Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

IN THE FOREST OUT of the mid-wood’s twilight Into the meadow’s dawn, Ivory limbed and brown-eyed, Flashes my Faun! He skips through the copses singing, And his shadow dances along, And I know not which I should follow, Shadow or song! O Hunter, snare me his shadow! O Nightingale, catch me his strain! Else moonstruck with music and madness I track him in vain! TO MY WIFE WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS I CAN write no stately proem As a prelude to my lay; From a poet to a poem I would dare to say. For if of these fallen petals One to you seem fair, Love will waft it till it settles On your hair. And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand. WITH A COPY OF ‘A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES’ GO, little book, To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl, Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl: And bid him look Into thy pages: it may hap that he May find that golden maidens dance through thee. ROSES AND RUE (To L. L.) COULD we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love’s song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! I remember we used to meet By an ivied seat, And you warbled each pretty word With the air of a bird; And your voice had a quaver in it, Just like a linnet, And shook, as the blackbird’s throat With its last big note; And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet. I remember your hair—did I tie it? For it always ran riot— Like a tangled sunbeam of gold: These things are old. I remember so well the room, And the lilac bloom That beat at the dripping pane In the warm June rain; And the colour of your gown, It was amber-brown, And two yellow satin bows From your shoulders rose. And the handkerchief of French lace Which you held to your face— Had a small tear left a stain? Or was it the rain? On your hand as it waved adieu There were veins of blue; In your voice as it said good-bye Was a petulant cry, ‘You have only wasted your life.’ (Ah, that was the knife!) When I rushed through the garden gate It was all too late. Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! Well, if my heart must break, Dear love, for your sake, It will break in music, I know, Poets’ hearts break so. But strange that I was not told That the brain can hold In a tiny ivory cell God’s heaven and hell. DÉSESPOIR THE seasons send their ruin as they go, For in the spring the narciss shows its head Nor withers till the rose has flamed to red, And in the autumn purple violets blow, And the slim crocus stirs the winter snow; Wherefore yon leafless trees will bloom again And this grey land grow green with summer rain And send up cowslips for some boy to mow. But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory. PAN DOUBLE VILLANELLE I O goat-foot God of Arcady! This modern world is grey and old, And what remains to us of thee? No more the shepherd lads in glee Throw apples at thy wattled fold, O goat-foot God of Arcady! Nor through the laurels can one see Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold, And what remains to us of thee? And dull and dead our Thames would be, For here the winds are chill and cold, O goat-foot God of Arcady! Then keep the tomb of Helice, Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold, And what remains to us of thee? Though many an unsung elegy Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold, O goat-foot God of Arcady! Ah, what remains to us of thee? II Ah, leave the hills of Arcady, Thy satyrs and their wanton play, This modern world hath need of thee. No nymph or Faun indeed have we, For Faun and nymph are old and grey, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! This is the land where liberty Lit grave-browed Milton on his way, This modern world hath need of thee! A land of ancient chivalry Where gentle Sidney saw the day, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! This fierce sea-lion of the sea, This England lacks some stronger lay, This modern world hath need of thee! Then blow some trumpet loud and free, And give thine oaten pipe away, Ah, leave the hills of Arcady! This modern world hath need of thee! THE SPHINX TO MARCEL SCHWOB IN FRIENDSHIP AND IN ADMIRATION THE SPHINX IN a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom. Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel. Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there. Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious cat Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold. Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears. Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so somnolent, so statuesque! Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal! Come forth my lovely languorous Sphinx! and put your head upon my knee! And let me stroke your throat and see your body spotted like the Lynx! And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory and grasp The tail that like a monstrous Asp coils round your heavy velvet paws! * * * * * A THOUSAND weary centuries are thine while I have hardly seen Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn’s gaudy liveries. But you can read the Hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks, And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have looked on Hippogriffs. O tell me, were you standing by when Isis to Osiris knelt? And did you watch the Egyptian melt her union for Antony And drink the jewel-drunken wine and bend her head in mimic awe To see the huge proconsul draw the salted tunny from the brine? And did you mark the Cyprian kiss white Adon on his catafalque? And did you follow Amenalk, the God of Heliopolis? And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep? And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid? * * * * * LIFT up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks! Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories! Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child, And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your shade. Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter of Antinous And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and hungry stare The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth! Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled! Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple’s granite plinth When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores, And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears, And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile, And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seized their snake And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms. * * * * * WHO were your lovers? who were they who wrestled for you in the dust? Which was the vessel of your Lust? What Leman had you, every day? Did giant Lizards come and crouch before you on the reedy banks? Did Gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch? Did monstrous hippopotami come sidling toward you in the mist? Did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passed them by? And from the brick-built Lycian tomb what horrible Chimera came With fearful heads and fearful flame to breed new wonders from your womb? * * * * * OR had you shameful secret quests and did you harry to your home Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasts? Or did you treading through the froth call to the brown Sidonian For tidings of Leviathan, Leviathan or Behemoth? Or did you when the sun was set climb up the cactus-covered slope To meet your swarthy Ethiop whose body was of polished jet? Or did you while the earthen skiffs dropped down the grey Nilotic flats At twilight and the flickering bats flew round the temple’s triple glyphs Steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake And slink into the vault and make the Pyramid your lúpanar Till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead? Or did you lure unto your bed the ivory-horned Tragelaphos? Or did you love the god of flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had green beryls for her eyes? Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the Assyrian Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head, Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch? Or did huge Apis from his car leap down and lay before your feet Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar? * * * * * HOW subtle-secret is your smile! Did you love none then? Nay, I know Great Ammon was your bedfellow! He lay with you beside the Nile! The river-horses in the slime trumpeted when they saw him come Odorous with Syrian galbanum and smeared with spikenard and with thyme. He came along the river bank like some tall galley argent-sailed,