Second Best
Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night, And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover; Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart From the dead best, the dear and old delight; Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good glad sun Showers love and labour on you, wine and song; The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long Till night." And night ends all things.
Then shall be
No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying, Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover! (And, heart, for all your sighing,
That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)
And has the truth brought no new hope at all,
Heart, that you're weeping yet for Paradise?
Do they still whisper, the old weary cries?
"'MID YOUTH AND SONG, FEASTING AND CARNIVAL, THROUGH LAUGHTER, THROUGH THE ROSES, AS OF OLD COMES DEATH, ON SHADOWY AND RELENTLESS FEET, DEATH, UNAPPEASABLE BY PRAYER OR GOLD; DEATH IS THE END, THE END!"
Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet Death as a friend!
Exile of immortality, strongly wise,
Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star, O heart, for ever! Yet, behind the night, Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, Some white tremendous daybreak. And the light, Returning, shall give back the golden hours, Ocean a windless level, Earth a lawn
Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places, And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers, The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces O heart, in the great dawn!
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands.
The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies.
I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands,
Where lies your waiting boat, by wreaths of the sea's making Mist-garlanded, with all grey weeds of the water crowned.
There you'll be laid, past fear of sleep or hope of waking;
And over the unmoving sea, without a sound,
Faint hands will row you outward, out beyond our sight, Us with stretched arms and empty eyes on the far-gleaming
And marble sand. . . .
Beyond the shifting cold twilight,
Further than laughter goes, or tears, further than dreaming,
There'll be no port, no dawn-lit islands! But the drear
Waste darkening, and, at length, flame ultimate on the deep.
Oh, the last fire -- and you, unkissed, unfriended there!
Oh, the lone way's red ending, and we not there to weep!
(We found you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers, Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us,
Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours,
High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous,
From the inland meadows,
Fragrant of June and clover, floats the dark, and fills The hollow sea's dead face with little creeping shadows,
And the white silence brims the hollow of the hills.
Close in the nest is folded every weary wing,
Hushed all the joyful voices; and we, who held you dear,
Eastward we turn and homeward, alone, remembering . . .
Day that I loved, day that I loved, the Night is here!
They sleep within. . . .
I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.
High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.
We have slept too long, who can hardly win The white one flame, and the night-long crying; The viewless passers; the world's low sighing With desire, with yearning,
To the fire unburning,
To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy! . . .
Helpless I lie.
And around me the feet of thy watchers tread.
There is a rumour and a radiance of wings above my head, An intolerable radiance of wings. . . .
All the earth grows fire,
White lips of desire
Brushing cool on the forehead, croon slumbrous things. Earth fades; and the air is thrilled with ways,
Dewy paths full of comfort. And radiant bands, The gracious presence of friendly hands,
Help the blind one, the glad one, who stumbles and strays, Stretching wavering hands, up, up, through the praise Of a myriad silver trumpets, through cries,
To all glory, to all gladness, to the infinite height, To the gracious, the unmoving, the mother eyes, And the laughter, and the lips, of light.
Lo! from quiet skies
In through the window my Lord the Sun! And my eyes
Were dazzled and drunk with the misty gold, The golden glory that drowned and crowned me Eddied and swayed through the room . . .
Around me, To left and to right,
Hunched figures and old,
Dull blear-eyed scribbling fools, grew fair, Ringed round and haloed with holy light. Flame lit on their hair,
And their burning eyes grew young and wise, Each as a God, or King of kings,
White-robed and bright
(Still scribbling all);
And a full tumultuous murmur of wings Grew through the hall;
And I knew the white undying Fire,
And, through open portals,
Gyre on gyre,
Archangels and angels, adoring, bowing, And a Face unshaded . . .
Till the light faded;
And they were but fools again, fools unknowing, Still scribbling, blear-eyed and stolid immortals.
I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky, And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover, And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry.
And in them all was only the old cry,
That song they always sing -- "The best is over! You may remember now, and think, and sigh, O silly lover!"
And I was tired and sick that all was over, And because I,
For all my thinking, never could recover One moment of the good hours that were over. And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die.
Then from the sad west turning wearily, I saw the pines against the white north sky, Very beautiful, and still, and bending over Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky. And there was peace in them; and I Was happy, and forgot to play the lover, And laughed, and did no longer wish to die; Being glad of you, O pine-trees and the sky!
Wagner Creeps in half wanton, half asleep,
One with a fat wide hairless face.
He likes love-music that is cheap;
Likes women in a crowded place;
His heavy eyelids droop half-over, Great pouches swing beneath his eyes.
He listens, thinks himself the lover,
Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs; He likes to feel his heart's a-breaking.
The music swells. His gross legs quiver. His little lips are bright with slime.
The music swells. The women shiver.
And all the while, in perfect time,
His pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking.
Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,
Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky, Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,
A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,
It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never
Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,
And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever
Into the emptiness and silence, into the night. . . .)
They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall, Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin -- and therein God's little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,
And curled up like some crumpled, lonely flower-petal -- Till it was no more visible; then turned again
With sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain.
Seaside
Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band, The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men, I am drawn nightward; I must turn again
Where, down beyond the low untrodden strand, There curves and glimmers outward to the unknownThe old unquiet ocean. All the shade
Is rife with magic and movement. I stray alone
Here on the edge of silence, half afraid,
Waiting a sign. In the deep heart of me
The sullen waters swell towards the moon, And all my tides set seaward.
From inland
Leaps a gay fragment of some mocking tune, That tinkles and laughs and fades along the sand, And dies between the seawall and the sea.
Song of a tribe of the ancient Egyptians
(The Priests within the Temple)
She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother. She was lustful and lewd? -- but a God; we had none other.
In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade; We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.
She sent us pain,
And we bowed before Her; She smiled again
And bade us adore Her.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?
(The Priests within)
She was hungry and ate our children; -- how should we stay Her? She took our young men and our maidens; -- ours to obey Her. We were loathed and mocked and reviled of all nations; that was our pride. She fed us, protected us, loved us, and killed us; now She has died.
She was so strong;
But death is stronger. She ruled us long;
But Time is longer.
She solaced our woe
And soothed our sighing;
And what shall we do
Now God is dying?
(Halted around the fire by night, after moon-set, they sing this beneath the trees.)
What light of unremembered skies
Hast thou relumed within our eyes,
Thou whom we seek, whom we shall find? . . . A certain odour on the wind,
Thy hidden face beyond the west,
These things have called us; on a quest Older than any road we trod,
More endless than desire. . . .
Far God,
Sigh with thy cruel voice, that fills
The soul with longing for dim hills
And faint horizons! For there come Grey moments of the antient dumb Sickness of travel, when no song Can cheer us; but the way seems long; And one remembers. . . .
Ah! the beat
Of weary unreturning feet,
And songs of pilgrims unreturning! . . . The fires we left are always burning On the old shrines of home. Our kin Have built them temples, and therein Pray to the Gods we know; and dwell In little houses lovable,
Being happy (we remember how!) And peaceful even to death. . . .
O Thou,
God of all long desirous roaming, Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing, And crying after lost desire.
Hearten us onward! as with fire Consuming dreams of other bliss. The best Thou givest, giving this Sufficient thing -- to travel still
Over the plain, beyond the hill,
Unhesitating through the shade, Amid the silence unafraid,
Till, at some sudden turn, one sees Against the black and muttering trees Thine altar, wonderfully white,
Among the Forests of the Night.
(Sung, on one night, in the cities, in the darkness.) Come away! Come away!
Ye are sober and dull through the common day, But now it is night!
It is shameful night, and God is asleep!
(Have you not felt the quick fires that creep Through the hungry flesh, and the lust of delight, And hot secrets of dreams that day cannot say?).
The house is dumb;
The night calls out to you. Come, ah, come! Down the dim stairs, through the creaking door, Naked, crawling on hands and feet
-- It is meet! it is meet!
Ye are men no longer, but less and more,
Beast and God. . . . Down the lampless street, By little black ways, and secret places,
In the darkness and mire,
Faint laughter around, and evil faces
By the star-glint seen -- ah! follow with us!
For the darkness whispers a blind desire,
And the fingers of night are amorous.
Keep close as we speed,
Though mad whispers woo you, and hot hands cling, And the touch and the smell of bare flesh sting, Soft flank by your flank, and side brushing side -- TO-NIGHT never heed!
Unswerving and silent follow with me,
Till the city ends sheer,
And the crook'd lanes open wide,
Out of the voices of night,
Beyond lust and fear,
To the level waters of moonlight,
To the level waters, quiet and clear,
To the black unresting plains of the calling sea.
Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry --
All the great courts were quiet in the sun, And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.
Before thy shrine I kneel, an unknown worshipper, Chanting strange hymns to thee and sorrowful litanies,
Incense of dirges, prayers that are as holy myrrh.
Ah, goddess, on thy throne of tears and faint low sighs, Weary at last to theeward come the feet that err,
And empty hearts grown tired of the world's vanities.
How fair this cool deep silence to a wanderer Deaf with the roar of winds along the open skies!
Sweet, after sting and bitter kiss of sea-water,
The pale Lethean wine within thy chalices! I come before thee, I, too tired wanderer,
To heed the horror of the shrine, the distant cries,
And evil whispers in the gloom, or the swift whirr
Of terrible wings -- I, least of all thy votaries,
With a faint hope to see the scented darkness stir,
And, parting, frame within its quiet mysteries One face, with lips than autumn-lilies tenderer,
And voice more sweet than the far plaint of viols is,
Dawn
(From the train between Bologna and Milan, second class.)
Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat. Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.
We have been here for ever: even yet
A dim watch tells two hours, two aeons, more.
The windows are tight-shut and slimy-wet
With a night's foetor. There are two hours more;
Two hours to dawn and Milan; two hours yet.
Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore. . . .
One of them wakes, and spits, and sleeps again. The darkness shivers. A wan light through the rain
Strikes on our faces, drawn and white. Somewhere
A new day sprawls; and, inside, the foul air
Is chill, and damp, and fouler than before. . . .
Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore.
Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity,
There was a thunder on the deep:
I came, because you called to me.
I broke the Night's primeval bars,
I dared the old abysmal curse,
And flashed through ranks of frightened stars
Suddenly on the universe!
The eternal silences were broken; Hell became Heaven as I passed. --
What shall I give you as a token,
A sign that we have met, at last?
I'll break and forge the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song;
Immortal in my love for you,
Because I love you, very strong.
Your mouth shall mock the old and wise, Your laugh shall fill the world with flame,
I'll write upon the shrinking skies
The scarlet splendour of your name,
Till Heaven cracks, and Hell thereunder Dies in her ultimate mad fire,
And darkness falls, with scornful thunder,
On dreams of men and men's desire.
Then only in the empty spaces, Death, walking very silently,
Shall fear the glory of our faces
Through all the dark infinity.
So, clothed about with perfect love, The eternal end shall find us one,
Alone above the Night, above
The dust of the dead gods, alone.
Made fair by one another for a while. Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace;
The long road then, unlit by your faint smile.
Ah! the long road! and you so far away!
Oh, I'll remember! but . . . each crawling day
Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile
Dull the dear pain of your remembered face.
Some gaunt eventual limit of our light,
In which I'll find you waiting; and we'll go
Together, hand in hand again, out there,
Into the waste we know not, into the night?
Some day I shall rise and leave my friends And seek you again through the world's far ends, You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!), My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain Have changed you wholly; for I shall know (How could I forget having loved you so?), In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I'll stand And hold you fiercely by either hand,
And seeing your age and ashen hair
I'll curse the thing that once you were,
Because it is changed and pale and old (Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!), And I loved you before you were old and wise, When the flame of youth was strong in your eyes,
-- And my heart is sick with memories.
Sonnet: "Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire"
Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing, See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream, Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam --
Most individual and bewildering ghost! --
Sonnet: "I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true"
I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true. Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --
The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist. Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,
Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,
And do not love at all. Of these am I.
I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch --
Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.
When the white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;
When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath --
When we are dust, when we are dust! --
Not dead, not undesirous yet, Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,
And dance as dust before the sun, And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.
And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,
Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that's I
Shall meet one atom that was you.
Then in some garden hushed from wind, Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
The lovers in the flowers will find
A sweet and strange unquiet grow
Upon the peace; and, past desiring, So high a beauty in the air,
And such a light, and such a quiring,
And such a radiant ecstasy there,
Out of the garden, higher, higher. . . .
But in that instant they shall learn The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
And the weak passionless hearts will burn
And faint in that amazing glow,
Until the darkness close above;
And they will know -- poor fools, they'll know! --
One moment, what it is to love.
When love has changed to kindliness -- Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
So tight that Time's an old god's dream Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
Seven million years were not enough
To think on after, make it seem
Less than the breath of children playing, A blasphemy scarce worth the saying, A sorry jest, "When love has grown
To kindliness -- to kindliness!" . . .
And yet -- the best that either's known
Will change, and wither, and be less,
At last, than comfort, or its own
Remembrance. And when some caress Tendered in habit (once a flame
All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame Unworded, in the steady eyes
We'll have, -- THAT day, what shall we do? Being so noble, kill the two
Who've reached their second-best? Being wise, Break cleanly off, and get away.
Follow down other windier skies
New lures, alone? Or shall we stay, Since this is all we've known, content In the lean twilight of such day,
And not remember, not lament?
That time when all is over, and
Hand never flinches, brushing hand; And blood lies quiet, for all you're near; And it's but spoken words we hear, Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies Are stranger and nobler than your eyes; And flesh is flesh, was flame before; And infinite hungers leap no more
In the chance swaying of your dress; And love has changed to kindliness.
As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
Drunk on the dead, and medicined With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
Ten centuries of lust.
So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme, Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
To rarify ecstasy.
Gypsy the lips I press; and see Two Antonys in your eyes.
The unheard invisible lovely dead Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head
Close face to straining face;
Their blood is wine along our limbs; Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns
Under the names we breathe;
Woven from their tomb, and one with it, The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit
Your flaming nakedness.
For the uttermost years have cried and clung To kiss your mouth to mine;
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,
Hand shaken to hand divine,
And Life has fired, and Death not shaded, All Time's uncounted bliss,
And the height o' the world has flamed and faded,
Love, that our love be this!
In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides.
Tho