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Title: Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

Author: Amy Lowell

Release date: August 1, 1997 [eBook #1020]

Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1020

Credits: Produced by Alan R. Light, and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED ***

SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED

by Amy Lowell

[American (Massachusetts) poet, 1874-1925.]

[Transcriber's note: Lines longer than 78 characters have been cut and continued on the next line, which is indented 2 spaces unless in a prose poem.]

SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED

"Face invisible! je t'ai gravée en médailles

D'argent doux comme l'aube pâle,

D'or ardent comme le soleil,

D'airain sombre comme la nuit;

Il y en a de tout métal,

Qui tintent clair comme la joie,

Qui sonnent lourd comme la gloire,

Comme l'amour, comme la mort;

Et j'ai fait les plus belles de belle argile

Sèche et fragile.

"Une à une, vous les comptiez en souriant,

Et vous disiez:  Il est habile;

Et vous passiez en souriant.

"Aucun de vous n'a donc vu

Que mes mains tremblaient de tendresse,

Que tout le grand songe terrestre

Vivait en moi pour vivre en eux

Que je gravais aux métaux pieux,

Mes Dieux."

Henri de Régnier, "Les Médailles d'Argile".

Preface

No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of the written word he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.

In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, of no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung!

For the purely technical side I must state my immense debt to the French, and perhaps above all to the, so-called, Parnassian School, although some of the writers who have influenced me most do not belong to it. High-minded and untiring workmen, they have spared no pains to produce a poetry finer than that of any other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and José-Maria de Heredia, or those of Henri de Régnier, Albert Samain, Francis Jammes, Remy de Gourmont, and Paul Fort, of the more modern school, we stand rebuked. Indeed—"They order this matter better in France."

It is because in France, to-day, poetry is so living and vigorous a thing, that so many metrical experiments come from there. Only a vigorous tree has the vitality to put forth new branches. The poet with originality and power is always seeking to give his readers the same poignant feeling which he has himself. To do this he must constantly find new and striking images, delightful and unexpected forms. Take the word "daybreak", for instance. What a remarkable picture it must once have conjured up! The great, round sun, like the yolk of some mighty egg, BREAKING through cracked and splintered clouds. But we have said "daybreak" so often that we do not see the picture any more, it has become only another word for dawn. The poet must be constantly seeking new pictures to make his readers feel the vitality of his thought.

Many of the poems in this volume are written in what the French call "Vers Libre", a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French versification than to ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system. They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved, and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve, of any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed. Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and time. In the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one scarce can do in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the modern temper, and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its power of expressing this.

Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor, and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory. Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English. But I found it the only medium in which these particular poems could be written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and permitting a great variety of treatment.

But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot.

In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of these poems in periodicals. They are not for the purpose of forestalling criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the beginning, solely with the question of technique. For the more important part of the book, the poems must speak for themselves.

Amy Lowell.

May 19, 1914.

CONTENTS

SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED

Preface

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

SWORD BLADES

The Captured Goddess

The Precinct. Rochester

The Cyclists

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

Astigmatism

The Coal Picker

Storm-Racked

Convalescence

Patience

Apology

A Petition

A Blockhead

Stupidity

Irony

Happiness

The Last Quarter of the Moon

A Tale of Starvation

The Foreigner

Absence

A Gift

The Bungler

Fool's Money Bags

Miscast I

Miscast II

Anticipation

Vintage

The Tree of Scarlet Berries

Obligation

The Taxi

The Giver of Stars

The Temple

Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success

In Answer to a Request

POPPY SEED

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók

Clear, with Light, Variable Winds

The Basket

In a Castle

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

The Exeter Road

The Shadow

The Forsaken

Late September

The Pike

The Blue Scarf

White and Green

Aubade

Music

A Lady

In a Garden

A Tulip Garden

Notes:

About the author

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

A drifting, April, twilight sky,

A wind which blew the puddles dry,

And slapped the river into waves

That ran and hid among the staves

Of an old wharf.  A watery light

Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white

Without the slightest tinge of gold,

The city shivered in the cold.

All day my thoughts had lain as dead,

Unborn and bursting in my head.

From time to time I wrote a word

Which lines and circles overscored.

My table seemed a graveyard, full

Of coffins waiting burial.

I seized these vile abortions, tore

Them into jagged bits, and swore

To be the dupe of hope no more.

Into the evening straight I went,

Starved of a day's accomplishment.

Unnoticing, I wandered where

The city gave a space for air,

And on the bridge's parapet

I leant, while pallidly there set

A dim, discouraged, worn-out sun.

Behind me, where the tramways run,

Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave,

When someone plucked me by the sleeve.

"Your pardon, Sir, but I should be

Most grateful could you lend to me

A carfare, I have lost my purse."

The voice was clear, concise, and terse.

I turned and met the quiet gaze

Of strange eyes flashing through the haze.

The man was old and slightly bent,

Under his cloak some instrument

Disarranged its stately line,

He rested on his cane a fine

And nervous hand, an almandine

Smouldered with dull-red flames, sanguine

It burned in twisted gold, upon

His finger.  Like some Spanish don,

Conferring favours even when

Asking an alms, he bowed again

And waited.  But my pockets proved

Empty, in vain I poked and shoved,

No hidden penny lurking there

Greeted my search.  "Sir, I declare

I have no money, pray forgive,

But let me take you where you live."

And so we plodded through the mire

Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.

I took no note of where we went,

His talk became the element

Wherein my being swam, content.

It flashed like rapiers in the night

Lit by uncertain candle-light,

When on some moon-forsaken sward

A quarrel dies upon a sword.

It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade,

And the noise in the air the broad words made

Was the cry of the wind at a window-pane

On an Autumn night of sobbing rain.

Then it would run like a steady stream

Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam,

Or lap the air like the lapping tide

Where a marble staircase lifts its wide

Green-spotted steps to a garden gate,

And a waning moon is sinking straight

Down to a black and ominous sea,

While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree.

I walked as though some opiate

Had stung and dulled my brain, a state

Acute and slumbrous.  It grew late.

We stopped, a house stood silent, dark.

The old man scratched a match, the spark

Lit up the keyhole of a door,

We entered straight upon a floor

White with finest powdered sand

Carefully sifted, one might stand

Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace

Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place.

From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom,

And a cricket's chirp filled all the room.

My host threw pine-cones on the fire

And crimson and scarlet glowed the pyre

Wrapped in the golden flame's desire.

The chamber opened like an eye,

As a half-melted cloud in a Summer sky

The soul of the house stood guessed, and shy

It peered at the stranger warily.

A little shop with its various ware

Spread on shelves with nicest care.

Pitchers, and jars, and jugs, and pots,

Pipkins, and mugs, and many lots

Of lacquered canisters, black and gold,

Like those in which Chinese tea is sold.

Chests, and puncheons, kegs, and flasks,

Goblets, chalices, firkins, and casks.

In a corner three ancient amphorae leaned

Against the wall, like ships careened.

There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware,

The carved, white figures fluttering there

Like leaves adrift upon the air.

Classic in touch, but emasculate,

The Greek soul grown effeminate.

The factory of Sevres had lent

Elegant boxes with ornament

Culled from gardens where fountains splashed

And golden carp in the shadows flashed,

Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads,

Which ladies threw as the last of fads.

Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt,

Hand on heart, and daintily spelt

Their love in flowers, brittle and bright,

Artificial and fragile, which told aright

The vows of an eighteenth-century knight.

The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs

Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs

Endlessly drank the foaming ale,

Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale.

The glancing light of the burning wood

Played over a group of jars which stood

On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky

Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry

To paint these porcelains with unknown hues

Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues,

Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen

Their colours are felt, but never seen.

Strange winged dragons writhe about

These vases, poisoned venoms spout,

Impregnate with old Chinese charms;

Sealed urns containing mortal harms,

They fill the mind with thoughts impure,

Pestilent drippings from the ure

Of vicious thinkings.  "Ah, I see,"

Said I, "you deal in pottery."

The old man turned and looked at me.

Shook his head gently.  "No," said he.

Then from under his cloak he took the thing

Which I had wondered to see him bring

Guarded so carefully from sight.

As he laid it down it flashed in the light,

A Toledo blade, with basket hilt,

Damascened with arabesques of gilt,

Or rather gold, and tempered so

It could cut a floating thread at a blow.

The old man smiled, "It has no sheath,

'Twas a little careless to have it beneath

My cloak, for a jostle to my arm

Would have resulted in serious harm.

But it was so fine, I could not wait,

So I brought it with me despite its state."

"An amateur of arms," I thought,

"Bringing home a prize which he has bought."

"You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?"

"Not in the way which you infer.

I need them in business, that is all."

And he pointed his finger at the wall.

Then I saw what I had not noticed before.

The walls were hung with at least five score

Of swords and daggers of every size

Which nations of militant men could devise.

Poisoned spears from tropic seas,

That natives, under banana trees,

Smear with the juice of some deadly snake.

Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make

And tip with feathers, orange and green,

A quivering death, in harlequin sheen.

High up, a fan of glancing steel

Was formed of claymores in a wheel.

Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees

Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these

Elbowed stilettos come from Spain,

Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name.

There were Samurai swords from old Japan,

And scimitars from Hindoostan,

While the blade of a Turkish yataghan

Made a waving streak of vitreous white

Upon the wall, in the firelight.

Foils with buttons broken or lost

Lay heaped on a chair, among them tossed

The boarding-pike of a privateer.

Against the chimney leaned a queer

Two-handed weapon, with edges dull

As though from hacking on a skull.

The rusted blood corroded it still.

My host took up a paper spill

From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl,

And lighted it at a burning coal.

At either end of the table, tall

Wax candles were placed, each in a small,

And slim, and burnished candlestick

Of pewter.  The old man lit each wick,

And the room leapt more obviously

Upon my mind, and I could see

What the flickering fire had hid from me.

Above the chimney's yawning throat,

Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote,

Was a mantelshelf of polished oak

Blackened with the pungent smoke

Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock

Of tarnished brass stood like a rock

In the midst of a heaving, turbulent sea

Of every sort of cutlery.

There lay knives sharpened to any use,

The keenest lancet, and the obtuse

And blunted pruning bill-hook; blades

Of razors, scalpels, shears; cascades

Of penknives, with handles of mother-of-pearl,

And scythes, and sickles, and scissors; a whirl

Of points and edges, and underneath

Shot the gleam of a saw with bristling teeth.

My head grew dizzy, I seemed to hear

A battle-cry from somewhere near,

The clash of arms, and the squeal of balls,

And the echoless thud when a dead man falls.

A smoky cloud had veiled the room,

Shot through with lurid glares; the gloom

Pounded with shouts and dying groans,

With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones.

Sabres and lances in streaks of light

Gleamed through the smoke, and at my right

A creese, like a licking serpent's tongue,

Glittered an instant, while it stung.

Streams, and points, and lines of fire!

The livid steel, which man's desire

Had forged and welded, burned white and cold.

Every blade which man could mould,

Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip,

Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip,

Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear,

Or slice, or hack, they all were there.

Nerveless and shaking, round and round,

I stared at the walls and at the ground,

Till the room spun like a whipping top,

And a stern voice in my ear said, "Stop!

I sell no tools for murderers here.

Of what are you thinking!  Please clear

Your mind of such imaginings.

Sit down.  I will tell you of these things."

He pushed me into a great chair

Of russet leather, poked a flare

Of tumbling flame, with the old long sword,

Up the chimney; but said no word.

Slowly he walked to a distant shelf,

And brought back a crock of finest delf.

He rested a moment a blue-veined hand

Upon the cover, then cut a band

Of paper, pasted neatly round,

Opened and poured.  A sliding sound

Came from beneath his old white hands,

And I saw a little heap of sands,

Black and smooth.  What could they be:

"Pepper," I thought.  He looked at me.

"What you see is poppy seed.

Lethean dreams for those in need."

He took up the grains with a gentle hand

And sifted them slowly like hour-glass sand.

On his old white finger the almandine

Shot out its rays, incarnadine.

"Visions for those too tired to sleep.

These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep.

No single soul in the world could dwell,

Without these poppy-seeds I sell."

For a moment he played with the shining stuff,

Passing it through his fingers.  Enough

At last, he poured it back into

The china jar of Holland blue,

Which he carefully carried to its place.

Then, with a smile on his aged face,

He drew up a chair to the open space

'Twixt table and chimney.  "Without preface,

Young man, I will say that what you see

Is not the puzzle you take it to be."

"But surely, Sir, there is something strange

In a shop with goods at so wide a range

Each from the other, as swords and seeds.

Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs."

"My neighbours," he said, and he stroked his chin,

"Live everywhere from here to Pekin.

But you are wrong, my sort of goods

Is but one thing in all its moods."

He took a shagreen letter case

From his pocket, and with charming grace

Offered me a printed card.

I read the legend, "Ephraim Bard.

Dealer in Words."  And that was all.

I stared at the letters, whimsical

Indeed, or was it merely a jest.

He answered my unasked request:

"All books are either dreams or swords,

You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

My firm is a very ancient house,

The entries on my books would rouse

Your wonder, perhaps incredulity.

I inherited from an ancestry

Stretching remotely back and far,

This business, and my clients are

As were those of my grandfather's days,

Writers of books, and poems, and plays.

My swords are tempered for every speech,

For fencing wit, or to carve a breach

Through old abuses the world condones.

In another room are my grindstones and hones,

For whetting razors and putting a point

On daggers, sometimes I even anoint

The blades with a subtle poison, so

A twofold result may follow the blow.

These are purchased by men who feel

The need of stabbing society's heel,

Which egotism has brought them to think

Is set on their necks.  I have foils to pink

An adversary to quaint reply,

And I have customers who buy

Scalpels with which to dissect the brains

And hearts of men.  Ultramundanes

Even demand some finer kinds

To open their own souls and minds.

But the other half of my business deals

With visions and fancies.  Under seals,

Sorted, and placed in vessels here,

I keep the seeds of an atmosphere.

Each jar contains a different kind

Of poppy seed.  From farthest Ind

Come the purple flowers, opium filled,

From which the weirdest myths are distilled;

My orient porcelains contain them all.

Those Lowestoft pitchers against the wall

Hold a lighter kind of bright conceit;

And those old Saxe vases, out of the heat

On that lowest shelf beside the door,

Have a sort of Ideal, "couleur d'or".

Every castle of the air

Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there

Are seeds for every romance, or light

Whiff of a dream for a summer night.

I supply to every want and taste."

'Twas slowly said, in no great haste

He seemed to push his wares, but I

Dumfounded listened.  By and by

A log on the fire broke in two.

He looked up quickly, "Sir, and you?"

I groped for something I should say;

Amazement held me numb.  "To-day

You sweated at a fruitless task."

He spoke for me, "What do you ask?

How can I serve you?"  "My kind host,

My penniless state was not a boast;

I have no money with me."  He smiled.

"Not for that money I beguiled

You here; you paid me in advance."

Again I felt as though a trance

Had dimmed my faculties.  Again

He spoke, and this time to explain.

"The money I demand is Life,

Your nervous force, your joy, your strife!"

What infamous proposal now

Was made me with so calm a brow?

Bursting through my lethargy,

Indignantly I hurled the cry:

"Is this a nightmare, or am I

Drunk with some infernal wine?

I am no Faust, and what is mine

Is what I call my soul!  Old Man!

Devil or Ghost!  Your hellish plan

Revolts me.  Let me go."  "My child,"

And the old tones were very mild,

"I have no wish to barter souls;

My traffic does not ask such tolls.

I am no devil; is there one?

Surely the age of fear is gone.

We live within a daylight world

Lit by the sun, where winds unfurled

Sweep clouds to scatter pattering rain,

And then blow back the sun again.

I sell my fancies, or my swords,

To those who care far more for words,

Ideas, of which they are the sign,

Than any other life-design.

Who buy of me must simply pay

Their whole existence quite away:

Their strength, their manhood, and their prime,

Their hours from morning till the time

When evening comes on tiptoe feet,

And losing life, think it complete;

Must miss what other men count being,

To gain the gift of deeper seeing;

Must spurn all ease, all hindering love,

All which could hold or bind; must prove

The farthest boundaries of thought,

And shun no end which these have brought;

Then die in satisfaction, knowing

That what was sown was worth the sowing.

I claim for all the goods I sell

That they will serve their purpose well,

And though you perish, they will live.

Full measure for your pay I give.

To-day you worked, you thought, in vain.

What since has happened is the train

Your toiling brought.  I spoke to you

For my share of the bargain, due."

"My life!  And is that all you crave

In pay?  What even childhood gave!

I have been dedicate from youth.

Before my God I speak the truth!"

Fatigue, excitement of the past

Few hours broke me down at last.

All day I had forgot to eat,

My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat.

I bowed my head and felt the storm

Plough shattering through my prostrate form.

The tearless sobs tore at my heart.

My host withdrew himself apart;

Busied among his crockery,

He paid no farther heed to me.

Exhausted, spent, I huddled there,

Within the arms of the old carved chair.

A long half-hour dragged away,

And then I heard a kind voice say,

"The day will soon be dawning, when

You must begin to work again.

Here are the things which you require."

By the fading light of the dying fire,

And by the guttering candle's flare,

I saw the old man standing there.

He handed me a packet, tied

With crimson tape, and sealed.  "Inside

Are seeds of many differing flowers,

To occupy your utmost powers

Of storied vision, and these swords

Are the finest which my shop affords.

Go home and use them; do not spare

Yourself; let that be all your care.

Whatever you have means to buy

Be very sure I can supply."

He slowly walked to the window, flung

It open, and in the grey air rung

The sound of distant matin bells.

I took my parcels.  Then, as tells

An ancient mumbling monk his beads,

I tried to thank for his courteous deeds

My strange old friend.  "Nay, do not talk,"

He urged me, "you have a long walk

Before you.  Good-by and Good-day!"

And gently sped upon my way

I stumbled out in the morning hush,

As down the empty street a flush

Ran level from the rising sun.

Another day was just begun.

SWORD BLADES

The Captured Goddess

Over the housetops,

Above the rotating chimney-pots,

I have seen a shiver of amethyst,

And blue and cinnamon have flickered

A moment,

At the far end of a dusty street.

Through sheeted rain

Has come a lustre of crimson,

And I have watched moonbeams

Hushed by a film of palest green.

It was her wings,

Goddess!

Who stepped over the clouds,

And laid her rainbow feathers

Aslant on the currents of the air.

I followed her for long,

With gazing eyes and stumbling feet.

I cared not where she led me,

My eyes were full of colours:

Saffrons, rubies, the yellows of beryls,

And the indigo-blue of quartz;

Flights of rose, layers of chrysoprase,

Points of orange, spirals of vermilion,

The spotted gold of tiger-lily petals,

The loud pink of bursting hydrangeas.

I followed,

And watched for the flashing of her wings.

In the city I found her,

The narrow-streeted city.

In the market-place I came upon her,

Bound and trembling.

Her fluted wings were fastened to her sides with cords,

She was naked and cold,

For that day the wind blew

Without sunshine.

Men chaffered for her,

They bargained in silver and gold,

In copper, in wheat,

And called their bids across the market-place.

The Goddess wept.

Hiding my face I fled,

And the grey wind hissed behind me,

Along the narrow streets.

The Precinct. Rochester

The tall yellow hollyhocks stand,

Still and straight,

With their round blossoms spread open,

In the quiet sunshine.

And still is the old Roman wall,

Rough with jagged bits of flint,

And jutting stones,

Old and cragged,

Quite still in its antiquity.

The pear-trees press their branches against it,

And feeling it warm and kindly,

The little pears ripen to yellow and red.

They hang heavy, bursting with juice,

Against the wall.

So old, so still!

The sky is still.

The clouds make no sound

As they slide away

Beyond the Cathedral Tower,

To the river,

And the sea.

It is very quiet,

Very sunny.

The myrtle flowers stretch themselves in the sunshine,

But make no sound.

The roses push their little tendrils up,

And climb higher and higher.

In spots they have climbed over the wall.

But they are very still,

They do not seem to move.

And the old wall carries them

Without effort, and quietly

Ripens and shields the vines and blossoms.

A bird in a plane-tree

Sings a few notes,

Cadenced and perfect

They weave into the silence.

The Cathedral bell knocks,

One, two, three, and again,

And then again.

It is a quiet sound,

Calling to prayer,

Hardly scattering the stillness,

Only making it close in more densely.

The gardener picks ripe gooseberries

For the Dean's supper to-night.

It is very quiet,

Very regulated and mellow.

But the wall is old,

It has known many days.

It is a Roman wall,

Left-over and forgotten.

Beyond the Cathedral Close

Yelp and mutter the discontents of people not mellow,

Not well-regulated.

People who care more for bread than for beauty,

Who would break the tombs of saints,

And give the painted windows of churches

To their children for toys.

People who say:

"They are dead, we live!

The world is for the living."

Fools!  It is always the dead who breed.

Crush the ripe fruit, and cast it aside,

Yet its seeds shall fructify,

And trees rise where your huts were standing.

But the little people are ignorant,

They chaffer, and swarm.

They gnaw like rats,

And the foundations of the Cathedral are honeycombed.

The Dean is in the Chapter House;

He is reading the architect's bill

For the completed restoration of the Cathedral.

He will have ripe gooseberries for supper,

And then he will walk up and down the path

By the wall,

And admire the snapdragons and dahlias,

Thinking how quiet and peaceful

The garden is.

The old wall will watch him,

Very quietly and patiently it will watch.

For the wall is old,

It is a Roman wall.

The Cyclists

Spread on the roadway,

With open-blown jackets,

Like black, soaring pinions,

They swoop down the hillside,

The Cyclists.

Seeming dark-plumaged

Birds, after carrion,

Careening and circling,

Over the dying

Of England.

She lies with her bosom

Beneath them, no longer

The Dominant Mother,

The Virile—but rotting

Before time.

The smell of her, tainted,

Has bitten their nostrils.

Exultant they hover,

And shadow the sun with

Foreboding.

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,

Of outworn, childish mysteries,

Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!

And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream

Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.

Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,

The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese

Dark-banded prints.  Carven cathedrals, on a sky

Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly

And sway like masts, against a shifting breeze.

Worm-eaten pages, clasped in old brown vellum, shrunk

From over-handling, by some anxious monk.

Or Virgin's Hours, bright with gold and graven

With flowers, and rare birds, and all the Saints of Heaven,

And Noah's ark stuck on Ararat, when all the world had sunk.

They soothe us like a song, heard in a garden, sung

By youthful minstrels, on the moonlight flung

In cadences and falls, to ease a queen,

Widowed and childless, cowering in a screen

Of myrtles, whose life hangs with all its threads unstrung.

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

They have watered the street,

It shines in the glare of lamps,

Cold, white lamps,

And lies

Like a slow-moving river,

Barred with silver and black.

Cabs go down it,

One,

And then another.

Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.

Tramps doze on the window-ledges,

Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.

The city is squalid and sinister,

With the silver-barred street in the midst,

Slow-moving,

A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,

The moon cuts,

Clear and round,

Through the plum-coloured night.

She cannot light the city;

It is too bright.

It has white lamps,

And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.

She is thin and lustreless,

But I love her.

I know the moon,

And this is an alien city.

Astigmatism

To Ezra Pound

With much friendship and admiration and some differences of opinion

The Poet took his walking-stick

Of fine and polished ebony.

Set in the close-grained wood

Were quaint devices;

Patterns in ambers,

And in the clouded green of jades.

The top was of smooth, yellow ivory,

And a tassel of tarnished gold

Hung by a faded cord from a hole

Pierced in the hard wood,

Circled with silver.

For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane.

His wealth had gone to enrich it,

His experiences to pattern it,

His labour to fashion and burnish it.

To him it was perfect,

A work of art and a weapon,

A delight and a defence.

The Poet took his walking-stick

And walked abroad.

Peace be with you, Brother.

The Poet came to a meadow.

Sifted through the grass were daisies,

Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun.

The Poet struck them with his cane.

The little heads flew off, and they lay

Dying, open-mouthed and wondering,

On the hard ground.

"They are useless.  They are not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.  Go your ways.

The Poet came to a stream.

Purple and blue flags waded in the water;

In among them hopped the speckled frogs;

The wind slid through them, rustling.

The Poet lifted his cane,

And the iris heads fell into the water.

They floated away, torn and drowning.

"Wretched flowers," said the Poet,

"They are not roses."

Peace be with you, Brother.  It is your affair.

The Poet came to a garden.

Dahlias ripened against a wall,

Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature,

And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour

With the red and gold of its blossoms.

Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets.

The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias,

And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground.

Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems.

Red and gold they lay scattered,

Red and gold, as on a battle field;

Red and gold, prone and dying.

"They were not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.

But behind you is destruction, and waste places.

The Poet came home at evening,

And in the candle-light

He wiped and polished his cane.

The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers,

And made the jades undulate like green pools.

It played along the bright ebony,

And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory.

But these things were dead,

Only the candle-light made them seem to move.

"It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.  You have chosen your part.

The Coal Picker

He perches in the slime, inert,

Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.

The oil upon the puddles dries

To colours like a peacock's eyes,

And half-submerged tomato-cans

Shine scaly, as leviathans

Oozily crawling through the mud.

The ground is here and there bestud

With lumps of only part-burned coal.

His duty is to glean the whole,

To pick them from the filth, each one,

To hoard them for the hidden sun

Which glows within each fiery core

And waits to be made free once more.

Their sharp and glistening edges cut

His stiffened fingers.  Through the smut

Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.

Wet through and shivering he kneels

And digs the slippery coals; like eels

They slide about.  His force all spent,

He counts his small accomplishment.

A half-a-dozen clinker-coals

Which still have fire in their souls.

Fire!  And in his thought there burns

The topaz fire of votive urns.

He sees it fling from hill to hill,

And still consumed, is burning still.

Higher and higher leaps the flame,

The smoke an ever-shifting frame.

He sees a Spanish Castle old,

With silver steps and paths of gold.

From myrtle bowers comes the plash

Of fountains, and the emerald flash

Of parrots in the orange trees,

Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.

He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke

Bears visions, that his master-stroke

Is out of dirt and misery

To light the fire of poesy.

He sees the glory, yet he knows

That others cannot see his shows.

To them his smoke is sightless, black,

His votive vessels but a pack

Of old discarded shards, his fire

A peddler's; still to him the pyre

Is incensed, an enduring goal!

He sighs and grubs another coal.

Storm-Racked

How should I sing when buffeting salt waves

And stung with bitter surges, in whose might

I toss, a cockleshell?  The dreadful night

Marshals its undefeated dark and raves

In brutal madness, reeling over graves

Of vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight,

Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish sprite

Who haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves.

No parting cloud reveals a watery star,

My cries are washed away upon the wind,

My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar,

My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind.

But painted on the sky great visions burn,

My voice, oblation from a shattered urn!

Convalescence

From out the dragging vastness of the sea,

Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands,

He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands

One moment, white and dripping, silently,

Cut like a cameo in lazuli,

Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands

Prone in the jeering water, and his hands

Clutch for support where no support can be.

So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,

He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow

And sandflies dance their little lives away.

The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch

The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,

And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.

Patience

Be patient with you?

When the stooping sky

Leans down upon the hills

And tenderly, as one who soothing stills

An anguish, gathers earth to lie

Embraced and girdled.  Do the sun-filled men

Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?

When the snow-girt earth

Cracks to let through a spurt

Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt

A snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth

To eyes frost-hardened, and do weary men

Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?

When pain's iron bars

Their rivets tighten, stern

To bend and break their victims; as they turn,

Hopeless, there stand the purple jars

Of night to spill oblivion.  Do these men

Feel patience then?

Be patient with you?

You!  My sun and moon!

My basketful of flowers!

My money-bag of shining dreams!  My hours,

Windless and still, of afternoon!

You are my world and I your citizen.

What meaning can have patience then?

Apology

Be not angry with me that I bear

Your colours everywhere,

All through each crowded street,

And meet

The wonder-light in every eye,

As I go by.

Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,

Blinded by rainbow haze,

The stuff of happiness,

No less,

Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds

Of peacock golds.

Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way

Flushes beneath its gray.

My steps fall ringed with light,

So bright,

It seems a myriad suns are strown

About the town.

Around me is the sound of steepled bells,

And rich perfumed smells

Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,

And shroud

Me from close contact with the world.

I dwell impearled.

You blazon me with jewelled insignia.

A flaming nebula

Rims in my life.  And yet

You set

The word upon me, unconfessed

To go unguessed.

A Petition

I pray to be the tool which to your hand

Long use has shaped and moulded till it be

Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,

You take it for its service.  I demand

To be forgotten in the woven strand

Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry

Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie

A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.

I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,

The railing to the stairway of the clouds,

To guard your steps securely up, where streams

A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds

Of pointed stars.  Remember not whereby

You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.

A Blockhead

Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,

Unseparated atoms, and I must

Sort them apart and live them.  Sifted dust

Covers the formless heap.  Reprieves, delays,

There are none, ever.  As a monk who prays

The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust

Each tasteless particle aside, and just

Begin again the task which never stays.

And I have known a glory of great suns,

When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!

Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,

And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!

Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand

Threw down the cup, and did not understand.

Stupidity

Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch

I broke and bruised your rose.

I hardly could suppose

It were a thing so fragile that my clutch

Could kill it, thus.

It stood so proudly up upon its stem,

I knew no thought of fear,

And coming very near

Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,

Tearing it down.

Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,

The crimson petals, all

Outspread about my fall.

They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone

Of memory.

And with my words I carve a little jar

To keep their scented dust,

Which, opening, you must

Breathe to your soul, and, breathing, know me far

More grieved than you.

Irony

An arid daylight shines along the beach

Dried to a grey monotony of tone,

And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon

The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach

Sparkles a wet, reviving sea.  Here bleach

The skeletons of fishes, every bone

Polished and stark, like traceries of stone,

The joints and knuckles hardened each to each.

And they are dead while waiting for the sea,

The moon-pursuing sea, to come again.

Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze.

Only the shells and stones can wait to be

Washed bright.  For living things, who suffer pain,

May not endure till time can bring them ease.

Happiness

Happiness, to some, elation;

Is, to others, mere stagnation.

Days of passive somnolence,

At its wildest, indolence.

Hours of empty quietness,

No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,

Effervescent, superfine.

Full of tang and fiery pleasure,

Far too hot to leave me leisure

For a single thought beyond it.

Drunk!  Forgetful!  This the bond:  it

Means to give one's soul to gain

Life's quintessence.  Even pain

Pricks to livelier living, then

Wakes the nerves to laugh again,

Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.

Although we must die to-morrow,

Losing every thought but this;

Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness:  We rarely feel it.

I would buy it, beg it, steal it,

Pay in coins of dripping blood

For this one transcendent good.

The Last Quarter of the Moon

How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,

A spatter of rust on its polished steel!

The seasons reel

Like a goaded wheel.

Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.

The night is sliding towards the dawn,

And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.

A torn moon flees

Through the hemlock trees,

The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.

Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing

A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.

Like dogs unleashed

After a beast,

They stream on the sky, an outflung string.

A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,

Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,

And the fierce unrests

I keep as guests

Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.

Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt

My labouring mind, I have fought and failed.

I have not quailed,

I was all unmailed

And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt.

The moon drops into the silver day

As waking out of her swoon she comes.

I hear the drums

Of millenniums

Beating the mornings I still must stay.

The years I must watch go in and out,

While I build with water, and dig in air,

And the trumpets blare

Hollow despair,

The shuddering trumpets of utter rout.

An atom tossed in a chaos made

Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam.

Whence have I come?

What would be home?

I hear no answer.  I am afraid!

I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame.

Pushed into nothingness by a breath,

And quench in a wreath

Of engulfing death

This fight for a God, or this devil's game.

A Tale of Starvation

There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,

And a disagreeable man was he.

He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,

And he cursed eternally.

He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,

And he blasted the winds in the sky.

He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,

And he raved at the birds as they fly.

His oaths were many, and his range was wide,

He swore in fancy ways;

But his meaning was plain:  that no created thing

Was other than a hurt to his gaze.

He dwelt all alone, underneath a leaning hill,

And windows toward the hill there were none,

And on the other side they were white-washed thick,

To keep out every spark of the sun.

When he went to market he walked all the way

Blaspheming at the path he trod.

He cursed at those he bought of, and swore at those he sold to,

By all the names he knew of God.

For his heart was soured in his weary old hide,

And his hopes had curdled in his breast.

His friend had been untrue, and his love had thrown him over

For the chinking money-bags she liked best.

The rats had devoured the contents of his grain-bin,

The deer had trampled on his corn,

His brook had shrivelled in a summer drought,

And his sheep had died unshorn.

His hens wouldn't lay, and his cow broke loose,

And his old horse perished of a colic.

In the loft his wheat-bags were nibbled into holes

By little, glutton mice on a frolic.

So he slowly lost all he ever had,

And the blood in his body dried.

Shrunken and mean he still lived on,

And cursed that future which had lied.

One day he was digging, a spade or two,

As his aching back could lift,

When he saw something glisten at the bottom of the trench,

And to get it out he made great shift.

So he dug, and he delved, with care and pain,

And the veins in his forehead stood taut.

At the end of an hour, when every bone cracked,

He gathered up what he had sought.

A dim old vase of crusted glass,

Prismed while it lay buried deep.

Shifting reds and greens, like a pigeon's neck,

At the touch of the sun began to leap.

It was dull in the tree-shade, but glowing in the light;

Flashing like an opal-stone,

Carved into a flagon; and the colours glanced and ran,

Where at first there had seemed to be none.

It had handles on each side to bear it up,

And a belly for the gurgling wine.

Its neck was slender, and its mouth was wide,

And its lip was curled and fine.

The old man saw it in the sun's bright stare

And the colours started up through the crust,

And he who had cursed at the yellow sun

Held the flask to it and wiped away the dust.

And he bore the flask to the brightest spot,

Where the shadow of the hill fell clear;

And he turned the flask, and he looked at the flask,

And the sun shone without his sneer.

Then he carried it home, and put it on a shelf,

But it was only grey in the gloom.

So he fetched a pail, and a bit of cloth,

And he went outside with a broom.

And he washed his windows just to let the sun

Lie upon his new-found vase;

And when evening came, he moved it down

And put it on a table near the place

Where a candle fluttered in a draught from the door.

The old man forgot to swear,

Watching its shadow grown a mammoth size,

Dancing in the kitchen there.

He forgot to revile the sun next morning

When he found his vase afire in its light.

And he carried it out of the house that day,

And kept it close beside him until night.

And so it happened from day to day.

The old man fed his life

On the beauty of his vase, on its perfect shape.

And his soul forgot its former strife.

And the village-folk came and begged to see

The flagon which was dug from the ground.

And the old man never thought of an oath, in his joy

At showing what he had found.

One day the master of the village school

Passed him as he stooped at toil,

Hoeing for a bean-row, and at his side

Was the vase, on the turned-up soil.

"My friend," said the schoolmaster, pompous and kind,

"That's a valuable thing you have there,

But it might get broken out of doors,

It should meet with the utmost care.

What are you doing with it out here?"

"Why, Sir," said the poor old man,

"I like to have it about, do you see?

To be with it all I can."

"You will smash it," said the schoolmaster, sternly right,

"Mark my words and see!"

And he walked away, while the old man looked

At his treasure despondingly.

Then he smiled to himself, for it was his!

He had toiled for it, and now he cared.

Yes! loved its shape, and its subtle, swift hues,

Which his own hard work had bared.

He would carry it round with him everywhere,

As it gave him joy to do.

A fragile vase should not stand in a bean-row!

Who would dare to say so?  Who?

Then his heart was rested, and his fears gave way,

And he bent to his hoe again....

A clod rolled down, and his foot slipped back,

And he lurched with a cry of pain.

For the blade of the hoe crashed into glass,

And the vase fell to iridescent sherds.

The old man's body heaved with slow, dry sobs.

He did not curse, he had no words.

He gathered the fragments, one by one,

And his fingers were cut and torn.

Then he made a hole in the very place

Whence the beautiful vase had been borne.

He covered the hole, and he patted it down,

Then he hobbled to his house and shut the door.

He tore up his coat and nailed it at the windows

That no beam of light should cross the floor.

He sat down in front of the empty hearth,

And he neither ate nor drank.

In three days they found him, dead and cold,

And they said:  "What a queer old crank!"

The Foreigner

Have at you, you Devils!

My back's to this tree,

For you're nothing so nice

That the hind-side of me

Would escape your assault.

Come on now, all three!

Here's a dandified gentleman,

Rapier at point,

And a wrist which whirls round

Like a circular joint.

A spatter of blood, man!

That's just to anoint

And make supple your limbs.

'Tis a pity the silk

Of your waistcoat is stained.

Why!  Your heart's full of milk,

And so full, it spills over!

I'm not of your ilk.

You said so, and laughed

At my old-fashioned hose,

At the cut of my hair,

At the length of my nose.

To carve it to pattern

I think you propose.

Your pardon, young Sir,

But my nose and my sword

Are proving themselves

In quite perfect accord.

I grieve to have spotted

Your shirt.  On my word!

And hullo!  You Bully!

That blade's not a stick

To slash right and left,

And my skull is too thick

To be cleft with such cuffs

Of a sword.  Now a lick

Down the side of your face.

What a pretty, red line!

Tell the taverns that scar

Was an honour.  Don't whine

That a stranger has marked you.

. . . . .

The tree's there, You Swine!

Did you think to get in

At the back, while your friends

Made a little diversion

In front?  So it ends,

With your sword clattering down

On the ground.  'Tis amends

I make for your courteous

Reception of me,

A foreigner, landed

From over the sea.

Your welcome was fervent

I think you'll agree.

My shoes are not buckled

With gold, nor my hair

Oiled and scented, my jacket's

Not satin, I wear

Corded breeches, wide hats,

And I make people stare!

So I do, but my heart

Is the heart of a man,

And my thoughts cannot twirl

In the limited span

'Twixt my head and my heels,

As some other men's can.

I have business more strange

Than the shape of my boots,

And my interests range

From the sky, to the roots

Of this dung-hill you live in,

You half-rotted shoots

Of a mouldering tree!

Here's at you, once more.

You Apes!  You Jack-fools!

You can show me the door,

And jeer at my ways,

But you're pinked to the core.

And before I have done,

I will prick my name in

With the front of my steel,

And your lily-white skin

Shall be printed with me.

For I've come here to win!

Absence

My cup is empty to-night,

Cold and dry are its sides,

Chilled by the wind from the open window.

Empty and void, it sparkles white in the moonlight.

The room is filled with the strange scent

Of wistaria blossoms.

They sway in the moon's radiance

And tap against the wall.

But the cup of my heart is still,

And cold, and empty.

When you come, it brims

Red and trembling with blood,

Heart's blood for your drinking;

To fill your mouth with love

And the bitter-sweet taste of a soul.

A Gift

See!  I give myself to you, Beloved!

My words are little jars

For you to take and put upon a shelf.

Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,

And they have many pleasant colours and lustres

To recommend them.

Also the scent from them fills the room

With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,

You will have the whole of me,

But I shall be dead.

The Bungler

You glow in my heart

Like the flames of uncounted candles.

But when I go to warm my hands,

My clumsiness overturns the light,

And then I stumble

Against the tables and chairs.

Fool's Money Bags

Outside the long window,

With his head on the stone sill,

The dog is lying,

Gazing at his Beloved.

His eyes are wet and urgent,

And his body is taut and shaking.

It is cold on the terrace;

A pale wind licks along the stone slabs,

But the dog gazes through the glass

And is content.

The Beloved is writing a letter.

Occasionally she speaks to the dog,

But she is thinking of her writing.

Does she, too, give her devotion to one

Not worthy?

Miscast I

I have whetted my brain until it is like a Damascus blade,

So keen that it nicks off the floating fringes of passers-by,

So sharp that the air would turn its edge

Were it to be twisted in flight.

Licking passions have bitten their arabesques into it,

And the mark of them lies, in and out,

Worm-like,

With the beauty of corroded copper patterning white steel.

My brain is curved like a scimitar,

And sighs at its cutting

Like a sickle mowing grass.

But of what use is all this to me!

I, who am set to crack stones

In a country lane!

Miscast II

My heart is like a cleft pomegranate

Bleeding crimson seeds

And dripping them on the ground.

My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full,

And its seeds are bursting from it.

But how is this other than a torment to me!

I, who am shut up, with broken crockery,

In a dark closet!

Anticipation

I have been temperate always,

But I am like to be very drunk

With your coming.

There have been times

I feared to walk down the street

Lest I should reel with the wine of you,

And jerk against my neighbours

As they go by.

I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,

But my brain is noisy

With the clash and gurgle of filling wine-cups.

Vintage

I will mix me a drink of stars,—

Large stars with polychrome needles,

Small stars jetting maroon and crimson,

Cool, quiet, green stars.

I will tear them out of the sky,

And squeeze them over an old silver cup,

And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it,

So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice.

It will lap and scratch

As I swallow it down;

And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire,

Coiling and twisting in my belly.

His snortings will rise to my head,

And I shall be hot, and laugh,

Forgetting that I have ever known a woman.

The Tree of Scarlet Berries

The rain gullies the garden paths

And tinkles on the broad sides of grass blades.

A tree, at the end of my arm, is hazy with mist.

Even so, I can see that it has red berries,

A scarlet fruit,

Filmed over with moisture.

It seems as though the rain,

Dripping from it,

Should be tinged with colour.

I desire the berries,

But, in the mist, I only scratch my hand on the thorns.

Probably, too, they are bitter.

Obligation

Hold your apron wide

That I may pour my gifts into it,

So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them

From falling to the ground.

I would pour them upon you

And cover you,

For greatly do I feel this need

Of giving you something,

Even these poor things.

Dearest of my Heart!

The Taxi

When I go away from you

The world beats dead

Like a slackened drum.

I call out for you against the jutted stars

And shout into the ridges of the wind.

Streets coming fast,

One after the other,

Wedge you away from me,

And the lamps of the city prick my eyes

So that I can no longer see your face.

Why should I leave you,

To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

The Giver of Stars

Hold your soul open for my welcoming.

Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me

With its clear and rippled coolness,

That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,

Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.

Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,

That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,

The life and joy of tongues of flame,

And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,

I may rouse the blear-eyed world,

And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.

The Temple

Between us leapt a gold and scarlet flame.

Into the hollow of the cupped, arched blue

Of Heaven it rose.  Its flickering tongues up-drew

And vanished in the sunshine.  How it came

We guessed not, nor what thing could be its name.

From each to each had sprung those sparks which flew

Together into fire.  But we knew

The winds would slap and quench it in their game.

And so we graved and fashioned marble blocks

To treasure it, and placed them round about.

With pillared porticos we wreathed the whole,

And roofed it with bright bronze.  Behind carved locks

Flowered the tall and sheltered flame.  Without,

The baffled winds thrust at a column's bole.

Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success

Beneath this sod lie the remains

Of one who died of growing pains.

In Answer to a Request

You ask me for a sonnet.  Ah, my Dear,

Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon?

Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June

And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere?

For your sake, I would go and seek the year,

Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune,

Blown sands of drifted hours, which the moon

Streaks with a ghostly finger, and her sneer

Pulls at my lengthening shadow.  Yes, 'tis that!

My shadow stretches forward, and the ground

Is dark in front because the light's behind.

It is grotesque, with such a funny hat,

In watching it and walking I have found

More than enough to occupy my mind.

I cannot turn, the light would make me blind.

POPPY SEED

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

1

A yellow band of light upon the street

Pours from an open door, and makes a wide

Pathway of bright gold across a sheet

Of calm and liquid moonshine.  From inside

Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch

Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth,

The clip of tankards on a table top,

And stir of booted heels.  Against the patch

Of candle-light a shadow falls, its girth

Proclaims the host himself, and master of his shop.

2

This is the tavern of one Hilverdink,

Jan Hilverdink, whose wines are much esteemed.

Within his cellar men can have to drink

The rarest cordials old monks ever schemed

To coax from pulpy grapes, and with nice art

Improve and spice their virgin juiciness.

Here froths the amber beer of many a brew,

Crowning each pewter tankard with as smart

A cap as ever in his wantonness

Winter set glittering on top of an old yew.

3

Tall candles stand upon the table, where

Are twisted glasses, ruby-sparked with wine,

Clarets and ports.  Those topaz bumpers were

Drained from slim, long-necked bottles of the Rhine.

The centre of the board is piled with pipes,

Slender and clean, the still unbaptized clay

Awaits its burning fate.  Behind, the vault

Stretches from dim to dark, a groping way

Bordered by casks and puncheons, whose brass stripes

And bands gleam dully still, beyond the gay tumult.

4

"For good old Master Hilverdink, a toast!"

Clamoured a youth with tassels on his boots.

"Bring out your oldest brandy for a boast,

From that small barrel in the very roots

Of your deep cellar, man.  Why here is Max!

Ho!  Welcome, Max, you're scarcely here in time.

We want to drink to old Jan's luck, and smoke

His best tobacco for a grand climax.

Here, Jan, a paper, fragrant as crushed thyme,

We'll have the best to wish you luck, or may we choke!"

5

Max Breuck unclasped his broadcloth cloak, and sat.

"Well thought of, Franz; here's luck to Mynheer Jan."

The host set down a jar; then to a vat

Lost in the distance of his cellar, ran.

Max took a pipe as graceful as the stem

Of some long tulip, crammed it full, and drew

The pungent smoke deep to his grateful lung.

It curled all blue throughout the cave and flew

Into the silver night.  At once there flung

Into the crowded shop a boy, who cried to them:

6

"Oh, sirs, is there some learned lawyer here,

Some advocate, or all-wise counsellor?

My master sent me to inquire where

Such men do mostly be, but every door

Was shut and barred, for late has grown the hour.

I pray you tell me where I may now find

One versed in law, the matter will not wait."

"I am a lawyer, boy," said Max, "my mind

Is not locked to my business, though 'tis late.

I shall be glad to serve what way is in my power.

7

Then once more, cloaked and ready, he set out,

Tripping the footsteps of the eager boy

Along the dappled cobbles, while the rout

Within the tavern jeered at his employ.

Through new-burst elm leaves filtered the white moon,

Who peered and splashed between the twinkling boughs,

Flooded the open spaces, and took flight

Before tall, serried houses in platoon,

Guarded by shadows.  Past the Custom House

They took their hurried way in the Spring-scented night.

8

Before a door which fronted a canal

The boy halted.  A dim tree-shaded spot.

The water lapped the stones in musical

And rhythmic tappings, and a galliot

Slumbered at anchor with no light aboard.

The boy knocked twice, and steps approached.  A flame

Winked through the keyhole, then a key was turned,

And through the open door Max went toward

Another door, whence sound of voices came.

He entered a large room where candelabra burned.

9

An aged man in quilted dressing gown

Rose up to greet him.  "Sir," said Max, "you sent

Your messenger to seek throughout the town

A lawyer.  I have small accomplishment,

But I am at your service, and my name

Is Max Breuck, Counsellor, at your command."

"Mynheer," replied the aged man, "obliged

Am I, and count myself much privileged.

I am Cornelius Kurler, and my fame

Is better known on distant oceans than on land.

10

My ship has tasted water in strange seas,

And bartered goods at still uncharted isles.

She's oft coquetted with a tropic breeze,

And sheered off hurricanes with jaunty smiles."

"Tush, Kurler," here broke in the other man,

"Enough of poetry, draw the deed and sign."

The old man seemed to wizen at the voice,

"My good friend, Grootver,—" he at once began.

"No introductions, let us have some wine,

And business, now that you at last have made your choice."

11

A harsh and disagreeable man he proved to be,

This Grootver, with no single kindly thought.

Kurler explained, his old hands nervously

Twisting his beard.  His vessel he had bought

From Grootver.  He had thought to soon repay

The ducats borrowed, but an adverse wind

Had so delayed him that his cargo brought

But half its proper price, the very day

He came to port he stepped ashore to find

The market glutted and his counted profits naught.

12

Little by little Max made out the way

That Grootver pressed that poor harassed old man.

His money he must have, too long delay

Had turned the usurer to a ruffian.

"But let me take my ship, with many bales

Of cotton stuffs dyed crimson, green, and blue,

Cunningly patterned, made to suit the taste

Of mandarin's ladies; when my battered sails

Open for home, such stores will I bring you

That all your former ventures will be counted waste.

13

Such light and foamy silks, like crinkled cream,

And indigo more blue than sun-whipped seas,

Spices and fragrant trees, a massive beam

Of sandalwood, and pungent China teas,

Tobacco, coffee!"  Grootver only laughed.

Max heard it all, and worse than all he heard

The deed to which the sailor gave his word.

He shivered, 'twas as if the villain gaffed

The old man with a boat-hook; bleeding, spent,

He begged for life nor knew at all the road he went.

14

For Kurler had a daughter, young and gay,

Carefully reared and shielded, rarely seen.

But on one black and most unfriendly day

Grootver had caught her as she passed between

The kitchen and the garden.  She had run

In fear of him, his evil leering eye,

And when he came she, bolted in her room,

Refused to show, though gave no reason why.

The spinning of her future had begun,

On quiet nights she heard the whirring of her doom.

15

Max mended an old goosequill by the fire,

Loathing his work, but seeing no thing to do.

He felt his hands were building up the pyre

To burn two souls, and seized with vertigo

He staggered to his chair.  Before him lay

White paper still unspotted by a crime.

"Now, young man, write," said Grootver in his ear.

"`If in two years my vessel should yet stay

From Amsterdam, I give Grootver, sometime

A friend, my daughter for his lawful wife.'  Now swear."

16

And Kurler swore, a palsied, tottering sound,

And traced his name, a shaking, wandering line.

Then dazed he sat there, speechless from his wound.

Grootver got up:  "Fair voyage, the brigantine!"

He shuffled from the room, and left the house.

His footsteps wore to silence down the street.

At last the aged man began to rouse.

With help he once more gained his trembling feet.

"My daughter, Mynheer Breuck, is friendless now.

Will you watch over her?  I ask a solemn vow."

17

Max laid his hand upon the old man's arm,

"Before God, sir, I vow, when you are gone,

So to protect your daughter from all harm

As one man may."  Thus sorrowful, forlorn,

The situation to Max Breuck appeared,

He gave his promise almost without thought,

Nor looked to see a difficulty.  "Bred

Gently to watch a mother left alone;

Bound by a dying father's wish, who feared

The world's accustomed harshness when he should be dead;

18

Such was my case from youth, Mynheer Kurler.

Last Winter she died also, and my days

Are passed in work, lest I should grieve for her,

And undo habits used to earn her praise.

My leisure I will gladly give to see

Your household and your daughter prosperous."

The sailor said his thanks, but turned away.

He could not brook that his humility,

So little wonted, and so tremulous,

Should first before a stranger make such great display.

19

"Come here to-morrow as the bells ring noon,

I sail at the full sea, my daughter then

I will make known to you.  'Twill be a boon

If after I have bid good-by, and when

Her eyeballs scorch with watching me depart,

You bring her home again.  She lives with one

Old serving-woman, who has brought her up.

But that is no friend for so free a heart.

No head to match her questions.  It is done.

And I must sail away to come and brim her cup.

20

My ship's the fastest that owns Amsterdam

As home, so not a letter can you send.

I shall be back, before to where I am

Another ship could reach.  Now your stipend—"

Quickly Breuck interposed.  "When you once more

Tread on the stones which pave our streets.—Good night!

To-morrow I will be, at stroke of noon,

At the great wharf."  Then hurrying, in spite

Of cake and wine the old man pressed upon

Him ere he went, he took his leave and shut the door.

21

'Twas noon in Amsterdam, the day was clear,

And sunshine tipped the pointed roofs with gold.

The brown canals ran liquid bronze, for here

The sun sank deep into the waters cold.

And every clock and belfry in the town

Hammered, and struck, and rang.  Such peals of bells,

To shake the sunny morning into life,

And to proclaim the middle, and the crown,

Of this most sparkling daytime!  The crowd swells,

Laughing and pushing toward the quays in friendly strife.

22

The "Horn of Fortune" sails away to-day.

At highest tide she lets her anchor go,

And starts for China.  Saucy popinjay!

Giddy in freshest paint she curtseys low,

And beckons to her boats to let her start.

Blue is the ocean, with a flashing breeze.

The shining waves are quick to take her part.

They push and spatter her.  Her sails are loose,

Her tackles hanging, waiting men to seize

And haul them taut, with chanty-singing, as they choose.

23

At the great wharf's edge Mynheer Kurler stands,

And by his side, his daughter, young Christine.

Max Breuck is there, his hat held in his hands,

Bowing before them both.  The brigantine

Bounces impatient at the long delay,

Curvets and jumps, a cable's length from shore.

A heavy galliot unloads on the walls

Round, yellow cheeses, like gold cannon balls

Stacked on the stones in pyramids.  Once more

Kurler has kissed Christine, and now he is away.

24

Christine stood rigid like a frozen stone,

Her hands wrung pale in effort at control.

Max moved aside and let her be alone,

For grief exacts each penny of its toll.

The dancing boat tossed on the glinting sea.

A sun-path swallowed it in flaming light,

Then, shrunk a cockleshell, it came again

Upon the other side.  Now on the lee

It took the "Horn of Fortune".  Straining sight

Could see it hauled aboard, men pulling on the crane.

25

Then up above the eager brigantine,

Along her slender masts, the sails took flight,

Were sheeted home, and ropes were coiled.  The shine

Of the wet anchor, when its heavy weight

Rose splashing to the deck.  These things they saw,

Christine and Max, upon the crowded quay.

They saw the sails grow white, then blue in shade,

The ship had turned, caught in a windy flaw

She glided imperceptibly away,

Drew farther off and in the bright sky seemed to fade.

26

Home, through the emptying streets, Max took Christine,

Who would have hid her sorrow from his gaze.

Before the iron gateway, clasped between

Each garden wall, he stopped.  She, in amaze,

Asked, "Do you enter not then, Mynheer Breuck?

My father told me of your courtesy.

Since I am now your charge, 'tis meet for me

To show such hospitality as maiden may,

Without disdaining rules must not be broke.

Katrina will have coffee, and she bakes today."

27

She straight unhasped the tall, beflowered gate.

Curled into tendrils, twisted into cones

Of leaves and roses, iron infoliate,

It guards the pleasance, and its stiffened bones

Are budded with much peering at the rows,

And beds, and arbours, which it keeps inside.

Max started at the beauty, at the glare

Of tints.  At either end was set a wide

Path strewn with fine, red gravel, and such shows

Of tulips in their splendour flaunted everywhere!

28

From side to side, midway each path, there ran

A longer one which cut the space in two.

And, like a tunnel some magician

Has wrought in twinkling green, an alley grew,

Pleached thick and walled with apple trees; their flowers

Incensed the garden, and when Autumn came

The plump and heavy apples crowding stood

And tapped against the arbour.  Then the dame

Katrina shook them down, in pelting showers

They plunged to earth, and died transformed to sugared food.

29

Against the high, encircling walls were grapes,

Nailed close to feel the baking of the sun

From glowing bricks.  Their microscopic shapes

Half hidden by serrated leaves.  And one

Old cherry tossed its branches near the door.

Bordered along the wall, in beds between,

Flickering, streaming, nodding in the air,

The pride of all the garden, there were more

Tulips than Max had ever dreamed or seen.

They jostled, mobbed, and danced.  Max stood at helpless stare.

30

"Within the arbour, Mynheer Breuck, I'll bring

Coffee and cakes, a pipe, and Father's best

Tobacco, brought from countries harbouring

Dawn's earliest footstep.  Wait."  With girlish zest

To please her guest she flew.  A moment more

She came again, with her old nurse behind.

Then, sitting on the bench and knitting fast,

She talked as someone with a noble store

Of hidden fancies, blown upon the wind,

Eager to flutter forth and leave their silent past.

31

The little apple leaves above their heads

Let fall a quivering sunshine.  Quiet, cool,

In blossomed boughs they sat.  Beyond, the beds

Of tulips blazed, a proper vestibule

And antechamber to the rainbow.  Dyes

Of prismed richness:  Carmine.  Madder.  Blues

Tinging dark browns to purple.  Silvers flushed

To amethyst and tinct with gold.  Round eyes

Of scarlet, spotting tender saffron hues.

Violets sunk to blacks, and reds in orange crushed.

32

Of every pattern and in every shade.

Nacreous, iridescent, mottled, checked.

Some purest sulphur-yellow, others made

An ivory-white with disks of copper flecked.

Sprinkled and striped, tasselled, or keenest edged.

Striated, powdered, freckled, long or short.

They bloomed, and seemed strange wonder-moths new-fledged,

Born of the spectrum wedded to a flame.

The shade within the arbour made a port

To o'ertaxed eyes, its still, green twilight rest became.

33

Her knitting-needles clicked and Christine talked,

This child matured to woman unaware,

The first time left alone.  Now dreams once balked

Found utterance.  Max thought her very fair.

Beneath her cap her ornaments shone gold,

And purest gold they were.  Kurler was rich

And heedful.  Her old maiden aunt had died

Whose darling care she was.  Now, growing bold,

She asked, had Max a sister?  Dropped a stitch

At her own candour.  Then she paused and softly sighed.

34

Two years was long!  She loved her father well,

But fears she had not.  He had always been

Just sailed or sailing.  And she must not dwell

On sad thoughts, he had told her so, and seen

Her smile at parting.  But she sighed once more.

Two years was long; 'twas not one hour yet!

Mynheer Grootver she would not see at all.

Yes, yes, she knew, but ere the date so set,

The "Horn of Fortune" would be at the wall.

When Max had bid farewell, she watched him from the door.

35

The next day, and the next, Max went to ask

The health of Jufvrouw Kurler, and the news:

Another tulip blown, or the great task

Of gathering petals which the high wind strews;

The polishing of floors, the pictured tiles

Well scrubbed, and oaken chairs most deftly oiled.

Such things were Christine's world, and his was she

Winter drew near, his sun was in her smiles.

Another Spring, and at his law he toiled,

Unspoken hope counselled a wise efficiency.

36

Max Breuck was honour's soul, he knew himself

The guardian of this girl; no more, no less.

As one in charge of guineas on a shelf

Loose in a china teapot, may confess

His need, but may not borrow till his friend

Comes back to give.  So Max, in honour, said

No word of love or marriage; but the days

He clipped off on his almanac.  The end

Must come!  The second year, with feet of lead,

Lagged slowly by till Spring had plumped the willow sprays.

37

Two years had made Christine a woman grown,

With dignity and gently certain pride.

But all her childhood fancies had not flown,

Her thoughts in lovely dreamings seemed to glide.

Max was her trusted friend, did she confess

A closer happiness?  Max could not tell.

Two years were over and his life he found

Sphered and complete.  In restless eagerness

He waited for the "Horn of Fortune".  Well

Had he his promise kept, abating not one pound.

38

Spring slipped away to Summer.  Still no glass

Sighted the brigantine.  Then Grootver came

Demanding Jufvrouw Kurler.  His trespass

Was justified, for he had won the game.

Christine begged time, more time!  Midsummer went,

And Grootver waxed impatient.  Still the ship

Tarried.  Christine, betrayed and weary, sank

To dreadful terrors.  One day, crazed, she sent

For Max.  "Come quickly," said her note, "I skip

The worst distress until we meet.  The world is blank."

39

Through the long sunshine of late afternoon

Max went to her.  In the pleached alley, lost

In bitter reverie, he found her soon.

And sitting down beside her, at the cost

Of all his secret, "Dear," said he, "what thing

So suddenly has happened?"  Then, in tears,

She told that Grootver, on the following morn,

Would come to marry her, and shuddering:

"I will die rather, death has lesser fears."

Max felt the shackles drop from the oath which he had sworn.

40

"My Dearest One, the hid joy of my heart!

I love you, oh! you must indeed have known.

In strictest honour I have played my part;

But all this misery has overthrown

My scruples.  If you love me, marry me

Before the sun has dipped behind those trees.

You cannot be wed twice, and Grootver, foiled,

Can eat his anger.  My care it shall be

To pay your father's debt, by such degrees

As I can compass, and for years I've greatly toiled.

41

This is not haste, Christine, for long I've known

My love, and silence forced upon my lips.

I worship you with all the strength I've shown

In keeping faith."  With pleading finger tips

He touched her arm.  "Christine!  Beloved!  Think.

Let us not tempt the future.  Dearest, speak,

I love you.  Do my words fall too swift now?

They've been in leash so long upon the brink."

She sat quite still, her body loose and weak.

Then into him she melted, all her soul at flow.

42

And they were married ere the westering sun

Had disappeared behind the garden trees.

The evening poured on them its benison,

And flower-scents, that only night-time frees,

Rose up around them from the beamy ground,

Silvered and shadowed by a tranquil moon.

Within the arbour, long they lay embraced,

In such enraptured sweetness as they found

Close-partnered each to each, and thinking soon

To be enwoven, long ere night to morning faced.

43

At last Max spoke, "Dear Heart, this night is ours,

To watch it pale, together, into dawn,

Pressing our souls apart like opening flowers

Until our lives, through quivering bodies drawn,

Are mingled and confounded.  Then, far spent,

Our eyes will close to undisturbed rest.

For that desired thing I leave you now.

To pinnacle this day's accomplishment,

By telling Grootver that a bootless quest

Is his, and that his schemes have met a knock-down blow."

44

But Christine clung to him with sobbing cries,

Pleading for love's sake that he leave her not.

And wound her arms about his knees and thighs

As he stood over her.  With dread, begot

Of Grootver's name, and silence, and the night,

She shook and trembled.  Words in moaning plaint

Wooed him to stay.  She feared, she knew not why,

Yet greatly feared.  She seemed some anguished saint

Martyred by visions.  Max Breuck soothed her fright

With wisdom, then stepped out under the cooling sky.

45

But at the gate once more she held him close

And quenched her heart again upon his lips.

"My Sweetheart, why this terror?  I propose

But to be gone one hour!  Evening slips

Away, this errand must be done."  "Max!  Max!

First goes my father, if I lose you now!"

She grasped him as in panic lest she drown.

Softly he laughed, "One hour through the town

By moonlight!  That's no place for foul attacks.

Dearest, be comforted, and clear that troubled brow.

46

One hour, Dear, and then, no more alone.

We front another day as man and wife.

I shall be back almost before I'm gone,

And midnight shall anoint and crown our life."

Then through the gate he passed.  Along the street

She watched his buttons gleaming in the moon.

He stopped to wave and turned the garden wall.

Straight she sank down upon a mossy seat.

Her senses, mist-encircled by a swoon,

Swayed to unconsciousness beneath its wreathing pall.

47

Briskly Max walked beside the still canal.

His step was firm with purpose.  Not a jot

He feared this meeting, nor the rancorous gall

Grootver would spit on him who marred his plot.

He dreaded no man, since he could protect

Christine.  His wife!  He stopped and laughed aloud.

His starved life had not fitted him for joy.

It strained him to the utmost to reject

Even this hour with her.  His heart beat loud.

"Damn Grootver, who can force my time to this employ!"

48

He laughed again.  What boyish uncontrol

To be so racked.  Then felt his ticking watch.

In half an hour Grootver would know the whole.

And he would be returned, lifting the latch

Of his own gate, eager to take Christine

And crush her to his lips.  How bear delay?

He broke into a run.  In front, a line

Of candle-light banded the cobbled street.

Hilverdink's tavern!  Not for many a day

Had he been there to take his old, accustomed seat.

49

"Why, Max!  Stop, Max!"  And out they came pell-mell,

His old companions.  "Max, where have you been?

Not drink with us?  Indeed you serve us well!

How many months is it since we have seen

You here?  Jan, Jan, you slow, old doddering goat!

Here's Mynheer Breuck come back again at last,

Stir your old bones to welcome him.  Fie, Max.

Business!  And after hours!  Fill your throat;

Here's beer or brandy.  Now, boys, hold him fast.

Put down your cane, dear man.  What really vicious whacks!"

50

They forced him to a seat, and held him there,

Despite his anger, while the hideous joke

Was tossed from hand to hand.  Franz poured with care

A brimming glass of whiskey.  "Here, we've broke

Into a virgin barrel for you, drink!

Tut!  Tut!  Just hear him!  Married!  Who, and when?

Married, and out on business.  Clever Spark!

Which lie's the likeliest?  Come, Max, do think."

Swollen with fury, struggling with these men,

Max cursed hilarity which must needs have a mark.

51

Forcing himself to steadiness, he tried

To quell the uproar, told them what he dared

Of his own life and circumstance.  Implied

Most urgent matters, time could ill be spared.

In jesting mood his comrades heard his tale,

And scoffed at it.  He felt his anger more

Goaded and bursting;—"Cowards!  Is no one loth

To mock at duty—"  Here they called for ale,

And forced a pipe upon him.  With an oath

He shivered it to fragments on the earthen floor.

52

Sobered a little by his violence,

And by the host who begged them to be still,

Nor injure his good name, "Max, no offence,"

They blurted, "you may leave now if you will."

"One moment, Max," said Franz.  "We've gone too far.

I ask your pardon for our foolish joke.

It started in a wager ere you came.

The talk somehow had fall'n on drugs, a jar

I brought from China, herbs the natives smoke,

Was with me, and I thought merely to play a game.

53

Its properties are to induce a sleep

Fraught with adventure, and the flight of time

Is inconceivable in swiftness.  Deep

Sunken in slumber, imageries sublime

Flatter the senses, or some fearful dream

Holds them enmeshed.  Years pass which on the clock

Are but so many seconds.  We agreed

That the next man who came should prove the scheme;

And you were he.  Jan handed you the crock.

Two whiffs!  And then the pipe was broke, and you were freed."

54

"It is a lie, a damned, infernal lie!"

Max Breuck was maddened now.  "Another jest

Of your befuddled wits.  I know not why

I am to be your butt.  At my request

You'll choose among you one who'll answer for

Your most unseasonable mirth.  Good-night

And good-by,—gentlemen.  You'll hear from me."

But Franz had caught him at the very door,

"It is no lie, Max Breuck, and for your plight

I am to blame.  Come back, and we'll talk quietly.

55

You have no business, that is why we laughed,

Since you had none a few minutes ago.

As to your wedding, naturally we chaffed,

Knowing the length of time it takes to do

A simple thing like that in this slow world.

Indeed, Max, 'twas a dream.  Forgive me then.

I'll burn the drug if you prefer."  But Breuck

Muttered and stared,—"A lie."  And then he hurled,

Distraught, this word at Franz:  "Prove it.  And when

It's proven, I'll believe.  That thing shall be your work.

56

I'll give you just one week to make your case.

On August thirty-first, eighteen-fourteen,

I shall require your proof."  With wondering face

Franz cried, "A week to August, and fourteen

The year!  You're mad, 'tis April now.

April, and eighteen-twelve."  Max staggered, caught

A chair,—"April two years ago!  Indeed,

Or you, or I, are mad.  I know not how

Either could blunder so."  Hilverdink brought

"The Amsterdam Gazette", and Max was forced to read.

57

"Eighteen hundred and twelve," in largest print;

And next to it, "April the twenty-first."

The letters smeared and jumbled, but by dint

Of straining every nerve to meet the worst,

He read it, and into his pounding brain

Tumbled a horror.  Like a roaring sea

Foreboding shipwreck, came the message plain:

"This is two years ago!  What of Christine?"

He fled the cellar, in his agony

Running to outstrip Fate, and save his holy shrine.

58

The darkened buildings echoed to his feet

Clap-clapping on the pavement as he ran.

Across moon-misted squares clamoured his fleet

And terror-winged steps.  His heart began

To labour at the speed.  And still no sign,

No flutter of a leaf against the sky.

And this should be the garden wall, and round

The corner, the old gate.  No even line

Was this!  No wall!  And then a fearful cry

Shattered the stillness.  Two stiff houses filled the ground.

59

Shoulder to shoulder, like dragoons in line,

They stood, and Max knew them to be the ones

To right and left of Kurler's garden.  Spine

Rigid next frozen spine.  No mellow tones

Of ancient gilded iron, undulate,

Expanding in wide circles and broad curves,

The twisted iron of the garden gate,

Was there.  The houses touched and left no space

Between.  With glassy eyes and shaking nerves

Max gazed.  Then mad with fear, fled still, and left that place.

60

Stumbling and panting, on he ran, and on.

His slobbering lips could only cry, "Christine!

My Dearest Love!  My Wife!  Where are you gone?

What future is our past?  What saturnine,

Sardonic devil's jest has bid us live

Two years together in a puff of smoke?

It was no dream, I swear it!  In some star,

Or still imprisoned in Time's egg, you give

Me love.  I feel it.  Dearest Dear, this stroke

Shall never part us, I will reach to where you are."

61

His burning eyeballs stared into the dark.

The moon had long been set.  And still he cried:

"Christine!  My Love!  Christine!"  A sudden spark

Pricked through the gloom, and shortly Max espied

With his uncertain vision, so within

Distracted he could scarcely trust its truth,

A latticed window where a crimson gleam

Spangled the blackness, and hung from a pin,

An iron crane, were three gilt balls.  His youth

Had taught their meaning, now they closed upon his dream.

62

Softly he knocked against the casement, wide

It flew, and a cracked voice his business there

Demanded.  The door opened, and inside

Max stepped.  He saw a candle held in air

Above the head of a gray-bearded Jew.

"Simeon Isaacs, Mynheer, can I serve

You?"  "Yes, I think you can.  Do you keep arms?

I want a pistol."  Quick the old man grew

Livid.  "Mynheer, a pistol!  Let me swerve

You from your purpose.  Life brings often false alarms—"

63

"Peace, good old Isaacs, why should you suppose

My purpose deadly.  In good truth I've been

Blest above others.  You have many rows

Of pistols it would seem.  Here, this shagreen

Case holds one that I fancy.  Silvered mounts

Are to my taste.  These letters `C. D. L.'

Its former owner?  Dead, you say.  Poor Ghost!

'Twill serve my turn though—"  Hastily he counts

The florins down upon the table.  "Well,

Good-night, and wish me luck for your to-morrow's toast."

64

Into the night again he hurried, now

Pale and in haste; and far beyond the town

He set his goal.  And then he wondered how

Poor C. D. L. had come to die.  "It's grown

Handy in killing, maybe, this I've bought,

And will work punctually."  His sorrow fell

Upon his senses, shutting out all else.

Again he wept, and called, and blindly fought

The heavy miles away.  "Christine.  I'm well.

I'm coming.  My Own Wife!"  He lurched with failing pulse.

65

Along the dyke the keen air blew in gusts,

And grasses bent and wailed before the wind.

The Zuider Zee, which croons all night and thrusts

Long stealthy fingers up some way to find

And crumble down the stones, moaned baffled.  Here

The wide-armed windmills looked like gallows-trees.

No lights were burning in the distant thorps.

Max laid aside his coat.  His mind, half-clear,

Babbled "Christine!"  A shot split through the breeze.

The cold stars winked and glittered at his chilling corpse.

Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris

Dear Virgin Mary, far away,

Look down from Heaven while I pray.

Open your golden casement high,

And lean way out beyond the sky.

I am so little, it may be

A task for you to harken me.

O Lady Mary, I have bought

A candle, as the good priest taught.

I only had one penny, so

Old Goody Jenkins let it go.

It is a little bent, you see.

But Oh, be merciful to me!

I have not anything to give,

Yet I so long for him to live.

A year ago he sailed away

And not a word unto today.

I've strained my eyes from the sea-wall

But never does he come at all.

Other ships have entered port

Their voyages finished, long or short,

And other sailors have received

Their welcomes, while I sat and grieved.

My heart is bursting for his hail,

O Virgin, let me spy his sail.

Hull down on the edge of a sun-soaked sea

Sparkle the bellying sails for me.

Taut to the push of a rousing wind

Shaking the sea till it foams behind,

The tightened rigging is shrill with the song:

"We are back again who were gone so long."

One afternoon I bumped my head.

I sat on a post and wished I were dead

Like father and mother, for no one cared

Whither I went or how I fared.

A man's voice said, "My little lad,

Here's a bit of a toy to make you glad."

Then I opened my eyes and saw him plain,

With his sleeves rolled up, and the dark blue stain

Of tattooed skin, where a flock of quail

Flew up to his shoulder and met the tail

Of a dragon curled, all pink and green,

Which sprawled on his back, when it was seen.

He held out his hand and gave to me

The most marvellous top which could ever be.

It had ivory eyes, and jet-black rings,

And a red stone carved into little wings,

All joined by a twisted golden line,

And set in the brown wood, even and fine.

Forgive me, Lady, I have not brought

My treasure to you as I ought,

But he said to keep it for his sake

And comfort myself with it, and take

Joy in its spinning, and so I do.

It couldn't mean quite the same to you.

Every day I met him there,

Where the fisher-nets dry in the sunny air.

He told me stories of courts and kings,

Of storms at sea, of lots of things.

The top he said was a sort of sign

That something in the big world was mine.

Blue and white on a sun-shot ocean.

Against the horizon a glint in motion.

Full in the grasp of a shoving wind,

Trailing her bubbles of foam behind,

Singing and shouting to port she races,

A flying harp, with her sheets and braces.

O Queen of Heaven, give me heed,

I am in very utmost need.

He loved me, he was all I had,

And when he came it made the sad

Thoughts disappear.  This very day

Send his ship home to me I pray.

I'll be a priest, if you want it so,

I'll work till I have enough to go

And study Latin to say the prayers

On the rosary our old priest wears.

I wished to be a sailor too,

But I will give myself to you.

I'll never even spin my top,

But put it away in a box.  I'll stop

Whistling the sailor-songs he taught.

I'll save my pennies till I have bought

A silver heart in the market square,

I've seen some beautiful, white ones there.

I'll give up all I want to do

And do whatever you tell me to.

Heavenly Lady, take away

All the games I like to play,

Take my life to fill the score,

Only bring him back once more!

The poplars shiver and turn their leaves,

And the wind through the belfry moans and grieves.

The gray dust whirls in the market square,

And the silver hearts are covered with care

By thick tarpaulins.  Once again

The bay is black under heavy rain.

The Queen of Heaven has shut her door.

A little boy weeps and prays no more.

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók

But why did I kill him?  Why?  Why?

In the small, gilded room, near the stair?

My ears rack and throb with his cry,

And his eyes goggle under his hair,

As my fingers sink into the fair

White skin of his throat.  It was I!

I killed him!  My God!  Don't you hear?

I shook him until his red tongue

Hung flapping out through the black, queer,

Swollen lines of his lips.  And I clung

With my nails drawing blood, while I flung

The loose, heavy body in fear.

Fear lest he should still not be dead.

I was drunk with the lust of his life.

The blood-drops oozed slow from his head

And dabbled a chair.  And our strife

Lasted one reeling second, his knife

Lay and winked in the lights overhead.

And the waltz from the ballroom I heard,

When I called him a low, sneaking cur.

And the wail of the violins stirred

My brute anger with visions of her.

As I throttled his windpipe, the purr

Of his breath with the waltz became blurred.

I have ridden ten miles through the dark,

With that music, an infernal din,

Pounding rhythmic inside me.  Just Hark!

One!  Two!  Three!  And my fingers sink in

To his flesh when the violins, thin

And straining with passion, grow stark.

One!  Two!  Three!  Oh, the horror of sound!

While she danced I was crushing his throat.

He had tasted the joy of her, wound

Round her body, and I heard him gloat

On the favour.  That instant I smote.

One!  Two!  Three!  How the dancers swirl round!

He is here in the room, in my arm,

His limp body hangs on the spin

Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm

Of blood-drops is hemming us in!

Round and round!  One!  Two!  Three!  And his sin

Is red like his tongue lolling warm.

One!  Two!  Three!  And the drums are his knell.

He is heavy, his feet beat the floor

As I drag him about in the swell

Of the waltz.  With a menacing roar,

The trumpets crash in through the door.

One!  Two!  Three! clangs his funeral bell.

One!  Two!  Three!  In the chaos of space

Rolls the earth to the hideous glee

Of death!  And so cramped is this place,

I stifle and pant.  One!  Two!  Three!

Round and round!  God!  'Tis he throttles me!

He has covered my mouth with his face!

And his blood has dripped into my heart!

And my heart beats and labours.  One!  Two!

Three!  His dead limbs have coiled every part

Of my body in tentacles.  Through

My ears the waltz jangles.  Like glue

His dead body holds me athwart.

One!  Two!  Three!  Give me air!  Oh!  My God!

One!  Two!  Three!  I am drowning in slime!

One!  Two!  Three!  And his corpse, like a clod,

Beats me into a jelly!  The chime,

One!  Two!  Three!  And his dead legs keep time.

Air!  Give me air!  Air!  My God!

Clear, with Light, Variable Winds

The fountain bent and straightened itself

In the night wind,

Blowing like a flower.

It gleamed and glittered,

A tall white lily,

Under the eye of the golden moon.

From a stone seat,

Beneath a blossoming lime,

The man watched it.

And the spray pattered

On the dim grass at his feet.

The fountain tossed its water,

Up and up, like silver marbles.

Is that an arm he sees?

And for one moment

Does he catch the moving curve

Of a thigh?

The fountain gurgled and splashed,

And the man's face was wet.

Is it singing that he hears?

A song of playing at ball?

The moonlight shines on the straight column of water,

And through it he sees a woman,

Tossing the water-balls.

Her breasts point outwards,

And the nipples are like buds of peonies.

Her flanks ripple as she plays,

And the water is not more undulating

Than the lines of her body.

"Come," she sings, "Poet!

Am I not more worth than your day ladies,

Covered with awkward stuffs,

Unreal, unbeautiful?

What do you fear in taking me?

Is not the night for poets?

I am your dream,

Recurrent as water,

Gemmed with the moon!"

She steps to the edge of the pool

And the water runs, rustling, down her sides.

She stretches out her arms,

And the fountain streams behind her

Like an opened veil.

In the morning the gardeners came to their work.

"There is something in the fountain," said one.

They shuddered as they laid their dead master

On the grass.

"I will close his eyes," said the head gardener,

"It is uncanny to see a dead man staring at the sun."

The Basket

I

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted,

in the round of light thrown by a candle.  Puffs of darkness sweep into

the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair.  The air

is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.

See how the roof glitters, like ice!

Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand

two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night.

See!  She is coming, the young woman with the bright hair.

She swings a basket as she walks, which she places on the sill,

between the geranium stalks.  He laughs, and crumples his paper

as he leans forward to look.  "The Basket Filled with Moonlight",

what a title for a book!

The bellying clouds swing over the housetops.

He has forgotten the woman in the room with the geraniums.  He is beating

his brain, and in his eardrums hammers his heavy pulse.  She sits

on the window-sill, with the basket in her lap.  And tap!  She cracks a nut.

And tap!  Another.  Tap!  Tap!  Tap!  The shells ricochet upon the roof,

and get into the gutters, and bounce over the edge and disappear.

"It is very queer," thinks Peter, "the basket was empty, I'm sure.

How could nuts appear from the atmosphere?"

The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof glitters

like ice.

II

Five o'clock.  The geraniums are very gay in their crimson array.

The bellying clouds swing over the housetops, and over the roofs goes Peter

to pay his morning's work with a holiday.

"Annette, it is I.  Have you finished?  Can I come?"

Peter jumps through the window.

"Dear, are you alone?"

"Look, Peter, the dome of the tabernacle is done.  This gold thread

is so very high, I am glad it is morning, a starry sky would have

seen me bankrupt.  Sit down, now tell me, is your story going well?"

The golden dome glittered in the orange of the setting sun.  On the walls,

at intervals, hung altar-cloths and chasubles, and copes, and stoles,

and coffin palls.  All stiff with rich embroidery, and stitched with

so much artistry, they seemed like spun and woven gems, or flower-buds

new-opened on their stems.

Annette looked at the geraniums, very red against the blue sky.

"No matter how I try, I cannot find any thread of such a red.

My bleeding hearts drip stuff muddy in comparison.  Heigh-ho!  See my little

pecking dove?  I'm in love with my own temple.  Only that halo's wrong.

The colour's too strong, or not strong enough.  I don't know.  My eyes

are tired.  Oh, Peter, don't be so rough; it is valuable.  I won't do

any more.  I promise.  You tyrannise, Dear, that's enough.  Now sit down

and amuse me while I rest."

The shadows of the geraniums creep over the floor, and begin to climb

the opposite wall.

Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,

and undulant in the orange glow.  His senses flow towards her,

where she lies supine and dreaming.  Seeming drowned in a golden halo.

The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.

He pushes against her knees, and brushes his lips across her languid hands.

His lips are hot and speechless.  He woos her, quivering, and the room

is filled with shadows, for the sun has set.  But she only understands

the ways of a needle through delicate stuffs, and the shock of one colour

on another.  She does not see that this is the same, and querulously murmurs

his name.

"Peter, I don't want it.  I am tired."

And he, the undesired, burns and is consumed.

There is a crescent moon on the rim of the sky.

III

"Go home, now, Peter.  To-night is full moon.  I must be alone."

"How soon the moon is full again!  Annette, let me stay.  Indeed, Dear Love,

I shall not go away.  My God, but you keep me starved!  You write

`No Entrance Here', over all the doors.  Is it not strange, my Dear,

that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere.  Would marriage

strike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be denied

the rights of loving if I leave you free?  You want the whole of me,

you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat.

Oh, forgive me, Sweet!  I suffer in my loving, and you know it.  I cannot

feed my life on being a poet.  Let me stay."

"As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do.  It will

crush your heart and squeeze the love out."

He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about."

"Only remember one thing from to-night.  My work is taxing and I must

have sight!  I must!"

The clear moon looks in between the geraniums.  On the wall,

the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the woman

by a silver thread.

They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles!  Unwinking, for there

are no lids.  Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are cased

in the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon.  The basket

is heaped with human eyes.  She cracks off the whites and throws them away.

They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounce

over the edge and disappear.  But she is here, quietly sitting

on the window-sill, eating human eyes.

The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shines

like ice.

IV

How hot the sheets are!  His skin is tormented with pricks,

and over him sticks, and never moves, an eye.  It lights the sky with blood,

and drips blood.  And the drops sizzle on his bare skin, and he smells them

burning in, and branding his body with the name "Annette".

The blood-red sky is outside his window now.  Is it blood or fire?

Merciful God!  Fire!  And his heart wrenches and pounds "Annette!"

The lead of the roof is scorching, he ricochets, gets to the edge,

bounces over and disappears.

The bellying clouds are red as they swing over the housetops.

V

The air is of silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.

How the ruin glistens, like a palace of ice!  Only two black holes swallow

the brilliance of the moon.  Deflowered windows, sockets without sight.

A man stands before the house.  He sees the silver-blue moonlight,

and set in it, over his head, staring and flickering, eyes of geranium red.

Annette!

In a Castle

I

Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog.  Drip—hiss—drip—hiss—

fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,

and smokes the ceiling beams.  Drip—hiss—the rain never stops.

The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet.  Above, dim,

in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully.  Overhead hammers and chinks

the rain.  Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes

the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors.  The arras blows sidewise

out from the wall, and then falls back again.

It is my lady's key, confided with much nice cunning, whisperingly.

He enters on a sob of wind, which gutters the candles almost to swaling.

The fire flutters and drops.  Drip—hiss—the rain never stops.

He shuts the door.  The rushes fall again to stillness along the floor.

Outside, the wind goes wailing.

The velvet coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold.  Above,

in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold.  The knight shivers

in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame.

She is always the same, a sweet coquette.  He will wait for her.

How the log hisses and drips!  How warm and satisfying will be her lips!

It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under the coronet,

and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out her arms,

and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms

her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and blot himself

beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble.

Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, absent and fighting,

terribly abhorred?

He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal.  His spur clinks

on the hearth.  Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks.  She is so pure

and whole.  Only because he has her soul will she resign herself to him,

for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign.  He takes her

by the divine right of the only lover.  He has sworn to fight her lord,

and wed her after.  Should he be overborne, she will die adoring him, forlorn,

shriven by her great love.

Above, the coronet winks in the darkness.  Drip—hiss—fall the raindrops.

The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off hall.

The candles swale.  In the gale the moat below plunges and spatters.

Will the lady lose courage and not come?

The rain claps on a loosened rafter.

Is that laughter?

The room is filled with lisps and whispers.  Something mutters.

One candle drowns and the other gutters.  Is that the rain

which pads and patters, is it the wind through the winding entries

which chatters?

The state bed is very cold and he is alone.  How far from the wall

the arras is blown!

Christ's Death!  It is no storm which makes these little chuckling sounds.

By the Great Wounds of Holy Jesus, it is his dear lady, kissing and

clasping someone!  Through the sobbing storm he hears her love take form

and flutter out in words.  They prick into his ears and stun his desire,

which lies within him, hard and dead, like frozen fire.  And the little noise

never stops.

Drip—hiss—the rain drops.

He tears down the arras from before an inner chamber's bolted door.

II

The state bed shivers in the watery dawn.  Drip—hiss—fall the raindrops.

For the storm never stops.

On the velvet coverlet lie two bodies, stripped and fair in the cold,

grey air.  Drip—hiss—fall the blood-drops, for the bleeding never stops.

The bodies lie quietly.  At each side of the bed, on the floor, is a head.

A man's on this side, a woman's on that, and the red blood oozes along

the rush mat.

A wisp of paper is twisted carefully into the strands of the dead man's hair.

It says, "My Lord:  Your wife's paramour has paid with his life

for the high favour."

Through the lady's silver fillet is wound another paper.  It reads,

"Most noble Lord:  Your wife's misdeeds are as a double-stranded

necklace of beads.  But I have engaged that, on your return,

she shall welcome you here.  She will not spurn your love as before,

you have still the best part of her.  Her blood was red, her body white,

they will both be here for your delight.  The soul inside was a lump of dirt,

I have rid you of that with a spurt of my sword point.  Good luck

to your pleasure.  She will be quite complaisant, my friend, I wager."

The end was a splashed flourish of ink.

Hark!  In the passage is heard the clink of armour, the tread of a heavy man.

The door bursts open and standing there, his thin hair wavering

in the glare of steely daylight, is my Lord of Clair.

Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog.  Drip—hiss—drip—hiss—

fall the raindrops.  Overhead hammers and chinks the rain which never stops.

The velvet coverlet is sodden and wet, yet the roof beams are tight.

Overhead, the coronet gleams with its blackened gold, winking and blinking.

Among the rushes three corpses are growing cold.

III

In the castle church you may see them stand,

Two sumptuous tombs on either hand

Of the choir, my Lord's and my Lady's, grand

In sculptured filigrees.  And where the transepts of the church expand,

A crusader, come from the Holy Land,

Lies with crossed legs and embroidered band.

The page's name became a brand

For shame.  He was buried in crawling sand,

After having been burnt by royal command.

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

The Bell in the convent tower swung.

High overhead the great sun hung,

A navel for the curving sky.

The air was a blue clarity.

Swallows flew,

And a cock crew.

The iron clanging sank through the light air,

Rustled over with blowing branches.  A flare

Of spotted green, and a snake had gone

Into the bed where the snowdrops shone

In green new-started,

Their white bells parted.

Two by two, in a long brown line,

The nuns were walking to breathe the fine

Bright April air.  They must go in soon

And work at their tasks all the afternoon.

But this time is theirs!

They walk in pairs.

First comes the Abbess, preoccupied

And slow, as a woman often tried,

With her temper in bond.  Then the oldest nun.

Then younger and younger, until the last one

Has a laugh on her lips,

And fairly skips.

They wind about the gravel walks

And all the long line buzzes and talks.

They step in time to the ringing bell,

With scarcely a shadow.  The sun is well

In the core of a sky

Domed silverly.

Sister Marguerite said:  "The pears will soon bud."

Sister Angelique said she must get her spud

And free the earth round the jasmine roots.

Sister Veronique said:  "Oh, look at those shoots!

There's a crocus up,

With a purple cup."

But Sister Clotilde said nothing at all,

She looked up and down the old grey wall

To see if a lizard were basking there.

She looked across the garden to where

A sycamore

Flanked the garden door.

She was restless, although her little feet danced,

And quite unsatisfied, for it chanced

Her morning's work had hung in her mind

And would not take form.  She could not find

The beautifulness

For the Virgin's dress.

Should it be of pink, or damasked blue?

Or perhaps lilac with gold shotted through?

Should it be banded with yellow and white

Roses, or sparked like a frosty night?

Or a crimson sheen

Over some sort of green?

But Clotilde's eyes saw nothing new

In all the garden, no single hue

So lovely or so marvellous

That its use would not seem impious.

So on she walked,

And the others talked.

Sister Elisabeth edged away

From what her companion had to say,

For Sister Marthe saw the world in little,

She weighed every grain and recorded each tittle.

She did plain stitching

And worked in the kitchen.

"Sister Radegonde knows the apples won't last,

I told her so this Friday past.

I must speak to her before Compline."

Her words were like dust motes in slanting sunshine.

The other nun sighed,

With her pleasure quite dried.

Suddenly Sister Berthe cried out:

"The snowdrops are blooming!"  They turned about.

The little white cups bent over the ground,

And in among the light stems wound

A crested snake,

With his eyes awake.

His body was green with a metal brightness

Like an emerald set in a kind of whiteness,

And all down his curling length were disks,

Evil vermilion asterisks,

They paled and flooded

As wounds fresh-blooded.

His crest was amber glittered with blue,

And opaque so the sun came shining through.

It seemed a crown with fiery points.

When he quivered all down his scaly joints,

From every slot

The sparkles shot.

The nuns huddled tightly together, fear

Catching their senses.  But Clotilde must peer

More closely at the beautiful snake,

She seemed entranced and eased.  Could she make

Colours so rare,

The dress were there.

The Abbess shook off her lethargy.

"Sisters, we will walk on," said she.

Sidling away from the snowdrop bed,

The line curved forwards, the Abbess ahead.

Only Clotilde

Was the last to yield.

When the recreation hour was done

Each went in to her task.  Alone

In the library, with its great north light,

Clotilde wrought at an exquisite

Wreath of flowers

For her Book of Hours.

She twined the little crocus blooms

With snowdrops and daffodils, the glooms

Of laurel leaves were interwoven

With Stars-of-Bethlehem, and cloven

Fritillaries,

Whose colour varies.

They framed the picture she had made,

Half-delighted and half-afraid.

In a courtyard with a lozenged floor

The Virgin watched, and through the arched door

The angel came

Like a springing flame.

His wings were dipped in violet fire,

His limbs were strung to holy desire.

He lowered his head and passed under the arch,

And the air seemed beating a solemn march.

The Virgin waited

With eyes dilated.

Her face was quiet and innocent,

And beautiful with her strange assent.

A silver thread about her head

Her halo was poised.  But in the stead

Of her gown, there remained

The vellum, unstained.

Clotilde painted the flowers patiently,

Lingering over each tint and dye.

She could spend great pains, now she had seen

That curious, unimagined green.

A colour so strange

It had seemed to change.

She thought it had altered while she gazed.

At first it had been simple green; then glazed

All over with twisting flames, each spot

A molten colour, trembling and hot,

And every eye

Seemed to liquefy.

She had made a plan, and her spirits danced.

After all, she had only glanced

At that wonderful snake, and she must know

Just what hues made the creature throw

Those splashes and sprays

Of prismed rays.

When evening prayers were sung and said,

The nuns lit their tapers and went to bed.

And soon in the convent there was no light,

For the moon did not rise until late that night,

Only the shine

Of the lamp at the shrine.

Clotilde lay still in her trembling sheets.

Her heart shook her body with its beats.

She could not see till the moon should rise,

So she whispered prayers and kept her eyes

On the window-square

Till light should be there.

The faintest shadow of a branch

Fell on the floor.  Clotilde, grown staunch

With solemn purpose, softly rose

And fluttered down between the rows

Of sleeping nuns.

She almost runs.

She must go out through the little side door

Lest the nuns who were always praying before

The Virgin's altar should hear her pass.

She pushed the bolts, and over the grass

The red moon's brim

Mounted its rim.

Her shadow crept up the convent wall

As she swiftly left it, over all

The garden lay the level glow

Of a moon coming up, very big and slow.

The gravel glistened.

She stopped and listened.

It was still, and the moonlight was getting clearer.

She laughed a little, but she felt queerer

Than ever before.  The snowdrop bed

Was reached and she bent down her head.

On the striped ground

The snake was wound.

For a moment Clotilde paused in alarm,

Then she rolled up her sleeve and stretched out her arm.

She thought she heard steps, she must be quick.

She darted her hand out, and seized the thick

Wriggling slime,

Only just in time.

The old gardener came muttering down the path,

And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath,

And covered Clotilde and the angry snake.

He bit her, but what difference did that make!

The Virgin should dress

In his loveliness.

The gardener was covering his new-set plants

For the night was chilly, and nothing daunts

Your lover of growing things.  He spied

Something to do and turned aside,

And the moonlight streamed

On Clotilde, and gleamed.

His business finished the gardener rose.

He shook and swore, for the moonlight shows

A girl with a fire-tongued serpent, she

Grasping him, laughing, while quietly

Her eyes are weeping.

Is he sleeping?

He thinks it is some holy vision,

Brushes that aside and with decision

Jumps—and hits the snake with his stick,

Crushes his spine, and then with quick,

Urgent command

Takes her hand.

The gardener sucks the poison and spits,

Cursing and praying as befits

A poor old man half out of his wits.

"Whatever possessed you, Sister, it's

Hatched of a devil

And very evil.

It's one of them horrid basilisks

You read about.  They say a man risks

His life to touch it, but I guess I've sucked it

Out by now.  Lucky I chucked it

Away from you.

I guess you'll do."

"Oh, no, Francois, this beautiful beast

Was sent to me, to me the least

Worthy in all our convent, so I

Could finish my picture of the Most High

And Holy Queen,

In her dress of green.

He is dead now, but his colours won't fade

At once, and by noon I shall have made

The Virgin's robe.  Oh, Francois, see

How kindly the moon shines down on me!

I can't die yet,

For the task was set."

"You won't die now, for I've sucked it away,"

Grumbled old Francois, "so have your play.

If the Virgin is set on snake's colours so strong,—"

"Francois, don't say things like that, it is wrong."

So Clotilde vented

Her creed.  He repented.

"He can't do no more harm, Sister," said he.

"Paint as much as you like."  And gingerly

He picked up the snake with his stick.  Clotilde

Thanked him, and begged that he would shield

Her secret, though itching

To talk in the kitchen.

The gardener promised, not very pleased,

And Clotilde, with the strain of adventure eased,

Walked quickly home, while the half-high moon

Made her beautiful snake-skin sparkle, and soon

In her bed she lay

And waited for day.

At dawn's first saffron-spired warning

Clotilde was up.  And all that morning,

Except when she went to the chapel to pray,

She painted, and when the April day

Was hot with sun,

Clotilde had done.

Done!  She drooped, though her heart beat loud

At the beauty before her, and her spirit bowed

To the Virgin her finely-touched thought had made.

A lady, in excellence arrayed,

And wonder-souled.

Christ's Blessed Mould!

From long fasting Clotilde felt weary and faint,

But her eyes were starred like those of a saint

Enmeshed in Heaven's beatitude.

A sudden clamour hurled its rude

Force to break

Her vision awake.

The door nearly leapt from its hinges, pushed

By the multitude of nuns.  They hushed

When they saw Clotilde, in perfect quiet,

Smiling, a little perplexed at the riot.

And all the hive

Buzzed "She's alive!"

Old Francois had told.  He had found the strain

Of silence too great, and preferred the pain

Of a conscience outraged.  The news had spread,

And all were convinced Clotilde must be dead.

For Francois, to spite them,

Had not seen fit to right them.

The Abbess, unwontedly trembling and mild,

Put her arms round Clotilde and wept, "My child,

Has the Holy Mother showed you this grace,

To spare you while you imaged her face?

How could we have guessed

Our convent so blessed!

A miracle!  But Oh!  My Lamb!

To have you die!  And I, who am

A hollow, living shell, the grave

Is empty of me.  Holy Mary, I crave

To be taken, Dear Mother,

Instead of this other."

She dropped on her knees and silently prayed,

With anguished hands and tears delayed

To a painful slowness.  The minutes drew

To fractions.  Then the west wind blew

The sound of a bell,

On a gusty swell.

It came skipping over the slates of the roof,

And the bright bell-notes seemed a reproof

To grief, in the eye of so fair a day.

The Abbess, comforted, ceased to pray.

And the sun lit the flowers

In Clotilde's Book of Hours.

It glistened the green of the Virgin's dress

And made the red spots, in a flushed excess,

Pulse and start; and the violet wings

Of the angel were colour which shines and sings.

The book seemed a choir

Of rainbow fire.

The Abbess crossed herself, and each nun

Did the same, then one by one,

They filed to the chapel, that incensed prayers

Might plead for the life of this sister of theirs.

Clotilde, the Inspired!

She only felt tired.

The old chronicles say she did not die

Until heavy with years.  And that is why

There hangs in the convent church a basket

Of osiered silver, a holy casket,

And treasured therein

A dried snake-skin.

The Exeter Road

Panels of claret and blue which shine

Under the moon like lees of wine.

A coronet done in a golden scroll,

And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll

Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track.

They daren't look back!

They are whipping and cursing the horses.  Lord!

What brutes men are when they think they're scored.

Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me,

In a steaming sweat, it is fine to see

That coach, all claret, and gold, and blue,

Hop about and slue.

They are scared half out of their wits, poor souls.

For my lord has a casket full of rolls

Of minted sovereigns, and silver bars.

I laugh to think how he'll show his scars

In London to-morrow.  He whines with rage

In his varnished cage.

My lady has shoved her rings over her toes.

'Tis an ancient trick every night-rider knows.

But I shall relieve her of them yet,

When I see she limps in the minuet

I must beg to celebrate this night,

And the green moonlight.

There's nothing to hurry about, the plain

Is hours long, and the mud's a strain.

My gelding's uncommonly strong in the loins,

In half an hour I'll bag the coins.

'Tis a clear, sweet night on the turn of Spring.

The chase is the thing!

How the coach flashes and wobbles, the moon

Dripping down so quietly on it.  A tune

Is beating out of the curses and screams,

And the cracking all through the painted seams.

Steady, old horse, we'll keep it in sight.

'Tis a rare fine night!

There's a clump of trees on the dip of the down,

And the sky shimmers where it hangs over the town.

It seems a shame to break the air

In two with this pistol, but I've my share

Of drudgery like other men.

His hat?  Amen!

Hold up, you beast, now what the devil!

Confound this moor for a pockholed, evil,

Rotten marsh.  My right leg's snapped.

'Tis a mercy he's rolled, but I'm nicely capped.

A broken-legged man and a broken-legged horse!

They'll get me, of course.

The cursed coach will reach the town

And they'll all come out, every loafer grown

A lion to handcuff a man that's down.

What's that?  Oh, the coachman's bulleted hat!

I'll give it a head to fit it pat.

Thank you!  No cravat.

They handcuffed the body just for style,

And they hung him in chains for the volatile

Wind to scour him flesh from bones.

Way out on the moor you can hear the groans

His gibbet makes when it blows a gale.

'Tis a common tale.

The Shadow

Paul Jannes was working very late,

For this watch must be done by eight

To-morrow or the Cardinal

Would certainly be vexed.  Of all

His customers the old prelate

Was the most important, for his state

Descended to his watches and rings,

And he gave his mistresses many things

To make them forget his age and smile

When he paid visits, and they could while

The time away with a diamond locket

Exceedingly well.  So they picked his pocket,

And he paid in jewels for his slobbering kisses.

This watch was made to buy him blisses

From an Austrian countess on her way

Home, and she meant to start next day.

Paul worked by the pointed, tulip-flame

Of a tallow candle, and became

So absorbed, that his old clock made him wince

Striking the hour a moment since.

Its echo, only half apprehended,

Lingered about the room.  He ended

Screwing the little rubies in,

Setting the wheels to lock and spin,

Curling the infinitesimal springs,

Fixing the filigree hands.  Chippings

Of precious stones lay strewn about.

The table before him was a rout

Of splashes and sparks of coloured light.

There was yellow gold in sheets, and quite

A heap of emeralds, and steel.

Here was a gem, there was a wheel.

And glasses lay like limpid lakes

Shining and still, and there were flakes

Of silver, and shavings of pearl,

And little wires all awhirl

With the light of the candle.  He took the watch

And wound its hands about to match

The time, then glanced up to take the hour

From the hanging clock.

Good, Merciful Power!

How came that shadow on the wall,

No woman was in the room!  His tall

Chiffonier stood gaunt behind

His chair.  His old cloak, rabbit-lined,

Hung from a peg.  The door was closed.

Just for a moment he must have dozed.

He looked again, and saw it plain.

The silhouette made a blue-black stain

On the opposite wall, and it never wavered

Even when the candle quavered

Under his panting breath.  What made

That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade

Of something so lovely, so exquisite,

Cast from a substance which the sight

Had not been tutored to perceive?

Paul brushed his eyes across his sleeve.

Clear-cut, the Shadow on the wall

Gleamed black, and never moved at all.

Paul's watches were like amulets,

Wrought into patterns and rosettes;

The cases were all set with stones,

And wreathing lines, and shining zones.

He knew the beauty in a curve,

And the Shadow tortured every nerve

With its perfect rhythm of outline

Cutting the whitewashed wall.  So fine

Was the neck he knew he could have spanned

It about with the fingers of one hand.

The chin rose to a mouth he guessed,

But could not see, the lips were pressed

Loosely together, the edges close,

And the proud and delicate line of the nose

Melted into a brow, and there

Broke into undulant waves of hair.

The lady was edged with the stamp of race.

A singular vision in such a place.

He moved the candle to the tall

Chiffonier; the Shadow stayed on the wall.

He threw his cloak upon a chair,

And still the lady's face was there.

From every corner of the room

He saw, in the patch of light, the gloom

That was the lady.  Her violet bloom

Was almost brighter than that which came

From his candle's tulip-flame.

He set the filigree hands; he laid

The watch in the case which he had made;

He put on his rabbit cloak, and snuffed

His candle out.  The room seemed stuffed

With darkness.  Softly he crossed the floor,

And let himself out through the door.

The sun was flashing from every pin

And wheel, when Paul let himself in.

The whitewashed walls were hot with light.

The room was the core of a chrysolite,

Burning and shimmering with fiery might.

The sun was so bright that no shadow could fall

From the furniture upon the wall.

Paul sighed as he looked at the empty space

Where a glare usurped the lady's place.

He settled himself to his work, but his mind

Wandered, and he would wake to find

His hand suspended, his eyes grown dim,

And nothing advanced beyond the rim

Of his dreaming.  The Cardinal sent to pay

For his watch, which had purchased so fine a day.

But Paul could hardly touch the gold,

It seemed the price of his Shadow, sold.

With the first twilight he struck a match

And watched the little blue stars hatch

Into an egg of perfect flame.

He lit his candle, and almost in shame

At his eagerness, lifted his eyes.

The Shadow was there, and its precise

Outline etched the cold, white wall.

The young man swore, "By God!  You, Paul,

There's something the matter with your brain.

Go home now and sleep off the strain."

The next day was a storm, the rain

Whispered and scratched at the window-pane.

A grey and shadowless morning filled

The little shop.  The watches, chilled,

Were dead and sparkless as burnt-out coals.

The gems lay on the table like shoals

Of stranded shells, their colours faded,

Mere heaps of stone, dull and degraded.

Paul's head was heavy, his hands obeyed

No orders, for his fancy strayed.

His work became a simple round

Of watches repaired and watches wound.

The slanting ribbons of the rain

Broke themselves on the window-pane,

But Paul saw the silver lines in vain.

Only when the candle was lit

And on the wall just opposite

He watched again the coming of it,

Could he trace a line for the joy of his soul

And over his hands regain control.

Paul lingered late in his shop that night

And the designs which his delight

Sketched on paper seemed to be

A tribute offered wistfully

To the beautiful shadow of her who came

And hovered over his candle flame.

In the morning he selected all

His perfect jacinths.  One large opal

Hung like a milky, rainbow moon

In the centre, and blown in loose festoon

The red stones quivered on silver threads

To the outer edge, where a single, fine

Band of mother-of-pearl the line

Completed.  On the other side,

The creamy porcelain of the face

Bore diamond hours, and no lace

Of cotton or silk could ever be

Tossed into being more airily

Than the filmy golden hands; the time

Seemed to tick away in rhyme.

When, at dusk, the Shadow grew

Upon the wall, Paul's work was through.

Holding the watch, he spoke to her:

"Lady, Beautiful Shadow, stir

Into one brief sign of being.

Turn your eyes this way, and seeing

This watch, made from those sweet curves

Where your hair from your forehead swerves,

Accept the gift which I have wrought

With your fairness in my thought.

Grant me this, and I shall be

Honoured overwhelmingly."

The Shadow rested black and still,

And the wind sighed over the window-sill.

Paul put the despised watch away

And laid out before him his array

Of stones and metals, and when the morning

Struck the stones to their best adorning,

He chose the brightest, and this new watch

Was so light and thin it seemed to catch

The sunlight's nothingness, and its gleam.

Topazes ran in a foamy stream

Over the cover, the hands were studded

With garnets, and seemed red roses, budded.

The face was of crystal, and engraved

Upon it the figures flashed and waved

With zircons, and beryls, and amethysts.

It took a week to make, and his trysts

At night with the Shadow were his alone.

Paul swore not to speak till his task was done.

The night that the jewel was worthy to give.

Paul watched the long hours of daylight live

To the faintest streak; then lit his light,

And sharp against the wall's pure white

The outline of the Shadow started

Into form.  His burning-hearted

Words so long imprisoned swelled

To tumbling speech.  Like one compelled,

He told the lady all his love,

And holding out the watch above

His head, he knelt, imploring some

Littlest sign.

The Shadow was dumb.

Weeks passed, Paul worked in fevered haste,

And everything he made he placed

Before his lady.  The Shadow kept

Its perfect passiveness.  Paul wept.

He wooed her with the work of his hands,

He waited for those dear commands

She never gave.  No word, no motion,

Eased the ache of his devotion.

His days passed in a strain of toil,

His nights burnt up in a seething coil.

Seasons shot by, uncognisant

He worked.  The Shadow came to haunt

Even his days.  Sometimes quite plain

He saw on the wall the blackberry stain

Of his lady's picture.  No sun was bright

Enough to dazzle that from his sight.

There were moments when he groaned to see

His life spilled out so uselessly,

Begging for boons the Shade refused,

His finest workmanship abused,

The iridescent bubbles he blew

Into lovely existence, poor and few

In the shadowed eyes.  Then he would curse

Himself and her!  The Universe!

And more, the beauty he could not make,

And give her, for her comfort's sake!

He would beat his weary, empty hands

Upon the table, would hold up strands

Of silver and gold, and ask her why

She scorned the best which he could buy.

He would pray as to some high-niched saint,

That she would cure him of the taint

Of failure.  He would clutch the wall

With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall

He could catch, and hold her, and make her live!

With sobs he would ask her to forgive

All he had done.  And broken, spent,

He would call himself impertinent;

Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven

To madness by the sight of Heaven.

At other times he would take the things

He had made, and winding them on strings,

Hang garlands before her, and burn perfumes,

Chanting strangely, while the fumes

Wreathed and blotted the shadow face,

As with a cloudy, nacreous lace.

There were days when he wooed as a lover, sighed

In tenderness, spoke to his bride,

Urged her to patience, said his skill

Should break the spell.  A man's sworn will

Could compass life, even that, he knew.

By Christ's Blood!  He would prove it true!

The edge of the Shadow never blurred.

The lips of the Shadow never stirred.

He would climb on chairs to reach her lips,

And pat her hair with his finger-tips.

But instead of young, warm flesh returning

His warmth, the wall was cold and burning

Like stinging ice, and his passion, chilled,

Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed

At the moment of birth.  Then, deadly sick,

He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick

Phantasmagoria crowded his brain,

And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain.

The crisis passed, he would wake and smile

With a vacant joy, half-imbecile

And quite confused, not being certain

Why he was suffering; a curtain

Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled

His sorrow.  Like a little child

He would play with his watches and gems, with glee

Calling the Shadow to look and see

How the spots on the ceiling danced prettily

When he flashed his stones.  "Mother, the green

Has slid so cunningly in between

The blue and the yellow.  Oh, please look down!"

Then, with a pitiful, puzzled frown,

He would get up slowly from his play

And walk round the room, feeling his way

From table to chair, from chair to door,

Stepping over the cracks in the floor,

Till reaching the table again, her face

Would bring recollection, and no solace

Could balm his hurt till unconsciousness

Stifled him and his great distress.

One morning he threw the street door wide

On coming in, and his vigorous stride

Made the tools on his table rattle and jump.

In his hands he carried a new-burst clump

Of laurel blossoms, whose smooth-barked stalks

Were pliant with sap.  As a husband talks

To the wife he left an hour ago,

Paul spoke to the Shadow.  "Dear, you know

To-day the calendar calls it Spring,

And I woke this morning gathering

Asphodels, in my dreams, for you.

So I rushed out to see what flowers blew

Their pink-and-purple-scented souls

Across the town-wind's dusty scrolls,

And made the approach to the Market Square

A garden with smells and sunny air.

I feel so well and happy to-day,

I think I shall take a Holiday.

And to-night we will have a little treat.

I am going to bring you something to eat!"

He looked at the Shadow anxiously.

It was quite grave and silent.  He

Shut the outer door and came

And leant against the window-frame.

"Dearest," he said, "we live apart

Although I bear you in my heart.

We look out each from a different world.

At any moment we may be hurled

Asunder.  They follow their orbits, we

Obey their laws entirely.

Now you must come, or I go there,

Unless we are willing to live the flare

Of a lighted instant and have it gone."

A bee in the laurels began to drone.

A loosened petal fluttered prone.

"Man grows by eating, if you eat

You will be filled with our life, sweet

Will be our planet in your mouth.

If not, I must parch in death's wide drouth

Until I gain to where you are,

And give you myself in whatever star

May happen.  O You Beloved of Me!

Is it not ordered cleverly?"

The Shadow, bloomed like a plum, and clear,

Hung in the sunlight.  It did not hear.

Paul slipped away as the dusk began

To dim the little shop.  He ran

To the nearest inn, and chose with care

As much as his thin purse could bear.

As rapt-souled monks watch over the baking

Of the sacred wafer, and through the making

Of the holy wine whisper secret prayers

That God will bless this labour of theirs;

So Paul, in a sober ecstasy,

Purchased the best which he could buy.

Returning, he brushed his tools aside,

And laid across the table a wide

Napkin.  He put a glass and plate

On either side, in duplicate.

Over the lady's, excellent

With loveliness, the laurels bent.

In the centre the white-flaked pastry stood,

And beside it the wine flask.  Red as blood

Was the wine which should bring the lustihood

Of human life to his lady's veins.

When all was ready, all which pertains

To a simple meal was there, with eyes

Lit by the joy of his great emprise,

He reverently bade her come,

And forsake for him her distant home.

He put meat on her plate and filled her glass,

And waited what should come to pass.

The Shadow lay quietly on the wall.

From the street outside came a watchman's call

"A cloudy night.  Rain beginning to fall."

And still he waited.  The clock's slow tick

Knocked on the silence.  Paul turned sick.

He filled his own glass full of wine;

From his pocket he took a paper.  The twine

Was knotted, and he searched a knife

From his jumbled tools.  The cord of life

Snapped as he cut the little string.

He knew that he must do the thing

He feared.  He shook powder into the wine,

And holding it up so the candle's shine

Sparked a ruby through its heart,

He drank it.  "Dear, never apart

Again!  You have said it was mine to do.

It is done, and I am come to you!"

Paul Jannes let the empty wine-glass fall,

And held out his arms.  The insentient wall

Stared down at him with its cold, white glare

Unstained!  The Shadow was not there!

Paul clutched and tore at his tightening throat.

He felt the veins in his body bloat,

And the hot blood run like fire and stones

Along the sides of his cracking bones.

But he laughed as he staggered towards the door,

And he laughed aloud as he sank on the floor.

The Coroner took the body away,

And the watches were sold that Saturday.

The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy

Such watches, and the prices were high.

The Forsaken

Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary.  Hear me!  I am very weary.  I have come

from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache for such

far roaming.  I cannot walk as light as I used, and my thoughts grow confused.

I am heavier than I was.  Mary Mother, you know the cause!

Beautiful Holy Lady, take my shame away from me!  Let this fear

be only seeming, let it be that I am dreaming.  For months I have hoped

it was so, now I am afraid I know.  Lady, why should this be shame,

just because I haven't got his name.  He loved me, yes, Lady, he did,

and he couldn't keep it hid.  We meant to marry.  Why did he die?

That day when they told me he had gone down in the avalanche, and could not

be found until the snow melted in Spring, I did nothing.  I could not cry.

Why should he die?  Why should he die and his child live?  His little child

alive in me, for my comfort.  No, Good God, for my misery!  I cannot face

the shame, to be a mother, and not married, and the poor child to be reviled

for having no father.  Merciful Mother, Holy Virgin, take away this sin I did.

Let the baby not be.  Only take the stigma off of me!

I have told no one but you, Holy Mary.  My mother would call me "whore",

and spit upon me; the priest would have me repent, and have

the rest of my life spent in a convent.  I am no whore, no bad woman,

he loved me, and we were to be married.  I carried him always in my heart,

what did it matter if I gave him the least part of me too?  You were a virgin,

Holy Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a woman

must give all.  There is some call to give and hold back nothing.

I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the sign.

What am I saying?  He is dead, my beautiful, strong man!  I shall never

feel him caress me again.  This is the only baby I shall have.

Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby!  My little, helpless baby!

He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a runner and as good

a shot.  Not that he shall be no scholar neither.  He shall go to school

in winter, and learn to read and write, and my father will teach him to carve,

so that he can make the little horses, and cows, and chamois,

out of white wood.  Oh, No!  No!  No!  How can I think such things,

I am not good.  My father will have nothing to do with my boy,

I shall be an outcast thing.  Oh, Mother of our Lord God, be merciful,

take away my shame!  Let my body be as it was before he came.

No little baby for me to keep underneath my heart for those long months.

To live for and to get comfort from.  I cannot go home and tell my mother.

She is so hard and righteous.  She never loved my father, and we were born

for duty, not for love.  I cannot face it.  Holy Mother, take my baby away!

Take away my little baby!  I don't want it, I can't bear it!

And I shall have nothing, nothing!  Just be known as a good girl.

Have other men want to marry me, whom I could not touch, after having known

my man.  Known the length and breadth of his beautiful white body,

and the depth of his love, on the high Summer Alp, with the moon above,

and the pine-needles all shiny in the light of it.  He is gone, my man,

I shall never hear him or feel him again, but I could not touch another.

I would rather lie under the snow with my own man in my arms!

So I shall live on and on.  Just a good woman.  With nothing to warm my heart

where he lay, and where he left his baby for me to care for.  I shall not be

quite human, I think.  Merely a stone-dead creature.  They will respect me.

What do I care for respect!  You didn't care for people's tongues

when you were carrying our Lord Jesus.  God had my man give me my baby,

when He knew that He was going to take him away.  His lips will comfort me,

his hands will soothe me.  All day I will work at my lace-making,

and all night I will keep him warm by my side and pray the blessed Angels

to cover him with their wings.  Dear Mother, what is it that sings?

I hear voices singing, and lovely silver trumpets through it all.  They seem

just on the other side of the wall.  Let me keep my baby, Holy Mother.

He is only a poor lace-maker's baby, with a stain upon him,

but give me strength to bring him up to be a man.

Late September

Tang of fruitage in the air;

Red boughs bursting everywhere;

Shimmering of seeded grass;

Hooded gentians all a'mass.

Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind

Tearing off the husky rind,

Blowing feathered seeds to fall

By the sun-baked, sheltering wall.

Beech trees in a golden haze;

Hardy sumachs all ablaze,

Glowing through the silver birches.

How that pine tree shouts and lurches!

From the sunny door-jamb high,

Swings the shell of a butterfly.

Scrape of insect violins

Through the stubble shrilly dins.

Every blade's a minaret

Where a small muezzin's set,

Loudly calling us to pray

At the miracle of day.

Then the purple-lidded night

Westering comes, her footsteps light

Guided by the radiant boon

Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

The Pike

In the brown water,

Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,

Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,

A pike dozed.

Lost among the shadows of stems

He lay unnoticed.

Suddenly he flicked his tail,

And a green-and-copper brightness

Ran under the water.

Out from under the reeds

Came the olive-green light,

And orange flashed up

Through the sun-thickened water.

So the fish passed across the pool,

Green and copper,

A darkness and a gleam,

And the blurred reflections of the willows on the opposite bank

Received it.

The Blue Scarf

Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered over with silver, brocaded

In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes,

it lies there,

Warm from a woman's soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, caressing.

Where is she, the woman who wore it?  The scent of her lingers and drugs me!

A languor, fire-shotted, runs through me, and I crush the scarf down

on my face,

And gulp in the warmth and the blueness, and my eyes swim

in cool-tinted heavens.

Around me are columns of marble, and a diapered, sun-flickered pavement.

Rose-leaves blow and patter against it.  Below the stone steps a lute tinkles.

A jar of green jade throws its shadow half over the floor.  A big-bellied

Frog hops through the sunlight and plops in the gold-bubbled water of a basin,

Sunk in the black and white marble.  The west wind has lifted a scarf

On the seat close beside me, the blue of it is a violent outrage of colour.

She draws it more closely about her, and it ripples beneath

her slight stirring.

Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel

Hard and white; a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to

a handful of cinders,

And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine.

How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!

White and Green

Hey!  My daffodil-crowned,

Slim and without sandals!

As the sudden spurt of flame upon darkness

So my eyeballs are startled with you,

Supple-limbed youth among the fruit-trees,

Light runner through tasselled orchards.

You are an almond flower unsheathed

Leaping and flickering between the budded branches.

Aubade

As I would free the white almond from the green husk

So would I strip your trappings off,

Beloved.

And fingering the smooth and polished kernel

I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting.

Music

The neighbour sits in his window and plays the flute.

From my bed I can hear him,

And the round notes flutter and tap about the room,

And hit against each other,

Blurring to unexpected chords.

It is very beautiful,

With the little flute-notes all about me,

In the darkness.

In the daytime,

The neighbour eats bread and onions with one hand

And copies music with the other.

He is fat and has a bald head,

So I do not look at him,

But run quickly past his window.

There is always the sky to look at,

Or the water in the well!

But when night comes and he plays his flute,

I think of him as a young man,

With gold seals hanging from his watch,

And a blue coat with silver buttons.

As I lie in my bed

The flute-notes push against my ears and lips,

And I go to sleep, dreaming.

A Lady

You are beautiful and faded

Like an old opera tune

Played upon a harpsichord;

Or like the sun-flooded silks

Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.

In your eyes

Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,

And the perfume of your soul

Is vague and suffusing,

With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.

Your half-tones delight me,

And I grow mad with gazing

At your blent colours.

My vigour is a new-minted penny,

Which I cast at your feet.

Gather it up from the dust,

That its sparkle may amuse you.

In a Garden

Gushing from the mouths of stone men

To spread at ease under the sky

In granite-lipped basins,

Where iris dabble their feet

And rustle to a passing wind,

The water fills the garden with its rushing,

In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns.

Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone,

Where trickle and plash the fountains,

Marble fountains, yellowed with much water.

Splashing down moss-tarnished steps

It falls, the water;

And the air is throbbing with it.

With its gurgling and running.

With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur.

And I wished for night and you.

I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool,

White and shining in the silver-flecked water.

While the moon rode over the garden,

High in the arch of night,

And the scent of the lilacs was heavy with stillness.

Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!

A Tulip Garden

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,

Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,

The tulips stand arrayed.  Here infantry

Wheels out into the sunlight.  What bold grace

Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace!

Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry,

With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye

Of purple batteries, every gun in place.

Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread,

With torches burning, stepping out in time

To some quick, unheard march.  Our ears are dead,

We cannot catch the tune.  In pantomime

Parades that army.  With our utmost powers

We hear the wind stream through a bed of flowers.

[End of original text.]

Notes:

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok:

Originally:  After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók:

A Blockhead:

"There are non, ever.  As a monk who prays"

changed to:

"There are none, ever.  As a monk who prays"

A Tale of Starvation:

"And he neither eat nor drank."

changed to:

"And he neither ate nor drank."

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck:

Stanza headings were originally Roman Numerals.

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde:

The following names are presented in this etext sans accents:

Marguérite, Angélique, Véronique, Franc,ois.

The following unconnected lines in the etext are presented sans accents:

The factory of Sèvres had lent

Strange wingéd dragons writhe about

And rich perfuméd smells

A faëry moonshine washing pale the crowds

Our eyes will close to undisturbéd rest.

And terror-wingéd steps.  His heart began

On the stripéd ground

Some books by Amy Lowell:

Poetry:

A Critical Fable

* A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)

* Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914)

* Men, Women and Ghosts (1916)

Can Grande's Castle (1918)

Pictures of the Floating World (1919)

Legends (1921)

What's O'Clock (1925)

East Wind

Ballads For Sale

(In collaboration with Florence Ayscough)

Fir-Flower Tablets:  Poems Translated from the Chinese (1921)

Prose:

John Keats

Six French Poets:  Studies in Contemporary Literature (1915)

Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917)

* Now available online from Project Gutenberg.

About the author:

From the notes to "The Second Book of Modern Verse" (1919, 1920), edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse.

Lowell, Amy. Born in Brookline, Mass., Feb. 9, 1874. Educated at private schools. Author of "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass", 1912; "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed", 1914; "Men, Women and Ghosts", 1916; "Can Grande's Castle", 1918; "Pictures of the Floating World", 1919. Editor of the three successive collections of "Some Imagist Poets", 1915, '16, and '17, containing the early work of the "Imagist School" of which Miss Lowell became the leader. This movement,... originated in England, the idea have been first conceived by a young poet named T. E. Hulme, but developed and put forth by Ezra Pound in an article called "Don'ts by an Imagist", which appeared in `Poetry; A Magazine of Verse'. ... A small group of poets gathered about Mr. Pound, experimenting along the technical lines suggested, and a cult of "Imagism" was formed, whose first group-expression was in the little volume, "Des Imagistes", published in New York in April, 1914. Miss Lowell did not come actively into the movement until after that time, but once she had entered it, she became its leader, and it was chiefly through her effort in America that the movement attained so much prominence and so influenced the trend of poetry for the years immediately succeeding. Miss Lowell many times, in admirable articles, stated the principles upon which Imagism is based, notably in the Preface to "Some Imagist Poets" and in the Preface to the second series, in 1916. She also elaborated it much more fully in her volume, "Tendencies in Modern American Poetry", 1917, in the articles pertaining to the work of "H.D." and John Gould Fletcher. In her own creative work, however, Miss Lowell did most to establish the possibilities of the Imagistic idea and of its modes of presentation, and opened up many interesting avenues of poetic form. Her volume, "Can Grande's Castle", is devoted to work in the medium which she styled "Polyphonic Prose" and contains some of her finest work, particularly "The Bronze Horses".

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Table of Contents

SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED

[American (Massachusetts) poet, 1874-1925.]

SWORD BLADES AND POPPY SEED

Preface

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

SWORD BLADES

The Captured Goddess

The Precinct. Rochester

The Cyclists

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

Astigmatism

The Coal Picker

Storm-Racked

Convalescence

Patience

Apology

A Petition

A Blockhead

Stupidity

Irony

Happiness

The Last Quarter of the Moon

A Tale of Starvation

The Foreigner

Absence

A Gift

The Bungler

Fool's Money Bags

Miscast I

Miscast II

Anticipation

Vintage

The Tree of Scarlet Berries

Obligation

The Taxi

The Giver of Stars

The Temple

Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success

In Answer to a Request

POPPY SEED

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartók

Clear, with Light, Variable Winds

The Basket

In a Castle

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

The Exeter Road

The Shadow

The Forsaken

Late September

The Pike

The Blue Scarf

White and Green

Aubade

Music

A Lady

In a Garden

A Tulip Garden

Notes:

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