D. H. Lawrence (1918) _New Poems_ NEW POEMS POEMS BY THE SAME AUTHOR LOVE POEMS AND OTHERS AMORES LOOK, WE HAVE COME THROUGH FIRST PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1918NEW EDITION (RESET), AUGUST, 1919 New Poems By D. H. Lawrence London: Martin Seeker TOAMY LOWELL THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, LONDON AND NORWICH, ENGLAND CONTENTS ApprehensionComing AwakeFrom a College WindowFlapperBirdcage WalkLetter from Town: The Almond TreeFlat Suburbs, S. W. , in the MorningThief in the NightLetter from Town: On a Grey Evening in MarchSuburbs on a Hazy DayHyde Park at Night: ClerksGipsyTwo-FoldUnder the OakSigh no MoreLove StormParliament Hill in the EveningPiccadilly Circus at Night: Street WalkersTarantellaIn ChurchPianoEmbankment at Night: CharityPhantasmagoriaNext MorningPalimpsest of TwilightEmbankment at Night: OutcastsWinter in the BoulevardSchool on the OutskirtsSicknessEverlasting FlowersThe North CountryBitterness of DeathSeven SealsReading a LetterTwenty Years AgoIntimeTwo WivesHeimwehDébâcleNarcissusAutumn SunshineOn That Day APPREHENSION AND all hours long, the town Roars like a beast in a caveThat is wounded thereAnd like to drown; While days rush, wave after waveOn its lair. An invisible woe unseals The flood, so it passes beyondAll bounds: the great old cityRecumbent roars as it feels The foamy paw of the pondReach from immensity. But all that it can do Now, as the tide rises, Is to listen and hear the grimWaves crash like thunder through The splintered streets, hear noisesRoll hollow in the interim. COMING AWAKE WHEN I woke, the lake-lights were quivering on the wall, The sunshine swam in a shoal across and across, And a hairy, big bee hung over the primulasIn the window, his body black fur, and the sound of him cross. There was something I ought to remember: and yetI did not remember. Why should I? The run- ning lightsAnd the airy primulas, obliviousOf the impending bee--they were fair enough sights. FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW THE glimmer of the limes, sun-heavy, sleeping, Goes trembling past me up the College wall. Below, the lawn, in soft blue shade is keeping, The daisy-froth quiescent, softly in thrall. Beyond the leaves that overhang the street, Along the flagged, clean pavement summer-white, Passes the world with shadows at their feet Going left and right. Remote, although I hear the beggar's cough, See the woman's twinkling fingers tend him a coin, I sit absolved, assured I am better off Beyond a world I never want to join. FLAPPER LOVE has crept out of her sealéd heart As a field-bee, black and amber, Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamberUp the warm grass where the sunbeams start. Mischief has come in her dawning eyes, And a glint of coloured iris brings Such as lies along the folded wingsOf the bee before he flies. Who, with a ruffling, careful breath, Has opened the wings of the wild young sprite? Has fluttered her spirit to stumbling flightIn her eyes, as a young bee stumbleth? Love makes the burden of her voice. The hum of his heavy, staggering wings Sets quivering with wisdom the common thingsThat she says, and her words rejoice. BIRDCAGE WALK WHEN the wind blows her veil And uncovers her laughterI cease, I turn pale. When the wind blows her veilFrom the woes I bewail Of love and hereafter:When the wind blows her veilI cease, I turn pale. LETTER FROM TOWN: THEALMOND TREE YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you forget? White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge? Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledgeOf our early love that hardly has opened yet. Here there's an almond tree--you have never seen Such a one in the north--it flowers on the street, and I stand Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expandAt rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean. Under the almond tree, the happy lands Provence, Japan, and Italy repose, And passing feet are chatter and clapping of thoseWho play around us, country girls clapping their hands. You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown, All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter Startled upon your eyes now so wide with here- after, You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down. FLAT SUBURBS, S. W. , IN THEMORNING THE new red houses spring like plants In level rowsOf reddish herbage that bristles and slants Its square shadows. The pink young houses show one side bright Flatly assuming the sun, And one side shadow, half in sight, Half-hiding the pavement-run; Where hastening creatures pass intent On their level way, Threading like ants that can never relent And have nothing to say. Bare stems of street-lamps stiffly stand At random, desolate twigs, To testify to a blight on the land That has stripped their sprigs. THIEF IN THE NIGHT LAST night a thief came to me And struck at me with something dark. I cried, but no one could hear me, I lay dumb and stark. When I awoke this morning I could find no trace;Perhaps 'twas a dream of warning, For I've lost my peace. LETTER FROM TOWN: ON AGREY EVENING IN MARCH THE clouds are pushing in grey reluctance slowly northward to you, While north of them all, at the farthest ends, stands one bright-bosomed, aglanceWith fire as it guards the wild north cloud-coasts, red-fire seas running throughThe rocks where ravens flying to windward melt as a well-shot lance. You should be out by the orchard, where violets secretly darken the earth, Or there in the woods of the twilight, with northern wind-flowers shaken astir. Think of me here in the library, trying and trying a song that is worthTears and swords to my heart, arrows no armour will turn or deter. You tell me the lambs have come, they lie like daisies white in the grassOf the dark-green hills; new calves in shed; peewits turn after the plough--It is well for you. For me the navvies work in the road where I passAnd I want to smite in anger the barren rock of each waterless brow. Like the sough of a wind that is caught up high in the mesh of the budding trees, A sudden car goes sweeping past, and I strain my soul to hearThe voice of the furtive triumphant engine as it rushes past like a breeze, To hear on its mocking triumphance unwitting the after-echo of fear. SUBURBS ON A HAZY DAY O STIFFLY shapen houses that change not, What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you, and raisedTo show you thus transfigured, changed, Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased? Such resolute shapes, so harshly set In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heapedIn void and null profusion, how is this? In what strong _aqua regia_ now are you steeped? That you lose the brick-stuff out of you And hover like a presentment, fading faintAnd vanquished, evaporate away To leave but only the merest possible taint! HYDE PARK AT NIGHT, BEFORETHE WAR _Clerks_. WE have shut the doors behind us, and the velvet flowers of nightLean about us scattering their pollen grains of golden light. Now at last we lift our faces, and our faces come aflowerTo the night that takes us willing, liberates us to the hour. Now at last the ink and dudgeon passes from our fervent eyesAnd out of the chambered weariness wanders a spirit abroad on its enterprise. Not too near and not too far Out of the stress of the crowd Music screams as elephants scream When they lift their trunks and scream aloud For joy of the night when masters are Asleep and adream. So here I hide in the Shalimar With a wanton princess slender and proud, And we swoon with kisses, swoon till we seem Two streaming peacocks gone in a cloud Of golden dust, with star after star On our stream. GIPSY I, THE man with the red scarf, Will give thee what I have, this last week's earn- ings. Take them, and buy thee a silver ring And wed me, to ease my yearnings. For the rest, when thou art wedded I'll wet my brow for theeWith sweat, I'll enter a house for thy sake, Thou shalt shut doors on me. TWO-FOLD How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleavingAll with a flash of blue!--when will she be leavingHer room, where the night still hangs like a half- folded bat, And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like must in a vat. UNDER THE OAK You, if you were sensible, When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful, You would not turn and answer me"The night is wonderful. " Even you, if you knewHow this darkness soaks me through and through, and infusesUnholy fear in my vapour, you would pause to dis- tinguishWhat hurts, from what amuses. For I tell youBeneath this powerful tree, my whole soul's fluidOozes away from me as a sacrifice steamAt the knife of a Druid. Again I tell you, I bleed, I am bound with withies, My life runs out. I tell you my blood runs out on the floor of this oak, Gout upon gout. Above me springs the blood-born mistletoeIn the shady smoke. But who are you, twittering to and froBeneath the oak? What thing better are you, what worse?What have you to do with the mysteriesOf this ancient place, of my ancient curse?What place have you in my histories? SIGH NO MORE THE cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling, Calling, Of a meaningless monotony is pallingAll my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered wood. May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling, FallingIn a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawlingMessages of true-love down the dust of the high- road. I do not like to hear the gentle grieving, GrievingOf the she-dove in the blossom, still believingLove will yet again return to her and make all good. When I know that there must ever be deceiving, DeceivingOf the mournful constant heart, that while she's weavingHer woes, her lover woos and sings within another wood. Oh, boisterous the cuckoo shouts, forestalling, StallingA progress down the intricate enthrallingBy-paths where the wanton-headed flowers doff their hood. And like a laughter leads me onward, heaving, HeavingA sigh among the shadows, thus retrievingA decent short regret for that which once was very good. LOVE STORM MANY roses in the windAre tapping at the window-sash. A hawk is in the sky; his wingsSlowly begin to plash. The roses with the west wind rappingAre torn away, and a splashOf red goes down the billowing air. Still hangs the hawk, with the whole sky movingPast him--only a wing-beat provingThe will that holds him there. The daisies in the grass are bending, The hawk has dropped, the wind is spendingAll the roses, and unendingRustle of leaves washes out the rendingCry of a bird. A red rose goes on the wind. --AscendingThe hawk his wind-swept way is wendingEasily down the sky. The daisies, sendingStrange white signals, seem intendingTo show the place whence the scream was heard. But, oh, my heart, what birds are piping!A silver wind is hastily wipingThe face of the youngest rose. And oh, my heart, cease apprehending!The hawk is gone, a rose is tappingThe window-sash as the west-wind blows. Knock, knock, 'tis no more than a red rose rapping, And fear is a plash of wings. What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flappingDown the bright-grey ruin of things! PARLIAMENT HILL IN THEEVENING THE houses fade in a melt of mist Blotching the thick, soiled airWith reddish places that still resist The Night's slow care. The hopeless, wintry twilight fades, The city corrodes out of sightAs the body corrodes when death invades That citadel of delight. Now verdigris smoulderings softly spread Through the shroud of the town, as slowNight-lights hither and thither shed Their ghastly glow. PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT _Street-Walkers_. WHEN into the night the yellow light is roused like dust above the towns, Or like a mist the moon has kissed from off a pool in the midst of the downs, Our faces flower for a little hour pale and uncertain along the street, Daisies that waken all mistaken white-spread in ex- pectancy to meet The luminous mist which the poor things wist was dawn arriving across the sky, When dawn is far behind the star the dust-lit town has driven so high. All the birds are folded in a silent ball of sleep, All the flowers are faded from the asphalt isle in the sea, Only we hard-faced creatures go round and round, and keep The shores of this innermost ocean alive and illusory. Wanton sparrows that twittered when morning looked in at their eyes And the Cyprian's pavement-roses are gone, and now it is weFlowers of illusion who shine in our gauds, make a Paradise On the shores of this ceaseless ocean, gay birds of the town-dark sea. TARANTELLA SAD as he sits on the white sea-stoneAnd the suave sea chuckles, and turns to the moon, And the moon significant smiles at the cliffs and the boulders. He sits like a shade by the flood aloneWhile I dance a tarantella on the rocks, and the croonOf my mockery mocks at him over the waves' bright shoulders. What can I do but dance alone, Dance to the sliding sea and the moon, For the moon on my breast and the air on my limbs and the foam on my feet?For surely this earnest man has noneOf the night in his soul, and none of the tuneOf the waters within him; only the world's old wisdom to bleat. I wish a wild sea-fellow would come down the glittering shingle, A soulless neckar, with winking seas in his eyesAnd falling waves in his arms, and the lost soul's kissOn his lips: I long to be soulless, I tingleTo touch the sea in the last surpriseOf fiery coldness, to be gone in a lost soul's bliss. IN CHURCH IN the choir the boys are singing the hymn. The morning light on their lipsMoves in silver-moist flashes, in musical trim. Sudden outside the high window, one crow Hangs in the airAnd lights on a withered oak-tree's top of woe. One bird, one blot, folded and still at the top Of the withered tree!--in the grailOf crystal heaven falls one full black drop. Like a soft full drop of darkness it seems to sway In the tender wineOf our Sabbath, suffusing our sacred day. PIANO Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of songBetrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belongTo the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outsideAnd hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamourWith the great black piano appassionato. The glamourOf childish days is upon me, my manhood is castDown in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past. EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR _Charity_. BY the riverIn the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks down, Dropping and starting from sleepAlone on a seatA woman crouches. I must go back to her. I want to give herSome money. Her hand slips out of the breast of her gownAsleep. My fingers creepCarefully over the sweetThumb-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 runDown the Embankment, run for my life. But why?--why? Because of my heart'sBeating like sobs, I come to myself, and standIn the street spilled over splendidlyWith wet, flat lights. What I've doneI 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 aloneLike a thing unwarrantable cross the hallAnd climb the stairs to find the group of doorsStanding angel-stern and tall. I want my own room's shelter. But what is thisThrong of startled beings suddenly thrownIn confusion against my entry? Is it only the trees'Large shadows from the outside street lamp blown? Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weepAloud, suddenly on my mindStartling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering windBreaks 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, sayWhat is the reckoning. Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, whyDo you rush to assail me?Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal?What should it avail me? Is there some great Iacchos of these slopesSuburban dismal?Have I profaned some female mystery, orgiesBlack and phantasmal? NEXT MORNING How have I wandered here to this vaulted roomIn the house of life?--the floor was ruffled with goldLast 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 gloomOf every dirty, must-besprinkled mould, And damp old web of misery's heirloomDeadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold. And what is this that floats on the undermistOf the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feelingUnsightly its way to the warmth?--this thing with a listTo the left? this ghost like a candle swealing? Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it missedItself among everything else, here hungrily stealingUpon me!--my own reflection!--explicit gistOf my presence there in the mirror that leans from the ceiling! Then will somebody square this shade with the being I knowI was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bellAnd 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 lightGlimmers: 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 betweenLamps, is rayed with golden bandsHalf way down its heaving sides;Revealed where it hides. Under the bridgeGreat electric carsSing through, and each with a floor-light racing along at its side. Far off, oh, midge after midgeDrifts over the gulf that barsThe night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched tide. At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridgeSleep in a row the outcasts, Packed in a line with their heads against the wall. Their feet, in a broken ridgeStretch out on the way, and a lout castsA look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall. Beasts that sleep will coverTheir faces in their flank; so theseHave huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep. Save, as the tram-cars hoverPast with the noise of a breezeAnd gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap, Two naked faces are seenBare and asleep, Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the cars. Foam-clots showing betweenThe long, low tidal-heap, The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars. Over the pallor of only two facesPasses the gallivant beam of the trams;Shows in only two sad placesThe 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 keepingCallous and dour. Over the pallor of only two placesTossed on the low, black, ruffled heapPasses the light of the tram as it racesOut of the deep. Eloquent limbsIn disarraySleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth thighsHutched up for warmth; the muddy rimsOf trousers frayOn the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies. The balls of five red toesAs red and dirty, bareYoung birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud--Newspaper sheets encloseSome limbs like parcels, and tearWhen the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the flood-- One heaped moundOf a woman's kneesAs she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt--And a curious dearth of soundIn the presence of theseWastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any hurt. Over two shadowless, shameless facesStark on the heapTravels the light as it tilts in its pacesGone in one leap. At the feet of the sleepers, watching, Stand those that waitFor a place to lie down; and still as they stand, they sleep, Wearily catchingThe flood's slow gaitLike men who are drowned, but float erect in the deep. Oh, the singing mansions, Golden-lighted tallTrams that pass, blown ruddily down the night!The bridge on its stanchionsStoops like a pallTo this human blight. On the outer pavement, slowly, Theatre people pass, Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are brightLike flowers of infernal molyOver nocturnal grassWetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight. And still by the rottenRow of shattered feet, Outcasts keep guard. Forgotten, Forgetting, till fate shall deleteOne from the ward. The factories on the Surrey sideAre beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky. The river's invisible tideThreads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye. And great gold midgesCross the chasmAt the bridgesAbove intertwined plasm. WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD THE frost has settled down upon the treesAnd ruthlessly strangled off the fantasiesOf leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like oldRomantic stories now no more to be told. The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought, Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caughtIn the grim undertow; naked the trees confrontImplacable 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 allTrees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thoughtAwaiting 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 wayAnd 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 barkOf my body slowly behind. Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of nightInvisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if in their flightMy hands should touch the door! What if I suddenly stumble, and push the doorOpen, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet, beforeI can draw back! What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wideAnd am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone down the tideOf eternal hereafter! Catch my hands, my darling, between your breasts. Take them away from their venture, before fate wrestsThe meaning out of them. EVERLASTING FLOWERS WHO do you think stands watching The snow-tops shining rosyIn heaven, now that the darkness Takes all but the tallest posy? Who then sees the two-winged Boat down there, all aloneAnd 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-tipsFrom the twilight like half-shut lilies To hold to your lips. And never the two-winged vessel That sleeps below on the lakeCan 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 eyesAt 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 gloomThat wraps the north in stupor and purple travels the deep, slow boomOf the man-life north-imprisoned, shut in the hum of the purpled steelAs 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, somnambuleMoans and booms the soul of a people imprisoned, asleep in the ruleOf the strong machine that runs mesmeric, booming the spell of its wordUpon 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 thereIn the spell-bound north, convulsive now with a dream near morning, strongWith 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 hardWhile I wash you with weeping water!Do you set your face against the daughterOf life? Can you never discardYour curt pride's ban? You masquerader!How can you shame to act this partOf unswerving indifference to me?You want at last, ah me!To break my heartEvader! You know your mouthWas always sooner to softenEven than your eyes. Now shut it liesRelentless, however oftenI kiss it in drouth. It has no breathNor any relaxing. Where, Where are you, what have you done?What is this mouth of stone?How did you dareTake cover in death! II Once you could see, The white moon show like a breast revealedBy the slipping shawl of stars. Could see the small stars trembleAs the heart beneath did wieldSystole, diastole. All the lovely macrocosmWas woman once to you, Bride to your groom. No tree in bloomBut it leaned you a newWhite bosom. And always and everSoft as a summering treeUnfolds from the sky, for your good, Unfolded womanhood;Shedding you down as a treeSheds its flowers on a river. I saw your browsSet like rocks beside a sea of gloom, And I shed my very soul down into your thought;Like flowers I fell, to be caughtOn the comforted pool, like bloomThat leaves the boughs. III Oh, masquerader, With a hard face white-enamelled, What are you now?Do you care no longer howMy heart is trammelled, Evader? Is this you, after all, Metallic, obdurateWith 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 nullThis never-warm! Is this the sum of you?Is it all nought?Cold, metal-cold?Are you all toldHere, 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 backAnd let me love you a long time ere you go. For you are sullen-hearted still, and lackThe will to love me. But even soI 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 slipYour love for me. I kiss your mouth. Ah, love, Could I but seal its ruddy, shining springOf passion, parch it up, destroy, removeIts softly-stirring crimson welling-upOf kisses! Oh, help me, God! Here at the sourceI'd lie for ever drinking and drawing inYour fountains, as heaven drinks from out their courseThe floods. I close your ears with kissesAnd 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 missesTo touch its fellow on either side. And thereFull mid-between the champaign of your breastI place a great and burning seal of loveLike a dark rose, a mystery of restOn the slow bubbling of your rhythmic heart. Nay, I persist, and very faith shall keepYou integral to me. Each door, each mystic portOf egress from you I will seal and steepIn perfect chrism. Now it is done. The mortWill sound in heaven before it is undone. But let me finish what I have begunAnd shirt you now invulnerable in the mailOf iron kisses, kisses linked like steel. Put greaves upon your thighs and knees, and frailWebbing of steel on your feet. So you shall feelEnsheathed invulnerable with me, with sevenGreat seals upon your outgoings, and wovenChain of my mystic will wrapped perfectlyUpon you, wrapped in indomitable me. READING A LETTER SHE sits on the recreation ground Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale blue sky. The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy. So sitting under the knotted canopy Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in a balloonAcross the insensible void, till she stoops to see The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon. She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one place Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and stirring. But never the motion has a human face Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring. And so again, on the recreation ground She alights a stranger, wondering, unused to the scene;Suffering at sight of the children playing around, Hurt at the chalk-coloured tulips, and the even- ing-green. TWENTY YEARS AGO ROUND the house were lilacs and strawberries And foal-foots spangling the paths, And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries Caught dust from the sea's long swaths. Up the wolds the woods were walking, And nuts fell out of their hair. At the gate the nets hung, balking The star-lit rush of a hare. In the autumn fields, the stubble Tinkled the music of gleaning. At a mother's knees, the trouble Lost all its meaning. Yea, what good beginnings To this sad end!Have we had our innings? God forfend! INTIME RETURNING, I find her just the same, At just the same old delicate game. Still she says: "Nay, loose no flameTo lick me up and do me harm!Be all yourself!--for oh, the charmOf your heart of fire in which I look!Oh, better there than in any bookGlow and enact the dramas and dreamsI love for ever!--there it seemsYou are lovelier than life itself, till desireComes licking through the bars of your lipsAnd over my face the stray fire slips, Leaving a burn and an ugly smartThat will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heartOf fire and beauty, loose no moreYour reptile flames of lust; ah, storeYour passion in the basket of your soul, Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coalThat stays with steady joy of its own fire. But do not seek to take me by desire. Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!For in the firing all my porcelainOf flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain, My ivory and marble black with stain, My veil of sensitive mystery rent in twain, My altars sullied, I, bereft, remainA priestess execrable, taken in vain--" So the refrainSings itself over, and so the gameRe-starts itself wherein I am keptLike a glowing brazier faintly blue of flameSo that the delicate love-adeptCan warm her hands and invite her soul, Sprinkling incense and salt of wordsAnd kisses pale, and sipping the tollOf incense-smoke that rises like birds. Yet I've forgotten in playing this game, Things I have known that shall have no name;Forgetting the place from which I cameI watch her ward away the flame, Yet warm herself at the fire--then blameMe that I flicker in the basket;Me that I glow not with contentTo have my substance so subtly spent;Me that I interrupt her game. I ought to be proud that she should ask itOf me to be her fire-opal--. It is wellSince I am here for so short a spellNot to interrupt her?--Why should IBreak in by making any reply! TWO WIVES I INTO the shadow-white chamber silts the whiteFlux of another dawn. The wind that all nightLong has waited restless, suddenly waftsA whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear, Till petals heaped between the window-shafts In a drift die there. A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed paneDraws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stainThe white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bedThat rides the room like a frozen berg, its crestFinally ridged with the austere line of the dead Stretched out at rest. Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressedThe peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest. Yet soon, too soon, she had him home againWith wounds between them, and suffering like a guestThat will not go. Now suddenly going, the pain Leaves an empty breast. II A tall woman, with her long white gown aflowAs she strode her limbs amongst it, once moreShe hastened towards the room. Did she knowAs she listened in silence outside the silent door?Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a pyre Awaiting the fire. Upraised on the bed, with feet erect as a bow, Like the prow of a boat, his head laid back like the sternOf a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of snowWith frozen rigging, she saw him; she drooped like a fernRefolding, she slipped to the floor as a ghost-white peony slips When the thread clips. Soft she lay as a shed flower fallen, nor heardThe ominous entry, nor saw the other love, The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus daredAt such an hour to lay her claim, aboveA stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed With misery, no more proud. III The stranger's hair was shorn like a lad's dark pollAnd pale her ivory face: her eyes would failIn silence when she looked: for all the wholeDarkness of failure was in them, without avail. Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost Now claimed the host, She softly passed the sorrowful flower shedIn blonde and white on the floor, nor even turnedHer head aside, but straight towards the bedMoved with slow feet, and her eyes' flame steadily burned. She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek, And she started to speak Softly: "I knew it would come to this, " she said, "I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus. So I did not fight you. You went your way insteadOf coming mine--and of the two of usI died the first, I, in the after-life Am now your wife. " IV "'Twas I whose fingers did draw up the youngPlant of your body: to me you looked e'er sprungThe secret of the moon within your eyes!My mouth you met before your fine red mouthWas set to song--and never your song denies My love, till you went south. " "'Twas I who placed the bloom of manhood onYour youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece was noneYour fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of newKnowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat;I put my strength upon you, and I threw My life at your feet. " "But I whom the years had reared to be your bride, Who for years was sun for your shivering, shade for your sweat, Who for one strange year was as a bride to you--you set me asideWith all the old, sweet things of our youth;--and never yetHave I ceased to grieve that I was not great enough To defeat your baser stuff. " V "But you are given back again to meWho have kept intact for you your virginity. Who for the rest of life walk out of care, Indifferent here of myself, since I am goneWhere you are gone, and you and I out there Walk now as one. " "Your widow am I, and only I. I dreamGod bows his head and grants me this supremePure look of your last dead face, whence now is goneThe mobility, the panther's gambolling, And all your being is given to me, so none Can mock my struggling. " "And now at last I kiss your perfect face, Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace. Your young hushed look that then saw God ablazeIn every bush, is given you back, and weAre met at length to finish our rest of days In a unity. " HEIMWEH FAR-OFF the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the garden at home. Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam. I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burstThe walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which I was nursed. It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and inviolate peace, The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my fate and my old increase. And now that the skies are falling, the world is spouting in fountains of dirt, I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with me, go with me, both in one hurt. DEBACLE THE trees in trouble because of autumn, And scarlet berries falling from the bush, And all the myriad houseless seeds Loosing hold in the wind's insistent push Moan softly with autumnal parturition, Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of lightInto the world of shadow, carried down Between the bitter knees of the after-night. Bushed in an uncouth ardour, coiled at core With a knot of life that only bliss can unravel, Fall all the fruits most bitterly into earth Bitterly into corrosion bitterly travel. What is it internecine that is locked, By very fierceness into a quiescenceWithin the rage? We shall not know till it burst Out of corrosion into new florescence. Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed The spark intense within it, all withoutMordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard For ruin on the naked small redoubt. Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally; To have the mystery, but not go forth;To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from the north. The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder the heart That saves the blue grain of eternal fireWithin its quick, committed to hold and wait And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire. NARCISSUS WHERE the minnows traceA glinting web quick hid in the gloom of the brook, When I think of the placeAnd remember the small lad lying intent to lookThrough the shadowy faceAt the little fish thread-threading the watery nook-- It seems to meThe woman you are should be nixie, there is a poolWhere we ought to be. You undine-clear and pearly, soullessly coolAnd waterlyThe pool for my limbs to fathom, my soul's last school. NarcissusVentured so long ago in the deeps of reflection. IllyssusBroke the bounds and beyond!--Dim recollectionOf fishesSoundlessly moving in heaven's other direction! BeUndine towards the waters, moving back;For meA pool! Put off the soul you've got, oh lackYour human self immortal; take the watery track. AUTUMN SUNSHINE THE sun sets out the autumn crocuses And fills them up a pouring measure Of death-producing wine, till treasureRuns waste down their chalices. All, all Persephone's pale cups of mould Are on the board, are over-filled; The portion to the gods is spilled;Now, mortals all, take hold! The time is now, the wine-cup full and full Of lambent heaven, a pledging-cup; Let now all mortal men take upThe drink, and a long, strong pull. Out of the hell-queen's cup, the heaven's pale wine-- Drink then, invisible heroes, drink. Lips to the vessels, never shrink, Throats to the heavens incline. And take within the wine the god's great oath By heaven and earth and hellish stream To break this sick and nauseous dreamWe writhe and lust in, both. Swear, in the pale wine poured from the cups of the queen Of hell, to wake and be free From this nightmare we writhe in, Break out of this foul has-been. ON THAT DAY ON that dayI shall put roses on roses, and cover your graveWith multitude of white roses: and since you were brave One bright red ray. So people, passing underThe ash-trees of the valley-road, will raiseTheir eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in wonder, Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder To see whose praiseIs blazoned here so white and so bloodily red. Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead, Who has remembered her after many days?" And standing thereThey will consider how you went your waysUnnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the maze Of this earthly affair. A queen, they'll say, Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill. Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed there, until Dawns my insurgent day.