[1]The Savoy, No. 4, August 1896.
[1]The Savoy, No. 4, August 1896.
THE FERRYMAN.With hands on oars the ferrymanStrove where the stubborn current ran,With a green reed between his teeth.But she who hailed him from the bank,Beyond the waves, among the rushes rankThat rim the rolling heath,Into the mists receded more and more.The windows, with their eyes,And the dials of the towers upon the shore,Watched him, with doubled back,Straining and toiling at the oar,And heard his muscles crack.Of a sudden broke an oar,Which the current boreOn heavy waves down to the sea.And she who hailed him from the mist,In the blustering wind, appearedMore madly still her arms to twist,Towards him who never neared.The ferryman took to the oar remainingWith such a might,That all his body cracked with straining,And his heart shook with feverish fright.A sudden shock, the rudder tore,And the current boreThis remnant to the sea.The windows on the shore,Like eyes with fever great,And the dials of the towers, those widows straightThat in their thousands throngA river bank, were obstinately staringAt this mad fellow obstinately daringHis crazy voyage to prolong.And she who hailed him there with chattering teeth,Howled and howled in the mists of night,With head stretched out in frantic frightTo the unknown, the vast, and rolling heath.The ferryman, as a statue stands,Bronze in the storm that paled his blood,With the one oar firm in his hands,Beat the waves, and bit the flood.His old hallucinated eyesSee the lit distances rejoice,Whence reaches him the lamentable voice,Under the freezing skies.His last oar breaks,His last oar the current takes,Like a straw, down to the sea.The ferryman exhausted sankUpon his bench, with sweat that poured,His loins with vain exertion sore,A high wave struck on the lee-board,He looked, behind him lay the bank:He had not left the shore.The windows and the dials gazed,With eyes they opened wide, amazed,Where all his strength to ruin ran;But the old, stubborn ferrymanKept all the same, for God knows when,The green reed in his teeth, even then.THE RAIN.As reeled from an exhaustless bobbin, the long rain,Interminably through the long gray day,Lines the green window paneWith its long threads of gray,The reeled, exhaustless rain,The long rain,The rain.It has been ravelling out, since last sunset,Rags hanging soft and lowFrom sulky skies of jet.Unravelling, patient, slow,Upon the roads, since last sunset,On roads and streets,Continual sheets.Along the leagues that windThrough quiet suburbs to the fields behind,Along the roads interminably bending,In funeral procession, drenched, resigned,Toiling, bathed in sweat and steam,Vehicles with tilted coverings are wending;In ruts so regular,And parallel so farBy night to join the firmament they seem,The water drips hour after hour,The spouts gush, and the trees shower,With long rain wet,With rain tenacious yet.Rivers o'er rotten dikes are brimmingUpon the meadows where drowned hay is swimming;The wind is whipping walnut trees and alders,And big black oxen wading standDeep in the water of the polders,And bellow at the writhen sky;And evening is at hand,Bringing its shadows to enfold the plain, and lieClustered at the washed tree's root;And ever falls the rain,The long rain,As fine and dense as soot.The long rain,The long rain falls afresh;And its identic threadWeaves mesh by meshA raiment making naked shred by shredThe cottages and farmyards grayOf hamlets crumbling fast away;A bunch of linen rags that hang down sickUpon a loosely planted stick;Here a blue dovecote to the roof that cleaves;Sinister window panesPlastered with paper rank with mildew stains;Dwellings whose regular evesForm crosses on their gable ends of stone;Uniform, melancholy mills,Standing like horns upon their hills;Chapels, and spires with ivy overgrown;The rainThe long rainWinter-long beneath them burrows.The rain, in lines,The long, gray rain untwinesIts watery tresses o'er its furrows,The long rainOf countries old,Torpid, eternally unrolled.THE FISHERMEN.Up from the sea a flaky, dank,Thickening fog rolls up, and chokesWindows and closed doors, and smokesUpon the slippery river bank.Drowned gleams of gas-lamps shake and fallWhere rolls the river's carrion;The moon looks like a corpse, and onThe heaven's rim its burial.But flickering lanterns now and thenLight up and magnify the backs,Bent obstinately in their smacks,Of the old river fishermen,Who all the time, from last sunset,For what night's fishing none can know,Have cast their black and greedy net,Where silent, evil waters flow.Deep down beyond the reach of eyeFates of Evil gathering throng,Which lure the fishers where they lieTo fish for them with patience strong,True to their task of simple toilingIn contradictory fogs embroiling.And o'er them peal the minutes stark,With heavy hammers peal their knells,The minutes sound from belfry bells,The minutes hard of autumn dark,The minutes list.And the black fishers in their ships,In their cold ships, are clad in shreds;Down their cold nape their old hat dripsAnd drop by drop in water shedsAll the mist.Their villages are numb and freeze;Their huts are all in ruin sunk,And the willows and the walnut-treesThe winds of the west have whipped and shrunk;And not a bark comes through the dark,And never a cry through the void midnight,That floated, humid ashes blight.And never helping one another,Never brother hailing brother,Never doing what they ought,For himself each fisher's thought:And the first draws his net, and seizesAll the fry of his poverty;And the next drags up, as keen as he,The empty bottoms of diseases;Another opens out his netTo griefs that on the surface swim;And another to his vessel's rimPulls up the flotsam of regret.The river churns, league after league,Along the dikes, and runs away,As it has done so many a day,To the far horizon of fatigue;Upon its banks skins of black clayBy night perspire a poison draught;The fogs are fleeces far to waft,And to men's houses journey they.Never a lantern streaks the dark,And nothing stirs in the fisher's bark,Save, nimbusing with halos of blood,The thick white felt of the clustering fogs,Silent Death, who with madness clogsThe brains of the fishermen on the flood.Lonely at the fog's cold heart,Each sees not each, though side by side;Their arms are tired, their vessels rideBy sandbanks marked on ruin's chart.Why in the dark do they not hail each other?Why does a brother's voice console not brother?No, numb and haggard they remain,With vaulted back and heavy brain,With, by their side, their little lightRigid in the river's night.Like blocks of shadow there they arc,And never pierce their eyes afarBeyond the acrid, spongy wet;And they suspect not that above,Luring them with a magnet's love,Stars immense are shining yet.These fishers in black torment tossed,They are the men immensely lostAmong the knells and far awaysAnd far beyonds where none can gaze;And in their souls' monotonous deepsThe humid autumn midnight weeps.SILENCE.Since last the summer broke above herA flash of lightning from his thunder-sheath,Silence has never left her coverIn the heather on the heath.Across her refuge peers the steeple,And with its fingers shakes its bells;Around her prowl the vehicles,Laden with uproarious people;Around her, where the fir-trees end,In its rut the cart-wheel grates;But never a noise has strength to rendThe tense, dead space where silence waits.Since the last loud thunder weather,Silence has stirred not in the heather;And the heath, wherein the evenings sink,Beyond the endless thickets, andThe purple mounds of hidden sand,Lengthens her haunts to heaven's brink.And even winds stir not the slimLarches at the marsh's rim,Where she will glass her abstract eyesIn pools where wondering lilies rise;And only brushes her the clouds'Shadow when they rush in crowds,Or else the shadow of a flightOf hovering hawks at heavens' height.Since the last flash of lightning streaked the plain,Nothing has bitten, in her vast domain.And those who in her realm did roam,Whether it were in dawn or gloam,They all have felt their hearts held fastIn spells of mystery she has cast.She, like an ample, final force,Keeps on the same unbroken course;Black walls of pinewoods gloom and barThe paths of hope that gleam afar;Clusters of dreamy junipersFrighten the feet of wanderers;Malignant mazes intertwineWith paths of cunning curve and line,And the sun every moment shiftsThe goal to which confusion drifts.Since the lightning that the storm forged bit,The bitter silence at the corners fourOf the heath, has changed no whit.The shepherds with their hundred years worn out,And the spent dogs that follow them about,See her, on golden dunes where shadows flit,Or in the noiseless moorland, sometimes sit,Immense, beneath the outspread wing of Night;Then waters on the wrinkled pond take fright;And the heather veils itself and palely glistens,And every leaf in every thicket listens,And the incendiary sunset stillsThe last cry of his light that o'er her thrills.And the hamlets neighbouring her, beneathTheir thatch of hovels on the heath,Shiver with terror, feeling herDominant, though she do not stir;Mournful, and tired, and helpless theyStand in her presence as at bay,And watch benumbed, and nigh to swoon,Fearing, when mists shall lift, to see,Suddenly opening under the moon,The silver eyes of her mystery.THE ROPE-MAKER.At the dike's foot that wearilyCurves along the sinuous sea,The visionary, silver-hairedRope-maker with arms bared,Pulling backwards as he stands,Rolls together, with prudent hands,The twisting play of endless twine,Coming from the far sky-line.Down yonder in the sunset sheen,In the twilight tired and chill,A busy wheel is whizzing still,Moved by one who is not seen;But, parallel on stakes that spaceThe road from equal place to place,The yellow hemp that the roper drawsRuns in a chain that never flaws.With skilful fingers thin and old,Fearing to break the glint of goldThat with his work the gliding lightBlends by the houses growing dim,The visionary roper weavesOut of the heart of the eddying eves,And draws the horizons unto him.Horizons? Those of red sunsets:Furies, hatred, fights, regrets,Sobs of beings broken-hearted,Horizons of the days departed,Writhen, golden, overcast;Horizons of the living past.Of old—the life of strayed somnambulists,When the right hand of God to Canaans blueThe road of gold through gloaming deserts drew,Through morns and evenings swayed with shifting mists.Of old—exasperated life careeringHanging from stallions' manes, lighting the denseDarkness with heels that flashed out gleams immense,Towards immensity immensely rearing.Of old—it was a life of burning leaven;When the Red Cross of Hell and Heaven's WhiteThrough miles of marshalled mail that shed the lightMarched each through blood towards its victory's heaven.Of old—it was a foaming, livid life,Living and dead, with tocsin bells and crime,Edicts and massacres reddening the time,With mad and splendid death above the strife.Between the flax and osiers,On the road where nothing stirs,Along the houses growing dim,The visionary roper weavesOut of the heart of the eddying eves,And draws the horizon unto him.Horizons? There they linger yet:Toil, and science, struggle, fret.Horizons? There at even-chime,They in their mirrors show the mourningImage of the present time.Now, a mass of fires that belch defiance,Where wise men, leagued in mighty storm and stress,Hurl the gods down to change the nothingnessWhereunto strives the force of human science.Now, lo! a room that ruthless thought has swept,Weighed and exactly measured, and men swearThe firmament is arched by empty air;And Death is in glass bottles corked and kept.Now, lo! a glowing furnace, and resistanceOf matter molten in fire's dragon dens;New strengths are forged, far mightier than men's,To swallow up the night, and time, and distance.Here, lo! a palace tiredly built, and lyingBeneath a century's weight, bowed down and yellow,And whence, in terror, mighty voices bellow,Invoking thunder towards adventure flying.Upon the regular road, with eyesFixed where the silent sunset dies,And leaves the houses drear and dim,The visionary roper weavesOut of the heart of the eddying eves,And draws the horizons unto him.Horizons? Where yon sunset beams:Combats, hopes, awakenings, gleams;The horizons he can see definedIn the future of his mind,Far beyond the shores that swimSketched in the sky of sunsets dim.Up yonder—in the calm skies hangs a redStaircase of double gold with steps of blue,With Dream and Science mounting it, the twoWho separately climb to one stair-head.The lightning clash of contraries expires;Doubt's mournful fist its fingers opes, while wedEssential laws that had been wont to shedIn horal doctrines their fragmentary fires.Up yonder—mind more strong and subtle dartsIts violence past death and what is seen.And universal love sheds a sereneAnd mighty silence over tranquil hearts.The God in every human heart, above,Unfolds, expands, and his own being seesIn those who sometimes fell upon their kneesTo worship sacred grief and humble love.Up yonder—living peace is burning bright,And shedding on these lands, down evening's slopeA bliss that kindles, like the brands of hope,In the air's ash the great stars of the night.At the dike's foot that wearilyCurves along the sinuous seaTowards the distant eddying spaces,The visionary roper pacesAlong the houses growing dim,And drinks the horizons into him.SAINT GEORGE.By a broad flash the fog was split,And Saint George, with gold and jewels lit,Came down the slope of it,With feathers foaming from his crest,Riding a charger with a milky breast,And in its mouth no bit.With diamonds decked the twoMade of their fall a path of pity toThis earth of ours from Heaven's blue.Heroes with helpful virtues dowered,Sonorous with courage, heroes crystalline,O through my heart now let the radiance shineThat from his aureolar sword is showered!O let me hear the silver prattleOf the wind around his coat of mail,And around his spurs in battle;Saint George, who shall prevail,He who has heard the cries of my distress,And comes to save from scaithMy poor arms stretched unto his great prowess!Like a loud cry of faith,He holds his lance at rest,Saint George;He passes, I beholdA victory as of a haggard gold,I see his forehead with the Chrism blessed:Saint George of duty,Bright with his heart's and his own beauty.Sound, all ye voices of my hope!Sound in myself, and on the sun-swept slope,And high roads, and the shaded avenue!And, gleams of silver between stones, be youJoy, and you pebbles white with waters opeYour eyes, and lookUp through the brookWhose ripples o'er you roll,And, landscape with thy crimson lakes, be thouThe mirror of the flights of flame that nowSaint George takes to my soul!Against the black dragon's teeth,Against the pustules of a leprous skinHe is the glaive and the miraculous sheath.Charity on his cuirass burns, and inHis courage is the bounding overthrowOf instinct swart with sin.Fire golden-sifted, fire that wheels,And eddying stars in which his glory lies,Flashed from his charger's galloping heels,Dazzle my memory's eyes.The beautiful ambassador is heFrom the white country that with marble glows,Where in the parks, on the sea's strand, and on the treeOf goodness, kindness gently grows.The port, he knows it, where the vessels ride,With angels filled, upon a rippling tide;And the long evenings lighting islands fairBut motionless upon their waters, where,And in eyes also, firmaments are seen.This kingdom hath the Virgin for its Queen,And St. George is the humble joy of her palace,In the air his falchion glimmers like a chalice;Saint George with his devouring light,Who like a fire of gold dispels my spirit's night.He knows how far my feet have wandered,He knows the strength that I have squandered,And with what fogs my brain has fought,He knows what keen assassin knivesHave cut black crosses in my thought,He knows my scorn of rich men's lives,He knows the mask of wrath and follyUpon the dregs of my melancholy.I was a coward in my flightOut of the world in my sick, vain defiance;I have lifted, under the roofs of night,The golden marbles of a hostile scienceTo the barred summits of black oracles;But the King of the Night is Death;And man but in the dawning's breathHis enigmatic effort spells;When flowers unclose, prayer too uncloses,With the scent of prayer their lips are sweet,And the white sun on a nacreous water-sheetIs a kiss that on man's lips reposes;Dawn is a counsel to be bold,And he who hearkens is tenfoldSaved from the marsh that never yet cleansed sin.Saint George in cuirass glitteringWith leaps of fire sprungUnto my soul through the fresh morning;He was beautiful with faith and young;And more to me he bentAs he beheld me penitent;As from an intimate golden phialHe filled me with his soaring;Though he was proud unto my sight,I laid the sweet flowers of my trialIn his pale hand of blest restoring;Then signed he, ere he did depart,My brow with his lance's cross of gold,Bade me be of good cheer and bold,And soared, and bore to God my heart.IN THE NORTH.Two ancient mariners from the Northern MainOne autumn eve came sailing home again,From Sicily and its deceitful islands,Carrying a shoal of sirensOn board.Sharpened with pride they sail into their bay;Among the mists that mark the homeward wayThey cut their passage like a sword;Under a mournful and monotonous gale,One autumn evening of a sadness pale,Into their northern fjord they sail.From the safe shore the burghers of the havenGaze listless, cold, and craven:And on the masts, and in the ropes, beholdThe sirens covered with goldBiting, like vines,Their bodies' sinuous lines.The burghers gaze with closed and sullen mouth,Nor see the ocean booty of the south,Brought in the fog's despite;The vessel seems a basket silver-white,Laden with flesh and fruit and gold for home,Advancing borne on wings of foam.The sirens sing, and in the cordage theyWith arms stretched out in lyres,And lifted breasts like fires,Sing and sing a layBefore the rolling eve,Which reaps upon the sea the lights of day;The sirens sing, and cleaveAround the masts as curves the handle of the urnAnd still the citizens, uncouth and taciturn,Hear not the song.They do not know their friends away so long—The ancient mariners twain—nor understandThe vessel is of their own land,Neither the foc-jibs of their ownMaking, nor the sails themselves have sewn;Of this deep dream they fathom naught,Which makes the sea glad with its journeyings,Since it was not the lie of all the thingsThat in their village to their youth were taught.And the ship passes by the harbour mole,Luring them to the wonder of its soul,But none will gather them the fruitsOf flesh and gold that load the trellised shoots.THE TOWN.Every road goes to the town.Under the mist that the sun illumes,She, where her terraces ariseAnd taper to the terraced skies,Herself as from a dream exhumes.Yonder glimmer looking down,Bridges trimmed with iron lace,Leaps in air and caught in space;Blocks and columns like the headOf a Gorgon gashed and red;O'er the suburbs chimneys tower;Gables open like a flower,Under stagnant roofs that frown.This is the many-tentacled town,This is the flaming octopus,The ossuary of all of us.At the country's end she waits,Feeling towards the old estates.Meteoric gas-lamps lineDocks where tufted masts entwine;Still they burn in noontides cold,Monster eggs of viscous gold;Never seems the sun to shine:Mouth as it is of radiance, shutBy reeking smoke and driving smut.A river of pitch and naphtha rollsBy wooden bridges, mortared moles;And the raw whistles of the shipsHowl with fright in the fog that grips:With a red signal light they peerTowards the sea to which they steer.Quays with clashing buffers groan;Carts grate o'er the cobble-stone;Cranes are cubes of shadow raising,And slipping them in cellars blazing;Bridges opening lift a vastGibbet till the ships have passed;Letters of brass inscribe the world,On roofs, and walls, and shop-fronts curled,Face to face in battle massed.Wheels file and file, the drosky plies,Trains are rolling, effort flies;And like a prow becalmed, the glareOf gilded stations here and there;And, from their platforms, ramifiedRails beneath the city glide,In tunnels and in craters, whenceThey storm in network flashing thinOut into hubbub, dust, and din.This is the many-tentacled town.The street, with eddies tied like ropesAround its squares, runs out and gropesAlong the city up and down,And runs back far enlaced, and linedWith crowds inextricably twined,Whose mad feet beat the flags beneath,Whose eyes are filled with hate, whose teethSnatch at the time they cannot catch.Dawn, eve, and night, lost in the press,They welter in their weariness,And cast to chance the bitter seedOf labour that no gain can breed.And dens black with inanityWhere poisoned sits the clerk and fasts;And banks wide open to the blastsOf the winds of their insanity.Outside, in wadding of the damp,Red lights in streaks, like burning rags,Straggle from reeking lamp to lamp.And alcohol goads life that lags.The bar upon the causey massesIts tabernacle of looking-glasses,Reflecting drunken louts and hags.To and fro a young girl passes,And sells lights to the lolling men;Debauch buys famine in her den;And carnal lust ignited salliesTo dance to death in rotten alleys.Lust roars and leaps from breast to breast,Whipped to a rage uproarious,To a blind crush of limbs in questOf the pleasure of gold and phosphorus;And in and out wan women fare,With sexual symbols in their hair.The atmosphere of reeking dunAt times recedes towards the sun,As though a loud cry called to PeaceTo bid the deafening noises cease;But all the city puffs and blowsWith such a violent snort and flush,That the dying seek in vain the hushOf silence that eyes need to close.Such is the day—and when the evesWith ebony hammers carve the skies,Over the plain the city heavesIts shimmer of colossal lies;Her haunting, gilt desires arise;Her radiance to the stars is cast;She gathers her gas in golden sheaves;Her rails are highways flying fastTo the mirage of happinessThat strength and fortune seem to bless;Like a great army swell her walls;And all the smoke she still sends downReaches the fields in radiant calls.This is the many-tentacled town,This is the burning octopus,The ossuary of all of us,The carcase with solemn candles lit.And all the long ubiquitousRoads and pathways reach to it.THE MUSIC-HALL.Under the enormous fogWhose wings the city arteries clog,'Mid ringing plaudits, at the backOf a radiant hall their Orients they unpack.The acrobat on airy trestles poises;Great suns of strass shine o'er the scene;Clashing their fists stand cymbal-players, leanBreakers of cries and noises;And when the ballet-corps with painted facesIn a thicket of perplexing steps appear,Tangling and disentangling labyrinthine paces,The hall, hung with its gorgeous chandelier,That o'er a surging sea of faces glares,The hall with heavy velvet clad,With balconies like pad on pad,Is like a belly that a woman bares.Swarming battalions of flesh and thighsMarch under arches flowered with thousand dyes;Lace, petticoats, throats, legs, and hips:Teams of rut whose breasts, though bridled, yetAre bounding, yoke by yoke the coiled dance trips,Blue with paint and raw with sweat.Hands, vainly opening, seem to seizeOnly invisible desire that flees;A dancer, darting legs her tights leave bare,Stiffens obscenity in the air;Another with swimming eyes and flanks that writheShrinks like a trampled beast above the loudFlare of the footlights swaying with the litheLust of the gloating crowd.O blasphemy vociferously hurledIn crying gold on the Beauty of the world!Atrocious feint of Art, while Art sublimeIs lying massacred and sunk in slime!O noisy pleasure singing as it treadsOn tortured ugliness that twists and cries;Pleasure against Joy's grain that nurtures headsWith alcohol, with alcohol men's eyes;O pleasure whose rank mouth calls out for flowers,And vomits the vile ferment it devours!Pleasure of old, heroic, calm, and bare,Walked with calm hands and forehead clear as air;The wind and the sun danced in his heart, he pressedDivine, harmonious life, to his warm breast;His breast that breathed it in was Beauty's source;He knew no law that dared call Beauty coarse;Sunrise and sunset, springs with mosses grassed,And the green bough that brushed him as he passed,Thrilled to his deep soul through his flesh, and wereThe kiss of things that love makes lovelier.Now senile and debauched, he licks and eatsSin that beguiles him with her poisoned teats;Now in his garden of anomaliesBibles, codes, texts, and rules he multiplies,And ravishes the faith he then denies.His loves are gold. His hatreds? Flights untoBeauty that grows still lovelier, still more true,Opening in starry flowers in heavens blue.Look where he haunts these halls of monstrous art,Whose burning windows to the heavens dartA restlessness by gazing still renewed:Here is the beast transformed to a multitude.Filled with contagion thousand eyes deflectTo find a million more they may infect;One mind to thousands casts its brazier fire,To be consumed the more in sick desire,To breed new vices, unimagined Hell.The conscience changes, and the brain as well;Another race is bred from putrid spawn,A writhen black totality, a sumOf ciphers spreading in a weltering scum,That outrages the healthfulness of Dawn.O shames and crimes of crowds that reek and stainThe city like a bellowing hurricane;Gulfed in the plaster boxes tier on tierOf theatres and halls obscene and blear!The stage is like a fan unfurled.Enamelled minarets grotesquely curled.Houses and terraces and avenues.Under the limelight's changing hues,First in slow rhythms, then with violent sweep,Gathering swift kisses, touching breasts that leap,Meet the Bayadères with swaying hips;Negro boys, whose heads with plumes are tipped,With their foam-coloured teeth in lipsLike a red vulva open ripped,Move all as pushed along in sluggish poses.A drum beats, an obstinate horn cries long,A raw fife tickles a stupid song,And at the last, for the final apotheosis,A mad assault over the boards is sweeping,Gold and throats and thighs in stages heapingIn curled entanglements; and then all closesWith garments splitting offering rounded shapesAnd vice half hid in flowers like tempting grapes.And the orchestra dies, or suddenly halts,And climbs, and swells, and rolls in whipped assaults;Out of the violins wriggle spasms dark;Lascivious dogs in the tempest seem to barkOf heavy brasses and of strong bassoons;A manifold desire swells, sickens, swoons,Revives, and with such heavy violence heaves,The sense cries out, and helpless reels,And prostitutes itself to a spasm that relieves.And midnight peals.The dense crowd pours and at the doors unfurls.The hall is closed—and on the black causeways,Gaudy beneath the gaslamps' leering gaze,Red in the fog like flesh, await the girls.THE BUTCHER'S STALL.Hard by the docks, soon as the shadows foldThe dizzy mansion-fronts that soar aloft,When eyes of lamps are burning soft,The shy, dark quarter lights again its oldAllurement of red vice and gold.Women, blocks of heaped, blown meat,Stand on low thresholds down the narrow street,Calling to every man that passes;Behind them, at the end of corridors,Shine fires, a curtain stirsAnd gives a glimpse of massesOf mad and naked flesh in looking-glasses.Hard by the docks.The street upon the left is ended byA tangle of high masts and shrouds that blocksA sheet of sky;Upon the right a net of grovelling alleysFalls from the town—and here the black crowd ralliesTo reel to rotten revelry.It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,Time out of mind erected on the frontiersOf the city and the sea.Far-sailing melancholy marinersWho, wet with spray, through grey mists peer,Cradled among the rigging cabin-boys, and they who steerHallucinated by the blue eyes of the vast sea-spaces,All dream of it, evoke it when the evening falls;Their raw desire to madness galls;The wind's soft kisses hover on their faces;The wave awakens rolling images of soft embraces;And their two arms implore,Stretched in a frantic cry towards the shore.And they of offices and shops, the city tribes,Merchants precise, keen reckoners, haggard scribes,Who sell their brains for hire, and tame their brows,When the keys of desks are hanging on the wall,Feel the same galling rut at even-fall,And run like hunted dogs to the carouse.Out of the depths of dusk come their dark flocks,And in their hearts debauch so rudely shocksTheir ingrained greed and old accustomed care,That they are racked and ruined by despair.It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,Time out of mind erected on the frontiersOf the city and the sea.Come from what far sea-isles or pestilent parts?Come from what feverish or methodic marts?Their eyes are filled with bitter, cunning hate,They fight their instincts that they cannot sate;Around red females who befool them, theyHerd frenzied till the dawn of sober day.The panelling is fiery with lewd art;Out of the wall nitescent knick-knacks dart;Fat Bacchuses and leaping satyrs inWan mirrors freeze an unremitting grin;Flowers sicken on the gaming-tables whereThe warming bowls twist fire of light blue hair;A pot of paint curds on an étagère;A cat is catching flies on cushioned seats;A drunkard lolls asleep on yielding plush,And women come, and o'er him bending, brushHis closed, red lids with their enormous teats.And women with spent loins and sleeping croupsAre piled on sofas and arm-chairs in groups,With sodden flesh grown vague, and black and blueWith the first trampling of the evening's crew.One of them slides a gold coin in her stocking;Another yawns, and some their knees are rocking;Others by bacchanalia worn out,Feeling old age, and, sniffing them, Death's snout,Stare with wide-open eyes, torches extinct,And smooth their legs with hands together linked.It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,Time out of mind erected on the frontiersOf the city and the sea.According to the jingle of the pursesThe women mingle promises with curses;A tranquil cynicism, a tired pleasureIs meted duly to the money's measure.The kiss grows weary, and the game grows tame.Often when fist with fist together clashes,In the wind of oaths and insults still the same,Some gaiety out of the blasphemy flashes,But soon sinks, and you hear,In the silence dank and drear,A halting steeple nearSounding, sick with pity,In the darkness over the city.Yet in those months by festivals sanctified,St. Peter in summer, in winter Christmastide,The ancient quarter of dirt and lightSoars up to sin and pounces on its joys,Fermenting with wild songs and boisterous noiseWindow by window, flight by flight,With vice the house-fronts glowDown from the garret to the grids below.Everywhere rage roars, and couples heats.In the great hall to which the sailors throng,Pushing some jester of the streets,Convulsed in obscene mimicry, along,The wines of foam and gold leap from their sheath;Women fall underneathMad, brawling drunkards; loosened rutsFlame, arms unite, and body body butts;Nothing is seen but instincts slaked and lit afresh,Breasts offered, bellies taken, and the fireOf haggard eyes in sheaves of brandished flesh.The frenzy climbs, and sinks to rise still higher,Rolls like exasperated tides,And backwards glides,Until the moment when dawn fills the port,And Death, tired of the sport,Back to ships and homesteads sweeps and harriesThe limp debauch and human weedThat on the pavement tarries.It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury,Wherein Crime plants his knives that bleed,Where lightning madness stainsForeheads with rotting pains,Time out of mind erected on the frontiers that feedThe city and the sea.A CORNER OF THE QUAY.When the wind sulks, and the dune dries,The old salts with uneasy eyesHour after hour peer at the skies.All are silent; their hands turning,A brown juice from their lips they wipe;Never a sound save, in their pipe,The dry tobacco burning.That storm the almanac announces,Where is it? They are puzzled.The sea has smoothed her flounces.Winter is muzzled.The cute ones shake their pate,And cross their arms, and puff.But mate by mate they wait,And think the squall is late,But coming sure enough.With fingers slow, sedateTheir finished pipe they fill;Pursuing, every salt,Without a minute's halt,The same idea still.A boat sails up the bay,As tranquil as the day;Its keel a long net trails,Covered with glittering scales.Out come the men: What ho?When will the tempest come?With pipe in mouth, still dumb,With bare foot onsabot,The salts wait in a row.Here they lounge about,Where all year long the stoutFishers' damesSell, from their wooden frames,Herrings and anchovies,And by each stall a stove is,To warm them with its flames.Here they spit together,Spying out the weather.Here they yawn and doze;Backs bent with many a squall,Rubbing it in rows,Grease the wall.And though the almanacIs wrong about the squall,The old salts lean their backAgainst the wall,And wait in rows together,Watching the sea and the weather.MY HEART IS AS IT CLIMBED A STEEP.My heart is as it climbed a steep,To reach your kindness fathomlessly deep,And there I pray to you with swimming eyes.I came so late to where you arc,You with your pity more than prodigal's surmise;I came from very farUnto the two hands you were holding out,Calmly, to me who stumbled on in doubt!I had in me so much tenacious rust,That gnawed with its rapacious teethMy confidence in myself;I was so tired, I was so spent,I was so old with my mistrust,I was so tired, I was so spentWith all the roads of my discontent.So little I deserved the joy how deepOf seeing your feet light up my wilderness,That I am trembling still with it, and nigh to weep,And lowly for ever is the heart you bless.WHEN I WAS AS A MAN THAT HOPELESS PINES.When I was as a man that hopeless pines,And pitfalls all my hours were,You were the light that welcomed home the wanderer,The light that from the frosted window shinesOn snow at dead of night.Your spirit's hospitable lightTouched my heart, and hurt it not,Like a cool hand on one with fever hot!A element word of green, reviving hopeRan down the piled wrack of my heart's waste slope;Then came stout confidence and right good will,Frankness, and tenderness, and at the last,With hand in hand held fast,An evening of clear understanding and of storms grown still.Since, though the summer followed winter's chill,Both in ourselves and under skies whose deathless firesWith gold all pathways of our thoughts adorn,Though love has grown immense, a great flower bornOf proud desires,A flower that, without cease, to grow still more,In our hearts begins as e'er before,I still look at the little lightWhich first shone out on me in my soul's night.LEST ANYTHING ESCAPE FROM OUR EMBRACE.Lest anything escape from our embrace,Which is as sacred as a Temple's holy place,And so that the bright love pierce with light the body's mesh,Together we descend into the garden of your flesh.Your breasts are there like offerings made,You hold your hands out, mine to greet,And nothing can be worth the simple meatOf whisperings in the shade.The shadow of white boughs caressesYour throat and face, and to the groundThe blossoms of your tressesFall unbound.All of blue silver is the sky,The night is a silent bed of ease,The gentle night of the moon, whose breezeKisses the lilies tall and shy.I BRING TO YOU AS OFFERING TO-NIGHT.I bring to you as offering to-nightMy body boisterous with the wind's delight;In floods of sunlight I have bathed my skin;My feet are clean as the grass they waded in;Soft are my fingers as the flowers they held;My eyes are brightened by the tears that welledWithin them, when they looked upon the earthStrong without end and rich with festive mirth;Space in its living arms has snatched me up,And whirled me drunk as from the mad wine-cup;And I have walked I know not where, with pentCries that would free my heart's wild wonderment;I bring to you the life of meadow-lands;Sweet marjoram and thyme have kissed my hands;Breathe them upon my body, all the freshAir and its light and scents are in my flesh.IN THE COTTAGE WHERE OUR PEACEFUL LOVE REPOSES.In the cottage where our peaceful love reposes,With its dear old furniture in shady nooks,Where never a prying witness on us looks,Save through the casement panes the climbing roses,So sweet the days are, after olden trial,So sweet with silence is the summer time,I often stay the hour upon the chimeIn the clock of oak-wood with the golden dial.And then the day, the night is so much ours,That the hush of happiness around us startsTo hear the beating of our clinging hearts,When on your face my kisses fall in showers.THIS IS THE GOOD HOUR WHEN THE LAMP IS LIT.This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.All is calm, and consoling, and dear,And the silence is such that you could hearA feather falling in it.This is the good hour when to my chair my love will flit,As breezes blow,As smoke will rise,Gentle, slow.She says nothing at first—and I am listening;I hear all her soul, I surpriseIts gushing and glistening,And I kiss her eyes.This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.When hearts will sayHow they have loved each other through the day.And one says such simple things:The fruit one from the garden brings;The flower that one has seenOpening in mosses green;And the heart will of a sudden thrill and glow,Remembering some faded word of loveFound in a drawer beneath a cast-off gloveIn a letter of a year ago.THE SOVRAN RHYTHM.Yet, after years and years, to Eve there cameImpatience in her soul, and as a blightOf being the sapless, loveless flower of whiteAnd torrid happiness that cleaved the same;And once, when in the skies the tempest movedFain had she risen and its lightning proved.Then did a sweet, broad shudder glide on her;And, in her deepest flesh to feel it, EvePressed her frail hands against her bosom's heave.The angel, when he felt the sleeper stirWith violent abrupt awakening,And scattered air and arms, and body rocked,Questioned the night, but Eve remained unlocked,And silent. He in vain bespoke each thingThat lived beside her by the naked sources,Birds, flowers, and mirrors of cold water-coursesWith which, perchance, her unknown thought aroseUp from the ground; and one night when he bowed,And with his reverent fingers sought to closeHer eyes, she leapt out of his great wing's shroud.O fertile folly in its sudden flareBeyond the too pure angel's baffled care!For while he stretched his arms out she was driftingAlready far, and passionately liftingTo braziers of the stars her body bare.And all the heart of Adam, seeing her so,Trembled.She willed to love, he willed to know.Awkward and shy he neared her, daring notTo startle eyes that lost in reveries swam;From terebinths were fluttered scents, and fromThe soil's fermenting mounted odours hot.He tarried, as if waiting for her hests;But she snatched up his hands, and o'er them hung,And kissed them slowly, long, with kiss that clung,And guided them to cool erected breasts.But through her flesh they burned and burned. His mouthHad found the fires to set on flame his drouth,And his lithe fingers spread her streaming tressesO'er the long ardour of their first caresses.Stretched by the cool of fountains both were lying,Seen of their passion-gleaming eyes alone.And Adam felt a sudden thought unknownWell in his heart to her fast heart replying.Eve's body hid profound retreats as sweetAs moss that by the noon's cool breeze is brushed;Gladly came sheaves undone to be their seat,Gladly the grass was by their loving crushed.And when the spasm leapt from them at last,And held them bruised in arms strained stiff and tight,All the great amorous and feline nightTempered its breeze as over them it passed.But on their vision burstA cloud far off at first,And whirling its dizziness with such a blastThat it was all a miracle and a fright,Leapt from the dim horizon through the night.Adam raised Eve, and pressed unto him fastHer shivering body exquisitely wan.Livid and sulphurous the cloud came on,With thundering threats o'erflowing, and red lit.Suddenly on the spotWhere the wild grass was hotWith their two bodies that had loved on it,All the loudRage of the dark, tremendous cloudBit.And the voice of the Lord God in its shadow sounded,Fires from the flowers and nightly bushes bounded;And where the dark the turning paths submerged,With sword in hand flamboyant angels surged;Lions were roaring at the fateful skies,Eagles hailed death with hoarsely boding cries;And by the waters all the palm-trees bentUnder the same hard wind of discontentThat beat on Eve and Adam on that sward,And in the vasty darkness drove them towardNew human worlds more fervent than the old.* * * * * * * * *Now felt the man a magnet manifoldDraw out his strength and mingle it with all;Ends he divined, and knew what gave them birth;His lover's lips with words grew magical;And his unwritten simple heart loved earth,And serviceable water, trees that holdAuthority, and stones that broken shine.Fruits tempted him to take their placid gold,And the bruised grapes of the translucent vineKindled his thirst which they were ripe to still.The howling beasts he chased awoke the skillThat in his hands had slept; and pride dowered himWith vehement strengths that foam and over-brim,That he himself his destiny might build.And the woman, still more fair since by the manThe marvellous shiver through her body ran,Lived in the woods of gold by perfumes filledAnd dawn, with all the future in her tears.In her awoke the first soul, made of prideAnd sweet strength blended with an unknown shame,At the hour when all her heart was shed in flameOn the child sheltered in her naked side.And when the day burns glorious and is done,And feet of tall trees in the forests gleam,She laid her body full of her young dreamOn sloping rocks gilt by the setting sun;Her lifted breasts two rounded shadows showedUpon her skin as rosy as a shell,And the sun that on her pregnant body glowedSeemed to be ripening all the world as well.Valiant and grave she pondered, burning, slow,How by her love the lot of men should grow,And of the beautiful and violent willFated to tame the earth. Ye sacred caresAnd griefs, she saw you, you she saw, despairs!And all the darkest deeps of human ill.And with transfigured face and statelier bearingShe took your hands in hers and kissed your brow;But you as well, men's grandeur madly daring,You lifted up her soul, and she saw howThe limitless sands of time should by your tideBe buried under billows singing pride;In you she hoped, ideas keen in quest,Fervour to love and to desire the bestIn valiant pain and anguished joy; and so,One evening roving in the after-glow,When she beheld, come to a mossy plot,The gates of Paradise thrown open wide,And the angel beckoning, she turned asideWithout desire of it, and entered not.
The translations in this Anthology have been taken from the following collections of poems:—
Bonmariage (Sylvain), Poèmes, Société française d'Editions modernes, Paris, 1909.
Braun (Thomas), Le Livre des Bénédictions, Brussels, 1900.
Collin (Isi-), La Vallée Heureuse, Liège and Paris, 1903.
Dominique (Jean), L'Anémone des Mers, Mercure de France, 1906.
Elskamp (Max), La Louange de la Vie, Mercure de France, 1898.
——Enluminures, Lacomblez, Brussels, 1898.
Fontainas (André), Crépuscules, Mercure de France, 1897.
——La Nef Désemparée, Mercure de France, 1908.
Gérardy (Paul), Roseaux, Mercure de France, 1898.
Gilkin (Iwan), La Nuit (reprint ofLa Damnation de l'Artiste, 1890, andTénèbres,1892), Fischbacher, Paris, 1897. (New edition Mercure de France, 1910.)
Gille (Valère), La Cithare, Fischbacher, Paris, 1897.
Giraud (Albert), Hors du Siècle, Vanier, Paris, 1888.
——La Guirlande des Dieux, Lamertin, Brussels, 1910.
Kinon (Victor), L'Âme des Saisons, Larcier, Brussels, 1909.
Lerberghe (Charles van), Entrevisions, Mercure de France, 1898
——La Chanson d'Eve, Mercure de France, 1904.
Le Roy (Grégoire), La Chanson du Pauvre, Mercure de France, 1907.
——La Couronne des Soirs, Lamertin, Brussels, 1911.
Maeterlinck (Maurice), Serres Chaudes suivies de Quinze Chansons, Lacomblez, Brussels, 1906.
Marlow (Georges), L'Âme en Exil, Deman, Brussels, 1895.
Mockel (Albert), Chantefable un peu naïve, Liège, 1891.
——Clartés, Mercure de France, 1902.
——Vers et Prose, 1910.
——La Flamme Immortelle (in preparation).
Ramaekers (Georges), Le Chant des Trois Règnes, Brussels, 1906.
Rency (Georges), Vie, Lacomblez, Brussels, 1897.
——Les Heures Harmonieuses, Brussels, 1897.
Séverin (Fernand), Poèmes, Mercure de France, 1907.
——Le Centaure, published inLa Vie intellectuelle, Nov. 19th, 1909.
Verhaeren (Émile), Poèmes, Mercure de France, 1900 (reprint ofLes Flamandes, 1883;Les Moines, 1886;Les Bords de la Route, 1891).
——Poèmes, nouvelle série, Mercure de France, 5th edit., 1906 (reprint ofLes Soirs, 1887;Les Débâcles,1888;Les Flambeaux Noirs, 1890).
——Poèmes, iiiesérie, Mercure de France, 5th edit., 1907 (reprint ofLes Villages illusoires, 1895;Les Apparus dans mes Chemins, 1891;Les Vignes de ma Muraille, 1899).
——Les Villes tentaculaires, précédées des Campagnes hallucinées, Mercure de France, 1904.
——Toute La Flandre, La Guirlande des Dunes, Deman, Brussels, 1907.
——Les Heures Claires, suivie des Heures d'après-midi, Mercure de France, 1909.
——Les Rythmes souverains, Mercure de France, 2nd edit., 1910.
ANTHOLOGIES.
Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, Vanier, Paris, 1887.
Poètes belges d'expression française (par Pol de Mont), W. Hilarius, Almelo, 1899.
Anthologie des Poètes français contemporains, ed. G. Walch, 3 vols., Ch. Delagrave, Paris, 1906-07.
Poètes d'Aujourd'hui, ed. Ad. van Bever and Paul Léautaud, 2 vols., 18th edit., Mercure de France, 1908.
LITERATURE (SELECTED).
Bazalgette (Léon), Émile Verhaeren, Sansot, Paris, 1907.
Beaunier (André), La Poésie Nouvelle, Mercure de France, 1902.
Edwards (Osman), Émile Verhaeren,The Savoy, Nov. 1897.
Gilbert (Eugène), Iwan Gilkin, Vanderpoorten, Ghent, 1908.
Gilkin (Iwan), Quinze Années de Littérature,la jeune Belgique,Dec. 1895.
——Les Origines Estudiantines de la "jeune Belgique" à l'Université de Louvain, Editions de la Belgique artistique et littéraire, Brussels, 1909.
Gosse (Edmund), French Profiles, London, 1905.
——The Romance of Fairyland, with a note on a Belgian Ariosto,The Standard, 27th March 1908.
Harry (Gérard), Maurice Maeterlinck, translated by Alfred Allinson, London, 1910.
Hauser (Otto), Die belgische Lyrik von 1880-1900, Groszenhain, 1902.
Horrent (Désiré), Ecrivains belges d'aujourd'hui, Lacomblez, Brussels, 1904.
Kinon (Victor), Portraits d'auteurs, Dechenne et Cie., Brussels, 1910.
Maeterlinck (Georgette Leblanc), Maeterlinck's Methods of Life and Work,Contemporary Review, Nov. 1910.
Mockel (Albert), Émile Verhaeren, Mercure de Franco, 1895.
——Charles van Lerberghe, Mercure de France, 1904.
Ramaekers (George), Émile Verhaeren, Edition de "La Lutte," Brussels, 1900.
Rency (Georges), Physionomies littéraires, Dechenne et Cie., Brussels, 1907.
Schlaf (Johannes), Émile Verhaeren, vol. xxxviii. of "Die Dichtung," Berlin, 1905.
Symons (Arthur), The Dawn by Émile Verhaeren, London, 1898.
——The Symbolist Movement in Literature, London, 1908.
Thompson (Vance), French Portraits, Boston, 1900.
Verhaeren (Émile), Les Lettres françaises en Belgique, Lamertin, Brussels, 1907.
Visan (Tancrède de), Sur l'uvre d'Alfred Mockel,Vers et Prose, April-June 1909.
Zweig (Stefan), Émile Verhaeren, Mercure de France, 1910.
——Émile Verhaeren, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1910.
Page3.—"Red Cheshire." The Dutch cheese so-called is "roux." Braun suggests that the adjective should be translated "red-haired."
Page6.—"Those that we address with 'Sir.'" The cheese sold under the name of "Monsieur Fromage."
Page13,seq.—Max Elskamp's poetry is considered somewhat obscure, and students may find the following equations of help: la Vierge = la femme pure; Jésus = l'enfance délicieuse; un dimanche solaire = une joie éclatante; un dimanche de cur de bois = une joie égoïste; un soldat = brutalité; un juif = un marchand; un oiseau = la vie sous la forme du verbe; une fleur = la vie sous la forme de la senteur.
Page13.—"Of Evening." Sunday is life, the week-days are death; the poet is the Sunday, therefore, since the week is about to begin again, hemustdie. The third stanza means that the Truelove will never again weep for the fair days of betrothal or marriage which the old family ring she wears remind her of.
Page18.—"Full of cripples." By night, because then the regulations forbidding begging are more easily set at defiance.
Page19, line 6.—An allusion to the painting by Seghers, which represents the Virgin Mary with lilies, dahlias, and even snowdrops.
Page23.—"Here the azure cherubs blow." An allusion to the painting by Fouquet in the Museum at Antwerp.
Page47.—In Huysmans' novel,À Rebours, liqueurs are compared with musical instruments: curaçao corresponds to the clarinet; kümmel to the nasal oboe; kirsch to the fierce blast of a trumpet, etc.
Page100.—Song vii. "Et c'est l'esclavage, n'est-ce pas? auquel s'astreint tout être qui se dévoue." Beaunier.
Page107.—"The running water" is the image of the human soul, constantly changing, "en devenir dans le devenir." And yet there is in it a continued, though mobile unity, a permanentrhythm. It objectifies itself in space, but only exists in time, and Mockel sees its vital sign in thoseaspirationswhich guide it towards itself, which bear it on to its fate. The unity of the mobile river, whose waves to-morrow will no longer be those they are to-day, is the continuous current that bears it, as though it aspired to the infinity of oceans.
Page110.—The Goblet is woman, who, whether she inspires genius or sells her body, exists, for us, less byherself than by us; she is what we make her, like this goblet whose colours vary according to what one pours into it.
Page111.—The Chandelier symbolizes the permanent drama enacted by Art, placed as it is between the frivolous world,—which tramples the rose of love under foot,—an the immortal splendour of Nature, which makes it feel its own feebleness.
Page113.—The Angel is the legend of genius.
Page116.—The Man with the lyre is the poet, who is less and less understood as he strikes the graver chords of his lyre.
Page122.—The Eternal Bride is the Aspiration towards which we strive.