by Unknown
Ah, l’étoile de l’allumette!
Il me plait bien d’observer
A voice that sings
A translation of Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’automne”
A voice that sings
Like viol strings
Through the wane
Of the pale year
Lulleth me here
With its strain.
My soul is faint
At the bell’s plaint,
Ringing deep;
I think upon
A day bygone
And I weep.
Away! Away!
I must obey
This drear wind,
Like a dead leaf
In aimless grief
Drifting blind.
Scalding tears shall not avail
Scalding tears shall not avail,
Love shall be to us for aye
An heart-breaking tale.
Ah, how fast your warm heart beats
Fluttering upon my breast.
Lay aside your deep unrest;
We have eaten all the sweets;
The golden fruit falls from the tree
Yea, for this love of mine
Yea, for this love of mine
I have given all I had;
For she was passing fair,
And I was passing mad.
All flesh, it is said,
Shall wither as the grass;
The fuel for the oven
Shall be consumed, alas!
We will leave the village behind
We will leave the village behind,
Merrily, you and I,
Tramp it smart and sing to the wind,
With the Rommany Rye.
Gladly above
Gladly above,
The lover listens
In deepest love.
After the tribulation of dark strife
After the tribulation of dark strife,
And all the ills of the earth, crying for my release.
Why is the truth so hidden and the land of dreams so far,
That the feet of the climber fail on the upward way;
Although in the purple distance burns a red-gold star,
There are briers on the mountain and the weary feet have bled.
The homesteads and the fireglow bid him stay:
And the burden of his body is like a burden of lead.
Told sublimely in the language
Told sublimely in the language
Which the shining angels knew.
Tearless choirs of joyful servants,
Sounding cymbals, brazen shawms,
Distant hymns of myriad planets,
Heavenly maze of full-voiced psalms.
Only, when the heart is peaceful,
When the soul is moved to love,
May we hearken to those voices
Starry singing from above.
Love that I can give you, lady
Love that I can give you, lady
Ah, that they haven’t, lady
Lady witchin’, lady mine.
O, you say that I torment you
With my verses, lady mine
Faith! the best I had I sent you,
Don’t be laughin’, lady mine,
I am foolish to be hopin’
That you left your window open,
Wind thine arms round me
... Wind thine arms round me, woman of sorcery,
While the lascivious music murmurs afar:
I will close mine eyes, and dream as I dance with thee,
And pass away from the world where my sorrows are.
Faster and faster! strike the harps in the hall!
Woman, I fear that this dance is the dance of death!
Faster! — ah, I am faint. . . and, ah, I fall.
The distant music mournfully murmureth.
Where none murmureth
Where none murmureth,
Let all grieving cease
And fade as a breath,
And come the final peace
Which men call death.
Joy and sorrow
Pass away and be fled,
Welcome the morrow
Lord, thou knowest my misery
Lord, thou knowest my misery,
See the gifts which I have brought,
Sunshine on a dying face
Stricken flowers, seldom sought.
See the pale moon, the sunless dawn
Of my fainting feebleness;
But only shed thy dew on me
And I shall teem in fruitfulness.
Thunders and sweeps along
Thunders and sweeps along
The roadway. The rain is strong
And the tide of it lays all pain.
I am in no idle passion
That my threadbare coat is torn,
And quaint of fashion.
My humour is devil-may-care,
As the labourer’s song upborne
On the quiet air.
Though there is no resurrection from the past
Though there is no resurrection from the past,
It matters not, for one pure thing I see,
On which no stain, no shadow has been cast.
I see the image of my love unclouded,
Like a white maiden in some hidden place,
In a bright cloak, woven of my hopes, enshrouded,
And looking at me with a smiling face.
I do not care for an honourable mention
And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd
And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd,
And have assisted at their boisterous play;
I have unbent myself and shouted loud,
And been as blatant and as coarse as they.
I have consorted with vulgarity
And am indelibly marked with its fell kiss,
Meanly I lived upon casual charity
Eagerly drinking of the dregs of bliss.
Gorse-flower makes but sorry dining
— Gorse-flower makes but sorry dining,
Mulberries make no winecups full,
Grass-threads lacing and entwining
Weave no linen by the waters -
Said the mother to her daughters.
The sisters viewed themselves reclining,
Heeding not, undutiful.
The first girl wished for spinning,
And she asked a spindle of gold;
The second sister wished to weave,
That I am feeble, that my feet
That I am feeble, that my feet
Are weak as young twigs in the wind;
That this poor heart, which was of old
So reckless, passionate and proud,
Shivers at trifles and wanes cold
Whene’er thy fair face shows a cloud.
A golden bird in azure skies,
Late radiant with sunbright wings,
Is fallen down to earth, and sighs
The grieving soul. But no grief is thine
The grieving soul. But no grief is thine
Who driftest the creeks and shallows among,
Shaking thy hair of the clinging brine.
Why is thy garment closer drawn?
Thine eyes are sad, my sorrowful one,
Thy tresses are strewn with the woe of dawn,
The pearly dawn weeping the sun.
Hast thou no word - to raise - to ease
Our souls? Well, go, for the faint far cry
Of the seabirds calls thee over the seas.
Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness
Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness,
Play us a jig in the spirit of gladness
On the creaky, old squeaky strings of the fiddle.
The why of the world is an answerless riddle
Puzzlesome, tiresome, hard to unriddle
To the seventeen devils with sapient sadness:
Tra la, tra la.
Hands that soothe my burning eyes<
br />
Hands that soothe my burning eyes
In the silence of moonrise,
At the midmost hour of night,
Trouble me not.
Fingers soft as rain alight,
Like flowers borne upon the night
From the pure deeps of sapphire skies.
Now a whisper... now a gale
Now a whisper... now a gale
List, ah list, how drear it calls!
There is in it that appals
As it wanders round the walls,
Like a forlorn woman, pale.
List the wind!
O, queen, do on thy cloak
O, queen, do on thy cloak
Of scarlet, passion hue,
And lift, attending folk,
A mournful ululu,
For flame-spun is the cloak.
Fling out thy voice, O lyre,
Forth of thy seven strings.
Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine
‘Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine’;
Silently, sorrowfully I bent down my head,
For I had hated him - a poor creature of clay:
And all my envious, bitter, cruel thoughts that came
Out of the past and stood by the bier whereon he lay
Pointed their long, lean fingers through the gloom... O Name
Ineffable, proud Name to whom the cries ascend
From lost, angelical orders, seraph flame to flame,
For this end have I hated him - for this poor end?
Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend
Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend,
Here is, indeed, an end.
There are no lips to kiss this foul remains of thee,
O, dead Unchastity!
The curse of loneliness broods silent on thee still,
Doing its utmost will,
And men shall cast thee justly to thy narrow tomb,
A sad and bitter doom.
I intone the high anthem
I intone the high anthem,
Partaking in their festival.
Swing out, swing in, the night is dark,
Magical hair, alive with glee,
Winnowing spark after spark,
Star after star, rapturously.
Toss and toss, amazing arms;
Witches, weave upon the floor
Your subtle-woven web of charms.
Some are comely and some are sour
Some are comely and some are sour,
Some are dark as wintry mould,
Some are fair as a golden shower.
To music liquid as a stream
They move with dazzling symmetry;
Their flashing limbs blend in a gleam
Of luminous-swift harmony.
They wear gold crescents on their heads,
Hornèd and brilliant as the moon:
Flower to flower knits
Flower to flower knits
Of willing lips and leaves:
Thy springtide of bliss
Maketh the breezes sing,
And blossoms yield their kiss
Unto amorous thieves.
But the arrow that flies
Must fall spent at last;
In the soft nightfall
In the soft nightfall
Hear thy lover call,
Hearken the guitar!
Lady, lady fair
Snatch a cloak in haste,
Let thy lover taste
The sweetness of thy hair.
Discarded, broken in two
Discarded, broken in two.
Sing to mine ear, O rain,
Thine ultimate melody;
That the dearest loss is gain
In a holier treasury;
That a passionate cry in the night
For a woman, hidden and pale,
The Holy Office
Myself unto myself will give
This name Katharsis-Purgative.
I, who dishevelled ways forsook
To hold the poets’ grammar-book,
Bringing to tavern and to brothel
The mind of witty Aristotle,
Lest bards in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:
Wherefore receive now from my lip
Peripatetic scholarship.
To enter heaven, travel hell,
Be piteous or terrible
One positively needs the ease,
Of plenary indulgences.
For every true-born mysticist
A Dante is, unprejudiced,
Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,
Hazards extremes of heterodoxy
Like him who finds a joy at table,
Pondering the uncomfortable.
Ruling one’s life by common sense
How can one fail to be intense?
But I must not accounted be
One of that mumming company —
With him who hies him to appease
His giddy dames’ frivolities
While they console him when he whinges
With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —
Or him who sober all the day
Mixes a naggin in his play —
Or him whose conduct ‘seems to own’,
His preference for a man of ‘tone’ —
Or him who plays the rugged patch
To millionaires in Hazelhatch
But weeping after holy fast
Confesses all his pagan past —
Or him who will his hat unfix
Neither to malt nor crucifix
But show to all that poor-dressed be
His high Castilian courtesy —
Or him who loves his Master dear —
Or him who drinks his pint in fear -
Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Eschylus.
But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,
Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.
My scarlet leaves them white as wool
Through me they purge a bellyful.
To sister mummers one and all
I act as vicar-general
And for each maiden, shy and nervous,
I do a similar kind service.
For I detect without surprise
That shadowy beauty in her eyes,
The ‘dare not’ of sweet maidenhood
That answers my corruptive ‘would’.
Whenever publicly we meet
She never seems to think of it;
At night when close in bed she lies
And feels my hand between her thighs
My little love in light attire
Knows the soft flame that is desire.
But Mammon places under ban
The uses of Leviathan
And that high spirit ever wars
On Mammon’s countless servitors
Nor can they ever be exempt
From his taxation of contempt.
So distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,
Indifferent as the herring-bone,
Firm as the mountain-ridges where
I flash my antlers on the air.
Let them continue as is meet
To adequate the balance-sheet.
Though they may labour to the grave
My spirit shall they never have
Nor make my soul with theirs at one
Till the Mahamanvantara be done:
And though they spurn me from their door
My soul shall spurn them evermore.
(1904)
Gas from a Burner
Ladies and gents, you are here assembled
To hear why earth and heaven trembled
Because of the black and sinister arts
Of an Irish writer in foreign parts.
He sent me a book ten years ago.
I read it a hundred times or so,
Backwards and forwards, down and up,
Through both the ends of a telescope.
I printed it all to the very last word
But by the mercy of the Lord
The darkness of my mind was rent
And I saw the writer’s foul intent.
But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I hold her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
’Twas Irish humour, wet and dry,
Flung quicklime into Parnell’s eye;
’Tis Irish brains that save from doom
The leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome
For everyone knows the Pope can’t belch
