35 But it is done — I know not how — perchance
Even as I, maddened, drew on hopelessly,
An angel taking pity — mayhap for thee —
Guided my hand and drew it easily.
And they will throng — admire with gaping mouth,
40 The students, ‘Look, what ease, what grace divine.
What balance and what harmony serene.’
And some, ‘Like noonday lakes to torrents wild,
After titanic Mighty Angelo.’
Ah, Angelo, he has no sweetness — true.
45 But ah, I would I had his breadth of wing.
Jove’s Thunders, and the giant craggy heights
Whose points cleave the high heavens, and at whose feet
The topmost clouds have end, afraid to soar.
And I too, shake my brow amongst the stars.
50 And this I know and feel, what I have done
Is but the seed plot of a mightier world.
Yea, world on world is forming in my brain.
I have no space to hold it. Time will show
I could draw down the Heavens, I could bend
55 Yon hoar age-scorning column with my hand
I feel such power. But where there’s sun there’s shade!
And these thoughts bring their shadow in their train.
Who lives? — see this, it is my hand — my name.
But who looks from the canvas, no — not me.
60 Some doubt of God — but the world lives who doubts?
Even thus our own creations mock at us.
Our own creations outlive our decay.
What do I labour for if all is thus?
I triumph, but my triumph is my scorn.
65 ’Tis true I love my labour, and the days
Pass pleasantly,
But what is it I love in it — desire
Accomplished? Never have I reached
The halfway of the purpose I have planned.
70 A hardship conquered? — a poor juggler’s feat
And his elatement mayhap betters mine.
The adoration of the gaping crowd,
Who praise, with jest, not knowing why they praise,
Then turn, and sing a lewd and smutty song.
75 Or kneel — bate breath — to my Lord Cardinal.
Or is it the approval of the wise?
I take it — sadly knowing what I know,
And feeling that this marvel of their world
Is little triumph to me, it being my world.
80 Their deeds being circumscribed — proportionate,
Within their limits; and mine loftier,
But (God how bounded yet) to do as thus
Is but my nature — therefore little pride
Their praises give me. Ah, but this gives pride
85 To know that there is one that does feel pride
When they praise me, and cannot hide the glow
Upon her cheeks to hear me spoken of.
Love — this is better — here to be with you,
My head upon your bosom while your hair
90 A loosened fire falls all about my face,
And through its tangles — like a prison bar
To shut my soul in — watch the shadows creep,
The long grey shadows creeping furtively.
I would I were a poet — love — this once.
95 I cannot tell my feelings...
How effable in this half-light you look,
Love, I would dream — the shadows thickly press.
You fade into my fancy — and become
A thought — a smile — a rapture of the brain,
100 A presence that embraces all things felt.
A twilight glamour — faery fantasy.
Your two eyes in the shadow, stars that dream
In quiet waters of the evening, draw
My spirit to them and enfold me there,
105 Love. I would sleep, dear love I would forget.
Love I would sleep, you watching, covering me,
Charmed by your love and sheltered ‘neath love’s wing,
Sweet, let the world pass as this day has passed,
What do you murmur — sleeping? Then will I.
1912
O’ER THE CELESTIAL PATHWAYS
O’er the celestial pathways the mortal and immortal strays;
For earth is a swift dream of God, and man one shape within His brain.
And there man meeteth sun and moon, immortal shapes of nights and days,
And in God’s glad mood he is glad and in God’s petulance has pain.
And there he dreams his dreamer’s face; forgets, nor knows himself a dream,
Until some shadow wavers by and leaves him but a trembling shade
To murmur in his impotence that nothing is, but all things seem,
And what they seem like man shall know when man beneath the dust is laid.
1912
DUST CALLETH TO DUST
A little dust whispered — a little grey dust,
As it whirled round my knees in the arms of the wind,
‘O wind lift me higher, sweet wind, lift me higher
To see through his eyes to the vast of his mind.’
Then I soon heard it murmur— ‘O brother, dear brother
How long must you guard that fierce temple of God?
So fixt to the earth and a foe to the wind —
O haste and with me kiss the cloud and the clod.’
1912
TO MICHAEL SHERBROOKE ON HEARING HIS RECITATION OF ‘THE RAVEN’
O! Keen magnificent pangs, luxurious opulent doom,
The exquisite tortures of death, felt, seen from the fullness of life,
A harrowing soul despair wrought out of a jewelled gloom,
My overcharged heart can endure not this pinnacled orient strife.
O master — take thought of our weakness, be not like God in his might;
He may forget — He is God, but why should you play with our hearts?
Lift them to ecstasy’s sunblaze, steep them in tear-dripping night.
1912
TWILIGHT II.
Mist-like its dusky panic creeps in the end to your proud heart:
O you will feel its kisses cold while it rends your limbs apart.
Have you not seen the withering rose and watched the lovely moon’s decay,
And more than mortal loveliness fade like the fainting stars away?
I have seen lovely thoughts forgot in wind, effacing dreams;
And dreams like roses wither leaving perfume not nor scent;
And I have tried to hold in net like silver fish the sweet starbeams,
But all these things are shadowed gleams of things beyond the firmament.
1913
AS A BESIEGED CITY
In the hushed pregnancy
And gleaming of hope,
When a joy’s infancy
Fills our stars’ horoscope,
5 Flowering like a mist
Heaven mixed but light unkist,
The soul is mixed in anguish,
For joy has not yet burst.
Expectant is the fear —
10 O! why the doubt?
Surely our friends are near,
And the strong foe cast out.
Ah! but if we are dead
In their loving fears, and shed
15 The tears for us in anguish,
And they turn from gates not burst.
CREATION
As the pregnant womb of night
Thrills with imprisoned light,
Misty, nebulous-born,
Growing deeper into her morn,
5 So man, with no sudden stride
Bloomed into pride.
In the womb of the All-spirit
The universe lay; the will
Blind, an atom, lay still,
10 The pulse of matter
Obeyed in awe
And strove to flatter
> The rhythmic law.
But the will grew; nature feared
15 And cast off the child she reared,
Now her rival, instinct-led,
With her own powers impregnated.
Brain and heart, blood-fervid flowers,
Creation is each act of yours.
20 Your roots are God, the pauseless cause,
But your boughs sway to self-windy laws.
Perception is no dreamy birth
And magnifies transfigured earth.
With each new light, our eyes receive
25 A larger power to perceive.
If we could unveil our eyes,
Become as wise as the All-wise,
No love would be, no mystery.
Love and joy dwell in infinity.
30 Love begets love; reaching highest
We find a higher still, unseen
From where we stood to reach the first.
Moses must die to live in Christ,
The seed be buried to live to green.
35 Perfection must begin from worst.
Christ perceives a larger reachless love
More full, and grows to reach thereof.
The green plant yearns for its yellow fruit.
Perfection always is a root.
40 And joy, a motion that doth feed
Itself on light of its own speed,
And round its radiant circle runs,
Creating and devouring suns.
Thus human hunger nourisheth
45 The plan terrific — true design —
Makes music with the bones of death,
And soul knows soul to shine.
What foolish lips first framed ‘I sin’?
The virgin spirit grows within
50 To stature its eyes know to fail.
And all its edges weaken and pale
Where the flesh merges and is one;
A chalice of light for stagnation
To drink, but where no dust can come
55 Till the glass shatters and light is dumb.
Soul grows in freedom natural.
When in wild growths eventual
Its light casts shadow on other light,
All cry ‘That spirit is not white’.
60 As when God strides through the wrack of skies,
The plunging seas welcome paradise,
They say not ‘This dark period
Sheweth our bitter wrong to God’.
But revel in a dark delight,
65 And day is sweet and night is bright.
The jewelled green laughs myriadly.
The yearning pits swing and draw down
The rainbow-splintered mountains thrown
By wrestling giants beneath the sea.
70 An emanation like a voice
Spreads up, the spirits of our joys.
The sky receives it like an ear
Bent o’er the throbbing atmosphere.
Our thoughts like endless waterfalls
75 Are fed — to fill life’s palace halls
Until the golden gates do close
On endless gardens of repose.
A sun, long set, again shall rise,
Bloom in annihilation’s skies
80 Strong — strong — past ruin to endure,
More lost than bliss — than life more sure.
This universe shall be to me
Millions of years beneath the sea
Cast from my rock of changelessness
85 The centre of eternity.
And uncreated nothingness,
Found, what creation laboured for
The ultimate silence — Ah, no more
A happy fool in paradise,
90 But finite — wise as the All-wise. —
GLORY OF HUELESS SKIES
Glory of hueless skies
What pallid splendour flies
Like visible music touched
From the lute of our eyes.
5 The stars are sick and white
Old in the morning light
Like genius in a rabble
The obscure mars their might.
The forest of the world
10 Lights scattering hands have uphurled
The branches of thought are driven
The vapours of act are uncurled.
Deed against strenuous deed
Dark seed choking the seed
15 The impulses blind that blacken
The ways of life’s rough need.
Mountain and man and beast
Live flower and leaf diseased
Riot or revel in quiet
20 At the broad day’s feast.
1913
A QUESTION
What if you shut your eyes and look,
Yea, look with all the spirit’s eyes,
While mystic unrevealed skies
Unfold like pages of a book
Wherein new scenes of wonder rare
Are imaged, till the sense deceives
Itself, and what it sees believes —
Even what the soul has pictured there?
APPARITION
From her hair’s unfelt gold
My days are twined.
As the moon weaves pale daughters
Her hands may never fold.
Her eyes are hidden pools
Where my soul lies
Glimmering in their waters
Like faint and troubled skies.
Dream pure, her body’s grace,
A streaming light
Scatters delicious fire
Upon my limbs and face.
A CARELESS HEART
A little breath can make a prayer,
A little wind can take it
And turn it back again to air:
Then say, why should you make it?
An ardent thought can make a word,
A little ear can hear it,
A careless heart forget it heard:
Then why keep ever near it?
THE POET II
He takes the glory from the gold
For consecration of the mould,
He strains his ears to the clouds’ lips,
He sings the song they sang to him
And his brow dips
In amber that the seraphim
Have held for him and hold.
So shut in are our lives, so still,
That we see not of good or ill —
A dead world since ourselves are dead.
Till he, the master, speaks and lo!
The dead world’s shed,
Strange winds, new skies and rivers flow
Illumined from the hill.
THE BLIND GOD
Streaked with immortal blasphemies,
Betwixt his twin eternities
The shaper of mortal destinies
Sits in that limbo of dreamless sleep,
Some nothing that hath shadows deep.
The world is only a small pool
In the meadows of Eternity,
And the wise man and the fool
In its depths like fishes lie.
When an angel drops a rod
And he draws you to the sky
Will you bear to meet your God
You have streaked with blasphemy?
1913
WALK YOU IN MUSIC, LIGHT OR NIGHT
Walk you in music, light or night,
Spelled on your brows, plain to men’s sight
Is death and darkness written clear.
God only can neither read nor hear.
Ah men, ye are so skilled to write
This doom so dark in letters bright.
But how can God read human fear
Who cannot dry a human tear?
1913
TWILIGHT III
A sumptuous splendour of leaves
Murmurously fanning the evening heaven;
And I hear
In the soft living grey shadows,
In the brooding evanescent atmosphere,
; The voice of impatient night.
The splendour shall vanish in a vaster splendour;
Its own identity shall lose itself,
And the golden glory of day
Give birth to the glimmering face of the twilight,
And she shall grow into a vast enormous pearl maiden
Whose velvet tresses shall envelop the world — Night.
O, BE THESE MEN AND WOMEN
O, be these men and women
That pass and cry like blowing flakes,
Seeking the parent cloud,
Seeking the parent sea?
5 Or like famished flames that fly
On a separate root of fire
Far from the nurturing furnace.
Or like scent from the flower
That hovers in doubt afar,
10 Or the colour of grasses
That flies to the spirit and spreads.
Are these things your dreams
That I too can watch?
When I dream my dreams
15 Do you see them too?
When the ghosts depart
Can you follow them,
Though I see them not.
A WARM THOUGHT FLICKERS
A warm thought flickers
An idle ray —
Being is one blush at root.
For the hours’ ungentle doom
5 Where one forsaking face
Hides ever — hides for our sighing
Is a hard bright leaf over clover
And bee-bitten shade.
What moons have hidden
10 Their month-long shine,
What buds uncover
And plead in vain,
While one opaque thought wearies
The weary lids of grief?
15 One thought too heavy
For words to bear,
For lips too tired
To curl to them.
1913
SONG
A silver rose to show
Is your sweet face,
And like the heavens’ white brow,
Sometime God’s battle place,
Your blood is quiet now.
Your body is a star
Unto my thought.
But stars are not too far
And can be caught —
Small pools their prisons are.
SPRING
I walk and I wonder
To hear the birds sing —
Without you my lady
Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg Page 7
