London, my beautiful,
it is not the sunset
nor the pale green sky
shimmering through the curtain
of the silver birch,
nor the quietness;
it is not the hopping
of birds
upon the lawn,
nor the darkness
stealing over all things
that moves me.
But as the moon creeps slowly
over the tree-tops
among the stars,
I think of her
and the glow her passing
sheds on men.
London, my beautiful,
I will climb
into the branches
to the moonlit tree-tops,
that my blood may be cooled
by the wind.
I know this room,
and there are corridors:
the pictures, I have seen before;
the statues and those gems in cases
I have wandered by before,—
stood there silent and lonely
in a dream of years ago.
I know the dark of night is all around me;
my eyes are closed, and I am half asleep.
My wife breathes gently at my side.
But once again this old dream is within me,
and I am on the threshold waiting,
wondering, pleased, and fearful.
Where do those doors lead,
what rooms lie beyond them?
I venture. . . .
But my baby moves and tosses
from side to side,
and her need calls me to her.
Now I stand awake, unseeing,
in the dark,
and I move towards her cot. . . .
I shall not reach her . . . There is no direction. . . .
I shall walk on. . . .
Immortal? . . . No,
they cannot be, these people,
nor I.
Tired faces,
eyes that have never seen the world,
bodies that have never lived in air,
lips that have never minted speech,
they are the clipped and garbled,
blocking the highway.
They swarm and eddy
between the banks of glowing shops
towards the red meat,
the potherbs,
the cheapjacks,
or surge in
before the swift rush
of the clanging trams,—
pitiful, ugly, mean,
encumbering.
Immortal? . . .
In a wood,
watching the shadow of a bird
leap from frond to frond of bracken,
I am immortal.
But these?
The grass is beneath my head;
and I gaze
at the thronging stars
in the night.
They fall . . . they fall. . . .
I am overwhelmed,
and afraid.
Each leaf of the aspen
is caressed by the wind,
and each is crying.
And the perfume
of invisible roses
deepens the anguish.
Let a strong mesh of roots
feed the crimson of roses
upon my heart;
and then fold over the hollow
where all the pain was.
Under the lily shadow
and the gold
and the blue and mauve
that the whin and the lilac
pour down on the water,
the fishes quiver.
Over the green cold leaves
and the rippled silver
and the tarnished copper
of its neck and beak,
toward the deep black water
beneath the arches,
the swan floats slowly.
Into the dark of the arch the swan floats
and into the black depth of my sorrow
it bears a white rose of flame.
Elm trees
and the leaf the boy in me hated
long ago—
rough and sandy.
Poplars
and their leaves,
tender, smooth to the fingers,
and a secret in their smell
I have forgotten.
Oaks
and forest glades,
heart aching with wonder, fear:
their bitter mast.
Willows
and the scented beetle
we put in our handkerchiefs;
and the roots of one
that spread into a river:
nakedness, water and joy.
Hawthorn,
white and odorous with blossom,
framing the quiet fields,
and swaying flowers and grasses,
and the hum of bees.
Oh, these are the things that are with me now,
in the town;
and I am grateful
for this minute of my manhood.
Dear one!
you sit there
in the corner of the carriage;
and you do not know me;
and your eyes forbid.
Is it the dirt, the squalor,
the wear of human bodies,
and the dead faces of our neighbours?
These are but symbols.
You are proud; I praise you;
your mouth is set; you see beyond us;
and you see nothing.
I have the vision of your calm, cold face,
and of the black hair that waves above it;
I watch you; I love you;
I desire you.
There is a quiet here
within the thud-thud of the wheels
upon the railway.
There is a quiet here
within my heart,
but tense and tender . . .
This is my station . . .
. . . That night I loved you
in the candlelight.
Your golden hair
strewed the sweet whiteness of the pillows
and the counterpane.
O the darkness of the corners,
the warm air, and the stars
framed in the casement of the ships’ lights!
The waves lapped into the harbour;
the boats creaked;
a man’s voice sang out on the quay;
and you loved me.
In your love were the tall tree fuchsias,
the blue of the hortensias, the scarlet nasturtiums,
the trees on the hills,
the roads we had covered,
and the sea that had borne your body
before the rocks of Hartland.
You loved me with these
and with the kindness of people,
country folk, sailors and fishermen,
and the old lady who had lodged us and supped us.
You loved me with yourself
that was these and more,
changed as the earth is changed
into the bloom of flowers.
Evening and quiet:
a bird trills in the poplar trees
behind the house with the dark green door
across the road.
Into the sky,
the red earthenware and the galvanised iron chimneys
thrust their cowls.
The hoot of the steamers on the Thames is plain.
No wind;
the trees merge, green with green;
a car whirs by;
footsteps and voices take their pitch
in the key of dusk,
far-off and near, subdued.
Solid and square to the world
the houses stand,
their windows blocked with venetian blinds.
Nothing will move them.
Through the open window can be seen
the poplars at the end of the garden
shaking in the wind,
a wall of green leaves so high
that the sky is shut off.
On the white table-cloth
a rose in a vase
—centre of a sphere of odour—
contemplates the crumbs and crusts
left from a meal:
cups, saucers, plates lie
here and there.
And a sparrow flies by the open window,
stops for a moment,
flutters his wings rapidly,
and climbs an aerial ladder
with his claws
that work close in
to his soft, brown-grey belly.
But behind the table is the face of a man.
The bird flies off.
The blue mist of after-rain
fills all the trees;
the sunlight gilds the tops
of the poplar spires, far off,
behind the houses.
Here a branch sways
and there
a sparrow twitters.
The curtain’s hem, rose-embroidered,
flutters, and half reveals
a burnt-red chimney pot.
The quiet in the room
bears patiently
a footfall on the street.
I sat there in the dark
of the room and of my mind
thinking of men’s treasons and bad faith,
sinking into the pit of my own weakness
before their strength of cunning.
Out over the gardens came the sound of some one
playing five-finger exercises on the piano.
Then
I gathered up within me all my powers
until outside of me was nothing:
I was all—
all stubborn, fighting sadness and revulsion.
And one came from the garden quietly,
and stood beside me.
She laid her hand on my hair;
she laid her cheek on my forehead,—
and caressed me with it;
but all my being rose to my forehead
to fight against this outside thing.
Something in me became angry;
withstood like a wall,
and would allow no entrance;
I hated her.
“What is the matter with you, dear?” she said.
“Nothing,” I answered,
“I am thinking.”
She stroked my hair and went away;
and I was still gloomy, angry, stubborn.
Then I thought:
she has gone away; she is hurt;
she does not know
what poison has been working in me.
Then I thought:
upstairs, her child is sleeping;
and I felt the presence
of the fields we had walked over, the roads we had followed,
the flowers we had watched together,
before it came.
She had touched my hair, and only then did I feel it;
And I loved her once again.
And I came away,
full of the sweet and bitter juices of life;
and I lit the lamp in my room,
and made this poem.
Eyes are tired;
the lamp burns,
and in its circle of light
papers and books lie
where chance and life
have placed them.
Silence sings all around me;
my head is bound with a band;
outside in the street a few footsteps;
a clock strikes the hour.
I gaze, and my eyes close,
slowly:
I doze; but the moment before sleep,
a voice calls my name
in my ear,
and the shock jolts my heart:
but when I open my eyes,
and look, first left, and then right . . .
no one is there.
There has been no sound of guns,
no roar of exploding bombs;
but the darkness has an edge
that grits the nerves of the sleeper.
He awakens;
nothing disturbs the stillness,
save perhaps the light, slow flap,
once only, of the curtain
dim in the darkness.
Yet there is something else
that drags him from his bed;
and he stands in the darkness
with his feet cold against the floor
and the cold air round his ankles.
He does not know why,
but he goes to the window and sees
a beam of light, miles high,
dividing the night into two before him,
still, stark and throbbing.
The houses and gardens beneath
lie under the snow
quiet and tinged with purple.
There has been no sound of guns,
no roar of exploding bombs;
only that watchfulness hidden among the snow-covered houses,
and that great beam thrusting back into heaven
the light taken from it.
To J. C.
Here where the brown leaves fall
from elm and chestnut and plane-tree;
here where the brown leaves drift
along the paths to the lake
where the waterfowl breast the waves
that are ridged by the wind,—
you spoke of your art and life,
of men you had known who betrayed you,
men who fell short of friendship
and women who fell short of love;
but, abiding beyond them, your art
held you to life, transformed it, became it,
and so you were free.
And I told you of all my weakness,—
my growing strength to resist
the appeal to my heart and eyes
of sorrowful, beautiful things;
and the strength of this outer husk
I had permitted to grow and protect me
was its pitiful measure.
You said: There are cracks in the husk.
It grew to your measure perhaps once;
but you are now breaking through it, and soon
it will fall apart and away from you.
Like a tree content with its fate,
you would not have known it was there
if it had grown to remain.
The cold wind blew the brown leaves
on to the lovers beneath,
who crept closer together for warmth
and closer still for love.
The peacocks perched in the branches
hawked their harsh cry at the golden
round moon that loomed over the tree-tops.
And the sound of our feet on the gravel
for a time was answer enough
to the broken mesh of our thoughts.
I said: I have wife and children,
a girl and a boy: I love them;
the gold of their hair is all the gold
of my thoughts; the blue of their eyes
is all the purity of my vision;
the rhythm of their life is more to be watched
than the cadences of my poems.
And you asked me:
Have you taken refuge behind them?
Do you not fear to lose your life
in saving it for them?
Be brave! Be brave! The waters are deep,
the waves run high; but you are a swimmer:
strike out!
The cold wind blew the brown leaves
deeper and deeper into the dusk;
the peacocks had hushed their cries;
the moon had turned her gold into silver,
and between the black lace of two trees
one star shone clearly.
O night!
have I deserved your beauty?
The mist of the evening is rose
In the dying sun,
And the street is quiet between its rows of plane-trees,
And the walls of the gardens
With the laurel bushes.
I walk along in a dream,
Half aware
Of the empty black of the windows.
One window I pass by.
It is not empty:
Something shows from it—white, I feel, and round-
Something that pulls me back
To gaze, still dreaming,
To gaze and to wake and stare
At a naked woman—
Oh, beautiful!
Alone in the window.
Is there a sign?
Does she call me?
What is the lure?
She does not move.
And I crawl to the gate, and stop,
And open the gate, again stopping,
And crawl again up the stone steps—
Fear driving my heart mad—
Up to the door.
Door, do not open—
Though I beat you with my fists!