RED SYMPHONYIOver the ink-black cauldron of the sea,Heavily, on wings of leaden cloud,Howling the sunsetRaces out to assail me.Long have I voyaged,Night after night the grey rains swept the sea:The heaving breakersHissed and quivered but held no light.Now my voyage is ending,White storm winds have swept bare my soul;With their harsh laughter,Their maddening mockery,Their bayonet-thrusts of despair.Over the keen, clean-swept zenithRoll crushingly, huge masses of cloud:Dull, ponderous, sagging with the burdenOf creaking snow.They drop flat on the sea,They hang menacing over me,They festoon the sunWith swags of crimson light.They stripe the horizon,They bar every way with their iron tongues;They loom weltering over my effort,They steadfastly close me in.Meanwhile the sunWith dying forceWrenches one little crackIn the midst of the sagging masses,And I steer on to it.Like a crimson lakeThe light overflows and touches the bulging surfacesWith carmine, with scarlet,With orange, with vermillion,With brick red, with bluish purple,With maroon, with rose, with russet,With savage green, with snowy blue,With grey, with ebony, with gold.It is the storm of the eveningThat races out shriekingTo assail me,And I hail it.IIThe sky's vast emptinessIs crowded with fragments colliding,Ragged, splintered massesSwirling away to the night.The volcano of the sunHas burst and split its crater:Black slag is hurled to the zenithAbove the red lava-sea.Black shrivelled, charred fragmentsFall into the scarlet torrent:Huge tresses of darkness sweep over my face,Leaving me choking.The sea is one crimson steaming fire;Each fanged waveletFlickers and dances about the one behind it,Hungrily licking at the ship.Fierce whirling swords,Tossed spear-heads lancelikeSpit and stab, then suddenly fallLeaving me thereOn a rolling summit of flame, facing a gulf of despair.The shipLurchesWith ice-crusted prow into the wave-trough;And rises, rapidly dripping liquid lire,Long twisted necklaces, that burn out to green frozen chrysolite.IIIOver my head a bell beats: it is midnight.Perhaps I will live to the dawn.About me are the mouths of yawning furnacesAnd from these scarlet mouths the heat outpours,And darts and licks its dry tongues at my brainTill it, too, seems a black shell almost burstingWith the force of flame in it.Still, wearily, I swing my shovel,Spattering the black coal over the palatesOf the snoring mouths which rapidly swallow.There is nothing else to do.My legs seem melting away in sweat beneath me:In my body my lungs and heart are fighting for air,My eyes are seared by the appalling scarlet,Of the furnaces about me—I scarcely-see them—Myshovelfuls fall short with every swing.Without I hear the battering of the tempest,The ship is pounded sideways by black immeasurable wave-thrusts,And rising dizzily again, like a half-senseless fighter,Is again sent downwards, by those unseen fists.My shovel rises to the ship's slow recovery,My shovel shoots out at the smash of toppling masses,Sometimes I pause and pant for an endless instant,While the ship crouches, quivering.Over my head a bell beats: it is morning.Wearily I drop the shovel,And drag myself to the deck.IVAfarThere is something that seems a shore;The sky has been blown clean of clouds except to westward,And these stare hard at me, like huge sardonyx towers.I cling to a half-shattered rail that reels and dances,Soused by the choking water,My face a streaming mass of blood and salt and grime,I wait and dizzily I try to remember.What is this city that out there awaits me?Am I its conqueror?Will scarlet flags hang fluttering in the streetsTo greet my coming?Will crimson lanternsJingle and toss in festival to-night?Has the fire burned the ship and is the waterBut stinging icy fire,That whips and sears my face?Down there the furnaces go out, for the waterSloshes about the floor;And steaming acrid fumes arise,No living soul could stay in such a place.Out here the decks are shattered,The boats are shorn away,And far on the horizon,The city glares with its sardonyx towers.Now the red bells,The black-red bells,The storm bells,Break loose from the horizon,Leaping upon the eastern sea,And breaking it in their teeth.The towersInfuriate, enkindleFrom base to summit,In layers, and orange terraces,Against the blue snow haze that drifts down on them from the east.The ship of my soulIs rolling to port at last,With one clang from its heaving boilers,One sigh from its shaking funnels,One rattle from its loosened chains.I will lash myself to the mastheadAnd waitEmpty-eyed and open-mouthed,Till the city that is all one scarlet flame of deathTakes me to itself at last.
VIOLET SYMPHONYIBut yesterdayMoonsails were raking high the harbour of my dreams.Dull night of trees,Dark sorrows drooping,Glittering raindrops gleam on youIn recollectionOf my despair.But yesterdayStardust was scattered deep on the dark gulf of my dreams.Wind of the night,Questing, swaying, calling,Rustle of dull grasses,Why do you trouble me?YesterdayPurple mist was powdered on the windless sea of dreams.Faces of the night that pass me,Haggard, monotonous faces,Windblown hair and lustful lips,I am not what you desire.YesterdayOne—two—sails above the mist—.Windswallows that hoverTowards the rainclouds of the horizon,Out of the reedy harboursRocking, swaying, falling,Blown to sea and partedYesterday,Yesterday.IIPurple-blue bloom of night,Globed grapes clustered moroselyDown the dark vineyards of untrodden streets:The noise of the moments is like the clash of the hoofs of a horserattling,Thin tattoo in the stillness:The noise of the moments takes me, uncaring,Towards the day.With brassy crash, dawn's corybantsInvade and trample the vineyard:Like a faun I hide and watch them,A dark cup in my hand.Spoilers of my vineyard,Spilling the lees of my sweet red wine,You will yet ask in vain for a cup that is not yours,A purple, dewy cup of lonely night.Tramplers in the morning,Sunburnt faces and weary lips,There is yet a cup here you cannot have,I hold it in my hands.Would you drink of it?Lay down your thyrse and timbrel.Break the harsh dance that flickers through the morning,Forget the scarlet perfumes of the day.Remember only starless night, cool swish of many seas.Faint pearl-glow of evening,Cool marble in the silence:Purple-blue grapes of night crushed freshly,Deep sleep and the drowsy stars.IIII love the night that in long violet shroudSlowly and lovingly wraps up the day,Hiding its blurred imperfectionsIn endless tenderness.I love the day'sHigh violet cone of light,With thin haze on the horizonLike a wavering summer sea.But most of all I love midsummer dawn,When far-off planes of light ascend and tremble togetherLike distant purple waves, the sound of whose dim breakingIs lost in the wild babel of awaking birds.IVTwisted fragments of violet paper,The dawn drops youInto the green bowl filled with the day's grey waves.I love the night'sDeep purple grapesThat yesterdayWere crushed and spilled,In long and sluggish riversThat joined and made a sea,Where, half-guessed through the mist,Two golden sailsDrifted on silently.The blue fume of my dreamsIs laced with violet flame.One golden sail alone came back to restIn its nestAmong the reeds.The other sail is lost;Behind the mist,Beyond the craggy rock,About which race in jagged whiteThe waves,Horizon on horizon far awayShe waits.But through the day,Comes no faint song, nor creaking of the ropes.Twisted fragments of violet paper,Charred and fallen:Out of the green bowl lazily coils grey smoke.
GREY SYMPHONYIUp on the hillside a long row of larchesShake from their grizzled Beards the vestiges of rain,From grey-blue melting ice-slabs 'neath their archesThe spring goes up again.Writhing, exuding,Up-steaming, streaming,The earth is breathing to the skyWet clouds of spring.Dim rosy fans, the treesAs they flick to and fro,Seem driving greyish vapourOver the snow.The sky remodulates itselfFrom violet-grey to blue,Under the upturned eaves of the blue larchesThe sun looks through.Now with the heat of the sunThe grey-blue ice-slabs quiver,They slide in muddy tricklesTowards the river.Up on the hillside between the long row of larchesFume up from south pale clouds that bear the rain;In pearl and violet archesThey break and shape again.III have seen in the eveningThe greyish-violet cloudsRoll wearily back from northwardTo the place whence first they came.One or two orange lamps burnt lowAgainst deep purple hills—The wind was hurrying, bundling them together,The pines awoke to singThe song of the snow buzzing and screamingOn its one string.I have seen within my heartCrocuses, purple and gold,Drop cold and dull and colourlessBeneath the snow.One or two orange lamps burnt low,Vain memories.The wind has driven me too many winters,My songs are snowflakes whirling about my breast.I will wrap my frozen and bitter songs about me,In one grey drift, and rest.IIIFluttering and soft the snowFlings outward, swirls and settles,But when I try to seize it,The wind tears it away.Through poised green platforms of enormous pines,I see far hilltops pushing up blue roofs.Snow comes,And humsThrough the woofOf the lower branches.It skips and dances:It drops in sluggish foldsOf grey,To where the frozen rhododendron bushesWith lower air-gusts play,And the earth hushesIts movement.Fluttering and soft the snow is blentIn long loose spirals with my dream.It is all I have, the snow,And I knowThat when I chase it, it will fly from me;Beyond the lifeless green,Beyond the low blue hills,Beyond the pale straw-coloured glare,Down in the westIt goes;Straight southward where the purple-orange flareOf sunset flows,And into the blackened heart of my last rosePours its despair.Fluttering, soft, and dimRegrets that skip and skimGrey in the grey twilight;Slim and weary whirls the snow,And where it goes I too shall go.IVOf my long nights afar in alien citiesI have remembered only this:They were black scarves all dusted over with silver,In which I wrapped my dreams;They were black screens on which I made those picturesThat faded out next day.Youth without glory, manhood one mad struggle,Maturity a battle without trumpet calls:Long gleams from pallid suns seen only in my dreamingStruck those dissolving walls.And of my days,I only knowThey slipped and fell,Like too-brief sunsets,Into the hill-ravines that held the snow.Three lofty pinesAt the corners of my heartWaited, apart.They only seeIn the mysteryOf the grey sky,The jaggled clouds that fly,Endlessly.
POPPIES OF THE RED YEAR(A Symphony in Scarlet)IThe words that I have writtenTo me become as poppies:Deep angry disks of scarlet flame full-glowing in the stillnessOf a shut room.Silken their edges undulate out to me,Drooping on their hairy stems;Flaring like folded shawls, down-curved like rockets startingTo break and shatter their light.Wide-flaunting and heavy, crinkle-lipped blossom,Darting faint shivers through me;Globed Chinese lanterns on green silk cords a-swayingOver motionless pools.These are lamps of a festival of sleep held each night to welcome me,Crimson-bursting through dark doors.Out to the dull, blue, heavy fumes of opium rollingFrom their rent red hearts, I go to seek my dream.IIA riven wall like a face half torn awayStares blankly at the evening:And from a window like a crooked mouthIt barks at the sunset sky.And over there, beyond,On plains where night has settled,Ten-like encampments of vaporous blue smoke or mist,Three men are riding.One of them looks and sees the sky:One of them looks and sees the earth:The last one looks and sees nothing at all.They ride on.One of them pauses and says, "It is death."Another pauses and says, "It is life."The last one pauses and says, "'Tis a dream."His bridle shakes.The skyIs filled with oval violet-tinted cloudsThrough which the sun long settled strikes at random,Enkindling here and there blotched circles of rosy light.These are poppies,Unclosing immense corollas,Waving the horsemen on.Over the earth, upheaving, folding,They ride: their bridles shake:One of them sees the sky is red:One of them sees the earth is dark:The last man sees he rides to his death,Yet he says nothing at all.IIIThere will be no harvest at all this year;For the gaunt black slopes arisingLift the wrinkled aching furrows of their fields, falling away,To the rainy sky in vain.But in the furrowsThere is grass and many flowers.Scarlet tossing poppiesFlutter their wind-slashed edges,On which gorged black flies poise and sway in drunken sleep.The black flies hangAbove the tangled trampled grasses,Grey, crumpled bundles lie in them:They sprawl,Heave faintly;And between their stiffened fingers,Run out clogged crimson trickles,Spattering the poppies and standing in beads on the grass.IVI saw last nightSudden puffs of flame in the northern sky.The sky was an even expanse of rolling grey smoke,Lit faintly by the moon that hungIts white face in a dead tree to the east.Within the depths of greenish greyish smokeWere roars,Crackles and spheres of vapour,And thenHuge disks of crimson shooting up, falling away.And I said these are flower petals,Sleep petals, dream petals,Blown by the winds of a dream.But still the crimson rockets rose.They seemed to beOne great field of immense poppies burning evenly,Casting their viscid perfume to the earth.The earth is sown with dead,And out of these the redBlooms are pushing up, advancing higher,And each night brings them nigher,Closer, closer to my heart.VBy the sluggish canalThat winds between thin ugly dunes,There are no passing boats with creaking ropes to-day.But when the eveningCrouches down, like a hurt rabbit,Under the everlasting raincloud whirling up the north horizon,Downwards on the stream will floatGlowing points of fire.Orange, coppery, scarlet,Crimson, rosy, flickering,They pass, the lanternsOf the unknown dead.Out where the sea, sailless,Is mouthing and frettingIts chaos of pebbles and dried sticks by the dunes.By the wall of that houseThat looks like a face half torn away,And from its flat mouth barks at the sky,The sky which is shot with broad red disks of light,Petals drowsily falling.VI"It was not for a sacred cause,Nor for faith, nor for new generations,That unburied we roll and floatBeneath this flaming tumult of drunken sleep-flowers.But it was for a mad adventure,Something we longed for, poisonous, seductive,That we dared go out in the night together,Towards the glow that called us,On the unsown fields of death."Now we lie here reaped, ungarnered,Red swaths of a new harvest:But you who follow after,Must struggle with our dream:And out of its restless and oppressive night,Filled with blue fumes, dull, choking,You will draw hints of that visionWhich we hold aloof in silence."THE END