From out the elements, from sea and fire
To lead them on; they conquered all desire
With passion ever-new. Adventure’s flame
Was sealed upon their souls that did aspire
And reached up to the transient face of fame.
IV
Outlawed, aloof, like thunderclouds they sped
Over the restless breathing of the sea;
And those around shook at their liberty,
And trembled at their power. Alone the dead
Were free from these magicians’ modern charms
That vaunted lawlessness and love and pleasure:
Drawing the brave into a swifter measure,
Leading the brave into the life that harms
All but its strange initiate. Their crimes
Sped down the course of nature unrestrained.
While others fell they conquered, careful, trained,
Well practised in their art; yet there were times
Most near to death – then she, who loved so well,
Saved him, and straightway gave her soul to hell.
V
Love was too little for him, fate too strong,
And took in payment from him folly’s toll;
And yet she loved him with a patience long,
And eyes kept clear wherewith to view the soul,
The shaking battlefield that nourished him
And filled with tempests the proud tortured eyes
That mirrored her reflected love, yet grim,
Brooding remained; as by a fire that dies
Sits an impenitent with ravenous crimes
That will not cry aloud nor mercy seek,
Through haunted midnights sped with cruel chimes,
Locked in himself – till finally the sleek
Pale face of morning puts to flight the dim,
Mad, raving, windy ghosts that follow him.
VI
Flayed souls that flee before a shivering wind
Out to the dark horizons of the sea;
Eternal wanderers that may never be
Stilled by the touch of death. A pirate’s mind
Steers their black ships; his soul makes full their sails
With the wild winds of courage, and the waves
Daily grow great between them over graves
Of others not so free. When daylight fails
They may be seen alongside each to each,
Two lovers passionate of life and stress,
Stepped from the lands of hell to earth above:
A man that failed with heaven in his reach,
And she, that should have crowned a king, no less,
Yet then as now held but her crown of love.
VII
One thinks to hear them crying in the wind:
‘Life was so bitter to us – but we chose
The living, stressful moments from this close
Denying, grey existence. If we sinned
We bear our joys and crimes with equal heart,
And punishment is nothing. We have known
All sweet and sharp adventures, and are grown
Heroic-hard with life. You cannot part
Our twin minds from each other, and we sail
Proud and forever on the clutching sea,
Grown element again; the heaven’s breath
Makes clear our souls with space; life does not fail
As we have used it.’… They shall ever be;
Summer has set upon them but not death.
And if the End Be Now?…
The rooms are empty and the streets are bare,
No lovers meet at midnight under stars,
And the past pleasures of congenial hours
Forgotten lie; yet now these flowers that fade
Once dressed the gardens with gay delight.
Ah, patiently we must grow friends with grey,
Put out of mind the colour of the flame
And the triumphant songs of inspiration;
Obliterate adventure, memory.
The silence of desertion has begun
And the slow madness of annihilation;
Think you we can be friends with nothingness
And make a song out of an empty hour?
Somewhere the world has changed, the sun slipped round
To lands antipodean, leaving us
Like wandering dreamers in long corridors
That may not be got through, a circular maze
That guards the promised land of Never More;
Alone, alone we wander with our dream –
Ah, I have felt remote before tonight,
To warn my soul of the eventual end
And the completed solitude to be.
I have felt married to eternity,
Already bade farewell to things and days,
And seen their transmutation into ghosts
That gravely intimate the parting sign –
And if the end be now have I known all?
Let us examine conscience’ hieroglyph…
The adolescent love of mysticism,
Followed by bitter sceptic pride and scorn
Of what life seemed to give, gave into hands
Too frail to hold, looked into eyes too veiled
With youthful sorrows to let comfort in.
And there was independence, solemnly
Scheming to build the tower impregnable
That should throw shadow over half the earth;
And fortitude and courage, like wild steeds
They raved and never could be brought to rein,
And so made havoc, vainly wasting strength
Till their nobility was lost indeed.
Love came along and seemed the conqueror
That should set right the world, proclaiming justice
With many promises of inspiration
And a high creed of generosity;
(Of all religions Love the proudest is,
And will not be gainsaid, but though eternal,
By its own flame it fades, consuming us).
There have been other martyrs on this wheel
That turns today before me: introspection,
And that fanatic, self-analysis,
With soul archaic as the early saint
That knelt with grace to clasp the cross and death;
But oh, my saint dies not! and glories still
Turning the knife each day in painful wounds
With self-infliction growing ever deeper…
Yet there are moods when I can plumb the world
And seem to tell the purpose of the stars,
Grasp at the palm of fate, transcending earth.
This is the tranquil mood of certainty
That lies above us as the distant sunset.
* * * * * *
After the beat of sorrow’s passionate hands
Came melancholy with a gesture calm;
And in her motion was the breath of sleep
And musing poetry, to soothe despair;
And here time seemed to turn a gentle hermit
Putting aside the weary web of stress;
Akin with nature, merging into autumn
With a long pause as if eternal – Then
The human world obtrudes, the daily tides
Of feverish events surge up again
And to a further controversy beckon.
* * * * * *
My hands are empty now, my heart as void
Of all emotions as a timeless dawn
When the last stars are lost, before some day
Has made complete actuality of hours.
Now close the doors and let the pulse of earth
Slip unperceived to final quietude,
For life has taken much in giving much –
In that shall lie the balance of the end.
Moon
Slowly the moon grows larger, I can see
&n
bsp; The real solitude to be tonight,
And the vain longing of a muted heart
As when two lovers have been long asunder.
She counts the minutes, pale and silently
Draws nearer to the sea; the little waves
Become all great with longing, wreath’d with foam;
Already a long stairway from the sky
Descending slowly rests upon the earth,
And thoughts, like spirits, on it come and go.
* * * * * *
Oh puissant unattainable white moon,
My soul has taken pause, saluting thee.
The Sonnet of Happiness
Over the City lie the gathered stars,
The streets are holy in their emptiness
As I go with you, great with happiness.
We have inherited the strength of Mars
And the proud love of Venus; we are free!
Let us make good our freedom, for we are wise
And bravely passionate; this enterprise
Shall long endure like a fine ship at sea.
Tonight we’ll have no melodrama, tears,
Or sudden partings of dissatisfaction,
No wavering purpose or unglorious action,
No hesitation or uncertain fears;
But in a solitude of silence Grecian
Shall know the plenitude of life’s completion.
I
[What is this cry for toys? you’ve had them all]
What is this cry for toys? you’ve had them all;
This clamouring for lovers? take your choice:
Outgrown and senseless dolls with timid voice,
Like marionettes unstrung they can but fall
Into your merciful hands, your tender grasp
That pities them and tidies up their tears;
The while you wince, yet put away their fears,
Their sorrows soothe, their anguished hands un-clasp.
For they have sunk all pride in commonness,
Lost the contumely look, the daily speech;
Lie at your feet – bend down, let fingers reach
An ultimate kiss to them – forgetfulness…
And then maybe your sorrows, each by each,
Will pardon beg for you, end your distress.
II
[Yet when the night draws on, you long for arms]
Yet when the night draws on, you long for arms,
Arms to enfold, becalm your soul away,
Gestures to quell, a voice that says: ‘Today
Is a spent nightmare, rest you from alarms
And be unharassed; you have done with fear
For a short season and shall claim reward,
That share of victory that has been stored
For you in well-kept sequence, costing dear.’
And in the sunset stillness of that hour
Maybe you’ll dream of lying down with Death,
Your ultimate lover; but your soul and breath
Must first be parted by that unknown power
Of time or fate, whatever name is given
To that strange path that’s said to lead to heaven.
Praise
I love the gesture of your open hands
Expounding things: the blinding streak of fire
That lights the voice of your imagination.
I love your laugh and all its cadences,
The tempests of your speech, the flaming words
Of wisdom, all the agile nimble thoughts
That seethe and simmer in your smiling brain;
The oratory of truths you have declaimed,
The conquest of the difficult and dark
Obstructions laid by life along your way.
You have not fallen, failed nor faltered once,
Nor looked behind in doubt, but undismayed
Have faced the sun. In your dark eyes I see
The promises of miracles, the lure
Of brilliant new horizons, hopes found good,
And dreams to make the gods rejoice and sing.
You are an army flushed with conquered wines,
Feasting on luxury and new delight –
You are the king of joy, the world is tamed
And spread before you in magnificence;
The subtle and the sensuous are your slaves,
And all the seven wonders now made clear
Delivered you as prize. I will stand by
And look into a corner of your heart
To see if you are happy, if your crown
Be not of gold too heavy, whether pain
Shall be excluded from this great new rule,
And all the sorrows and incertitudes
Put to the torture they have merited.
I think that you will now make free our days,
And conquer time; you shall not know defeat.
For you are priest of Possibility,
Hero of new-discovered continents,
Pure as the endless sea, spirit of love
Created from the essences of stars
And the pulsating powers of elements;
There are no bounds nor limits to your speed,
No mountain huge enough to crush your heart,
Nothing to kill the genius of your soul.
The Lovers
Hundreds of lovers there have been,
Princes and clowns and fools;
Mighty, timid, low, obscene,
And some whose hearts were never clean
Who set aside all rules.
Dark lovers from the burning lands,
And giants from the plain,
And some with wicked cruel hands,
And some God made and understands,
And more that Death has slain.
Pale boys too beautiful to live,
Too wild and proud and young,
With eager eyes and hearts that give
A love this life cannot forgive
And sends its snakes among.
And some that lied and stole and swore
To fill the world with vice,
Who fought each other and made war
Till Fate came knocking at the door
And made them pay the price.
Strange subtlety, sweet happiness
Some gave and others took!
Yet lovers all, who once did bless
The love that leads men to distress
And marks with bitter look.
Now Death has stolen all away,
And bade them love and kiss
Pale shadows of a yesterday,
With empty hands and hearts that sway
In darker worlds than this.
Wheels
I sometimes think that all our thoughts are wheels,
Rolling forever through a painted world:
Moved by the cunning of a thousand clowns
Dressed paper-wise, with blatant rounded masks,
That take their multi-coloured caravans
From place to place, and act and leap and sing,
Catching the spinning hoops when cymbals clash.
And one is dressed as Fate, and one as Death;
The rest that represent Love, Joy and Sin,
Join hands in solemn stage-learnt ecstasy,
While Folly beats a drum with golden pegs,
And mocks that shrouded jester called Despair.
The dwarfs and other curious satellites,
Voluptuous-mouthed, with slyly pointed steps
Strut in the circus while the people stare.
And some have sober faces white with chalk
And roll the heavy wheels all through the streets
Of sleeping hearts, with ponderance and noise
Like weary armies on a solemn march.
Now in the scented gardens of the Night
Where we are scattered like a pack of cards,
Our words are turned to spokes that thoughts may roll,
And form a ringing chain around the world,
&nb
sp; (Itself a fabulous wheel controlled by Time
Over the slow incline of centuries).
So dreams and prayers, and feelings born of sleep,
As well as all the sun-gilt pageantry
Made out of summer breezes and hot noons,
Are in the great revolving of the spheres
Under the trampling of their chariot wheels.
Zeppelins
I saw the people climbing up the street
Maddened with war and strength and thought to kill;
And after followed Death, who held with skill
His torn rags royally, and stamped his feet.
The fires flamed up and burnt the serried town,
Most where the sadder, poorer houses were;
Death followed with proud feet and smiling stare,
And the mad crowds ran madly up and down.
And many died and hid in unfound places
In the black ruins of the frenzied night;
And Death still followed in his surplice, white
And streaked in imitation of their faces.
* * * * * *
But in the morning men began again
To mock Death following in bitter pain.
The Last of Pierrot
Pierrot again on octaves strums around,
(Octaves his only meaning, speech and measure),
White, wasted, wanton fool that kisses pleasure
Thinking with love’s glass knife to stab the ground
And draw life-blood from out his painted heart;
Forgetting that its texture is but paper,
More fragile frills than gossamer or vapour,
A ribbon, tied with eighteenth-century art.
He sits and shivers on a tattered stool,
Hearing the cold grind out the endless breath
From saddened shadows: ‘Sober now,’ he saith,
‘The cards lie upwards on the useless pool,
The drums are filled with blood and wine and lead,