Whose throat a sweetened reed had blown to be;
Whose breast was harped of silver and of two
Grave small singing birds uncaged; the chant
Of limbs to one another tuned and wed
That, as she walked, the air with music filled;
Now she, for whose caress once duke and king
And scarlet cardinal broke cords of fate,
From couch to couch her restless slumber seeks
And strokes indifferent lead with moaning hands.
The citied dead snore past, the hissing seas
Roar overhead again, and bows of coral
Whip gleaming fish in darts of unmouthed colors:
Trees of coral strip their colored leaves
Of fish, and each leaf has two bats of light
Where eyes would be, while other golden bats
Slipping among them, gleam their curving sides.
Thundering rocks crash down; spears of starlight
Shatter and break among them. Water-stallions
Neighing, crest the foaming rush of tides.
Drowning waves, airward rushing, crash
Columned upward, rake the stars and hear
A humming chord within the heavens bowled,
Then plunging back, they lose between the rocks
A dying rumor of the chanting stars.
The cave is ribbed with music; threads of sound
Gleam on the whirring wings of bats of gold,
Loop from the grassroots to the roots of trees
Thrust into sunlight, where the song of birds
Spins silver threads to gleam from bough to bough.
Grass in meadows cools his fancy’s feet:
Dew is on the grass, and birds in hedges
Weave the sunlight with sharp streaks of flight.
Bees break apple bloom, and peach and clover
Sing in the southern air where aimless clouds
Go up the sky-hill, cropping it like sheep,
And startled pigeons, like a wind beginning,
Fill the air with sucking silver sound.
He would leave the cave, before the bats
Of light grow weary, to their eaves return,
While music fills the dark as wind fills sails
And Silence like a priest on thin gray feet
Tells his beads of minutes on beside.
The cave is ribbed with dark, the music flies,
The bats of light are eaved and dark again.
Before him as, the priest of Silence by
And all the whispering nuns of breathing blent
With Silence’s self, he walks, the door beside
Stands the moonwashed sentinel to break
Its lichened sleep. Here halts the retinue.
The priest between his fingers lets his beads
Purr down. The nuns the timeless interval
Fill with all the still despair of breath.
He gateward turns. The sentinel his mace
Lifts in calm indifference. At the stroke
The sleeping gate wakes yawning back upon
Where gaunt Orion, swinging by his knees,
Crashes the arcing moon among the stars.
IV
and let
within the antiseptic atmosphere
of russel square grown brisk and purified
the ymca (the american express for this sole purpose too)
let lean march teasing the breasts of spring
horned like reluctant snails within
pink intervals
a brother there
so many do somanydo
from out the weary courtesy of time
fate a lady shopper takes her change
brightly in coppers somanydo
with soaped efficiency english food agrees
even with thos cook
here is a
tunnel a long one like a black period
with kissing punctuate on our left we see
forty poplars like the breasts of girls
taut with running
on our left we see
that blanched plateau wombing cunningly
hushing his brilliant counterattack saying
shhhhhh to general blah in the year mille
neufcentvingtsomethingorother
may five years defunct
in a patient wave of sleep till natures
stomach settles hearing their sucking boots
their brittle sweat harshly evaporating carrying
dung there was no time to drop
the general himself
is now on tour somewhere in the states
telling about the war
and here
battalioned crosses in a pale parade
the german burned his dead (which goes to show
god visited him with proper wrath)
above unsapped convolvulae of hills april
a bee sipping perplexed with pleasure o spring
o wanton o cruel
o bitter and new as fire
baring to the curved and hungry hand
of march your white unsubtle thighs
grass his feet no longer trouble grows
lush in lanes he
sleeps quietly decay
makes death a cuckold yes lady
8 rue diena we take care of that yes
in amiens youll find 3 good hotels
V
THERE is no shortening-breasted nymph to shake
The tickets that stem up the lidless blaze
Of sunlight stiffening the shadowed ways,
Nor does the haunted silence even wake
Nor ever stir.
No footfall trembles in the smoky brush
Where bright leaves flicker down the dappled shade:
A tapestry that cloaks this empty glade
And shudders up to still the pulsing thrush
And frighten her
With the contact of its unboned hands
Until she falls and melts into the night
Where inky shadows splash upon the light
Crowding the folded darkness as it stands
About each grave
Whose headstone glimmers dimly in the gloom
Threaded by the doves’ unquiet calls,
Like memories that swim between the walls
And dim the peopled stillness of a room
Into a nave
Where no light breaks the thin cool panes of glass
To falling butterflies upon the floor;
While the shadows crowd within the door
And whisper in the dead leaves as they pass
Along the ground.
Here the sunset paints its wheeling gold
Where there is no breast to still in strife
Of joy or sadness, nor does any life
Flame these hills and vales grown sharp and cold
And bare of sound.
VI
MAN comes, man goes, and leaves behind
The bleaching bones that bore his lust;
The palfrey of his loves and hates
Is stabled at the last in dust.
He cozened it and it did bear
Him to wishing’s utmost rim;
But now, when wishing’s gained, he finds
It was the steed that cozened him.
VII
TRUMPETS of sun to silence fall
On house and barn and stack and wall.
Within the cottage, slowly wheeling,
The lamplight’s gold turns on the ceiling.
Beneath the stark and windless vane
Cattle stamp and munch their grain;
Below the starry apple bough
Leans the warped and clotted plow.
The moon rolls up, while far away
And thin with sorrow, the sheepdog’s bay
Fills the valley with lonely sound.
Slow leaves of darkness steal around.
The watch the watc
hman, Death, will keep
And man in amnesty may sleep.
The world is still, for she is old
And many’s the bead of a life she’s told.
Her gossip there, the watching moon
Views hill and stream and wave and dune
And many’s the fair one she’s seen wither:
They pass and pass, she cares not whither;—
Lovers’ vows by her made bright,
The outcast cursing at her light;
Mazed within her lambence lies
All the strife of flesh that dies.
Then through the darkened room with whispers speaking
There comes to man the sleep that all are seeking.
The lurking thief, in sharp regret
Watches the far world, waking yet,
But which in sleep will soon be still;
While he upon his misty hill
Hears a dark bird briefly cry
From its thicket on the sky,
And curses the moon because her light
Marks every outcast under night.
Still swings the murderer, bent of knees
In a slightly strained repose,
Nor feels the faint hand of the breeze:
He now with Solomon all things knows:
That, lastly, breath is to a man
But to want and fret a span.
VIII
HE FURROWS the brown earth, doubly sweet
To a hushed great passage of wind
Dragging its shadow. Beneath his feet
The furrow breaks, and at its end
He turns. With peace about his head
Traverses he again the earth: his own,
Still with enormous promises of bread
And the clean smell of its strength upon him blown.
Against the shimmering azure of the wood
A blackbird whistles, cool and mellow;
And there, where for a space he stood
To fill his lungs, a spurting yellow
Rabbit bursts, its flashing scut
Muscled in erratic lines
Of fright from furrow hill to rut.
He shouts: the darkly liquid pines
Mirror his falling voice, as leaf
Raises clear brown depths to meet its falling self;
Then again the blackbird, thief
Of silence in a burnished pelf.
Inscribes the answer to all life
Upon the white page of the sky:
The furious emptiness of strife
For him to read who passes by.
Beneath the marbled sky go sheep
Slow as clouds on hills of green;
Somewhere waking waters sleep
Beyond a faintleaved willow screen.
Wind and sun and air: he can
Furrow the brown earth, doubly sweet
With his own sweat, since here a man
May bread him with his hands and feet.
IX
THE sun lies long upon the hills,
The plowman slowly homeward wends;
Cattle low, uneased of milk,
The lush grass to their passing bends.
Mockingbirds in the ancient oak
In golden madness swing and shake;
Sheep like surf against a cliff
Of green hills, slowly flow and break.
Then sun sank down, and with him went
A pageantry whose swords are sheathed
At last, as warriors long ago
Let fall their storied arms and breathed
This air and found this peace as he
Who across this sunset moves to rest,
Finds but simple scents and sounds;
And this is all, and this is best.
X
BeYOND the hill the sun swam downward
And he was lapped in azure seas;
The dream that hurt him, the blood that whipped him
Dustward, slowed and gave him ease.
Behind him day lay stark with labor
Of him who strives with earth for bread;
Before him sleep, tomorrow his circling
Sinister shadow about his head.
But now, with night, this was forgotten:
Phantoms of breath round man swim fast;
Forgotten his father, Death; Derision
His mother, forgotten by her at last.
Nymph and faun in this dusk might riot
Beyond all oceaned Time’s cold greenish bar
To shrilling pipes, to cymbals’ hissing
Beneath a single icy star
Where he, to his own compulsion
—A terrific figure on an urn—
Is caught between his two horizons,
Forgetting that he cant return.
XI
WHEN evening shadows grew around
And a thin moon filled the lane,
Their slowing breath made scarce a sound
Where Richard lay with Jane.
The world was empty of all save they
And Spring itself was snared,
And well’s the fare of any day
When none has lesser fared:
Young breasts hollowed out with fire,
A singing fire that spun
The gusty tree of his desire
Till tree and gale were one;
And a small white belly yielded up
That they might try to make
Of youth and dark and spring a cup
That cannot fail nor slake.
XII
YOUNG Richard, striding toward town,
Felt life within him grown
Taut as a silver wire on which
Desire’s sharp winds were blown
To a monstrous sound that lapped him close
With a rain of earth and fire,
Flaying him exquisitely
With whips of living wire.
Under the arch where Mary dwelt
And nights were brief and sharp,
Her ancient music fell with his
As cythern falls with harp
And Richard’s fire within her fire
Swirled up into the air,
And polarised was all breath when
A girl let down her hair.
XIII
WHEN I was young and proud and gay
And flowers in fields were thicking,
There was Tad and Ralph and Ray
All waiting for my picking.
And who, with such a page to spell
And the hand of Spring to spread it,
Could like the tale told just as well
By another who had read it?
Ah, not I! and if I had
—When I was young and pretty—
Not learned to spell, then there was Tad
And Ralph and Ray to pity.
There was Tad and Ray and Ralph,
And field and lane were sunny;
And ah! I spelled my page myself
Long ere I married Johnny.
XIV
HIS mother said: I’ll make him
A lad has never been
(And rocked him closely, stroking
His soft hair’s yellow sheen)
His bright youth will be metal
No alchemist has seen.
His mother said: I’ll give him
A brave and high desire,
’Till all the dross of living
Burns clean within his fire.
He’ll be strong and merry
And he’ll be clean and brave,
And all the world will rue it
When he is dark in grave.
But dark will treat him kinder
Than man would anywhere
(With barren winds to rock him
—Though now he doesn’t care—
And hushed and haughty starlight
To stroke his golden hair)
Mankind called him felon
And hanged him stark and high
Where four winds coul
d watch him
Troubled on the sky.
Once he was quick and golden,
Once he was clean and brave.
Earth, you dreamed and shaped him:
Will you deny him grave?
Being dead he will forgive you
And all that you have done,
But he’ll curse you if you leave him
Grinning at the sun.
XV
BONNY earth and bonny sky
And bonny was the sweep
Of sun and rain in apple trees
While I was yet asleep.
And bonny earth and bonny sky
And bonny’ll be the rain
And sun among the apple trees
When I’ve long slept again.
XVI
BEHOLD me, in my feathered cap and doublet,
strutting across this stage that men call living:
the mirror of all youth and hope and striving.
Even you, in me, become a grimace.”
“Ay, in that belief you too are but a mortal,
thinking that peace and quietude and silence
are but the shadows of your little gestures
upon the wall of breathing that surrounds you.”
“Ho, old spectre, solemnly ribbed with wisdom!
D’ye think that I must feel your dark compulsions
and flee with kings and queens in whistling darkness?
I am star, and sun, and moon, and laughter.”
“What star is there that falls, with none to watch it?
What sun is there more permanent than darkness?
What moon is there that cracks not? ay, what laughter,
what purse is there that empties not with spending?”
“Ho.… One grows weary, posturing and grinning,
aping a dream to a house of peopled shadows!
Ah, ’twas you who stripped me bare and set me
gibbering at mine own face in a mirror.”