mellowed to milk, like turtle-feathers free - Floating and flurry on the teasing brine, - Below, I saw those youths that died of love - And wandered with them in the myrtle grove.[A] - - And when I rose a slender oaten pipe - Made music in the entrails of my ears, - Rich bandaliers of fruit grown pulpy-ripe - Moistened the membranes and dissolved my fears, - I could remember at her day of birth - How Flora with her daisies strewed the earth. - - But man still chased his jet-black butterflies, - And looking up, as from a rippled cloud, - Shunned me with viscous terror in his eyes, - Then fell a-triply sewing at his shroud, - Lest I should mar the self-fomenting strife - And cultivated void that was his life. - -[A] These two lines are derived from Pope. - - - - - _Back-Streets_ - - - Inane perspective stretched behind the street: - A wall, a yard, a wall, a yard, a wall, - Patterned interminably, patterned neat - With intervals of oblongs squat and tall. - - A full moon dims the stars and here and there - Glints on a bulging square of window-pane. - Soon clinging sodden moistures glut the air - And mists fall heavier than autumn rain. - - Only one room of all these rooms is lit. - Perhaps somebody watches, dreams absurd - And sentimental dreams, and from this pit - The ponderous bourdon of some heart is stirred. - - Men live their packed exasperated lives, - Callous and unfamiliar, yet each knows, - In all these sordid chiaroscuro hives, - His neighbour’s pleasures and his neighbour’s woes. - - Through gutters of stagnations and defeats, - Immense black ruins with the beds unmade, - Interminable agonising streets, - I walk alone, a stranger, and afraid - - - - - _Werther-Introspection_ - - “Talk to me somewhat quickly, - Or my imagination will carry me - To see her in the shameful act of sin.” - _Duchess of Malfi._ - - - The morning drums upon the window-pane, - The evening drums upon the window-pane, - I wait and wait and fumble in my brain.... - - All night I’ve lain with soul that could not rest. - At dusk strange hands were tearing at my heart - In a prim polar silence. - - The stags and does may frolic in the woods - And leap beyond the stars, for aught I care, - Beyond those furbished clots of frigid light, - Abstract and sad detached identities, - Where they may anguish, fossilize or freeze. - - All night I’ve lain upon the charming rack - You manufactured: I shall not despair, - Or coax a courteous isolated tear. - But I shall hear my agonizing laughter - Echoing far from floor to trembling rafter - In brittle carillons like metal bells, - And hear my bleached emaciated yells - Burgeon in petalled peals, flamboyant, bright - As merry moons in petticoats of white - To hide their cancer and their leprosy. - - Then: “Patience, rebel, calm!” the darkness said, - “You’ll never choke time’s throat of beaten lead.” - I did not heed.... I knew that my heart bled. - - Near the pellucid lake--ah God, there stirred - No animalculus, and an absurd - Decorous silence humped its back and purred. - - - - - _On the Theme of Ophelia’s Madness_ - - - “And will he not come again?” - Ophelia wanders out into the rain - That makes soft music on her yellow hair. - “O, shall I then surrender to despair?” - In vain she begs the strutting chanticleer - And Tullia’s intellectual marmosyte, - King Oberon a-lying on his bier - And Leda’s downy swan. - Throughout the night - She listens to the noise of dead men’s bones, - Sad subterranean murmurs drowned in sea-weed, - Slow-drifting down jade silences.... - --She hopes to screw some answer from their groans! - But there’s a seal upon their lipless mouths. - - “By all the moons that in the peacock’s tail - Rival the heaven’s moon, - I conjure a reply; has any seen - My lover’s sandal-shoon? - He wears a fluted cockle-hat, - A staff of briar-wood, - His hair’s coiled thick in a flaxen mat, - And like a river in flood - The crisp locks tumble on his poll.” - She cried but there came no answer at all - Save, God ha’ mercy on his soul! - - “By molewarp’s brain and by pismire’s gall, - Will he whom I love return again?” - The pale grey rain - For pity’s sake, - Breathed her asleep in a lullaby, - Till slothful Charon in his barge rowed by - And ferried her gently over the Stygian lake. - - - - - _These Consolations_ - - - I shall console myself by being absurd - And sit among the rank, unwholesome dews, - And watch each whining pheasant and each bird - Guzzle the very-human bearded grain: - I shall not weep beneath the dismal yews - But to the milk-white turtles tune my pain. - - Where spiny pines diffuse a noxious shade - I’ll wage a series of intestine wars, - The listening wolves grow milder in the glade - Beneath the incense of the breathing Spring, - Whilst every shepherd polishes his sores - I’ll languish into life, and living, sing. - - The women teem their babes; the sative plants - Quiver as Cynthia fills her silver horn, - The spicy forest and her sycophants, - The fiery-pointed organons of sense, - Attempt to catch the sound as it is born - And, as it dies, the hush is thick and tense. - - But even so the tensity can vex - What I had hoped had blackened into jet, - Like raven-feathers in the moon’s reflex, - The feeble eyes of our aspiring thoughts, - But even so the tensity can fret, - And I must grope in unsuspected orts.... - I shall console myself with being fed - On hollow sapless tales and other slips, - And to the pallid nations of the dead - I’ll wander, and as soon as I arise - A liquid film will glaze upon my lips, - Upon my pores, impatient for the skies. - - - - - _In the Month of Athyr_[B] - - - These ruins seem a womb of cringing air, - So thin that the ears tingle, flickering, - And every barren plant is withering, - Ready to snap, like glass, for sheer despair ... - And through the ether mountains loom like bones - So hollow you could scrape a melody - Sounding like water from them, oozily - To this sun-stricken desert-world of groans. - The light is cruel: it is hard to read - The letters on these stones, but, lo, the words: - “_Lord Jesus Christ_” and further “_soul_”; what birds - Erased the script with droppings? and what weed - Has wrested from these crevices a home? - “_In month of Athyr_” ... “_Lucius fell asleep_”.... - His age is mentioned: he was young; and deep - Beneath the damaged parts, as in a foam - Of centuries I see, disfigured, “_tears_.” - Then “_tears_” again, “_for us his friends who weep_”.... - Lucius was much belovèd, it appears. - In grey November ... Lucius fell asleep.... - -[B] The ancient Egyptian November (derived from a poem by C. P. -Cavafy). - - - - - _Discoveries_ - - - We have discovered many things - To suit our moods, to give us wings: - More than an Aristotle-tome - In crimson splash of a fowl’s comb, - In silver-boled unleaving trees - Like organ-pipes along the breeze; - Sometimes the notes run sharp and false - When rooks and twigs join in the valse - Of smooth and swaying treetop spun - Like yarn across the copper sun.... - But there are times when you would cry - To hear the trees’ low melody. - And we have watched the hemlock spray - And smelt dank wafture of decay, - The fume from tawny bellied leaves - In spirals where the autumn grieves. - With froth of flowers we have been rich-- - The globuled frog-spawn on the ditch - Was mottled with our wonder; vast - Moist moans of raping bees’ repast - Have sluiced our languid afternoons - Like ripples crawling on lagoons. - But we have not discovered yet - How to erase, how to forget - Sheer vividness of solitude, - How to obliterate each mood - To dim Antarctic memories, - Merged icebergs twinkling in chopped seas. - - - - - _Old Woman_ - - - Gaunt woman with pinched, palsied hands, - Cramped fingers once their nimble slaves, - Did your poor feet once print the sands - With lovely dimpled curves like waves? - - I’m told men once would march to wars, - Your name upon their lips, would kneel - Rapt by your eyes that fleered the stars, - Where passions leapt like sparks from steel. - - I’m told snow hawthorn massed in bloom - Could not cool whiter than your hands, - Or candles crackling up the gloom - Of churches in chill twilit lands. - - Gaunt woman, why so tense your mouth? - Is it your blistered heart that speaks? - Did colour fluid as the South - Light those emaciated cheeks? - - I’m told your voice once trembled clear - And frail withal as linnet’s wings.... - And now your voice is but the mere - Vague echo of forgotten things. - - “_Once lovers bruised each blue-veined breast_ - _And charred my body as ’twere coal._ - _Now I would lay me down to rest._ - _May Christ receive my wrinkled soul!_” - - - - - _Cold Joints_ - - - I - - In mental constipation shivering, - He went into the fields, where he could sing - To ease the sobbing of his plangent mind, - With desolate, cracked voice, for they were kind. - The sky an ashen cup of neutral air; - Black specks of surly rooks whirred cawing there - And sombre clots of writhing, stunted trees - Stretched withered fingers, creaking traceries - Of mazed arms multitudinous; their moan - A memory that he was not alone. - - Upon the gravel path small frosted stars - Glittered and bleared; the rusty railing-bars - Were furred with silver lichen as the down - Bristled upon a dead man’s throat; a crown - Of Gothic spires through lustrous distance crept. - The world and all its wedge-shaped engines slept. - - Disturbed, he heard the crunch of footsteps fast - And looking up, he saw two men that passed. - “Good-morning, Mr. Gosling.” “Oh, good-day!” - “Bit nippy weather!” then strode on their way - With patch-work quilted minds and bowler hats, - With Sunday journal, gloves and yellow spats, - Into the distance ... while the echoes bear - “Bit nippy weather” drifting down the air. - - - II - - Up, silver man nid-nodding by the hearth! - The languid summer has trailed out her days.... - For this night leave your bible, leave your path - Of selfish righteousness; delay your praise - Of God till He has given you a seat - Amongst the flapping angels. (Fire and sleete - And candle-light - And Christ receive thy soul.) - - Well, these are facts, even if impolite-- - As trite and boring as the price of coal. - The lyke-wake dirge comes after; now you live-- - Too old for fornication--that is true. - But you may love the slender fleeting things, - The terrible music of the slipping hours, - If sordid Life has nothing else to give. - In each clock-tick there is a something new-- - Unsatiated sweet imaginings, - Pianola dreams or orchidaceous flowers! - And though you shiver in a slow decay, - You still have guts and marrow, though your limbs - Be well-nigh licked of blood, you need not stay - For ever by the fire and croon cracked hymns! - - The children gloze and fleech him all in vain-- - The taxi throbs outside. - “I hope the rain - Won’t spoil the fireworks.” - Granpa’s left behind - With baby and the adenoided nurse. - The maid moves in to draw the window blind. - Her lips compressed have never known a curse. - Amazed, she sees frail drops are trickling down - What she had ever held to be a mask. - Half-pitying the old exhausted man - So infantine, yet sitting all alone - As in blue forest depths a mossy stone, - Where toads crouch like the voice in gramophone, - She brings him crumpets and a cup of tea. - - - III - - “He’s got hot lips when he plays jazz.” - How trite and obvious; of course he has! - Sex blossoms on the lips as well as other parts, - If not, he is unworthy of an entrance to our hearts. - And you invite spontaneous destruction - For splitting chips which form so tiresome an obstruction - To our imaginative possibilities. - No half-dissembled grey tranquillities - Of mental judgment! We want elephants, - Tough-grained calamities, to clamber up on; - To travel petulantly bump-a-bump, to sup on - Champagne and slippery flesh of oysters, - And conversational quips and roysters - With childishly garrulous termagants. - And in their company you’ll find it pays - To polish up the petals of a phrase! - - - - - _Invocation_ - - - Upon this flat, misshapen day - My weary sullen thoughts grow grey-- - Grey waters, and grey, sunless cliffs, - Bleak gaiety of flowers, whiffs - Of loneliness, ah loneliness - To ever clasp in my caress. - And shall I, poor mazed lunatic, - When memories come crowding thick, - Dangle a silly mandrake-root, - Swinging upon Time’s parachute? - Can thoughts have colours, colours thoughts, - Or do I wander midst the orts - Of half-forgotten nightmare-pyres? - We poets have exchanged our lyres - For heart-strings. We have souls to save - From boredom; come then, let’s be brave - And sing the baser passions, sing - Until the blood jerked up will ring - A matins for our lusts and shames, - And men will tingle at our names. - - - - - _Lame Lady_ - - - A poor lame lady limps along - Low sloping fields of tender green, - She’d love to break into a song - Or dance, a figure slim, serene. - - All nature seems a parquet floor - To please the sense, to please the eye, - And Lazarus forgets each sore - Beneath the thickly-coated sky. - - The poor lame lady senses whole - The shafts of coloured warmth arise, - A thirsty solitude of soul - Looms in her vague pathetic eyes. - - The hollow spells of Spring are fleet - And quick thoughts clatter through her head.... - “An awkward duck with webbèd feet!... - Ah! better far to lie a-bed.” - - In bed her lameness will not leer, - For Sleep’s compassionate and kind, - And she will dance and sing and hear - The crooning of a phantom wind. - - For then her body’s cage-doors wide - Are opened, and the spirit free - Flutters, and in a burst of pride - Dances before Eternity. - - - - - _Conversations and Crumbling_ - - - “Well, here we are. I venture to believe - We have not met since Venice ... seven years.... - My sons were killed, and I was left to grieve - With Adelaide and Fanny ... they are dears.” - I look around and find two fleshy ears - Dangling a pair of ear-rings ... it’s a phase.... - But all the same I wish that they’d wear stays. - - When Regent Street is up I always feel - That London Bridge is also falling down, - Symbolic hulks of granite, orange peel, - And somebody who’s losing half-a-crown.... - It is so queer, so queer, to live in town.... - And then I see myself and purse my lips - “With no more conscience than a snake has hips.”[C] - - Yes, here am I bathed in a maudlin smile! - And here are: you, he, it, and everyone - Except the person who’s alone worth while. - Calmly I rise with broken threads, I run - Stirred by my own intrinsic power to sun - Self-consciousness to flesh-burst--I’ve begun - With unabated sarcasm to rise - In self-opinion, sinking with closed eyes. - - A subtle crepitation in the air - As if the nomad camels would return, - As if the burly lion left his lair - To have his hair curled daintily. I burn. - You do not listen: “there’s so much to learn - From scientific data, palimpsest....” - I tell you they will crumble with the rest. - - Before the wolf returns to Regent Street, - Before he digs up fashionable tombs, - Before the nightingale with music sweet - Pierces the Piccadilly catacombs, - Before the screech-owl adds to ruin-glooms, - The merry robin-redbreast and the wren - Will trill their notes in Bayswater again. - - “The worst of influenza’s over now, - But rents are high ... the weather is not cold - Considering the month of year, but how - The war has broken through our lives! how old”.... - Above her grave time soon will rake the mould: - Already she is smouldering away, - Already she is fettled for decay. - - Pleasures and vanities, regrets, desires - Dumped on a dung-heap where the lilies grow.... - And these shall be their own sad funeral-pyres, - Destruction totters and his steps are slow. - The miles to Babylon? I do not know. - But this I know: these folk on gilded chairs - Had better kneel and say their hopeless prayers. - -[C] A line from “Louisville Lou”: a certain fox-trot. - - - - - _Intermezzo_ - - - That sinister, that sombre poet-waif - Presses his brow against the window-pane, - (That window-pane of cruel, wicked glass), - Watching the sour and curdled flakes of snow. - With eyes like pale grey membranes fixed and glazed - Ever he stares upon snow-silent fields, - And sweating skies that lean towards the earth - Like a great toper leaning at a bar. - Ever the mournful cries of mountain-apes - Echo, re-echo, and abysmally, - Ever the sour snow falls. And where’s the moon? - It must hang high, oh, somewhere in the heavens. - And somewhere, waking in the middle night - Soft longing arms spread out in love’s embrace - Find nothing, no one; in a dazed despair - Grope for a form to clasp, to touch, and then - Fall limply back in dismal loneliness. - Perpetual Penelopes unspin - The webs they spun meticulous at day. - Somewhere the honey-throated nightingale - Is voiceless for the burden of his love, - And somewhere it is good to be alive.... - - That sinister, that sombre poet-waif - So tired to tears and tearless, with those eyes - Airily floating in eternal stare, - Bartered his soul for void philosophies. - But suddenly he flings a weary laugh - And walks into the jangling painted world. - - - - - THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH - -(FOR EDITH SITWELL) - - - - - I - - _The Gibbet_ - -(DERIVED FROM ALOYSIUS BERTRAND) - - - Oh, do I hear the night-raped wind - Who screams in travail, do I hear - The blunt ropes of the gibbet grind, - The hanged man’s writhing sigh so drear? - - Oh, can it be some cricket’s song - Vibrating shrill amongst the weeds - And sterile moss? throughout the long - Finned languid hours when summer bleeds - - Outstretched and pallid on a bier. - Oh, can it be some spot-swift fly - Who winds his horn round each deaf ear? - Some beetle plucking stealthily - - A morsel of corrupting flesh, - A trailing wisp, a bleeding hair, - Until his spirit, fed and fresh, - Will bid him frisk upon the air? - - Oh, can it be some spider squat - Who sings and sows at half an ell - Of satin, for a new cravat - To deck his strangled throat in Hell? - - It is the clock which tinkles down - The hour to the crumbling town. - It is a hanged man’s carcass spun - With crimson by the setting sun. - - - - - II - - _Saint_ - -(AFTER MALLARMÉ) - - - High at a window - Of old gilded sandalwood - Where once the viol - Mingled with dulcimer, - - Sits the Saint pallid, - The missal of parchment - Lies open where vespers - And complines were chaunted: - - At monstrance-glazing - Grazed by the Angel’s - Harp curved by winging - Aloft on the twilight - - For her delicate fingers, - On instrument’s plumage - She balances soft, - A musician of silence. - - - - - III - - _Hérodiade_ - - TRANSLATED FROM MALLARMÉ - - - _Scene_ - - The Nurse--Hérodiade - - NURSE. You live, Princess? or do I see your shade? - Your fingers at my lips and all their rings - Cease to proceed in an unlearned-of age.... - - HÉRODIADE. Recede. - The immaculate blond torrent of my hair - Freezes my limbs with horror when it bathes - Their solitude, and interlaced with light - My hair’s immortal. Me a kiss would murder, - Would kill, if beauty were not death, oh woman.... - Driven by what allurement, should I know? - What morn forgotten by the prophets pours - O’er dying distances, these dismal feasts? - And you have seen me enter, nurse of winter, - The heavy prison built of stone and iron - Where aged lions drag the centuries, - And fatal, I advanced, with shielded hands, - Through desert-perfume of these ancient kings: - But have you still beheld my very dread? - I stop to dream of exiles, and I strip, - As near a pond whose gush of water welcomes, - The pallid lilies in me, smitten, charmed - My eyes pursue the languor of the wreck - Descend, in silence, through my reverie, - The lions part my indolence of robe - And gaze on feet whose curves would calm the sea. - Quiet the shudder of your crumbling flesh, - And mimicking the fashions of my hair - So fierce that makes you fear their shock of manes, - Come, help, as thus you dare no longer see me, - Within a mirror nonchalantly combing. - - NURSE. My child, unless you wish to sample myrrh - Gay in its sealèd bottles, would you prove - The grave funereal virtue of the essence - Ravished from roses’ dim senility? - - HÉRODIADE. Leave there those perfumes! Nurse, do you not know - I hate them, do you wish me then, to feel - My languid frame drown in their drunkenness? - I crave: my hair of flowers not created - To strew oblivion of human anguish, - But gold, for ever virgin of the spices, - In cruel flashes and in heavy pallor, - Will mark the sterile chilliness of metals, - Having reflected you, my native jewels, - Vases and arms, from solitary childhood. - - NURSE. Pardon, oh queen, for age eclipsed the plea - With which you deign to vindicate my mind - Grown sallow as an old or gloomy book.... - - HÉRODIADE. Enough! before me hold this mirror. Mirror! - Cold water frozen hard within your frame - By weariness; how often, dream-tormented - And searching for my memories, like leaves - Beneath the hole profound within your ice, - In you I seemed a shadow, but, what horror - At dusk when in your fountain I have known - The nudity of my dishevelled dream! - Nurse, am I beautiful? - - NURSE. In truth, a star, - But this tress tumbles.... - - HÉRODIADE. Check in your offence - Which chills my blood towards its source, and quell - This gesture of notorious irreligion: - Tell me, in grim emotion what sure demon - Throws you this kiss, these perfumes, should I breathe it? - And, oh my heart, this hand still sacrilegious, - Since I believe you wished to touch me, say - They are a day which will not be extinguished - Without calamity upon the tower.... - Oh day Hérodiade beholds with dread! - - NURSE. Indeed, a strange day, from which heaven guard you! - You wander, lonely shadow, recent passion, - Looking within you, premature in terror: - Even as an immortal exquisite, - And hideously beautiful, my child - As.... - - HÉRODIADE. Were you not about to touch me? - - NURSE. I would belong to him, for whom the Fates - Reserve your secrets. - - HÉRODIADE. Oh! be silent! - - NURSE. Sometimes - He’ll come, perchance? - - HÉRODIADE. I pray you, do not listen, - Innocent stars! - - NURSE. How else, ’mid sombre terrors - To dream a suppliant, more implacable, - That god the treasure of your grace attends! - For whom, devoured of agony, you guard - The mystery, vain splendour of your being? - - HÉRODIADE. For me. - - NURSE. Sad flower seen with atony - In water, doleful flower that grows alone, - Nor has anxiety but cloudy sound. - - HÉRODIADE. Go, keep your pity with your irony. - - NURSE. Expound however: no, ingenuous child, - Some day this scorn triumphant will diminish.... - - HÉRODIADE. But who would touch me, reverenced of lions? - Besides, I want no human thing; if, chiselled, - You see me with eyes lost in Paradise, - ’Tis when I call to mind your milk of yore. - - NURSE. Oh lamentable victim to its fate! - - HÉRODIADE. Yes, it is for myself, deserted, that I flower! - Gardens of amethyst, you know too well-- - Fled without end into the wise abysms - Dazzled and dazed; you unawared-of golds - Who guard your antique mellowness of light - Beneath the sombre slumber of a soil - Primordial and primitive; and you - Oh stones from which my pure and jewel eyes - Borrow their melody of clarity; - You, metals, which surrender to my hair - A fatal splendour and its massive gait! - Woman who speak of mortal, as for you, - Created in malignant centuries, - Born for the spite of caverns sybilline! - According as from calyx of my clothes - The white thrill of my nudity emerge, - Aroma of the fierce, the savage joys-- - Woman who speak of mortal! prophesy - That if the tepid azure of the summer, - To whom the woman natively unveils, - Sees me in starlike shivering chastity, - I die! - I love the dread of being virgin - And I desire to live the terror of my hair-- - To sense, inviolate reptile, on my couch - At evening, stir within my useless flesh - The frigid sparkle of your pallid lucence, - O you who die calcined with chastity, - White night of icicles and cruel snow! - And your lone sister, oh eternal sister, - My dream will mount towards you airily: - Already as the rare limpidity - Of one who dreamt it, in my native-land - Monotonous, I think myself alone, - And all around me lives in the idolatry - That in a mirror’s dozing calm reflects - Hérodiade of clear and diamond gaze.... - Yea, last of spells! I feel it, I’m alone. - - NURSE. And will you die then, Madam? - - HÉRODIADE. Grandmother, no, - Be calm: withdrawing, pardon this flint heart, - But, if you wish, first close the shutters fast, - Seraphic azure smiles within the pane’s - Profundity. I loathe the lovely azure. - The waters lull themselves and, over there, - Do you not know a country where the sky, - So sinister, has all the heated looks - Of Venus who is burning in the leaves - At evening? I’ll thither ... - Light these tapers, - Mere childishness, you say, whose nimble flames - Weep a strange weeping ’mid the empty gold - And ... - - NURSE. Now? - - HÉRODIADE. Farewell. - You lie, oh naked flower of my lips! - For I await a thing unheard of yet. - Perhaps unconscious of their mystery, - Unconscious of your cries, you hurl the sobs - Supreme and bruisèd of an infancy - Perceiving dimly ’mid its reveries - Those frozen gems that separate at last. - - - Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INDIAN ASS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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