Time for the heart to rest and hands to hold
Untrembling all the treasure, breath be found
To conjure into life this stolen gain
And clasp it, willing fellow to our joy?
The shining bird that will not be constrained
Nor tamed with dazzling toys, the lightning flame
That strikes and shatters, the fiery paradox
That burns the soul into a sobbing sea
When all is done and the sweet story fled;
Then grow we old, and weary of all tales!…
Transmutation
This transmutation of the visible
Into subconscious feelings of the past,
And the insistence of declining autumn,
Mysterious vapour, latent colouring
Of humid clouds, clouds like a face aghast.
We breathe in memories, and the infinite loss
Of summer – Silences are like dumb grief,
Preying and long, woven with spell of tears
Come from untraveled regions, unexplored
By consciousness; this an instinctive day,
Dateless but poignant, solemnly subdued –
We are the prisoners of the sky and earth,
The suffering hostages of memory.
Love
Oh Love, shall we not leave you at the last!
We have exploited all your mysteries
And lures of glamour; time’s corollary
Is heavy with our vows, our platitudes
Attempting happiness – love that was proud
And tightly clasped the honourable sword
Of disillusion to a passionate breast;
Adventurous love that would not be gainsaid,
And sought to storm the world with eloquence
Making a hero out of commonplace;
Or kindly love compassionate as sleep,
Pure as a song of peace, (a charity
That also has been spurned, unrecognised).
For we have suffered as the martyrs, sought
After your revelations secretly,
Trembling yet brave; we have put out of mind
The gaping mockeries of our defeat,
Thinking to climb a summit, dreaming then
To gather up some prize of recompense
In a new world untrammelled with horizon.
But all these roads are circular and dark,
Remote with loneliness, ending in nought
Beyond the cynical smile of memory…
* * * * * *
Oh love, must we not leave you at the last!
Poor-Streets
They shall not know the tuneful words of love
Nor the impatience of imagination;
They shall not see the meaning of the day,
Nor slip into the comfortable dreams
Of which we make pleased profitable hours.
For they shall plod and shudder in the streets,
Shadowed by poverty’s unending sadness;
Streets that are long and sullen, unrelieved
By smile of sunlight. Winter is your season
And all your meaning, suburbs! pale-faced skies
Shall weigh on you as lead – Oh, hideous poor,
Accursed of life, there is no explanation
Of fate incomprehensible! no clue
That I should sit by a secluded fire
And know the ending of your day will be
The desolate despair of public houses.
The Wreath
Love has destroyed my life, and all too long
Have I been my enemy with life, too late
Unlocked the secrets of existence! there
Found but ashes of a fallen city
Stamped underfoot, the temple of desires
Run through with fire and perished with defeat.
I would not speak the word of Disillusion
But have long felt the seal of melancholy
Stamped on my sombre autumn resignation.
My loves have been voracious, many-coloured,
Fantastic, sober, all-encompassing,
Have flown like summer swallows at the sun
And dipped into a wintry world of water:
Returned with laughing eyes or blenching face
From each horizon, from the Ever-New:
Passed through Adventure’s net, struck at the stars
Flung by excitement recklessly so high:
Delved into precipices warily
And picked the jewel there from dragon-jaws:
Questioned the sphinx of Personality
Reading the puzzling riddles of the sand,
Bringing back prizes, bringing home defeat;
Sometimes to answers ancient questions turned,
Or driven on, flown like unbalanced moths
Round the perpetual candle of a sage,
Dropping to dust on Science’s midnight.
They have gone forth like innocent crusaders
To win the ideals of mediaevalism;
They have set sail on roving western waters,
Searched for Eternity in worlds untame,
Fought for their lives against the rush of Time
And known the despairs of death, and war’s dismay –
Of these my cunning crown is made, of these
Imperious leaves the sombre final wreath!
Sonnet
I have lost faith in symbols, wearily
Put out of mind their virtues stripped by Time;
Their magic sciences are gone from me,
Lost as a line that halts, a broken rhyme,
Dead as an ancient metre, dumb as thought
That may not be expressed: some tortured theme
That follows like a ghost, from memory brought
By the persistent power of a dream,
Unwanted, all recurrent – Where shall be,
When the last flame is out, ion found,
An explanation of philosophy
For they that live, or lie deep underground?
Oh, we shall never know, nor they be free –
Unanswered riddles move the world around…
Answer to a Reproof
Let my impatience guide you now, I feel
You have not known that glorious discontent
That leads me on: the wandering after dreams
And the long chasing in the labyrinth
Of fancy, and the reckless flight of moods –
You shall not prison, shall not grammarise
My swift imagination, nor tie down
My laughing words, my serious words, old thoughts
I may have led you on with, baffling you
Into a pompous state of great confusion.
You have not seen the changing active birds
Nor heard the mocking voices of my thoughts;
Pedant-philosopher, I challenge you
Sometimes with jests, more often with real things,
And you have failed me, you have suffered too
And struggled, wondering. The difference lies
In the old bulk of centuries, the way
You have been fashioned this or that; and I
Belong to neither, I the perfect stranger,
Outcast and outlaw from the rules of life,
True to one law alone, a personal logic
That will not blend with anything, nor bow
Down to the general rules; inflexible,
And knowing it from old experience;
So much for argument – My trouble is,
It seems, that I have loved a star and tried
To touch it in its progress: tear it down
And own it, claimed a ‘master’s privilege’
Over some matter that was element
And not an object that would fit the palm
Of a possessor, master-mind itself
And active-ardent of its liberty.
We work apart, alone; conflicting tides
Brim-f
illed with angers, violences, strife,
Each championing his own idealism,
Romanticism and sceptic bitterness…
The last I leave you, for this present mood
(The name of which you have expounded so)
Has turned against you, bared insulting teeth
And snarled away its rage into the smile
Of old remembrance: ‘You were ever so,’
Exacting and difficult; in fact the star
That will not, cannot change for all the price
Of love or understanding – mark you now
I have concluded we are justified
Each in his scheming; is this not a world
Proportioned large enough for enemies
Of our calibre? Shall we always meet
In endless conflict? I have realised
That I shall burn in my own hell alone
And solitary escape from death;
That you will wander guideless too, and dream
(Sometimes) of what I mean, the things unsaid,
Vacant discussions that have troubled you
And left me desperate as a day of rain.
Then we shall meet at crossroads in wild hours
Agreeing over fundamental fates,
Calamities of a more general kind
Than our own geniuses have kindled up.
But at the fabulous Judgement day, the End,
We shall be separate still, and you will find
That Destiny has posted you once more
Back in the sky – and I shall be on earth.
Sonnet
What will you say of me if I should die
Without the last words spoken? Shall there be
Some brave religion that will testify
Belief in my strange faith, and bury me
As I would wish? with arms upstretched and high
Cold eyes turned seaward, souls symbolical
Caught in a prison still; they shall not die
But be mute audience to the logical
Denunciation of my life by you,
You, the calm critics, and the easeful wise
That have long done with doubt and take for true
That which is taught by faith, and seen with eyes,
Learnt from life’s lessons – mourners will be few
That follow my last questioning surmise.
Western Islands
The islands of the blessed, the sunset isles,
Full of long summer, and the undying light
That pauses in its radiancy; and there,
The distant piping of some quavering music
That has expressed the lyric souls of gods
And the long loves of heroes – There have I seen
Isolda bearing Tristan on the waves
From rugged melancholy to dreaming death;
And syren-lovers weaving wreaths of song
Tuned to the tides, while poets slowly dream
The delicate tales of intermingling souls.
Now time breathes death and life, but leads all there
On the last western voyage of the sun,
All that is worthy of infinitude;
Heroes and lovers made immortal there
By the insistence of undying beauty.
In exultation shall we not approach
This mystic heaven that outstrips the stars?
And find anew the passions lived on earth,
Yea, without stress, but in beatitude.
The Haunted Castle
Outside, the staring eye of emptiness,
Eyes of the dead unclosed! What lovely sin
In long forgotten centuries within
Filled the glad rooms with transient happiness?
This castle is a husk of flowers dead,
This barren window has enclosed an hour
Saved from the world by love; alas, no power
Brings back for us these tales, romances sped
Down to the grieving sea, and out beyond
The last red clouds of sunset – empty rooms
Wait for new stories, wait with vacant eyes,
Eyes of the dead; the waves are ever fond
Of midnight sorrowing, and the castle looms,
Gaunt, without answer to the moon’s surmise.
Thamar
Thamar in distant Georgia watched the sun
Set in voluptuous solitude; the hills
Brought to her lovers, and she bound their wills
Under her own firm spell, and every one
Of pleasure tasted, marvelled, and was dead:
Cast into night after a little hour
Of paradise incarnate, for her power
None might escape, by fate thereunto led.
But in the silent halls where love had lain,
Captive of all her beauty, wisdom, pride,
Rose clamouring ghosts that made her turn aside
Her longing eyes, as yet she waved again,
(Herself now prisoner of the loves that died),
Signal continuous o’er the endless plain.
Sublunary
1923
Sublunary
They are met at midnight in the windy tower,
Alchemist and students of alchemy,
Beneath a failing moon’s reluctance; dark,
The narrow glen each side breathes mystery.
Moon without shadows streaming wan, and night
Again returning to its silences
After the laughing clamour of a fair,
The up-and-down of voices on the hill.
All these are past: they come to assignation,
In ruined chapel sit. Humbly at first,
The summer dews around them, solacing,
Each soul is lightened of its pain and made
Contemplative, desirous of hidden wisdom.
The master speaks, the crucible has grown
More red with throbbing secrets, dice are tossed
Till one has thrown the number winning speech.
He ponders daily thoughts, would know if friends
Are true when faithful words leap from their lips,
And if the heart should trustingly respond.
Then a newcomer, tantalising truth,
Voices the eager questionings of love:
‘Shall every coin be spent, and every tear
Given from eyes revulsed in sacrifice –
And master, shall the profit outweigh loss?’
‘But,’ said another stranger, ‘we know love –
How, treasuring it, our faith is kept serene;
Yet we are heavy with our uncertainties
Here on this brink of darkness – master, tell
Secret divine or clue we know not yet;
So that in dawns after most sorrowful dreams
We may unwrap ourselves from pain subconscious,
Making of haunted night a better day.’
‘I have lost track of love,’ another said.
Their ardent words assailed the midnight wizard,
And the dead saints looked down from their high walls,
At rest or dreaming still of the centuries past.
The moon grew yet more slight, ethereal, western,
And in the great world’s streets thin cats and ghosts
Trod the transparent shadows, liberated
By this rare interval of dark and dawn.
So, full of striving each man told his tale
And would have known an answer to all things,
Thinking, ‘we have that faith that walks the waves,
Faith of the holy parables indeed,
Tonight alone – a miracle shall reward.’
But they were given symbols, further doubts,
And stuff that fades with daylight; while the lord
Of their enchantment, wrapped in manifold mists,
Grown dim, was lost in far philosophies,
Unconscious to their calling. They were chilled
By t
he swift sudden wings of morning eagles
Stirring the empty space, and all the fire
Leapt in the crucible in one last flame
Of taunting laughter, fallen grey with ash.
Then from this company of questioners
That had adventured into wizardry
And sat around the stealthy science of truth,
Arose four friends and fled the haunted dew,
Descending silent to the dawn-white valley.
In a Café
Pale-face, turn round and look at me:
From out the shimmer of your glass
Are gone the indifferent that pass
Your fragile face. They cannot see,
Mark as I do, your weariness
Bowed to the music of this hour,
Unconscious, pensive as a flower.
Suppose I took for happiness
(All of a moment) your white face,
Lulled you with songs and gold – this place
Would surely fade from you and seem
But the persistence of sad dream?
Its music gone far from your mind
Ring as the voice of dull mankind,
Unheedful of your beauty – yet
When you awoke, the daily fret
And toil of living would return…
I am uncertain, while the tune
Urges me to you, and all soon
The hour is past us. Shall I spurn
The adventurous and fond certainty
That I might make of midnight hours,
With you, as soft as fairy flowers?
Pale-face turn round and look at me.
Eusebius Doubts
The pupil of the priests walks on the bridge
Pondering and ill at heart. Eusebius, young
Uncertain aspirant of the faith among
The docile clergy, gazes at that far ridge
High on the mountain where the sun is dying;
Thinks of the frolic springtime when the hours
Are sweet in meadows pale with cuckoo-flowers,
Dreams of young lovers laughing, birds low-flying
Over the mountain freshets. Then the bell
Selected Poems Page 7
