m^ iihiH ■iirtiih o V ' o'^ N^ ^^ o^' ^A a^ ^ A-^ \^ -^.i ,^<^' K^^ LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND BOOKS BY EZRA POUND PROVENCA, being poems selected from Personae, Exultations, and Canzoniere THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE: An attempt to define someiifhat the charm of the pre-renaissance literature of Latin-Europe THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF GUI DO CAVALCANTl RIPOSTES DES IMAGISTES: an anthology of the Imagists, Ezra Pound, Aldington, Amy Loivell, Ford Maddox Hueffer, and others GAUDIER-BRZESKA : A memoir NOH: A Study of the Classical Stage of Japan {ivith Ernest Fenollosa. Alfred A. Knopf, New York) LUSTRA zvith Earlier Poems. {Al- fred A. Knopf, New York) PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS. {Prose. In preparation: Alfred A. Knopf, New York) L U S T R A o/Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems ^ New York . Alfred A. Knopf . Mcmxvii COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY EZRA POUND / Pukliihea Ocubtr, 1911 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AUESICA NOV 24 1517 ' »Gi,A479208 ^ f-^ Vail de Lencour Cui dono lepidum novum libellum. CONTENTS Ten zone 13 The Condolence 14 The Garret 15 The Garden 16 Ortus 16 Salutation 17 Salutation the Second 18 The Spring 20 Albatre 20 Causa 21 Commission 21 A Pact 23 Surgit Fama 24 Preference 25 Dance Figure 25 April 27 Gentildonna 27 The Rest 28 Les Milwin 29 Further Instructions 30 A Song of the Degrees 31 Ite 32 Dum Capitolium Scandet 32 To KaX^j/ 33 The Study in Aesthetics 33 The Bellaires 34 The New Cake of Soap 36 Salvationists 37 Epitaph 38 Arides 38 The Bath Tub 38 Amities 39 Meditatio 40 To Dives 41 Ladies 41 Phyllidula 42 The Patterns 43 Coda 43 The Seeing Eye 43 Ancora 44 " Dompna pois de me no'us cal" 45 The Coming of War: Actaeon 48 After Ch'u Yuan 49 Liu Ch'e 49 Fan-piece, for her Imperial Lord 50 Ts'ai Chi'h 50 In a Station of the Metro 50 Alba 51 Heather 51 The Faun 51 Coitus 52 The Encounter 52 Tempora 53 Black Slippers: Bellotti 53 Society 54 Image from D'Orleans 54 Papyrus 55 " lone, Dead the Long Year " 55 Shop Girl 56 To Formianus' Young Lady Friend 56 Tame Cat 57 L'Art, 1910 57 Simulacra 58 Women Before a Shop 58 Epilogue 58 The Social Order 59 The Tea Shop 60 Ancient Music 61 The Lake Isle 61 Epitaphs 62 Our Contemporaries 63 Ancient Wisdom, Rather Cos- mic 63 The Three Poets 64 The Gipsy 64 The Game of Chess 65 Provincia Deserta 66 CATHAY Song of the Bowmen of Shu 73 The Beautiful Toilet 74 The River Song 75 The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter 77 The Jewel Stairs' Grievance 79 Poem by the Bridge at Ten- Shin 80 Lament of the Frontier Guard 81 Exile's Letter 83 Four Poems of Departure Separation on the River Ki- ang 87 Taking Leave of a Friend 88 Leave-taking near Shoku 88 The City of Choan 89 South-Folk in Cold Country 89 Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku 90 A Ballad of the Mulberry Road 91 Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu 92 To-Em-Mei's " The Unmoving Cloud " 94 Near Perigord 96 Villanelle: The Psychological Hour 105 Dans un Omnibus de Londres 107 Pagani's, November 8 109 To a Friend Writing on Cab- aret Dancers 109 Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus 114 Fish and the Shadow ii6 Impressions of Frangois-Marie Arouet (De Voltaire) 117 POEMS PUBLISHED BEFORE 1911 In Durance 123 Piere Vidol Old 125 Prayer for His Lady's Life 129 "Blandula, TenuUa, Vagula " 130 Erat Hora 130 The Sea of Glass 131 Rome 131 Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon 132 Housman's Message to Mankind 135 Translations from Heine 135 Extra poem from Heine 42 Und Drang 141 Ripostes 152 In Exitum Cuiusdam 153 Apparuit 154 The Tomb at Akr Caar 155 Portrait d'une Femme 157 New York 158 A Girl 159 "Phasellus Hie" 159 An Object 160 Quies i6i The Seafarer i6i The Cloak 165 An Immorality 166 Dieu! Qu'il la fait 167 Salve Pontifex 167 Awpia 172 The Needle 172 Sub Mare 173 Plunge 174 A Virginal 175 Pan Is Dead 175 The Picture 176 Of Jacopo del Sellaio 177 The Return 177 THREE CANTOS Three Cantos of a Poem of Some Length 180 LUSTRA OF EZRA POUND TENZONE Will people accept them? (i.e. these songs). As a timorous wench from a centaur (or a centurion), Already they flee, howling in terror. Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes? Their virgin stupidity is untemptable. I beg you, my friendly critics. Do not set about to procure me an audience. I mate with my free kind upon the crags; the hidden recesses Have heard the echo of my heels, In the cool light, in the darkness. 13 THE CONDOLENCE A mis soledades voy, De mis soledades vengo, Porque por andar conmigo Mi bastan mis pensamientos. Lope de Vega. O my fellow sufferers, songs of my youth, A lot of asses praise you because you are " virile," We, you, I ! We are " Red Bloods " 1 Imagine it, my fellow sufferers — Our maleness lifts us out of the ruck, Who'd have foreseen it? O my fellow sufferers, we went out under the trees, We were in especial bored with male stupidity. We went forth gathering delicate thoughts. Our " fantastikon " delighted to serve us. We were not exasperated with women, for the female is ductile. And now you hear what is said to us : We are compared to that sort of person Who wanders about announcing his sex 14 As if he had just discovered it. Let us leave this matter, my songs, and return to that which concerns us. THE GARRET Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are. Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends. And we have friends and no butlers. Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried. Dawn enters with little feet like a gilded Pavlova, And I am near my desire. Nor has life in it aught better Than this hour of clear coolness, the hour of waking together. 15 THE GARDEN En robe de parade. Samain Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anaemia. And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion. ORTUS How have I laboured? How have I not laboured To bring her soul to birth. To give these elements a name and a centre 1 i6 She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid. She has no name, and no place. How have I laboured to bring her soul into separation; To give her a name and her being! Surely you are bound and entwined, You are mingled with the elements unborn; I have loved a stream and a shadow. I beseech you enter your life. ^ I beseech you learn to say " I " When I question you : For you are no part, but a whole; No portion, but a being. SALUTATION generation of the thoroughly smug and thoroughly uncomfortable, 1 have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun, I have seen them with untidy families, I have seen their smiles full of teeth and heard ungainly laughter. 17 And I am happier than you are, And they were happier than I am; And the fish swim in the lake and do not even own clothing. SALUTATION THE SECOND You were praised, my books, because I had just come from the country; I was twenty years behind the times so you found an audience ready. I do not disown you, do not you disown your progeny. Here they stand without quaint devices. Here they are with nothing archaic about them. Watch the reporters spit. Watch the anger of the professors, Watch how the pretty ladies revile them : " Is this," they say, " the nonsense that we expect of poets? " " Where is the Picturesque? " " Where is the vertigo of emotion? " " No ! his first work was the best." " Poor Dear ! he has lost his illusions." i8 Go, little naked and impudent songs, Go with a light foot ! (Or with two light feet, if it please you !) Go and dance shamelessly! Go with an impertinent frolic 1 Greet the grave and the stodgy, Salute them with your thumbs at your noses. Here are your bells and confetti. Go ! rejuvenate things I Rejuvenate even " The Spectator." Go ! and make cat calls ! Dance and make people blush. Dance the dance of the phallus and tell anecdotes of Cybele I Speak of the indecorous conduct of the Gods ! (Tell it to Mr. Strachey) Ruffle the skirts of prudes, speak of their knees and ankles. But, above all, go to practical people — go! jangle their door-bells! Say that you do no work and that you will live forever. 19 THE SPRING Cydonian Spring with her attendant train, Meliads and water-girls. Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace, Throughout this sylvan place Spreads the bright tips, And every vine-stock is Clad in new brilliancies. And wild desire Falls like black lightning. O bewildered heart, Though every branch have back what last year lost. She, who moved here amid the cyclamen, Moves only now a clinging tenuous ghost. ALBATRE This lady in the white bath-robe which she calls a peignoir Is, for the time being, the mistress of my friend, And the delicate white feet of her little white dog Are not more delicate than she is. Nor would Gautier himself have despised their con- trasts in whiteness 20 As she sits in the great chair Between the two indolent candles. CAUSA I join these words for four people, Some others may overhear them, O world, I am sorry for you, You do not know these four people. COMMISSION Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied. Go also to the nerve-wracked, go to the enslaved- by-convention, Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water, Bear my contempt of oppressors. Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds. 21 Go to the bourgeolse who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women in suburbs. Go to the hideously wedded, Go to them whose failure is concealed, Go to the unluckily mated. Go to the bought wife. Go to the woman entailed. Go to those who have delicate lust, Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted. Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world; Go with your edge against this, Strengthen the subtle cords. Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles of the soul. Go in a friendly manner, Go with an open speech. Be eager to find new evils and new good. Be against all forms of oppression. Go to those who are thickened with middle age. To those who have lost their interest. Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family — Oh how hideous it is 22 To see three generations of one house gathered together ! It is like an old tree with shoots, And with some branches rotted and falling. Go out and defy opinion, Go against this vegetable bondage of the blood. Be against all sorts of mortmain. A PACT I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman I have detested you long enough, I come to you as a grown child Who has had a pig-headed father; I am old enough now to make friends. It was you that broke the new wood, Now is a time for carving. We have one sap and one root — Let there be commerce between us. 23 SURGIT FAMA There is a truce among the gods, Kore is seen in the North Skirting the blue-gray sea In gilded and russet mantle. The com has again its mother and she, Leuconoe, That failed never women, Fails not the earth now. The tricksome Hermes is here; He moves behind me Eager to catch my words, Eager to spread them with rumour; To set upon them his change Crafty and subtle; To alter them to his purpose ; But do thou speak true, even to the letter; " Once more in Delos, once more is the altar a-quiver. Once more is the chant heard. Once more are the never abandoned gardens Full of gossip and old tales." 24 PREFERENCE It is true that you say the gods are more use to you than fairies, But for all that I have seen you on a high, white, noble horse, Like some strange queen in a story. It is odd that you should be covered with long robes and trailing tendrils and flowers; It is odd that you should be changing your face and resembling some other woman to plague me; It is odd that you should be hiding yourself In the cloud of beautiful women who do not concern me. And I, who follow every seed-leaf upon the wind? You will say that I deserve this. DANCE FIGURE For the Marriage in Cana of Galilee Dark eyed, O woman of my dreams. Ivory sandaled. 25 There is none like thee among the dancers, ^ None with swift feet. I have not found thee in the tents, In the broken darkness. I have not found thee at the well-head Among the women with pitchers. Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark; Thy face as a river with lights. White as an almond are thy shoulders; As new almonds stripped from the husk. They guard thee not with eunuchs; Not with bars of copper. Gilt turquoise and silver are in the place of thy rest. A brown robe, with threads of gold woven in patterns, hast thou gathered about thee, O Nathat-Ikanaie, " Tree-at-the-river." As a rillet among the sedge are thy hands upon me ; Thy fingers a frosted stream. 26 Thy maidens are white like pebbles; Their music about thee ! There is none like thee among the dancers; None with swift feet. APRIL Nympharum membra disjecta Three spirits came to me And drew me apart To where the olive boughs Lay stripped upon the ground: Pale carnage beneath bright mist. GENTILDONNA She passed and left no quiver in the veins, who now Moving among the trees, and clinging in the air she severed, Fanning the grass she walked on then, endures: Grey olive leaves beneath a rain-cold sky. 27 THE REST O helpless few in my country, remnant enslaved ! Artists broken against her, A-stray, lost in the villages. Mistrusted, spoken-against. Lovers of beauty, starved. Thwarted with systems. Helpless against the control; You who can not wear yourselves out By persisting to successes. You who can only speak. Who can not steel yourselves into reiteration; You of the finer sense. Broken against false knowledge. You who can know at first hand, Hated, shut in, mistrusted: Take thought: 1 have weathered the storm, I have beaten out my exile. 28 LES MILLWIN The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet. The mauve and greenish souls of the httle Millwins Were seen lying along the upper seats Like so many unused boas. The turbulent and undiscipllne'd host of art students — The rigorous deputation from " Slade " — Was before them. With arms exalted, with fore-arms Crossed in great futuristic X's, the art students Exulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra. And the little Millwins beheld these things; With their large and anaemic eyes they looked out upon this configuration. Let us therefore mention the fact. For it seems to us worthy of record. 29 FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions, Let us express our envy of the man with a steady job and no worry about the future. You are very idle, my songs. I fear you will come to a bad end. You stand about in the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops. You do next to nothing at all. You do not even express our inner nobilities, You will come to a very bad end. And I? I have gone half cracked, I have talked to you so much that I almost see you about me, Insolent little beasts, shameless, devoid of clothing I But you, newest song of the lot. You are not old enough to have done much mischief, I will get you a green coat out of China With dragons worked upon It, 30 I will get you the scarlet silk trousers From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella, Lest they say we are lacking in taste, Or that there is no caste in this family. A SONG OF THE DEGREES I Rest me with Chinese colours, For I think the glass is evil. II The wind moves above the wheat — With a silver crashing, A thin war of metal. I have known the golden disc, I have seen it melting above me. I have known the stone-bright place. The hall of clear colours. 31 Ill O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours ! O light bound and bent in, O soul of the captive, Why am I warned? Why am I sent away? Why is your glitter full of curious mistrust? O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold! O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence! ITE Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant. Move among the lovers of perfection alone. Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light And take your wounds from it gladly. DUM CAPITOLIUM SCANDET How many will come after me singing as well as I sing, none better; Telling the heart of their truth as I have taught them to tell It; Fruit of my seed, O my unnameable children. 32 Know then that I loved you from afore-time, Clear speakers, naked in the sun, untrammelled. To Ka\6v Even in my dreams you have denied yourself to me And sent me only your handmaids. THE STUDY IN AESTHETICS The very small children in patched clothing, Being smitten with an unusual wisdom. Stopped in their play as she passed them And cried up from their cobbles : Guarda! A hi, guarda! ch' e be' a */ But three years after this I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not know — For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes and thirty-four Catulli; * Bella, 33 And there had been a great catch of sardines, And his elders Were packing them in the great wooden boxes For the market in Brescia, and he Leapt about, snatching at the bright fi^h And getting in both of their ways; And in vain they commanded him to sta fermo! And when they would not let him arrange The fish in the boxes He stroked those which were already arranged, Murmuring for his own satisfaction This identical phrase: Ch' e be' a. And at this I was mildly abashed. THE BELLAIRES Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen Mach' ich die kleinen L'teder The good Bellaires Do not understand the conduct of this world's affairs. In fact they understood them so badly That they have had to cross the Channel. 34 Nine lawyers, four counsels, five judges and three proctors of the King, Together with the respective wives, husbands, sis- ters and heterogeneous connections of the good Bellaires, Met to discuss their affairs; But the good Bellaires have so little understood their affairs That now there is no one at all Who can understand any affair of theirs. Yet Fourteen hunters still eat in the stables of The good Squire Bellaire; But these may not suffer attainder. For they may not belong to the good Squire Bellaire But to his wife. On the contrary, if they do not belong to his wife, He will plead A " freedom from attainder " For twelve horses and also for twelve boarhounds From Charles the Fourth; And a further freedom for the remainder Of horses, from Henry the Fourth. But the judges, Being free of mediaeval scholarship. Will pay no attention to this, 35 And there will be only the more confusion, Replevin, estoppel, espavin and what not. Nine lawyers, four counsels, etc.. Met to discuss their affairs. But the sole result was bills From lawyers to whom no one was indebted, And even the lawyers Were uncertain who was supposed to be indebted to them. Wherefore the good Squire Bellaire Resides now at Agde and Biaucaire. To Carcassonne, Pui, and Alais He fareth from day to day. Or takes the sea air Between Marseilles And Beziers. And for all this I have considerable regret. For the good Bellaires Are very charming people. THE NEW CAKE OF SOAP Lo, how it gleams and glistens in the sun Like the cheek of a Chesterton. 36 SALVATIONISTS I Come, my songs, let us speak of perfection — We shall get ourselves rather disliked. II Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect The very excellent term Riisticus. Let us apply it in all its opprobrium To those to whom it applies. And you may decline to make them immortal, For we shall consider them and their state In delicate Opulent silence. Ill Come, my songs. Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities Beginning with Mumpodorus; And against this sea of vulgarities — Beginning with Nimmim; And against this sea of imbeciles — All the Bulmenian literati. 37 EPITAPH Leucis, who intended a Grand Passion, Ends with a willingness-to-oblige. ARIDES The bashful Arldes Has married an ugly wife, He was bored with his manner of life. Indifferent and discouraged he thought he might as Well do this as anything else. Saying within his heart, " I am no use to myself, " Let her, if she wants me, take me." He went to his doom. THE BATH TUB As a bathtub lined with white porcelain. When the hot water gives out or goes tepid. So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady. 38 AMITIES Old friends the most. W. B. Y. I To one, on returning certain years after. You wore the same quite correct clothing, You took no pleasure at all in my triumphs, You had the same old air of condescension Mingled with a curious fear That I, myself, might have enjoyed them. Te voila, mon Boiirrienne, you also shall be im- mortal. II To another. And we say good-bye to you also. For you seem never to have discovered That your relationship is wholly parasitic; Yet to our feasts you bring neither Wit, nor good spirits, nor the pleasing attitudes Of discipleship. 39 Ill But you, bos amic, we keep on, For to you we owe a real debt: In spite of your obvious flaws, You once discovered a moderate chop-house. IV Iste fuit vir incultus, Deo laus, quod est sepultuSy Vermes habent eius vultum A-a-a-a — A-men. Ego autem jovialis Gaudero contubernalis Cum jocunda femina. MEDITATIO When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs I am compelled to conclude That man is the superior animal. When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled. 40 TO DIVES Who am I to condemn you, O Dives, I who am as much embittered With poverty As you are with useless riches? LADIES Agathas Four and forty lovers had Agathas in the old days, All of whom she refused; And now she turns to me seeking love. And her hair also is turning. Young Lady I have fed your lar with poppies, I have adored you for three full years; And now you grumble because your dress does not fit And because I happen to say so. 41 Leshia Ilia Memnon, Memnon, that lady Who used to walk about amongst us With such gracious uncertainty, Is now wedded To a British householder. Lugete, Venere! Ltigete, Cupidinesque! Passing Flawless as Aphrodite, Thoroughly beautiful, Brainless, The faint odour of your patchouli. Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin, Assails me, and concerns me almost as little. PHYLLIDULA Phyllidula is scrawny but amorous. Thus have the gods awarded her That in pleasure she receives more than she can give; If she does not count this blessed Let her change her religion. 42 THE PATTERNS Erinna is a model parent, Her children have never discovered her adulteries. Lalage is also a model parent, Her offspring are fat and happy. CODA O my songs, Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into people's faces, Will you find your lost dead among them? THE SEEING EYE The small dogs look at the big dogs; They observe unwieldly dimensions And curious imperfections of odor. Here is a formal male group: The young men look upon their seniors. 43 They consider the elderly mind And observe its inexplicable correlations. Said Tsin-Tsu : It is only in small dogs and the young That we find minute observation. i ANCORA Good God! They say you are risque, O canzonetti ! We who went out into the four A. M. of the world Composing our albas, We who shook off our dew with the rabbits, We who have seen even Artemis a-binding her sandals. Have we ever heard the like? O mountains of Hellas ! ! Gather about me, O Muses ! When we sat upon the granite brink in Helicon Clothed in the tattered sunlight, O Muses with delicate shins, O Muses with delectable knee-joints. When we splashed and were splashed with 44 The lucid Castillan spray, Had we ever such an epithet cast upon us ! ! II DOMPNA POIS DE ME NO'US CAL " A TRANSLATION From the PROVENgAL of En Bertrans de Born Lady, since you care nothing for me, And since you have shut me away from you Causelessly, I know not where to go seeking, For certainly I will never again gather Joy so rich, and if I find not ever A lady with look so speaking To my desire, worth yours whom I have lost, I'll have no other love at any cost. And since I could not find a peer to you, Neither one so fair, nor of such heart, So eager and alert. Nor with such art In attire, nor so gay Nor with gift so bountiful and so true. 45 I will go out a-searching, Culling from each a fair trait To make me a borrowed lady Till I again find you ready. Bels Cembelins, I take of you your colour, For it's your own, and your glance Where love is, A proud thing I do here, For, as to colour and eyes I shall have missed nothing at all, Having yours. I ask of Midons Aehs (of Montfort) Her straight speech free-running, That my phantom lack not in cunning. At Chalais of the Viscountess, I would That she give me outright Her two hands and her throat, So take I my road To Rochechouart, Swift-foot to my Lady Anhes, Seeing that Tristan's lady Iseutz had never Such grace of locks, I do ye to wit, Though she'd the far fame for it. 46 Of Audiart at Malemort, Though she with a full heart Wish me ill, I'd have her form that's laced So cunningly, Without blemish, for her love Breaks not nor turns aside. I of Miels-de-ben demand Her straight fresh body, She is so supple and young. Her robes can but do her wrong. Her white teeth, of the Lady Faidita I ask, and the fine courtesy She hath to welcome one. And such replies she lavishes Within her nest; Of Bels Mirals, the rest, Tall stature and gaiety, To make these avail She knoweth well, betide No change nor turning aside. Ah, Bels Senher, Maent, at last I ask naught from you, Save that I have such hunger for 47 This phantom As I've for you, such flame-lap, And yet I'd rather Ask of you than hold another, Mayhap, right close and kissed. Ah, lady, why have you cast Me out, knowing you hold me so fast ! THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON An image of Lethe, and the fields Full of faint light but golden, Gray cliffs, and beneath them A sea Harsher than granite, unstill, never ceasing; High forms with the movement of gods. Perilous aspect; And one said: " This is Actaeon." Actaeon of golden greaves! 48 Over fair meadows, Over the cool face of that field, Unstill, ever moving, Hosts of an ancient people. The silent cortege. AFTER CH'U YUAN I will get me to the wood Where the gods walk garlanded in wistaria. By the silver blue flood move others with ivory cars. There come forth many maidens to gather grapes for the leopards, my friend, For there are leopards drawing the cars. I will walk in the glade, I will come out of the new thicket and accost the procession of maidens. LIU CH'E The rustling of the silk is discontinued. Dust drifts over the court-yard. There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves 49 Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. FAN-PIECE, FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD A fan of white silk, clear as frost on the grass-blade. You also are laid aside. TS'AI CHI'H The petals fall in the fountain, the orange-coloured rose-leaves, Their ochre clings to the stone. IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. 50 ALBA As cool as the pale wet leaves of lily-of-the-valley She lay beside me in the dawn. HEATHER The black panther treads at my side, And above my fingers There float the petal-like flames. The milk-white girls Unbend from the holly-trees, And their snow-white leopard Watches to follow our trace. THE FAUN Ha ! sir, I have seen you sniffing and snoozling about among my flowers. And what, pray, do you know about horticulture, you capriped? 51 " Come, Auster, come, Apeliota, And see the faun in our garden. But If you move or speak This thing will run at you And scare itself to spasms." COITUS The gilded phaloi of the crocuses are thrusting at the spring air. Here is there naught of dead gods But a procession of festival, A procession, O Giulio Romano, Fit for your spirit to dwell in. Dione, your nights are upon us. The dew is upon the leaf. The night about us is restless. THE ENCOUNTER All the while they were talking the new morality Her eyes explored me. And when I arose to go 52 Her fingers were like the tissue Of a Japanese paper napkin. TEMPORA lo ! lo ! Tamuz ! The Dryad stands in my court-yard With plaintive, querulous crying, (Tamuz. lo ! Tamuz!) Oh, no, she is not crying: " Tamuz." She says, " May my poems be printed this week? The god Pan is afraid to ask you, May my poems be printed this week? " BLACK SLIPPERS: BELLOTTI At the table beyond us With her little suede slippers off, With her white-stockin'd feet Carefully kept from the floor by a napkin, She converses : Connaissez-vous Ostende? The gurgling Italian lady on the other side of the restaurant 53 Replies with a certain hauteur, But I await with patience To see how Celestine will re-enter her slippers. She re-enters them with a groan. SOCIETY The family position was waning, And on this account the little Aurelia, Who had laughed on eighteen summers. Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus. IMAGE FROM D'ORLEANS Young men riding in the street In the bright new season Spur without reason. Causing their steeds to leap. And at the pace they keep Their horses' armoured feet Strike sparks from the cobbled street In the bright new season. 54 PAPYRUS Spring. . . Too long. . . Gongula. . . "lONE, DEAD THE LONG YEAR" Empty are the ways, Empty are the ways of this land And the flowers Bend over with heavy heads. They bend in vain. Empty are the ways of this land Where lone Walked once, and now does not walk But seems like a person just gone. ifieppu) Thy soul Grown delicate with satieties, Atthis. O Atthis, I long for thy lips. 5S I long for thy narrow breasts, Thou restless, ungathered. SHOP GIRL For a moment she rested against me Like a swallow half blown to the wall. And they talk of Swinburne's women. And the shepherdess meeting with Guido. And the harlots of Baudelaire. TO FORMIANUS' YOUNG LADY FRIEND After Valerius Catullus All Hail! young lady with a nose by no means too small. With a foot unbeautiful, and with eyes that are not black, With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth undry. And with a tongue by no means too elegant, You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of cosmetics, 56 And they call you beautiful In the province, And you are even compared to Lesbia. O most unfortunate age ! TAME CAT " It rests me to be among beautiful women. Why should one always lie about such matters? I repeat: It rests me to converse with beautiful women Even though we talk nothing but nonsense, The purring of the invisible antennae Is both stimulating and delightful." L'ART, 1 910 Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes. 57 SIMULACRA Why does the horse-faced lady of just the unmen- tionable age Walk down Longacre reciting Swinburne to herself, inaudibly? Why does the small child in the soiled-white imita- tion fur coat Crawl in the very black gutter beneath the grape stand? Why does the really handsome young woman ap- proach me in Sackville Street Undeterred by the manifest age of my trappings? WOMEN BEFORE A SHOP The gew-gaws of false amber and false turquoise attract them. " Like to like nature " : these agglutinous yellows I EPILOGUE O chansons foregoing You were a seven days' wonder, When you came out in the magazines You created considerable stir in Chicago, 5! And now you are stale and worn out, You're a very depleted fashion, A hoop-skirt, a calash. An homely, transient antiquity. Only emotion remains. Your emotions? Are those of a maitre-de-cafe. THE SOCIAL ORDER I This government official Whose wife is several years his senior, Has such a caressing air When he shakes hands with young ladies. II (Pompes Funebres) This old lady. Who was " so old that she was an atheist," Is now surrounded By six candles and a crucifix. While the second wife of a nephew 59 Makes hay with the things in her house. Her two cats Go before her into Avernus; A sort of chloroformed suttee, And it is to be hoped that their spirits will walk With their tails up, And with a plaintive, gentle mewing. For it is certain that she has left on this earth No sound Save a squabble of female connections. THE TEA SHOP The girl in the tea shop is not so beautiful as she was, The August has worn against her. She does not get up the stairs so eagerly; Yes, she also will turn middle-aged. And the glow of youth that she spread about us as she brought us our muffins Will be spread about us no longer. She also will turn middle-aged. 60 ANCIENT MUSIC Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm ! Sing: Goddamm. Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver. Damn you, sing: Goddamm. Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm, So 'gainst the winter's balm. Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm, Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM. Note. — This is not folk music, but Dr. Ker writes that the tune is to be found under the Latin words of a very ancient canon. THE LAKE ISLE O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves, Give me in due time, I beseech you, a httle tobacco- shop, With the little bright boxes piled up neatly upon the shelves 6i And the loose fragrant cavendish and the shag, And the bright Virginia loose under the bright glass cases, And a pair of scales not too greasy, And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing, For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit. O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves. Lend me a little tobacco-shop, or install me in any profession Save this damn'd profession of writing, where one needs one's brains all the time. EPITAPHS Fu I Fu I loved the high cloud and the hill, Alas, he died of alcohol. Li Po And Li Po also died drunk. He tried to embrace a moon In the Yellow River. 62 OUR CONTEMPORARIES When the Taihaitian princess Heard that he had decided, She rushed out into the sunlight and swarmed up a cocoanut palm tree, But he returned to this island And wrote ninety Petrarchan sonnets. Note. — II s'agit d'un jeune poete qui a suivi le culte de Gauguin jusqu'a Tahiti meme (et qui vit encore). Etant fort bel homme, quand la princesse bistre entendit qu'il voulait lui accorder ses faveurs elle montra son allegresse de la fagon dont nous venons de parler. Malheureusement ses poemes ne sont remplis que de ses propres subjectivites, style Victorien de la " Georgian Anthology." ANCIENT WISDOM, RATHER COSMIC So Shu dreamed. And having dreamed that he was a bird, a bee, and a butterfly, He was uncertain why he should try to feel like any- thing else, Hence his contentment. 63 THE THREE POETS Candidia has taken a new lover And three poets are gone into mourning. The first has written a long elegy to " Chloris," To *' Chloris chaste and cold," his " only Chloris." The second has written a sonnet upon the mutability of woman, And the third writes an epigram to Candidia. THE GYPSY " Est-ce que vous avez vu des autres — des camarades — avec des singes ou des ours? " A Stray Gipsy — A.D. 1912 That was the top of the walk, when he said: " Have you seen any others, any of our lot, " With apes or bears? " — A brown upstanding fellow Not like the half-castes, up on the wet road near Clermont. The wind came, and the rain, And mist clotted about the trees in the valley, And I'd the long ways behind me, gray Aries and Blaucaire, And he said, " Have you seen any of our lot? " 64 I'd seen a lot of his lot . . . ever since Rhodez, Coming down from the fair of St. John, With caravans, but never an ape or a bear. THE GAME OF CHESS Dogmatic Statement Concerning the Game of Chess: Theme for a Series of Pictures Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens. Striking the board, falling in strong " L "s of colour, Reaching and striking in angles, holding lines in one colour. This board is alive with light; these pieces are living in form, Their moves break and reform the pattern: Luminous green from the rooks. Clashing with " X "s of queens, looped with the knight-leaps. " Y " pawns, cleaving, embanking! Whirl ! Centripetal ! Mate ! King down in the vortex, 65 Clash, leaping of bands, straight strips of hard colour, Blocked lights working in. Escapes. Renewal of contest. PROVINCIA DESERTA At Rochecoart, Where the hills part in three ways, And three v^alleys, full of winding roads, Fork out to south and north. There is a place of trees . . . gray with lichen. I have walked there thinking of old days. At Chalais is a pleached arbour; Old pensioners and old protected women Have the right there — it is charity. I have crept over old rafters, peering down Over the Dronne, over a stream full of lilies. Eastward the road lies, Aubeterre is eastward, 66 With a garrulous old man at the inn. I know the roads in that place : Mareuil to the north-east, La Tour, There are three keeps near Mareuil, And an old woman, glad to hear Arnaut, Glad to lend one dry clothing. I have walked into Perigord, I have seen the torch-flames, high-leaping, Painting the front of that church; Heard, under the dark, whirling laughter. I have looked back over the stream and seen the high building. Seen the long minarets, the white shafts. I have gone in Ribeyrac and in Sarlat, I have climbed rickety stairs, heard talk of Croy, Walked over En Bertran's old layout, Have seen Narbonne, and Cahors and Chalus, Have seen Excideuil, carefully fashioned. I have said: " Here such a one walked. 67 *' Here Coeur-de-LIon was slain. " Here was good singing. " Here one man hastened his step. " Here one lay panting." I have looked south from Hautefort, thinking of Montaignac, southward. I have lain in Rocafixada, level with sunset, Have seen the copper come down tingeing the mountains, I have seen the fields, pale, clear as an emerald, Sharp peaks, high spurs, distant castles. I have said: " The old roads have lain here. " Men have gone by such and such valleys " Where the great halls are closer together." I have seen Foix on its rock, seen Toulouse, and Aries greatly altered, I have seen the ruined " Dorata." I have said: " Riquier! Guido." I have thought of the second Troy, Some little prized place in Auvergnat: Two men tossing a coin, one keeping a castle. One set on the highway to sing. He sang a woman. Auvergne rose to the song; 68 The Dauphin backed him. " The castle to Austors! " " Pieire kept the singing — '* A fair man and a pleasant." He won the lady, Stole her away for himself, kept her against armed force : So ends that story. That age is gone; Pieire de Maensac is gone. I have walked over these roads; I have thought of them living. 69 CATHAY FOR THE MOST PART FROM THE CHINESE OF RIHAKU, FROM THE NOTES OF THE LATE ERNEST FENOLLOSA, AND THE DECIPHERINGS OF THE PROFESSORS MORI AND ARIGA SONG OF THE BOWMEN OF SHU Here we are, picking the first fern-shoots And saying: When shall we get back to our country? Here we are because we have the Ken-nin for our foemen, We have no comfort because of these Mongols. We grub the soft fern-shoots, When anyone says " Return," the others are full of sorrow. Sorrowful minds, sorrow is strong, we are hungry and thirsty. Our defence is not yet made sure, no one can let his friend return. We grub the old fern-stalks. We say: Will we be let to go back in October? There is no ease in royal affairs, we have no com- fort. Our sorrow is bitter, but we would not return to our country. What flower has come into blossom? Whose chariot? The General's. Horses, his horses even, are tired. They were strong. We have no rest, three battles a month. 73 By heaven, his horses are tired. The generals are on them, the soldiers are by them. The horses are well trained, the generals have ivory arrows and quivers ornamented with fish-skin. The enemy^is swift, we must be careful. When we set out, the willows were drooping with spring. We come back, in the snow. We go slowly, we are hungry and thirsty. Our mind is full of sorrow, who will know of our grief? By Bunno Reputedly iioo B.C. THE BEAUTIFUL TOILET Blue, blue is the grass about the river And the willows have overfilled the close garden. And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth. White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door. Slender, she puts forth a slender hand, And she was a courtezan in the old days. And she has married a sot, 74 Who now goes drunkenly out And leaves her too much alone. By Met Sheng B.C. 140 THE RIVER SONG This boat Is of shato-wood, and its gunwales are cut magnolia, Musicians with jewelled flutes and with pipes of gold Fill full the sides In rows, and our wine Is rich for a thousand cups. We carry singing girls, drift with the drifting water, Yet Sennin needs A yellow stork for a charger, and all our seamen Would follow the white gulls or ride them. Kutsu's prose song Hangs with the sun and moon. King So's terraced palace is now but a barren hill. But I draw pen on this barge Causing the five peaks to tremble. And I have joy in these words like the joy of blue islands. (If glory could last forever Then the waters of Han would flow northward.) 75 And I have moped in the Emperor's garden, await- ing an order-to-write I I looked at the dragon-pond, with its willow-col- oured water Just reflecting the sky's tinge, And heard the five-score nightingales aimlessly sing- ing. The eastern wind brings the green colour into the island grasses at Yei-shu, The purple house and the crimson are full of Spring softness. South of the pond the willow-tips are half-blue and bluer, Their cords tangle in mist, against the brocade-like palace. Vine-strings a hundred feet long hang down from carved railings, And high over the willows, the fine birds sing to each other, and listen. Crying — " Kwan, Kuan," for the early wind, and the feel of it. The wind bundles itself into a bluish cloud and wan^ ders off. Over a thousand gates, over a thousand doors are the sounds of spring singing, 76 And the Emperor is at Ko. Five clouds hang aloft, bright on the purple sky, The imperial guards come forth from the golden house with their armour a-gleaming. The Emperor in his jewelled car goes out to inspect his flowers. He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-flapping storks, He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new nightingales. For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nightin- gales. Their sound is mixed in this flute. Their voice is in the twelve pipes here. By Rihaku 8th century A.D. THE RIVER-MERCHANT'S WIFE: A LETTER While my hair was still cut straight across my fore- head I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. 77 And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. At fifteen I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever. Why should I climb the look out? At sixteen you departed. You went into far Ku-to-Yen, by the river of swirl- ing eddies. And you have been gone five months. The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. You dragged your feet when you went out. By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, Too deep to clear them away ! The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; 78 They hurt me. I grow older. If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you As far as Cho-fu-Sa, By Rihaku THE JEWEL STAIRS' GRIEVANCE The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew, It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings, And I let down the crystal curtain And watch the moon through the clear autumn. By Rihaku Note. — Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, there- fore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, there- fore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach. 79 POEM BY THE BRIDGE AT TEN-SHIN March has come to the bridge head, Peach boughs and apricot boughs hang over a thousand gates, At morning there are flowers to cut the heart. And evening drives them on the eastward-flowing waters. Petals are on the gone waters and on the going, And on the back-swirling eddies. But to-day's men are not the men of the old days. Though they hang in the same way over the bridge- rail. The sea's colour moves at the dawn And the princes still stand in rows, about the throne, And the moon falls over the portals of Sei-go-yo, And clings to the walls and the gate-top. With head gear glittering against the cloud and sun, The lords go forth from the court, and into far borders. They ride upon dragon-like horses, Upon horses with head-trappings of yellow metal. And the streets make way for their passage. Haughty their passing, 80 Haughty their steps as they go in to great banquets, To high halls and curious food, To the perfumed air and girls dancing, To clear flutes and clear singing; To the dance of the seventy couples; To the mad chase through the gardens. Night and day are given over to pleasure And they think It will last a thousand autumns, Unwearying autumns. For them the yellow dogs howl portents in vain. And what are they compared to the lady Riokushu, That was cause of hate ! Who among them is a man like Han-rei Who departed alone with his mistress, With her hair unbound, and he his own skiffsman ! By Rihaku LAMENT OF THE FRONTIER GUARD By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand. Lonely from the beginning of time until now ! Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn. I climb the towers and towers to watch out the barbarous land: Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert. There is no wall left to this village. Bones white with a thousand frosts, High heaps, covered with trees and grass; Who brought this to pass? Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums? Barbarous kings. A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn, A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle king- dom. Three hundred and sixty thousand, And sorrow, sorrow like rain. Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning. Desolate, desolate fields, And no children of warfare upon them. No longer the men for offence and defence. Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate, With Rihoku's name forgotten. And we guardsmen fed to the tigers. By Ri/iaku 82 EXILE'S LETTER To So-kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of Gen. Now I remember that you built me a special tavern By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin. With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs and laughter And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting the kings and princes. Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west border. And with them, and with you especially There was nothing at cross purpose. And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of moun- tain-crossing. If only they could be of that fellowship. And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret. And then I was sent off to South Wei, smothered in laurel groves, And you to the north of Raku-hoku, Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in common. And then, when separation had come to its worst. 83 We met, and travelled Into Sen-Go, Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters, into a valley of the thousand bright flowers, That was the first valley; And into ten thousand valleys full of voices and pine-winds. And with silver harness and reins of gold. Out come the East of Kan foreman and his com- pany. And there came also the " True man " of Shi-yo to meet me, Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ. In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more Sennin music, Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix broods. The foreman of Kan Chu, drunk, danced because his long sleeves wouldn't keep still With that music playing. And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap, And my spirit so high it was all over the heavens. And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars, or rain. 84 I had to be off to So, far away over the waters, You back to your river-bridge. And your father, who was brave as a leopard, Was governor in Hei Shu, and put down the bar- barian rabble. And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance. And what with broken wheels and so on, I won't say it wasn't hard going. Over roads twisted like sheep's guts. And I was still going, late in the year, in the cutting wind from the North, And thinking how little you cared for the cost, and you caring enough to pay it. And what a reception: Red jade cups, food well set on a blue jewelled table. And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning. And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle. To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear as blue jade. With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums. With ripples Hke dragon-scales, going grass green on the water, 85 Pleasure lasting, with courtezans, going and coming without hindrance. With the willow flakes falling like snow, And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset. And the water a hundred feet deep reflecting green eyebrows — Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight. Gracefully painted — And the girls singing back at each other, Dancing in transparent brocade. And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it, Tossing it up under the clouds. And all this comes to an end. And is not again to be met with. I went up to the court for examination. Tried Layu's luck, offered the Choyo song, And got no promotion, and went back to the East Mountains white-headed. And once again, later, we met at the South bridge- head. And then the crowd broke up, you went north to San palace. And if you ask how I regret that parting: It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end Confused, whirled in a tangle. 86 What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking, There is no end of things in the heart. I call in the boy, Have him sit on his knees here To seal this, And send it a thousand miles, thinking. By Rihaku From Rihaku FOUR POEMS OF DEPARTURE Light rain is on the light dust The ivilloivs of the inn-yard fVill be going greener and greener, But you, Sir, had better take ivine ere your departure. For you ivill have no friends about you When you come to the gates of Go. (or Omakitsu) SEPARATION ON THE RIVER KIANG Ko-Jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro, The smoke-flowers are blurred over the river. His lone sail blots the far sky. And now I see only the river. The long Kiang, reaching heaven. 87 TAKING LEAVE OF A FRIEND Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating wide cloud, Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each other as we are departing. LEAVE-TAKING NEAR SHOKU " Sanso, King of Shoku, built roads " They say the roads of Sanso are steep, Sheer as the mountains. The walls rise in a man's face. Clouds grow out of the hill at his horse's bridle. Sweet trees are on the paved way of the Shin, Their trunks burst through the paving. And freshets are bursting their ice in the midst of Shoku, a proud city. Men's fates are already set, There is no need of asking diviners. THE CITY OF CHOAN The phoenix are at play on their terrace. The phoenix are gone, the river flows on alone. Flowers and grass Cover over the dark path where lay the dynastic house of the Go. The bright cloths and bright caps of Shin Are now the base of old hills. The Three Mountains fall through the far heaven, The isle of White Heron splits the two streams apart. Now the high clouds cover the sun And I can not see Choan afar And I am sad. SOUTH-FOLK IN COLD COUNTRY The Dai horse neighs against the bleak wind of Etsu, The birds of Etsu have no love for En, in the north, Emotion is born out of habit. Yesterday we went out of the Wild-Goose gate, 89 To-day from the Dragon-Pen,* Surprised. Desert turmoil. Sea sun. Flying snow bewilders the barbarian heaven. Lice swarm like ants over our accoutrements. Mind and spirit drive on the feathery banners. Hard fight gets no reward. Loyalty is hard to explain. Who will be sorry for General Rishogu, the swift moving, Whose white head is lost for this province? SENNIN POEM BY KAKUHAKU The red and green kingfishers flash between the orchids and clover, One bird casts its gleam on another. Green vines hang through the high forest, They weave a whole roof to the mountain, The lone man sits with shut speech, He purrs and pats the clear strings. * I.e., we have been warring from one end of the empire to the other, now east, now west, on each border. 90 He throws his heart up through the sky, He bites through the flower pistil and brings up a fine fountain. The red-pine-tree god looks on him and wonders. He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin, He takes " Floating Hill " * by the sleeve, He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin. But you, you dam'd crowd of gnats. Can you even tell the age of a turtle? A BALLAD OF THE MULBERRY ROAD (Fenollosa MSS., 'very early ) The sun rises in south east corner of things To look on the tall house of the Shin For they have a daughter named Rafu, (pretty girl) She made the name for herself: " Gauze Veil," For she feeds mulberries to silkworms. She gets them by the south wall of the town, * Name of a sennin. 91 with green strings she makes the warp of her basket, She makes the shoulder-straps of her basket from the boughs of Katsura, And she piles her hair up on the left side of her head-piece. Her earrings are made of pearl, Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk. Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple. And when men going by look on Rafu They set down their burdens. They stand and twirl their moustaches. OLD IDEA OF CHOAN BY ROSORIU The narrow streets cut into the wide highway at Choan, Dark oxen, white horses, drag on the seven coaches with outriders. The coaches are perfumed wood, The jewelled chair is held up at the crossway, 92 Before the royal lodge a glitter of golden saddles, awaiting the princess, They eddy before the gate of the barons. The canopy embroidered with dragons drinks in and casts back the sun. Evening comes. The trappings are bordered with mist. The hundred cords of mist are spread through and double the trees, Night birds, and night women, spread out their sounds through the gardens. II Birds with flowery wing, hovering butterflies crowd over the thousand gates, Trees that glitter like jade, terraces tinged with silver. The seed of a myriad hues, A net-work of arbours and passages and covered ways. Double towers, winged roofs, border the net-work of ways: 93 A place of felicitous meeting. Rill's house stands out on the sky, with glitter of colour As Butei of Kan had made the high golden lotus to gather his dews, Before it another house which I do not know: I low shall we know all the friends whom we meet on strange roadways? TO-EM-MEFS "THE UNMOVING CLOUD" "Wet springtime," says To-em-mei, " Wet spring in the garden." I The clouds have gathered, and gathered, and the rain falls and falls. The eight ply of the heavens are all folded into one darkness. And the wide, flat road stretches out. I stop in my room toward the East, quiet, quiet, 1 pat my new cask of wine. My friends are estranged, or far distant, I bow my head and stand still. 94 II Rain, rain, and the clouds have gathered. The eight ply of the heavens are darkness, The flat land is turned into river. " Wine, wine, here is wine 1 " I drink by my eastern window. I think of talking and man, And no boat, no carriage, approaches. Ill The trees in my east-looking garden are bursting out with new twigs, They try to stir new affection, And men say the sun and moon keep on moving because they can't find a soft seat. The birds flutter to rest in my tree, and I think I have heard them saying, " It is not that there are no other men But we like this fellow the best. But however we long to speak He can not know of our sorrow." END OF CATHAY 95 T'ao Yuan Ming A.D. 365-427 NEAR PERIGORD // Perigord, pres del muralli Tan que i puoscli' om gitar ab malh You'd have men's hearts up from the dust And tell their secrets, Messire Cino, Right enough? Then read between the lines of Uc St. CIrc, Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale. Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone: " Maent, I love you, you have turned me out. The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes' hair, Bel Miral's stature, the viscountess' throat, Set all together, are not worthy of you. . . ." And all the while you sing out that canzone, Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac, One at Chalais, another at Malemort Hard over Brive — for every lady a castle, T'ach place strong. Oh, is it easy enough? Tairiran held hall in Montaignac, His brother-in-law was all there was of power In Perigord, and this good union Gobbled all the land, and held it later for some hundred years. 96 And our En Bertrans was in Altafort, Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife, As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell — The headless trunk " that made its head a lamp." For separation wrought out separation. And he who set the strife between brother and brother And had his way with the old English king, Viced in such torture for the " counterpass." How would you live, with neighbours set about you — Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochechouart, Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand; And you on that great mountain of a palm — Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams, But one huge back half-covered up with pine, Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born — The four round towers, four brothers — mostly fools: What could he do but play the desperate chess. And stir old grudges? " Pawn your castles, lords! Let the Jews pay." And the great scene — 97 (That, maybe, never happened!) Beaten at last. Before the hard old king: " Your son, ah, since he died My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside In the full flare of grief. Do what you will." Take the whole man, and ravel out the story. He loved this lady in castle Montaignac? The castle flanked him — he had need of it. You read to-day, how long the overlords of Perigord, The Talleyrands, have held the place, it was no transient fiction. And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme? And all his net-like thought of new alliance? Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars. Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies. And Rochecouart can match it, stronger yet. The very spur's end, built on sheerest cliff, And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive, While Born, his own close purse, his rabbit warren, His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors. 98 A-bristle with antennae to feel roads, To sniff the traffic into Perigord. And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line, The ten good miles from thence to Maent's castle, All of his flank — how could he do without her? And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse? What would he do without her? " Papiol, Go forthright singing — Anhes, Cembelins. There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands; There is a trellis full of early roses, And all my heart is bound about with love. Where am I come with compound flatteries — What doors are open to fine compliment? " And every one half jealous of Maent? He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies Against her, give her pride in them? Take his own speech, make what you will of it — And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent? Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war? Is it an intrigue to run subtly out, Born of a jongleur's tongue, freely to pass Up and about and in and out the land. 99 Mark him a craftsman and a strategist? (St. Leider had done as much as Polhonac, Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.) Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition. To sing one thing when your song means another, " Et alh'trar ab lor bordon — " Foix' count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans' singing? Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent, Or war and broken heaumes and politics? II End fact. Try fiction, Let us say we see En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort, Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light, South toward Montaignac, and he bends at a table Scribbling, swearing between his teeth; by his left hand Lie little strips of parchment covered over, Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos. Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious? With a red straggling beard? And the green cat's-eye lifts toward Montaignac. lOO Or take his " magnet " singer setting out, Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at Chalais In the vaulted hall, Or, by a lichened tree at Rochecouart Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys. Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening. Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul . . . To find her half alone, Montfort away, And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her. Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one. Little enough? Or carry him forward. " Go through all the courts. My Magnet," Bertrand had said. We came to Ventadour In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon. No one hears save Arrimon Luc D'Esparo — No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments. Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort, Rochecouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic, Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Coeur- de-Lion : lOI The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled About his castle, cattle driven out ! Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered? And ten years after, or twenty, as you will, Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus: The dull round towers encroaching on the field, The tents tight drawn, horses at tether Further and out of reach, the purple night. The crackling of small fires, the bannerets, The lazy leopards on the largest banner. Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armourer's torch- flare Melting on steel. And in the quietest space They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead; And we've the gossip (skipped six hundred years). Richard shall die to-morrow — leave him there Talking of trobar clus with Daniel. And the " best craftsman " sings out his friend's song. Envies its vigour . . . and deplores the technique. Dispraises his own skill? — That's as you will. And they discuss the dead man, Plantagenet puts the riddle: " Did he love her? " 102 And Arnaut parries: " Did he love your sister? True, he has praised her, but In some opinion He wrote that praise only to show he had The favour of your party; had been well received." " You knew the man." " You knew the man." " I am an artist, you have tried both metiers." " You were born near him." " Do we know our friends? " " Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maentl" *' Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle? " End the discussion, Richard goes out next day And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard, Pardons the bowman, dies, Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends " In sacred odour " — (that's apocryphal!) And we can leave the talk till Dante writes : Surely I saw, and still before my eyes Goes on that headless trunk, that hears for light Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair. And like a swinging lamp that says, " Ah me! 103 / severed men, my head and heart Ye see here severed, my life's counterpart. Or take En Bertrans? Ill Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due Inferno, XXVIII, 125 " Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere Poppies and day's-eyes in the green email Rose over us; and we knew all that stream, And our two horses had traced out the valleys; Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars, In the young days when the deep sky befriended. And great wings beat above us in the twilight, And the great wheels in heaven Bore us together . . . surging . . . and apart . . . Believing we should meet with lips and hands. High, high and sure . . . and then the counter- thrust: ' Why do you love me ? Will you always love me ? But I am like the grass, I can not love you.' 104 Or, ' Love, and I love and love you, And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.' So to this last estrangement, Tairiran 1 There shut up in his castle, Tairiran's, She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands. Gone — ah, gone — untouched, unreachable I She who could never live save through one person, She who could never speak save to one person, And all the rest of her a shifting change, A broken bundle of mirrors ... 1 " VILLANELLE: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HOUR I had over-prepared the event, that much was ominous. With middle-ageing care I had laid out just the right books. I had almost turned down the pages. Beauty is so rare a thing. So few drink of my fountain. los So much barren regret, So many hours wasted! And now I watch, from the window, the rain, the wandering busses. " Their httle cosmos is shaken " — the air is alive with that fact. In their parts of the city they are played on by diverse forces. How do I know? Oh, I know well enough. For them there is something afoot. As for me: I had over-prepared the event — Beauty is so rare a thing. So few drink of my fountain. Two friends: a breath of the forest . . . Friends? Are people less friends because one has just, at last, found them? Twice they promised to come. " Between the night and morning? " Beauty would drink of my mind. Youth would awhile forget my youth is gone from me. 1 06 II (" Speak up! You have danced so stiffly? Someone admired your works, And said so frankly. " Did you talk like a fool, The first night? The second evening? " "But they promised again: ' To-morrow at tea-time.' ") III Now the third day is here — no word from either; No word from her nor him, Only another man's note : " Dear Pound, I am leaving England." DANS UN OMNIBUS DE LONDRES Les yeux d'une morte aimee M'ont salue, Enchasses dans un visage stupide Dont tous les autres traits etaient banals, lis m'ont salue 107 Et alors je vis bien des choses Au dedans de ma memoire Remuer, S'eveiller. Je vis des canards sur le bord d'un lac minuscule, Aupres d'un petit enfant gai, bossu. Je vis les colonnes anciennes en " toe " Du Pare Monceau, Et deux petites filles graciles, Des patriciennes, aux toisons couleur de lin, Et des pigeonnes Grasses comme des poulardes. Je vis le pare, Et tous les gazons divers Ou nous avions loue des chaises Pour quatre sous. Je vis les cygnes noirs, Japonais, Leurs ailes Teintees de couleur sang de-dragon, io8 Et toutes les fleurs D'Armenonville. Les yeux d'une morte M'ont salue. PAGANI'S, NOVEMBER 8 Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful Normande cocotte The eyes of the very learned British Museum as- sistant. TO A FRIEND WRITING ON CABARET DANCERS " Breathe not the ivord to-morrow in her ears " Vir Quidem, on Dancers Good " Hedgethorn," for we'll anglicize your name Until the last slut's hanged and the last pig disem- boweled, Seeing your wife is charming and your child Sings in the open meadow — at least the kodak says so — 109 My good fellow, you, on a cabaret silence And the dancers, you write a sonnet; Say " Forget To-morrow," being of all men The most prudent, orderly, and decorous! " Pepita " has no to-morrow, so you write. Pepita has such to-morrows : with the hands puffed out, The pug-dog's features encrusted with tallow Sunk in a frowsy collar — an unbrushed black. She will not bathe too often, but her jewels Will be a stuffy, opulent sort of fungus Spread on both hands and on the up-pushed bosom — It juts like a shelf between the jowl and corset. Have you, or I, seen most of cabarets, good Hedgethorn ? Here's Pepita, tall and slim as an Egyptian mummy, Marsh-cranberries, the ribbed and angular pods Flare up with scarlet orange on stiff stalks And so Pepita flares on the crowded stage before our tables no Or slithers about between the dishonest waiters — " Carmen est maigre, unt trait de bistre Cerne son ceil de gitana " And " rend la flamme " you know the deathless verses. I search the features, the avaricious features Pulled by the kohl and rouge out of resemblance — Six pence the object for a change of passion. " Write me a poem." Come now, my dear Pepita, '* -ita, bonita, chiquita," that's what you mean you advertising spade, Or take the intaglio, my fat great-uncle's heir- loom: Cupid, astride a phallus with two wings. Swinging a cat-o'-nine-tails. No. Pepita, I have seen through the crust. I don't know what you look like But your smile pulls one way and your painted grin another, While that cropped fool, that tom-boy who can't earn her living, III Come, come to-morrow, To-morrow in ten years at the latest. She will be drunk In the ditch, but you, Pepita, Will be quite rich, quite plump, with pug-bitch features. With a black tint staining your cuticle, Prudent and svelte Pepita. " Poete, writ me a poeme ! " Spanish and Paris, love of the arts part of your geisha-culture ! Euhenia, in short skirts, slaps her wide stomach, Pulls up a roll of fat for the pianist, " Pauvre femme malgre ! " she says. He sucks his chop bone, That some one else has paid for, grins up an amiable grin. Explains the decorations. Good Hedgethorn, they all have futures, All these people. Old Popkoff Will dine next week with Mrs. Basil, Will meet a duchess and an ex-diplomat's widow From Weehawken — who has never known Any but " Majesties " and Italian nobles. 112 Euhenia will have a fonda in Orbajosa. The amorous nerves will give way to digestive; " Delight thy soul in fatness," saith the preacher. We can't preserve the elusive " mica salts," It may last well in these dark, northern climates, Nell Gwynn's still here, despite the reformation, And Edward's mistresses still light the stage, A glamour of classic youth in their deportment. The prudent whore is not without her future. Her bourgeois dulness is deferred. Her present dulness . . Oh well, her present dulness . . . Now in Venice, 'Storante al Giardino, I went early. Saw the performers come : him, her, the baby, A quiet and respectable-tawdry trio; An hour later : a show of calves and spangles, '' Un e duo fanno tre" Night after night, ► No change, no change of program, " Che! La donna e mobile" 113 HOMAGE TO QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENTIS CHRISTIANUS (Ex libris Graec ivitlt thee! IVho can demolish at surh polished ease P/iilistia's pomp and Art's pomposities! VII SONG FROM dip: IIARZRKISR I am the Princess Ilz.a In llscnstcin T fare, Come with me to that castle And we'll be happy there. Thy head will 1 cover over With my waves' clarity Till thou forget thy sorrow, () wounded sorrowfully. Thou wilt in my white arms there, Nay, on my breast thou must Forget and rest and dream there For thine old legend-lust. My lips and my heart are thine there As they were his and mine. 1 lis ? Why the good King I larry's, And he is dead lang syne. '39 Dead men stay alway dead men, Life is the live man's part, And I am fair and golden With joy breathless at heart. If my heart stay below there, My crystal halls ring clear To the dance of lords and ladies In all their splendid gear. The silken trains go rustling. The spur-clinks sound between. The dark dwarfs blow and bow there Small horn and violin. Yet shall my white arms hold thee, That bound King Harry about. Ah, I covered his ears with them When the trumpet rang out. VIII And have you thoroughly kissed my lips? There was no particular waste. And are you not ready when evening's come? There's no particular haste. 140 You've got the whole night before you, Heart's-all-beloved-my-own, In an uninterrupted night one can Get a good deal of kissing done. UND DRANG Nay, dwells he in cloudy rumour alone? BiNYON I I am worn faint, The winds of good and evil Blind me with dust And burn me with the cold, There is no comfort being over-man; Yet are we come more near The great oblivions and the labouring night, Inchoate truth and the sepulchral forces. II Confusion, clamour, 'mid the many voices Is there a meaning, a significance? That life apart from all life gives and takes. This life, apart from all life's bitter and life's sweet, Is good. 141 Ye see me and ye say: exceeding sweet Life's gifts, his youth, his art. And his too soon acclaim. I also knew exceeding bitterness, Saw good things altered and old friends fare forth. And what I loved in me hath died too soon. Yea I have seen the " gray above the green "; Gay have I lived in life; Though life hath lain Strange hands upon me and hath torn my sides. Yet I believe. Life is most cruel where she is most wise. Ill The will to live goes from me. I have lain Dull and out-worn with some strange, subtle sickness. Who shall say That love is not the very root of this, O thou afar? Yet she was near me, that eternal deep. 142 O it is passing strange that love Can blow two ways across one soul. And I was Aengus for a thousand years, And she, the ever-living, moved with me And strove amid the waves, and would not go. IV ELEGIA " Far buon tempo e trionfare " " I have put my days and dreams out of mind," For all their hurry and their weary fret Availed me little. But another kind Of leaf that's fast in some more sombre wind, Is man on life, and all our tenuous courses Wind and unwind as vainly. I have lived long, and died, Yea I have been dead, right often, And have seen one thing: The sun, while he Is high, doth light our wrong And none can break the darkness with a song. To-day's the cup. To-morrow is not ours : Nay, by our strongest bands we bind her not, 143 Nor all our fears and our anxieties Turn her one leaf or hold her scimitar. The deed blots out the thought And many thoughts, the vision; And right's a compass with as many poles As there are points in her circumference, 'Tis vain to seek to steer all courses even. And all things save sheer right are vain enough. The blade were vain to grow save toward the sun, And vain th' attempt to hold her green forever. All things in season and no thing o'er longl Love and desire and gain and good forgetting, Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long! How our modernity, Nerve-wracked and broken, turns Against time's way and all the way of things. Crying with weak and egoistic cries 1 All things are given over. Only the restless will Surges amid the stars 144 Seeking new moods of life, New permutations. See, and the very sense of what we know Dodges and hides as in a sombre curtain Bright threads leap forth, and hide, and leave no pattern. VI I thought I had put Love by for a time And I was glad, for to me his fair face Is like Pain's face. A little light. The lowered curtain and the theatre! And o'er the frail talk of the inter-act Something that broke the jest! A little light, The gold, and half the profile ! The whole face Was nothing like you, yet that Image cut Sheer through the moment. VI^; I have gone seeking for you in the twilight, Here in the flurry of Fifth Avenue, Here where they pass between their teas and teas. Is it such madness? though you could not be 145 Ever in all that crowd, no gown Of all their subtle sorts could be your gown. Yet I am fed with faces, is there one That even in the half-light mindeth me. VII THE HOUSE OF SPLENDOUR 'Tis Evanoe's, A house not made with hands, . But out somewhere beyond the worldly ways Her gold is spread, above, around, inwoven, Strange ways and walls are fashioned out of it. And I have seen my Lady in the sun. Her hair was spread about, a sheaf of wings, And red the sunlight was, behind it all. And I have seen her there within her house, With six great sapphires hung along the wall, Low, panel-shaped, a-level with her knees. And all her robe was woven of pale gold. There are there many rooms and all of gold, Of woven walls deep patterned, of email, 146 Of beaten work; and through the claret stone, Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light. Here am I come perforce my love of her. Behold mine adoration Maketh me clear, and there are powers in this Which, played on by the virtues of her soul. Break down the four-square walls of standing time. VIII THE FLAME 'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating, Provence knew; 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, Provenge knew. We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom, Drink our immortal moments; we " pass through." We have gone forth beyond your bonds and borders, Provence knew; And all the tales they ever writ of Oisin Say but this : That man doth pass the net of days and hours. Where time is shrivelled down to time's seed corn We of the Ever-living, in that light Meet through our veils and whisper, and of love. 147 O smoke and shadow of a darkling world, Barters of passion, and that tenderness That's but a sort of cunning! O my Love, These, and the rest, and all the rest we knew. 'TIs not a game that plays at mates and mating, 'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses, 'Tis not " of days and nights " and troubling years. Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray; There is the subtler music, the clear light Where time burns back about th' eternal embers. We are not shut from all the thousand heavens: Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen, Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid. Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysoprase. Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee Nature herself's turned metaphysical. Who can look on that blue and not believe? Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl, O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor. Through all thy various mood I know thee mine; If I have merged my soul, or utterly Am solved and bound in, through aught here on earth, 148 There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou, Who call'st about my gates for some lost me ; I say my soul flowed back, became translucent. Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands, This thing that moves as man is no more mortal. If thou hast seen my shade sans character. If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments, That glass to all things that o'ershadow it. Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped Your grasp, I have eluded. IX (HOR.^ BEATiE INSCRIPTIO) How will this beauty, when I am far hence, Sweep back upon me and engulf my mind ! How will these hours, when we twain are gray, Turned in their sapphire tide, come flooding o'er us ! X (THE ALTAR) Let US build here an exquisite friendship. The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder; Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy. 149 IX (AU SALON) Her grave, sweet haughtiness Pleaseth me, and in like wise Her quiet ironies. Others are beautiful, none more, some less. I suppose, when poetry comes down to facts, When our souls are returned to the gods and the spheres they belong in, Here in the every-day where our acts Rise up and judge us; I suppose there are a few dozen veri ies That no shift of mood can shake from us: One place where we'd rather have tea (Thus far hath modernity brought us) "Tea" (Damn you!) Have tea, damn the Caesars, Talk of the latest success, give wing to some scandal, Garble a name we detest, and for prejudice? Set loose the whole consummate pack to bay like Sir Roger de Coverley's This our reward for our works, sic crescit gloria mundi : Some circle of not more than three that we prefer to play up to, 150 Some few whom we'd rather please than hear the whole aegrum vulgus Splitting its beery jowl a-meaowling our praises. Some certain peculiar things, cari laresque, penatcs, Some certain accustomed forms, the absolute unimportant. XII (AU JARDIN) you, away high there, you that lean From amber lattices upon the cobalt night, 1 am below amid the pine trees. Amid the little pine trees, hear me! " The jester walked in the garden." Did he so? Well, there's no use your loving me That way. Lady; For I've nothing but songs to give you. 151 I am set wide upon the world's ways To say that life is, some way, a gay thing, But you never string two days upon one wire But there'll come sorrow of it. And I loved a love once, Over beyond the moon there, I loved a love once, And, may be, more times, But she danced like a pink moth in the shrubbery. Oh, I know you women from the " other folk," And it'll all come right, O' Sundays. " The jester walked in the garden." Did he so? RIPOSTES First Published 191 2 When I behold how black, immortal ink Drips from my deathless pen — ah, well-away Why should we stop at all for what I think? There is enough in what I chance to say. 152 It is enough that we once came together; What is the use of setting it to rime? When it is autumn do we get spring weather, Or gather may of harsh northwindish time? It is enough that we once came together; What if the wind have turned against the rain? It is enough that we once came together; Time has seen this, and will not turn again; And who are we, who know that last intent, To plague tc morrow with a testament ! IN EXITUM CUIUSDAM On a certain one's departure " Time's bitter flood " I Oh, that's all very well, But where's the old friend hasn't fallen off. Or slacked his hand-grip when you first gripped fame? I know your circle and can fairly tell What you have kept and what you've left behind: I know my circle and I know very well How many faces I'd have out of mind. 153 APPARUIT Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered, caught at the wonder. Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where thou afar moving in the glamorous sun drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue golden about thee. Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there, open lies the land, yet the steely going darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded aether parted before thee. Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, cast- ing a-loose the cloak of the body, earnest straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned light faded about thee. Half the graven shoulder, the throat aflash with strands of light inwoven about it, loveli- est of all things, frail alabaster, ah me ! swift in departing. 154 Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect, gone as wind! The cloth of the magical hands! Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning dar'dst to assume this? THE TOMB AT AKR CAAR " I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched These five millennia, and thy dead eyes Moved not, nor ever answer my desire, And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame, Burn not with me nor any saffron thing. See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee, And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues; But not thou me. I have read out the gold upon the wall. And wearied out my thought upon the signs. And there is no new thing in all this place. I have been kind. See, I have left the jars sealed, Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine. And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee. ^SS thou unmindful ! How should I forget ! — Even the river many days ago, The river, thou wast over young, And three souls came upon Thee — And I came. And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off; 1 have been intimate with thee, known thy ways. Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips. Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels? How ' came I in ' ? Was I not thee and Thee? And no sun comes to rest me in this place, And I am torn against the jagged dark. And no light beats upon me, and you say No word, day after day. Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks And all their crafty work upon the door. Out through the glass-green fields. . . . Yet it is quiet here : I do not go." 156 PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things. Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else. You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious. One average mind — with one thought less, each year. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit Hours, where something might have floated up. And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay. You are a person of some interest, one comes to you And takes strange gain away: Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion; Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two. Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else That might prove useful and yet never proves, That never fits a corner or shows use. Or finds its hour upon the loom of days: 157 The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work; Idols and ambergris and rare inlays. These are your riches, your great store; and yet For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things. Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff In the slow float of differing light and deep. No! there is nothing! In the whole and all, Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you. NEW YORK My City, my beloved, my white ! Ah, slender, Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul. Delicately upon the reed, attend me I Now do I know that I am mad, For here are a million people surly with traffic; This is no maid. Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one. My City, my beloved, Thou art a maid with no breasts, 158 Thou art slender as a silver reed. Listen to me, attend me ! And I will breathe into thee a soul, And thou shalt live for ever. A GIRL The tree has entered my hands. The sap has ascended my arms. The tree has grown in my breast — Downward, The branches grow out of me, Hke arms. Tree you are. Moss you are. You are violets with wind above them. A child — so high — you are. And all this is folly to the world. " PHASELLUS ILLE " This papier-mache, which you see, my friends, Saith 'twas the worthiest of editors. Its mind was made up in " the seventies," Nor hath it ever since changed that concoction. 159 It works to represent that school of thought Which brought the hair-cloth chair to such perfec- tion, Nor will the horrid threats of Bernard Shaw Shake up the stagnant pool of its convictions; Nay, should the " deathless voice of all the world " Speak once again for its sole stimulation, 'Twould not move it one jot from left to right. Come Beauty barefoot from the Cyclades, She'd find a model for St. Anthony In this thing's sure decorum and behaviour. AN OBJECT This thing, that hath a code and not a core, Hath set acquaintance where might be affections, And nothing now Disturbeth his reflections. 1 60 QUIES This is another of our ancient loves. Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day Hath lacked a something since this lady passed; Hath laclced a something. 'Twas but marginal. THE SEAFARER (From the early Anglo-Saxon text) May I for my own self song's truth reckon, Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft. Bitter breast-cares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted, My feet were by frost benumbed. Chill its chains are; chafing sighs Hew my heart round and hunger begot Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not That he on dry land loveliest liveth. List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea, Weathered the winter, wretched outcast Deprived of my kinsmen; i6i Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hailscur flew, There I heard naught save the harsh sea And Ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries, Did for my games the gannet's clamour, Sea-fowls' loudness was for me l?ughter, The mews' singing all my mead-drink. Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed With spray on his pinion. Not any protector May make merry man faring needy. This he little believes, who aye in winsome life Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business, Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft Must bide above brine. Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north. Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then, Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now The heart's thought that I on high streams The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone. Moaneth away my mind's lust That I fare forth, that I afar hence Seek out a foreign fastness. For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst, 162 Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed; Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faith- ful But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare Whatever his lord will. He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight Nor any whit else save the wave's slash, Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water. Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries. Fields to fairness, land fares brisker, All this admonisheth man eager of mood, The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks On flood-ways to be far departing. Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying. He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow. The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not — He the prosperous man — what some perform Where wandering them widest draweth. So that but now my heart burst from my breast- lock. My mood 'mid the mere-flood. Over the whale's acre, would wander wide. On earth's shelter cometh oft to me, 163 Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer, Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly, O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow My lord deems to me this dead life On loan and on land, I believe not That any earth-weal eternal standeth Save there be somewhat calamitous That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain. Disease or oldness or sword-hate Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body. And for this, every earl whatever, for those speak- ing after — Laud of the living, boasteth some last word, That he will work ere he pass onward. Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice. Daring ado, . . . So that all men shall honour him after And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English, Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast, Delight mid the doughty. Days little durable, And all arrogance of earthen riches, There come now no kings nor Caesars Nor gold-giving lords like those gone. Howe'er in mirth most magnified, Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest, 164 Drear all this excellence, delights undurable 1 Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth. Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low. Earthly glory ageth and seareth. No man at all going the earth's gait, But age fares against him, his face paleth. Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions, Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven. Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth, Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry, Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart. And though he strew the grave with gold, His born brothers, their buried bodies Be an unlikely treasure hoard. THE CLOAK* Thou keep'st thy rose-leaf Till the rose-time will be over, Think'st thou that Death will kiss thee? Think'st thou that the Dark House Will find thee such a lover As I? Will the new roses miss thee? * Asclepiades, Julianus ^gyptus. 165 Prefer my cloak unto the cloak of dust 'Neath which the last year lies, For thou shouldst more mistrust Time than my eyes. AN IMMORALITY Sing we for love and idleness, Naught else is worth the having. Though I have been in many a land, There is naught else in living. And I would rather have my sweet. Though rose-leaves die of grieving. Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men's believing. i66 DIEU! QU'IL LA FAIT From Charles D'Orleans For music God! that mad'st her well regard her, How she is so fair and bonny; For the great charms that are upon her Ready are all folk to reward her. Who could part him from her borders When spells are alway renewed on her? God ! that mad'st her well regard her, How she is so fair and bonny. From here to there to the sea's border, Dame nor damsel there's not any Hath of perfect charms so many. Thoughts of her are of dream's order: God! that mad'st her well regard her. SALVE PONTIFEX (A. C. S.) One after one they leave thee, High Priest of lacchus. Intoning thy melodies as winds intone The whisperings of leaves on sunlit days. 167 And the sands are many And the seas beyond the sands are one In ultimate, so we here being many Are unity; nathless thy compeers, Knowing thy melody, Lulled with the wine of thy music Go seaward silently, leaving thee sentinel O'er all the mysteries, High Priest of lacchus. For the lines of life lie under thy fingers, And above the vari-coloured strands Thine eyes look out unto the infinitude Of the blue waves of heaven, And even as Triplex Sisterhood Thou fingerest the threads knowing neither Cause nor the ending, High Priest of lacchus, Draw'st forth a multiplicity Of strands, and, beholding The colour thereof, raisest thy voice Towards the sunset, O High Priest of lacchus! And out of the secrets of the inmost mysteries Thou chantest strange f ar-sourced canticles : O High Priest of lacchus! Life and the ways of Death her i68 Twin-born sister, that is life's counterpart, And of night and the winds of night; Silent voices ministering to the souls Of hamadryads that hold council concealed In streams and tree-shadowing Forests on hill slopes, O High Priest of lacchus. All the manifold mystery Thou makest a wine of song, And maddest thy following even With visions of great deeds And their futility, O High Priest of lacchus! Though thy co-novices are bent to the scythe Of the magian wind that is voice of Persephone, Leaving thee solitary, master of Initiating Maenads that come through the Vine-entangled ways of the forest Seeking, out of all the world. Madness of lacchus. That being skilled in the secrets of the double cup They might turn the dead of the world Into paeans, -> O High Priest of lacchus. Wreathed with the glory of thy years of creating 169 Entangled music, Breathe ! Now that the evening cometh upon thee, Breathe upon us, that low-bowed and exultant Drink wine of lacchus, that since the conquering Hath been chiefly contained in the numbers Of them that, even as thou, have woven Wicker baskets for grape clusters Wherein is concealed the source of the vintage, O High Priest of lacchus. Breathe thou upon us Thy magic in parting! Even as thy co-novices. At being mingled with the sea, While yet thou madest thy canticles Serving upright before the altar That is bound about with shadows Of dead years wherein thy lacchus Looked not upon the hills, that being Uncared for, praised not him in entirety. O High Priest of lacchus, Being now near to the border of the sands Where the-sapphire girdle of the sea Encinctureth the maiden Persephone, released for the spring, Look! Breathe upon us 170 The wonder of the thrice encinctured mystery Whereby thou being full of years art young, Loving even this lithe Persephone That is free for the seasons of plenty; Whereby thou being young art old And shalt stand before this Persephone Whom thou lovest, In darkness, even at that time That she being returned to her husband Shall be queen and a maiden no longer, Wherein thou being neither old nor young Standing on the verge of the sea Shall pass from being sand, O High Priest of lacchus, And becoming wave Shalt encircle all sands, Being transmuted through all The girdling of the sea. O High Priest of lacchus, Breathe thou upon us ! Note. — This apostrophe was written three years before Swin- burne's death. Balderdash but let it stay for the rhythm. — E. P. 171 AQPIA Be in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not As transient things are — gaiety of flowers. Have me in the strong loneliness of sunless cliffs And of grey waters. Let the gods speak softly of us In days hereafter, The shadowy flowers of Orcus Remember Thee. THE NEEDLE Come, or the stellar tide will slip away. Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, Now! for the needle trembles in my soul! Here have we had our vantage, the good hour. Here we have had our day, your day and mine. Come now, before this power That bears us up, shall turn against the pole. 172 Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be. O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly. The waves bore In, soon will they bear away. The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it. Move we and take the tide, with its next favour. Abide Under some neutral force Until this course turneth aside. SUB MARE It is, and is not, I am sane enough. Since you have come this place has hovered round me. This fabrication built of autumn roses, Then there's a goldish colour, different. And one gropes in these things as delicate Algas reach up and out beneath Pale slow green surglngs of the underwave, 'Mid these things older than the names they have. These things that are familiars of the god. 173 PLUNGE I would bathe myself in strangeness: These comforts heaped upon me, smother me I burn, I scald so for the new. New friends, new faces, Places ! Oh, to be out of this, This that is all I wanted — Save the new. And you. Love, you the much, the more desired ! Do I not loathe all walls, streets, stones, All mire, mist, all fog, All ways of traffic? You, I would have flow over me hke water. Oh, to be out of this ! Grass, and low fields, and hills, And sun, Oh, sun enough! Out and alone, among some Alien people 1 174 A VIRGINAL No, no ! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air has a new lightness; Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether; As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness. Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her. No, no ! Go from me. I have still the flavour. Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers. Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches, As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches. Hath of the tress a likeness of the savour: As white their bark, so white this lady's hours. PAN IS DEAD " Pan is dead. Great Pan is dead. Ah ! bow your heads, ye maidens all. And weave ye him his coronal." 175 " There is no summer in the leaves, And withered are the sedges; How shall we weave a coronal, Or gather floral pledges?" " That I may not say, Ladies. Death was ever a churl. That I may not say, Ladies. How should he show a reason. That he has taken our Lord away Upon such hollow season? " THE PICTURE* The eyes of this dead lady speak to me, For here was love, was not to be drowned out, And here desire, not to be kissed away. The eyes of this dead lady speak to me. * " Venus Reclining," by Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-93) 176 OF JACOPO DEL SELLAIO This man knew out the secret ways of love, No man could paint such things who did not know. And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian, And you are here, who are " The Isles " to me. And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out: The eyes of this dead lady speak to me. THE RETURN See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet. The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering ! See, they return, one, and by one. With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the " Wing'd-withAwe," Inviolable. 177 Gods of the winged shoe! With them the silver hounds, sniffing the trace of air! Haie! Haie! These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men 1 178 THREE CANTOS THREE CANTOS OF A POEM OF SOME LENGTH An earlier version of these Cantos appeared in Poetry during June, July and August, 1917. Most of the poems in the section headed " Lustra " had appeared there at earlier dates. To the editors of this magazine, and of the others where his poems have appeared, the author wishes to make due acknowledgment. I Hang It all, there can be but the one " Sor- dello," But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks. Let in your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing's an art-form. Your " Sordello," and that the " modern world " Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in; Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery As fresh sardines flapping and shpping on the mar- ginal cobbles ? I stand before the booth (the speech), but the truth Is inside this discourse: this booth is full of the mar- row of wisdom. Give up the intaglio method? Tower by tower. Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan Follows the builder's whim; Beaucaire's slim gray Leaps from the stubby base of Altaforte — Mohammed's windows, for the Alcazar Has such a garden, split by a tame small stream — The Moat is ten yards wide, the inner court-yard Half a-swim with mire. Trunk-hose ? i8i There are not. The rough men swarm out In robes that are half Roman, half like the Knave of Hearts. And I discern your story: Peire Cardinal Was half fore-runner of Dante. Arnaut's the trick Of the unfinished address, And half your dates are out; you mix your eras; For that great font, Sordello sat beside — 'Tis an immortal passage, but the font Is some two centuries outside the picture — And no matter. Ghosts move about me patched with histories. You had your business : to set out so much thought. So much emotion, and call the lot " Sordello." Worth the evasion, the setting figures up And breathing life upon them. Has it a place in music? And your: " Appear Ve- ronal"? I walk the airy street, See the small cobbles flare with the poppy spoil. 'Tis your " Great Day," the Corpus Domini, And all my chosen and peninsular village Has spread this scarlet blaze upon its lane. Oh, before I was up, — with poppy-flowers. Mid-June, and up and out to the half ruined chapel, 182 Not the old place at the height of the rocks But that splay barn-like church, the Renaissance Had never quite got into trim again. As well begin here, here began Catullus: *' Home to sweet rest, and to the waves deep laugh- ter," The laugh they wake amid the border rushes. This is our home, the trees are full of laughter. And the storms laugh loud, breaking the riven waves On square-shaled rocks, and here the sunlight Glints on the shaken waters, and the rain Comes forth with delicate tread, walking from Isola Garda, Lch Soleils plovil. It is the sun rains, and a spatter of fire Darts from the " Lydian " ripples, lacus iindae, And the place is full of spirits, not lemtires, Not dark and shadow-wet ghosts, but ancient living. Wood-white, smooth as the inner-bark, and firm of aspect And all a-gleam with colour? Not a-gleam But coloured like the lake and olive leaves, GLAUKOPOS, clothed like the poppies, wearing golden greaves, 183 Light on the air. Are they Etruscan gods? The air is solid sunlight, apricus. Sun-fed we dwell there (we in England now) For Sirmio serves my whim, better than Asolo, Yours and unseen. Your palace step? My stone seat was the Dogana's vulgarest curb. And there were not " those girls," there was one flare, One face, 'twas all I ever saw, but it was real . . . And I can no more say what shape it was . . , But she was young, too young. True, it was Venice, And at Florian's under the North arcade I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for break- fast. Drifted at night and seen the lit, gilt cross-beams Glare from the Morosini. And for what it's worth I have my background; and you had your back- ground. Watched " the soul," Sordello's soul, flare up And lap up life, and leap " to th' Empyrean " ; Worked out the form, meditative, semi-dramatic. Semi-epic story; and what's left? Pre-Daun-Chaucer, Pre-Boccacio? Not Arnaut, Not Uc St Circ. 184 Gods float in the azure air, Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed; It is a world hke Puvis' ? Never so pale, my friend, 'Tis the first light — not half-light — Panisks And oak-girls and the Maelids have all the wood; Our olive Sirmio Lies in its burnished mirror, and the Mounts Balde and Riva Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices, " Non e fuggi." " It is not gone." Metastasio Is right, we have that world about us. And the clouds bowe above the lake, and there are folk upon them Going their windy ways, moving by Riva, By the western shore, far as Lonato, And the water is full of silvery almond-white swim- mers, The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple. " When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe, He brother to Prometheus, physicist/' We let Ficino Start us our progress, say it was Moses' birth year? 185 Exult with Shang In squatness? The sea-monster Bulges the squarish bronzes. Daub out, with blue of scarabs, Egypt, Green veins in the turquoise? Or gray gradual steps Lead up beneath flat sprays of heavy cedars: Temple of teak-wood, and the gilt-brown arches Triple in tier, banners woven by wall. Fine screens depicted: sea-waves curled high, Small boats with gods upon them, Bright flame above the river : Kuanon, Footing a boat that's but one lotus petal. With some proud four-square genius Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness, Saying, " 'Tis she, his friend, the mighty Goddess. Sing hymns, ye reeds, and all ye roots and herons and swans, be glad. Ye gardens of the nymphs, put forth your flowers." What have I of this life? Or even of Guido? A pleasant lie that I knew Or San Michaele, Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta's, Do not even know which sword he'd with him in the street-charge. I have but smelt this life, a whiff of It, The box of scented wood i86 Recalls cathedrals. Shall I claim; Confuse my own phantastikon Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me Contains the actual sun; confuse the thing I see With actual gods behind me? Are they gods behind me ? Worlds we have, how many worlds we have. If Botticelli Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell, His Venus (Simonetta?) , and Spring And Aufidus fill all the air With their clear-outlined blossoms? World enough. Behold, I say, she comes " Apparelled like the Spring, Graces her subjects " ("Pericles"), Such worlds enough we have, have brave decors And from these like we guess a soul for man And build him full of aery populations. (Panting and Faustus), Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us: Barred lights, great flares, and write to paint, not music, O Casella. 187 II O " Virgllio mio," Send out your thought upon the Mantuan palace, Drear waste, great halls; pigment flakes from the stone ; Forlorner quarter: Silk tatters still in the frame, Gonzaga's splendour, Where do we come upon the ancient people. Or much or little, Where do we come upon the ancient people? *' All that I know is that a certain star " — All that I know of one, Joios, Tolosan, Is that in middle May, going along A scarce discerned path, turning aside In " level poplar lands," he found a flower, and wept; " Y a la primera flor," he wrote, " Qu'ieu trobei, tornei em plor." One stave of it, I've lost the copy I had of it in Paris, Out of a blue and gilded manuscript: Couci's rabbits, a slim fellow throwing dice. Purported portraits serving in capitals. Joios we have, by such a margent stream. He strayed in the field, wept for a flare of colour When Coeur de Lion was before Chalus; Arnaut's a score of songs, a wry sestina; The rose-leaf casts her dew on the ringing glass, Dolmetsch will build our age in witching music, Viols da Gamba, tabors, tympanons. Yin-yo laps in the reeds, my guest departs. The maple leaves blot up their shadows. The sky is full of Autumn, We drink our parting in saki. Out of the night comes troubling lute music, And we cry out, asking the singer's name, And get this answer: " Many a one Brought me rich presents, my hair was full of jade. And my slashed skirts were drenched in the secret dyes. Well dipped in crimson, and sprinkled with rare wines; I was well taught my arts at Ga-ma-rio And then one year I faded out and married." The lute-bowl hid her face. We heard her weeping. Society, her sparrows, Venus' sparrows. Catullus hung on the phrase (played with it as Mal- larme Played for a fan: " Reveuse pour que je plonge.") ; Wrote out his crib from Sappho : 189 God's peer, yea and the very gods are under him Facing thee, near thee; and my tongue is heavy, And along my veins the fire; and the night is Thrust down upon me. That was one way of love, flatnma demanat, And in a year: " I love her as a father," And scarce a year, " Your words are written in water," And in ten moons : " O Caehus, Lesbia ilia, Caelius, Lesbia, our Lesbia, that Lesbia Whom Catullus once loved more Than his own soul and all his friends. Is now the drab of every lousy Roman " ; So much for him who puts his trust in woman. Dordoigne ! When I was there There came a centaur, spying the land And there were nymphs behind him; Or procession on procession by Salisbury, Ancient in various days, long years between them; Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here. Catch at Dordoigne I Vicount St, Antoni — '* D'amor tug miei cossir " — hight Raimon Jordans Of land near Caortz. The Lady of Pena '* Gentle and highly prized." 190 And he was good at arms and bos trobaire, *' Thou art the pool of worth, flood-land of pleasure, And all my heart is bound about with love, As rose in trellis that is bound over and over "; Thus were they taken in love beyond all measure. But the Viscount Pena Went making war into an hostile country. And was sore wounded. The news held him dead, " And at this news she had great grief and teen," And gave the church such wax for his recovery That he recovered, " And at this news she had great grief and teen " And fell a-moping, dismissed St. Antoni, " Thus was there more than one in deep distress," So ends that novel. Here the blue Dordoigne Placid between white cliffs, pale As the background of a Leonardo. Elis of Mont- fort Then sent him her invitations (wife of de Gordon). It juts into the sky, Gordon that is. Like a thin spire. Blue night pulled down about it Like tent-flaps or sails close hauled. When I was there, La Noche de San Juan, a score of players Were walking about the streets in masquerade. Pike-staves and paper helmets, and the booths 191 Were scattered align, the rag ends of the fair. False arms, true arms: A flood of people storming about Spain: My Cid rode up to Burgos, Up to the studded gate between two towers, Beat with his lance butt. A girl child of nine years Comes to the shrine-like platform in the wall. Lisps out the words a-whisper, the King's writ: Let no man speak to Diaz (Ruy Diaz, Myo Cid) Or give him help or food, on pain of death: His heart upon a pike, his eyes torn out, his goods sequestered. Cid from Bivar, from empty perches of dispersed hawks. From empty presses. Came riding with his company up the great hill {Afe Minayaf) to Burgos in the Spring, And thence to fighting, to down-throw of Moors And to Valencia rode he. By the beard! Muy velida! Of onrush of lances, of splintered staves Riven and broken casques, dismantled castles; Of painted shields split up, blazons hacked off, Piled men and bloody rivers. Or " Of sombre light upon reflected armour " When De las Nieblas sails — 192 " Y dar nueva lumbre las armas y hierros " — And portents in the wind, a pressing air; Full many a fathomed sea-change in the eyes That sought with him the salt sea victories, Rumble of balladist. Another gate: And Kumasaka's ghost comes back to explain How well the young man fenced who ended him. Another gate : The kernelled walls of Toro, las almenas, Aheld, a king come in an unjust cause, Atween the chinks aloft flashes the armoured figure, " Muy linda! ", " Helen! ", " a star," Lights the king's features . . . ** No use, my liege. She is your highness' sister," Breaks in Ancures. " Mai fuego s'enciende ! " Such are the gestes of war. A tire-woman. Court sinecure, the court of Portugal, And the young prince loved her, Pedro, Called later. Cruel. Jealousy, two stabbed her, Courtiers, with king's connivance. And he, the prince, kept quiet a space of years. And came to reign, after uncommon quiet, And had his will upon the dagger-players: 193 A wedding ceremonial: he and the dug-up corpse in cerements. Who winked at murder kisses the dead hand, Does loyal homage " Que despois de ser morta foy Rainha." Dig up Camoens: " That once as Proserpine Gatheredst thy soul's light fruit, and every blindness; Thy Enna the flary mead-land of Mondego, Long art thou sung by Maidens in Mondego." What have we now of her, his " linda Ignez "f Houtmans in jail for debt in Lisbon, how long after. Contrives a company, the Dutch eat Portugal, Follow her ships tracks. Roemer Vischer's daugh- ters Talking some Greek, dally with glass engraving: Vondel, the Eglantine, Dutch Renaissance. The old tale out of fashion, daggers gone. And Gaby wears Braganza on her throat. Another pearl, tied to a public gullet. I knew a man, but where 'twas is no matter. Born on a farm, he hankered after painting. His father kept him at work, no luck. Married and got four sons. 194 Three died, the fourth he sent to Paris. And this son: Ten years of JuUans' and the ateliers, Ten years of life, his pictures in the salons, Name coming in the press; and when I knew him : Back once again in middle Indiana, Acting as usher in the theatre, Painting the local drug-shop and soda bars, The local doctor's fancy for a mantel-piece: Sheep! jabbing the wool upon their flea-bit backs. " Them sheep! Them goddamd sheep!! " Ador- ing Puvis, Giving his family back what they had spent on him. Talking Italian cities. Local excellence at Perugia ; dreaming his renaissance, Take my Sordello I III Another one, half-cracked: John Heydon, Worker of miracles, dealer In levitation, " Servant of God and secretary of nature," The half transparent forms, in trance at Bulverton: " Decked all in green," with sleeves of yellow silk Slit to the elbow, slashed with various purples. 195 (Thus in his vision) Her eyes were green as glass, Her foot was leaf-lilce, and she promised him, Dangling a chain of emeralds, promised him The way of holiest wisdom. " Omniformis Omnis intellectus est " : thus he begins By spouting half of Psellus; no, not " Daemonibus," But Porphyry's " Chances," the 13th chapter, That every intellect is omniform. " A daemon is a substance in the locus of souls." Munching Ficino's mumbhng Platonists. Valla, more earth and sounder rhetoric, Prefacing praise to his Pope, Nicholas: A man of parts skilled in the subtlest sciences; A patron of the arts, of poetry; and of a fine discern- ment. A catalogue, his jewels of conversation. " Know then the Roman speech: a sacrament" Spread for the nations, eucharist of wisdom. Bread of the hberal arts. Ha I Sir Blancatz, Sordello would have your heart up, give it to all the princes; Valla, the heart of Rome, sustaining speech, 196 Set out before the people. " Nee bonus Chrlstianus " (In the Elegantlae) " ac bonus Tul- lianus." Shook the church. Marius, Du Bellay, wept for the buildings; Baldassar Castlgllone saw Raphael " Lead back the soul Into Its dead, waste dwelling," l.aniato corpore. Lorenzo Valla " Broken in middle life? Bent to submission? Took a fat living from the Papacy " (That's In Villarl, but Burckhardt's statement's dif- ferent) . " More than the Roman city the Roman speech " Holds fast Its part among the ever living. " Not by the eagles only was Rome measured." " Wherever the Roman speech was, there was Rome." Wherever the speech crept, there was mastery, Spoke with the law's voice, while your greek logi- cians. . . . More greeks than one! Doughty's "Divine Ho- meros " Came before sophistry. Justinopolitan, uncata- logued. One Andreas DIvus gave him in latin, 197 In Officina Wecheli, M.D. three " X s." eight, Caught up his cadence, word and syllable : " Down to the ships we went, set mast and sail, Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice, Weeping we went." I've strained my ear for -ensa, -ombra, and -ensa, And cracked my wit on delicate canzoni, Here's but rough meaning: " And then went down to the ship, set keel to breakers. Forth on the godly sea, We set up mast and sail on the swart ship, Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also. Heavy with weeping; and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships — wind jamming the tiller — Thus with stretched sail we went over sea till day's end. Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean. Came we then to the bounds of deepest water. To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays. Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven, 198 Swartest night stretched over wretched men there, The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin. Poured we libations unto each the dead. First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's- heads. As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods. Sheep, to Tiresias only; black and a bell sheep. Dark blood flowed in the fosse. Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, Of brides, of youths, and of much-bearing old; Virgins tender, souls stained with recent tears. Many men mauled with bronze lance-heads. Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms, These many crowded about me. With shouting. Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts. Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze. Poured ointment, cried to the gods, 199 To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine, Unsheathed the narrow sword, 1 sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth. Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other. Pitiful spirit, and I cried in hurried speech: '' Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? Cam'st thou a-foot, outstripping seamen?" And he in heavy speech: " 111 fate and abundant wine ! I slept in Circe's ingle. Going down the long ladder unguarded, I fell against the buttress, * Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, un- buried. Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-board, and inscribed: ' A man of no fortune and with a name to come* And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows." Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticlea, And then Tiresias, Theban, 200 Holding his golden wand, knew me and spoke first: " Man of 111 hour, why come a second time, Leaving the sunlight, facing the sunless dead, and this joyless region? Stand from the fosse, move back, leave me my bloody bever, And I will speak you true speeches." And I stepped back, Sheathing the yellow sword. Dark blood he drank then. And spoke: " Lustrous Odysseus Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas. Lose all companions." Foretold me the ways and the signs. Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered: " Fate drives me on through these deeps. I sought Til iresias. Told her the news of Troy. And thrice her shadow Faded In my embrace. Lie quiet DIvus. Then had he news of many faded women. Tyro, Alcmena, Chloris, Heard out their tales by that dark fosse, and sailed By sirens and thence outward and away. 20I And unto Circe. Buried Elpenor's corpse. Lie quiet Divus, plucked from a Paris stall With a certain Cretan's " Hymni Deorum " ; The thin clear Tuscan stuff Gives way before the florid mellow phrase, Take we the goddess, Venerandam Auream coronam habentem, pulchram. . . . Cypri munimenta sortita est, maritime. Light on the foam, breathed on by Zephyrs And air-tending Hours, mirthful, orichalci, with golden Girdles and breast bands. Thou with dark eyelids, Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. END OF THREE CANTOS END 202 WM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 015 909 886 2