MA. / 
 
 11-1912) 
 
 IRLF 
 
 B M IDS DEC 
 
f 
 
 - 
 
THE DOMINANT CITY (1911-1912) 
 
THE DOMINANT 
 CITY (1911-1912) 
 
 BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER 
 
 LONDON : MAX GOSCHEN LTD. 
 
 20, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C. 
 
 MCMXIII 
 

 A 
 
TO THE FRENCH POETS OF TO-DAT 
 
 Death-agonies, dances, resurrections hurled, 
 Have made for me, and made for you, a world : 
 With the red lava-torrents of the suns 
 Drunken, we dance yet to the rain s dark drums, 
 And watch the universe, life, birth, and death, 
 Hanging each instant on a single breath. 
 
 589194 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Dominant City ... ... ... 7 
 
 The Hoardings 8 
 
 The Deserted Factory ... ... ... ... 9 
 
 The Evening Clouds ... ... .. ... ... n 
 
 London Evening ... ... ... ... ... 12 
 
 Pleasure s Awakening ... ... ... ... 13 
 
 The Night of Pleasure ... ... ... ... 14 
 
 Eros 17 
 
 Song of a Night ... ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 London at Night 20 
 
 In the City of Night ... ... ... ... ... 23 
 
 Tragic Night 26 
 
 Triumphant Night ... . . ... ... ... 27 
 
 The Hour of Peace 28 
 
 Saturday Night: Horses going to Pasture ... 29 
 
 The Great Moon ... ... ... ... ... 30 
 
 In the Night 31 
 
 From the Night to the Dawn 32 
 
 Dawn ... ... 33 
 
 --The Clouds ... ... 34 
 
 ^Factory Chimneys ... ... ... ... ... 35 
 
 Back Streets , 36 
 
 Joy ... 37 
 
 The Age of Steel 38 
 
 Twilight ... ... ... ... .. ... 39 
 
Chorus for the Tragedy of Man 40 
 
 Midwinter Moon ... ... ... ... ... 44 
 
 - Dawn in Italy and in Londo^ 45 
 
 Saturday Night in Fleet Street 46 
 
 At the Meeting of the Days ... ... ... ... 47 
 
 The Banners 48 
 
 The Magician ... ... ... ... ... 49 
 
 The Forces at Work in the City 50 
 
 The Forging of the Sun ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 Autumn Sunset ... ... ... ... ... 52 
 
 Two Autumn Dawns ... ... ... ... ... 53 
 
 ~~An Autumn Picture ... ... ... ... ... 55 
 
 The City lies at ease upon the Night ... ... 56 
 
 The Litanies of the City ... ... ... ... 57 
 
 The Death of the City 60 
 
 The Anarchist s Dream ... ... ... ... 64 
 
 Coal 67 
 
 The Sower ... ... ... ... ... ... 70 
 
 Epilogue: The Prayer 74 
 
THE DOMINANT ClTt. 
 
 IT is the city of night, of drunkenness, and of 
 dream. 
 
 In waves that thunder on the shores of night, 
 The streets hurl out their molten wealth of flame; 
 Vast spendthrifts maddened with pride, drunken 
 
 with praise, 
 They squander the molten gold of sunless days. 
 
 It is the city of mystery, of madness, and of desire. 
 
 At the corners of the street, motionless, 
 Blear-eyed loafers look upon the mad 
 
 of lamps, the whirl of wheels, the babel 
 of cries, 
 Lovers walk amid them; they are sad. 
 
 It is the city of silence, of hope, and hypocrisy. 
 
 Now they vanish, all the wheels whirl round no 
 
 more, 
 
 Far behind them waits in mockery silent night. 
 Though the darkness brings the city lust and sleep, 
 Through the dawn there slinks death s phantom, 
 
 ghastly white. 
 
 It is the city that has butchered night ! 
 
 That has forgotten drunkenness in pain : 
 
 That has crushed and is devouring its mad dream. 
 
THE HOARDINGS. 
 
 WHEN into the town I go, 
 Under sad and leaden skies 
 I see hoardings, row on row, 
 Flare in pink and yellow dyes. 
 
 Glittering promises they bear : 
 Food to gorge and drink to swill; 
 Spectacles of pleasure rare, 
 Cures for every mortal ill. 
 
 Tis man s paradise of hope 
 Mocking starving winter s night; 
 Filling wretched souls who grope, 
 With a gorgeous lie of might ! 
 
 Poet, do not vainly dream 
 
 Of a past forgot for long, 
 
 Let the wonderful hoardings stream 
 
 In their splendour through your song. 
 
 Fling away the beautiful, 
 Withered flower of ancient birth : 
 See! It springs in blossom full, 
 Fresh from out the teeming earth ! 
 
THE DESERTED FACTORY. 
 
 IT stands apart, forlorn, grotesque, immense; 
 
 Bearing no trace of that magnificence 
 
 Of fury, toil, and flame which it once wore 
 
 Day after day, a few brief years before : 
 
 Windows show shattered glass, holes gape in wall; 
 
 Askew, a smoke-grimed chimney threatens fall. 
 
 Around it stretch the marshy flats, the red 
 
 River amid them crumpled like the dead 
 
 Arm of a drowned man stretched from shallow 
 
 grave 
 Amid brown shingle wetted by the wave. 
 
 Now, to this shell the city s life is naught 
 
 But desolate distant murmurs, vaguely brought 
 
 From the horizon-edge where steadily loom 
 
 Above their flame-shot drifting smoke and gloom. 
 
 Like battle-towers of a besieging host, 
 
 The chimneys, from whose heads the smoke is 
 
 tossed 
 
 All through the day, in columns mounting high. 
 Throughout the night, flame signals flare in sky, 
 But waken not this ruin huge and cold 
 Which lacks the beauty of all things grown old : 
 This sombre empty shell that laughs at man, 
 Its purpose long forgot and void its plan : 
 This prison of splendid squalor by the waves 
 Left squatting dead the master, fled the slaves, 
 From out its dark brown windowless deep walls 
 Where, smoky red, the sun of evening falls 
 
Over cold chimneys that desire to sleep 
 But yet to heaven totter, sway, or leap. 
 
 Along the sterile earth, like lines of pain, 
 Stand etched the shadows of each rusty crane. 
 These once swung precious bales high in the air; 
 But now, like twisted cripples, in despair, 
 Gaze on the ground, half-strewn with vague 
 
 debris : 
 
 On torn-up rails, rubbish and starveling tree, 
 Near by which stands a shack, crazy and frail. 
 Within, cadaverous, shaggy-bearded, pale, 
 Like a lost dog there sits a lonely man. 
 Tis but an outcast, neath the dreadful ban 
 Of hunger, thirst, and all futility; 
 An evil hermit of dreams he looks to be : 
 A black monk waiting for this corpse to fall, 
 That he may spring, and, like a lean jackal, 
 Tear from its bones whatever fragments fate 
 Forgot to take when it grew desolate. 
 Within his eyes averted, stupid, blind, 
 Something seems ever moving like that wind 
 Which humming murmurs here, restless and 
 
 sweet, 
 Amid the dust once stirred by workmen s feet. 
 
 10 
 
THE EVENING CLOUDS. 
 
 LIKE long terraces the evening clouds 
 Prolong themselves to an infinite grey 
 Of distance, as shadows seen in a dream. 
 
 Like old parks full of autumnal branches 
 Which the winds agitate, slowly, to and fro; 
 The evening clouds, grey interwoven, 
 Sway in a stately measure of old. 
 
 Like colonnades, like colonnades darkening, 
 Like colonnades ancient, mouldering, mysterious, 
 Stand the motionless clouds of evening : 
 And my old soul goes shivering amid them, 
 Seeking grey ghosts that resemble me : 
 
 Like colonnades along long terraces 
 Prolonged, the colonnades of temples, 
 Behind whose bronze gates, never opened, 
 Crouch the colossal gods of night. 
 
 ii 
 
LONDON EVENING. 
 
 THE city is like a vague dream- tapestry 
 
 On which are breathed, not woven, shapes of blue : 
 
 Perhaps they are towers and wet slopes of roof, 
 
 Perhaps they are only my embodied dreams : 
 
 For the city is strangely still as if it were dead, 
 
 And my soul had built on, the dusk a city new; 
 
 Its only life in the lights that glow aloof, 
 
 Its only movement, the unseen traffic-streams. 
 
 city of my desire ! It rains in you, 
 A slow incessant fall of quiet showers : 
 
 The blue sky melts to grey, pale the lights glow, 
 And all is still, while sunless move the hours. 
 Could you be ever thus, half-hid from sight, 
 
 1 would think, grey one, that your rain was my 
 
 grief : 
 
 And so, content, know hope and calm delight, 
 Watching my sorrow find in night relief. 
 
 12 
 
PLEASURE S AWAKENING. 
 
 ALL day men walk the city up and down, 
 Shuffling monotonously their weary feet, 
 While pleasure sleeps behind that vague uproar; 
 
 But sometimes like a lightning flash she flicks 
 Some stagnant soul into a blaze of pain, 
 And shatters the conventional round of toil. 
 
 But when sick day has staggered his last steps, 
 And night like a black curtain rushes down 
 Upon the city, comes a sudden change : 
 
 Then pleasure, like a vast cat, stirs herself, 
 And yawning, stretches forth her velvet feet, 
 To grasp the city in her long, curved claws. 
 
THE NIGHT OF PLEASURE. 
 
 WITH pleasure-seeking folk 
 The City hums and stirs, 
 All who have gold to buy her 
 Are pleasure s worshippers. 
 
 They are drunken, but what matter ? 
 To sorrow were they born? 
 They may be sick or silent 
 Upon the morrow morn. 
 
 Open the theatre! 
 
 Let the mad mob within 
 
 Be stunned with speed and glitter, 
 
 And deafened with din : 
 
 In furious vibration 
 Let voices bawl and roar, 
 Upon life s streaming altars 
 They sacrifice once more. 
 
 Meanwhile, without, the starving 
 Tramp wearily to and fro : 
 As the chance of life has shaped men, 
 It breaks them, high or low : 
 
 Soon the game palls and sickens, 
 Packed audiences rise; 
 They must sleep, if they would struggle 
 For another day as prize. 
 
Down with the muffling curtain 
 On the dance which darts like fire, 
 Through quivering nerve and fibre, 
 Fierce arrows of desire : 
 
 Out to the night, while music 
 Is braying and clashing still 
 Its dissonant wild rhythms 
 That leap with prodigious will! 
 
 The roaring hall of revel 
 Gushes forth into the night 
 Light, and a jostling throng 
 Of mortals taking flight. 
 
 Pale and strained are the faces 
 As if through flames they won : 
 Priests are these, and victims, 
 And gods, all three in one. 
 
 They break and melt and scatter; 
 
 Into the dark they drift. 
 
 Was it all but a shaking 
 
 Of that veil which none may lift? 
 
 I know not. Terribly changeless 
 Stands the city of flint and fire : 
 All over it there is silence, 
 And quenched is the torch of desire. 
 
 They have drained their black narcotic, 
 To-morrow will be pain; 
 Meanwhile the wind is flinging 
 Thin gusts of sooty rain. 
 
They are nauseated with madness, 
 They are too bored to weep : 
 Oh, give them death, what matter? 
 Or at least give them sleep! 
 
 16 
 
EROS. 
 
 THROUGH all the roar and strife of sun-smit day, 
 Deep in a dark lair do I lie and sleep. 
 Without the myriads rage, or laugh, or weep; 
 I heed them not till sunlight ebbs away. 
 
 But when, beneath the electric lamps warm glow, 
 Lust slow uncurls like an enormous flower 
 Over the city, then I know my hour : 
 I rise, and like an amorous cat I go 
 
 To watch my children at the appointed task 
 Of draining Pleasure s cup down to the lees; 
 To know that mankind reels in drunkenness 
 And splendour towards the abyss, is all I ask. 
 
 I stand upon a street of infamy, 
 About me surge the Bacchanals of night : 
 And watching them, I do not turn my sight 
 To where vague stars swarm on an empty sea. 
 
 For there is laughter, dance, the fire of eyes : 
 Illusion s blossoms from the pavement spring : 
 Their odour, like hot fire, in blood can bring 
 Explosions of bright-glittering ecstasies. 
 
 In every stolen glance, in every touch, 
 In every detail of lust s solemn rite 
 Repeated endlessly, I drink delight : 
 Yet fevered, know my thirst is over-much. 
 
In man the Satyr-God, to quell whose pain 
 New generations shall the old repeat; 
 And women tramp along the enticing street, 
 And cities blaze with lurid lights again : 
 
 In shock of straining flesh, in fierce desire, 
 I gather up a myriad perishing flowers. 
 All day-dreams pale before my unreal fire, 
 Before my dreadful death-creative powers. 
 
 I bind my slaves down with the fetters of 
 Roses, I lash them. Kisses are my rods; 
 I sicken them with sweet surfeit of love, 
 And then abandon them to lesser gods. 
 
 Let the day make of them that which it may ! 
 
 In all still burns my artificial spark 
 
 Which, night on night, shall blaze forth, fiercely 
 
 Till all the worlds and suns grow cold and dark : 
 
 For I am Eros, lawless law of life, 
 For I am birth and death and new life won 
 Through woe and joy, destroyed, remade in strife 
 Past, present, future, infinite, and one. 
 
 Tri-formed am I : read what this riddle saith ! 
 For I am Man, desiring earth to sway, 
 And Woman, seeking my own pain to stay, 
 And God, fixed ever in the thought of Death. 
 
 18 
 
SONG OF A NIGHT. 
 
 LAST night I lay disgusted, sick at heart, 
 Beside a sodden woman of the street : 
 Who drowsed, oblivious of the dreadful mart, 
 Her outraged body and her blistered feet. 
 
 I could not sleep. I lay awake all night, 
 Questioning again that grey old puzzle, life : 
 Was this the sordid end of passion s might, 
 This purchase ? Or the purchase of a wife ? 
 
 And then I thought : No one can love alone, 
 Love singly in no human heart can dwell : 
 Ere it is caught, tis lost, ere come tis gone, 
 It is a slave, which all men buy and sell : 
 
 The wives their bodies barter for a ring, 
 For one man s care, a home, maternity; 
 The husbands seek to rid them of the sting 
 Of sex, or they would happy fathers be. 
 
 So all sell love for some low earthly gift ; 
 What matter then, what I have sold it for? 
 If I should strive from earth my soul to lift, 
 Soon must it fall back to the earth once more. 
 
 All hope is an illusion, sad and vain : 
 
 Alike in essence diamond and clod. 
 
 Pure love is not, all things on earth have stain 
 
 My soul and hers are as the same to God. 
 
LONDON AT NIGHT. 
 
 ALONG the river squats and towers 
 The city : life and death and lust 
 Light up in flames its darkening hours, 
 In splendour, terrible, august. 
 
 Misshapen bulks of shadow starred 
 With orange fire sweep straight along : 
 Their roofs with blazing light are barred; 
 A gorgeous and a sordid throng ! 
 
 From a thousand chimney-stacks and more, 
 That shatter the sky-line s black brute jumble, 
 Vast curls of white smoke upward pour, 
 That through the sky roll on and tumble 
 
 Down the horizons red with lights, 
 
 Down keel-thronged rivers, thundering bridges, 
 
 Following the lines of endless streets 
 
 That swoop down vales, and swarm up ridges; 
 
 Wherever the city flames to-night, 
 As mocking that poor show of stars, 
 The hot smoke streams, and in its flight 
 It throbs with the iron wheels of cars. 
 
 In every street, in every square, 
 In a million door- and window-frames, 
 Life lights its terrible tawdry glare, 
 Proclaiming loud its strength, its shames. 
 
 20 
 
Before thee, time and space were not : 
 And ages fade before thy throne, 
 
 city, ever freshly wrought, 
 Among the mighty, mightiest one! 
 
 Poet and prophet, king and priest, 
 Have filled thee with their gloom and joy : 
 Building the structures, greatest, least, 
 That all indifferent, dost destroy, 
 
 To build anew more glorious walls, 
 With feverish toil that never stops : 
 To fill the desert with vast halls, 
 To cram the woodland with roof-tops ! 
 
 The toil of ages on thy winds 
 Vanishes, swift as puffs of steam; 
 And time, with all its saints and sins, 
 Is as the tide upon thy stream 
 
 That laps the same bed evermore, 
 But always sides of newer ships; 
 Has risen, fallen, while a score 
 Of centuries have touched thy lips. 
 
 Meanwhile from ends of all the earth 
 The flame-shod steeds of steel must bring, 
 Defying river, peak, and firth, 
 And the great sea, thy furnishing. 
 
 1 see thee grow out of thy past 
 Into new shape, again, again, 
 Ever thy present real and vast, 
 The pride and the despair of men. 
 
 21 
 
No more a city, but a world 
 Of smoke and stone in furious strife, 
 A challenge down all ages hurled 
 To match man s utmost might of life ! 
 
 Along the river squats and towers 
 The city : life and death and lust 
 Light up in flames its darkening hours, 
 Its splendour, terrible, august. 
 
 22 
 
IN THE CITY OF NIGHT. 
 
 TOWARDS the end of night 
 
 Life swelters in its gore, 
 
 The roaring wheels run down, 
 
 The flames of the gas no more 
 
 Stab at the iron skv 
 
 In hissing mockery : 
 
 And the city takes such rest 
 
 As its torn nerves know best. 
 
 O night, that like an eyeless ghost dost prowl 
 Twixt granite walls, with talons dripping blood : 
 O night, eared, feathered, like an enormous owl : 
 O night, dark vulture that destroys its brood, 
 O night of hate and death, O night of nights, 
 We pray to thee, vampire, for the death-stupor of 
 
 sleep, 
 For we are weary of foolish babble and lights. 
 
 Along the dismal empty streets, stretching end 
 lessly away, 
 
 The darkened houses stand, in a mournful dull 
 array, 
 
 Like wretched starving folk that silently make 
 show 
 
 Of asking you for bread : 
 
 And their windows pale with the starless sky 
 o erhead 
 
 Are as maniac faces white with woe, 
 
 And agony of the living dead. 
 
 23 
 
Their doors are barred as the doors of tombs; 
 
 And alone in the unlit shuttered rooms 
 
 Sprawl inert bundles of breathing flesh, 
 
 The weavers of life s mesh. 
 
 One moved, daylong, amid victory : 
 
 And one who desires no more to be 
 
 Is helpless as he ! 
 
 O night that makest all our effort vain, 
 
 Our lips tremble for thee, our eyes do burn : 
 
 To some sleep is given; to some, to turn 
 
 And writhe, and toss, and dream in horrible pain 
 
 Of the ghastliness of lust, 
 
 And of every fear and hate! 
 
 O night, whelm our dry dust 
 
 In sleep s unfathomed stream, 
 
 So that not even in dream 
 
 We can recall our fate! 
 
 Here and there a belfry-tower, 
 Be it prison, church, or tomb, 
 No one can say : an arm of gloom 
 Beckoning to the sky to tell 
 That not a ray can pierce this hell, 
 Lifts its sardonic pride and power, 
 And with jarring and funereal boom 
 Beats a malison on the hour. 
 Here and there a van, iron-wheeled, 
 Rolls like a hearse unlit and sealed; 
 And behind it, the echoes in wild affray 
 Clang and shudder far away : 
 
 24 
 
Here and there one footstep-beat 
 Like shattering thunder, shakes the street. 
 Here and there one white arc-light 
 Intensifies the crushing night. 
 
 O night, that like a blear-eyed cast dost prowl, 
 Sated with blood, gorged with the city s soul : 
 Corpse-snatcher and defiler of the dead, 
 Stalking the city with sepulchral tread : 
 O night of horror, we we heed thee not! 
 Oblivion now doth blot 
 
 The last hope and the last thought from our brains : 
 Thy victory remains : 
 
 Suck in our helpless lives, destroy this dreadful 
 spot! 
 
TRAGIC NIGHT. 
 
 RAIN, and a glare of lamps set in the rain, 
 Where seekers for numb brains and deadened wills 
 Stagger like helpless idiots through the pain 
 Of vain remembrance of increasing ills. 
 The dazzle of light in the darkness thickly fills 
 The breadth of street with long and snake-like stain 
 Of false gold, which the weak sight blinds and kills, 
 While through it all come slipping by amain, 
 Like vast black birds of prey with eyes aglow, 
 The automobiles, mid shrieks and howls of lust; 
 No deeper tragedy the earth can know 
 Than this, its night of pain and rain and rust, 
 Where death is only death and nothingness, 
 But living holds hell s infinite distress. 
 
 26 
 
TRIUMPHANT NIGHT. 
 
 As once I wandered lonely in the night, 
 Upon some grey and grimy street belated, 
 I saw a sad man and a woman white, 
 Clasped in a doorway low, unconsecrated. 
 
 And they were parting, for their sobs came thick 
 Across the street to where I wandered, deeming 
 That all the world with ugliness was sick, 
 And that life held no moments worth esteeming. 
 
 vision of the night, you mocked me then 
 With sudden floods of beauty, power and glory ! 
 
 1 saw the paltry, weak desires of men 
 
 Rise from our hearts, and conquer song and story, 
 And flout the idle Gods who do not love us, 
 And sweep away the swarm of stars above us. 
 
 27 
 
THE HOUR OF PEACE. 
 
 IT is the hour when all is dark and still; 
 When long despair, brief hope, alike resign 
 Their ancient dominance of human will; 
 When life no longer to the far sea-line 
 Bends its gray sails, worn with the winds of ill, 
 Seeking those unseen lands beyond the brine 
 Which never, through the bitter foam and chill, 
 A man shall mark, and marvel as they shine; 
 
 It is the hour of silence. No one cares 
 To think of toil now, asking, " W T hat is done 
 By all our effort endlessly onstreaming ? " 
 For we are sick of mocking, sly despairs, 
 And we would rest as if all time were gone, 
 Filling the hour of peace with foolish dreaming, 
 
 28 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT: HORSES GOING 
 TO PASTURE. 
 
 HARK ! through the city, quiet, cool, and starred, 
 Longing for sleep and for respose in dreams, 
 Dull rattling hoofs in hundreds echo hard : 
 The deep reverberant groundswell upwards streams. 
 
 Heavily the long cavalcade clatters and prances 
 Through the dazzling glare of lamps, through 
 
 shadows thickly scored, 
 
 The sound in a broken rhythm quivers and dances, 
 As the ponderous bulks in irregular trot move 
 
 forward. 
 
 Man s mighty slaves, now for a time set free, 
 Pass from the city that they served so well, 
 Churning to choppy waves its sombre sea, 
 Beating harsh dissonances of farewell. 
 Their steel-shod hoofs gleam bright as they move 
 
 on 
 To green-clad silent pastures in the sun. 
 
 29 
 
THE GREAT MOON. 
 
 I SEE aloft the white full-moon upswaying 
 Through the long breadths of cloudless, starless 
 
 sky; 
 
 Her thin and ashy light is subtly playing : 
 It sparkles on the streets and housetops high. 
 
 She lights as she will ever light our darkness; 
 Until the sun has quenched his lava-streams, 
 She fills night s dreadful chill and distant starkness 
 With pale translucence of regretful dreams : 
 
 The moon of poisonous drugs intoxicating, 
 The moon, the nearest of all planets to us, 
 The moon of longing, empty hope, vain waiting, 
 The moon that gives us death, that does renew us; 
 
 The great moon that, through purple skies of 
 
 sorrow, 
 
 t 
 
 Glides, a vast pallid shape of perfect grieving, 
 Linking the death of dusk to new-born morrow, 
 As suffering links the souls of all the living. 
 
IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 IN the night, the beautiful, bitter night, 
 
 I contemplate my perfect loneliness and failure : 
 
 I, cast out by the loose rhythm of life, 
 
 Desire the inexpressible, long for what I cannot be. 
 
 Oh, the sad, slow rains and the heavy winds and 
 
 the darkness 
 
 Of winter, and the dull streets of despair ! 
 Of life I am so weary and sick at heart 
 I could fight, were aught to be won, or sleep, if 
 
 sleep were not dead. 
 Now the lamps are put out, the babel of day 
 
 returns; 
 
 I live on, yet a million others die; 
 Weakly I strive, but none knows aught of it, 
 To the crowd I am as one of the never-born. 
 Better to make an end, best not to be, 
 Than to know myself a seed that was flung by the 
 
 wind 
 Never to sprout in the wilderness of earth. 
 
 3 r 
 
FROM THE NIGHT TO THE DAWN. 
 
 IN every night some haggard hours there are 
 Whose passing is unnoted, save by those 
 Unconquered by dim slumber and her shows; 
 The wretched and the houseless near and far, 
 And those for whom the night cannot unbar 
 The common gate to her divine repose, 
 Whose nerves are torn by living and its woes, 
 Until they sink in some melee of war. 
 These know and these alone the secret things : 
 The mysteries which those who see must die : 
 The silent spaces of which no one sings : 
 The grey death-minutes fading, till on high 
 Aloft there flash the sudden glorious wings 
 Of dawn and fill with light the hollow sky. 
 
DAWN. 
 
 THE sun rends the long veils of smoke, and the 
 
 fogs 
 
 Of night shift and vanish in upper air : 
 While the eternal huddle of chimneys now 
 To the light pour forth their praise from yawning 
 
 mouths. 
 
 Blackened with grief, blistered with lust of life, 
 Unconquerable and unconquered, they cast their 
 
 spell : 
 
 Crowding with vague forms the infinite emptiness 
 Of the pale seas of air that stretch out from dawn 
 
 to dark. 
 
 Now man awakes to another day, to a life 
 
 That has forgotten its past, that must forget all 
 
 days to come. 
 
 Until the incontrollable impulse is exhausted, 
 Until no more feet sound, no more voices shake 
 
 with desire, 
 
 Towards the illusion circle-wise he treads 
 Along the track of ancient unreality. 
 
 33 
 
THE CLOUDS. 
 
 I WATCH the clouds that float along the sky. 
 
 The city is stiff and grey, 
 
 In desperate struggle death-locked and frozen, 
 
 And between the angular, motionless, unbent 
 
 facades 
 
 Creak and groan the carts, painfully striving 
 To crawl and push along forward for ever in vain. 
 Yet above them move the clouds, free and unfrozen. 
 
 I watch the clouds that drift along the sky. 
 
 Through the fracas of life my body s borne and 
 
 buffeted, 
 Ever resisting impulse, held back yet pushed 
 
 forward; 
 
 But my soul watches alone, indifferent and un 
 changing, 
 By that deep thought in which life and death are 
 
 one : 
 
 Which is to me as a lonely torch in the darkness, 
 Consuming, creating its own illumination, 
 Lawless, of all its laws its own fulfilment, 
 Purposeless, of all purposes the creator, 
 Imperishably dead. 
 
 I watch the clouds that float along the sky. 
 
 34 
 
FACTORY CHIMNEYS. 
 
 MOTIONLESS blood-hued styluses that scrawl on 
 
 the infinite 
 
 Shifting surface of sky for ever and ever unrolled, 
 Man s greatest achievement and failure, through 
 
 infuriate day and through night, 
 In hieroglyphs rolling and tumbling, red, black, 
 
 purple and gold. 
 
 35 
 
BACK STREETS. 
 
 You that have gazed long on the city s splendour, 
 Behold its life, how thick and red it runs ! 
 From dawn to dusk and on through countless suns, 
 Self-spending, self-creating, fixed, untender, 
 Coarse, deathless, changeless! Do you homage 
 
 render 
 
 To that which with its power the spirit stuns : 
 And will, until all things are as they once 
 Were, in the grip of Death, the sole amender. 
 Thousands of years ago thus in the grime 
 Life struggled, as it struggles on to-day, 
 As it must struggle till its latest scene : 
 No change shall ever be except in time, 
 Until all things as dreams are swept away, 
 And the earth is as if it ne er had been. 
 
JOY. 
 
 BY a street-organ stands a minstrel bawling : 
 Dirty children are out of courtyards crawling : 
 Drunken women come reeling from a bar : 
 Drunken loafers, as many as there are : 
 Blotched blue scarecrows, up and down they go, 
 With staggering steps and garments flapping wild, 
 To foot it raggedly over the greasy snow 
 Slop-stained and littered, sooty and denied, 
 Grubbed at and sucked at by the babies sprawling, 
 Where the organ palpitates and men are bawling 
 To drown the clatter of pots and the children 
 calling. 
 
 Under a sky which is one smudge of soot, 
 Bleary and slattern we go hopping and hobbling : 
 To a rattling tune, forgetting an instant our squab 
 bling, 
 
 The toil and disease and mockery and mud. 
 Even as Adam danced in the Garden of God, 
 When the sky was clean and the earth without scar 
 
 or sore 
 On the back of her, but lovely from shore to 
 
 shore, 
 
 So do we dance, and shall, although the good 
 Old sun be put out and all the earth go toppling, 
 And God grow weary of man and his broken lute, 
 And the dirt of life, and the flies, and the women 
 squabbling. 
 
 37 
 
THE AGE OF STEEL. 
 
 IT was the age of iron. 
 Till men built furnaces 
 By many a silent vale, 
 Tis now the age of steel ! 
 
 The great grey frameworks rise 
 Upwards to lowering skies, 
 The drills and hammers roar : 
 Tunnels sink, low and dull, 
 Earth, sea, and air are full 
 With shapes that leap and soar. 
 It is the age of steel. 
 
 The curse that was laid on man 
 Put God, too, neath its ban, 
 And He is dead thereof : 
 To break the spell of fate, 
 Let mankind toil and hate 
 Quitting the dream of love. 
 
 It is the age of steel; 
 
 Let my song, then, be a sword! 
 
 It cuts to my heart, but it pierces your own as well, 
 
 Yes, it pierces all hearts from Heaven down to hell. 
 
 Welcome, the age of steel ! 
 
TWILIGHT. 
 
 LIGHT is horror and darkness beauty only in the 
 
 vague hours where they mingle, 
 Can all who wander without the great dark pale 
 
 enclosing 
 That intangible unreal loveliness, catch some faint 
 
 apprehension 
 Of what the power of Night, without beginning or 
 
 end in the seasons, 
 Without change, limitless in space, may be to the 
 
 Gods unknown 
 Contemplating in its perfect constancy their own 
 
 unconsciousness. 
 
 39 
 
CHORUS FOR THE TRAGEDY OF 
 
 MAN. 
 
 (2OOO A.D.) 
 
 THERE is no earth left now, 
 
 But toppling heaps of debris, 
 
 Shattered scaffoldings, and gaping chasms 
 
 In which the poisonous air 
 
 Hangs close, and puts out the explorer s lamp : 
 
 Vast cities tenantless, 
 
 Huge, foul with soot and dust, 
 
 And rotting into ruin; 
 
 Labyrinths of rusty rails, 
 
 Innumerable shelves of books mildewed, 
 
 Colossal cranes that stretch out stiff, dead arms. 
 
 For a curse on man has fallen : 
 The black plague-lust of tragedy 
 Has crushed to pulp his soul. 
 The past is all completed, 
 The future is accomplished; 
 There is no future now. 
 
 Here and there in the bare, brown waste 
 
 Rise quivering chimneys of tin 
 
 Vomiting yellow smoke : 
 
 Filling the air with a filthy soup of fog, 
 
 Sour, nauseating, dead : 
 
 While seen through this horrible haze 
 
 Are black squat bulks of iron 
 
 40 
 
Clanking and howling with machinery : 
 Screeching, quivering, gaping, tottering huts, 
 Lunatic asylums of greed, lethal chambers of joy, 
 The last fantastic hope and help of man. 
 
 For these the spinning nebulae grew still; 
 
 For these layer on layer the earth was built 
 
 Of flowers and lives innumerable; 
 
 For these the will through countless centuries 
 
 Accumulating force, 
 
 Burst forth into explosions of desire. 
 
 These are the final pinnacles accomplished 
 
 Of that cathedral pile of misery 
 
 Which we have raised to God through days and 
 
 nights : 
 
 For them my pencil moves, 
 All things in them are done. 
 There is no future now. 
 
 Long ago, first we heard 
 That all things which are, are vain : 
 And yet that which is, is right. 
 Man heeded not, nor was made 
 To bow thus his head before fate, 
 But to struggle with it and to fall; 
 And to bring down with him at the last 
 Chance and the wandering stars : 
 The present that mocks our desires, 
 And the future that builds them anew. 
 
 Now the air is utterly dead : 
 
 Tatters of smoke through which rain, 
 
Rheumy-eyed, jerks her swift needle 
 To hide from men s eyes the bare sun : 
 Only here and there goes plunging, 
 Racing, with roaring vibration, 
 A steel thing with monstrous engines 
 Winged, like a glittering bird. 
 It charges across the vision 
 From the night into the night. 
 
 Nor is there ocean left : 
 
 Its waters are viscid and foul 
 
 With the innumerable pollutions 
 
 Which the rivers roll into them. 
 
 Like to stale treacle or jam, 
 
 It lies now, sluggish and grey, 
 
 Feebly whipped by propellers, 
 
 Slowly furrowed by keels, 
 
 Bearing many a blistered wreck of iron, 
 
 Paved with countless forgotten graves. 
 
 Not in the past, but now 
 The curse upon man has fallen : 
 The black plague-lust of tragedy 
 Has crushed to pulp his soul. 
 The past is all completed, 
 The future is accomplished : 
 There is no future now. 
 
 O endless generations gone before 
 And long forgotten, come, vast hordes of ghosts ! 
 See, the iron curtain, rusted in its groove, 
 Creaks slowly down upon the darkening scene : 
 
 42 
 
Man has destroyed his mother, Life : all things 
 He slew to deepen the horror of his doom. 
 For he was neither body nor soul, though now 
 His soul has slain all bodies as decreed. 
 Do you as I do now, applaud this end : 
 Speak, ages, for your effort comes to this! 
 Acclaim unflinching progress to this goal 
 Inevitable, and marked out from the first : 
 So and not otherwise it must, should be, 
 And is, forever and forevermore! 
 
 43 
 
MIDWINTER MOON OVER THE CITY. 
 
 THE tarnished moon spins upward like a piece 
 Cast by some starving loafer on a bar, 
 To buy that poison which may give release 
 An instant, from the weight of things that are. 
 
 Mid the grey chill which makes the blood run 
 
 slow, 
 
 Mid intellectual women coarse and cold, 
 Mid sentimental joy and silly woe, 
 Mid all the misery of a land grown old : 
 
 Mid thin black clouds like ragged strips of crepe 
 Upon a pauper s hearse, she makes her way; 
 Bound to a wheel from which is no escape, 
 Towards the dull grey mockery of a day. 
 
 A little nearer, then, that frozen death 
 Which will conclude our childish discontent 
 Gainst grim endurance of each painful breath 
 Which, to this land of tears, the gods have sent. 
 
 44 
 
DAWN IN ITALY AND IN LONDON. 
 
 BENEATH the sombre cypresses 
 
 The faded petals fall, 
 
 Against the dawn s grey wall 
 
 Are etched the motionless trees : 
 
 And the last perfume of the rose is borne 
 
 Out to die at the gates of the morn. 
 
 There are only four things 
 
 Which my soul can find 
 
 To match its moody mind : 
 
 The lake of the mountain springs, 
 
 The sad, caressing wind, 
 
 The star aloft in the air, 
 
 And the tree in the desert bare. 
 
 To each dim blackened roof 
 A leaden fogbank clings : 
 With acrid smoke it stings, 
 The sunlight stays aloof. 
 The traffic grumbles by, 
 Men live and suffer why ? 
 
 There are only four things 
 Which my soul can find 
 To match its moody mind : 
 The ancient house which rots, 
 Suburban rubbish lots, 
 The abandoned factory bare, 
 And the slum of grim despair. 
 
 45 
 
SATURDAY NIGHT IN FLEET STREET. 
 
 HERE, where for six long days the traffic whirled. 
 Solitude falls; and there is only left 
 A void of silence in the weary world. 
 
 The roaring muddy tide of life no more, 
 Urged by necessity s lash, rushes this way : 
 And it has left no mark upon the shore ! 
 
 Uneasily and shamefaced, with stained walls, 
 The houses stand about the empty street 
 Of tragic farces and gay funerals. 
 
 All things have faded; all, too, must come back! 
 The silence shudders at the shadows grim, 
 Not wishing to disturb their memories black : 
 
 While over all the empty street that seems 
 
 To faintly sob in hopeless misery, 
 
 The hair of Sorrow falls, in long, dark streams. 
 
AT THE MEETING OF THE DAYS. 
 
 VEILED in night s cloak a silent moment came, 
 When night and dawn, two days together, met 
 Upon the echoing streets of flint and flame, 
 That trailed their gold-embroidered skirts of jet 
 Into the city s gulf of grief and shame : 
 And the dead day its crown of thorns did set 
 Upon the new day s brow, so that its fame 
 Might never die, and men s souls in the net 
 Of labour might be caught, ever the same. 
 So death kissed life and sealed a pact of sin; 
 We saw it, we who toiled in that last hour. 
 For as we homeward fled, new men did come 
 To seize our tools, and carve the dawn s red flower 
 Triumphantly anew with pain and din ! 
 Yet we were helpless and we had no power; 
 Like idiots lame, our souls did cringe and cower : 
 For sleep had left them blind and deaf and dumb. 
 
 47 
 
THE BANNERS. 
 
 LIKE ruddy or tawny masses of torn flame, 
 
 Over the whirlpool seething in agony 
 
 Defiantly they flap and shake on high 
 
 The electricity of life, that, ever the same, 
 
 Fulminates in the city s pain and shame, 
 
 And streams in smoke-clouds towards the ashen 
 
 sky; 
 
 A roaring chaos of wrath and mystery 
 Fashioned to pleasure That-Which-Has-No 
 
 Name : 
 
 Banners on banners heavily everywhere, 
 Soul-oriflammes of blood and hate and lust, 
 Burst flickering through the abysms of the air. 
 Leap, condors chained; it is our will; you must. 
 And scream our tragedy even to those dim 
 Veils of the dawn, where red stars flicker grim ! 
 
THE MAGICIANS. 
 
 ALONG the wet, gleaming footway, over wide and 
 
 deep-echoing squares, 
 They pass, the splendid magicians unknown to 
 
 fame! 
 They who by skill and will wove the robe that the 
 
 city wears, 
 Who cast round hovel and palace a gorgeous girdle 
 
 of flame; 
 Who set rows on rows of beacons to flare right and 
 
 left on each street, 
 
 Who made each window a golden square above; 
 They wander homewards now, pale men on puny 
 
 feet, 
 Who have vanquished night through pain and joy 
 
 and love. 
 
 Yet these mighty magicians, whose deeds no epic 
 skill 
 
 Can narrate or describe, they are unwearied yet; 
 
 Their muscles still move forward with ever- 
 increasing will, 
 
 New wires further to stretch, new lamps higher to 
 set, 
 
 New jewels to devise for the city of their dreams, 
 
 That darkness and storm she may be ever yet 
 defying : 
 
 New forces to subdue, vast hidden lightning 
 streams, 
 
 To fashion toys from them, for man s desire 
 undying. 
 
 49 
 
THE FORCES AT WORK IN THE CITY. 
 
 LIKE crystal torrents perfect in desire 
 For all the winds of sea and waves that fill 
 The gulf whereon day trails his robes of fire, 
 So moves man s dominant will. 
 
 Mid iron hammers that clang and then vibrate, 
 Falling and intermingling in one tone, 
 So does his force stand forging shapes of fate 
 To cast them into the city, one by one. 
 
 As some red bomb that bursts on towers of might, 
 So does his soul explode and shake the earth, 
 Into new cataclysms of convulsive death, 
 Into light-leaping new fires of red birth. 
 
 His song of songs, sun-drunken tragic Queen, 
 He scatters delirious like gold rain adown 
 Your nights, and like red roses down your days, 
 His song of songs, merged in one mighty tone. 
 
 And from his heart s dance-rhythms evermore 
 It struggles in dazzling spasms, seeking higher 
 To shatter its broken and triumphant spray, 
 In new invincible violence of desire ! 
 
THE FORGING OF THE SUN. 
 
 UNDYING sun of the years, pour forth thy blood 
 Till men grow drunken with the strength thereof : 
 Let us be wrapped in flame as in a hood. 
 And perish and be reborn in fiery love. 
 
 Sun that grows pale each winter, through the bold 
 Death-struggle of desire we recreate 
 On the worn anvils of will, your power old 
 To be our song, our glory, and our fate. 
 
AUTUMN SUNSET. 
 
 EVENING and the clear sun 
 Slides down opal ways; 
 London like a crystal 
 Shines beneath my gaze. 
 
 Rosy, pearly, blue and brown, 
 Is the pale- washed sky; 
 Right and left, and up and down, 
 Gleaming roof-tops lie; 
 
 In the calm of autumn 
 All the city seems 
 A young giant dreaming 
 Fair and foolish dreams. 
 
TWO AUTUMN DAWNS. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE Dawn creeps laggard now into the wood; 
 For he she loved, her God with golden hair, 
 Summer, has slipped off to the south somewhere, 
 And all his birds have followed, like a flood. 
 
 In vain she asks the trees, " Why did he fly ? " 
 In tattered cloaks close-folded they are dumb : 
 For Autumn, that brown gipsy child, has come, 
 And filled their hearts with piping wild and high. 
 
 He has sung Summer gone and Winter near : 
 
 And has consoled their grief with promises 
 
 Of coats well-lined with gold, so, though they 
 
 freeze, 
 They will be safe from Winter, never fear. 
 
 This mocking song they have misunderstood : 
 But Dawn, in her grey lonely heart, knows all. 
 She marks how, from the stiff boughs, dead leaves 
 
 fall 
 Each morning, as she comes into the wood. 
 
 II. 
 
 The City is astir ere Dawn has come, 
 She has arisen, shaken herself from sleep, 
 And over all her pinnacles surges deep 
 The noise of life, in a reverberant hum. 
 
 53 
 
The Summer dream is over : wake, O wake, 
 You gemmed Aladdin-caverns of long nights! 
 Let lamps into the Dawn their long hair shake, 
 And let the roaring streets o erflow with lights ! 
 
 Let the wind-shuttles, on the chimney-looms, 
 Weave the great web of smoke, which, cast afar, 
 Blots from our ken each planet, every star. 
 Let Dawn be lost within those glittering glooms. 
 
 For Winter, which makes Nature stiff and dumb, 
 Fills man with his heroic dream of old : 
 With all his surging fevered search for gold 
 The City is astir, ere dawn has come. 
 
 54 
 
AN AUTUMN PICTURE. 
 
 Two lovers sit in a shadowy park, 
 
 Amid a litter of fallen leaves. 
 
 The air is still and cool and dark, 
 
 As two lovers sit in a park, 
 
 Amid the mouldering autumn leaves. 
 
 The city thunders gainst the dark, 
 Out there beyond the fallen leaves; 
 Jarring night-caravans embark : 
 The night her robe of darkness weaves 
 Out of many and many and many a spark 
 Smouldering above the fallen leaves. 
 
 Two lovers sit in a shadowy park : 
 They heed not the city which rages and grieves 
 They mark not the menacing mocking dark, 
 Nor the grey vapour over the leaves. 
 Love laughs triumphantly in the dark 
 Amid the sodden, rotten leaves. 
 
 55 
 
THE CITY LIES AT EASE UPON THE 
 NIGHT. 
 
 THE City lies at ease upon the night : 
 
 Her bed is hung with jewels glorious one! 
 
 And all her palaces are but a throne 
 
 Of splendour, sparkling in the joy of light. 
 
 And over all the region of the spheres 
 There booms her song of night and light and fire, 
 Her fierce tempestuous challenge of desire, 
 That fails not, nor shall fail in future years. 
 
 Cry that the night hath hid thee not, and still 
 Proclaim in strident clarions all thy might; 
 Let laughing tumult leap from hill to hill : 
 Thou blessed one, my City of the night! 
 
THE LITANIES OF THE CITY. 
 
 BLESSED be thou, my City, for thy day : 
 Chaotic revel woven of dance and fire; 
 The sun trails flame along each level way, 
 Enkindling every window with desire. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy night : 
 The rain makes slippery slime of every street, 
 The lamps of lust their crimson globes repeat, 
 Man s soul is trapped within a maze of light. 
 
 Blessed be thou, my City, for thy throngs : 
 They move, processions vast, for evermore; 
 Bearing a million joys, a million wrongs 
 Over the earth, like seas without a shore. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy men : 
 They waste their energy and waste their pain, 
 And are blown hither and thither like fine rain, 
 And, weary of life, long yet for life again. 
 
 Blessed be thou, my City, for thy love : 
 For women made of marvellous bones and blood, 
 Uniting hovels beneath and heavens above 
 In one vast litany of joy, one passion-flood. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy lust 
 That hides and leers behind thy cloak of night : 
 A mockery of force, a beauty-blight, 
 Which clasps a skeleton, and fawns on dust. 
 
 57 
 
Blessed be thou, my City, for thy strife : 
 Epic sublime of wrath and wrong untold, 
 Which makes thy streets rage with excessive life, 
 Commends thy commerce, glorifies thy gold. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy hate : 
 Flower of weakness, and of vanity, fruit; 
 Poised on a putrid stem from poisoned root 
 It springs and it contains the seed of fate. 
 
 Blessed be thou, my City, for thy work : 
 The restless hands that lure the challenging mind. 
 Grim, gorgeous palaces loom from out the murk, 
 And up their staring walls there crawl mankind. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy toil : 
 Timid, or mean, or plotting gods half -hewn, 
 It casts up smoke and scaffoldings to the moon, 
 And crazes itself with hope and with turmoil. 
 
 Blessed be thou, my City, for thy rest : 
 
 For broad, deep-bosomed, slow, reposeful days, 
 
 For calm and ebony nights, when night seems 
 
 best: 
 A mistress-mother, silencing vain praise ! 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy sleep : 
 
 A rickety attic for a day of pains, 
 
 Where we may drink cold wine and count our 
 
 gains, 
 Lust s pale and withered flowers buried deep. 
 
 58 
 
Blessed be thou, my City, for thy night : 
 The dusk slips off her scarlet robe, black-lined; 
 She solemnly bares her nudity, dazzling white, 
 Source of all life and fountain of mankind. 
 
 Accursed be thou, my City, for thy day : 
 Smoky with sombre feasts and dull with tears, 
 She scrawls despair upon the brows of years 
 Which slowly move, like hungry men, away. 
 
 O City of night and light, of mire and fire, 
 O City of song and wrong, of roar and gore, 
 Eternity s self stamped in a vain desire! 
 Be blessed, be accurst, for evermore! 
 
 59 
 
THE DEATH OF THE CITY. 
 
 YEAR on year, and day on day. 
 
 Like the light advancing towards June, 
 
 Grew the city greater under the moon. 
 
 And men said : " She will never pass away." 
 
 Soldier, priest, and statesman found within her 
 Treasures to guard, and souls to save, and laws to 
 
 keep : 
 Night and day she grew more splendid, night and 
 
 day she grew more vast, 
 Cities were added to her in her sleep. 
 
 Explosive outbursts of life 
 She felt, and tonic strife : 
 Steadily consuming gold 
 
 Through shops, banks, houses, churches, all the old 
 Multitudinous, diverse, unchanging mouths of 
 life. 
 
 Then towards her, on great roads outward flung, 
 
 There came a numberless throng; 
 
 On foot or hobbling along, 
 
 In carts, in carriages, trains and boats, men came : 
 
 For her great eyes aflame 
 
 Had drawn each from his lair; 
 
 From his dull den in the changeless countryside 
 
 where 
 There was only labour and rest, 
 
 60 
 
To her palaces, taverns, chapels, slums, and gaols, 
 
 and great shops fair, 
 Where sat together ruling, smiling Hope and 
 
 Despair, 
 
 Crowned with terrific crest; 
 And a Dream over all, a vast Dream vaguely blest. 
 
 So generations passed, but still men s toil 
 Never slackened, never ceased. It went on, blind. 
 There was no time to pause, nor had they a mind 
 To see the record of their own turmoil. 
 Small men arose and dominated the whole : 
 Great men fell crushed beneath the appalling 
 
 weight. 
 
 The rest still strove, for their crude force was great, 
 Their hopes yet high, although they lacked a goal, 
 And then, they said : " She will never pass away." 
 
 But while the ship of fate tugged at the chain of 
 
 years, 
 Men s bodies grew the weaker, their souls grew 
 
 faint with fears : 
 They came to hate the errors and follies they had 
 
 done, 
 And then they fell to hating the savage, splendid 
 
 sun : 
 And then they thought earth evil : and then, in 
 
 sullen mood, 
 They worked slowly, mechanically, and merely for 
 
 their food, 
 
 61 
 
Toiling resignedly ever : none knew the reason 
 
 why, 
 But that all men were slaves alike, to suffer, bear, 
 
 and die. 
 
 Year on year, and day on day, 
 
 Like the light returning in December, 
 
 Died the city s force down to an ember. 
 
 And still fools cried : " She will never pass away." 
 
 Not to the sound of glorious battle, 
 Not to the rhythm of marching feet, 
 But to hushed compliments of deceit, 
 Slowly sounded the long death-rattle. 
 Exhausted, and not daring 
 Sudden, fierce death to face, 
 She passed, without disgrace, 
 Or honour, or any caring. 
 
 Slowly she grew more rotten-ripe; 
 Slowly her heart did shrivel so, 
 Slowly her streets grew tenantless, 
 Slowly her life-blood ceased to flow. 
 At the last, like a toothless harlot, 
 Painted, in tawdry lace, 
 She sat at the cross-roads of the world, 
 And the world spat in her face. 
 Then, after many centuries, she fell to ruin there, 
 To a ruin that had forgotten its triumph, its 
 despair : 
 
 62 
 
While new and violent nations rose red and 
 
 launched great ships, 
 And went to their last battle with mad song on 
 
 their lips, 
 
 While surging cities rose and battered at the skies, 
 And monstrous cities fell and the earth reeled with 
 
 their cries. 
 She sat there ghastly, smiling, and unmoved at all 
 
 their strife, 
 Her choice was made at last and her choice was 
 
 death-in-life. 
 
 Year on year, and day on day, 
 Like the face of one lost long ago, 
 She faded into the darkness so : 
 None cursed her, none for her did pray. 
 
THE ANARCHIST S DREAM. 
 
 I. 
 
 I KNELT amid the martyr-saints redeemed, 
 Before the glory of God s stainless throne; 
 And, thinking to praise Him there, I idly deemed 
 Myself, amongst them all, the worthiest one : 
 " Lo, I am he who flung a sphere of death; 
 And I am he who, steadfast there, was caught ; 
 And I am he who fainted, torn of breath, 
 And to my soul s hurt, told the plot I wrought; 
 And to my soul s cure died a felon there. 
 Vile infamy was heaped upon my corse." 
 A Voice rang out, a Voice of dire despair, 
 " Thou shalt return to Earth and taste remorse." 
 
 II. 
 
 So now, amid a sneaking, servile rout, 
 
 On dreary, filthy streets, I stand and mark 
 
 Grim towers shattering the iron dark 
 
 With lights that like thin blades of steel leap out. 
 
 And in these leaden walls I hear the noise 
 
 Of grey machines which, grinding petty laws, 
 
 Keep sharp and bright the strong gold-clutching 
 
 claws 
 
 To mock God s Law of Life, to clip old joys, 
 To bind men s souls in slavery s dull hell, 
 To starve and threaten them, to break their might, 
 To rob them of last pitiful show of right, 
 So that these vultures fatten, waste, and swell. 
 
III. 
 
 Is there a man, then, with a scrap of soul? 
 Has God denied salvation now, to all? 
 How can they stand indifferent while there fall 
 The nights about them, and the shadows roll ? 
 The tempest threatens and their faith runs down; 
 They have no God, the people, and no will : 
 Are they to wait for midnight s blackest frown, 
 Or bow themselves to servitude s baser ill ? 
 Can my example stir no frozen heart, 
 Let loose upon the sky the avenging fire, 
 Like a red scourge that leaps upon the mart, 
 And sweeps away the last of vile desire ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is in vain to call on God or man. 
 
 Come Hell then, and blot out this land in deep 
 
 Folds of thick darkness, so no eye may scan 
 
 Its horrors, and no heart for it may weep ! 
 
 Like a scrawled schoolboy s legend wet with tears, 
 
 Erase man s story from the slate of years; 
 
 And bring to him no comfort from afar, 
 
 No promise, even of misery, to his mind : 
 
 But hurl the dead earth downward, whence no star 
 
 May gleam upon its voyage, vast and blind. 
 
 V. 
 
 I waken. Tis myself has made the plea, 
 Which I myself must answer once again : 
 The silence which arises now in me 
 Beats back the echoes of my joy and pain : 
 
 65 
 
It is a refuge whereto I may fly, 
 
 A pole of ice, around which I see rolled 
 
 Creation s endless shame and misery, 
 
 Of death and life, and love and hate, untold, 
 
 Beyond s God s sun or Lucifer s red star, 
 Beyond all heavens and hells and men, I go 
 Unto my goal illimitably afar 
 Amid the eternal silence of the snow. 
 
 66 
 
COAL. 
 
 A VALLEY, narrow as the pit, 
 
 Without a blossoming thing in it : 
 
 Raw and dirty, an unwashed wound. 
 
 In the midst, insurgently rise 
 
 Wheels sharp-fretted traceries, 
 
 Chimneys that score with smoke the skies. 
 
 It is a cancer-spot, a fane, 
 
 A mass of hovels, a city of men, 
 
 A mart of mud and blood and gold, 
 
 A thing that clings to earth s bosom cold 
 
 And sucks the last drops from her breasts running 
 
 dry, 
 Gorging the coal as it comes from the mine. 
 
 Grind of wheels and clank of pumps 
 Make the thick air twitch and shrink 
 Like broken nerves, throughout the day. 
 As dawn throws his torch in the soot-hung sky 
 An aimless procession shuffles by : 
 The men march out for another day 
 Of darkness in the pits below. 
 When the dusk swoops swiftly down, 
 Like a black vulture, on the town, 
 They shamble back, the self-same way, 
 Towards the mocking bedazzling glow 
 Of bar-rooms, seeking with hungry eyes 
 Over the streets for their votaries. 
 
But they have borne their prize away : 
 Black, but with life-blood dripping red, 
 It fills their wastes with sense and soul; 
 It makes all love and hate and strife, 
 Fairer than song, better than bread, 
 The harvest-hope, the life of life, 
 Coal! 
 
 Downwards suddenly plunge the cages 
 
 From the daylight, to the vast 
 
 Abysmal silence of the night : 
 
 Now the thick earth holds them fast : 
 
 The slaves who sell life for death s wages, 
 
 Risking indifferently the blast 
 
 Of gas exploding, that choking death. 
 
 They tumble into iron carts 
 
 Their grimy bodies, as they start, 
 
 An echo follows them behind 
 
 Through the mean tunnels which drearily wind 
 
 Onward and on. 
 
 Clanking, clattering, bumping, grinding, 
 
 The carts roll through them, onward and on. 
 
 At last, they make a sudden stay. 
 Lo now, beneath a spluttering ray, 
 The half-stripped bodies at their toil ! 
 Backs that gleam as wet with oil; 
 Picks alternately aswing, 
 Crashing with dull and sullen ring; 
 Hewing the thick tough carbon out. 
 These men strive stoutly there, no doubt, 
 
 68 
 
At the sacred shrine of their joy and despair! 
 One of them, weary and loath, 
 Yawns, and mutters an obscene oath : 
 Another spits; and one agape 
 Grins, expectant of some jape. 
 But the steel picks rise and fall, 
 Relentless pendulums, through it all. 
 
 Blood of it and bone of it, 
 Above on earth, are men in towns; 
 Statesmen, churchmen, rogues and clowns, 
 Doing all things fit, unfit : 
 Palaces and hairpins making, 
 Pamphleteering, loafing, baking. 
 Black, but with life-blood dripping red, 
 It fills their breasts with sense and soul : 
 It makes all love and hate and strife, 
 Fairer than song, better than bread, 
 The harvest-hope, the life of life 
 Coal. 
 
 69 
 
THE SOWER. 
 
 RIDGE on ridge the great fields lie, 
 Endless under the autumn sky; 
 Scattered huts, but never a tree 
 On the brown waves of fertility : 
 And upon them, strong and light, 
 From dawn s dusk to that of night, 
 Moves a man, forward and back, 
 Like a Titan near at hand, 
 Like a fly from overhead, 
 Scattering ever in his track 
 On the grim, unwilling land 
 The grey germs of living bread. 
 He sows the bitter seed of Time, 
 The long harvest of life and death, 
 And the prayers of broken hearts. 
 
 While his legs beneath him stride, 
 With his right hand in a sack 
 He dips, then quick-flinging back, 
 Casts the wheat-grains far and wide, 
 Furrow on furrow, row on row, 
 He traverses acres so, 
 Unarmoured gainst the bitter chill, 
 Unstrengthened but by his own will : 
 His feet are swollen, blackened, ground 
 With the clumsy clogs they re bound, 
 Yet they spring with power sure, 
 To the last day they endure : 
 
 70 
 
His legs, in stringy sinew cast, 
 
 Millions of engines have surpassed; 
 
 Above his shirt, tattered at breast, 
 
 Works a gnarled and hairy chest; 
 
 His arms swing mightier than steel cranes, 
 
 His grizzled skull is bared to rains, 
 
 And in his deep eyes light does lie 
 
 As in a snake s or an eagle s eye. 
 
 He sows the bitter seed of Time, 
 
 The long harvest of life and death, 
 
 And the prayers of broken hearts. 
 
 He has not known art s mystery. 
 Progress ? It has passed him by. 
 History speaks naught of him. 
 And his spirit, rude and dim, 
 Never hears a call to wake 
 While the dark fields freeze and bake 
 Under this cruel, empty heaven : 
 Whereto, as by mockery driven, 
 All his hope how little! fled 
 From the terrible crushing dread 
 Of old age and pain and death, 
 Sole reward for all his breath 
 Spent in toil, barren and drear. 
 His forefathers have walked here, 
 And their footsteps mark them not : 
 The strong arms wherewith they tossed 
 The grain, are rotted long to dust : 
 And his son in the self-same spot 
 Must trudge steadily in his place, 
 
And behind him, his son s face 
 Comes, marked with toil, and a great race 
 To the dim future stride on by, 
 Long as the leaden earth shall fly, 
 Till the sun falls from the sky, 
 They sow the bitter seed of Time, 
 The long harvest of life and death, 
 And the prayers of broken hearts. 
 
 Yet, lacking him, all things were vain : 
 Tis his sweat, his blood, his pain, 
 Which have made all that shall be. 
 What the earth could not, that he 
 Is doing, and he knows it not! 
 From the brown breast, no more hot, 
 Of his own mother tearing bread, 
 Without which all men were dead. 
 Under those feet that crush the clods 
 Spring the heroes and the gods : 
 At the great gesture of that hand. 
 Science and art overspread the land : 
 From those fingers, bent with pain, 
 Cities fall, as falls the grain : 
 And life s pulse, more than all beside, 
 Hangs on the rhythm of that stride : 
 He sows the bitter seed of Time, 
 The long harvest of life and death, 
 And the prayers of broken hearts. 
 
 Steadily, to the brown fields bare, 
 
 He gives green life which makes the air 
 
 72 
 
Anew, from a stagnant, breathed-out fen, 
 
 To a moving freedom, fit for men. 
 
 He casts life s crimson slender thread 
 
 From the dark caverns of the dead 
 
 Out to a vast futurity, 
 
 So full of light, we may not see. 
 
 He scatters the stars upon the night : 
 
 Through him alone in endless flight 
 
 Of boundless joys and tragedies, 
 
 They move, on the cold and hollow seas 
 
 Of emptiness, which knows not death, 
 
 Since it nor life nor sorrow hath. 
 
 Unwitting, even as God hath wrought, 
 
 From thoughtlessness he weaves firm thought 
 
 He knows naught save what he creates, 
 
 He has achieved his mastering fates, 
 
 And, mystery of mystery, 
 
 To himself he prays ah, me! 
 
 That what he has done may forgiven be. 
 
 He sows the bitter seed of Time, 
 
 The long harvest of life and death, 
 
 And the prayers of broken hearts. 
 
 73 
 
EPILOGUE: THE PRAYER. 
 
 THE sky to-day s an infinite temple-dome 
 With clouds like wisps of incense here and there : 
 Before that chasm of light, light s terrible home, 
 I stand and cry aloud my savage prayer. 
 
 Give me joy, O God, joy burning, destroying, 
 
 bright; 
 
 But give me sorrow s yet more withering fire : 
 Let hard joy crush me beneath its massive weight, 
 But sorrow release me for despair and desire. 
 
 Give me knowledge, O God, a blood-stained, 
 
 broken sword : 
 
 Let Thy curse be the badge and banner I must win. 
 And let me gain it not untried, ungored, 
 But sooty with despair and red with sin. 
 
 Give me life, O God, give me toil for toil fresh 
 
 done, 
 Give me clamour of cities thundering through my 
 
 brain : 
 
 Let me feel vast multitudes dragging me ever on, 
 Till they overwhelm me, spent with struggle and 
 
 pain. 
 
 Give me song, O God, song that no gold can buy, 
 Or no fame can debase, mad song of strife : 
 And be my proud voice lost like a vain sigh 
 Amid the surging ritual of life. 
 
 74 
 
Give me courage, O God, courage alone above all. 
 Courage in every heart-beat, every breath : 
 Courage to battle desperately till I fall 
 Before Thy great winds and grey seas of death. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 75 
 
GARDEN CITY PRESS 
 
 LIMITED 
 LETCHWORTH, HERTS 
 

RETURN 
 
 CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation D< 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 ^-T^T- 
 
 -7T 
 
 FORM NO. DD 6, 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKEL 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 589194 
 
 -? 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY