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- Voices out of the shade that cried,
- And long noon in the hot calm places,
- And children's play by the wayside,
- And country eyes, and quiet faces -- -
- All these were round my steady paces.
- Those that I could have loved went by me;
- Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
- I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
- Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
- In the green and gold. And I went on.
- For if my echoing footfall slept,
- Soon a far whispering there'd be
- Of a little lonely wind that crept
- From tree to tree, and distantly
- Followed me, followed me. . . .
- But the blue vaporous end of day
- Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite,
- Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
- I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
- I trod as quiet as the night.
- The pine-boles kept perpetual hush;
- And in the boughs wind never swirled.
- I found a flowering lowly bush,
- And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
- Hidden at rest from all the world.
- Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
- Yet -- - with cold heart and cold wet brows
- I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
- Meward a sound of shaken boughs;
- And ceased, above my intricate house;
- And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
- I felt the unfaltering movement creep
- Among the leaves. They shed around me
- Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
- And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
- Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
- Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
- You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
- Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
- When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
- All's over that is ours; and life burns on
- Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
- -- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
- "We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
- Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
- "We shall go down with unreluctant tread
- Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
- And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
- -- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.
- I dreamt I was in love again
- With the One Before the Last,
- And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
- Of that innocent young past.
- But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
- The pain when it did live,
- How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
- Were Hell in Nineteen-five.
- The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
- The boy's love just as true,
- And the One Before the Last, my dear,
- Hurt quite as much as you.
- * * * * *
- Sickly I pondered how the lover
- Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
- And sentimentalizes over
- What earned a better doom.
- Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,
- Strews pinkish dust above,
- And sighs, "The dear dead boyish pastime!
- But this -- - ah, God! -- - is Love!"
- -- Better oblivion hide dead true loves,
- Better the night enfold,
- Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,
- Should lie about the old!
- * * * * *
- Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.
- But here's the worst of it -- -
- I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,
- You ever hurt abit!
- The stars, a jolly company,
- I envied, straying late and lonely;
- And cried upon their revelry:
- "O white companionship! You only
- In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
- Friends radiant and inseparable!"
- Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
- And merry comrades (even so
- God out of heaven may laugh to see
- The happy crowds; and never know
- That in his lone obscure distress
- Each walketh in a wilderness).
- But I, remembering, pitied well
- And loved them, who, with lonely light,
- In empty infinite spaces dwell,
- Disconsolate. For, all the night,
- I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
- Star to faint star, across the sky.
- He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
- Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
- Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
- Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
- And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
- Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
- Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
- Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
- An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
- Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
- Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
- Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.
- I thought when love for you died, I should die.
- It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.
- Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
- And all the world's a song;
- "She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
- "Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"
- Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
- Spite of your chosen part,
- I do remember; and I go
- With laughter in my heart.
- So above the little folk that know not,
- Out of the white hill-town,
- High up I clamber; and I remember;
- And watch the day go down.
- Gold is my heart, and the world's golden,
- And one peak tipped with light;
- And the air lies still about the hill
- With the first fear of night;
- Till mystery down the soundless valley
- Thunders, and dark is here;
- And the wind blows, and the light goes,
- And the night is full of fear,
- And I know, one night, on some far height,
- In the tongue I never knew,
- I yet shall hear the tidings clear
- From them that were friends of you.
- They'll call the news from hill to hill,
- Dark and uncomforted,
- Earth and sky and the winds; and I
- Shall know that you are dead.
- I shall not hear your trentals,
- Nor eat your arval bread;
- For the kin of you will surely do
- Their duty by the dead.
- Their little dull greasy eyes will water;
- They'll paw you, and gulp afresh.
- They'll sniffle and weep, and their thoughts will creep
- Like flies on the cold flesh.
- They will put pence on your grey eyes,
- Bind up your fallen chin,
- And lay you straight, the fools that loved you
- Because they were your kin.
- They will praise all the bad about you,
- And hush the good away,
- And wonder how they'll do without you,
- And then they'll go away.
- But quieter than one sleeping,
- And stranger than of old,
- You will not stir for weeping,
- You will not mind the cold;
- But through the night the lips will laugh not,
- The hands will be in place,
- And at length the hair be lying still
- About the quiet face.
- With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief,
- And dim and decorous mirth,
- With ham and sherry, they'll meet to bury
- The lordliest lass of earth.
- The little dead hearts will tramp ungrieving
- Behind lone-riding you,
- The heart so high, the heart so living,
- Heart that they never knew.
- I shall not hear your trentals,
- Nor eat your arval bread,
- Nor with smug breath tell lies of death
- To the unanswering dead.
- With snuffle and sniff and handkerchief,
- The folk who loved you not
- Will bury you, and go wondering
- Back home. And you will rot.
- But laughing and half-way up to heaven,
- With wind and hill and star,
- I yet shall keep, before I sleep,
- Your Ambarvalia.
- There was a damned successful Poet;
- There was a Woman like the Sun.
- And they were dead. They did not know it.
- They did not know their time was done.
- They did not know his hymns
- Were silence; and her limbs,
- That had served Love so well,
- Dust, and a filthy smell.
- And so one day, as ever of old,
- Hands out, they hurried, knee to knee;
- On fire to cling and kiss and hold
- And, in the other's eyes, to see
- Each his own tiny face,
- And in that long embrace
- Feel lip and breast grow warm
- To breast and lip and arm.
- So knee to knee they sped again,
- And laugh to laugh they ran, I'm told,
- Across the streets of Hell . . .
-
And then
- They suddenly felt the wind blow cold,
- And knew, so closely pressed,
- Chill air on lip and breast,
- And, with a sick surprise,
- The emptiness of eyes.
- Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
- Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
- In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
- And flaming brains are the white heart of all.
- Here, million pulses to one centre beat:
- Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,
- Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
- On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.
- Here the green-purple clanging royal night,
- And the straight lines and silent walls of town,
- And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white
- Undying passers, pinnacle and crown
- Intensest heavens between close-lying faces
- By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire;
- And we've found love in little hidden places,
- Under great shades, between the mist and mire.
- Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you've heard
- Night creep along the hedges. Never go
- Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird,
- And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!
- Lest -- - as our words fall dumb on windless noons,
- Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath
- Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons,
- Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death, -- -
- Unconscious and unpassionate and still,
- Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare,
- And gradually along the stranger hill
- Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,
- And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss,
- And your lit upward face grows, where we lie,
- Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is,
- And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.
- For moveless limbs no pity I crave,
- That never were swift! Still all I prize,
- Laughter and thought and friends, I have;
- No fool to heave luxurious sighs
- For the woods and hills that I never knew.
- The more excellent way's yet mine! And you
- Flower-laden come to the clean white cell,
- And we talk as ever -- - am I not the same?
- With our hearts we love, immutable,
- You without pity, I without shame.
- We talk as of old; as of old you go
- Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,
- Flit through the streets, your heart all me;
- Till you gain the world beyond the town.
- Then -- - I fade from your heart, quietly;
- And your fleet steps quicken. The strong down
- Smiles you welcome there; the woods that love you
- Close lovely and conquering arms above you.
- O ever-moving, O lithe and free!
- Fast in my linen prison I press
- On impassable bars, or emptily
- Laugh in my great loneliness.
- And still in the white neat bed I strive
- Most impotently against that gyve;
- Being less now than a thought, even,
- To you alone with your hills and heaven.
I
- Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
- To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
- On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
- And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
- And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
- Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
- He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
- Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.
- High sat white Helen, lonely and serene.
- He had not remembered that she was so fair,
- And that her neck curved down in such a way;
- And he felt tired. He flung the sword away,
- And kissed her feet, and knelt before her there,
- The perfect Knight before the perfect Queen.
II
- So far the poet. How should he behold
- That journey home, the long connubial years?
- He does not tell you how white Helen bears
- Child on legitimate child, becomes a scold,
- Haggard with virtue. Menelaus bold
- Waxed garrulous, and sacked a hundred Troys
- 'Twixt noon and supper. And her golden voice
- Got shrill as he grew deafer. And both were old.
- Often he wonders why on earth he went
- Troyward, or why poor Paris ever came.
- Oft she weeps, gummy-eyed and impotent;
- Her dry shanks twitch at Paris' mumbled name.
- So Menelaus nagged; and Helen cried;
- And Paris slept on by Scamander side.
- How should I know? The enormous wheels of will
- Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet.
- Night was void arms and you a phantom still,
- And day your far light swaying down the street.
- As never fool for love, I starved for you;
- My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see.
- Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view,
- And your remembered smell most agony.
- Love wakens love! I felt your hot wrist shiver
- And suddenly the mad victory I planned
- Flashed real, in your burning bending head. . . .
- My conqueror's blood was cool as a deep river
- In shadow; and my heart beneath your hand
- Quieter than a dead man on a bed.
- When I see you, who were so wise and cool,
- Gazing with silly sickness on that fool
- You've given your love to, your adoring hands
- Touch his so intimately that each understands,
- I know, most hidden things; and when I know
- Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow
- Of his red lips, and that the empty grace
- Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face,
- Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love,
- That you have given him every touch and move,
- Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life,
- -- Oh! then I know I'm waiting, lover-wife,
- For the great time when love is at a close,
- And all its fruit's to watch the thickening nose
- And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye,
- That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die!
- Day after day you'll sit with him and note
- The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat;
- As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat,
- And love, love, love to habit!
- And after that,
- When all that's fine in man is at an end,
- And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend
- A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old,
- When his rare lips hang flabby and can't hold
- Slobber, and you're enduring that worst thing,
- Senility's queasy furtive love-making,
- And searching those dear eyes for human meaning,
- Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning
- A scrap that life's flung by, and love's forgotten, -- -
- Then you'll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;
- And he'll be dirty, dirty!
- O lithe and free
- And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see,
- That's how I'll see your man and you! -- -
-
But you
- -- Oh, when that time comes, you'll be dirty too!
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