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Last night, within our little townThe Dead came marching through;In a long line, like living men,Just as they used to do.Only, so long a line it seemedYou'd think the Judgment DayHad dawned, to see them slowly pass,With faces turned one way.They walked no longer foe and foeBut brother bound to brother;Poor men, common men they walkedFriendly to one another.Just as in life they might have doneWho stabbed and slew instead....So quietly and evenly they walkedThese million gentle dead.
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For her the proud stars bend, she sees,As never yet, dim sorceriesBreaking in silver magic wideOn the blue midnight's swirling tide,With arrowy mist and spearing flameThat out of central beauty came.The innumerate splendours of the skiesAre thronging in her shining eyes;Her body is a fount of lightIn the plumed garden of the night;Her lily breasts have known the blissOf the cool air's unfaltering kiss.She is made one with loveliness,Enfranchised from the world's distress,Given utterly to joy, a brideWith a bride's hunger satisfied.Now, though she heavily walk, and knowThe sharp premonitory throeAnd the life leaping in the gloomOf her most blessed and chosen womb,It is as though foot never wasSo light upon the glimmering grass.She is shot through with the stars' light,Helped by their calm, unwavering might.In tall, lone-swaying gravityStoops to her there the eternal treeWhose myriad fruitage ripens onBeneath the light of moon and sun.
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Lone shadows move,The night air stirs;This hour of dyingDreams was hers.In this dusk placeHer throat gleamed whiteIn glimmering beautyOf starlight.Nightingales sangExultant bliss;The snared stars saw usSway, and kiss.Now the bats whirr,The barn owls hoot,Her lovelinessIs dust, is mute.Peace comes not here,No dream-bird trills:They haunt her lodgingIn the hills.
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Bring me some oranges on blue china,With a jade-and-silver spoon,And drowse on your silken mats beside meIn the burning noon.Bring me red wine in cups of crystal,With melons on chrysoprase,And place them softly with jewelled fingersBefore my gaze.Hasten, my dove of scented whisperings,My lily, my Xacán!Bring bubbling pipes for the cool shadows,And my peacock fan.And bid Isárrib, my chief musician,Weave quiet songs within,That my soul in the circles of a great glamourMay float and spin.And O, you gaudy and whistling parrotsIn your high, flowered maze,Still your harsh, petulant quarrellingWith the mocking jays.
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Ah, my brave Vitellius!Ah, your tastes are marvellous!When you eat your singing birdsDo you leave the bones — and words,The proud music in the throat?...Not a note, not a note?Doubtless they were not so pleasantAs the brains of a young pheasant,Or flamingoes' tongues, whose dutyNever was to utter beauty.But they sang, but they flutedAnd your rasping lies confuted,And your ugliness laid bareWith a lyric in the air.So you bought them on a string,Dangling balls that used to sing,And you gave them to the cookWith a fat and happy look.But you ask me why this fuss!Ah, my brave Vitellius,I am never sure your stringersMay not string you other singers,May not tire of lark and wrenAnd attempt to sell you men.Please forgive me, but I've madeCertain songs ... and I'm afraid!
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If Beauty came to you,Ah, would you know her grace,And could you in your shadowed prison viewUnscathed her face?Stepping as noiselesslyAs moving moth-wings, soMight she come suddenly to you or meAnd we not know.Amid these clangs and cries,Alas, how should we hearThe shy, dim-woven music of her sighsAs she draws near.Threading through monstrous, black,Uncharitable hours,Where the soul shapes its own abhorrèd rackOf wasted powers?
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"And God said 'Let us make man in our image and let him have dominion'
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God made you in His image, yet I sawYou stoop and seize a blind mole from the snare.Blind.Blind with terror ... BlindYour teeth gleamed bare behind the taut, white lips.The trapper's law knows neither hate nor love.You watched it paw,Frantic with lust of life, the yielding airAnd were amused.God's Image!Did you care, pitying one moment, see the swift hands clawFor life and darkness, know and hate your trap?I saw your knuckles gleam, your hand swing free;A cry;The blind face crashed against the wall.Then death and stillness and — —You grinned.Mayhap,Snaring the blind mole of humanity,God made you in His image after all.
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Lovely SemiramisCloses her slanting eyes:Dead is she long ago,From her fan sliding slowParrot-bright fire's feathersGilded as June weathers,Plumes like the greenest grassTwinkle down; as they passThrough the green glooms in Hell,Fruits with a tuneful smell —Grapes like an emerald rainWhere the full moon has lain,Greengages bright as grass,Melons as cold as glassPiled on each gilded boothFeel their cheeks growing smooth;Apes in plumed head-dressesWhence the bright heat hisses,Nubian faces sly,Pursing mouth, slanting eye,Feel the ArabianWinds floating from that fan:See how each gilded facePaler grows, nods apace:"Oh, the fan's blowingCold winds.... It is snowing!"
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Across the fields as green as spinach,Cropped as close as Time to Greenwich,Stands a high house; if at all,Spring comes like a Paisley shawl —Patternings meticulousAnd youthfully ridiculous.In each room the yellow sunShakes like a canary, runOn run, roulade, and watery trill —Yellow, meaningless, and shrill.Face as white as any clock's,Cased in parsley-dark curled locks —All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guessAt the hidden ugliness.Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beatTo put stitches in my mind,Make it tidy, make it kind,You shall not: I'll keep it freeThough you turn earth, sky and seaTo a patchwork quilt to keepYour mind snug and warm in sleep!
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Metallic waves of people jarThrough crackling green toward the barWhere on the tables chattering-whiteThe sharp drinks quarrel with the light.Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —Sometimes they splash like water (youYourself reflected in their hue).The conversation loud and brightSeems spinal bars of shunting lightIn firework-spurting greenery.O complicate machineryFor building Babel, iron craneBeneath your hair, that blue-ribbed maneIn noise and murder like the seaWithout its mutability!Outside the bar where jangling heatSeems out of tune and off the beat —A concertina's glycerineExudes, and mirrors in the greenYour soul: pure glucose edged with hintsOf tentative and half-soiled tints.
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The carriage brushes through the brightLeaves (violent jets from life to light);Strong polished speed is plunging, heavesBetween the showers of bright hot leavesThe window-glasses glaze our facesAnd jar them to the very basis —But they could never put a polishUpon my manners or abolishMy most distinct disinclinationFor calling on a rich relation!In her house — (bulwark built betweenThe life man lives and visions seen) —The sunlight hiccups white as chalk,Grown drunk with emptiness of talk,And silence hisses like a snake —Invertebrate and rattling ache....Then suddenly EternityDrowns all the houses like a seaAnd down the street the Trump of DoomBlares madly — shakes the drawing-roomWhere raw-edged shadows sting forlornAs dank dark nettles. Down the hornOf her ear-trumpet I conveyThe news that "It is Judgment Day!""Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear."I roared: "It is the Trump we hear!""TheWhat?" "THE TRUMP!" "I shall complain!.... the boy-scouts practising again."
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The evening found us whom the day had fled,Once more in bitter anger, you and I,Over some small, some foolish, trivial thingOur anger would not decently let die,But dragged between us, shamed and shiveringUntil each other's taunts we scarcely heard,Until we lost the sense of all we said,And knew not who first spoke the fatal word.It seemed that even every kiss we wrungWe killed at birth with shuddering and hate,As if we feared a thing too passionate.However close we clungOne hour the next hour found us separate,Estranged, and Love most bitter on our tongue.To-night we quarrelled over one small head,Our fruit of last year's maying, the white budBlown from our stormy kisses and the deadFirst rapture of our wild, estranging blood.You clutched him: there was panther in your eyes,We breathed like beasts in thickets, on the wallOur shadows in huge challenge seemed to rise,The room grew dark with anger. Yet through allThe shame and hurt and pity of it you wereStill strangely and imperishably dear,As one who loves the wild day none the lessThat breaks in bitter hands the buds of Spring,Whose cold hand stops the breath of loveliness,And drives the wailing ghost of beauty past,Making the rose, — even the rose, a thingFor pain to be remembered by at last.I said: "My son shall wear his father's sword."You said: "Shall hands once blossoms at my breastBe stained with blood?" I answered with a wordMore bitter, and your own, the bitterestStung me to sullen anger, and I said:"My son shall be no coward of his lineBecause his mother choose"; you turned your headAnd your eyes grew implacable in mine.And like a trodden snake you turned to meetThe foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled,And broke our life in pieces at my feet,"Your child?" you said: "Yourchild?"
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The low bay melts into a ring of silver,And slips it on the shore's reluctant fingerThough in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.But the black wood that leans and sighs above herNo tide can turn, no moon can slave nor summon.Then comes the dark: on sleepy, shell-strewn beaches,O'er long pale leagues of sand and cold, clear waterShe hears the tide go out towards the moonlight.The wood still leans ... weeping she turns to seek him,And his black hair all night is on her bosom.
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I came by night to Thèlus wood,And though in dark and desperate placesStubborned with wire and brown with bloodUndaunted April crept and sewedHer violets in dead men's faces,And in a soft and snowy shroudDrew the scarred fields with gentle stitch;Though in the valley where the ditchWas hoarse with nettles, blind with mud,She stroked the golden-headed bud,And loosed the fern, she dared not hereTo touch nor tend this murdered thing;The wind went wide of it, the yearUpon this breast stopped short of Spring:Beauty turned back from Thèlus Wood.From broken brows the dim eyes stared,Blistered and maimed the wide stumps grinnedFrom the black mouth of Thèlus baredIn laughter at some monstrous jest.No creature moved there, weed nor wind.Huge arms, half-torn from savage breast,Hung wide, and tangled limbs and facesLay, as if giants blind and starkWith violent, with perverse embracesGroped for each other in the dark.A moaning rose — not of the wind,— There was no wind, but hollowlyFrom its dim bed of mud each treeGave forth a sound, till trees and mudSeemed but a single, sighing mouth,A wound that spoke with lips uncouth,And cried to me from Thèlus Wood.I heard one tree say: "This was IWho drew great clouds across the skyTo weep against me." This one said:"I made a gloom where love might lieAll day and dream it night, a bedSecret and soft, the birds' song hadA twilight sound the whole day there."One said: "Last night I shook my hairBefore the mirror of the moon.""I saw a corpse to-day," said one"That was but buried yester-year."And one, the smallest, sweetest thing —A fair child-tree made never stir,Dead before God had tended herIn the green nurseries of Spring.She lay, the loveliest, loneliest,Among the old and ruined trees,And at each small and broken wristThe white flowers grew like bandages.Then from the ruined churchyard whereOld vaults and graves lay turned and tossedAnd earth from earth was shaken bare,Came murmurings of a tongueless hostThat to each ghastly brother said:"Who raised us from our sleep? Is thisThe resurrection of the dead?Upon our bodies no flesh grows,No bright blood through our temples springs,No glory spreads, no trumpet blows,The air is not white and blind with wings.And yet dragged up before us lieThe woods of Thèlus at our feet,And strange hills sentinel the sky,And where the road went yawns a pit.The world is finished: let us sleep.God has forgotten: we shall keepHere a sweet, safe Eternity.There is no other end than this,And this is death, and that is peace."But even as they ceased the stonesWere loosed, the earth shook where I stood,And from far off the crouching gunsSwung slowly round on Thèlus Wood.
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I will build up a wall for Freedom to dwell therein,A high wall with towersAnd steel fangs for a gate.For Freedom that lacks a home falleth by pit and gin,A prey to the alien powersThat lie in wait.I will build up a house for her where the ways divide,A house set on a hill,With a lamp in the topmost tower,And a trumpet calling to arms, and a flag like a flame blown wide,And a sword to save and to killAs her bridal dower.I will take her to wife, she that is life and death;Life — for a trumpet calls;Death — for it calls me still,And I shall know love — a star, and a fluttering breathTill the shadow of silence fallsIn the house on the hill.I will build up a house for her where the ways divide,Four-square on the rock,A high house and a great;So, when I fly, spent, back from a broken ride,Her key shall cry in the lock,She shall stand in the gate.She shall stand in the gate — the prize of the world to win,Stand steel-shod,Crowned with a cloud of flowers.I will build up a wall, a wall, for Freedom to dwell thereinIn the name of the most high God,A wall with towers.
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Soldier, soldier, burnishing your sword,Is there no place for a wayfaring man in the courts of your lord?A couch, and a crust, and a song, and a flagon of wine?Haggard, begrimed though I be, and out at heel,A lean, grey hop-and-go-one with a crutch of steel,Brother-at-arms with death? Behold the sign:I have tasted great weather on high, white, green-turreted cliffs by the sea.I have tramped the tough heather, the purple, the brown,By pools of peat water; from the night to the day,Till the moon has dropped down: the ghost of a minim, low down,In a high-piping treble of grey.In shy, dim recesses, mid tresses, green tresses.Slow dipping, caressing, I've heardA whisper, a chuckle of laughter, a scamper; and high,High up in the air the cry, the call of a bird.And when the night came with a flicker of wingsI have heard the earth breathing quiet and slowLike a pulse in the tiny, wild tumult of things.I have sung to the sun, and the moon and the stars,In valleys uncharted of tumbled sea meadowsI have shouted aloud 'neath a sky whipped to smoke in the fret of my sparsAnd I fought as I fared; and my couch was a camp; and my songs were my scars.Soldier! Soldier! Cosetting your sword!Have you no place for a harper-at-arms in the courts of your lord —Prim fountains, clipped trees, and trim gardens, and music, and rest?Nay, keep your sugared delights and your margents embroidered! My life is the best.In my ears is the sound of a bugle blown, and my pulses like kettle-drums beatFor the hungry blind onset, the rally, the stubborn defeat.I, too, could have polished, and polished, and jeered at the wayfaring man who passed by.But I follow the fighting Apollo.And I stand unashamed; and I raise up my shard of a sword; and I cry the old cry.Please God they shall find but a hilt in my hand when I die!
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Dark hurrying shapes beset my path that night —Pushing and buffeting; and in my brainDark hurrying shapes beset my soul. In vainI struggled; as a fevered dreamer might;Or some spent, breathless swimmer, in despiteOf desperate stroke, thrust headlong to the main.The waking nightmare, monstrous and inane,Whirled, rushed, and huddled in its random flight.Like a spent swimmer, battling with a swoon,Silent I fought, yet seemed to cry aloud.When, at the challenge of a marching tune,Heard in a sudden stillness of the crowd,I looked aloft, and saw the great round moonSteadfast behind her ragged rout of cloud.
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The Silent People of No Man's LandCalm they lie,With a stare and vacant smileAt the vacant sky.Over them swept the battle,And stirred them not.Armies passed over, beyond them.They are forgot.Calmly the earth deals with them,Melts them away.Nothing is left of them now but bones,Bones and clay.Bones of the Valley of Judgment,Bones stripped clean.We fought, day in, day out, and the others,With this between.Dawn comes white and finds themStark and cold.Twilight creeps over and covers them,Fold on fold.Night cannot hide them from us.In the dark, again,We see the Silent PeopleWho once were men.The Silent People of No Man's Land,They rise, they rise,With the glory of utter lossIn their stary eyes.Beckoning, beckoning, calling,Pointing the way.But the dawn comes white, and finds themBones and clay.Winds of the world blow o'er themYour serenade!Touch like a lute the broken earthWhere our dead are laid!Broken bones of the martyrs,Reliques of pain,Anoint them, anoint them with sunlight,Robe them in rain.The Silent People of No Man's LandCalm they lie,Bones, broken and bleached,Under the sky.Over them sweeps the tempest,And stirs them not.We pass over, beyond them,They are forgot.