I WILL give you all my keys,

  You shall be my châtelaine,

You shall enter as you please,

  As you please shall go again.

When I hear you jingling through         5

  All the chambers of my soul,

How I sit and laugh at you

  In your vain housekeeping rôle.

Jealous of the smallest cover,

  Angry at the simpler door;        10

Well, you anxious, inquisitive lover,

  Are you pleased with what’s in store?

You have fingered all my treasures,

  Have you not, most curiously,

Handled all my tools and measures        15

  And masculine machinery?

Over every single beauty

  You have had your little rapture;

You have slain, as was your duty,

  Every sin-mouse you could capture.        20

Still you are not satisfied,

  Still you tremble faint reproach; 

Challenge me I keep aside

  Secrets that you may not broach.

Maybe yes, and maybe no,        25

  Maybe there are secret places,

Altars barbarous below,

  Elsewhere halls of high disgraces.

Maybe yes, and maybe no,

  You may have it as you please,        30

Since I choose to keep you so,

  Suppliant on your curious knees.

THE QUICK sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,

Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;

Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:

They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie

   5

Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.

Are they asleep?—Are they alive?—Now see, when I

Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the rushes

Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;

  10

There the lazy streamlet pushes

Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,

Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow,

Naked on the steep, soft lip

  15

Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.

What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost?

Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook?

If my veins and my breasts with love embossed

Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.

  20

So my soul like a passionate woman turns,

Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love

For myself in my own eyes’ laughter burns,

Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.

Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,

  25

Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.

And the soul of the wind and my blood compare

Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.

Oh but the water loves me and folds me,

Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,

  30

Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,

Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.

SOMEWHERE the long mellow note of the blackbird

Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel,

Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,

Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways’ll

All be sweet with white and blue violet.         5

    (Hush now, hush. Where am I?—Biuret—)

On the green wood’s edge a shy girl hovers

From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass,

Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers

Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!        10

Oh the sunset swims in her eyes’ swift pool.

    (Work, work, you fool——!)

Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling

Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads,

And the red firelight steadily wheeling        15

Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.

And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing

For the man to heed lest the girl shall weep.

    (Tears and dreams for them; for me

    Bitter science—the exams are near.        20

    I wish I bore it more patiently.

    I wish you did not wait, my dear,

    For me to come: since work I must:

    Though it’s all the same when we are dead.—

    I wish I was only a bust,        25

        All head.)

OUTSIDE the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,

And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree

Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s

Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash         5

Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound

Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned

The other voice in a silence of blood, ’neath the noise of the ash.

NOW and again

All my body springs alive,

And the life that is polarised in my eyes,

That quivers between my eyes and mouth,

Flies like a wild thing across my body,         5

Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,

Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,

Gathering the soft ripples below my breasts

Into urgent, passionate waves,

And my soft, slumbering belly        10

Quivering awake with one impulse of desire,

Gathers itself fiercely together;

And my docile, fluent arms

Knotting themselves with wild strength

To clasp—what they have never clasped.        15

Then I tremble, and go trembling

Under the wild, strange tyranny of my body,

Till it has spent itself,

And the relentless nodality of my eyes reasserts itself,

Till the bursten flood of life ebbs back to my eyes,        20

Back from my beautiful, lonely body

Tired and unsatisfied.

THIS is the last of all, this is the last!

I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,

I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,

Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past

Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire         5

Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.

Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a loyer,

Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting

The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;

White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover        10

Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting

The monotonous weird of departure away from me.

Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,

Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing

Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats        15

From place to place perpetually, seeking release

From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing

His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.

I must look away from him, for my faded eyes

Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,        20

Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,

Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies

In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,

As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.

This is the last, it will not be any more.        25

All my life I have borne the burden of myself,

All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house,

Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:

“Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,

You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”        30

Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.

It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!

Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago

The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected

Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,        35

I must sit awhile and wait, and never know

The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.

Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me:

For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.

And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me        40

With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,

And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher.

SEE the stars, love,

In the water much clearer and brighter

Than those above us, and whiter,

Like nenuphars.

Star-shadows shine, love,         5

How many stars in your bowl?

How many shadows in your soul,

Only mine, love, mine?

When I move the oars, love,

See how the stars are tossed,        10

Distorted, the brightest lost.

—So that bright one of yours, love.

The poor waters spill

The stars, waters broken, forsaken.

—The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,        15

Its stars stand still.

There, did you see

That spark fly up at us; even

Stars are not safe in heaven.

—What of yours, then, love, yours?        20

What then, love, if soon

Your light be tossed over a wave?

Will you count the darkness a grave,

And swoon, love, swoon?

THE FIVE old bells

Are hurrying and eagerly calling,

Imploring, protesting

They know, but clamorously falling

Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,         5

Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping

In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

The silver moon

That somebody has spun so high

To settle the question, yes or no, has caught        10

In the net of the night’s balloon,

And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky

Smiling at naught,

Unless the winking star that keeps her company

Makes little jests at the bells’ insanity,        15

As if he knew aught!

The patient Night

Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,

She neither knows nor cares

Why the old church sobs and brags;        20

The light distresses her eyes, and tears

Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face,

Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells’ loud clattering disgrace.

The wise old trees

Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,        25

While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh;

As by degrees

The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,

And the stars can chaff

The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church        30

Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch

In its cenotaph.

ALWAYS, sweetheart,

Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry,

Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very

Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring

Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting         5

In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting

Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her, then bid her depart.

    A come and go of March-day loves

    Through the flower-vine, trailing screen;

      A fluttering in of doves.        10

    Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves

    Over the waste where no hope is seen

    Of open hands:

      Dance in and out

Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love,        15

With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout

Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your glove.

I HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on the sill

Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon

Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still

In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.

The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,         5

Like savage music striking far off, and there

On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine

Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.

There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange

Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud        10

Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range

At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.

Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil

Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora,

With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail        15

Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.

All the bygone, hushčd years

Streaming back where the mist distils

Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears

No longer shake, where the silk sail fills        20

With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm

Of living has passed, on and on

Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm

Wake of the tumult now spent and gone,

Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after        25

The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.

MY world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes

Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;

An endless tapestry the past has women drapes

The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

The surface of dreams is broken,         5

The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.

Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken

From the dreams that the distance flattered.

Along the railway, active figures of men.

They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move        10

Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.

Here in the subtle, rounded flesh

Beats the active ecstasy.

In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,

The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh        15

Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded flesh.

Oh my boys, bending over your books,

In you is trembling and fusing

The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation:

And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.        20

The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure,

But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,

Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,

Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?

Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:        25

Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams reflected on the molten metal of dreams,

Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them all as a heart-beat moves the blood,

Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,

Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile features.

Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper,        30

The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat, light, all in one,

Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh,

As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.

Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life!

Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration        35

Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream,

Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life,

And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world;

And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream,

As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal,        40

Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream,

Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life!

YESTERDAY the fields were only grey with scattered snow,

And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge;

Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go

On towards the pines at the hills’ white verge.

I cannot see her, since the mist’s white scarf         5

Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky;

But she’s waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half

Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

Why does she come so promptly, when she must know

That she’s only the nearer to the inevitable farewell;        10

The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow—

Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?

PATIENCE, little Heart.

One day a heavy, June-hot woman

Will enter and shut the door to stay.

And when your stifling heart would summon

Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the night at bay,         5

Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies

Flaming on after sunset,

Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of their hot twilight;

There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange scent comes yet

Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the daffodillies        10

With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot assuage,

When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the dog-days holds you in gage.

Patience, little Heart.

WHEN the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass

The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,

They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;

And the sight of their white play among the grass

Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,         5

Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower

For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.

I long for the baby to wander hither to me

Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,

So that she can stand on my knee        10

With her little bare feet in my hands,

Cool like syringa buds,

Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.

IT is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,

The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;

The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains

The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.

It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long:         5

I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul

And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong

Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil’s little control.

And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight

Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there        10

In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light,

We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare.

And in the original dark the roots cannot keep, cannot know

Any communion whatever, but they bind themselves on to the dark,

And drawing the darkness together, crush from it a twilight, a slow        15

Burning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower’s bright spark.

I came to the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me;

I came with gentleness, with my heart ’twixt my hands like a bowl,

Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly

And tried to break the vessel, and to violate my soul.        20

But what have I to do with the boys, deep down in my soul, my love?

I throw from out of the darkness my self like a flower into sight,

Like a flower from out of the night-time, I lift my face, and those

Who will may warm their hands at me, comfort this night.

But whosoever would pluck apart my flowering shall burn their hands,        25

So flowers are tender folk, and roots can only hide,

Yet my flowerings of love are a fire, and the scarlet brands

Of my love are roses to look at, but flames to chide.

But comfort me, my love, now the fires are low,

Now I am broken to earth like a winter destroyed, and all        30

Myself but a knowledge of roots, of roots in the dark that throw

A net on the undersoil, which lies passive beneath their thrall.

But comfort me, for henceforth my love is yours alone,

To you alone will I offer the bowl, to you will I give

My essence only, but love me, and I will atone        35

To you for my general loving, atone as long as I live.

A FAINT, sickening scent of irises

Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table

A fine proud spike of purple irises

Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable

To see the class’s lifted and bended faces         5

Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.

I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless

Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you

With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped

Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you,        10

Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,

Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

You amid the bog-end’s yellow incantation,

You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,

Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,        15

Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love;

You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent,

You with your face all rich, like the sheen of a dove.

You are always asking, do I remember, remember

The butter-cup bog-end where the flowers rose up        20

And kindled you over deep with a cast of gold?

You ask again, do the healing days close up

The open darkness which then drew us in,

The dark which then drank up our brimming cup.

You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire of night        25

Burnt like a sacrifice; you invisible;

Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you!

—And yes, thank God, it still is possible

The healing days shall close the darkness up

Wherein we fainted like a smoke or dew.        30

Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God,

The fire of night is gone, and your face is ash

Indistinguishable on the grey, chill day;

The night had burst us out, at last the good

Dark fire burns on untroubled, without clash        35

Of you upon the dead leaves saying me Yea.

AH, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom

The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces,

Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom,

Wounding themselves against her, denying her fecund embraces.

YOURS is the shame and sorrow

  But the disgrace is mine;

Your love was dark and thorough,

Mine was the love of the sun for a flower

  He creates with his shine.         5

I was diligent to explore you,

  Blossom you stalk by stalk,

Till my fire of creation bore you

Shrivelling down in the final dour

  Anguish—then I suffered a balk.        10

I knew your pain, and it broke

  My fine, craftsman’s nerve;

Your body quailed at my stroke,

And my courage failed to give you the last

  Fine torture you did deserve.        15

You are shapely, you are adorned,

  But opaque and dull in the flesh,

Who, had I but pierced with the thorned

Fire-threshing anguish, were fused and cast

  In a lovely illumined mesh.        20

Like a painted window: the best

  Suffering burnt through your flesh,

Undrossed it and left it blest

With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now

  Who shall take you afresh?        25

Now who will burn you free

  From your body’s terrors and dross,

Since the fire has failed in me?

What man will stoop in your flesh to plough

  The shrieking cross?        30

A mute, nearly beautiful thing

  Is your face, that fills me with shame

As I see it hardening,

Warping the perfect image of God,

  And darkening my eternal fame.        35

NOW I am all

One bowl of kisses,

Such as the tall

Slim votaresses

Of Egypt filled         5

For a God’s excesses.

I lift to you

My bowl of kisses,

And through the temple’s

Blue recesses        10

Cry out to you

In wild caresses.

And to my lips’

Bright crimson rim

The passion slips,        15

And down my slim

White body drips

The shining hymn.

And still before

The altar I        20

Exult the bowl

Brimful, and cry

To you to stoop

And drink, Most High.

Oh drink me up        25

That I may be

Within your cup

Like a mystery,

Like wine that is still

In ecstasy.        30

Glimmering still

In ecstasy,

Commingled wines

Of you and me

In one fulfil        35

The mystery.

A WIND comes from the north

Blowing little flocks of birds

Like spray across the town,

And a train, roaring forth,

Rushes stampeding down         5

With cries and flying curds

Of steam, out of the darkening north.

Whither I turn and set

Like a needle steadfastly,

Waiting ever to get        10

The news that she is free;

But ever fixed, as yet,

To the lode of her agony.

OH the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,

Lamps in a wash of rain!

Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,

Oh tears on the window pane!

Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,         5

Full of disappointment and of rain,

Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples

Of autumn tell the withered tale again.

All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,

Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,        10

Cluck, my marigold bird, and again

Cluck for your yellow darlings.

For the grey rat found the gold thirteen

Huddled away in the dark,

Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,        15

Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.

Once I had a lover bright like running water,

Once his face was laughing like the sky;

Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter

On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.        20

What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom?

What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?

’Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom;

What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!

Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,        25

And her shift is lying white upon the floor,

That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm,

Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.

Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,

Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!        30

And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,

Did you see the wicked sun that winked!

AT the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,

Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,

Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.

I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,

And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might         5

Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.

I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore

To draw his net through the surf’s thin line, at the dawn before

The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.

I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net, the four        10

Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store

Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.

I will catch in my eyes’ quick net

The faces of all the women as they go past,

Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet        15

Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: “Is it you?”

Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast

Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew

Its rainy swill about us, she answered me

With a laugh and a merry wildness that it was she        20

Who was seeking me, and had found me at last to free

Me now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,

How glad I should be!

Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the night

Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool;        25

Why don’t they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight?

Why do I wander aimless among them, desirous fool?

I can always linger over the huddled books on the stalls,

Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touch of their leaves,

Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in the doorways, where falls        30

The shadow, always offer myself to one mistress, who always receives.

But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.

There is something I want to feel in my running blood,

Something I want to touch; I must hold my face to the rain,

I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explain        35

Me its life as it hurries in secret.

I will trail my hands again through the drenched, cold leaves

Till my hands are full of the chillness and touch of leaves,

Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.

  AS a drenched, drowned bee

Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,

  So clings to me

My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears

  And laid against her cheek;         5

Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm

Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.

  My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,

Like a burden she hangs on me.

  She has always seemed so light,        10

But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain

Even her floating hair sinks heavily,

  Reaching downwards;

As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee

  Are a heaviness, and a weariness.        15

THE HOAR-FROST crumbles in the sun,

  The crisping steam of a train

Melts in the air, while two black birds

  Sweep past the window again.

Along the vacant road, a red         5

  Bicycle approaches; I wait

In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy

  To leap down at our gate.

He has passed us by; but is it

  Relief that starts in my breast?        10

Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still

  She has no rest.

I HAVE fetched the tears up out of the little wells,

Scooped them up with small, iron words,

    Dripping over the runnels.

The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still

I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys         5

    Glitter and spill.

Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came

Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,

    Whirling a flame.
    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

The tears are dry, and the cheeks’ young fruits are fresh        10

With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain

    Beat through the flesh.

The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness.

Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out.

    And night enters in drearness.        15

The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace,

The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish;

    Then God left the place.

Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head

Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,        20

    My strength is shed.

IF I could have put you in my heart,

If but I could have wrapped you in myself,

How glad I should have been!

And now the chart

Of memory unrolls again to me         5

The course of our journey here, before we had to part.

And oh, that you had never, never been

Some of your selves, my love, that some

Of your several faces I had never seen!

And still they come before me, and they go,        10

And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.

And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,

And have not any longer any hope

To heal the suffering, or make requite

For all your life of asking and despair,        15

I own that some of me is dead to-night.

MY love looks like a girl to-night,

    But she is old.

The plaits that lie along her pillow

    Are not gold,

But threaded with filigree,         5

    And uncanny cold.

She looks like a young maiden, since her brow

    Is smooth and fair,

Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,

    She sleeps a rare        10

Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.

Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her dreams

    Of perfect things.

She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,

    And her dead mouth sings        15

By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.

MY little love, my darling,

You were a doorway to me;

You let me out of the confines

Into this strange countrie,

Where people are crowded like thistles,         5

Yet are shapely and comely to see.

My little love, my dearest

Twice have you issued me,

Once from your womb, sweet mother,

Once from myself, to be        10

Free of all hearts, my darling,

Of each heart’s home-life free.

And so, my love, my mother,

I shall always be true to you;

Twice I am born, my dearest,        15

To life, and to death, in you;

And this is the life hereafter

Wherein I am true.

I kiss you good-bye, my darling,

Our ways are different now;        20

You are a seed in the night-time,

I am a man, to plough

The difficult glebe of the future

For God to endow.

I kiss you good-bye, my dearest,        25

It is finished between us here.

Oh, if I were calm as you are,

Sweet and still on your bier!

O God, if I had not to leave you

Alone, my dear!        30

Let the last word be uttered,

Oh grant the farewell is said!

Spare me the strength to leave you

Now you are dead.

I must go, but my soul lies helpless        35

Beside your bed.

THE PINE-TREES bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters

Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;

While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede,

Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after         5

The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed.

The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass

To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled eyes

That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

TOO far away, oh love, I know,

To save me from this haunted road,

Whose lofty roses break and blow

On a night-sky bent with a load

Of lights: each solitary rose,         5

Each arc-lamp golden does expose

Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows

Night blenched with a thousand snows.

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,

White lilac; shows discoloured night        10

Dripping with all the golden lees

Laburnum gives back to light.

And shows the red of hawthorn set

On high to the purple heaven of night,

Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,        15

Blood shed in the noiseless fight.

Of life for love and love for life,

Of hunger for a little food,

Of kissing, lost for want of a wife

Long ago, long ago wooed.
   .   .   .   .   .   .        20

Too far away you are, my love,

To steady my brain in this phantom show

That passes the nightly road above

And returns again below.

The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees        25

  Has poised on each of its ledges

An erect small girl looking down at me;

White-night-gowned little chits I see,

  And they peep at me over the edges

Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call        30

  Them down to my arms;

“But, child, you’re too small for me, too small

  Your little charms.”

White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,

  Some other will thresh you out!        35

And I see leaning from the shades

A lilac like a lady there, who braids

  Her white mantilla about

Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight

    Of a man’s face,        40

Gracefully sighing through the white

    Flowery mantilla of lace.

And another lilac in purple veiled

  Discreetly, all recklessly calls

In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed        45

Her forth from the night: my strength has failed

  In her voice, my weak heart falls:

Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering

    Her draperies down,

As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering        50

    White, stand naked of gown.
   .   .   .   .   .   .

The pageant of flowery trees above

  The street pale-passionate goes,

And back again down the pavement, Love

  In a lesser pageant flows.        55

Two and two are the folk that walk,

  They pass in a half embrace

Of linkčd bodies, and they talk

  With dark face leaning to face.

Come then, my love, come as you will        60

  Along this haunted road,

Be whom you will, my darling, I shall

  Keep with you the troth I trowed.

WHY does the thin grey strand

Floating up from the forgotten

Cigarette between my fingers,

Why does it trouble me?

Ah, you will understand;         5

When I carried my mother downstairs,

A few times only, at the beginning

Of her soft-foot malady,

I should find, for a reprimand

To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs        10

On the breast of my coat; and one by one

I let them float up the dark chimney.

THE ACRID scents of autumn,

Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear

Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn

And the snore of the night in my ear.

For suddenly, flush-fallen,         5

All my life, in a rush

Of shedding away, has left me

Naked, exposed on the bush.

I, on the bush of the globe,

Like a newly-naked berry, shrink        10

Disclosed: but I also am prowling

As well in the scents that slink

Abroad: I in this naked berry

Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;

And I in the stealthy, brindled odours        15

Prowling about the lush

And acrid night of autumn;

My soul, along with the rout,

Rank and treacherous, prowling,

Disseminated out.        20

For the night, with a great breath intaken,

Has taken my spirit outside

Me, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,

Like a man who has died.

At the same time I stand exposed        25

Here on the bush of the globe,

A newly-naked berry of flesh

For the stars to probe.

SINCE you did depart

Out of my reach, my darling,

Into the hidden,

I see each shadow start

With recognition, and I         5

Am wonder-ridden.

I am dazed with the farewell,

But I scarcely feel your loss.

You left me a gift

Of tongues, so the shadows tell        10

Me things, and silences toss

Me their drift.

You sent me a cloven fire

Out of death, and it burns in the draught

Of the breathing hosts,        15

Kindles the darkening pyre

For the sorrowful, till strange brands waft

Like candid ghosts.

Form after form, in the streets

Waves like a ghost along,        20

Kindled to me;

The star above the house-top greets

Me every eve with a long

Song fierily.

All day long, the town        25

Glimmers with subtle ghosts

Going up and down

In a common, prison-like dress;

But their daunted looking flickers

To me, and I answer, Yes!        30

So I am not lonely nor sad

Although bereaved of you,

My little love.

I move among a kinsfolk clad

With words, but the dream shows through        35

As they move.

SINCE I lost you I am silence-haunted,

  Sounds wave their little wings

A moment, then in weariness settle

  On the flood that soundless swings.

Whether the people in the street         5

  Like pattering ripples go by,

Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs

  With a loud, hoarse sigh:

Or the wind shakes a ravel of light

  Over the dead-black river,        10

Or night’s last echoing

  Makes the daybreak shiver:

I feel the silence waiting

  To take them all up again

In its vast completeness, enfolding        15

  The sound of men.

I LISTEN to the stillness of you,

  My dear, among it all;

I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,

  And take them in thrall.

My words fly off a forge         5

  The length of a spark;

I see the night-sky easily sip them

  Up in the dark.

The lark sings loud and glad,

  Yet I am not loth        10

That silence should take the song and the bird

  And lose them both.

A train goes roaring south,

  The steam-flag flying;

I see the stealthy shadow of silence        15

  Alongside going.

And off the forge of the world,

  Whirling in the draught of life,

Go sparks of myriad people, filling

  The night with strife.        20

Yet they never change the darkness

  Or blench it with noise;

Alone on the perfect silence

  The stars are buoys.

A YELLOW leaf from the darkness

Hops like a frog before me.

Why should I start and stand still?

I was watching the woman that bore me

Stretched in the brindled darkness         5

Of the sick-room, rigid with will

To die: and the quick leaf tore me

Back to this rainy swill

Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.

HOW many times, like lotus lilies risen

  Upon the surface of a river, there

  Have risen floating on my blood the rare

Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light         5

  And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;

  Till naked for her in the finest fashion

The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

And then I offer all myself unto

  This woman who likes to love me: but she turns        10

  A look of hate upon the flower that burns

To break and pour her out its precious dew.

And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,

  And all the lotus buds of love sink over

  To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,        15

Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.

THE SICK grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone; at the window

The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane,

As a little wind comes in.

The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd

Scooped out and dry, where a spider,         5

Folded in its legs as in a bed,

Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see but twilight and walls.

And if the day outside were mine! What is the day

But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging

Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them        10

Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over

The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave!

I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.

But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings

Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards        15

And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible,

So that the birds are like one wafted feather,

Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country.

A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,

  Star-spiders spinning their thread

Hang high suspended, withouten respite

  Watching us overhead.

Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths         5

  Curtain us in so dark

That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s

  Flitting remark.

Here in this swarthy, secret tent,

  Where black boughs flap the ground,        10

You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,

  Surgeon me sound.

This rare, rich night! For in here

  Under the yew-tree tent

The darkness is loveliest where I could sear        15

  You like frankincense into scent.

Here not even the stars can spy us,

  Not even the white moths write

With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us

  And set us affright.        20

Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,

  But draw the turgid pain

From my breast to your bosom, eclipse

  My soul again.

Waste me not, I beg you, waste        25

  Not the inner night:

Taste, oh taste and let me taste

  The core of delight.

THE MOON is broken in twain, and half a moon

Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky;

The other half of the broken coin of troth

Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie.

They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away;         5

I had pushed it gently in among the thick of her hair

Where it gathered towards the plait, on that very last day;

And like a moon in secret it is shining there.

My half shines in the sky, for a general sign

Of the troth with the dead I pledged myself to keep;        10

Turning its broken edge to the dark, it shines indeed

Like the sign of a lover who turns to the dark of sleep.

Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks still

In darkened waves whose breaking echoes o’er

The wondering world of my wakeful day, till I’m lost        15

In the midst of the places I knew so well before.

MANY years have I still to burn, detained

Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine

A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained

In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.

And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,         5

What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,

Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,

A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.

WHEN along the pavement,

Palpitating flames of life,

People flicker round me,

I forget my bereavement,

The gap in the great constellation,         5

The place where a star used to be.

Nay, though the pole-star

Is blown out like a candle,

And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,

Yet when pleiads of people are        10

Deployed around me, and I see

The street’s long outstretched Milky Way,

When people flicker down the pavement,

I forget my bereavement.

THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration         5

Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,

Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among

This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed        10

About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

HAD I but known yesterday,

Helen, you could discharge the ache

    Out of the cloud;

Had I known yesterday you could take

The turgid electric ache away,         5

    Drink it up with your proud

White body, as lovely white lightning

Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,

I might have hated you, Helen.

But since my limbs gushed full of fire,        10

Since from out of my blood and bone

    Poured a heavy flame

To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone

Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,

    You have no name.        15

Earth of my swaying atmosphere,

Substance of my inconstant breath,

I cannot but cleave to you.

Since you have drunken up the drear

Painful electric storm, and death        20

    Is washed from the blue

Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.

You are strong and passive and beautiful,

I come like winds that uncertain hover;

    But you        25

Are the earth I hover over.

HER tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,

Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;

Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress

Means even less than her many words to me.

Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only         5

Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips

Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely

Fruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.

I know from her hardened lips that still her heart is

Hungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breast        10

She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is

Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.

But her hands are still the woman, the large, strong hands

Heavier than mine, yet like leverets caught in steel

When I hold them; my still soul understands        15

Their dumb confession of what her sort must feel.

For never her hands come nigh me but they lift

Like heavy birds from the morning stubble, to settle

Upon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shift

Uneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.        20

How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,

How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinks

In my flesh and bone and forages into me,

How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever she thinks!

And often I see her clench her fingers tight        25

And thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of her skirt;

And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with her bright

Big hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.

And I have seen her stand all unaware

Pressing her spread hands over her breasts, as she        30

Would crush their mounds on her heart, to kill in there

The pain that is her simple ache for me.

Her strong hands take my part, the part of a man

To her; she crushes them into her bosom deep

Where I should lie, and with her own strong span        35

Closes her arms, that should fold me in sleep.

Ah, and she puts her hands upon the wall,

Presses them there, and kisses her bright hands,

Then lets her black hair loose, the darkness fall

About her from her maiden-folded bands.        40

And sits in her own dark night of her bitter hair

Dreaming—God knows of what, for to me she’s the same

Betrothed young lady who loves me, and takes care

Of her womanly virtue and of my good name.

I WONDER, can the night go by;

Can this shot arrow of travel fly

Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky

    Of a dawned to-morrow,

Without ever sleep delivering us         5

From each other, or loosing the dolorous

    Unfruitful sorrow!

What is it then that you can see

That at the window endlessly

You watch the red sparks whirl and flee        10

    And the night look through?

Your presence peering lonelily there

Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear

    To share the train with you.

You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;        15

I wish I could put you away from me;

I suffocate in this intimacy,

    For all that I love you;

How I have longed for this night in the train,

Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain        20

    To God to remove you.

But surely my soul’s best dream is still

That one night pouring down shall swill

Us away in an utter sleep, until

    We are one, smooth-rounded.        25

Yet closely bitten in to me

Is this armour of stiff reluctancy

    That keeps me impounded.

So, dear love, when another night

Pours on us, lift your fingers white        30

And strip me naked, touch me light,

    Light, light all over.

For I ache most earnestly for your touch,

Yet I cannot move, however much

    I would be your lover.        35

Night after night with a blemish of day

Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;

Come another night, come a new night, say

    Will you pluck me apart?

Will you open the amorous, aching bud        40

Of my body, and loose the burning flood

    That would leap to you from my heart?

HOLLOW rang the house when I knocked on the door,

And I lingered on the threshold with my hand

Upraised to knock and knock once more:

Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,

Hollow re-echoed my heart.         5

The low-hung lamps stretched down the road

With shadows drifting underneath,

With a music of soft, melodious feet

Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet

The low-hung light of her eyes.        10

The golden lamps down the street went out,

The last car trailed the night behind;

And I in the darkness wandered about

With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt

In the dying lamp of my love.        15

Two brown ponies trotting slowly

Stopped at a dim-lit trough to drink:

The dark van drummed down the distance slowly;

While the city stars so dim and holy

Drew nearer to search through the streets.        20

A hastening car swept shameful past,

I saw her hid in the shadow,

I saw her step to the curb, and fast

Run to the silent door, where last

I had stood with my hand uplifted.        25

She clung to the door in her haste to enter,

Entered, and quickly cast

It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.

CLOSE your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;

      They have taught you to see

Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,

A cunning algebra in the faces of men,

      And God like geometry         5

Completing his circles, and working cleverly.

I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;

      If I can—if any one could.

Then perhaps in the dark you’ll have got what you want to find.

You’ve discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes,        10

      And I’m a kaleidoscope

That you shake and shake, and yet it won’t come to your mind.

Now stop carping at me.—But God, how I hate you!

      Do you fear I shall swindle you?

Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will abate you        15

Somehow?—so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so cautious, you

Must have me all in your will and your consciousness—

      I hate you.

ROUND clouds roll in the arms of the wind,

The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,

And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,

    The wild anemones lie

In undulating shivers beneath the wind.         5

Over the blue of the waters ply

White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;

And, look you, floating just thereby,

    The blue-gleamed drake stems proud

Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.        10

In the lustrous gleam of the water, there

Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,

Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share

    The darkness that interweaves

The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.        15

Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts

Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see

  A great bay stallion dances, skirts

    The bushes sumptuously,

Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.        20

Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,

What sudden expectation opens you

  So wide as you watch the catkins blow

    Their dust from the birch on the blue

Lift of the pulsing wind—ah, tell me you know!        25

Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun

A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all

  Us creatures, people and flowers undone,

    Lying open under his thrall,

As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?        30

Why, I should think that from the earth there fly

Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams

  Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high

    Bursting globe of dreams,

To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.        35

Do you not hear each morsel thrill

With joy at travelling to plant itself within

  The expectant one, therein to instil

    New rapture, new shape to win,

From the thick of life wake up another will?        40

Surely, and if that I would spill

The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,

  From off my brimming measure, to fill

    You, and flush you rife

With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?        45

REJECT me not if I should say to you

I do forget the sounding of your voice,

I do forget your eyes that searching through

The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice.

Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide         5

Under the pallid moonlight’s fingering,

I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide

My eyes from diligent work, malingering.

Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw

The blind to hide the garden, where the moon        10

Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw

Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.

And I do lift my aching arms to you,

And I do lift my anguished, avid breast,

And I do weep for very pain of you,        15

And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest.

And I do toss through the troubled night for you,

Dreaming your yielded mouth is given to mine,

Feeling your strong breast carry me on into

The peace where sleep is stronger even than wine.        20

THE SHORN moon trembling indistinct on her path,

Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky,

Draws towards the downward slope: some sorrow hath

Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares

Along her foot-searched way without knowing why         5

She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs.

Some day they see, though I have never seen,

The dead moon heaped within the new moon’s arms;

For surely the fragile, fine young thing had been

Too heavily burdened to mount the heavens so.        10

But my heart stands still, as a new, strong dread alarms

Me; might a young girl be heaped with such shadow of woe?

Since Death from the mother moon has pared us down to the quick,

And cast us forth like shorn, thin moons, to travel

An uncharted way among the myriad thick        15

Strewn stars of silent people, and luminous litter

Of lives which sorrows like mischievous dark mice chavel

To nought, diminishing each star’s glitter,

Since Death has delivered us utterly, naked and white,

Since the month of childhood is over, and we stand alone,        20

Since the beloved, faded moon that set us alight

Is delivered from us and pays no heed though we moan

In sorrow, since we stand in bewilderment, strange

And fearful to sally forth down the sky’s long range.

We may not cry to her still to sustain us here,        25

We may not hold her shadow back from the dark.

Oh, let us here forget, let us take the sheer

Unknown that lies before us, bearing the ark

Of the covenant onwards where she cannot go.

Let us rise and leave her now, she will never know.        30

I WONDER if with you, as it is with me,

If under your slipping words, that easily flow

About you as a garment, easily,

    Your violent heart beats to and fro!

Long have I waited, never once confessed,         5

Even to myself, how bitter the separation;

Now, being come again, how make the best

    Reparation?

If I could cast this clothing off from me,

If I could lift my naked self to you,        10

Of if only you would repulse me, a wound would be

    Good; it would let the ache come through.

But that you hold me still so kindly cold

Aloof my floating heart will not allow;

Yea, but I loathe you that you should withhold        15

    Your pleasure now.

THE EARTH again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over

The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide

Slowly into another day; slowly the rover

Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting         5

Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped

And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting

The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing upon me,

I who am substance of shadow, I all compact        10

Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly

Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;

And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, though the clouds

Shine in conceit of substance upon me, who am less than the rain.        15

Do I know the darkness within them? What are they but shrouds?

The clouds go down the sky with a wealthy ease

Casting a shadow of scorn upon me for my share in death; but I

Hold my own in the midst of them, darkling, defy

The whole of the day to extinguish the shadow I lift on the breeze.        20

Yea, though the very clouds have vantage over me,

Enjoying their glancing flight, though my love is dead,

I still am not homeless here, I’ve a tent by day

Of darkness where she sleeps on her perfect bed.

And I know the host, the minute sparkling of darkness        25

Which vibrates untouched and virile through the grandeur of night,

But which, when dawn crows challenge, assaulting the vivid motes

Of living darkness, bursts fretfully, and is bright:

    Runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light,

    Stirred by conflict to shining, which else        30

    Were dark and whole with the night.

    Runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel,

    Which else were aslumber along with the whole

    Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel.

    Is chafed to anger, bursts into rage like thunder;        35

    Which else were a silent grasp that held the heavens

    Arrested, beating thick with wonder.

    Leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping

    In a jet from out of obscurity,

    Which erst was darkness sleeping.        40

    Runs into streams of bright blue drops,

    Water and stones and stars, and myriads

    Of twin-blue eyes, and crops

    Of floury grain, and all the hosts of day,

    All lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting        45

    The Darkness into play.

SHE bade me follow to her garden, where

The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup

Between the old grey walls; I did not dare

To raise my face, I did not dare look up,

Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in         5

My windows of discovery, and shrill “Sin.”

So with a downcast mien and laughing voice

I followed, followed the swing of her white dress

That rocked in a lilt along: I watched the poise

Of her feet as they flew for a space, then paused to press        10

The grass deep down with the royal burden of her:

And gladly I’d offered my breast to the tread of her.

“I like to see,” she said, and she crouched her down,

She sunk into my sight like a settling bird;

And her bosom couched in the confines of her gown        15

Like heavy birds at rest there, softly stirred

By her measured breaths: “I like to see,” said she,

“The snap-dragon put out his tongue at me.”

She laughed, she reached her hand out to the flower,

Closing its crimson throat. My own throat in her power        20

Strangled, my heart swelled up so full

As if it would burst its wine-skin in my throat,

Choke me in my own crimson. I watched her pull

The gorge of the gaping flower, till the blood did float

      Over my eyes, and I was blind—        25

    Her large brown hand stretched over

    The windows of my mind;

    And there in the dark I did discover

    Things I was out to find:

    My Grail, a brown bowl twined        30

    With swollen veins that met in the wrist,

    Under whose brown the amethyst

    I longed to taste. I longed to turn

    My heart’s red measure in her cup,

    I longed to feel my hot blood burn        35

    With the amethyst in her cup.

    Then suddenly she looked up,

    And I was blind in a tawny-gold day,

    Till she took her eyes away.

    So she came down from above        40

    And emptied my heart of love.

    So I held my heart aloft

    To the cuckoo that hung like a dove,

    And she settled soft.

      It seemed that I and the morning world        45

      Were pressed cup-shape to take this reiver

      Bird who was weary to have furled

      Her wings in us,

      As we were weary to receive her.

      This bird, this rich,        50

      Sumptuous central grain,

      This mutable witch,

      This one refrain,

      This laugh in the fight,

      This clot of night,        55

      This core of delight.

    She spoke, and I closed my eyes

    To shut hallucinations out.

    I echoed with surprise

    Hearing my mere lips shout        60

    The answer they did devise.

    Again I saw a brown bird hover

    Over the flowers at my feet;

    I felt a brown bird hover

    Over my heart, and sweet        65

    Its shadow lay on my heart.

    I thought I saw on the clover

    A brown bee pulling apart

    The closed flesh of the clover

    And burrowing in its heart.        70

    She moved her hand, and again

    I felt the brown bird cover

    My heart; and then

    The bird came down on my heart,

    As on a nest the rover        75

    Cuckoo comes, and shoves over

    The brim each careful part

    Of love, takes possession, and settles her down,

    With her wings and her feathers to drown

    The nest in a heat of love.        80

She turned her flushed face to me for the glint

Of a moment. “See,” she laughed, “if you also

Can make them yawn.” I put my hand to the dint

In the flower’s throat, and the flower gaped wide with woe.

She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still,        85

She watched my hand, to see what I would fulfil.

I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between

My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs

Poised at her. Like a weapon my hand was white and keen,

And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs        90

Of mordant anguish, till she ceased to laugh,

Until her pride’s flag, smitten, cleaved down to the staff.

She hid her face, she murmured between her lips

The low word “Don’t.” I let the flower fall,

But held my hand afloat towards the slips        95

Of blossom she fingered, and my fingers all

Put forth to her: she did not move, nor I,

For my hand like a snake watched hers, that could not fly.

Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult

Like a sudden chuckling of music. I bade her eyes       100

Meet mine, I opened her helpless eyes to consult

Their fear, their shame, their joy that underlies

Defeat in such a battle. In the dark of her eyes

My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise.

Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills, and the dark       105

Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light;

And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark

Fervour within the pool of her twilight,

Within her spacious soul, to grope in delight.

And I do not care, though the large hands of revenge       110

Shall get my throat at last, shall get it soon,

If the joy that they are searching to avenge

Have risen red on my night as a harvest moon,

Which even death can only put out for me;

And death, I know, is better than not-to-be.       115

MOURNFULLY to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving;

      What did you say, my dear?

The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child

Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob—

      Yes, my love, I hear.         5

One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,

      Why not let it ring?

The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender, mild

Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb—

      It is such a little thing!        10

A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come and look,

      Yes, it is over now.

Call to him out of the silence, call him to see

The starling shaking its head as it walks in the grass—

      Ah, who knows how?        15

He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it shook—

      Don’t disturb him, darling.

—Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me,

Never, he is not, whatever shall come to pass.

      No, look at the wet starling.        20

    I LOOK at the swaling sunset

    And wish I could go also

Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.

    I wish that I could go

Through the red doors where I could put off         5

    My shame like shoes in the porch,

    My pain like garments,

And leave my flesh discarded lying

Like luggage of some departed traveller

    Gone one knows not where.        10

    Then I would turn round,

And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber,

    I would laugh with joy.

SINCE I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near,

And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near,

The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries,

And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear.

And I am willing to come to you now, my dear,         5

As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome

To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to come,

And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like foam.

For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet,

My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth        10

To fall like a breath within the breathing wind

Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!

WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you

My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?

My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,

And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped         5

Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields

Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped

And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among

The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk,        10

As farther off the scythe of night is swung,

And little stars come rolling from their husk.

And all the earth is gone into a dust

Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,

Covered with aged lichens, past with must,        15

And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey,

Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,

All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding

With wounds of sunset and the dying day.        20

THE DARKNESS steals the forms of all the queens,

But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red,

Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead

Hours that were once all glory and all queens.

And I remember all the sunny hours         5

Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,

And morning singing where the woods are scrolled

And diapered above the chaunting flowers.

Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;

The town is like a churchyard, all so still        10

And grey now night is here; nor will

Another torn red sunset come to pass.

OUT of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,

Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping

To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.

Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel

Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel         5

Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.

And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops

Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops

Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.

And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,        10

The rainbow arching over in the skies,

New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.

All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea

Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,

Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea        15

Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.

THE END