Contents/Contents, p. 4
Over that morn hung heaviness, until,Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beatingA melancholy staccato on dead metal;Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft;Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangleIts harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated:Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!They stopped.The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart:She held, she swayed, a hulk, a hollow carcassOf blistered iron that the grey-green, waveless,Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly.And, in that pause, a sinister whisper ran:Burial at Sea! a Portuguese official ...Poor fever-broken devil from Mozambique:Came on half tight: the doctor calls it heat-stroke.Why do they travel steerage? It's the exchange:So many millionreisto the pound!What did he look like? No one ever saw him:Took to his bunk, and drank and drank and died.They're ready! Silence!We clustered to the rail,Curious and half-ashamed. The well-deck spreadA comfortable gulf of segregationBetween ourselves and death.Burial at sea...The master holds a black book at arm's length;His droning voice comes for'ard:This our brother ...We therefore commit his body to the deepTo be turned into corruption... The bo's'n whispersHoarsely behind his hand:Now, all together!The hatch-cover is tilted; a mummy of sailclothWell ballasted with iron shoots clear of the poop;Falls, like a diving gannet. The green sea closesIts burnished skin; the snaky swell smoothes over ...While he, the man of the steerage, goes down, down,Feet foremost, sliding swiftly down the dim water,Swift to escapeThose plunging shapes with pale, empurpled belliesThat swirl and veer about him. He goes downUnerringly, as though he knew the wayThrough green, through gloom, to absolute watery darkness,Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers:To the sad, sunless deeps where, endlessly,A downward drift of death spreads its wan mantleIn the wave-moulded valleys that shall enfold himTill the sea give up its dead.There shall he lie dispersed amid great riches:Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts!All the sunken armadas pressed to powderBy weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrackNo livening sun shall visit till the crustOf earth be riven, or this rolling planetReel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides,Unloosed, deliver up that white AtlantisWhose naked peaks shall bleach above the slakedThirst of Sahara, fringed by weedy tanglesOf Atlas's drown'd cedars, frowning eastwardTo where the sands of India lie cold,And heap'd Himalaya's a rib of coralSlowly uplifted, grain on grain....We dreamToo long! Another jangle of alarumStabs at the engines:Slow. Half-speed. Full-speed!The great bearings rumble; the screw churns, frothingOpaque water to downward-swelling plumesMilky as wood-smoke. A shoal of flying-fishSpurts out like animate spray. The warm breeze wakens;And we pass on, forgetting,Toward the solemn horizon of bronzed cumulusThat bounds our brooding sea, gathering gloomThat, when night falls, will dissipate in flawsOf watery lightning, washing the hot sky,Cleansing all hearts of heat and restlessness,Until, with day, another blue be born.
Contents/Contents, p. 4
Out of that high pavilionWhere the sick, wind-harassed sunIn the whiteness of the dayGhostly shone and stole away —Parchèd with the utter thirstOf unnumbered Libyan sands,Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burstOut of arid AfricaTo the tideless sea, and smoteOn our pale, moon-coolèd landsThe hot breath of a lion's throat.And that furnace-heated breathBlew into my placid dreamsThe heart of fire from whence it came:Haunt of beauty and of deathWhere the forest breaks in flameOf flaunting blossom, where the floodOf life pulses hot and stark,Where a wing'd death breeds in mudAnd tumult of tree-shadowed streams —Black waters, desolately hurledThrough the uttermost, lost, dark,Secret places of the world.There, O swift and terribleBeing, wast thou born; and thence,Like a demon loosed from hell,Stripped with rending wings the denseEchoing forests, till their bowedPlumes of trees like tattered cloudWere toss'd and torn, and cried aloudAs the wood were rack'd with pain:Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soonFrom the moaning, stricken plainIn whorled eagle-soarings roseTo melt the sun-defeating snowsOf the Mountains of the Moon,To dull their glaciers with fierce breath,To slip the avalanches' rein,To set the laughing torrents freeOn the tented desert beneath,Where men of thirst must wither and dieWhile the vultures stare in the sun's eye;Where slowly sifting sands are strownOn broken cities, whose bleaching bonesWhiten in moonlight stone on stone.Over their pitiful dust thy blastPassed in columns of whirling sand,Leapt the desert and swept the strandOf the cool and quiet sea,Gathering mighty shapes, and proudPhantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud,And northward drove this panoplyTill the sky seemed charging on the land....Yet, in that plumèd helm, the mostOf thy hot power was cooled or lost,So that it came to me at length,Faint and tepid and shorn of strength,To shiver an olive-grove that heavesA myriad moonlight-coloured leaves,And in the stone-pine's dome set freeA murmur of the middle sea:A puff of warm air in the nightSo spent by its impetuous flightIt scarce invades my pillar'd closes, —To waft their fragrance from the sweetBuds of my lemon-coloured rosesOr strew blown petals at my feet:To kiss my cheek with a warm sighAnd in the tired darkness die.
Contents/Contents, p. 4
(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)
All through the nightI have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail,A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones,Crying for light as the quails cry for love.Other wanderers,Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazedWith beating winds and the sobbing of the sea,Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the callOf the blind one, their sister....Hearing, their fluttered heartsTake courage, and they wheel in their dark flight,Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to seeThe white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn,And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered goldThat is the delight of quails in their spring mating.Land-scents grow keener,Penetrating the dank and bitter odour of brineThat whitens their feathers;Far below, the voice of their sister calls themTo plenty, and sweet water, and fulfilment.Over the pallid margin of dim seas breaking,Over the thickening in the darkness that is land,They fly. Their flight is ended. Wings beat no more.Downward they drift, one by one, like dark petals,Slowly, listlessly fallingInto the mouth of horror:The nets....Where men come trampling and crying with bright lanterns,Plucking their weak, entangled claws from the meshes of net,Clutching the soft brown bodies mottled with olive,Crushing the warm, fluttering flesh, in hands stained with blood,Till their quivering hearts are stilled, and the bright eyes,That are like a polished agate, glaze in death.But the blind one, in her wicker cage, without ceasingHaunts this night of spring with her stuttering call,Knowing nothing of the terror that walks in darkness,Knowing only that some cruelty has stolen the lightThat is life, and that she must cry until she dies.I, in the darkness,Heard, and my heart grew sick. But I know that to-morrowA smiling peasant will come with a basket of quailsWrapped in vine-leaves, prodding them with blood-stained fingers,Saying, 'Signore, you must cook them thus, and thus,With a sprig of basil inside them.' And I shall thank him,Carrying the piteous carcases into the kitchenWithout a pang, without shame.'Why should I be ashamed? Why should I railAgainst the cruelty of men? Why should I pity,Seeing that there is no cruelty which men can imagineTo match the subtle dooms that are wrought against themBy blind spores of pestilence: seeing that each of us,Lured by dim hopes, flutters in the toils of deathOn a cold star that is spinning blindly through spaceInto the nets of time?'So cried I, bitterly thrusting pity aside,Closing my lids to sleep. But sleep came not,And pity, with sad eyes,Crept to my side, and told meThat the life of all creatures is brave and pityfulWhether they be men, with dark thoughts to vex them,Or birds, wheeling in the swift joys of flight,Or brittle ephemerids, spinning to death in the hazeOf gold that quivers on dim evening waters;Nor would she be denied.The harshness diedWithin me, and my heartWas caught and fluttered like the palpitant heartOf a brown quail, flyingTo the call of her blind sister,And death, in the spring night.
Contents/Contents, p. 4
Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis:Meeting lips and twining fingersIn the mild Atlantis springtime?How should I knowIf there were lovers in the lanes of AtlantisWhen the dark sea drowned her mountainsMany ages ago?Were there poets in the paths of Atlantis:Eager poets, seeking beautyTo adorn the women they worshipped?How can I sayIf there were poets in the paths of Atlantis?For the waters that drowned her mountainsWashed their beauty away.Were there women in the ways of Atlantis:Foolish women, who loved, as I do,Dreaming that mortal love was deathless?Ask me not nowIf there were women in the ways of Atlantis:There was no woman in all her mountainsWonderful as thou!
Contents/Contents, p. 4
These lists, which include poetical works only, are in some cases incomplete.
Footnote 1:
Reprinted in
Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912
.
return to footnote mark
Footnote 2:
Reprinted, with additions, in
Forty New Poems
.
return
Footnote 3:
Reprinted, with additions, in
Motley
.
return
end of text