Thin to the glittering stars above,
You know the hands, the eyes of love!
The
strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,
The
infinite distance, and the singing
Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,
The gleam, the flowers, and vast around
The
horizon, and the heights above --
You know the sigh, the song of love!
But there the night is close, and there
Darkness is cold and strange and bare;
And the secret deeps are
whisperless;
And
rhythm is all deliciousness;
And joy is in the throbbing tide,
Whose
intricate fingers beat and glide
In felt bewildering harmonies
Of trembling touch; and music is
The
exquisite knocking of the blood.
Space is no more, under the mud;
His bliss is older than the sun.
Silent and straight the waters run.
The lights, the cries, the willows dim,
And the dark tide are one with him.
Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body
How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With
crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness! No
perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and
socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires,
shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed
fantastic shape,
Straggling,
irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
How can love
triumph, how can
solace be,
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
Could we but fill to
harmony, and dwell
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
Rise disentangled from humanity
Strange whole and new into simplicity,
Grow to a
radiant round love, and bear
Unfluctuant
passion for some perfect sphere,
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
Following the round clear orb of her delight,
Patiently ever, through the
eternal night!
Flight
Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces --
All these were round my steady paces.
Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the
whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the green and gold. And I went on.
For if my echoing footfall slept,
Soon a far
whispering there'd be
Of a little
lonely wind that crept
From tree to tree, and distantly
Followed me, followed me. . . .
But the blue vaporous end of day
Brought peace, and
pursuit baffled quite,
Where between pine-woods dipped the way.
I turned, slipped in and out of sight.
I trod as quiet as the night.
The pine-boles kept
perpetual hush;
And in the boughs wind never swirled.
I found a flowering lowly bush,
And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled,
Hidden at rest from all the world.
Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew!
Yet -- with cold heart and cold wet brows
I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew
Meward a sound of
shaken boughs;
And ceased, above my
intricate house;
And silence, silence, silence found me. . . .
I felt the unfaltering
movement creep
Among the leaves. They shed around me
Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep;
And stroked my face. I fell asleep.
The Hill
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and
ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
-- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"
"We are Earth's best, that
learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.
The One Before the Last
I dreamt I was in love again
With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
Of that
innocent young past.
But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
Were Hell in Nineteen-five.
The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,
Hurt quite as much as you.
* * * * *
Sickly I pondered how the lover
Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
And sentimentalizes over
What earned a better doom.
Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,
Strews pinkish dust above,
And sighs, "The dear dead
boyish pastime!
But THIS -- ah, God! -- is Love!"
-- Better
oblivion hide dead true loves,
Better the night enfold,
Than men, to eke the praise of new loves,
Should lie about the old!
* * * * *
Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty.
But here's the worst of it --
I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty,
YOU ever hurt abit!
The Jolly Company
The stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and
lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith
unbroken dwell,
Friends
radiant and inseparable!"
Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (EVEN SO
GOD OUT OF HEAVEN MAY LAUGH TO SEE
THE HAPPY CROWDS; AND NEVER KNOW
THAT IN HIS LONE OBSCURE DISTRESS
EACH WALKETH IN A WILDERNESS).
But I, remembering, pitied well
And loved them, who, with
lonely light,
In empty
infinite spaces dwell,
Disconsolate. For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.
The Life Beyond
He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless
horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most
strangely, I live on.
Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead
Was Called Ambarvalia
Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
And all the world's a song;
"She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
"Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"
Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go
With
laughter in my heart.
So above the little folk that know not,
Out of the white hill-town,
High up I
clamber; and I remember;
And watch the day go down.
Gold is my heart, and the world's golden,
And one peak tipped with light;
And the air lies still about the hill
With the first fear of night;
Till
mystery down the soundless valley
Thunders, and dark is here;
And the wind blows, and the light goes,
And the night is full of fear,
And I know, one night, on some far height,
In the tongue I never knew,
I yet shall hear the
tidings clear
From them that were friends of you.
They'll call the news from hill to hill,
Dark and uncomforted,
Earth and sky and the winds; and I
Shall know that you are dead.
I shall not hear your trentals,
Nor eat your arval bread;