New Poems Read online

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the

  tingling strings

  And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who

  smiles as she sings.

  In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

  Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

  To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter

  outside

  And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano

  our guide.

  So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

  With the great black piano appassionato. The

  glamour

  Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

  Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a

  child for the past.

  EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT,

  BEFORE THE WAR

  _Charity_.

  BY the river

  In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks

  down,

  Dropping and starting from sleep

  Alone on a seat

  A woman crouches.

  I must go back to her.

  I want to give her

  Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of

  her gown

  Asleep. My fingers creep

  Carefully over the sweet

  Thumb-mound, into the palm's deep pouches.

  So, the gift!

  God, how she starts!

  And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!

  And again at me!

  I turn and run

  Down the Embankment, run for my life.

  But why?--why?

  Because of my heart's

  Beating like sobs, I come to myself, and stand

  In the street spilled over splendidly

  With wet, flat lights. What I've done

  I know not, my soul is in strife.

  The touch was on the quick. I want to forget.

  PHANTASMAGORIA

  RIGID sleeps the house in darkness, I alone

  Like a thing unwarrantable cross the hall

  And climb the stairs to find the group of doors

  Standing angel-stern and tall.

  I want my own room's shelter. But what is this

  Throng of startled beings suddenly thrown

  In confusion against my entry? Is it only the trees'

  Large shadows from the outside street lamp blown?

  Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weep

  Aloud, suddenly on my mind

  Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind

  Breaks and sobs in the blind.

  So like to women, tall strange women weeping!

  Why continually do they cross the bed?

  Why does my soul contract with unnatural fear?

  I am listening! Is anything said?

  Ever the long black figures swoop by the bed;

  They seem to be beckoning, rushing away, and

  beckoning.

  Whither then, whither, what is it, say

  What is the reckoning.

  Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why

  Do you rush to assail me?

  Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal?

  What should it avail me?

  Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes

  Suburban dismal?

  Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies

  Black and phantasmal?

  NEXT MORNING

  How have I wandered here to this vaulted room

  In the house of life?--the floor was ruffled with gold

  Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,

  Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight

  unfold

  For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom

  Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,

  And damp old web of misery's heirloom

  Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.

  And what is this that floats on the undermist

  Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling

  Unsightly its way to the warmth?--this thing with

  a list

  To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?

  Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it

  missed

  Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing

  Upon me!--my own reflection!--explicit gist

  Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from

  the ceiling!

  Then will somebody square this shade with the

  being I know

  I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell

  And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be

  so?

  What is there gone against me, why am I in hell?

  PALIMPSEST OF TWILIGHT

  DARKNESS comes out of the earth

  And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;

  From the hay comes the clamour of children's

  mirth;

  Wanes the old palimpsest.

  The night-stock oozes scent,

  And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:

  All that the worldly day has meant

  Wastes like a lie.

  The children have forsaken their play;

  A single star in a veil of light

  Glimmers: litter of day

  Is gone from sight.

  EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT,

  BEFORE THE WAR

  _Outcasts_.

  THE night rain, dripping unseen,

  Comes endlessly kissing my face and my hands.

  The river, slipping between

  Lamps, is rayed with golden bands

  Half way down its heaving sides;

  Revealed where it hides.

  Under the bridge

  Great electric cars

  Sing through, and each with a floor-light racing

  along at its side.

  Far off, oh, midge after midge

  Drifts over the gulf that bars

  The night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched

  tide.

  At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridge

  Sleep in a row the outcasts,

  Packed in a line with their heads against the wall.

  Their feet, in a broken ridge

  Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts

  A look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall.

  Beasts that sleep will cover

  Their faces in their flank; so these

  Have huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep.

  Save, as the tram-cars hover

  Past with the noise of a breeze

  And gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap,

  Two naked faces are seen

  Bare and asleep,

  Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the

  cars.

  Foam-clots showing between

  The long, low tidal-heap,

  The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars.

  Over the pallor of only two faces

  Passes the gallivant beam of the trams;

  Shows in only two sad places

  The white bare bone of our shams.

  A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping,

  With a face like a chickweed flower.

  And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping

  Callous and dour.

  Over the pallor of only two places

  Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap

  Passes the light of the tram as it races

  Out of the deep.

  Eloquent limbs

  In disarray

  Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth

  thighs

  Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims

  Of trousers fray

  On the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies.
/>   The balls of five red toes

  As red and dirty, bare

  Young birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud--

  Newspaper sheets enclose

  Some limbs like parcels, and tear

  When the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the

  flood--

  One heaped mound

  Of a woman's knees

  As she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt--

  And a curious dearth of sound

  In the presence of these

  Wastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any

  hurt.

  Over two shadowless, shameless faces

  Stark on the heap

  Travels the light as it tilts in its paces

  Gone in one leap.

  At the feet of the sleepers, watching,

  Stand those that wait

  For a place to lie down; and still as they stand,

  they sleep,

  Wearily catching

  The flood's slow gait

  Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the

  deep.

  Oh, the singing mansions,

  Golden-lighted tall

  Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night!

  The bridge on its stanchions

  Stoops like a pall

  To this human blight.

  On the outer pavement, slowly,

  Theatre people pass,

  Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are

  bright

  Like flowers of infernal moly

  Over nocturnal grass

  Wetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight.

  And still by the rotten

  Row of shattered feet,

  Outcasts keep guard.

  Forgotten,

  Forgetting, till fate shall delete

  One from the ward.

  The factories on the Surrey side

  Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky.

  The river's invisible tide

  Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye.

  And great gold midges

  Cross the chasm

  At the bridges

  Above intertwined plasm.

  WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD

  THE frost has settled down upon the trees

  And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies

  Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old

  Romantic stories now no more to be told.

  The trees down the boulevard stand naked in

  thought,

  Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught

  In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront

  Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt.

  Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths

  of the twigs?

  Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the

  birch?--

  It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on

  the sprigs,

  Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with

  their perch.

  The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself.

  Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all

  Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought

  Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought.

  SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS

  How different, in the middle of snows, the great

  school rises red!

  A red rock silent and shadowless, clung round

  with clusters of shouting lads,

  Some few dark-cleaving the doorway, souls that

  cling as the souls of the dead

  In stupor persist at the gates of life, obstinate

  dark monads.

  This new red rock in a waste of white rises against

  the day

  With shelter now, and with blandishment, since

  the winds have had their way

  And laid the desert horrific of silence and snow on

  the world of mankind,

  School now is the rock in this weary land the winter

  burns and makes blind.

  SICKNESS

  WAVING slowly before me, pushed into the dark,

  Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the

  bark

  Of my body slowly behind.

  Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night

  Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if

  in their flight

  My hands should touch the door!

  What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door

  Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,

  before

  I can draw back!

  What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide

  And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone

  down the tide

  Of eternal hereafter!

  Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts.

  Take them away from their venture, before fate

  wrests

  The meaning out of them.

  EVERLASTING FLOWERS

  WHO do you think stands watching

  The snow-tops shining rosy

  In heaven, now that the darkness

  Takes all but the tallest posy?

  Who then sees the two-winged

  Boat down there, all alone

  And asleep on the snow's last shadow,

  Like a moth on a stone?

  The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,

  Have all gone dark, gone black.

  And now in the dark my soul to you

  Turns back.

  To you, my little darling,

  To you, out of Italy.

  For what is loveliness, my love,

  Save you have it with me!

  So, there's an oxen wagon

  Comes darkly into sight:

  A man with a lantern, swinging

  A little light.

  What does he see, my darling

  Here by the darkened lake?

  Here, in the sloping shadow

  The mountains make?

  He says not a word, but passes,

  Staring at what he sees.

  What ghost of us both do you think he saw

  Under the olive trees?

  All the things that are lovely--

  The things you never knew--

  I wanted to gather them one by one

  And bring them to you.

  But never now, my darling

  Can I gather the mountain-tips

  From the twilight like half-shut lilies

  To hold to your lips.

  And never the two-winged vessel

  That sleeps below on the lake

  Can I catch like a moth between my hands

  For you to take.

  But hush, I am not regretting:

  It is far more perfect now.

  I'll whisper the ghostly truth to the world

  And tell them how

  I know you here in the darkness,

  How you sit in the throne of my eyes

  At peace, and look out of the windows

  In glad surprise.

  THE NORTH COUNTRY

  IN another country, black poplars shake them-

  selves over a pond,

  And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and

  wheel from the works beyond;

  The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the

  grass is a darker green,

  And people darkly invested with purple move

  palpable through the scene.

  Soundlessly down across the counties, out of the

  resonant gloom

  That wraps the north in stupor and purple travels

  the deep, slow boom

  Of the man-life no
rth-imprisoned, shut in the hum

  of the purpled steel

  As it spins to sleep on its motion, drugged dense in

  the sleep of the wheel.

  Out of the sleep, from the gloom of motion, sound-

  lessly, somnambule

  Moans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned,

  asleep in the rule

  Of the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming

  the spell of its word

  Upon them and moving them helpless, mechanic,

  their will to its will deferred.

  Yet all the while comes the droning inaudible, out

  of the violet air,

  The moaning of sleep-bound beings in travail that

  toil and are will-less there

  In the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a

  dream near morning, strong

  With violent achings heaving to burst the sleep

  that is now not long.

  BITTERNESS OF DEATH

  I

  AH, stern, cold man,

  How can you lie so relentless hard

  While I wash you with weeping water!

  Do you set your face against the daughter

  Of life? Can you never discard

  Your curt pride's ban?

  You masquerader!

  How can you shame to act this part

  Of unswerving indifference to me?

  You want at last, ah me!

  To break my heart

  Evader!

  You know your mouth

  Was always sooner to soften

  Even than your eyes.

  Now shut it lies

  Relentless, however often

  I kiss it in drouth.

  It has no breath

  Nor any relaxing. Where,

  Where are you, what have you done?

  What is this mouth of stone?

  How did you dare

  Take cover in death!

  II

  Once you could see,

  The white moon show like a breast revealed

  By the slipping shawl of stars.

  Could see the small stars tremble

  As the heart beneath did wield

  Systole, diastole.

  All the lovely macrocosm

  Was woman once to you,

  Bride to your groom.

  No tree in bloom

  But it leaned you a new

  White bosom.

  And always and ever

  Soft as a summering tree

  Unfolds from the sky, for your good,

  Unfolded womanhood;

  Shedding you down as a tree

  Sheds its flowers on a river.

  I saw your brows

  Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,

  And I shed my very soul down into your

  thought;

  Like flowers I fell, to be caught

  On the comforted pool, like bloom

  That leaves the boughs.

  III

  Oh, masquerader,

  With a hard face white-enamelled,

  What are you now?

  Do you care no longer how

  My heart is trammelled,

  Evader?

  Is this you, after all,

  Metallic, obdurate

  With bowels of steel?

  Did you _never_ feel?--

  Cold, insensate,

  Mechanical!

  Ah, no!--you multiform,

  You that I loved, you wonderful,

  You who darkened and shone,

  You were many men in one;

  But never this null

  This never-warm!

  Is this the sum of you?

  Is it all nought?

  Cold, metal-cold?

  Are you all told

  Here, iron-wrought?

  Is _this_ what's become of you?

  SEVEN SEALS

  SINCE this is the last night I keep you home,

  Come, I will consecrate you for the journey.

  Rather I had you would not go. Nay come,

  I will not again reproach you. Lie back

  And let me love you a long time ere you go.

  For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack

  The will to love me. But even so

  I will set a seal upon you from my lip,

  Will set a guard of honour at each door,

  Seal up each channel out of which might slip

  Your love for me.

  I kiss your mouth. Ah, love,

  Could I but seal its ruddy, shining spring

  Of passion, parch it up, destroy, remove

  Its softly-stirring crimson welling-up

  Of kisses! Oh, help me, God! Here at the source

  I'd lie for ever drinking and drawing in

  Your fountains, as heaven drinks from out their

  course

  The floods.

  I close your ears with kisses

  And seal your nostrils; and round your neck you'll

  wear--

  Nay, let me work--a delicate chain of kisses.

  Like beads they go around, and not one misses

  To touch its fellow on either side.

  And there

  Full mid-between the champaign of your breast

  I place a great and burning seal of love

  Like a dark rose, a mystery of rest

  On the slow bubbling of your rhythmic heart.

  Nay, I persist, and very faith shall keep

  You integral to me. Each door, each mystic port

  Of egress from you I will seal and steep

  In perfect chrism.

  Now it is done. The mort

  Will sound in heaven before it is undone.

  But let me finish what I have begun

  And shirt you now invulnerable in the mail

  Of iron kisses, kisses linked like steel.

  Put greaves upon your thighs and knees, and frail

  Webbing of steel on your feet. So you shall feel