IC-NRLF FIRE AND WINE FIRE AND WINE BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER LONDON GRANT RICHARDS LTD. PUBLISHERS THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH 1913 TO ANYONE READING THIS BOOK You, miracle marvellous and divine, Whose eyes upon this page now fall, Have linked your soul so unto mine That I must praise you most of all. I care not, be you young or old : I heed not if you love or hate : Reading my rhymes may leave you cold, You read them yet, at any rate. Then, after, with each further rhyme, I feel your hands that push the pen; Your breath that falls to mark the time, My songs shall rise the higher, then I CONTENTS BOOK I. FIRE PAGE SPRING LOVE . . . . .13 MIDSUMMER LOVE . . . .14 AUTUMNAL LOVE . . . .15 MIDWINTER LOVE . . . . l6 I CANNOT LOVE YOU . . . .18 LACKING YOUR LOVE . . . .19 IN THE YEAR THAT IS PAST . . .20 COULD MY SOUL DREAM . . . .21 EYES . . . . . .22 HANDS . . . . . .23 MYSTIC UNION . . . . .24 SONG IN THE DESERT . . . .25 LOVE AND SUSPICION . . . .26 THE END OF LOVE . . . .27 THE ICY WATERS . . . .28 7 CONTENTS PAGE IN THE SHADOW OF A PINE . . .29 A PRAYER ANSWERED . . . .30 AT PARTING . . . . .32 THE MATING .... LOVE S MEMORY FADING . . . .34 LOVE S MEMORY FORGOTTEN . . .35 THE END OF DESIRE . . . .36 THE FINAL FUTILITY . . . .37 BOOK II. WINE TO MY MOTHER . . . . .41 THE VOWELS . . . . .42 THE THREE TRANSFORMATIONS OF POETRY . 44 THE HOSTS OF SONG . . . .45 DIONYSUS AND APOLLO . . . .46 THE POET S CHARACTER . . .4? THE POET S DESIRE . . . .48 POETIC ART ... .49 ON AN EDITOR S REFUSAL OF MY POEMS . . 50 TO THE PUBLISHER WHO REFUSED TO PUBLISH MY POEMS . . . . .51 8 CONTENTS PAGE THE POET S AUTUMN . . . .52 THE POET S IMMORTALITY . . .53 LINES TO THE ADMIRERS OF ALFRED STEVENS . 54 TO THE PUBLIC . . . . .56 PRESENT-DAY POETRY . . . .57 CLOWN S SONG . . . . .58 THE PRICE OF POETRY . . . 60 ART S SACRIFICES . . . .61 FATIGUE . . . . .62 THE DREAM OF ART . . . .63 A DISTANT SONG . . . .65 DREAM-POETRY . . . . .67 ART . . . . . .68 TO THE MUSE . . . . .70 THE POET, I. . . . .71 TIME AND POET . . . . .72 THE POET, II. . . . .73 THE TRIUMPH OF SONG . 75 BOOK I. FIRE SPRING LOVE ERE I can love, the chill rain spoils my rose : Ere I can weep, the sun shines forth again : Ere I can rage, more beautifully it glows : Ere I can kiss, my kisses cost me pain. 0, I will turn my back and cease from chase ; This Love s a shifting wind that will not sit : But ere I turn she buffets me in the face, And flies before I howl with sting of it. 1, too, am April-mooded, so I grieve, And pity Love her tantrums and her whims : She is unloved, an orphan, and afraid ; And Winter s sneering wrinkle slow dislimns. At last, I have her ; lo, a half-slipped kiss ! A flower careless to the hillside tossed : There is no word to speak its thrilling bliss. But in the night comes Winter s latest frost. MIDSUMMER LOVE MIDSUMMER noontide in a sky of brass : The sun like flame licks at the blistered earth, And shrivels up the blades of withering grass ; Like Love that slays the love it brought to birth. I hate you even as dying men hate death ; I hate you as the damned must hate their fire ; But I am sick and damned, and spite my breath, I hate you with an agony of desire. I love you and your sterile, arid kiss. You cry to me intolerable depths of shame : Grant but one anguish, then, to equal this, And I will sleep, cradled in scarlet flame. Earth s loveliness the raging sun destroyed In vainly striving to sear the brazen sky : Pour forth my cup of wormwood unalloyed, And trample on my tears, and let me die. AUTUMNAL LOVE AT last I reach with weary strife And endless wrestling with the gale, The autumnal harbour of my life ; And in that harbour yours the sail. I am too old, at last, to care ; It is the end : be this my home, Where I may watch the red leaves flare Before they fall and rot to loam. Safe by the hearth, I shall forget The intolerable loneliness I knew Out there amidst the sea s wild fret : That dread and glorious sea of blue. MIDWINTER LOVE WINTER S without With his mad rout ! A red wind pours Through windows and doors ; It laughs, this flayed Naked thing afraid ; It clutches at leaves, It screeches, it grieves. Winter s without ! But we together within bear in our bodies the fire Of love, the breath of the world, a flame leaping higher and higher ; On the perilous coasts of despair, a red beacon of desire. Winter s without ! In night s dark peace Crawl serpents that freeze With their rattling scales, And their stony eyes, The water that fails And the grass that dies. Winter s without ! But we watch steadily between us, between our clasped hands in the gloom, 16 Love s perfect and motionless beauty, a flower that fills the room With its white glory unchanging, its never-passing perfume. Winter s without ! Afloat and aflow In the dawn, lo, The wet white snow ! Winter s without ! Tis day. Love is weak as a snowflake and cold as a frozen tear : Perchance in some distant spring of dreams it may melt, then, and disappear Beyond the ice slow crawling or the raving winds thin and red. Meanwhile, in a drifting tomb of the snow we lie together dead. I CANNOT LOVE YOU I CANNOT love you, but for an instant only : Each hour your love and mine must wake anew ; One moment s weakness and the charm is shattered, Whether I fail or you. And since life is a constant change and tumult, Since low comes out of high as day from night, We shall love, we shall hate, and we shall find together Grey days of little light. And I shall seek in love a thousand others, And I shall long to kill you, lovely one, And I shall torture you until you hate me, And we shall both make hells beneath the sun ! We shall part and we shall once again unite us, Ugly with tears, broken with time and care, And loathing, loving, we shall lie together To consecrate our uttermost despair. Love is a fire that leaps this hour between us, And it will fade till ashes quench its glow, Unless dumb death will hear our prayer, in pity, And take us from decline of loving now ! 18 LACKING YOUR LOVE LACKING your love, my heart is a darkened house : The dust lies thick on the carpetless, creaking floors : The walls are covered with green mould : a cricket ironically chirps ; And the shattered windows let in the long autumn rains. O grant me your love, press kiss upon kiss on my lips, Till I can forget the dark ruin and havoc that time has made ; Till aswoon in your arms, my empty heart dreams of bright halls, Lit up with curious lamps, and with dancers awhirl. IN THE YEAR THAT IS PAST IN the year that is past and forgotten, I have learned Naught but increasing bitterness with life ; My studies disillusionment have earned, And I have paid with failure for my strife. For no good, to no purpose have I striven ; Life shaped in me an instrument of pain : Now Spring, a great bird, sweeps along high heaven, And the old wound breaks open, once again. I do not know if Love his scorn is showing, I do not know if Love a grief must prove, I do not know Love s dreadful burden growing, I only know I starve and thirst for love. If Love do choose from every joy to sever My soul, I care not, so he bring me still Kisses that burn and tempt to kiss for ever : I d sell my soul for but one hour in Hell ! Though Death and Life and Wisdom be a-calling, And even Folly counsels, " Let Love be " ; Yet into that fierce furnace-fire I m falling, And may I be consumed there utterly. 20 COULD MY SOUL DREAM COULD my soul dream of anything now for the rest of my life, I would dream that you and I in the twilight were one: That silence were ever about us, and we were alone, Enclosed by great hills from the echoes of tumult and strife. In my arms I would hold you, as in the stillness out there The twilight-tide tragically ebbed, while I in my bliss Would kiss all your beauty which you would permit me to kiss, Would taste with my lips eyes, breast, hands, feet, and hair. yield me a moment thus, I will pay you its worth : Give over the rest to serve the world s laughter and scorn, Bid infinite darkness descend without hope of a morn! 1 am clay in your hands. I shall never dream more upon earth. 21 EYES YOUR shining eyes make laughter of the night : The lights reflected dance therein, my eyes Drink of their rhythm-dazzling ecstasies. Your shining eyes make laughter of the night. I am as one who plunges in a sea Mid little waves that clash and splash and fight. Half mocking me, yet half caressing me, Your shining eyes make laughter of the night. Your shining eyes make laughter of the night : On that deep laughter I am borne along ; A ripple, a swirl of lights, a clash of song . . . Your shining eyes make music of the night. 22 HANDS THERE is great mystery, my love, In the movements of your hands. They glide upwards, like the sun, In silent benediction ; They glide downwards gradually, Like dark retreating tides of sea : They whirl and twirl and weep and leap, And around them my pale rose meditations sleep. Over them hovers still the dense Mysterious scent of frankincense : And when their fingers together move Over long keyboards of old clavichords, I am consumed with a dance of love ; And when they are still I have no more words. There is great mystery, my love, In the movements of your hands. MYSTIC UNION I TASTE the sultry beauty of your mouth : Tis like a scarlet poppy in the sun. Its sleepy passion has my strength undone, And I am lost in vague dreams of the South. The scented soft dark tangle of your hair Is like the shade of sighing cypress thrown On marble terraces where, one by one,, Gold glints are aimlessly drifting, here and there. Yet in my soul I feel a vague disquiet : A lofty melancholy in the sun. Stilled are my heartbeats,, stilled my pulses riot, I dream. Are we apart or are we one ? 24 SONG IN THE DESERT UNDER the sun the dry sands bake, The long day slips to afternoon ; Song in the desert do thou make, In the dark tent, a sleepy tune. All through the night the land will be white, Jackals will bark, far-off and low ; The moon will be in her fourteenth night ; Sing then a faded song of woe ! And if the scented stillness holds One kiss for me, untasted yet, All other things I would forget : All but the dream of your hair s dark folds. LOVE AND SUSPICION You squeeze me in your arms the while your eyes Hungrily seek, fierce woman, on my face Close-hid deceits, brief mocking smiles, to trace : For you have guessed that you have lost your prize. But I care not, for all my enterprise Is sending such thoughts through your brain achase ; For thereby do I gain the crowning grace Of all your splendid savage witcheries. Seize me and keep me ever for your own, So that my love flames in you like a star : But if you dim its ray, be sure some one Shall lure me from your side, and out afar : This shadowy terror I set on you now, Leaves but love s perfect lustre on your brow ! 26 THE END OF LOVE O, I AM weary of Love, Of Love with the broken wings, Of Love with the eyelids bound : Whose temple is shut and still, Alone on a hidden hill, Far above any sound. There is a little pool, And the trailing leaf-sprays cool Dip into it, all day. It whispers to me of rest, And a slumbering Naiad s breast : There will I sink, and stay. THE ICY WATERS HE who has plunged in some deep sullen ocean, But reaches shore again, whence he was long afar, Keeps yet its icy waters in his heart. Thus, I loved long ago ; but now, when love comes calling, It seems, though near, like some dim, distant peak That the eyes, ranging southward, mid blue mists vainly seek. The throbbing pulses of my heart, tremendous, No longer lift the blood to my desires. The engine s still and cold are all the fires. Both pain and fear I feel : false hopes yet lure me, But of the old joy dead I know no more a part : For the dark bitter waters grip my heart. IN THE SHADOW OF A PINE YOUR life is like a pine s soft shadow cast On the green sliding surface of Life s stream ; The hours vanish and the stream runs fast, The sun sinks, and the shadow is a dream. And I who rest beneath your sloping boughs, Woman beautiful and sombre, I have come Voyaging down the stream from some far home I furl the sails and ease the storm-strained bows, And then I sit beneath your shade. Aloft You whisper old silly and soothing rhymes ; You touch my fingers with your needles soft, The while the afternoon beats slumbrous chimes. But soon, the ancient voyage I resume, Soon, the fierce stream must call me forth again ; Soon, I leave needle-roofed and carpeted room To slip down to the veiled and lonely main. 1 bear your magic music with me yet ; On what wave tossed, what yellow beach upcast, Its melancholy smile cannot forget : Its whirling, throbbing, sobbing are not past : The shadow of the pine was on me cast. 29 A PRAYER ANSWERED ONE time I saw the temple gates in thunder Roll open, clanging, and to me alone ; And there within, a marble shape of wonder, The Goddess on her throne. But when my soul towards that threshold polished Moved challenging and swiftly, free from care, The doors rolled to, the glory was demolished. And so I knew despair ! Now since no Goddess-vision of desiring Nor even any mortal comes my way, My hated honour and my long aspiring I cast from me to-day : It is enough to me that you are woman ; I ask no further, better thing than this : Be warm and soft and treacherous and human, But grant me of your bliss. I want no finer wealth, no brighter glory, Than your dark eyes and your entangling hair, As for the Goddess, twas an empty story, And she a hag, I swear ! A million women stand without the portal : Their eyes and lips invite me, unafraid. One of the million now I make immortal : " In you my choice is made ! " And as I seize her, lo, those gates asunder ! Before them stands a marble shape at rest. . . . There leaps, a dream of crowning woe and wonder, The Goddess, to my breast. AT PARTING I GAVE to you a day of love, And more than this you shall not have Although for ever you beseech, Although for ever you do crave. Vain is your asking, vain your strife, For on two ways our thoughts now fall You are a miser of your life, I am in all things prodigal. With other women I must prove If in my loving well I chose ; Or if all women are divine, Each rose a perfect rose. And you, if you would worthy be Of my great love that storms the sky, Must force all men to bow the knee So they can naught deny. Part we in hope then, not in tears ; Be each content with one wild day. Not all the winged clamorous years Shall sweep its thought away ! THE MATING I AM content to take you as you are, As such I think you answer every test. I ll seek no more, for I have wandered far And you are only woman, like the rest. As well as any other will you do, As ill as any other you were made. I am not much to boast on too, you know. Ask little, then, and let it be a trade. Though love s a soiled and hard and withered thing Cast on a rubbish-heap of worn-out days, To bear the rains and bleak winds of the spring : Tis all we have, tis all we need to praise. I ll look down in the cellars of my heart For those old casks, long-broached, of love and hate, Perhaps some lees are left : if so, take part. Such wedding-feast does fortune set, O mate ! 33 LOVE S MEMORY FADING ONE eve within a garden rich in roses We kissed, how many times I dare not tell : A secret tis that nothing now discloses, Although the wind knows well. The words we said, the plaints and sighs we uttered, That hour of madness in the darkening shade, Perhaps the fountain in its plash has muttered, Perhaps the memory s strayed. My memory, too, within me flickers palely Like an old lantern that Time slowly closes. O, what is love that it should pass so frailly From out that little garden rich in roses ? 34 LOVE S MEMORY FORGOTTEN You are no more to me than a dream-ghost flying Who, so I dreamed, cast on me one wild look : Or the stale perfume of a flower dying Slowly, within a book. My memory of you fades out like a figure Seen far upon a road at late twilight : A tiny silhouette in the red distance, Soon lost upon the night. I could remember you better were I sober, I could feel on my lips the soft stir of your breath But there is fire on the hills, wine in October, And in the valleys, death. 35 THE END OF DESIRE ALL my dreams have brought me pain, All my hopes have fallen to dust : Happiness I strove to gain. All I got was fresh disgust. Every pleasure has been brief, Granted but to tempt anew ; And the strife they cost, the grief, Now too late I learn to rue. Through the wilderness of years I have followed vain desire. Slowly fall the rain s cold tears : It is night. Put out the fire. THE FINAL FUTILITY I THINK I could love you were it not for those ghosts Who stand in the dusk of my heart like shadowy hosts. They have woven between my sight and the dazzling stream Of things that are, a pale grey mist of dream : So that no more I see reality, But only some memory of time gone by. I think I could love you were but my heart and my sight Empty, new-swept, and open to the light. I think I could love you, you I have never known, But I am to you as a mossy shape of stone On which for a moment you leaned, without feeling at all The dark ghosts weeping within, in a crape-hung hall: Motionless, cold I was ; so you hurried away, While I abide lethargically that day When beneath grey jets from cold fountains of alabaster My heart shall crumble to dust, as if it were plaster. 37 BOOK II. WINE TO MY MOTHER YOUR body bore me : it has mouldered long, I, like your dust, am blown along the wind. Dead dust of ruin, striving life to find In frozen temples, made of chiselled song ! Your brain gave mine the light : I bear it yet. It flickers palely through the long dark rains On the steep road of human wrongs and pains ; It flickers, that my tears may fall in it. Your soul has passed : it rests aloof, apart, Inhabiting freely cool dark realms of space. It knows me not : yet from it, by your grace, I draw the song, the mad song of my art. THE VOWELS (To Leon Bakst) A LIGHT and shade, E green, I blue, U purple and yellow, O red, All over my soul and song your lambent variations are spread. A, flaming caravans of day advancing with stately art Through pale, ashy deserts of grey to the shadowy dark of the heart ; Barbaric clangor of cataracts, suave caresses of sails, Caverned abysms of silence, assaults of infuriate gales ; Dappled vibrations of black and white that the bacchanal valleys track ; Candid and waxlike jasmine, amaranth sable black. E, parakeets of emerald shrieking perverse in the trees, Iridescent and restless chameleons tremulous in the breeze, Peace on the leaves, peace on the sea-green sea, Ethiopian timbrels that tinkle melodiously : I, Iris of night, hyacinthine, semi-green, Intensity of sky and of distant sea dimly seen, Chryselephantine image, Athena violet-crowned, Beryl-set sistra of Isis ashiver with infinite sound : 42 Bells with amethyst tongues, silver bells, E and I, Tears that drip on the wires, ^Eolian melody ! U, torrid bassoons and flutes that murmur without repose, Butterflies, bumblebees, buzzing about a hot rose ; Upas-flower bursting, thunder, furnaces, sunset, lagoon ; Muted tunes of the autumn, ruby, purple, maroon : O, orange surface of bronze, topaz-spotted brocade, Sorrow and pomp of the Orient, colour and odour and shade, Ebony and onyx corollas opening to the sun ; O, lotus-glory Olympian, glory of God that is One ! O, crimson clarion horn that echoes on in the bold Old omnipotence of power ; O, rosy glow of gold ! These are the miracles and I make them day and night : O red, U purple and yellow, I blue, E green, A black and white. 43 THE THREE TRANSFORMATIONS OF POETRY I AM the smith of words, lord of cold torrents of tone That like flags tossed to and fro, undulate wide from my lips. A fluid mosaic, each letter a luminous stone, A stalactite grotto, all over which the light drips. I am the anvil of moods : slave of the fulminate world That, like a prismatic kaleidoscope, leaps instan taneously through My soul : flamboyant flamingoes gainst torpid tortoises hurled : Chrome corollas confused with corallas chysoprase- blue. I am the iron of thought, the sword of singing enchased. Let the dark clouds roll northward, the blood-red sunset pass ! I see aloft in the sky green gargoyles interlaced Leering or scowling or dreaming from cathedrals of steel and of glass. 44 THE HOSTS OF SONG THROUGH clay and night and on through many days Ever I seek sensations rude and strong. Like leaves or winds or waves or clouds or rays My hosts of song stream endlessly along. Beyond the keenest joys, beyond the realms of air, Beyond infinite peace where ended is all care, Beyond the dark abyss of the most vile despair, My hosts of song stream endlessly along. Sometimes they are a deep and dark-blue pool, Sometimes a torrent harsh and terrible, Sometimes a swamp of ennui cold and dull ; But each with all my heart and soul is full. The infinite only is my bound and rule : Stream endlessly along, you hosts of song ! 45 DIONYSUS AND APOLLO DIONYSUS from India straying Runs fast through the low marsh-towns : His maenads dishevelled run after Yelping like bloodthirsty hounds. Apollo sits high on a summit And looks on the glittering range. He dreams that pale Daphne he follows, Though to bitter-sweet laurel she change. The wine is thy life-blood, O Bromius, But my blood is sorrow and song. You offer me life, and hot folly, When I want cold glory and wrong. If I weep not a sob shall escape me, If I kiss not a kiss shall I waste. I shall fashion grape-clusters of singing But no single grape shall I taste : Dionysus I shall not follow, Too drowsy and dull is his wine. I shall sit on the heights with Apollo, And be taught of the sacred Nine. THE POET S CHARACTER HE is one drunken with monotonous wine Of rhyme divine and undivine : Who seeing all things scarcely shows He sees to the end of his own nose : Who hates the thing he loves, and makes A passion of the thing he hates : Who in the mountains seeks the plain : And in the sun desires the rain : \Vho flashes on life s evil flood Transient gleams of joyful good : Who lives in the north, and loves the south, And gainsays the song from his own mouth. Life is his death and death may be More of life than he ever may see ; Hell is his Heaven : should he dwell In Heaven itself, twould be his Hell. 47 THE POET S DESIRE I WOULD not sing one song, but many a strain expressing The steeps of the sky and the lowest depths of the gutter. I would put all the tones this world can utter Into my voice, the rhythm proudly stressing Until the stars stood still to listen to that song, Ever ascending afresh, new and sublime and strong. I would not be a single string low-throbbing To a few sick souls in a lamplit hospital staying, But the great harp of the world, shaking with laughter and sobbing, Under the sky to all the wind s wild playing. If my strings soon break, what matter ? the Maker of song May stretch then some other strings than mine ; more new, more strong ! POETIC ART ASK not a purpose of all things, No dogma with fixed mind debate, But loose each mood to beat its wings Freely against the bars of fate. Welcome each sorrow with full heart, As freely as you welcome bliss ; Never to flinch is the best art, And to receive all, giving is. 49 ON AN EDITOR S REFUSAL OF MY POEMS WHO knows in acid-bitten bronze to scrape His thought he need not fear to die unknown : His immortality he cannot scape ; He rests, as rests the steel-grey granite stone. Resisting shallow change, resisting death, His song pours ever into earth unheard ; The great sigh of the myriads taking breath, He knows it his : and that is his reward. Not his to count the chink of coins, or worse, To waste his time in remedying Fame s wrong ; For all the wild force of the universe Bursts from his soul, shaking his strings to song. TO THE PUBLISHER WHO REFUSED TO PUBLISH MY POEMS THOSE who fall shattered with joy at their own fate, Those who lie stricken with arrows of the sun, Those w r ho die smiling and smiting : were but one Of those men here, he now might hail me great. Those to whom every pulse is an affray, Those to whom all holds evil and misery, Those who have lost all purpose, yet dare be : Those are my readers, those ! And only they. Those who have leapt in leaping flame of wrongs, Laden with fuel to make it blaze yet higher, A rending, wrecking, devastating fire : Those are my followers. Go, read their songs. Now though I live or die, it matters not. I see great cliffs of granite clothed in sun, And up those cliffs I climbed apart, alone. It is enough. The rest of me can rot. THE POET S AUTUMN MY boyhood passed like a storm in Spring, My youth, like a vague calm summer s day : But ended now is all my play,, For Autumn s frost has pierced my soul, And my pulses leap beneath its sting. Pinnacles of incomplete rhyme I will rear up to catch the sun Higher than any man has done : There will I seize faint arrowy beams Of that infinite light that erratically streams Through the transfixed bounds of space and time, And I will fling them towards the deep Where the azure fishes sleep, To spear some vagrant thought or rhyme. The springtime of my life is now left behind me, And summer s glowing peace shall not return again. But the clarions of the Autumn, sombre and sonorous, wind me : Forth, go forth to the sunset s sumptuous pain ; On to the fury of the rain ! THE POET S IMMORTALITY No speck of mine can ever pass from earth ; When I am dead I shall relive my pain More violently, more exultantly. Again I suffer, die. Again 1 pass through birth. Even my lightest dust about earth blown, Men shall consume with eager, greedy lips ; From clown to monarch, knave to saint, it slips ; All then my own and nothing then my own. And when the earth at last is dead, and night s Brusque curtain cuts in two my latest scene, By some collision with a world unseen, I shall awake before the old footlights. Ask you perchance for joy s last ecstasy, Seek you apart for sorrow s bitter wine, Would you at one with good or evil be ? I ask naught, seek naught, need naught. All is mine. 53 LINES TO THE ADMIRERS OF ALFRED STEVENS (On the occasion of the Memorial Exhibition of his Works) YES, take the fragments from the wreck Of this great soul who was your slave, So long as these your gallery deck, What more reward need art to crave ? Take every broken, battered shape Which a man, spite misfortune foul, Sought to create for tailless ape But could not, for such have no soul : Treasure them well, now he is dead ! And scatter precious gift your tears Over that beauty which has fled Uncaught for ever, down the years. But in the meantime, on the street Let other genius starve ! Tis just. An act most worshipful and meet, To spurn red life and pray to dust. Better, I say, be art accurst ! For I am sure your souls are dead, Being stillborn in you from the first, Since it was money that you wed. 54 O let him sleep beyond distress : Beyond the pity and the praise Of all your paltry penny press : And the futility of days ! 55 TO THE PUBLIC I DO not condescend to you : Tis to myself I condescend, For you are not. You have no end Nor being, but what I endue Tis this, this clay doll of a day, My breath has huddled together so ; This me, which you can see and know, That basely would its Father slay. For Godhood only knows the void, Yet yearns for life, and finding it, Life finds that Godhood does not fit, Being precious, with a stuff alloyed ; So all my moments are a crime, And all are as idle as all breath, Which lasts through endless empty time, Seeking an empty song of death. PRESENT-DAY POETRY BUT yesterday the poets Ere they could dare to sing, Must find the one thing needful ; A mighty voice to ring : But we have changed that evil, And all is now once more As if no voice attempted In song to rise and soar. To-day, we have no singers : For our doting eyes are cast On two colossal phantoms, The future, and the past. In the cause of reform and progress We have burnt to-day at the stake ; She may pray or she may shudder, For the past, or the future s sake. If you would be a poet, These words will save you strife : The one, sole thing you need is A philosophy of life ! 57 CLOWN S SONG " WHO can speak the crimes of rhyming ? Said a poet. Well he knew What this vile and senseless chiming Tempts a singer s soul to do : How it alters his rude power, Nature s firstborn rhythm vast, Into trifles for an hour Cheap and vulgar, first to last ! How it changes his swift dancing, Pause and whirl of tireless feet, Into capers unentrancing, Cut for pennies on the street. Or if all the gold of Indies Could not tempt him to such shame, Deeper yet the poet s sin lies : He is jingling but for fame : Idol made of gilded paper, Crammed inside with chaff and bran, Fit to dolt the foolish gaper, Fit only to be kicked by man ! 58 Whether gold or fame, no matter Which I serve, it is the same, For my castanets I clatter, Bawl some vulgar song of shame In a voice that cracks and falters ; And I tumble on my head In this garb that nothing alters, Clown-costume of white and red. People laugh and think me funny, Deem my face a mirthful sight. When I go round for the money, Then they scatter, left and right ! 59 THE PRICE OF POETRY WHAT is your need, poet, What is your need ? " To grow many songs From a little thought-seed : Blossoming myriads, Flower and weed." You are mad indeed, poet, You are mad indeed : When all these have blossomed, What is your meed ? Drink, lust, starvation, By these you are freed. 60 ART S SACRIFICES POETS can only hear, So they glasses wear ; Painters can only see, Deaf they always are ; Sculptors can only feel, So they have no mind ; Musicians can only sing, They are deaf and dumb and blind. 6l FATIGUE SING, O ye poets, sing on, Of golden summer s gales ; Of patented magic casements, And copyright nightingales ! Gainst all these harmless follies I do not stir up strife, I am only weary of two things, And these are death and life. 62 THE DREAM OF ART TO-NIGHT I am very weary, And depressed at heart. I will revive an old fancy, The healing illusion of art. Some liquor brewed by monks In the depths of a tomb-like cell,, Amid old skulls and tombstones, This shall poison me well : So that a blazing hall Up in my brain shall rise ; With musicians assembled, And a thousand watching eyes. There the violins shall sob, And the long trombones roar. The drums shall thump and throb, And the vast tone-poem soar. Tschaikowsky, Mozart, Strauss, Shall revel, revolt and sing ; Or weep : while at the end The wild applause shall ring. 63 And so long as those liquid fires Within my soul yet shine, I will dream that dream of madness, The dream which is divine : But the strings snap soon and the fiddles Wabble, all out of tune ; The horns grunt, and the flutes shriek, And hoots the grim bassoon. The conductor breaks his baton ; The tears run down his face. The lights go out : the audience Clump noisily from their place. Thus I must pay the reckoning For dreaming that dream again Sick and pallid and aching, I wake to the same old pain. A DISTANT SONG WHETHER awake or sleeping, I cannot rest for long : By my casement comes creeping A distant song. A song like the chiming of silver Bells which the breezes play, Seeming to float for ever Towards an unseen day : A song that is weary with sorrow, Yet knows not any defeat : Through the past, through to-day, through to-morrow, It echoes on life s long street. Could I but make words of its power, Bring it from the future here, Men s souls would be waking, that hour, To the victory against fear. But the vague sweet stanza befools me With its calm joy, time after time, And no failure here ever schools me To cease from an idle rhyme. E 65 That music afar, unspoken, Tis I have done it wrong : I caught, and I have broken, A distant song. 66 DREAM-POETRY I OFTEN think that poets never have sung Beauty but with a dull and stammering tongue : That only in dim wonderlands of sleep To which the key is lost, in drowsing deep, Is art transformed from out a broken cry To an immortal, effortless ecstasy. ART FAR on the chill and gloomy fen Alone, unmoved, Art stands ; An image fashioned not by men, She lifts her shining hands : The mists part, and we see her then, And we come from many lands. The waters dabble at her feet, And around them, the ashen slime Stretches, even as it was when time Was not, nor her beauty sweet Was frozen to marble thus To be the delight of us : To stand so lonely-white on high Under the autumn evening sky. All our desire for her is plain : We are her lovers, only fain The waters from her feet to keep A little longer, from swallowing deep To hold her pure and lofty still, It is our pride, our hope, our skill, Flinging ourselves in the marsh-pools bare, Greatest or least, to sacrifice Each precious instant, ere it dies, To her sublime despair ! 68 She rests on a mighty plinth of bones : These are the proudly happy ones. Victims accepted, their work done, Within her glory they live on. Their names are long forgotten, as the chime Of last year s bells, or an unspoken rhyme, And those large eyes droop not from dreams on high To comfort anyone who comes to die. In the long evening, grey and cool, Like a phantom of mist she is. From each bleak sedge-bordered pool The frogs bemock her bliss. They croak their distaste of this great Austere image of a fate Which they must ever miss : She heeds them not, through day and night ; And we sleep on, being well content, Each with another s spirit blent, Hidden and safe from any sight ; Alone to her the vision s sent, The glory and the might ! TO THE MUSE STERN and lofty Muse, That long hast fled the earth, Scorning the acts of men Loveless and base of worth : 1 still, through smoke and dust, Through misery and pain, Longingly look aloft To the shrine without a stain I ask not for a song : No pearl for husk-fed swine ; Nor any earthly gift, But a splendid deed divine ! O stern and lofty Muse, Take thou my soul away From this foul pit of death, To the white fire of day. 70 THE POET I I AM a poet, Dusky image wrought After long years within the fires of thought : Leaving my ancient dross to feed the mire, And offering up my pure gold to the fire. Alike to those who tread my vestiture, And those who wipe its stain, I am serene : I know the meaning of each strange, wild scene ; And every chasm cross with footstep sure. I am a poet and a mystery, Each day myself as in a glass I see : Creator and created fused in one, Sun that makes night and night that drinks the sun. TIME AND POET ONWARD I move, at one with flying Time, Borne like a bubble down the resistless stream Changing yet constant, like a poet s rhyme, Containing all, reality and dream. No more than hours, days, seasons, do I wait : I watch the terrible spectacle of fate, The suns, like kindled matches, flash and fall. And if too soon I find the hour grown late, Too soon Time moves without me, hesitate Or pause, I cannot : I am part of all. For if the bubble soon is burst, the stream Flies on with newer bubbles, endless Time ! And Time s am I : reality and dream Move me to silence or an idle rhyme. THE POET II MY body was once a beautiful house of marble, Kissed to pale rose by the passionate heat of the sun, Wherein through cunning channels flowed forever Health-giving crimson blood in steady tides. My eyes were then quick to see and to welcome beauty, My lips smiled often with gratified desire, My hands shook not, but were fit for caress or grapple, My arms rose and my body moved in strength. Then not a single line of any poem Had my hands raped from my brain, but un touched and pure They abode in the land of distant visions where no man Heard my voice calling for them at eventide. My blood lies in great black lakes now, sluggish and frozen, Or fumes in like some boiling, stinging, poison brew Till it suddenly stops in a lassitude unspoken, Or bursts through my pores and covers me with red dew : 73 My eyes are bleared now and dull with sleepless midnights, My lips are like shrunken purses their gold is spent, My hands unsteadily clutch and paw and tremble, My arms are as strings of macaroni bent. And as for my chest, tis like a leaky air-box Fixed to some cheap melodeon out of tune, The bellows creak, the loose and brown keys rattle, And the music that comes is like a dog s sick moan. But in my brain there seethes an adulterous hotchpotch Of poems clean and disgusting, mad and sage ; And pain, like a dry fire, keeps them ever a-boiling Till they splash over and blacken some wasted page. Yes, I am a poet now to be mocked and applauded, A turnspit that turns and must never taste the meat: Behold how great I am, but I wait for a greater, Even Death, who will silence the march of these crippled feet. 74 THE TRIUMPH OF SONG WHATEVER the past has given Of bitterness and woe, Whatever the days to follow Of pain have left to show : Still onward song is streaming, And after every wrong More great and more triumphant Grows the need of life for song. For it is everlasting : It passes not away. The earth herself is singing As she whirls through night and day. 75 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. SEtaTMi ^t Mav ^BDS JUL 2-2 71104 . liiwj >_ ^ <~ir*n}L r Ckl i IT Y UNPvBeBKBifcY . ftPfJl JT-L. *--*-&-*> Stftar^ 5 f* 1941 DEC o 1942 : ; :,s K . gg cC ^ _, ,. -. L :;- i 4 /fm^jff f Uf ^ juii j^- 1 yjr oJ ^feb i 3773^ UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY