The Project Gutenberg eBook of Selected Poems, by Aldous Huxley 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: Selected Poems Author: Aldous Huxley Release Date: August 6, 2021 [eBook #66000] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED POEMS *** _Selected Poems_ _Selected Poems_ _Aldous Huxley_ _D APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK MCMXXV_ _Printed and made in Great Britain_ CONTENTS. [Illustration] Page Song of Poplars 7 The Reef 9 The Flowers 12 The Elms 13 Out of the Window 14 Summer Stillness 15 Inspiration 16 Anniversaries 17 Italy 20 The Alien 22 A Little Memory 23 Waking 24 By the Fire 26 Valedictory 28 Private Property 30 Revelation 31 Minoan Porcelain 32 In Uncertainty to a Lady 33 Crapulous Impression 34 Complaint of a Poet Manqué 35 Social Amenities 36 Topiary 36 On the Bus 37 Points and Lines 38 Panic 38 Stanzas 39 Poem 40 Scenes of the Mind 41 L’Après-Midi d’un Faune 44 Mole 49 Two Realities 52 Quotidian Vision 53 The Mirror 53 Variations on a Theme of Laforgue 54 Philosophy 55 Philoclea in the Forest 55 Books and Thoughts 59 The Higher Sensualism 60 Formal Verses 61 Perils of the Small Hours 62 Return to an Old Home 63 SONG OF POPLARS. Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great sky be mute. Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, In airy leafage of the mind, Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales That fade not nor grow old. “Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires Springing in dark and rusty flame, Seek you aught that hath a name? Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony Of undefined desires? “Say, are you happy in the golden march Of sunlight all across the day? Or do you watch the uncertain way That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs Over the heaven’s wide arch? “Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift The sharpness of your trembling spears? Or do you seek, through the grey tears That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, A deeper, calmer rift?” So; I have tuned my music to the trees, And there were voices dim below Their shrillness, voices swelling slow In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry And then vast silences. THE REEF. My green aquarium of phantom fish, Goggling in on me through the misty panes; My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; My few clear quiet autumn days--I wish I could leave all, clearness and mistiness; Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still. Yes, and I too rot with the leaves that fill The hollows in the woods; I am grown less Than human, listless, aimless as the green Idiot fishes of my aquarium, Who loiter down their dim tunnels and come And look at me and drift away, nought seen Or understood, but only glazedly Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply Winged fins, bursting this matrix dark to find Jewels and movement, mintage of sunlight Scattered largely by the profuse wind, And gulfs of blue brightness, too deep for sight. Free, newly born, on roads of music and air Speeding and singing, I shall seek the place Where all the shining threads of water race, Drawn in green ropes and foamy meshes. There, On the red fretted ramparts of a tower Of coral rooted in the depths, shall break An endless sequence of joy and speed and power: Green shall shatter to foam; flake with white flake Shall create an instant’s shining constellation Upon the blue; and all the air shall be Full of a million wings that swift and free Laugh in the sun, all power and strong elation. Yes, I shall seek that reef, which is beyond All isles however magically sleeping In tideless seas, uncharted and unconned Save by blind eyes: beyond the laughter and weeping That brood like a cloud over the lands of men. Movement, passion of colour and pure wings, Curving to cut like knives--these are the things I search for:--passion beyond the ken Of our foiled violences, and, more swift Than any blow which man aims against time, The invulnerable, motion that shall rift All dimness with the lightning of a rhyme, Or note, or colour. And the body shall be Quick as the mind; and will shall find release From bondage to brute things; and joyously Soul, will and body, in the strength of triune peace, Shall live the perfect grace of power unwasted. And love consummate, marvellously blending Passion and reverence in a single spring Of quickening force, till now never yet tasted, But ever ceaselessly thirsted for, shall crown The new life with its ageless starry fire. I go to seek that reef, far down, far down Below the edge of everyday’s desire, Beyond the magical islands, where of old I was content, dreaming, to give the lie To misery. They were all strong and bold That thither came; and shall I dare to try? THE FLOWERS. Day after day, At spring’s return, I watch my flowers, how they burn Their lives away. The candle crocus And daffodil gold Drink fire of the sunshine-- Quickly cold. And the proud tulip-- How red he glows!-- Is quenched ere summer Can kindle the rose. Purple as the innermost Core of a sinking flame, Deep in the leaves the violets smoulder To the dust whence they came. Day after day At spring’s return, I watch my flowers, how they burn Their lives away, Day after day.... THE ELMS. Fine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing Across the lanterns of a revelling night, The tiny leaves of April’s earliest growing Powder the trees--so vaporously light, They seem to float, billows of emerald foam Blown by the South on its bright airy tide, Seeming less trees than things beatified, Come from the world of thought which was their home. For a while only. Rooted strong and fast, Soon will they lift towards the summer sky Their mountain-mass of clotted greenery. Their immaterial season quickly past, They grow opaque, and therefore needs must die, Since every earth to earth returns at last. OUT OF THE WINDOW. In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea, Are the little places one passes by in trains And never stops at; where the skies extend Uninterrupted, and the level plains Stretch green and yellow and green without an end. And behind the glass of their Grand Express Folk yawn away a province through, With nothing to think of, nothing to do, Nothing even to look at--never a “view” In this damned wilderness. But I look out of the window and find Much to satisfy the mind. Mark how the furrows, formed and wheeled In a motion orderly and staid, Sweep, as we pass, across the field Like a drilled army on parade. And here’s a market-garden, barred With stripe on stripe of varied greens.... Bright potatoes, flower starred, And the opacous colour of beans. Each line deliberately swings Towards me, till I see a straight Green avenue to the heart of things, The glimpse of a sudden opened gate Piercing the adverse walls of fate.... A moment only, and then, fast, fast, The gate swings to, the avenue closes; Fate laughs, and once more interposes Its barriers. The train has passed. SUMMER STILLNESS. The stars are golden instants in the deep Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set: The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep Seeming so motionless that I forget The hollow booming bridges, where it slides, Dark with the sad looks that it bears along, Towards a sea whose unreturning tides Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors’ song. INSPIRATION. Noonday upon the Alpine meadows Pours its avalanche of Light And blazing flowers: the very shadows Translucent are and bright. It seems a glory that nought surpasses-- Passion of angels in form and hue-- When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses Leaps a lightning of sudden blue. Dimming the sun-drunk petals, Bright even unto pain, The grasshopper flashes, settles, And then is quenched again. ANNIVERSARIES. Once more the windless days are here, Quiet of autumn, when the year Halts and looks backward and draws breath Before it plunges into death. Silver of mist and gossamers, Through-shine of noonday’s glassy gold, Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs Save one blanched leaf, weary and old, That over and over slowly falls From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air Like tattered flags along the walls Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer. Once more.... Within its flawless glass To-day reflects that other day, When, under the bracken, on the grass, We who were lovers happily lay And hardly spoke, or framed a thought That was not one with the calm hills And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought, Our gusty passions, our burning wills Dissolved in boundlessness, and we Were almost bodiless, almost free. The wind has shattered silver and gold; Night after night of sparkling cold, Orion lifts his tangled feet From where the tossing branches beat In a fine surf against the sky. So the trance ended, and we grew Restless, we knew not how or why; And there were sudden gusts that blew Our dreaming banners into storm; We wore the uncertain crumbling form Of a brown swirl of windy leaves, A phantom shape that stirs and heaves Shuddering from earth, to fall again With a dry whisper of withered rain. Last, from the dead and shrunken days We conjured spring, lighting the blaze Of burnished tulips in the dark; And from black frost we struck a spark Of blue delight and fragrance new, A little world of flowers and dew. Winter for us was over and done: The drought of fluttering leaves had grown Emerald shining in the sun, As light as glass, as firm as stone. Real once more: for we had passed Through passion into thought again; Shaped our desires and made that fast Which was before a cloudy pain; Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined In a fair statue, strong and free, Twin bodies flaming into mind, Poised on the brink of ecstasy. ITALY. There is a country in my mind, Lovelier than a poet blind Could dream of, who had never known This world of drought and dust and stone In all its ugliness: a place Full of an all but human grace; Whose dells retain the printed form Of heavenly sleep, and seem yet warm From some pure body newly risen; Where matter is no more a prison, But freedom for the soul to know Its native beauty. For things glow There with an inward truth and are All fire and colour like a star. And in that land are domes and towers That hang as light and bright as flowers Upon the sky, and seem a birth Rather of air than solid earth. Sometimes I dream that walking there In the green shade, all unaware At a new turn of the golden glade, I shall see her, and as though afraid Shall halt a moment and almost fall For passing faintness, like a man Who feels the sudden spirit of Pan Brimming his narrow soul with all The illimitable world. And she, Turning her head, will let me see The first sharp dawn of her surprise Turning to welcome in her eyes. And I shall come and take my lover And looking on her re-discover All her beauty:--her dark hair And the little ears beneath it, where Roses of lucid shadow sleep; Her brooding mouth, and in the deep Wells of her eyes reflected stars. Oh, the imperishable things That hands and lips as well as words Shall speak! Oh movement of white wings, Oh wheeling galaxies of birds! THE ALIEN. A petal drifted loose From a great magnolia bloom, Your face hung in the gloom, Floating, white and close. We seemed alone: but another Bent o’er you with lips of flame, Unknown, without a name, Hated, and yet my brother. Your one short moan of pain Was an exorcising spell: The devil flew back to hell; We were alone again. A LITTLE MEMORY. White in the moonlight, Wet with dew, We have known the languor Of being two. We have been weary As children are, When over them, radiant, A stooping star, Bends their Good-Night, Kissed and smiled:-- Each was mother, Each was child. Child, from your forehead I kissed the hair, Gently, ah, gently: And you were Mistress and mother When on your breast I lay so safely And could rest. WAKING. Darkness had stretched its colour, Deep blue across the pane: No cloud to make night duller, No moon with its tarnish stain; But only here and there a star, One sharp point of frosty fire, Hanging infinitely far In mockery of our life and death And all our small desire. Now in this hour of waking From under brows of stone, A new pale day is breaking And the deep night is gone. Sordid now, and mean and small The daylight world is seen again, With only the veils of mist that fall Deaf and muffling over all To hide its ugliness and pain. But to-day this dawn of meanness Shines in my eyes, as when The new world’s brightness and cleanness Broke on the first of men. For the light that shows the huddled things Of this close-pressing earth, Shines also on your face and brings All its dear beauty back to me In a new miracle of birth. I see you asleep and unpassioned, White-faced in the dusk of your hair-- Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned That it filled me once with despair To look on its exquisite transience And think that our love and thought and laughter Puff out with the death of our flickering sense, While we pass ever on and away Towards some blank hereafter. But now I am happy, knowing That swift time is our friend, And that our love’s passionate glowing, Though it turn ash in the end, Is a rose of fire that must blossom its way Through temporal stuff, nor else could be More than a nothing. Into day The boundless spaces of night contract And in your opening eyes I see Night born in day, in time eternity. BY THE FIRE. We who are lovers sit by the fire, Cradled warm ’twixt thought and will, Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs In the equipoise of all desire, Sit and listen to the still Small hiss and whisper of green logs That burn away, that burn away With the sound of a far-off falling stream Of threaded water blown to steam, Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey. Vapours blue as distance rise Between the hissing logs that show A glimpse of rosy heat below; And candles watch with tireless eyes While we sit drowsing here. I know, Dimly, that there exists a world, That there is time perhaps, and space Other and wider than this place, Where at the fireside drowsily curled We hear the whisper and watch the flame Burn blinkless and inscrutable. And then I know those other names That through my brain from cell to cell Echo--reverberated shout Of waiters mournful along corridors: But nobody carries the orders out, And the names (dear friends, your name and yours) Evoke no sign. But here I sit On the wide hearth, and there are you: That is enough and only true. The world and the friends that lived in it Are shadows: you alone remain Real in this drowsing room, Full of the whispers of distant rain And candles staring into the gloom. VALEDICTORY. I had remarked--how sharply one observes When life is disappearing round the curves Of yet another corner, out of sight!-- I had remarked when it was “good luck” and “good night” And “a good journey to you,” on her face Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace Of clouded thought in those brown eyes, Always so happily clear of hows and ifs-- My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys. There I stood, holding her farewell hand, (Pressing my life and soul and all The world to one good-bye, till, small And smaller pressed, why there I’d stand Dead when they vanished with the sight of her). And I saw that she had grown aware, Queer puzzled face! of other things Beyond the present and her own young speed, Of yesterday and what new days might breed Monstrously when the future brings A charger with your late-lamented head: Aware of other people’s lives and will, Aware, perhaps, aware even of me.... The joyous hope of it! But still I pitied her; for it was sad to see A goddess shorn of her divinity. In the midst of her speed she had made pause, And doubts with all their threat of claws, Outstripped till now by her unconsciousness, Had seized on her; she was proved mortal now. “Live, only live? For you were meant Never to know a thought’s distress, But a long glad astonishment At the world’s beauty and your own. The pity of you, goddess, grown Perplexed and mortal!” Yet ... yet ... can it be That she is aware, perhaps, even of me? And life recedes, recedes; the curve is bare, My handkerchief flutters blankly in the air; And the question rumbles in the void: Was she aware, was she after all aware? PRIVATE PROPERTY. All fly--yet who is misanthrope?-- The actual men and things that pass Jostling, to wither as the grass So soon: and (be it heaven’s hope, Or poetry’s kaleidoscope, Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) Each owns a paradise of glass Where never a yearning heliotrope Pursues the sun’s ascent or slope; For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was. Like fauns embossed in our domain, We look abroad, and our calm eyes Mark how the goatish gods of pain Revel; and if by grim surprise They break into our paradise, Patient we build its beauty up again. REVELATION. At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, I taste a strange apocalypse: Your subtle taper finger-tips Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, I know the wiles and each iynx That brought me passionate to your lips: I know you bare as laughter strips Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks Pure knowledge from this tainted well, And now hears voices yet unheard Within it, and without it sees That world of which the poets tell Their vision in the stammered word Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies. MINOAN PORCELAIN. Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze All imperturbable do not Even make pretences to regard The jutting absence of her stays, Where many a Tyrian gallipot Excites desire with spilth of nard. The bistred rims above the fard Of cheeks as red as bergamot Attest that no shamefaced delays Will clog fulfilment, nor retard Full payment of the Cyprian’s praise Down to the last remorseful jot. Hail priestess of we know not what Strange cult of Mycenean days! IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY. I am not one of those who sip, Like a quotidian bock, Cheap idylls from a languid lip Prepared to yawn or mock. I wait the indubitable word, The great Unconscious Cue. Has it been spoken and unheard? Spoken, perhaps, by you? CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION. Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine Stands firmly solid in the glasses, Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes The lamp’s bright pencil of down-struck light. The fruits metallically gleam, Globey in their heaped-up bowl, And there are faces against the night Of the outer room--faces that seem Part of this still, still life ... they’ve lost their soul. And amongst these frozen faces you smiled, Surprised, surprisingly, like a child: And out of the frozen welter of sound Your voice came quietly, quietly. “What about God?” you said. “I have found Much to be said for Totality. All, I take it, is God: God’s all-- This bottle, for instance....” I recall, Dimly, that you took God by the neck-- God-in-the-bottle--and pushed Him across: But I, without a moment’s loss Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: “Check!” COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ. We judge by appearance merely: If I can’t think strangely, I can at least look queerly. So I grew the hair so long on my head That my mother wouldn’t know me, Till a woman in a night-club said, As I was passing by, “Hullo, here comes Salome.” I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass, And, oh Salome! there I was-- Positively jewelled, half a vampire, With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire Over the brink of the crag of sense, Looking down from perilous eminence Into a gulf of windy night. And there’s straw in my tempestuous hair, And I’m not a poet: but never despair! I’ll madly live the poems I shall never write. SOCIAL AMENITIES. I am getting on well with this anecdote, When suddenly I recall The many times I have told it of old, And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck-- The whole thing sticks in my throat, And my face all tingles and pricks with shame For myself and my hearers. These are the social pleasures, my God! But I finish the story triumphantly all the same. TOPIARY. Failing sometimes to understand Why there are folk whose flesh should seem Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; Why there are men without any legs, Whizzing along on little trollies With long long arms like apes’: Failing to see why God the Topiarist Should train and carve and twist Men’s bodies into such fantastic shapes: Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish That I were a fabulous thing in a fool’s mind, Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish. ON THE ’BUS. Sitting on the top of the ’bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. “Conservation of energy,” you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me streams out In a vanishing skein of grey. Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! I am a harp of twittering strings, An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident. Droll phenomena! POINTS AND LINES. Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed Baffles even the grasp of time. Oh that I might reflect them As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, And the stars are mirrored across me; Those stabbing points of the sky Turned to a thread of shaken silver, A long fine thread. PANIC. The eyes of the portraits on the wall Look at me, follow me, Stare incessantly: I take it their glance means nothing at all? --Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all.... Out in the gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, Each of them sounds his mournful horn: Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. What can have made the peacocks wake? STANZAS. Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: And action bears us onward like a stream Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our swift course; Glorious--and yet its headlong currents seem But backwaters of some diviner force. There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought, That stoop to carry the grace of a girl’s breast; And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought In airy metal, that they seem possessed Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift The shoulder of a god towards the light; And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift, Piercing the spirit deeply with delight. Would I might make these miracles my own! Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form; Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone; Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm On noonday flowers; speaking the song of birds Among the branches; whispering the fall of rain; Beyond all thought, past action and past words, I would live in beauty, free from self and pain. POEM. Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; And magic words lay ripening in my soul Till their much-whispered music turned a wine Whose subtlest power was all in my control. These things were mine, and they were real for me As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast: For I could love a phrase, a melody, Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed. I scorned all fire that outward of the eyes Could kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid; Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wise Who saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed. But a time came when, turning full of hate And weariness from my remembered themes, I wished my poet’s pipe could modulate Beauty more palpable than words and dreams. All loveliness with which an act informs The dim uncertain chaos of desire Is mine to day; it touches me, it warms Body and spirit with its outward fire. I am mine no more: I have become a part Of that great earth that draws a breath and stirs To meet the spring. But I could wish my heart Were still a winter of frosty gossamers. SCENES OF THE MIND. I have run where festival was loud With drum and brass among the crowd Of panic revellers, whose cries Affront the quiet of the skies; Whose dancing lights contract the deep Infinity of night and sleep To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. And I have found my heart’s desire In beechen caverns that autumn fills With the blue shadowiness of distant hills; Whose luminous grey pillars bear The stooping sky: calm is the air, Nor any sound is heard to mar That crystal silence--as from far, Far off a man may see The busy world all utterly Hushed as an old memorial scene. Long evenings I have sat and been Strangely content, while in my hands I held a wealth of coloured strands, Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains New life at the lamp’s round pool of gold; Each sinks again when I withhold The quickening radiance, to a wan And shadowy oblivion Of what it was. And in my mind Beauty or sudden love has shined And wakened colour in what was dead And turned to gold the sullen lead Of mean desires and everyday’s Poor thoughts and customary ways. Sometimes in lands where mountains throw Their silent spell on all below, Drawing a magic circle wide About their feet on every side, Robbed of all speech and thought and act, I have seen God in the cataract. In falling water and in flame, Never at rest, yet still the same, God shows himself. And I have known The swift fire frozen into stone, And water frozen changelessly Into the death of gems. And I Long sitting by the thunderous mill Have seen the headlong wheel made still, And in the silence that ensued Have known the endless solitude Of being dead and utterly nought. Inhabitant of mine own thought, I look abroad, and all I see Is my creation, made for me: Along my thread of life are pearled The moments that make up the world. L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE. (From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.) I would immortalize these nymphs; so bright Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, It floats like drowsy down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown The tree’s true self--proving that I have known, Thinking it love, the blushing of a rose. But think. These nymphs, their loveliness ... suppose They bodied forth your senses’ fabulous thirst? Illusion! which the blue eyes of the first, As cold and chaste as is the weeping spring, Beget: the other, sighing, passioning, Is she the wind, warm in your fleece at noon? No; through this quiet, when a weary swoon Crushes and chokes the latest faint essay Of morning, cool against the encroaching day, There is no murmuring water, save the gush Of my clear fluted notes; and in the hush Blows never a wind, save that which through my reed Puffs out before the rain of notes can speed Upon the air, with that calm breath of art That mounts the unwrinkled zenith visibly, Where inspiration seeks its native sky. You fringes of a calm Sicilian lake, The sun’s own mirror which I love to take, Silent beneath your starry flowers, tell _How here I cut the hollow rushes, well_ _Tamed by my skill, when on the glaucous gold_ _Of distant lawns about their fountain cold_ _A living whiteness stirs like a lazy wave;_ _And at the first slow notes my panpipes gave_ _These flocking swans, these naiads, rather, fly_ _Or dive_. Noon burns inert and tawny dry, Nor marks how clean that Hymen slipped away From me who seek in song the real A. Wake, then, to the first ardour and the sight, O lonely faun, of the old fierce white light, With, lilies, one of you for innocence. Other than their lips’ delicate pretence, The light caress that quiets treacherous lovers, My breast, I know not how to tell, discovers The bitten print of some immortal’s kiss. But hush! a mystery so great as this I dare not tell, save to my double reed, Which, sharer of my every joy and need, Dreams down its cadenced monologues that we Falsely confuse the beauties that we see With the bright palpable shapes our song creates: My flute, as loud as passion modulates, Purges the common dream of flank and breast, Seen through closed eyes and inwardly caressed, Of every empty and monotonous line. Bloom then, O Syrinx, in thy flight malign, A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. Proud of my music, let me often make A song of goddesses and see their rape Profanely done on many a painted shape. So when the grape’s transparent juice I drain, I quell regret for pleasures past and feign A new real grape. For holding towards the sky The empty skin, I blow it tight and lie Dream-drunk till evening, eyeing it. Tell o’er Remembered joys and plump the grape once more. _Between the reeds I saw their bodies gleam_ _Who cool no mortal fever in the stream_ _Crying to the woods the rage of their desire:_ _And their bright hair went down in jewelled fire_ _Where crystal broke and dazzled shudderingly._ _I check my swift pursuit: for see where lie,_ _Bruised, being twins in love, by languor sweet,_ _Two sleeping girls, clasped at my very feet._ _I seize and run with them, nor part the pair,_ _Breaking this covert of frail petals, where_ _Roses drink scent of the sun and our light play_ _’Mid tumbled flowers shall match the death of day._ I love that virginal fury--ah, the wild Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. _Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew_ _So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide_ _Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied._ _For as I leaned to stifle in the hair_ _Of one my passionate laughter (taking care_ _With a stretched finger, that her innocence_ _Might stain with her companion’s kindling sense_ _To touch the younger little one, who lay_ _Child-like unblushing) my ungrateful prey_ _Slips from me, freed by passion’s sudden death_ _Nor heeds the frenzy of my sobbing breath._ Let it pass! others of their hair shall twist A rope to drag me to those joys I missed. See how the ripe pomegranates bursting red To quench the thirst of the mumbling bees have bled; So too our blood, kindled by some chance fire, Flows for the swarming legions of desire. At evening, when the woodland green turns gold And ashen grey, ’mid the quenched leaves, behold! Red Etna glows, by Venus visited, Walking the lava with her snowy tread Whene’er the flames in thunderous slumber die. I hold the goddess! Ah, sure penalty! But the unthinking soul and body swoon At last beneath the heavy hush of noon. Forgetful let me lie where summer’s drouth Sifts fine the sand and then with gaping mouth Dream planet-struck by the grape’s round wine-red star. Nymphs, I shall see the shade that now you are. MOLE. Tunnelled in solid blackness creeps The old mole-soul, and wakes or sleeps, He knows not which, but tunnels on Through ages of oblivion; Until at last the long constraint Of each hand-wall is lost, and faint Comes daylight creeping from afar, And mole-work grows crepuscular. Tunnel meets air and bursts; mole sees Men as strange as walking trees? And far horizons smoking blue, And chasing clouds for ever new; Green hills, like lighted lamps aglow Or quenched beneath the cloud-shadow; Quenching and blazing turn by turn, Spring’s great green signals fitfully burn. Mole travels on, but finds the steering A harder task of pioneering Than when he thridded through the strait Blind catacombs that ancient fate Had carved for him. Stupid and dumb And blind and touchless he had come A way without a turn; but here, Under the sky, the passenger Chooses his own best way; and mole Distracted wanders, yet his hole Regrets not much wherein he crept, But runs, a joyous nympholept, This way and that, by all made mad-- River nymph and oread, Ocean’s daughters and Lorelei, Combing the silken mystery, The glaucous gold of her rivery tresses-- Each haunts the traveller, each possesses The drunken wavering soul awhile; Then with a phantom’s cock-crow smile Mocks craving with sheer vanishment. Mole-eyes grow hawk’s: knowledge is lent In grudging driblets that pay high Unconscionable usury. To unrelenting life. Mole learns To travel more secure; the turns Of his long way less puzzling seem, And all those magic forms that gleam In airy invitation cheat Less often than they did of old. The earth slopes upward, fold by fold Of quiet hills that meet the gold Serenity of western skies. Over the world’s edge with clear eyes Our mole transcendent sees his way Tunnelled in light: he must obey Necessity again and thrid Close catacombs as erst he did, Fate’s tunnellings, himself must bore Through the sunset’s inmost core. The guiding walls to each-hand shine Luminous and crystalline; And mole shall tunnel on and on, Till night let fall oblivion. TWO REALITIES. A waggon passed with scarlet wheels And a yellow body, shining new. “Splendid!” said I. “How fine it feels To be alive, when beauty peels The grimy husk from life.” And you Said, “Splendid!” and I thought you’d seen That waggon blazing down the street; But I looked and saw that your gaze had been On a child that was kicking an obscene Brown ordure with his feet. Our souls are elephants, thought I, Remote behind a prisoning grill, With trunks thrust out to peer and pry And pounce upon reality; And each at his own sweet will Seizes the bun that he likes best And passes over all the rest. QUOTIDIAN VISION. There is a sadness in the street, And sullenly the folk I meet Droop their heads as they walk along, Without a smile, without a song. A mist of cold and muffling grey Falls, fold by fold, on another day That dies unwept. But suddenly, Under a tunnelled arch I see On flank and haunch the chestnut gleam Of horses in a lamplit steam; And the dead world moves for me once more With beauty for its living core. THE MIRROR. Slow-moving moonlight once did pass Across the dreaming looking-glass, Where, sunk inviolably deep, Old secrets unforgotten sleep Of beauties unforgettable. But dusty cobwebs are woven now Across that mirror, which of old Saw fingers drawing back the gold From an untroubled brow; And the depths are blinded to the moon, And their secrets forgotten, for ever untold. VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LAFORGUE. Youth as it opens out discloses The sinister metempsychosis Of lilies dead and turned to roses Red as an angry dawn. But lilies, remember, are grave-side flowers, While slow bright rose-leaves sail Adrift on the music of happiest hours; And those lilies, cold and pale, Hide fiery roses beneath the lawn Of the young bride’s parting veil. PHILOSOPHY. “God needs no christening,” Pantheist mutters, “Love opens shutters On heaven’s glistening, Flesh, key-hole listening, Hear what God utters”.... Yes, but God stutters. PHILOCLEA IN THE FOREST. I. ’Twas I that leaned to Amoret With: “What if the briars have tangled Time, Till, lost in the wood-ways, he quite forget How plaintive in cities at midnight sounds the chime Of bells slow-dying from discord to the hush whence they rose and met? “And in the forest we shall live free, Free from the bondage that Time has made To hedge our soul from its liberty; We shall not fear what is mighty, and unafraid Shall look wide-eyed at beauty, nor shrink from its majesty.” But Amoret answered me again: “We are lost in the forest, you and I; Lost, lost, not free, though no bonds restrain; For no spire rises for comfort, no landmark in the sky, And the long glades as they curve from sight are dark with a nameless pain. And Time creates what he devours,-- Music that sweetly dreams itself away, Frail-swung leaves of autumn and the scent of flowers, And the beauty of that poised moment, when the day Hangs ’twixt the quiet of darkness and the mirth of the sunlit hours.” II. Mottled and grey and brown they pass, The wood-moths, wheeling, fluttering; And we chase and they vanish; and in the grass Are starry flowers, and the birds sing Faint broken songs of the dying spring. And on the beech-hole, smooth and grey, Some lover of an older day Has carved in time-blurred lettering One world only:--“Alas.” III. Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play, When shimmeringly, glimpse by glimpse Seen through the leaves, the silken figures sway In measured dance. Never at shut of day, When Time perversely loitering limps Through endless twilights, should your strings Whisper of light remembered things That happened long ago and far away: Lutes, I forbid you! You must never play.... And you, pale marble statues, far descried Where vistas open suddenly, I bid you shew yourselves no more, but hide Your loveliness, lest too much glorified By western radiance slantingly Shot down the glade, you turn from stone To living gods, immortal grown, And, ageless, mock my beauty’s fleeting pride, You pale, relentless statues, far descried.... BOOKS AND THOUGHTS. Old ghosts that death forgot to ferry Across the Lethe of the years-- These are my friends, and at their tears I weep and with their mirth am merry. On a high tower, whose battlements Give me all heaven at a glance, I lie long summer nights in trance, Drowsed by the murmurs and the scents That rise from earth, while the sky above me Merges its peace with my soul’s peace, Deep meeting deep. No stir can move me, Nought break the quiet of my release: In vain the windy sunlight raves At the hush and gloom of polar caves. THE HIGHER SENSUALISM. There’s a church by a lake in Italy Stands white on a hill against the sky; And a path of immemorial cobbles Leads up and up, where the pilgrim hobbles Past a score or so of neat reposories, Where you stop and breathe and tell your rosaries To the shrined terra-cotta mannikins, That expound with the liveliest quirks and grins Known texts of Scripture. But no long stay Should the pilgrim make upon his way; But as means to the end these shrines stand here To guide to something holier, The church on the hill top. Your heaven’s so With a path leading up to it past a row Of votary Priapulids; At each you pause and tell your beads Along the quintuple strings of sense: Then on, to face Heaven’s eminence, New stimulated, new inspired. FORMAL VERSES. I. Mother of all my future memories, Mistress of my new life, which but to-day Began, when I beheld, deep in your eyes, My own love mirrored and the warm surprise Of the first kiss swept both our souls away, Your love has freed me; for I was oppressed By my own devil, whose unwholesome breath Tarnished my youth, leaving to me at best Age lacking comfort of a soul at rest And weariness beyond the hope of death. II. Ah, those were days of silent happiness! I never spoke, and had no need to speak, While on the windy down-land, cheek by cheek, The slow-driven sun beheld us. Each caress Had oratory for its own defence; And when I kissed or felt her fingers press, I envied not Demosthenes his Greek, Nor Tully for his Latin eloquence. PERILS OF THE SMALL HOURS. When life burns low as the fire in the grate And all the evening’s books are read, I sit alone, save for the dead And the lovers I have grown to hate. But all at once the narrow gloom Of hatred and despair expands In tenderness: thought stretches hands To welcome to the midnight room Another presence:--a memory Of how last year in the sunlit field, Laughing, you suddenly revealed Beauty in immortality. For so it is; a gesture strips Life bare of all its make-believe. All unprepared we may receive Our casual apocalypse. Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to night, And love comes, dimming spirit’s sight, When body plays interpreter. RETURN TO AN OLD HOME. In this wood--how the hazels have grown!-- I left a treasure all my own Of childish kisses and laughter and pain; Left, till I might come back again To take from the familiar earth My hoarded secret and count its worth. And all the spider-work of the years, All the time-spun gossamers, Dewed with each succeeding spring; And the piled up leaves the Autumns fling To the sweet corruption of death on death.... At the sudden stir of my spirit’s breath All scattered. New and fair and bright As ever it was, before my sight The treasure lay, and nothing missed. So having handled all and kissed, I put them back, adding one new And precious memory of you. _Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford._ *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED POEMS *** 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. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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