ICOME, my little one, closer up against me,Creep right up, with your round head pushed inmy breast.How I love all of you! Do you feel me wrapyouUp with myself and my warmth, like a flameround the wick?And how I am not at all, except a flame thatmounts off you.Where I touch you, I flame into being;—but is itme, or you?That round head pushed in my chest, like a nutin its socket,And I the swift bracts that sheathe it: thosebreasts, those thighs and knees,Those shoulders so warm and smooth: I feelthat IAm a sunlight upon them, that shines them intobeing.But how lovely to be you! Creep closer in, thatI am more.I spread over you! How lovely, your round head,your arms,Your breasts, your knees and feet! I feel that weAre a bonfire of oneness, me flame flung leapinground you,You the core of the fire, crept into me.IIAND oh, my little one, you whom I enfold,How quaveringly I depend on you, to keep mealive,Like a flame on a wick!I, the man who enfolds you and holds you close,How my soul cleaves to your bosom as I clasp you,The very quick of my being!Suppose you didn't want me! I should sink downLike a light that has no sustenanceAnd sinks low.Cherish me, my tiny one, cherish me who enfoldyou.Nourish me, and endue me, I am only of you,I am your issue.How full and big like a robust, happy flameWhen I enfold you, and you creep into me,And my life is fierce at its quickWhere it comes off you!IIIMY little one, my big one,My bird, my brown sparrow in my breast.My squirrel clutching in to me;My pigeon, my little one, so warmSo close, breathing so still.My little one, my big one,I, who am so fierce and strong, enfolding you,If you start away from my breast, and leave me,How suddenly I shall go down into nothingLike a flame that falls of a sudden.And you will be before me, tall and towering,And I shall be wavering uncertainLike a sunken flame that grasps for support.IVBUT now I am full and strong and certainWith you there firm at the core of meKeeping me.How sure I feel, how warm and strong and happyFor the future! How sure the future is within me;I am like a seed with a perfect flower enclosed.I wonder what it will be,What will come forth of us.What flower, my love?No matter, I am so happy,I feel like a firm, rich, healthy root,Rejoicing in what is to come.How I depend on you utterlyMy little one, my big one!How everything that will be, will not be of me,Nor of either of us,But of both of us.VAND think, there will something come forth fromus.We two, folded so small together,There will something come forth from us.Children, acts, utterancePerhaps only happiness.Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us.Old sorrow, and new happiness.Only that one newness.But that is all I want.And I am sure of that.We are sure of that.VIAND yet all the while you are you, you are not me.And I am I, I am never you.How awfully distinct and far off from each other'sbeing we are!Yet I am glad.I am so glad there is always you beyond my scope,Something that stands over,Something I shall never be,That I shall always wonder over, and wait for,Look for like the breath of life as long as I live,Still waiting for you, however old you are, and Iam,I shall always wonder over you, and look for you.And you will always be with me.I shall never cease to be filled with newness,Having you near me.
THE listless beauty of the hourWhen snow fell on the apple treesAnd the wood-ash gathered in the fireAnd we faced our first miseries.Then the sweeping sunshine of noonWhen the mountains like chariot carsWere ranked to blue battle—and you and ICounted our scars.And then in a strange, grey hourWe lay mouth to mouth, with your faceUnder mine like a star on the lake,And I covered the earth, and all space.The silent, drifting hoursOf morn after mornAnd night drifting up to the nightYet no pathway worn.Your life, and mine, my lovePassing on and on, the hateFusing closer and closer with loveTill at length they mate.THE CEARNE
SONG OF A MAN WHO HASCOME THROUGHNOT I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carryme!If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, awinged gift!If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and amborrowedBy the fine, fine wind that takes its course throughthe chaos of the worldLike a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-bladeinserted;If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of awedgeDriven by invisible blows,The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder,we shall find the Hesperides.Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.What is the knocking?What is the knocking at the door in the night?It is somebody wants to do us harm.No, no, it is the three strange angels.Admit them, admit them.
I DON'T care whether I am beautiful to youYou other women.Nothing of me that you see is my own;A man balances, bone unto boneBalances, everything thrownIn the scale, you other women.You may look and say to yourselves, I doNot show like the rest.My face may not please you, nor my stature; yetif you knewHow happy I am, how my heart in the wind ringstrueLike a bell that is chiming, each stroke as a strokefalls due,You other women:You would draw your mirror towards you, youwould wishTo be different.There's the beauty you cannot see, myself andhimBalanced in glorious equilibrium,The swinging beauty of equilibrium,You other women.There's this other beauty, the way of the starsYou straggling women.If you knew how I swerve in peace, in the equi-poiseWith the man, if you knew how my flesh enjoysThe swinging bliss no shattering ever destroysYou other women:You would envy me, you would think me wonder-fulBeyond compare;You would weep to be lapsing on such harmonyAs carries me, you would wonder aloud that heWho is so strange should correspond with meEverywhere.You see he is different, he is dangerous,Without pity or love.And yet how his separate being liberates meAnd gives me peace! You cannot seeHow the stars are moving in suretyExquisite, high above.We move without knowing, we sleep, and wetravel on,You other women.And this is beauty to me, to be lifted and goneIn a motion human inhuman, two and oneEncompassed, and many reduced to none,You other women.KENSINGTON
THE great gold apples of nightHang from the street's long boughDripping their lightOn the faces that drift below,On the faces that drift and blowDown the night-time, out of sightIn the wind's sad sough.The ripeness of these apples of nightDistilling over meMakes sickening the whiteGhost-flux of faces that hieThem endlessly, endlessly byWithout meaning or reason whyThey ever should be.
GOLD, with an innermost speckOf silver, singing afloatBeneath the night,Like balls of thistle-downWandering up and downOver the whispering townSeeking where to alight!Slowly, above the streetAbove the ebb of feetDrifting in flight;Still, in the purple distanceThe gold of their strange persistenceAs they cross and part and meetAnd pass out of sight!The seed-ball of the sunIs broken at last, and doneIs the orb of day.Now to the separate endsSeed after day-seed wendsA separate way.No sun will ever riseAgain on the wonted skiesIn the midst of the spheres.The globe of the day, over-ripe,Is shattered at last beneath the stripeOf the wind, and its oneness veersOut myriad-wise.Seed after seed after seedDrifts over the town, in its needTo sink and have done;To settle at last in the dark,To bury its weary sparkWhere the end is begun.Darkness, and depth of sleep,Nothing to know or to weepWhere the seed sinks inTo the earth of the under-nightWhere all is silent, quiteStill, and the darknesses steepOut all the sin.
"SHE SAID AS WELL TO ME"SHE said as well to me: "Why are you ashamed?That little bit of your chest that shows betweenthe gap of your shirt, why cover it up?Why shouldn't your legs and your good strongthighsbe rough and hairy?—I'm glad they are likethat.You are shy, you silly, you silly shy thing.Men are the shyest creatures, they never will comeout of their covers. Like any snakeslipping into its bed of dead leaves, you hurry intoyour clothes.And I love you so! Straight and clean and all of apiece is the body of a man,such an instrument, a spade, like a spear, or anoar,such a joy to me—"So she laid her hands and pressed them down mysides,so that I began to wonder over myself, and what Iwas.She said to me: "What an instrument, yourbody!single and perfectly distinct from everything else!What a tool in the hands of the Lord!Only God could have brought it to its shape.It feels as if his handgrasp, wearing youhad polished you and hollowed you,hollowed this groove in your sides, grasped youunder the breastsand brought you to the very quick of your form,subtler than an old, soft-worn fiddle-bow."When I was a child, I loved my father's riding-whipthat he used so often.I loved to handle it, it seemed like a near part ofhim.So I did his pens, and the jasper seal on his desk.Something seemed to surge through me when Itouched them."So it is with you, but hereThe joy I feel!God knows what I feel, but it is joy!Look, you are clean and fine and singled out!I admire you so, you are beautiful: this cleansweep of your sides, this firmness, this hardmould!I would die rather than have it injured with onescar.I wish I could grip you like the fist of the Lord,and have you—"So she said, and I wondered,feeling trammelled and hurt.It did not make me free.Now I say to her: "No tool, no instrument, noGod!Don't touch me and appreciate me.It is an infamy.You would think twice before you touched aweasel on a fenceas it lifts its straight white throat.Your hand would not be so flig and easy.Nor the adder we saw asleep with her head on hershoulder,curled up in the sunshine like a princess;when she lifted her head in delicate, startledwonderyou did not stretch forward to caress herthough she looked rarely beautifuland a miracle as she glided delicately away, withsuch dignity.And the young bull in the field, with his wrinkled,sad face,you are afraid if he rises to his feet,though he is all wistful and pathetic, like a mono-lith, arrested, static."Is there nothing in me to make you hesitate?I tell you there is all these.And why should you overlook them in me?—"
IAND so I cross into another worldshyly and in homage linger for an invitationfrom this unknown that I would trespass on.I am very glad, and all alone in the world,all alone, and very glad, in a new worldwhere I am disembarked at last.I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,just ventured in.I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there isnobody to know.And whosoever the unknown people of this un-known world may bethey will never understand my weeping for joyto be adventuring among thembecause it will still be a gesture of the old world Iam makingwhich they will not understand, because it isquite, quite foreign to them.III WAS so weary of the worldI was so sick of iteverything was tainted with myself,skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,nations, armies, war, peace-talking,work, recreation, governing, anarchy,it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to startwithbecause it was all myself.When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myselfplucking my own flowering.When I went in a train, I knew it was myselftravelling by my own invention.When I heard the cannon of the war, I listenedwith my own ears to my own destruction.When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my owntorn dead body.It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.IIII SHALL never forget the maniacal horror of it allin the endwhen everything was me, I knew it all already, Ianticipated it all in my soulbecause I was the author and the resultI was the God and the creation at once;creator, I looked at my creation;created, I looked at myself, the creator:it was a maniacal horror in the end.I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.I was a father and a begetter of children,and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceivingin my own body.IVAT last came death, sufficiency of death,and that at last relieved me, I died.I buried my beloved; it was good, I buriedmyself and was gone.War came, and every hand raised to murder;very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!Very good, very good, I am a murderer!It is good, I can murder and murder, and seethem fallthe mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitudeone on another, and then in clusters togethersmashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heapsgoing up in a foetid smoke to get rid of themthe murdered bodies of youths and men in heapsand heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heapstill it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous fouldeadthat are youths and men and mebeing burned with oil, and consumed in corruptthick smoke, that rollsand taints and blackens the sky, till at last it isdark, dark as night, or death, or helland I am dead, and trodden to nought in thesmoke-sodden tomb;dead and trodden to nought in the sour blackearthof the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, troddento nought.VGOD, but it is good to have died and been troddenouttrodden to nought in sour, dead earthquite to noughtabsolutely to nothingnothingnothingnothing.For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it iseverything.When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite outevery vestige gone, then I am hererisen, and setting my foot on another worldrisen, accomplishing a resurrectionrisen, not born again, but risen, body the same asbefore,new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyondlifeproud beyond inkling or furthest conception ofprideliving where life was never yet dreamed of, norhinted athere, in the other world, still terrestrialmyself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.VII, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute deathI put out my hand in the night, one night, and myhandtouched that which was verily not meverily it was not me.Where I had been was a sudden blazea sudden flaring blaze!So I put my hand out further, a little furtherand I felt that which was not I,it verily was not Iit was the unknown.Ha, I was a blaze leaping up!I was a tiger bursting into sunlight.I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown.I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tombstarved from a life of devouring always myselfnow here was I, new-awakened, with my handstretching outand touching the unknown, the real unknown,the unknown unknown.My God, but I can only sayI touch, I feel the unknown!I am the first comer!Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth-ing, nothing!I am the first comer!I am the discoverer!I have found the other world!The unknown, the unknown!I am thrown upon the shore.I am covering myself with the sand.I am filling my mouth with the earth.I am burrowing my body into the soil.The unknown, the new world!VIIIT was the flank of my wifeI touched with my hand, I clutched with myhandrising, new-awakened from the tomb!It was the flank of my wifewhom I married years agoat whose side I have lain for over a thousandnightsand all that previous while, she was I, shewas I;I touched her, it was I who touched and I who wastouched.Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivionstretching out my hand, my hand flung like adrowned man's hand on a rock,I touched her flank and knew I was carried by thecurrent in deathover to the new world, and was climbing out onthe shore,risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I,the old life,wakened not to the old knowledgebut to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, anew world of time.Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new worldI cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture ofits discovery.I shall be mad with delight before I have done,and whosoever comes after will find me in thenew worlda madman in rapture.VIIIGREEN streams that flow from the innermostcontinent of the new world,what are they?Green and illumined and travelling for everdissolved with the mystery of the innermost heartof the continentmystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump-tuousout of the well-heads of the new world.—The other, she too has strange green eyes!White sands and fruits unknown and perfumesthat nevercan blow across the dark seas to our usualworld!And land that beats with a pulse!And valleys that draw close in love!And strange ways where I fall into oblivion ofuttermost living!—Also she who is the other has strange-moundedbreasts and strange sheer slopes, and whitelevels.Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takespossession of me!The unknown, strong current of life supremedrowns me and sweeps me away and holds medownto the sources of mystery, in the depths,extinguishes there my risen resurrected lifeand kindles it further at the core of utter mystery.GREATHAM
I HAVE found a place of lonelinessLonelier than LyonesseLovelier than Paradise;Full of sweet stillnessThat no noise can transgressNever a lamp distress.The full moon sank in state.I saw her stand and waitFor her watchers to shut the gate.Then I found myself in a wonderlandAll of shadow and of blandSilence hard to understand.I waited therefore; then I knewThe presence of the flowers that grewNoiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.And flashing kingfishers that flewIn sightless beauty, and the fewShadows the passing wild-beast threw.And Eve approaching over the groundUnheard and subtle, never a soundTo let me know that I was found.Invisible the hands of EveUpon me travelling to reeveMe from the matrix, to relieveMe from the rest! Ah terriblyBetween the body of life and meHer hands slid in and set me free.Ah, with a fearful, strange detectionShe found the source of my subjectionTo the All, and severed the connection.Delivered helpless and amazedFrom the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazedFor memory to be erased.Then I shall know the ElysiumThat lies outside the monstrous wombOf time from out of which I come.
IA WOMAN has given me strength and affluence.Admitted!All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now,has not so much of strength as the body of onewomansweet in ear, nor so much to givethough it feed nations.Hunger is the very Satan.The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horribleGod.It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear ofhunger.Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirstythroat.I have never yet been smitten through the belly,with the lack of bread,no, nor even milk and honey.The fear of the want of these things seems to bequite left out of me.For so much, I thank the good generations of man-kind.IIAND the sweet, constant, balanced heatof the suave sensitive body, the hunger for thishas never seized me and terrified me.Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us,in these two primary instances.IIITHEN the dumb, aching, bitter, helpless need,the pining to be initiated,to have access to the knowledge that the great deadhave opened up for us, to know, to satisfythe great and dominant hunger of the mind;man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet,printed books,bright, glancing, exquisite corn of many a stubbornglebe in the upturned darkness;I thank mankind with passionate heartthat I just escaped the hunger for these,that they were given when I needed them,because I am the son of man.I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothedmy body,I have been taught the language of understanding,I have chosen among the bright and marvellousbooks,like any prince, such stores of the world's supplywere open to me, in the wisdom and goodness ofman.So far, so good.Wise, good provision that makes the heart swellwith love!IVBUT then came another hungervery deep, and ravening;the very body's body crying outwith a hunger more frightening, more profoundthan stomach or throat or even the mind;redder than death, more clamorous.The hunger for the woman. Alas,it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong,'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord,not to be spoken aloud.Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us,which we must learn to satisfy with pure, realsatisfaction;or perish, there is no alternative.I thought it was woman, indiscriminate woman,mere female adjunct of what I was.Ah, that was torment hard enoughand a thing to be afraid of,a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch.A woman fed that hunger in me at last.What many women cannot give, one woman can;so I have known it.She stood before me like riches that were mine.Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening,unfree,Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious.A man is so terrified of strong hunger;and this terror is the root of all cruelty.She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me.How could I look, when I was mad? I lookedsideways, furtively,being mad with voracious desire.VTHIS comes right at last.When a man is rich, he loses at last the hunger fear.I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve.I could put my face at last between her breastsand know that they were given for everthat I should never starvenever perish;I had eaten of the bread that satisfiesand my body's body was appeased,there was peace and richness,fulfilment.Let them praise desire who will,but only fulfilment will do,real fulfilment, nothing short.It is our ratificationour heaven, as a matter of fact.Immortality, the heaven, is only a projection ofthis strange but actual fulfilment,here in the flesh.So, another hunger was supplied,and for this I have to thank one woman,not mankind, for mankind would have preventedme;but one woman,and these are my red-letter thanksgivings.VITo be, or not to be, is still the question.This ache for being is the ultimate hunger.And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh,very nearly."Yet something remains.Something shall not always remain.For the main already is fulfilment.What remains in me, is to be known even as Iknow.I know her now: or perhaps, I know my ownlimitation against her.Plunging as I have done, over, over the brinkI have dropped at last headlong into nought,plunging upon sheer hard extinction;I have come, as it were, not to know,died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassedmyself.What can I say more, except that I know what it isto surpass myself?It is a kind of death which is not death.It is going a little beyond the bounds.How can one speak, where there is a dumbness onone's mouth?I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me,she is all not-me, ultimately.It is that that one comes to.A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch thatwhich is not me in any sense,it wounds me to death with my own not-being;definite, inviolable limitation,and something beyond, quite beyond, if youunderstand what that means.It is the major part of being, this having surpassedoneself,this having touched the edge of the beyond, andperished, yet not perished.VIII WANT her though, to take the same from me.She touches me as if I were herself, her own.She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, thatI am the other,she thinks we are all of one piece.It is painfully untrue.I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root andquick of my darknessand perish on me, as I have perished on her.Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall haveeach our separate being.And that will be pure existence, real liberty.Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,unextricated one from the other.It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinctionof being, that one is free,not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.When she has put her hand on my secret, darkestsources, the darkest outgoings,when it has struck home to her, like a death, "thisishim!"she has no part in it, no part whatever,it is the terribleother,when she knows the fearfulother flesh, ah, dark-ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous andconcrete,when she is slain against me, and lies in a heaplike one outside the house,when she passes away as I have passed awaybeing pressed up against theother,then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused withher,I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnishedin silver,having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,and she also, pure, isolated, complete,two of us, unutterably distinguished, and inunutterable conjunction.Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah,perfect.VIIIAFTER that, there will only remain that all mendetach themselves and become unique,that we are all detached, moving in freedom morethan the angels,conditioned only by our own pure single being,having no laws but the laws of our own being.Every human being will then be like a flower,untrammelled.Every movement will be direct.Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faceswhen we think of itlest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassingsingleness of mankind.The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-dimmed,the hen will nestle over her chickens,we shall love, we shall hate,but it will be like music, sheer utterance,issuing straight out of the unknown,the lightning and the rainbow appearing in usunbidden, unchecked,like ambassadors.We shall not look before and after.We shallbe,now.We shall know in full.We, the mystic NOW.ZENNOR
THE plane leavesfall black and weton the lawn;The cloud sheavesin heaven's fields setdroop and are drawnin falling seeds of rain;the seed of heavenon my facefalling—I hear againlike echoes eventhat softly paceHeaven's muffled floor,the winds that treadout all the grainof tears, the storeharvestedin the sheaves of paincaught up aloft:the sheaves of deadmen that are slainnow winnowed softon the floor of heaven;manna invisibleof all the painhere to us given;finely divisiblefalling as rain.
IT is not long since, here among all these folkin London, I should have held myselfof no account whatever,but should have stood aside and made them waythinking that they, perhaps,had more right than I—for who was I?Now I see them just the same, and watch them.But of what account do I hold them?Especially the young women. I look at themas they dart and flashbefore the shops, like wagtails on the edge of apool.If I pass them close, or any man,like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little asidepretending to avoid us; yet all the timecalculating.They think that we adore them—alas, would itwere true!Probably they think all men adore them,howsoever they pass by.What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring,such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces,like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Romanhyacinths,scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dimanemones,even the sulphur auriculas,flowers that come first from the darkness, and feelcold to the touch,flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;what is it, that, from the faces of the fair youngwomencomes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneaththat startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?They are the issue of acrid winter, these first-flower young women;their scent is lacerating and repellant,it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption;it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,when destruction soaks through the mortified,decomposing earth,and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosomof the ground.They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification,thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,with a loveliness I loathe;for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heartmust they need to root in!
I WISH it were spring in the world.Let it be spring!Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!Come, rush of creation!Come, life! surge through this mass of mortifica-tion!Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,which are rather last-flowers!Come, thaw down their cool portentousness,dissolve them:snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations ofwhite and purple crocuses,flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption,nourished in mortification,jets of exquisite finality;Come, spring, make havoc of them!I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasureto tread down the jonquils,to destroy the chill Lent lilies;for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessentialbrightness,rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheatand rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads offruittemptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb andfinger;oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirlsthe pear-bloom,upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot-and quince-blossom,storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginableblossomabout our bewildered faces,though we do not worship.I wish it were springcunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds andends of the old, scattered fire,and kindling shapely little conflagrationscurious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves,and naked sparrow-bubs.I wish that springwould start the thundering traffic of feetnew feet on the earth, beating with impatience.I wish it were spring, thunderingdelicate, tender spring.I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of pas-sionate, mysterious corruptionwere not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down forvery exuberance,exulting with secret warm excess,bowed down with his inner magnificence!Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enoughto toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jetdancing sportfully;as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squintof waterfor men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at afair.The gush of spring is strong enoughto play with the globe of earth like a ball on afountain;At the same time it opens the tiny hands of thehazelwith such infinite patience.The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sapcould take the earthand heave it off among the stars, into the in-visible;the same sets the throstle at sunset on a boughsinging against the blackbird;comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,and betrays its candour in the round white straw-berry flower,is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indianbrave.Ah come, come quickly, spring!Come and lift us towards our culmination, wemyriads;we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring usto our summerwe who are winter-weary in the winter of the world.Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,come and soften the willow buds till they arepuffed and furred,then blow them over with gold.Come and cajole the gawky colt's-foot flowers.Come quickly, and vindicate usagainst too much death.Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of theworld from within,burst it with germination, with world anew.Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannotflower from the ice.All the world gleams with the lilies of Death theUnconquerable,but come, give us our turn.Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate,suffocating perfume of corruption,no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the bladesof sensationpiercing the flesh to blossom of death.Have done, have done with this shuddering,delicious businessof thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion,of rare, death-edged ecstasy.Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hourstrike,O soon, soon!Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to aruddy violet,incipient purpling towards summer in the worldof the heart of man.Are the violets already here!Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that evennowon the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.Show me the violets that are out.Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of theblood of man is purpling with violets,if the violets are coming out from under the rackof men, winter-rotten and fallenwe shall have spring.Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming withviolets.Pray to live through.If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness ofthe shadow of manit will be spring in the world,it will be spring in the world of the living;wonderment organising itself, heralding itself withthe violets,stirring of new seasons.Ah, do not let me die on the brink of suchanticipation!Worse, let me not deceive myself.ZENNOR